eirce BOSTON. No. PECK'S FUN: EXTRACTS FROM THE "LA CROSSE SUN," AVD "PECK'S SUN," MILWAUKEE' CAREFULLY SELECTED WITH THE OBJECT OF AFFORDING THE PUBLIC IN ONE VOLUME JHE OF OF THE PAST TEN YEARS. IT WILL BE FOUND TO CONTAIN HI* Lecture, "Samantha, the Blond Mule, or How I Broke the Back-Bone of the Rebellion," the Address Delivered Before the Northwestern Dairymen's Association on "Cheese," Fourth of July Address, Agricultural Address, Etc., Etc., Together with Nearly all those Shorter Sketches and Crisp Items which won for him his Reputation as a Humorist. COMPILED BY V. W. RICHARDSON, CHICAGO: BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. 1880. Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1879, by V. W. RICHARDSON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. DEDICATION. OFFICE OF PECK'S SUN, MILWAUKEE, Wis., December I, 1879. MR. V. W. RICHARDSON, ESQ.: DEAR SIR : Your letter, asking me if I have any objections to your publishing a book of Extracts from PECK'S SUN, is received. In reply I would say that, so far as I am personally concerned, I have none, it can't injure me much, but I ask you to think of the people. They have already many burdens to bear, and they are about as mad now as they can be, and I fear the result should you carry the thing too far. They are slow to anger, but once they are aroused they would string a man up to a tree. I can see how persons can stand such liter- ary stuff in installments, but come to choke 250 pages down them at once and they might rebel. You may mean well, but if you have a family, and you are not prepared to take your chances on treading the Golden Streets of the New Jerusalem, or running to a brimstone fire, I advise you to think twice before you publish such a book. However, if you believe with Mr. Ingersoll, that there is no hereafter, go ahead, but understand that I am not responsible, and if the people rise up and mob you, that I have an undisputed right to get behind a barrel. If, after this warning, you conclude to preceed, ALLOW ME TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK To THE AUTHORS OF " BEAUTIFUL SNOW," THE ABLEST POETS OF OUR TlilE AND MOST FREQUENT; MAT THEIR NUMBERS INCREASE, AND MAT THKT An, HOLD OUT FAITHFUL TO THE EXD. You see, if every author of "Beautiful Snow " buys a copy of your book, you are a rich man. Hoping for the best, yet fearing the worst, allow me to advise you to get your life insured, and wish you success. Yours Feelingly, GEO. W. PECK. IKTDIEX. Agricultural Address 161 Amputating Woman's Leg. . .175 Anthony, Susan B 6 Artesian Well, Our 144 Awkward Squad of One 84 Barbarism, Western States. ... 40 Barnum's Show for Sale 85 Beecher's Ice House in Hell. ..200 Bennett and May Duel 79 Bedbug's Mass Sleeting 46 Black, Mayor, & River Water. 25 Blind Pig,"The 37 Boston Lecturer 13 do Girl and Stockings. ... 19 Boy Story Papers 90 Bov and the Goat 141 Bridge, Miss Mattie A 38 Bruce Roscoe Conkling 40 Brooklyn Man & Fit Medicine. 97 Buying Stone Crusher 28 Burglarizing a Coffin Factory. 240 C Cameron, Senator 15 "Cash" j6 Cardiff Giant Under Arrest. . . 31 Cairo Tight-rope Artist 51 Can a Cow Joke? 73 Carpenters' Self-raker & Bind'r.io6 Can a Person Live on Air?. . . .177 Cat Teaser, A 194 Cheese, Lecture 20 Cheese-cloth 5 Church, Excitement in a 48 Chewed Flannel & Lace Run's. 110 Chapin as Single-han'd Talk'r.i5i Chri-tmas 240 Chicken's Gizzards 6 Challenge, Negro 6 Cholera Morbus and Brandy. .109 Church, Girls Locked in 9 Chicago- -Sunday School Boys 15 do Newspapers 19 do Hotels 40 do Lady Cut a Dog. ... 74 do Canned Bodies for the Heathens 83 do Hotel for Men 87 Cincinnati Preacher A 87 Circus, and Three-Card-Monte 89 Cider for Two 100 Coachman and Girls 38 Connecticut Suicides 40 Cucumbers and Science 19 Darling Kiss my EyelidsDown.no Dead Soldiers." 16 Democrats, what will they do? 38 do Dry Removal 40 Des Moines S. S. Teacher 49 Dead by Hanging vs. Cucumb'r 140 Dickinson, Anna, on Stage. . . 70 Didn't Know Horse was Fast. 86 Different Months ^38 Don't be Too Nice 194 Domestic Tragedv, A 180 Dog, Smith's Wa"tch 78 Dogs Attacked by Sheep 52 do Rubber Hunting 87 Drake, Frank, Cowhided 106 Dubuque Doctor 25 do Umbrella Repairers. 70 Duke of Hamilton and the Sun's Cashier 114 E Pluribus Unum 223 Editors on a Spree 30 do Visiting LaCrosse 70 do Wisconsin Twins 83 Editorial Protector 34 Emperor and Nihilism -148 Excitement in a Church 48 Expedition in Search Doughn't.2i3 PECK'S FUN. Fall in the Rabbit Market 146 Fever, Why it Didn't Spread. . 52 Female Und'clo'es, New Style. 146 Fire New Year's Day, The. . . .215 Fishing for Pieces of Women . 1 1 1 Fire Department, An Efficient 31 Fly Manufactory. . . . ^ 10 Flour and Wheat by Tele- fraph and Canal 97 du Lac Dogs 52 Fond du Lac as Spark'g Resort 76 Fond du Lac's Ungrateful Dog. 239 Fourth of July 55 Front Gates and Frost 68 G Game Laws in the South 51 Getting the Hang of Things. . 50 Getting it Down Fine 71 Getting in the Wrong Pew. ... 151 Gently Down the Stream we Glide 191 Girls Before and After Pic-Nic . 248 Girls Charged with Electricity . 5 1 Give us War 101 Glenn's Falls Editor 25 Goose, Hanscom's 7 Go West, Young Man 41 Grant, Mr. U. S 12 do Go in, Ulisses 101 Green Bay Pet Bear 46 Greenback Orator & Cramped Stomach 112 Granite Head Cheese 141 Grasshoppers and Wild Geese. 173 Great Man Departed, A 245 H Hamlin, Hannibal 6 Hanscom's Goose 7 Hanscom's Colt 191 Hash Cutter 35 " Hazel Dell " Saloon 74 Hatch, Fred., Pigeon Shooting 74 Hell, Ingersoll and Whisky. . . 38 He had her Ear in his Mouth.. iSS Hen, The 218 Hotel Keepers & Rope Lad'rs.247 How the Old Squaw Preven- ted Bloodshed 181 How to Reach Young Men. . . 144 Horses, Seven Year Old 47 Hug me to Death, Darling 76 Ice Boat, A Ride on So If Love is Blind, Etc 76 Ingersoll, Hell and Whisky. . . 38 Ingersoll, Death of Bob. .".... f>-j Ingersoll and a Kicking Mule. 187 Indian Attack, An 113 India Rubber Angle Worm. . . 180 Itch, The 5 Jack Styles Won 39 Jack-knife Step Ladder 243 Joke on the Hat 14:5 Jones' Fast Horse 86 K Key Hole, Looking in 15 Kee Mon, Converted Chinaman 79 Kilbourn Gas Spring 54 Killing Big Game 115 Langtry, Mrs., "You Bet". . . .247 Lay up Apples in Heaven 172 La Crosse Nebecudnez'r Wat'r. 147 La Crosse Established Busi- ness Betting on Elections 87 La Crosse Theatricals 66 Lane's, Mrs., Universalists' Bath 116 Lake Superior Maple Sugar.. . 93 Lathrop's Eyesight not Failing 97 Labor-Saving Invention 33 Lewis, Dr. Dio, on Tomatoes.. 27 Legend of the Lake 108 Lightning-Rod Peddler 19 Liver Pad, Leadville Beefsteak 38 Little Falls Diaper Pen 76 Louisville Mule 27 do Libel Suit 46 Love, Ten Days 49 Loan Exhibition 51 Lord's Supper and an Oyster Supper 114 PECK S FUN. Man Who was Hung for Mur- der, The 220 Madison Letters 203 Madison Legislators 30 Madison Democrat, Practical Joke 156 Madison, Magnetic Artesian Well 171 Mad Minister, A 157 Mexico in Serious Trouble. . . . 154 Meriden Church Deacon 27 " Mene Mene Tekel " 95 Milw'kee Man & Our Lecture. 101 Milwaukee River Water. . . .25-48 Mineral Water, Effects of 69 Minnesota Fire Steamer 107 Moody and Potter Palmer's Driver 97 Model Collector, A 94 Moments in Life 6 Musical Critique, A 13 Mule, A Louisville 27 do StreetCar 36 do Oshkosh 76 Nearly Broke up a Festival. . . 44 Nearly Broke up the Ball 155 New York Policeman 72 O Obituary Articles 36 O'Gorman Edith, Escaped Nun 74 Okalona States' Editor 101 Oliver, Joe, Counting Ties. ... ^2 Oshkosh Jail, Men Fell Out of. 76 do Mule 76 do Skunk in Church 76 Patent Applied For 77 Patterson, N. J., Young Man. . 30 Pettibone's, A. W., Slate 5 Petrified Sturgeon 47 Penzer, Mrs., First Offence 49 Peck, How he Put Down the Rebellion 117 Perseverance will Win 176 Peter Cooper's Air Cushion. . .200 Pickerel, When to Eat 36 Pig, The Blind 37 Piscatorial Orphan Asylum. . .178 Plea for the Bull Head 134 Porous Plasters & Turpentine . 198 Postal Card, New Double- Barreled 114 Politics, Look Not Upon 70 Political Outlook, The 247 Pratt, of the Menasha Press.. . 36 Prairie Chicken Shooting Si Pulcifer's Biography of Leg- islators 89 Pulled the Wrong Thing 199 Q Quebec Corpse 51 R Racine Journal's Accusation. . 89 Raising a Mortgage .--- 1 Raising Children in Milw'kee .112 Rand's Tom., Bear 116 Read or Write, Unable to 12 Result of Changing your Business 82 Reverand Three-Card-Monte Chaps, The 91 Reeds Tom, of Menasha Press . 97 do Courage ....192 Red Wine and Tights 114 Ride on an Ice Boat So Roman Toga, A 12 Roosevelt, Capt, Attack 217 S St. Louis Street Lamps 6 Safe Investment, A 159 Safest Business, The 216 Salt Seller 9 Satisfactory Explanation 14 Sardineindianapolis 98 Schurz, Karl 5 do and Key on In- dian Business 200 Self-Raker 34 Seven Year Old Horse 47 Sewing Machine, Kind & G'tle 68 Sentinel, "Timely Topics'' Ed.. 72 Selling Clams 154 Show 'Em to Me 187 Siddons, Scott, & her Shadows . 1 16 Silver Wedding, A 241 Smith's Watch Dog 78 Sons of Temperance Festival . 54 PECK S FUN. Soverign Governor, The 224 Soldiers, The Dead 16 Spanking Machine 33 Sparking Machine, A no Stone Crusher, Buying a 28 Street Car, Old Maid in 87 Stockings and Beer 93 Stuck on an Easy Word 96 Sulky, Jack Styles and. Girl. .. 39 Sun's Alarm, The 244 Sun's Solemnity 174 Sun's Outlay, The. 171 Sun Sewing Machine 109 Sun Excursion, The 102 Tar and Feather Party 9 Take your Latin Straight 142 Ten Days in Love 49 Telescope Car 77 Terrible Scene, A 150 Three-Card-Monte, The Rev- erend Chaps' 91 That Cussed Cow 137 Thomas H. Cat 177 Throw Out Them Potatoes. ...188 They Called it Fun 190 Thanksgiving 234 Toney Slaughter House, A. . . .244 Toney Vehicle, A 140 Toe Nails, Cut Them 77 Tomatoes 27 Treating 16 Trying to Save Two Shillings. 53 Trying Moment, A 75 Trains Without Conductors. . . r>y Trouble at Debating Society.. . 193 Turner, John, Burglarized 153 Two Chromoes 107 W Watertown Junction 195 We all get Behind Something. 201 Weather, Striped Stockings. . . 153 Why the Fever Didn't Spread. 52 What they were Fighting for. . 175 Williams, Blanche, Recovers $10,000 46 Wicked Stand on Slippery Places, The 88 Will he Bleed? 174 Woodcock, The 17 Woodhull, Victoria, and the Presidency 31 TRACTS /ROM "PECK'S SUN." LITTLE ONES FOR A CENT. It is more blessed to give than to receive, the itch. Up from the west at break of day, the tobacco signs were rolled out and the devil was to pay, for Carl Schurz was seized with fresh dismay and got about two thousand miles away, quick as a palace car could take him. Where is Buchanan Reed, with his poetic descriptive talents ? A. W. Pettibone, one of Ripon's dry goods merchants, had business in the Cream City Wednesday. He is ten years younger than he was eleven years ago when we used to buy calico of him and tell him to put it on the slate. Well, in those days, the more business we did with a mer- chant the older he looked. It is said by fashion reporters that "cheese cloth" is being used for ladies' dresses and so forth. Those who have noticed the bandages around cheese will wonder if they can be made up into dresses without retaining the odor of the cheese. It would be pretty tough to take a girl to a party who had a suspicion of limberger clinging to her garments. 6 In the gizzard of a chicken killed at Ripon, was found fifteen pins, a piece of corset steel, a piece of hoopskirt, ten hooks and eyes, a brass garter fastening, and the heel of a gaiter. The name of the lady is unknown. A negro who was challenged at the Rome (Georgia) election by a white man, thought it was a challenge to fight, when he took to the woods, and has been subsisting on roots and herbs ever since. The St. Louis street lamps have the name of the street on the top, and all a man has to do to find out what street he is on is to climb on to the top of a house. They are much handier than the old kind, for people who live in attics. Hannibal Hamlin gives it as his opinion that the soldier who suffered with dysentery was as brave as the one who charged a battery. In behalf of thousands of comrades wiio have never had a good word spoken tor us before, we return thanks to Mr. Hamlin. During the trial of Susan B. Anthony for illegal voting, the prosecuting Attorney got one admission from the de- fense that should endear him to the hearts of the American people. He compelled Susan, through her attorney, to ad- mit that she was a woman. That is a point gained that will be valuable in future litigation. There is a moment in the life of every married man, however humble or however exalted, when he feels the humiliation of his position, and blushes at what is expected of him A moment when he feels as though he would pre- fer to transact the business before him through an agent. A time when his soul would fain throw off its fetters, and he feels it to be a moral impossibility for him to go through the task assigned to him, when he feels that he had almost rather die, if he were satisfied he were good enough. That time is when he has to go into a store and inquire of the gentlemanly clerk if he has got any fine tooth combs. He looks around carefully to see that no one is listening, and asks for the harrowing instrument of torture, but is careful to tell the clerk that it is dandruff that is the matter. 7 HANSCOM'S GOOSE. Negotiations have been in progress during the past week, between Hanscom and the editor of this great moral paper, to induce us tell the following good story on Steve Martin- dale or Judge Burton, but that high regard for truth which has always characterized THE SUN, and which has kept us up under the most trying circumstances, has caused us to turn our back to the tempter. An old lady from the country came in the other day, and asked Hanscom if he didn't want to buy a goose. He said he didn't know as he wanted any goose, but the old lady insisted that it was a good fat goose, and as she had always been a good customer, he said he would take it. She went out and shortly returned with a live goose. In politics the goose was a gander. Hanscom was a little disappointed when he found the bird was alive, but after looking it over to see that it was not wind broken or spavined, he paid her a dollar for it. She said the feathers were worth at least seventy-five cents. Well, the goose was put in a boot and shoe box with a crack in the cover, to keep till noon. First, Steve Martindale came in to collect pew rent, and sat down on the box, and the goose reached. up and bit Mr. Martindale near the pistol pocket. Steven tarried but a moment. He said any time before the first of January would do about the pew rent, and with his hand on his heart he went out. It seemed as though everybody that went in sat down on that box, and the goose welcomed them all. Frank Hatch went in to try on a pair of barges, and had no sooner sat down on the box, than he jumped up about four feet, and said people had got an idea that be- cause he was on the police force, and prohibited from taking his own part, that they could pick on him all they chose. He said when his time was out he would whip the man that run that sabre into him, if he died for it. Then a woman came in, canvassing for " Eminent Women." Hanscom didn't want the book, but was a little delicate about telling her, so he asked her to be seated, while he glanced over the pictures in the book. Of course she sat down on that box. Hanscom was gazing intently at a steel engraving of Susan Anthony, and wondering how one so young could be so base, when the book agent arose unanimously, snatched the book out of his hand, took it in one hand, and her polon- 8 aise in the other, and went out as mad as a hornet. Hans- corn said he never saw a book agent tear herself away so sudden like, and he wondered at it, though he had no doubt the goose was in some manner responsible. She told Forbes that a shoemaker up on the corner stabbed her. Pretty soon along came General Kellogg, the great tem- perance orator, to talk to Hanscom about reforming. He tried to show the danger of even putting cider in mince pies, as it led to dissipation, and when a man once got to going it was not once in a hundred times that he ever swore off and stuck to it. Sitting down on the box, Kellogg re- marked that he hadn't tasted a drop of anything intoxicat- ing in over two years (here the goose took a couple of mouthfuls out of the calf of his back) and yet at times he felt a sort of nervousness, and numbness, and a twitching up his trowsers legs, that showed that the demon was still at work at his vitals. He was just closing his argument with a peroration on the idea of having procrastination arrested for grand larceny, when the goose stuck his head and about eleven inches of neck up