Another thing that is being largely counterfeited is tripe. Parties who
buy tripe cannot be too careful. There is a manufactory that can make
tripe so natural that no person on earth can detect the deception. They
take a large sheet of rubber about a sixteenth of an inch thick for a
background, and by a process only known to themselves veneer it with a
Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. The unsuspecting boarding
house keeper, or restaurant man buys it and cooks it, and the boarder or
transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the damnable tripe
with a pair of shears used in a tin shop for cutting sheet iron, and it is
handed to the victim. He tries to cut it, and fails; he tries to gnaw it
off, and if he succeeds in getting a mouthful, that settles him. He leaves
his tripe on his plate, and it is gathered up and sewed on the original
piece, and is kept for another banquet.
"CASH."
On circus day W.H.H. Cash, the great railroad monopolist of New Lisbon,
was in the city. He had just made a few hundred thousand dollars on a
railroad contract, and he decided to expend large sums of money in buying
dry goods. He went into one of our stores and was passing along up the
floor, when a black-eyed girl with a dimple in her chin, pearly teeth, red
pouting lips, who was behind the counter, shouted, "_cash, here!_" Mr.
Cash turned to her, a smile illuminating his face as big as a horse
collar. He is one of the most modest men in the world, and as he extended
his great big horny hand to the girl, a blush covered his face, and the
perspiration stood in great beads on his forehead. "How do yeu dew?" said
Cash, as she seemed to shrink back in a frightened manner. They gazed at
each other a moment, in astonishment, when another girl, perhaps a little
better looking, further on, said, "Here, Cash, quick!" He at once made up
his mind that she was the one that had spoken to him the first time, so he
said, "Beg your pardon, miss," to the black-eyed girl, and went on to
where the other girl was wrapping up a corset in a base ball undershirt.
As he approached her she smiled, supposing he wanted to buy something. He
thought she knew him, and he sat down on a stool and put out his hand and
said, "How have you been?" She didn't seem to shake very much, but asked
him if there was anything she could show him. He thought may be it was
against the rules for the clerks to speak to anybody, unless they were
buying something, so he said, "Yes, of course. Show me corsets, stockings,
anything, gaul dumbed if I care what." She was just beginning to look upon
him as though she thought he had escaped, when a little blonde on the
other side of the store, as sweet as honey, shouted, "Cash, Cash, I need
thee every hour. Come a running." To say that Cash was astonished, is
drawing it mild. He knew that they all wanted him, but he couldn't make
out how they seemed to know his name. He looked at the little blonde a
minute, trying to think where he had met her, when he decided to go over
and ask her. On the way over he thought she resembled a girl that used to
live in Portage. He went up to her, and with a smile that was childlike
and bland, he said, "Why, how are you, Samantha?" The little blonde looked
daggers at him. "Didn't you use to wait on tables there at the Fox House,
at Portage?" The girl picked up a roll of paper cambric, and was about to
brain him, when the floor walker came along, and asked what was the
matter. Cash explained that since he came into the store, three or four
girls had yelled to him, and he couldn't place them. "There," says he, as
another girl yelled "Cash," "there's another of 'em wants me," and he was
going to where she was, when the floor walker asked him if his name was
Cash. "You bet your liver it is," said Cash. It was then explained to him
that the girls were calling cash boys. He thought it over a minute and
said, "Sold, by the great baldheaded Elijah. Won't you go down and take
something? Invite all of them. The girls can take soda. I'll be gaul
blasted if I ever had such a rig played on me." And he went out into the
glare of the sunlight, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and just
then the circus procession came along, and he followed off the elephants.
There are lots of worse men than Cash.