through the crack in the box cover, right beside the General's leg, and commenced hiss- ing. Kellogg eyed it a moment, and said, " Now, Hans- com, no fooling. Is there a goose in this box?" "Goose!" says Hanscom, " of course not. What has got into you to think of geese?" Kellogg went out whistling, "Cold water, bright water," and thinking how natural that goose looked. Then Hixon came in to talk about the United States Sena- torship, and the comparative chances of Carpenter and Washburn. He leaned against the box, and was just saying something about back pay, when the goose reached up and took back pay out of his voluminous coat tail, or therea- bouts. He said he didn't know but he was going to be sick, as he had felt a kind of a gnawing at his stomach for some time, and now it had got around to the small of his back. The Senator adjourned, and Smith, the grocery man came in, and sat down on the box, and he and Hanscom talked over the President's message, and the price of beans. Smith is a man of very little feeling. That goose bit Smith at least twenty times, and he never budged, except to squirm a tittle. Then they got to talking about things more cheerful, ind Smith said he expected to die, if he ever did die, of ape worms. He said he had felt them coming on for some 9 time, and he was going to take out a fire insurance policy on his life. When Smith went out, Hanscom looked at the goose, and found him pretty near gone. He Lad taken a plug of Navy tobacco out of Smith's coat tail pocket, and was wasting his substance in riotous living. Hanscom took the goose home under his arm, but it rever rallied enough to be very useful or ornamental about the house. A dollar seemed a pretty big price for the goose, but Hanscom wouldn't trade off the fun he had with it and the book agent, for two dollars and a half. A dispatch, a fresh one from Nashville, says there is not a barrel ot salt for sale in that city. A city is getting in rather close quarters when there isn't a salt seller in i f A gentleman at Fremont, Ohio, had a reception at his house the other night, and when the guests went away it took the host all night to wash the tar and pick the feathers off his person. It seemed the neighbors didn't approve of the way he had been carrying on. The Minnesota legislature is about to strike another blow at the press. A bill is under consideration to make it a crime to treat a man to a glass of beer. They might as well say right out in so many words, that if a newspaper man wants anything to drink he has got to go and buy it. Civ- ilization is a failure in some of those fronties states. Two girls, belonging to a church choir at Oshkosh, got locked into the church the other night, while they were talking over the fashions. They gave the alarm, when a man living near the church put a board up to the window and they slid down to the ground. The most singular thing was that after they had got safely to the ground they looked mad and went off without thanking the man, and they won't speak to him when they meet him. He couldn't account for it until he went to take the board down, when got slivers in his fingers and scratched his thumb on a shingle nail that stuck up through the board. Some men are mighty careless. He says he don't care only for the other hearts that may ache. 10 A FLY MANUFACTORY. Flies are artificially propagated in New Jersey, near Pat- terson, where an association of men have invested capital and are running the works to their full capacity. Flies are incubated from eggs by an artificial hatching arrangement, and the young flies are taught all the deviltry they know right in the factory." Some will look upon this statement as false, and wonder why an association of men should engage in the artificial propagation of the fly. We will explain. It is well known flies die at the end of the season, and if it were not for artificial propagation, there would be none the second season. The parties that are engaged in this industry are also sole manufacturers of fly-paper and fly-traps. We trust that the object is now plain. In order to sell their paper and traps it is necessary to have game to catch. The gen- tlemen had engaged largely in the manufacture of fly-paper and fly-traps before they knew that flies only lasted one season, and after a 3 r ear of success they found bankruptcy staring them in the face, as it was probable they would not sell a sheet of paper the next year. So they organized the "Great American Artificial Incubating Association of New Jersey," and issued a million dollars' worth of stock. We have no room to describe the hatching of flies, but it is like hatching chickens by steam. Some of the best old flies are kept to lay eggs, and the eggs are placed on cards and put into an oven. They hatch out in twenty minutes, and are ready in half an hour to learn the business. First they are taught to wade in butter, to swim in cream, and to get into things around the kitchen. Then the young flies are taken to the dormitory, where men and women, engaged for the purpose, are pretending to sleep. An old fly and a hun- dred young ones are placed in each room, and the old fly, after lighting on shirt bosoms of female white goods, in order to teach the young flies the noble art of punctuation, begins to get in his work on the sleeper. The old fly, after seating the young flies on cuffs and collars, calls "Atten- tion ! " and after buzzing around a little, lights on the sleeper's nose. The sleeper pretends to be mad, and slaps at the fly; this is a mere mattex of form, however, for if a sleeper engaged by the association kills an old stool fly, it is deducted from his or her salary. As the old fly gets away, 11 the young flies laugh and want to try it themselves. Then the old fly lights upon the lady sleeper's big toe, and pro- ceeds deliberately to walk up her foot, ankle and calf, occasionally stopping to bite. This is very trying to the alleged sleepers, causing nervousness and a twitching of the muscles, but they must not injure the fly. The little flies notice everything, and, after the old fly has caroused around, and tickled and buzzed, then the young flies are allowed to practice on them. The persons practiced on get $6 a day and board, as it is a very particular and trying situation. Then comes the expensive business of distributing flies throughout the country. Formerly it was done through book agents and lightning-rod peddlers, but that was found too expensive; so the association originated the idea of sending out regular agents, called tramps, to introduce the flies. The first year only about 16,000 tramps were sent out, but the business has grown to such huge proportions that it is estimated that this year the association has out 500,000 tramps, leaving flies around. They go from house to house begging, and before they leave they manage to drop a few flies. Each tramp has a card with a million young flies on. After he has partaken of his meal, and the woman of the house is out for a shot gun or a dog to drive him away, he slips his hand up his sleeve and tears off a piece of card containing, perhaps, 10,000 young flies, and drops it in the wood-box or in some convenient place. That is enough to start on, as the flies breed rapidly. The next day the woman will wonder "where on airth all them flies came from." The company has distributing points all over the country Chicago, St Louis and St. Paul being among them where the tramps go once a month after a new supply. A card will last thirty days. The introduction of the fly-paper and the fly-traps is easier, as the articles are sent directly to druggists, who sell them to consumers. Stock in the association is worth an immense amount, pay ing a quarterly dividend of twenty per cent. The only way that the fly nuisance can be abated is to kill the tramps as fast as they enter a community, or destroy the manu- factory at New Jersey. We have exposed the nefarious business; now let the people rise up and crush it out of existence. 12 A ROMAN TOGA. THE SUN is informed that an effort will be made at the next session of the legislature to provide the members of the state senate with what is called a "Roman Toga," a sort of cloak said to have been worn by Roman senators when the senate was in session. There is nothing that could give more tone to the" Wisconsin senate than such a uniform. There are many dignified men in that body, whose eloquence is not second to that of Demosthenes and Cicero, but they are hampered by the clothing that ordinary men wear. A Roman Toga will let them out. Let us imagine the motherly Bingham, presiding aver that body, wrapping his toga around him and going to sleep, while Senator Reed throws back his cloak and reads a report of the State Board of Health. Imagine Senator Hudd, making one of his impassioned appeals to the democracy to stand by the dog law, in a Roman Toga. Gaze upon Joe Rankin, arising in all the dignity of a senator from Manitowoc, throwing his Toga over his shoulder and moving to 'adjourn. Think of Senator Welch, and Bailey, and Paul, and all of them, in Roman Togas. It would be better than a circus. Of course, there will be some granger members of the Assembly who will kick against the expense, and they will say that it is all "poppycolic," but the effectiveness of the State Senate will be much increased by Roman Togas, and these grangers -must be frowned down. An ignorant man, unable to read or write, has lately died in Cincinnati, leaving an estate of $250,000, in steamboats and things. What a lesson this circumstance is to those who will fritter away their time learning to read and write, when they might be laying up steamboats for their heirs and assigns. Knowledge is power, but steamboats are powerer. Mr. Grant has been made an honorary member of the Allen street M. E. Church. It is but lately that arrangements have been made to get people to heaven on the "honorary" dodge, and as this is only an experi- ment, there will be a general desire to see how Ulisses makes the old thing work. 13 A MUSICAL CRITIQUE. The second Lecture of the Library Association course, was delivered on Tuesday evening by a female lecturer named Camilla Urso, on a fiddle. The lecturer was sup- ported by a female singer, two male clamseliers and a piano masher, all of them decidedly talented in their particular lines. The lecture on the fiddle gave the most unbounded satisfaction, and the association in taking this new departure, has struck a popular chord. Scarcely a person in the vast audience but would prefer such an entertainment to a dry lecture by some dictionary sharp. Of the performance it is unnecessary to go into details, as all our readers were there, with few exceptions. The fat female, Urso, more than carved the fiddle. She dug sweet morsels of music out of it, all the way from the wish-bone to the part that gets over the fence last. She made it talk Norwegian, and squeezed little notes out of it not bigger than a cambric needle, and as smooth as a book agent. The female singer was fair, though nothing to brag on, while the male grasshopper sufferers sang as well as was necessary. But the most agile flea-catcher that has been here since Anna Dickinson's time, was sixteen-fingered Jack, the sandhill crane that had the disturbance with the piano. We never knew what the row was about, but when he walked up to the piano smiling, and shied his castor into the ring, anybody could see there was going to be trouble, vie spit on his hands, sparre'd a little, and suddenly landed a stunning blow right on the ivory, which staggered the piano, and caused an exclamation of agony. First knock down for Jack. He paused a moment and then began putting in blows right and left, in such a cruel manner that the spectators came near breaking into the ring. Whenever a key showed its head he mauled it. We never saw a piano stand so much punishment, and live, and Jack never got a scratch. The whole concert was a success, and the troupe can always get a good house here. A Boston lecturer astonished his audience by bringing his fist down on the table and shouting, "Where is the religiosity of the anthropoid quadrumana ?" If he thinks we have got it he can search us. We never saw it in the world. 14 A SATISFACTORY EXPLANATION. A good deal is appearing these days in the papers about a minister at Lanesboro, Minn., who is charged by a girl, before the proper authorites, with assaulting her, while passing through a piece of woods. She claims that he was stopping at her father's house, and as she was going to the school where she taught, and he was going in the same direction, to preach, he offered to accompany her. In passing through a piece of woods, he became tired and sat down on a log, and asked her to sit on his lap. She refused, and he pulled her to his lap, and acted very much unlike a minister, and she sues him for damages. He claims that he sat down on the log, and playfully asked her to sit on his lap, that she attempted to do so and fell over the log back- wards, and in trying to save her from falling he touched her, in the hurry and bustle of the accident, upon the foot, and that he meant no wrong. The explanation of the reverend gentleman is satisfactory. We can see how it might all occur, and nobody be to blame. No person who has never traveled through the woods can appreciate how tired one becomes, and a convenient log is an oasis, as it were, in the desert. And how natural it is. when one is so tired, to desire to have a large girl to sit down in his lap, to rest him. We can see, at once, that the elder must have been awful tired. And after she had sat down on his lap, and he began to get rested, how natural it would be for a girl to lose her bal- ance. Girls are proverbially careless, and the way they make logs now days, round, with no place smoothed off to sit upon, how easy it would be to fall off a log. No man, and especially no minister, who has any of the instincts of man- hood, or who possesses the least gallantry, would sit by and see a young woman roll off a log, without at least stretching forth a helping hand to save her. That he did so shows that he is a gentleman of fine senti- ment, and a man in whose company any person would be safe from accident. It may be asked why she did not sit down on the log beside him, instead of upon his lap. No person who has sat upon a log, in the woods, would ask such a question. It is well known that logs in the woods, are filled with bugs, ants, worms, lizards and nurfierous animalculae, that run riot up and down the person who recklessly sits 15 down upon it. To the female mind there is nothing so terrible as a bug. Few woman would recklessly sit down upon a log, when there was a man there to protect them from the bugs. A man is different. For him the bug, or the ant, or the worm, has no terrors. That is, not much terror. To be sure, a large sized ant a No 1 1 ant, for instance, gently meandering up one's trowsers, carrying a worm, is not the most pleasant experience in the world, but we become inured to these things by our nomadic life, when we go to picnics, and go hunting, and are inclined to be less excited than the other sex, who, under the same circum- stances in which we are composed and calm, would yell murder, grab their skirts and fan themselves and go a\vay from there with all sails set, a whooping. So it is proper that man should occupy the post of danger in such emer- gencies, and furnish protection to his companion, from bugs and crawling reptiles, and a girl that will go back on a poor minister and sue him for damages, ought to be talked to by the presiding elder. We think that the minister has made out a good case, and if the jury is composed of men who have ever been out to a pic-nic, and who know how bad the bugs are at this season of the year, he will be acquitted, and the girl will be compelled to pay the costs. Chicago has a boy who can recite his Sunday-school lesson with one hand tied behind him, on a carom table, push shot barred. A young man at La Crosse, Wis., looked in the key-hole of a girl's bedroom, and ever since the doctors have been trying to get a knitting needle out of the place where his north eye used to be. Senator Angus Cameron is at Topeka, Kansas, hearing testimony in the Ingalls investigation. This is pretty tough on Senator Cameron, as he had arranged to be present at the West Salem fair, in his own county, where he had a cucumber on exhibition, raised by his own hands hired hands. Senator Cameron is one of the greatest cucumber agriculturists in the nation, and his speeches on the rise and fall of the cucumber are marvels of eloquence and strict attention to business. 16 THE DEAD SOLDIERS. Since THE SUN last went to press the nation has paid tribute again, by floral offerings, to the memory of those of our late defenders who became breast works for more fortunate men to stand behind when the leaden invitations to funerals were bejng sent north by our dear brethren of the south, and before this the flowers have withered while the flowers of hope in the breasts of office seekers have blos- somed again. There was not as much political monkey work by ambitious political volunteer mourners this year as usual. The time has been within a few years when the cross roads martyr, and the ward political bummers have begun to eat onions days before the one appointed for decorating the silent tenements, in order that they might get their" eyes into the customary state of dampness to touch the hearts and the votes of those near and dear to the departed heroes, but lately people who had any respect for those who fell, have looked with suspicion upon the polit- ical crocodile salt water, brewed to order by those who would profit by the nation's annual funeral, and those who have often heretofore fired a mournful mouth salute over the graves, that the echo might reverberate across the hills to the ballot box, have found that it was none of their funeral, and so they have relieved the sincere mourners of their presence on this occasion, and used the holiday to pack up their fishing tackle and fish for suckers elsewhere. The day was more generally observed than formerly, by a different class of people, and the day will grow to be more observed by loyal people each year, and he who brings his political axe to the soldier's cemetery grindstone, to have an edge put upon it, will be stopped outside the gate, in sight of the little mounds that he would desecrate, perhaps, but under the surveillance of a policeman. Let none forget the duty they owe to the memory of those whose breasts were pierced by weapons in the hands of our dear friends in the south, but let every man be a detective, who never sleeps, to spot the men who would climb the political ladder, by placing it upon the foot of a soldier's grave, and taking his first step from the head of that grave. 17 THE WOODCOCK. It is a rainy day, and nothing has occurred of a local na- ture, that is, nothing of a hair standing nature, so we will just spoil a few sheets of paper relating, in a Sunday School book style, the circumstances of an excursion after wood- cock, the other day, indulged in by W. C. Root, the Wisconsin amateur Bogardus, Jennings McDonald, Captain of a breech-loading steamboat, and the subscriber. In the first place, it may be well to state that the woodcock, or " Timber Doodle," as Prof. Agassiz calls it, is a game bird. We know it is a game bird, because they charge a dollar apiece for them in New York. The meat is about as sweet as deceased cow's liver, but they are worth a dollar apiece. The "Timber Doodle" is a patriotic bird, because he gets ripe on the 4th of July. He is about the size of a doughnut, with a long bill, like a lawyer. We took passage per skiff at twelve o'clock. If there was one drawback, it was the fact that the oar-locks of the boat had been mislaid. After consuming an hour in not finding them, Frank Hatch became discouraged at seeing us lay round the levee, so he tied the oars on with tarred rope and we got off, three of us besides the other dogs. The water was so high that we crossed Barren's island, only having to get out and pull the boat over two or three sand-bars and a raft or two. Every time we got out to pull the boat, the dogs would get out to look for woodcock, around the stumps, and when they got in the boat would be full of water and mud, and of course we had our best clothes on. Did it ever occur to you how much water a dog could carry in his hair ? A dog is worse than a sponge. An ordinary dog, with luck, can fill a skiff with water at two jumps. Not, however, with us in the boat to bail out the water. The woodcock's tail sticks up like a sore thumb. We are thus particular to describe the woodcock, so if you ever see one you can go right away from him. Woodcock and mosqui- toes are in "cahoots." While the woodcock bores in the ground for snakes and other feed that makes him fat and worth a dollar in New York, the musquito stands on the ramparts and talks to the boys. Well, speaking about woodcock, after riding five miles, through bushes, brambles and things, we got out of the 18 boat and only had to walk a couple of miles to get where the birds were. Right here we wish to state that we shouldn't have gone after the woodcock at all, only every body said it was such fun. Root showed us a picture of a woodcock in a book, and if that didn't convince us, the fact that a small boy came in town and sold three dozen, did. Then we ^wanted to go. There never has been a year when woodcock were so plenty at places we didn't visit. The most fun was at a ditch which was about a fool wider than any of us could jump. Root gave his gun to McDonald and plunged in. Then McDonald threw a gun to Root. It hit him on the thumb-nail and drooped in the ditch out of sight. Me. thought it was Root's gun, and he apologized to Root for throwing it so careless. Root supposed it was Mc.'s gun, and he apologized for not catching it. We never saw men more polite in the world. Me. started to jump across, when a dog got between his legs, and both went in up to their knees. You never can jump as well with a dog tangled up amongst your legs. The dog looked at Jennings as though he wanted to swear. We waded through the ditch and only got two feet wet. The rest of them had more than that wet. But about the woodcock. This is, kind reader, purely a woodcock story, and more or less must be said about that dollar bird. But this is neither here nor there. It was over in the Root river bottoms. Finally we got on the woodcock ground and went to work. Talk about mos- quitoes ! There was no end to them. We ought not to say that, either, because there are spots on our person that just fit the end of a mosquito. There was an end to them. If you never saw mosquitoes in convention, you want to go over there. But right here we will give a recipe for keeping mosquitoes from biting. You take some cedar oil and put on your coat collar, if you are a man, and if you are a woman put it on that gingerbread work around your neck, and a moquito will come up and sing to you and get all ready to take toll, when she will smell that oil. She is the sickest mosquito you ever saw. She turns over on her back and sends her husband for the nearest doctor. We had a bottle of cedar oil, and if Jennings hadn't left it hanging up in Hogan's store in his coat, we should have made those mos- quitoes sick. As it was they did it to us. There isn't a spot 19 on us as big as a billiard table but what you can find arte- sian wells made by mosquitoes. Woodcock sell higher in the market than any other bird. Lots of people that never saw them eat snakes, eat them. When they get up to fly they talk Bohemian, and get'be- hind a bush. You shoot right into the bush, and if you kill one you think you are a good shot. Talk about getting tired. You walk around in the woods several miles, with mosquitoes getting acquainted with you, and all the time your nerves strung up in anticipation of seeing a dollar bill fly up, and if you don't sleep without rocking, we are no prophet. The sport, however, is exhilirating, and we are glad we went. We are glad because it learned us one thing, and that is, if we ever want a woodcock real bad, it will be cheaper, easier, and better to buy it. It will be inferred that we did not see a woodcock. Such is the case. But we made the blackbirds sick. A Boston girl says : "What is home without a mother" while the old lady is mending her daughter's stockings. There is something sweet in those old songs. A dispatch from Chicago says that three men were shot on "a boat used for the vilest purposes." We never knew that the newspapers were printed on boats, there in Chicago. A lightning rod peddler was struck by lightning in In- diana, while seated on his wagon, during a thunder storm, talking through the window of a farmer's rendence trying to induce the farmer to let him rod the barn. It was the largest funeral ever seen in Indiana. People went miles to see the deceased. They couldn't believe it until they saw it with their own eyes. An eastern scientist has discovered that cucumbers con- tain tape worms. Then all we have to say is that they are selling their tape worms mighty high. Twenty cents for a cucumber not bigger than a clothes-pin, that can't possibly contain tape worm enough to go around in a small family, is outrageous. But, is there anything eatable that does not contain something bad, except the bologna sausage ? 20 CHEESE. [Delivered before the Northwestern Dairymen's Association, in Chicago, February llth, 1879] Gentlemen of the Cheese Congress : There is not on earth any product of the human mind, no result of scientific investigation, that holds so proud a place in the hearts of a free people, as cheese. I say product of the human mind, though it must be admitted that calves runnel lias much to do with the result. You back up the human mind with calves runnel, and nothing is impos- sible. Had Edison known, or appreciated the power of the calves runnel, and had he applied il in his experiments, ihe electric lighl might have been a success before this, and the world could have paid tribute to the calves internal improvements. How few people, when they see Ihe little brindle calf in Ihe barn yard, throw his "bunting" to the breeze in his efforts to draw nourishment from the maternal fountain, or see him gambol on the green and try to stand on one leg, appreciate the power within him for the amelior- ation of the condition of the human race. How few people when they take their cheese straight, appreciate from whom these blessings flow. How few there are who would know a runnel if they should meet il in the streel. And yel from what is done for us in ihe way of making ihe product of the cow a mercantile commodity, fit to ship to the uttermost parts of the earth, and warranted to keep in any climate, I claim thai the calf should be honored by being adopted as the emblem of this nation, instead of the eagle. What did the eagle ever do ? You might search Ihe eagle from Gen- esis lo Revelalions, with a search warrant, and you couldn't find any runnel thai would bring cheese order out of milk chaos. Give us the calf as the national emblem. Let us see the calf emblazoned on our banners, let him appear on our currency, and let us bow down and worship him. In saying that cheese has a stronger hold upon Ihe American people than any other decoclion, I am aware that I shall incur the enmity of the aulhors of anolher article of American diel, but I am prepared to maintain my posilion. I allude to hash. There is no person that 21 has greater respect for hash than I have. It fills a want long felt. Its manufacture opens a field for the indus- trious poor, and utilizes many an article that would other- wise be a total loss. But it does not contain runnet, though that is about the only thing that is left out. Hash has her claims to the respect of our people, but she can never take the place of cheese. As the world- renowned poet, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" has said in her immortal literary creation, entitled, "The Broken Wash-bowl, or the Chambermaid's Revenge :" "Let me make the cheese of my people, and I care not who makes their hash." And then, she adds, as though her soul was touched on the raw : "O cheese, where is thy sting ? O, hash, where is thy victory ?" Few persons are aware of the invaluable aid that has been rendered to science by cheese. For thousands of years the darkened intellects of mankind were chained to the belief that Man was originally made from the dust of the earth that he was scraped together and got into shape in the same manner that children manufacture mud pies, and that he was turned out, a full grown man, six feet high and forty years old, all in one day. Some scientific gents held that this was preposterous, and that Man was the result of evolu- tion that had been evolved out of other elements of nature, one gentleman, Mr. Darwin, claiming that Man had come up from the lower order of animals, and that he was for- merly a monkey. The Bible men wanted proof that Man was evolved from lifeless material. And where did the scientific rnen find the proof? Why, in the cheese, to be sure. Said they, "Here is a cheese, made out of milk that has been submitted to a warm place, and in six weeks what do we see ? We see animal life, almost as big as angle worms." It is thus that cheese has put its strong shoulder to the wheel and helped science over a bad place in the road. But Mr. Darwin only goes half way back in his Descent of Man. I go further, and claim that the monkeys from whom we are descended, were originally skippers in cheese, I go still further, and claim that the entire human race has descended, in a direct line, from cheese. I have 22 been on the opposite side of men from which the wind was blowing, and had the strongest and most conclusive evidence that they were made of cheese, and not the most recent cheese, either. As great a power as cheese has become in the world, it has not fairly begun to be appreciated. The last triumph that cheese has attained, is being introduced in the army as ammunition. To-day the soldier on the plains, in his efforts to get away from the Indians, is aided to a great extent by cheese. With a slug>of cheese in his holster, he bids defi- ance to the red devils of the plains. On the retreat he places his cheese behind him and the dusky braves decline to follow. When charging a lodge of squaws and papooses he waves aloft his trusty slice of cheese, and carries terror into the camp of the enemy. They fall upon their knees at sight of the sanguinary weapon, and beg the soldiers to take it away. In all the recent battles with the Indians, where our soldiers were armed with the deadly breech-loading cheese, victory has perched upon our banners. "And Sheridan twenty miles away. The disaster to our arms away off in the Big Horn coun- try, by which so many brave men were destroyed, could have been avoided had that noble little band been armed with cheese. How different was the result of the battle a few miles from the fatal battle field where a portion of the command, under the gallant Reno, was under the influence of cheese, as shown by the testimony in the recent investiga- tion. Cheese saved the day. Who does not remember the noble words of the patriotic driver of the pack mules on that day, who, as he saw the Indians running one way, while he was running the other, raised in his saddle and shouted, "Give me cheese or give me death." The recent invention by which cheese can be reduced to U" liquid form and car- ried in a bottle, fills a want long felt by army officers. But as an assistant to the army in suppressing insurrections and exterminating Indians, the cheese has many advantages not yet enumerated. Why should not cheese be used in offensive operations as well as on the defensive ? By the exercise of a little ingenuity on your part, fellow cheeseists, it can be done. I would recommend that cheese for the army be made in sections, with hinges at stated intervals in 23 the rind. Then sections of cheese can be issued to soldiers, and when they find it necessary to throw up intrenchments, they can dismount, hitch the hinges of their several sections of cheese together, spread the cheese-rind out on the ground set up on the edge, get behind the breastwork and bid defiance to the bullets of the enemy, which will be flattened against the boiler plate that is found on the outside of all well-regulated cheese. Then send a shell loaded with lim- berger into the camp of the enemy, and watch the devas- tation. At one time during the war, parties complained to Mr. Lincoln that Gen. Grant was in the habit of indulging to excess in the flowing bowl, when Mr. Lincoln shocked the party who complained by saying that if he could learn the particular brand of whisky that Grant used he would send a barrel a piece to some of the other officers. The time is coining when the same complaints will be made about officers of the army who will be offensive to temperance people, because they are in the habit of allowing themselves to become intoxicated on cheese. Officers should remem- ber that cheese is a good servant, but a bad master. Do not let the fatal appetite get too strong a hold upon you. The many uses to which cheese can be put will make it one of the most valuable compositions known to science. It will take the place of the mule in hauling heavy loads on wagon trains, street cars, etc, The mule is liable to weaken in trying situations, and fail to perform its alloted task, and if persuaded with a hand spike, the mule is liable to go off when no one thinks it is loaded, and kill somebody or break a dashboard. With the cheese there is no such trouble. In the bright lexicon of cheese there's no such word as fail. It is patient, never complaining and always ready for duty. Many think the cheese cannot be domesticated, but if taken young, and brought up by the hand and taught the rudi- ments, it will well repay the owner for all trouble. The cheese is not ungrateful. It appreciates all kindnesses, as well as a hired girl. It will ultimately take the place of the locomotive. In fact, I have been in emigrant cars that could have hauled the train right along, if the locomotive had been left in the shop. Cheese is liable to dispute with India rubber, for a place in public estimation. Is there not some ingredient that can 24 be put in cheese to make it of the consistency of an overshoe . I believe that cheese can be made as impervious to water as the stomach of a Democrat or a Republican politician. If it can, then a new field is open for it. It may not go to congress though I would sooner trust a good, intelligent, sage cheese in congress, than some of the politicians. Cettainly cheese couldn't do any hurt there. But it can be made into many articles that rubber is now used exclusively for, such as overcoats, belts, car springs, and teething rings, and it will eventually take the place of China for nest eggs for hens. There is a great future before cheese, but it must not be expected that it can attain the proud eminence to which it is entitled in a day. There are prejudices against cheese which must be overcome. It is just so in everything. It was so in the case of the bologna sausage. It took years for bologna sausage to rise from its humble sphere to the place it now occupies in the economy of nature. Bologna had to combat against prejudices, and live down scandal as to its origin, with which the names of respectable dogs are coupled. But it outlived, all the vile stories and is to-day enshrined in the hearts of our people, in ulsters made of riddle string material, proud in its conscious victory over as implacable an enemy as ever attempted to tear down a rival. Let cheese keep a stiff upper-lip, decline to be inter- viewed by the reporters for the daily press, who will misrep- resent it, keep its own counsel, and it will walk hand in hand with bologna, and wear laurels on its brow. But it should keep out of politics. There is nothing that so blights fair prospects as politics. Cheese in politics would become a stench in the nostrils of our people. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that an excellent article of marble can be easily manufactured from cheese. And what could possibly be more appropriate? especially for an agriculturist, a member of this Northwestern Dairy- men's Association, whose whole life is wrapped up in the noble calling to which he has devoted the best years of his early manhood and his prime. As he stretches his wasted form upon the couch which is to be his last resting-place on earth, and feels the icy hand of death laid upon him, what could be more consoling, more calculated to lighten up the gloom of trie 1 last dark hour of dissolution, than the thought 25 that when he is gone, and the clods of the valley are resting upon all that is mortal of this earthly tabernacle of clay, his virtues will be perpetuated to posterity by a monument of imperishable cheese. It is the nature of marble to be cold, hard, stern, odorless throwing an air of gloom and dismal melancholy over a sacred place, which should be rendered attractive and pleasant by flowers and fragrance. And what more fragrant than cheese ? Flowers, with their exquisite aroma, wither almost within an hour, and, like the last rose of summer, lie scentless and dead. But a tomb- stone of cheese cheese of the proper consistency \vould bloom on forever, defying the elements and Time; and when Gabriel sounds his reveille on the glad morning of the resurrection a morning that has been anticipated to a con- siderable extent in medical quarters it will be found of the tombstone of cheese that its flag is still there, with not a star erased or a stripe polluted. Forever float that standard, Cheese Where breathes the foe that flies before us ? With government socks beneath our feet, And Lamburg fragrance streaming o'er us. A Dubuque doctor tieated a baby for trichina, and when it died he excavated it and found it had swallowed a hair- pin. He says if it had been them worms he would have made them sick. An editor at Glenns Falls has been elected Vice Presi- dent of the Northern New York Poultry Association. All he knows about poultry has been acquired by his experience in raising a rooster at the head of his columns after election, and the next week pull-et down. Mayor Black and a corps of other eminent scientists have been analyzing some of the river water, and looking at it through a window pane. They rind that it con- tains living things of all denominations, things that look as though they would be politicians if they were allowed to grow up, and all kinds of worms. They are of the opinion that the river is not fit to drink. It is a proud moment with us to have opinions that we have expressed thus corroborated by such high authority. Don't drink river water. 26 "CASH. 1 On circus day Wr"H. H. Cash, the great railroad monop- olist 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 ex- tended 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, per- haps 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 one 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 seern to shake hands 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 talk to anybody, unless they were buy- ing 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 re- sembled a girl that used to live in Portage. He went up to her, and with a smile that was chilklike and bland, he said, 27 " Why, how are you, Samantha ?" The little blonde looked daggers at him. " Didn't you use to wait on table 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 bald-headed Elijah. Won't you go down and take something? Invite all of them. The girls can take soda. I'll be gaul blasted if 1 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. Dr. Dio Lewis says that tomatoes are not healthy. Well, why don't they go to taking physic. This thing shouldn't be put off until it is too late. A church deacon at Meriden, Connecticut, while going out of church with his overcoat on his arm, let a pack of cards fall out of his coat pocket into the vestibule of the church. In picking them up the pack scattered all around. To add to his embarrassment, the minister came along and asked, " How's that for high ?" Put yourself in his place. Some men at Louisville were betting on the weight of a large mule, when one man who was a good judge of the weight of live stock, got behind the mule and was measur- ing his hind quarters, when something appeared to loosen up behind the mule. Just before the expert died, from the kick in among his ribs, he gave it as his opinion that if the mule was as heavy all over as he was behind, he weighed not far from 47,000 pounds and a trifle over. 28 BUYING A STONE CRUSHER The proceedings of the council of the city of Milwaukee shows that the aldermen are about to buy a stone crusher, to be run by steam, for the purpose of crushing stones to be used on the streets. If the city has never indulged in the luxury of a stone crusher, it should interview some city that has owned one, before it closes a contract with any party that wants to sell one. Every party that owns one does want to sell it. Statistics show that. The first city in Wis- consin that bought one was Madison. The city owned it for a year or two, and after that no man that was in the council when it was bought could ever get in it again. The mayor that winked at the purchase of the stone crusher was defeated, and there was trouble. No person would ever say what was the matter, but you say stone crusher to a citizen of Madison, and he would reach his right hand around to his pistol pocket, and the conversation would cease. La Crosse heard that Madison had a stone crusher, and so she wanted one. La Crosse is bound to have anything that any other town has, whether it is a railroad, an insane asylum, or a speckled hen. La Crosse could have bought Madison's stone crusher at a discount, but she wanted one new, with the paint all on, fresh. Second hand stone crusher? Not any for La Crosse. So the city ordered a bran new one, right from the mint, at an expense of about $5,000. The idea was that it would be about as big as a straw cutter, or a job press, and people were anxious to see it work. Finally the city was notified that one train of cars loaded with the stone crusher had arrived, with red flags on, be- tokening extra trains running wild behind, and the city was told to come down to the depot and pay the first install- ment of freight, and take the stone crusher away that part of it that had arrived. The aldermen went down and took an inventory of the hardware, and some of them went and jumped in the river. At a cent a pound one can buy a good deal of cast iron for five thousand dollars. The city bonded itself, and paid the freight, and during the spring all of the trains loaded with the stone crusher arrived. It was argued that the nly way to get the stone crusher up to the 29 city building would be to give the railroad the right of way up town, right through Main street. Some were in favor of letting the railroad company keep it for freight, but the company threatened to get out an in- junction oa the city. Finally a man who took contracts to move brick buildings agreed to move it up town on shares, and during the summer the most of it was got up there and corded up on some vacant lots. If all the cast iron in it came out of one mine it must have been an immense mine. People would look at it and weep. Every alderman swore he voted against buying it. Occasionally some one in the council would suggest that the stone crusher be taken out to the blufis, a couple of miles and set to work, when an- other one would move to amend by inserting a clause that the blufts be moved into the city to be crushed as it would save expense. Then the matter would drop. For three years that stone crusher stood there, and it never crushed a pebble. New mayors and aldermen were elected, and every day they passed that crusher, but they never spoke to it. Finally a job was put up to get rid of it. There was a man there who owned a stone quarry, and it occurred to somebody to sell it to. him. He was a truly good man, and did not believe there were any bad men in the world, who would kanoodle him with a stone crusher. A committee was appointed to sell it to him. The com- mittee was composed of men who had traded horses, sold lightning rods, and been insurance agents, and when they told the poor man that the city had noticed that he was a deserving man, that they had decided to help him along, and would sell him that stone crusher, and he could pay for it in crushed stone, and the city would pay him in cash half a dollar more than the stone was worth, he said he would take it. They got it on to him by buying crushed stone of him and paying cash for it. We have never heard whether the man lived or not, and have never heard whether the city bought any stone of him, but the city got rid of it, and then had a celebration. Why, they figured it up, and the thing could crush enough stone in twenty-four hours to pave the streets a foot thick all over town and thirteen miles in the country. To run it a week would bankrupt the State of Wisconsin. It could go up to a stone quarry and tunnel a hole right through the hill. It 30 was the biggest elephant that ever a city drew in a legalized lottery. Milwaakee will make money if she does not buy a stone crusher, not as long as it can buy stone in the rough, and have it crushed by tramps, at nothing a day. The glory, honor and history of a winter's work at Madi- son, for the average legislator, is summed up in a little item from the local colums of his home paper, which he cuts out and pastes on the door post of the barn. The item is as follows : "We are under obligations to Hon. So-and-so for a copy of the Legislative Blue Book." Years hence the hired men, when it rains too hard to work, will be sitting in the barn, on up-turned half bushels, playing draw poker for kernels of corn, when some fellow who has been "froze out" will catch a view of the little slip of paper on the door post, and will read it,. and will turn to the "Honorable gentleman," who had just raised them all out on a bob tail flush, and raked in the chips, and say, "Why, Jim, was you ever a member of the legislature ?" And Jim will wet his thumb, and as he deals the cards, will say, "Yes, I was there the winter we paased the law giving $5,000 to the Oshkosh steam road wagon. How many keerds do you want, Hiram ?" Fame ! The other day the front door of the Tribune office had to be closed for some purpose. So Horace wrote on a piece of paper, "Entrance on Spruce street," and sent it down to the man who does the painting of the bulletins to be copied. The man studied over Horace's tracks all the forenoon, and finally, in despair, wrote "Editors on a Spree ! " and posted it up. The passers by thought the circumstance was not unusual, but wondered why it should be posted up so con- spicuously. A young man at Patterson, N. J., has caused the arrest of his girl because she refused to entertain his offer of marriage. We are glad the strong arm of the law is to be brought to bear on the reckless women who tamper with a man's affec- tions, and then when they are brought right down to the sticking point say they were only tooling. Thousands of our best young men are brought to an untimely hole in the ground by such means. 31 AN EFFICIENT FIRE DEPARTMENT. Eau Claire is patterning after Madison in its fire depart- ment. They have a steam fire engine, and horses, but the team is used to haul stuff around town, the same as in Madison. The other day there was a fire at Eau Claire, and after the building had burned down some one hap- pened to think of the fire engine, and a committee went to see about it. They found the engine at the house. The paint was all on it, and there was hose, though the hose was busted in many places and eaten by tramps, and the flues and things inside the engine were burned out, and the pump was out of order. They couldn't find the city team that usually hauls the engine, on the fourth of July, and parade days, but along in the afternoon the team came into town hauling a road roller which it had been using out in the country. It was said that the driver heard about the fire through a tramp that passed along on the way to Chip- pewa Falls, and as soon as he got his job of rolling done he came right into town. He brought the roller, believing that in certain stages of a fire a road roller is better than a steamer, especially if the steamer won't steam or squirt. The city will tender the department a vote of thanks for its efficiency, and the driver will go to hauling slabs, and one of these days a fire will break out there and burn up the engine, and half the town, and the people will take to the woods and be picking pieces of burnt shingle out of their hair, and swearing because the fire team was down towards Durand helping move a house. Always lock the bam after the incendiary has saddled the horse and drove away. The Cardiff giant is under arrest at Buffalo for debt, and they tried to get him out on a habeas corpus, but, bless you, it didn't have any more efiect on him than so much whisky. The London Circular announcing the candidacy of Victoria Woodhull for the presidency, says "The lady, from her youth up, has been the common property of the Amer- ican people." We charged that against her once, when we where on a New York paper, and she was going to sue the paper for libel. Now she is using the same disreputable charge as a campaign document. GEO. W. PECK'S AUTOMATIC URCHIN CHASTISER, 33 THE GREAT LABOR-SAVING INVENTION. Self-Raking, Stem-Winding, Breech- Loading, Lock-Stitch, Stern- Wheel, Seven- Octave, Non-Explosive, Base-Burner Automatic Urchin Chastiser aini Combined Hair Comb, Editorial Protector, Hash Cutter, Beef Steak-Pounder, Assistant Educator, &"c. This is an age of invention, and there is no knowing what a day may bring forth. Prominent educators have for years racked their brains and consumed midnight oil, to devise some method whereby the youthful student, the urchin with thick-soled pantaloons, could be chastised as the gravity of his offense might demand, without inflicting a more severe punishment upon the lady teacher's hand than upon the child. Previous to the invention of this machine, principals of schools have wept to see their assistants go around with their arms in a sling from the effects of punishing scholars. In many instances excellent teachers, who loved their calling, have been compelled to resign their positions, and get married, because they had too much on their hands. The matter had been discussed at the various institutes, and it had been almost decided to adopt capital punishment, instead of the time honored taking across the knee, when the inventor of this machine stepped in, and by the simple device above illustrated, has saved the lives of many valuable young ones. The heart of the inventor was touched at seeing a frail school-ma'am with her right hand swelled up to the size of a canvass ham, from agitating a boy who had wickedly placed a piece of clapboard inside of his trowser- loons, when he knew that the teacher was on the war path after him. He was a bad boy, and will probably fetch up in Congress. The teacher was weeping, and saying she would be cussed if she didn't run that boy through a thresh- ing machine before she got through with him. The idea at once struck the inventor that a machine could be constructed that would tan the jacket, as it were, of the young Modoc, and you see the result of careful thought and study, in the machine before yon. AS A SPANKING MACHINE. What a change. Instead of dreading the task of punish- ing scholars, and shivering at the prospect of blistered hands, 34 the teacher can enjoy the performance, and look forward to the hour for doing up the day's spanking with a feeling of pleasure and gladness, and the frown formerly stereotyped on the face of the average school-ma'am gives place to an angelic smile. She seats herself at the instrument, with a dime novel in her hand, after placing the condemned urchins in a row within reach of the hoisting apparatus, or ice-tongs, and smiles, touches the snatch-brake with her foot, and the doomed urchin is launched into if not eternity, he will think so before that hand lets up on him. With a smile playing over her features she works her tiny hoof, and the avenging hand descends, the boy says his "now I lay me," and the old machine works as though endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Care should be taken not to work the machine too rapidly at first, as it may make it hot for the boy. Or it might telescope his spinal menin- gfiis, with fatal results. Any teacher can work it all right, after perchance, killing a few scholars of the cheaper kind.] It will only take a moment of treading to make any ordinary boy sorry he enlisted, when he can be dropped, and the next can be snatched. A whole school can be spanked up in fifteen minutes, if the teacher is anything of a treader. We make different sized machines, suitable for the primary department, the intermediate, the High school, the Normal school, and the State University. AS A SELF-RAKER. The ease with which this machine can be changed from one thing to another will convince the reader that it is almost human. It will remind one of a politician, every time it changes. To change it from a spanking machine to a self-raker, all you have to do is to unscrew the "hand," remove it and screw on a fine comb, change ends with the boy, and proceed to search for things that live, and move, and have a being, and bite boys' heads. This will tend to relieve mothers of much searching investigation, as the school teacher can, by simply using her foot, keep the heads of all the children free from the festive bug that at times make life a burden. AS AN EDITORIAL PROTECTOR. Every editor in the land will thank us, on his bended knees, for this invention, as it solves a problem that has dis- 35 turbed the minds of the knights of the scissors for many gen- erations, viz : How to exterminate the exchange fiend, the man who steals exchanges, when you are busy writing. The editor can have a machine sitting in his office. In ' place of the hand of Providence, we screw on a cast iron fist, weighing seven hundred pounds. If you desire to simply maim the fiend for life, you work the treadle mildly and merely mash his eye out, and italicise his nose, and break his jaw-bone. But if he is an old offender, and you want to make an example of him, you keep treading, and the pile driver will come down on him like a President on a post- master, and break every bone in his body, and flatten him as thin as one of Colfax's vindications. AS A HASH CUTTER. To transform the machine into a hash cutter, it is only necessary to unjoint the hand, and put in its place an ordi- nary chopping-knife, and set the machine to running. (Of course it is understood that the boy should be removed and a piece of beef hoisted in its place, unless you are fond of boy hash.) We have testimonials from some of the best hotels in the State, where our machine has been used as a hash cutter, and they all unite in pronouncing it the most successful aid to the dissemination of meat that has lost its charm for boarders, that they ever saw. Only one accident has occurred thus far. At a Madison hotel, the proprietor had been chastising one of the dining-room girls with the machine, and stepped out to see a man, leaving the girl hoisted on the ice-tongs. The cook took the machine to cut some meat for hash, and forgot to take the girl down, and she was cut finer than mustard seed. One of the boarders was the first to discover the tragedy. He got a piece of ear-ring on his plate, and immediately gave the alarm, but it was too late. The funeral was largely attended. These accidents need not occur, if the manipulator of the machine uses ordinary caution. There is no end to the different uses to which the machine can be put. Anything that requires a horizontal motion, can be done better by machinery, and this machine will fill a want long felt. But it is as an urchin chastiser that its principle merits lies, and in which its owner expects to amass a fortune. It is not only in the school-room that the 36 machine can be utilized, but in the family. Any family that has thirty-five or forty children, can make a machine pay for ilself in a year, and the work can be done much more satisfactorily. Where families are smaller, several can club together and own one in partnership, and some one can be appointed to chastise the whole neighborhood. The inven- tion of this machine opens a new field for the unemployed by which they can make a good living. Those female book agents can buy a machine and mount it on a wheelbarrow, and go about from house to house, doing jobs that any mother would be glad to pay a quarter to get off her hands. A street car mule fell into a sewer trench on East Water street, on top of some men who were at work down there. When it began to rain mules the men put up umbrellas, and went out of that hole real quick. One man said the mule seemed to stutter with his hind feet. They said they would rather have a whole line of street cars fall on them than one mule. Some of the obituary articles in the country papers are tear-starters. A Peekskill paper speaks of a recent corpse who "was struck down by the hand of Providence, and not permitted to finish the French roof he had commenced on his house." Such sad occurrences come right home to all of us. The Waupun Leader contains an article informing its readers "when to eat pickerel." We did not read the article, but suppose of course that the Leader says, eat pickerel at meal time. Nothing appears so much out of place as to see a man in business hours walking along the street picking the bones out of a piece of pickerel. A justice of the peace at Menasha wants to kill Pratt, the editor of the Press. The matters have been compromised, however. Pratt got the justice cornered up and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, *' Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender." 37 THE BLIND PIG. There is a fortune in store for the nigger show that will start out traveling and leave out a certain old joke. There is one old "gag" that always appears. When Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden, Adam said to Eve, "Can you spell blind pig?" She said if she knew her own heart, she could, and on being invited to spell it, she took out her chew of gum and spelled, " b-1-i-n-d p-i-g-" Adam told her she was wrong, and proceeded to spell it "b-l-n-d p-g," explaining, that by leaving the "is" out the pig was blind. Eve smiled a sickly smile, but Cain and Abel, and the devil, who was sitting on the rainwater barrel at the corner of the house, laughed right out. From that time the " blind pig " joke has had a remarkable career. Millions of nigger shows have organized on that joke. When a manager ad- vertises for artists, the first one who applies is asked if he knows the blind pig joke, and if he does, and can repeat it, he is engaged. Then, with this joke as a nucleus, they procure other talent and start out through the country. It will be remembered that the revolutionary war was caused by the people of this country rebelling against English nig- ger shows palming off that joke as new. It was thought that after all the blood and carnage of that war, and that of the southern rebellion, the blind pig joke would not be heard again, but it is as lively now at nigger shows as it was a thousand years ago. A new nigger show is or- ganized and it comes along advertising that everything is new, and that it has no old played-out gags. People smile and say, "Now we will go and have some fun." They fill the hall, and after listening to the old songs, the interlocutor says to an imitation ape on the end, "Are you much of a speller ?" The cold chills run up and down the audience, as he says he is a good speller, and they fear the old joke is coming again. Their fears are only too soon to be re- alized, for the next thing the boss asks him to spell "blind pig." The audience at once places itself under the influ- ence of chloroform until the worst is over. But there is one idiot in the gallery who laughs at the blind pig joke, and that encourages the niggers to repeat it at each suc- ceeding performance. There is evidently no way to stop that old joke, unless the people band themselves together 38 and hire a detective to go into the gallery and spot the idiot who laughs at the joke, and kill him. If we owned a hall, and a nigger show desired to give an entertainment, we should compel the manager to give bonds that the blind pig joke should not be inflicted on the audience, or they couldn't have the hall. A man down east is lecturing on "Hell, Ingersoll, and whisky." If the lecturer is at all familiar with his subjects, we wouldn't believe him under oath. Mrs. Mattie A. Bridge is meeting with great success in Minnesota. In some places she is retained until she lec- tures four times. She says the heart of Minnesota is warm towards her. We shall feel inclined to put a head on Min- nesota, if it don't quit allowing its heart to get warm. The Wisconsin asks, " What will the democrats do ?" We trust it is not betraying a confidence reposed in us by the manager of a party, but we can not allow our neighbor to remain in such dense ignorance, as long as we are possessed of the desired information. "What will the democrats do ?" The democrats will prove an alibi. A boarder at a Leadville hotel investigated his beefsteak and found that it was a fried liver pad that a former boarder had pawned for his board. The landlord didn't want to lose it, so he had it cooked. A liver pad, if nicely cooked, is fine eating, with mushrooms, but of course, in that new country where they have not all the cooking utensils, it must be a trifle raw. A lady correspondent wants to know what there is about coachmen that makes girls fall in love with them. We do not know unless it is the smell of horses that usually hangs about them. Girls get disgusted with the smell of tobacco and benzine that floats about the young men who are al- lowed to pay addresses to them, and when they find a real nice coachman, who don't use tobacco or whisky, they are so desperate that they fasten to him, and the chances are that they make a pretty good bargain, 39 '"JACK STYLES WON." We never saw such a sight before and never expect to again, as the one at Salem, during the last day of the county fair, and we never can think of it without bursting right out laughing. In fact, last Sunday in church, just as the minister was illustrating the solimnity of the thought that many before him would eventually fetch up in the neighborhood of hell, we happened to think of that Salem scene, and if it hadn't been for a parasol handle in our fifth rib, we should have snorted right out. A Veil, it was this way. The race between Minerva and the two Sparta horses was getting interesting, and evey inch of room was worth money. Any place that a sight at the home stretch could be had was worth at least ten cents. There was a young rooster there from Sparta, or somewhere, with his girl, and he had a terrible time finding a place to see anything. The grand stand was full, and every wagon was loaded. Finally one of the drivers pushed a trotting sulky off the track, to the left of the stand, and the Sparta youth, after some trouble, induced his girl to get up into the sulky, after he had faith- fully promised that he would stand on the shafts and hold them down. She said that if he didn't hold them down, she was a ruined community. Three or four of us watched the performance, pretty intently, you bet. He held the shafts down alight until the horses got on the home stretch, and all was excitement, when he forgot his girl, home, friends and kindred, and rushed to the ropes, to see the come-out. He had not got more than ten feet from his girl before that sulky seemed to be alive. It reared up in front and kicked up behind, and the girl screamed, and finally the sulky flopped over, turned the girl bottom side up and spilled her on the ground. For a few seconds the air seemed to be filled with sulky wheels, and tall stockings, and fall bonnets, and legs, and shafts, and back hair, and wild shrieks, and gaiters, and garters with monogram clasps, and everything. We never knew how the heat between the horses was decided, because we were looking to see if she had broke anything. She laid upon her ear a moment, and clawed the ground with her hands to hold herself down. She said she was stabbed, and finally, remembering that there was a hole in her stocking she got up and shook her- 40 self, presenting an aspect as of one completely "squashed." Forked lightning flashed from her eyes, and just then her feller came back. He said that Jack Styles won the heat. She said dam Jack Styles. Perhaps she didn't talk to him for letting go of those shafts. But they finally made it up, and later we saw them at the Granger's Hall buying pea- nuts and grapes of Bob Rand. He didn't seem to mind the expense. We hope we may never witness so soul-har- rowing a sight again. All the time that sulky looked as in- nocent as though it hadn't done anything to speak of. Bruce, the colored senator, has caused an infant born to him to be named Roscoe Conkling Bruce. Mr. Conkling maintains a dignified silence, but his friends deny that he is in any manner to blame in the matter. A young man from a neighboring suburb who passed a night at an alleged first-class Chicago hotel swears he caught cold sleeping next to an iceberg. When the beds are all full they put a man right into the refrigerator with the cold meat. 1'he city seems to be in favor of "dry removal." If this is an underhanded design to get democrats put of the city previous to election we shall oppose it. W^re always dry, some of us, but we don't propose to be removed and placed on a reservation, like Indians. An Iowa man, living within three miles of a railroad, has never been in a car ; has never been courting ; never sat on a jury, or kissed a girl. What a fearful state of barbarism prevails in some of those Western States. Bless us, and he never kissed a girl. How can a man live in such ignorance ? In Connecticut the method of committing suicide by going to bed with a pipe or cigar in the mouth is becoming very popular. In many localities it is taking the place of kerosene. It isn't so greasy, and don't smell so bad, and then a man can be asleep during at least half of the dying. Try it, and put a stop to that gigantic monopoly, kerosene. 41 "GO WEST, YOUNG MAN." If you have a gun, a little leisure, dyspepsia and a spike tailed dog, go west, and chase the bounding prairie chicken over the plains. We had nearly all of these things last week, so we instructed the domestic to call us early mother dear, and on Wednesday morning at half past six a proces- sion of one could have been seen meandering down Main street, a grip sack and gun box in one hand, and a whistle to try and steal a dog with in the other. The procession was us, heading for the S. M. ferry boat. The last five blocks were made on the run, fearing the boat would leave prematurely. After we got on board, the boat waited half an hour to take on kegs of Michel's beer, which goes out into Minnesota, a liquid missionary, to convert the grangers. When you think every passenger has got aboard, fifteen or twenty more will come straggling along, and every one will say, "Going hunting, eh ?" And if you say "no," they will ask you what you have got in that box, and if you tell them it is a fiddle, and that you are going to Hokah to play for a dance, some one will call you a "lawyer," and get thrown overboard, as Ed. Doane did almost. Sitting on the muzzle of the ferry boat, waiting for it to start, and seeing the peo- ple come down the bank, you wonder where all the folks are going, and who woke them up so early. There are hunters, traveling men, pleasure seekers, consumptives and editors, waiting to cross the big thin-bottomed river. The last man to come down to the bank is the dignified Perkins, the champion conductor, who looks as though he would have given a two hundred and fifty dollar bill if it had not been his day to run, and if he could have slept another hour. Finally the last keg of beer is on board, the captain pulls a dingus, the engineer winds up the stem winder, the gang plank is pulled in, and the McGregor swings around, the freight smells of rotten eggs, the woman on the sidewalk waves her handkerchief, Doc. Clarke looks out the back door and smiles a benediction, and away we go for the sand bar. When a boat draws three feet of water, and the river is two feet and a half deep, there is every probability that she will get her bottom rubbed more or less, and that was what ailed Hannah McGregor, but she went over the bar as though it was made of lard, and landed at the depot, 42 where the beer and passengers were transferred, and away we went toward the Root River. There are some that doubt that the Southern Minnesota Railroad crosses Root river. We know it does, because we saw it more than forty times before we got across so as to stay. It is said that the river has now got its back up, and crosses the railroad, but that won't last. Steering carefully around Lanesboro, where last year we paid half a dollar for a lunch of brown bread and brindle butter, that the dogs in the baggage car had an indignation meeting over, and resolved not to find a chicken tor us, which resolution they kept, the train was soon rolling over the prairies, out of sight of land. Station after station popped up out of the wheat fields, and the farmers seemed to have stopped work just long enough to stand on the depot steps and see the train go by. The platform of a country depot is an interesting study. There are always four boys, one with a black eye, one with the seat of his pants in such a state of anarchy, that he leans against the depot, lest the lady passengers shall view the scenery from one end to Revelations, one boy with brown overalls, one leg in his boot, and one boy holding a bay dog. There is the man with the mail bag, who looks at the passengers as though they could appreciate the responsibility that rests on him, but the depot loafers could not. There is the depot agent, with manure on his boots and a dispatch in his hand for the conductor. There is " Uncle Jim," who remem- bers the first railroad that ever came into Ohio, the express man who receives the empty egg boxes and the beer, and three fellows who cannot read, rushing around with a nickel, looking for a newsboy to buy a paper, for the wheat buyers. Four dirty loafers come through the car to see the passengers, and go out at the back end and walk for- ward on the platform, chew plug tobacco, and make re- marks about the ladies, and say, " be Jasus, she is purty," as the train moves off, and some tired lady looks out the window. Who has not seen these people at a country depot almost anywhere ? The ride from where you strike the prairie, on the S. M. Road, to the bitter end, is full of interest. There can be no such wheat fields anywhere. As far as the eye can reach there is nothing but shocks of wheat, fat shocks that look like about thirty bushels to the acre. The fanners look, as 43 they lean upon their rakes, and look at the train as though they defied the world, the flesh, and the men who hold mortgages on their farms, in anticipation of a dollar a bushel for their wheat. (Since the recent two weeks' rain we have not heard how they do feel). As the train pulls up at Grand Meadow a sight meets our gaze that strikes terror. A man stands there under a plug hat, the picture ot neatness and dispatch. In one hand he holds a piece of bed cord attached to a wet dog. In the other hand he holds three chickens that he has borrowed of a granger, to send home. Giving the chickens to the express man, with injunctions to guard them as he would his life, the plug hat falls back, a woe-begone expression passes over the face of the man, he jerks his dog around, takes his gun and starts off. We call him. It is Doc. Pal- mer. He says he has only killed one night-hawk, with a club, and wants to go home. He says chickens are scarce, as Henry Heil, and six more fellows from La Crosse have been around there with spike tailed dogs. We invite Doc. to go to Albert Lea with us, where chickens grow on every bush and where a man can kill a back load without getting out of the wagon. He accepts, and we arrive in Albert Lea, the central park of Minnesota, after taking a dinner at Ram- sey that is seldom equaled We want to tell all about the two days hunt, how Frank Fobes, and Frank Hall, and the rest of the boys, made it pleasant for us. How Doc., after he found we wouldn't get the teeth ache, so he could get a job, tried to knock our front teeth out with the muzzle of his gun so he could make us a new set. How he disguised himself, by changing hats, and tucking his pants in his boots, till his own dog would bark at him, thinking he was an Indian. (When a man gets so mean that his dog goes back on him, it is time something was done). We want to tell about the beauties of Albert Lea, and how her hospitable people contend with those La Crosse buzz-saw appetites, how Doc. got beat playing cro- quet, in the rain, and everything, but as THE SUN is to be continued indefinitely, it will do at another time. It is proper to state right here that the reason we did not send more chickens home was on account of the hot weather. Those we did send spoiled on the way. Honest, now, they did. 44 NEARLY BROKE UP A FESTIVAL. One bold, bad man, around a church festival, can do more to injure the cause of religion, by souring the tempers of the ladies, than a barrel of vinegar. Not many years ago there was a church festival in Milwaukee, to raise funds for paying one of the many debts of nature that churches always owe. The festival had been extensively advertised via the pulpit and the press, two institutions that go hand in hand, especially the press. It was to be a grand aggregation, a combined oyster and ice cream festival, two shows combined in one, with one price of admission, and six prices to get out Everything had been arranged and the women of the church were in the basement, working like beavers that is, we do not know as beavers ever got up a church festival, or that women ever built a beaver darn, but any way the women were working awful, while the men stood around in their shirt sleeves, tasting of an oyster here and something else there, asking a sister if she thought there was going to be much of a crowd, etc., and all was business. The crowd began to arrive, and then there was bustle. We do not mean the kind of bustle that you do, gentle reader. We mean business. There was business -going on. The deaconesses were flying around, with their arms rolled up, showing dimples at the elbows, and vaccination marks up on the calf of the arm, and their cheeks were red and their lips looked so good, and wholesome, and O, you know how it is. The ladies had aprons on, and their dresses were pinned up so the deacons could observe perhaps one stripe, as they looked on the floor for the nutmeg grater, or something that had dropped. A committee of ladies were engaged in split- ting the oysters, before cooking, so they would go further, and another committee was thining the milk, so it wouldn't give anybody the dyspepsia. Another commit- tee was freezing the ice-cream, the women looking on, while the men turned the freezer. They had been freer- ing the cream since four o'clock in the afternoon, and here it was seven o'clock, and the cream was thin as t linen duster, and as free from frigidity as when it came from the cow or the hen, as the case may be. Th deacons put in salt, and ice, and the more they turned 45 the concern, the warmer the ice cream seemed to get The deacons perspired, and said words that wouldn'^ sound well in history. Time passed, and the cream would not freeze. Girl waiters were coming down stairs with orders for ice cream, and the wild eyed men would take off the cover and look into the churn and find it thinner than before. A council of war was held in the basement, and the matter was discussed, but no one could give any information that would freeze the cream. Finally one old deacon, who had been working the freezer for three hours, until every bone in his body ached, and who sat on the bottom step of the stairs with a coffee sack thrown over his shoulders to keep from taking cold, and mopping the perspiration from his brow, arose and said, that desperate diseases require desperate remedies. He said if that cream couldn't be induced to freeze, the church was beat out of at least twenty dollars. He said that there was only one way. "Send for my wife !" said he as he sank back, weeping. The man's wife was up stairs waiting on table, and a sister rushed up to her and told her to come down stairs at once, as her husband was in a terri- ble state. The good woman dropped a lot of soup plates, and rushed down stairs, and found her husband looking as though he had been playing a base ball match. "For heaven's sake, Hennery, what is the matter?" said the darling wife, as she kneeled at his feet, and took his blistered band in her own soft palm. "Harriet," said he, as he put his- hand on her auburn hair to get it warm, "Have I always been -a good husband to you?" She admitted that he had as far as she knew, though he had a reprehensible habit of going down town nights. "Then," said he, "I have only one favor to ask. We have been trying for three hours to freeze that cussed ice cream. If it wasn't for the church, I wouldn't ask it, but Harriet, something has got to be done. Now, if you will take off your shoes and stockings, and put your feet in that ice cream freezer, you can freeze that cream in two minutes, and we are saved !" There was a noise as of a ward caucus breaking up in a row, and a wild eyed deacon might have been seen going around that room in the basement, trying to dodge chairs, 46 and plates, and cups and saucers, and when he got to the door, and a soup tureen took him on the head, he went out into the wide world and went home in his shirt sleeves, and a young man that sings in the choir went home with the deacon's wife later, and the ice cream did not freeze. A man at Green Bay, Wis., had a pet bear which used to sleep the in same bed with him. The other morning the doctor called and said the man couldn't live without a lot of new intestines. As billiard players say, "it was a damna- ble scratch." The bear is not allowed to sleep with any- body now unless he cuts his nails. The bed bugs at the house of correction will hold a mass meeting on Sunday afternoon, to protest against being com- pelled to exodus. Prominent bed bug speakers are expected to be present from several third class hotels in Milwaukee, and delegates will attend from several county jails. The meeting will be red hot. In a libel suit against a Louisville paper the plaintiff was awarded one cent damages. To show how popular some papers are, it is stated that a number of influential capitalists immediately stepped forward and offered to loan the editor the money to pay the damages, without any- security more than a chattel mortgage on the press and material. Blanche Williams, of Philadelphia, who met with an acci- dent at Fairmount Water-works, by which one leg was broken, and rendered three inches shorter than the rest of her legs, has recovered $10,000 damages. It would seem, to the student of nature, to be a pretty good price for three inches of ordinary leg, but then some people will make such a fuss. The regular weekly murder is reported from Peshtigo. Two men named Glass and Penrue, got to quarreling about a girl, in a hay loft, over a barn. Glass stabbed Penrue quite a number of times and he died. There is nothing much more dangerous, unless it is kerosene, than two men and a girl, in a hay loft quarreling. 47 SEVEN YEAR OLD HORSES. An old farmer once said, "What a year it must have been for colts seven years ago this spring." No person who has never attempted to buy a horse can appreciate the remark, but if he will let it be known that he wants to buy a good horse, he will be struck with the circumstance that all the horses that are of any particular account were born seven years ago. Occasionally there is one that is six years old, but they are not plenty. Now, those of us who lived around here seven years ago did not have our attention called to the fact that the country was flooded with colts. There were very few twin colts, and it was seldom that a mother had half a dozen colts following her. Farmers and stock raisers did not go around worrying about what they were going to do with so many colts. The papers, if we recol- lect right, were not filled with accounts of the extraordinary number of colts born. And yet it must have been a terrible year for colts, because there are only six horses in Milwaukee that are over seven years old, but one of them was found to have been pretty well along in years when he worked in Burnham's brick yard in 1848, and finally the owner owned up that he was mistaken twenty-six years. What a mortality there must have been among horses that would now be eight, nine or ten years old. There are none of them left. And a year from now, when our present stock of horses would naturally be eight years old they will all be dead, and a new lot of seven years old horses will take their places. It is singular, but it is true. That is, it is true unless horse dealers lie, and THE SUN would be slow to charge so grave a crime upon a useful and enterprising class of citizens. No, it cannot be, and yet, don't it seem peculiar that all the horses in this broad land are seven years old this spring ? We leave the subject for the youth of the land to Bonder over. It beats us. A petrified sturgeon has been found in a stone quarry at Appleton. It will be just our luck to be quartered on somebody at the editorial convention that will try to cook that sturgeon so it can be served on the table. However, a petrified sturgeon must be an improvement over a fresh sturgeon. 48 EXCITEMENT IN A CHURCH. One day last week, at Oshkosh, a man came down on the main street, with his hair flying, and said there was a ghost in the church steeple. Men looked at each other and turned pale. The man said that the ghost was pounding away up in the steeple, and it sounded like a section of the day of judgment. In about five minutes a hundred men had got together at the Beckwith House, to talk it over. They threw the dice to see who should go up to the church and reconnoiter. It fell on George Cameron. He said it was just his condemned luck. He looked in a tumbler, there being no mirror, to see if he looked well enough to go to church, and then started out, after shaking hands with Beckwith. "If I fall," said he to the boys, "tell them that I fell with my face to the front," and away he went. There was not a dry eye in the place, though the excitement caused other dry spots to appear. There was a sand bar in every throat. While the scout was gone, the boys talked it over. Tom Wall said he had felt all along as though so many churches in Oshkosh would lead to some trouble. Bill Wall said he knew that ghost story was just a conspiracy to get the boys to church. Pretty soon Cameron came back and said there was something in that steeple, as sure as you live, and it made a noise like a boiler factory. He said he didn't know anything about ghosts, and didn't see any white winding sheet, but he said he knew the devil was to pay in that steeple. The whole crowd decided to go to the church, and as they moved toward the structure in solemn procession, the sight was so unusual that the whole popula- tion followed. It was a beautiful sight to see thousands of people gazing up to the steeple of the sacred edifice. The noise inside was something they had never heard before. It was as though spirits were rapping very loud, and the sound reverberated. Some rolled their eyes heavenward and fervently prayed mentally that no harm would befall them. Tom Wall said his plan would be to call out the fire department and flood the steeple with water. Gabe Bouck sneered and said nobody but a d d fool would think of drowning out a Baptist ghost. He said water would be right into the hand of the ghost. Finally the sexton came along and said he would go up 49 into the steeple and drive out any ghost that might be there. As he disappeared in the door and began ascending the stairs to the steeple there was a silence that was painful, broken only by the ominous rapping of the ghost. Hank Harshaw said it reminded him of the moment before, a battle. The heavy boots of the sexton could be heard, away up the steeple, the rapping stopped, the audience stopped breathing, when a red- headed woodpecker flew out of one of the windows of the steeple. He had been pecking at the tin roof of the steeple. The crowd breathed easier, and dispersed in all directions. They said they knew it couldn't be a ghost, all the time. The river water now smells as bad as some of the mineral springs. That was all we lacked to have a summer resort. Any man sending us ten new subscribers will receive a gal- lon of Milwaukee river water. It cures the itch. There is a fearfully harrowing story going the rounds of the papers headed "Ten Days in Love." It must have been dreadful, with no Sunday, no day of rest, no holiday, just nothing but love, for ten long days. By the way, did the person live ? Mrs. Penzer, of Syracuse, whose husband committed sui- cide not long since by drowning in the canal, has finally come out and told how it was. She had a paramour named Dean, who pounded her husband until he wasn't no use any more, when they both took the old man and emptied him in the canal. She says, with tears in her eyes, that this was her first offense of the kind. Mildness and perseverence is an invaluable trait in a suc- cessful Sunday-school ieacher. They should have control over their tempers, and speak gently to the erring scholars. A teacher in a Des Moines, Iowa, Sunday-school said to a boy last Sunday, "You d d little scoundrel, I will kick you out of church in two minutes if you do that again." That poor persecuted boy only had been playing seven-up for a cup of peanuts, with another boy in, the pulpit. The teacher was too harsh, and no doubt, pained the boy unnecessarily. 5 50 GETTING THE HANG OF THINGS. We don't know who it was invented hanging up kerosene cans and coffee pots over the celler stairs, but whoever he is he is entitled to a chromo. A Ninth street man came home late on Tuesday morning from Deacon Wing's "iron picnic" as the little boy called the tin wedding, when his wife who had remained at home, asked him, as a special favor, before he got into bed, to go down cellar and kill a burglar or two that she had heard down there. Removing a button hole bouquet from his coat, in order that he might not be encum- bered, and depositing a California pear that he had stolen, on the table, he started, in the dark. He knew there were no burglars around, but thought he would go down cellar and thrash around a little just to please his wife. He started down cellar whistling "There is a smell in the air that binds me," when the nozzle of the kerosene can struck him on the forehead, and went tumbling down stairs, accompan- ied by the coffee pot, with a noise that reminded him of a tin wedding. He leaned over a little to the right, against the wall, when his white vest came in contact with the burnt bottom of a long pancake griddle. That fell on his foot and went down celler at three jumps and fell on the coflee pot. Reaching up to brush the soot off his vest, his elbow struck a tin foot bath tub which fell down and covered his head. With a remark that would not offend the most fastid- ious pirate, he pulled off the bath tub and threw it down, when it hit a large tin dish pan, and both went down together and fell on the coffee pot. He went down a couple of steps and landed both feet in a wash boiler that was set- ting on the bettom step, his head struck against a basket of dried beef hanging to one of the joists, and in dodging, he tipped over the boiler and fell, taking the boiler with him to the bottom of the cellar, and landed on all fours in the ware that had gone- before. His wife came to the head of the stairs to see what was the matter, when her foot struck a tin slop pail full of water and that came down on him. He picked himself up and crept up stairs, telling his wife he had had the d dest fight with a burglar that ever was, he went to bed and dreamed that he was married to a tin wash .boiler, and when he went to dash it to his aching breast a 51 foot struck him in the stomach, and a voice said, "can't you lay still and let people have a little rest." It is a nice place to hang tin ware % over the cellar stairs. We see it advocated that the southern legislature should pass game laws, prohibiting the killing of game except in certain seasons of the year. It is believed that if something of the kind is not done, the negro will soon become extinct. "What is a loan exhibition ?" asks a correspondent. Well, when a fellow borrows ten dollars of you, to be paid next Saturday, and he lets it run a year and a half, and don't pay it, and he meets you on the street and asks for five dollars more, and you turn him around and kick him right before the crowd, that is a loan exhibition. A man in Cairo, 111., after witnessing the performance of a tight-rope artist, said it was easy enough to walk a rope if a man had the nerve. He said he had the nerve, so he fastened a clothes-line from the top of the barn to the chim- ney of the house, took a hoe handle to balance himself, and started. It wasn't forty-eight hours after that before the family were out riding in carriages, dressed in mourning. You see, he didn't have any place to rest the hoe handle. There is a fearful story going the rounds, headed "A Girl charged with electricity." W r e do not believe the charge, on general principles, but if they can prove it against her, that settles it, and she must keep away from here or we will call the police. It is a fearful charge to make against a girl, but girls will be girls. And yet, she may not be all to blame. It is always best not lay all the blame to the girl in such cases. A corpse got a good joke on the people of Quebec the other day. It came there by expiess, and was only an ordin- ary, every-day dead man, but the Kanucks were looking for a military corpse, and supposing our ordinary corpse to be he, they got up a big Fifth avenue funeral, and buried it with military honors. The corpse, who didn't know a thing about military matters, must have many a good laugh over the mistake. And how the military corpse must have felt, when HE came ! 52 WHY THE FEVER DIDN'T SPREAD. Portage City has had a sensation which, though at one time it looked serious, turned out to be a farce. A girl was taken sick, and a physician was called who pronounced it a case of yellow fever, and he made out a prescription for that disease. Mr. Brannan, editor of the Portage Register, who lives near, got the news, and imparted it to all whom he met, and they in turn told it to others, and a stampede was looked for. Fox turned the Fox House over to Hunker, and had his trunks checked for the Hot Springs. Corning and Jack Turner hired a wagon to take them to Briggsville. Haertel, the brewery man, offered to sell out his brewery and all his property for eight hundred dollars, and he bought a ticket for Germany. Bunker left the Fox House to run itself, and went to Devil's Lake. Sam. Brannan, telegraphed to George Clinton, at Denver, not to come home, as the yellow fever was raging, and people were dying off like rotten sheep. And Sam. got vaccinated and went to Beaver Dam. The excitement was intense. Men became perfectly wild, and were going to rush off and leave the women and children to the mercies of the dread plague. Chicago and Milwaukee bummers could be seen at the hotels, kneeling beside their sample cases trying to pray, but they couldn't. Just before the train started that was to carry away the frightened populace, the doctor came up town and said that the girl with the yelloiv fever was better, and that she was the mother of a fine nine pound boy. The authorities took every precaution to prevent the spread of the yellow fever, by arresting the brakemen whom the girl said was the cause of all the trouble. All is quiet on the Wisconse now. Joe Oliver, editor of the Waupun Leader, was along here early in the week. He says there are forty-two thousand ties between Waupun and SchleisingervilK He rode in from there. Fifteen dogs were attacked by sheep in Fond du Lac county a few nights since, and the sheep were killed in self defense. Farmers should tie up their sheep or there will be little encouragement to dog owners. 53 TRYING TO SAVE TWO SHILLINGS. No person ever wants to tell us again how to save two shillings. When we started for Chippewa Falls, to attend the celebration, we only had a few hundred dollars along, and we felt like saving all that was possible. Just before arriving at Sparta, where we were to take supper, Dan Mc- Donald got to telling about how to save twenty-five cents on meals at these eating houses, when traveling. He said that all you had to do when you come out from supper was to look like a bummer, or " traveling man," hand the door keeper fifty cents and wink twice with the left eye, and he would pass you right out, as though you had paid seventy- five cents. . If you handed out a dollar bill, and he only gave you back twenty-five cents, you only had to hold out your hand and wink a couple of times, and the man would give you the other quarter. Dan. said he always did that way, and he had saved hundreds of dollars. He said these bummers only paid fifty cents a meal, and there was no use of any body else paying more, if they had cheek enough to play it on the landlord. We never had anything strike us as any more reasonable than the statement of Mr. McDonald, and we delenr.ined to try it. To a man who was traveling a good deal, lec- turing, a saving of twenty-five cents a meal was worth look- ing into, and we made up our mind to begin to econo- mize that very night. The train stopped and we walked across the platform as near like a bummer as possible. With our hat on one side, we threw a cigar stub into the parlor window, said "Hello, old tapeworm," to the landlord, in a familiar sort of way, chucked our hat into a chair, rushed into the dining room, took a seat at the head of the table, and told a girl to cart out all she had got. The landlord looked at us as though he thought we were one of Field, Leiter & Co.'s bummers, his good wife looked fright- ened, as though she feared we would kick a leg off the table and spill things. However, there is no use of de- scribing the meal, and how we went through brook trout and strawberry shortcake, and things. We couldn't help feeling sorry for the man that was destined to furnish all that for fifty cents. Finally we went out. We felt a sort of palpitation of the heart when we approached the hungry 54 looking man at the door, taking the money. He looked as though he was a sick orphan trying to save money enough to get to a water cure. Picking our teeth with our finger, like a Chicago bummer, and pulling our handkerchief out of our pistol pocket and blowing our nose like a thirty-two pounder, just as we had heard a Chicago fellow do, we handed the man fifty cents, winked a couple of times and started to go by. The tobacco" sign standing there said, "twenty five cents more, please." We looked at him, winked, and said, " O, that will be all right." "Two shillings more, my friend," said the summer resort. We winked some more, and punched him in the nbs with our thumb, and said, "O, now, old tapeworm, don't try to play it on us boys." And we laughed a sickly sort of laugh. The fact of it was, we began to have doubts about the thing working, and had a suspicion that the twinkle in Dan McDonald's eye meant that he had been playing it on us. The landlord said he should have to have two shillings more, and that we were blocking up the thoroughfare, and we fumbled around and found it and paid him, and went out, probably the most disgusted excursionist that ever was. Dan. who had watched the whole business, slapped us on the shoulder, and said, "How did it work?" Though not especially hungry, we could have eaten him raw. When we go east now, we take a lunch along, and when the other passen- gers are in to supper, we sit on the woodpile at Sparta, eat our lunch and gaze at the fountains, talk with the brakeman, and wonder if the landlord would know us if we should go in and take a tooth pick off the counter. Not any more bummer for us, and no man must ever tell us how to save two shillings on a meal. We must all swear off and go to the Sons of Temperance Festival Monday night, and give them a benefit. Of course it would be wrong to dance with the Templaresses, but if they should insist on dancing just once, why, we are all poor creatures anyway. An exchange says Kilbourn has a hydrogen gas spring. Wonder if that was what Bunker had in his bottle that we stole, down there. It made us mighty light headed in the feet, when the music struck up. 55 THE FOURTH OF JULY. [The following Oration was Delivered at Green Bay, July 4th, 1879.J Pilgrims : Once more are we gathered together, in the capacity of patriots, to see to it personally that the day that our fore- fathers celebrated is not allowed to be forgotten. With so many new holidays, and so many new people, it is hardly to be wondered at that the day of all days, the day that should be dearest to the heart of every American, is in danger of being passed over in silence, and were it not for the fire cracker, that begins to get in its work about the first of June, in many instances this Anniversary of American Independence would be passed without the customary mouth shootzen-fest from alleged orators, but when the small boy begins to stir around and clandestinely look down the muzzle of the always loaded fire cracker, the patriotism of the boys still begins to assert itself, the old man's eyes begin to snap, and he talks with his neighbor about how they used to celebrate when he was a boy, the sluff begins to work over the neighborhood, the village catches it, the country begins to warm up, everybody says "we will cele- brate," a feeble minded person from abroad is engaged to assist the brass band to raise the wind, and before the great day arrives every heart within a radius of forty miles beats responsive to every other heart, the German, shakes hands with the Irishman, and say the 4th of July is equal to a sangerfest, the Irishman replies that next to St. Patrick's Day the 4th of July can count on him ; the Scotchman joins the Englishman in celebrating, every nationality comes to the center and forgets that it ever had another flag, America welcomes them all, and the united "hurrah" for the star spangled banner, from throats of native and adopted American citizens, on the 4th day of July, is enough to make ever person as proud as a peacock, whether he had an ancestor in the fight for liberty or not. For many years it has been customary, on this day, for patriotic people to meet together to pay tribute to the heroes of the Revolution, the men who died that our country might live. This tribute is paid in many ways, the most popular of which is to shout, fire bass drums, drink red 56 lemonade, climb greased poles, catch greased pigs, smell of powder, blow our thumbs off by firing unaccustomed cannon, and by talking at a mark in regard to the grand old flag, of which the poet has asked the following conundrum: "O, say, does the star spangled banner still wave, O'er the land of the free lunch and the home of the bravado ?" Though I am .not authority on conundrums, I will answer this one by saying that to the best of my knowledge and belief, the star spangled banner does still wave over the land of the free. I make bold to assert this because Congress has adjourned. Why is it that on this day every man looks like a rich uncle with a "don't care for expense" expression ? Why is it that every boy looks as happy as though he had found a hidden water melon patch, and was only waiting for night, with her sable mantle, to hide the light of day so he could go and lay in a stock of cholera infantum ? Why is it that every woman looks as happy and smiling as though she was going to attend a donation party and carry pickles and bring home sponge cake, and causeth a poor minister to shudder for the future of his larder ? Why is it that every woman looks handsomer than ever on this day, her face as rosy as the sea shell, and her heart as warm as the sun ? On this great day we are accustomed to leave our busi- ness to hired men, and burn with patriotism, and ginger pop, fill ourselves with patriotic fervor, and beer, shout the battle cry of freedom, and go home when the day is over with our eye winkers burned off, and to sleep with a consciousness that a great duty has been performed, ajid that we have got bank notes to pay on the morrow. For three hundred and sixty-four days in the year our patriotism is corked up and wired down, and all we can do is to work, and acquire age and strength. On the morning of the 4th of July we cut the wire, the cork that holds our patriotism flies out, and we bubble and sparkle and steam, and make things howl. We hold in as long as we can, but when we get the harness off, and are turned into the pasture, we make a picnic of ourselves, with music all along the line. And why do we do this. Why is it that on this particular day we lose our cud, and kick up the dust, and perspire through our linen coats, and get the galloping head ache ? 57 Lend me your ears, and I will a tale unfold, whose light- est word will harrow up your corn ground, freeze your young blooded stock, and make each particular hair pin to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Many, many years ago, before voluntary bankruptcy had been invented, a solitary horseman might have been seen, standing on Plymouth rock, gazing into the country, his hand shading his eyes, and his whole being trembling with emotion. He was looking for Indians. He never had owned an Indian, and thus no Indian had ever escaped from him, but he was looking for Indians all the same. Not that he needed any Indians in his business, but he was looking for them. It is strongly suspected that the Pilgrims, who landed on Plymouth Rock, were the first nine of an archery club who had been sent over here to shoot a match with the Indians. He was a pilgrim, and this was his progress. Coming here with a good recommendation from his last place, he had the appearance of a tramp, his shoes being run over at the heel, and his coat rusty. In a canal boat hard by, was the balance of the gang, passing the time, in the absence of the boss, playing Croquet, won- dering if he would find a good place lor them to hold their turnout. Presently the leader, who was on the rock, raised his hankerchief and waved the excursion to "come ashore." The party on the boat laid down their hands, after marking the score on the slate, weighed anchor, on a pair of spring balances, touched the canal horse on the raw with a hop pole, and steamed into port. This was "the Landing of the Pilgrims." It was the first church excursion of which history speaks, and netted quite a sum. Lunch baskets were produced, and while the women stood guard over the lemon pie, and the raspberry jam, to keep out the caterpillars and the ants, the men took their guns and sallied forth to conquer the country, and kill an Indian, or some kind of game for supper. That picnic party was the foundation of all this trouble. On that rock they laid the foundation, and then they set around, and hatched out this great country. They liked the climate and with one accord they lifted up their voices and chanted the beautiful anthem, "We wont go home till morning," which is even remembered, and sung on great occasions to this day. Whatever there is in the country, 58 that is deserving of censure, the odium must attach to those tramps, who found this country a wilderness, and kept on fooling until it blossomed the worst way. If they had gone back, after having a picnic, and kept still about it, this country might have been a quiet sort of place, with no peni- tentiaries, no congress, no nothing. But they had blood in their eyes. They had flown from oppression. They * had come from a far country, where they were not allowed to have church sociables, and where a prayer meeting was looked upon as the work of an incen- diary. Why, where they lit out from, it was as much as a young man's life was worth to go home with one of the sisterin' and hang on the gate for a few hours. He was liable to be arrested for disorderly conduct, and sedition, and habeas corpus, and such foreign things. Here, now, one might go home with her, and break all the hinges on the gate, and he wouldn't be hung for it. That shows the difference between a monarchical form of government, and an E pluribus Government, like ours. These heroes fled from home because they were not allowed to worship in their own way. They wanted a place where they could be sprinkled or immersed just as they pleased. Where they could be Presbyterians, or Methodists or Democrats or Baptists, or Republicans or Second Adventists, or Greenbackers, whichever they thought held out best inducements for a nice, cool summer resort after the wicked should cease from troubling. They wanted a place where they could organize a government of the people, where one ballot box stuffer would be as good as another, and where the man who got the most votes would draw the salary, so they tied up their boat, unloaded their tracts, and began preparing to go west and; grow up with the country. The progress of these pilgrims, from their landing, on Plymouth Rock, till they had descendants enough to make a pretty fair show in a free fight, is familiar to all readers of profane history, and we will pass on to the front. They kept on multiplying and replenishing the earth, until the year 1776, when there were enough of them to make a pretty fair caucus. They had scattered themselves over thirteen states, and had schools, churches, colleges, county fairs, grab bags, three card monte, and many of the 59 .evidences of a higher civilization. All this time the king of England had kindly allowed himself to rule the colonists. The returning board counted him in, unbeknown to him- self, and while it was not to his taste to hold office, he felt that he could not go behind the returns. A king is a good enough thing to have around, if he does not get to putting on style. The American people can stand anything but airs. They submitted patiently to everything for years. They worked ten hours a day when other subjects were only working eight hours. They took their's without any sugar in it, rather than get in a muss. At length it became irksome to be bossed around by a king, and the hands got up a strike. They met together, under the lead of a Socialist by the name of Hancock, who run a commercial college and kept a writing school, and passed resolutions. There is nothing so dear to the Ameri- can heart as the inalienable right to pass resolutions. They passed resolutions calling the king another. They said he was a fraud. That he compelled them to pay taxes. Some may think that was a small thing to get mad about, but they must remember that these were 'a primitive people, who had not learned the beauty and patriotism of paying taxes. They charged him with keeping a standing army of bull-dozers John Bull dozers, in time of peace, when a constable was all that was necessary. They then went into committee of the whole and on the 4th of July declared that they wouldn't stand any more nonsense, and swore that from that time out America should be free or they would know the reason why. and they unfurled the Star Spangled Banner, and the poet of the occasion got on a stump and said, "If any man attempts to haul down the American Flag, put him in his little bed." What memorable words, How dear to the heart of every American. It was about this time that the fire cracker was invented, and it was alleged by adherents of the crown that John Hancock and some of the framers of the Declaration were interested in the invention of that patriotic instrument of torture with the fiery tail and the sanguinary insides, and that the Declaration of Independence was got up to throw the fire cracker upon the market. History does not show_ 60 that the signers were stockholders in any fire cracker manu- factory, but you can't tell anything about these old fellows. They may have had axes to grind. Anyway the fire cracker from that time became one of the dearest of American in- stitutions, and it has come down to us with a fuse that stut- ters and fizzes, and its red wrapper as sanguinary, and its contents as astonishing, as it wag in the days when John Hancock's boy traded off his birthright for a bunch, half of which were squibs. When we see the enjoyment that can be extracted from fire-crackers, we wonder how Adaro and Eve got along in the garden of Eden without them. May be there were fire-crackers in those days, and that on the 4th of July in Paradise, Cain and Abel traded off milk tickets for them, and made it hot around there, with firing all along the line. Let us imagine Adam and Eve sitting on the veranda, conversing upon revolutionary topics, and watching the dear children, Cain and Abel, in the alley, tying a bunch of crackers to a neighbor's dog's tail, and as the crackers began to explode, and the dog run down by the brewery like a Barren county settler fighting Indians, how Adam and Eve would clap their hands, and shout, arid say, " Boys will be boys." And again at evening, after the spinning wheels had been set off on the gate post in the garden of Eden, and the Smith children, who had been permitted to witness the dis- play, and gone home, saying it wasn't much of a celebra- tion, we can see Adam chastising Cain with a piece of barrel stave, for burning a hole in the elbow of his pantaloons, while Eve was bathing Abel's face with sweet oil, and won- dering if his eye winkers would ever grow out again. And after the children had been put to bed, and the house had been locked up so tramps could not get in and raise Cain among the canned fruit, we can see Adam take a dose of pain killer, to neutralize the effects of a day's debauch on red lemonade, and as he clasps his aching heart he says to Eve that he is mighty glad the 4th of July only comes once a year. And Eve, who has tied a wet towel around her head to ward off an approaching attack of nervous sick headache, as she asks Adam to pass the bottle of camphor, says that remark is right into her hand. There may be those who will doubt if fire-crackers and 4th of July celebrations were known so long ago as that, but 61 we must not judge harshly. Stranger things have happened. Adam was a good provider, and if there were any fire- crackers at the groceries, from what I know of Adam, he :joing to have a celebration, if he did not lay up a cent. -\e are drifting from the subject. When the signers of the Declaration of Independence had fairly got their foot in it, and had knocked the chip off the shoulder of the King, they began to look around for a man to play "First Base." They looked the league players all over, but couldn't find a man that would fill the bill. They wanted a man who could not tell a lie. If that revolution should*occur to-day, how easy it would be to find a man that could not tell a lie. They could take a pair of ice tongs and go into this crowd, and snatch right in among the excursionists from the towns along the Green Bay & Minnesota railroad, and at the first haul they would get a man that could not tell a lie. The woods are full of them around here. But in that early day it was different. That was before men had become politi- cians, and had been nurtured in an atmosphere of truth and veracity. It was before the era of congressional investiga- tions, when witnesses were selected for their probity, and their adherence to all that is good and true. When they were looking for a man that could not tell a lie, the country was sparsely settled, and it was customary to meet at stated periods and tell lies for the beer. In all these tourna- ments there was one young man who never paid his en- trance fee. He said he was a poor orphan, who never had had any attention paid to his education, and he could not tell a lie. He had tried as hard as anybody, to master the accomplishment, but a lie always stuck in his throat. It was related of him that on one occasion he went into the garden and slew a cherry colored Thomas cat, belonging to a neighbor, and when his father caught him at it, and was about to send for the police, the boy began to weep on his coat, and he said, and i want you to mark the words, he said, " Father, I cannot tell a lie, the cat died of small pox." What a lesson is here for the youth. Let us incul- cate into the minds of the young a habit of being truthful. This man was George Washington. George was a brick. He was not one of those fellows who sit around a saloon waiting for somebody to set them up on the other alley. George did not stay down town nights until all the places 62 were closed, and then go home and foil over the baby crib, and stub his instep on the rocker of a chair, and get on the wrong, night shirt. George Washington never flirted with the girls. Girls made eyes at him for years and he never told his love. It wouldn't have been healthy for him to tell his love, for she would have made it hot for the father of his country if he had. Martha would. Washington, whatever may be said to his discredit, never sold lightning rods. He never took an agency for an Insurance company. Wash- ington never went around to different wards the night be- fore election and fcft tickets with the bar tender, wrapped up in a three dollar bill, with instructions to get the boys out to vote. Washington never was the kind of a politician who rode on a railroad pass, and put in a bill on the state for his car fare. He never took a girl to the 4th of July, or to a circus, and made her buy her own dinner. Washington never raised the bottom of strawberry boxes up two inches and put the best berries on top. He could not tell a lie, George couldn't. Washington, it is probable, never knew what it was to stew away a schooner of beer, and history makes no mention that he ever, on any pretext, eat limberger cheese. At least no mention was made of it in his farewell address. He never was President of a savings bank. Washington never lectured. He never edited a newspaper. He could not tell a lie, at the rates that editors charge. No he was a good man, with none of the small vices that are so prevalent these days. We have not time on this occasion to fight over again the battles of the Revolution. It would take too long. Suffice it to say that George Washington and all the rest of our ancestors did as good fighting during the sorrowful years of bloodshed as they would if we had been there to advise them. Of course they lacked the spirit, the training, the uniform of our present Wisconsin militia, but they did as well as they could under the circumstances. By strict attention to business, they taught the British government and troops that it was not good to be here, and they bought return tickets for the other side, and they couldn't hardly wait for train time, they were so anxious to get home in time to do their chores. Deeds of heroism were performed in those days that will always be remembered, and cheerfully celebrated, 63 and the heroes will always have warm places in the memory of ourselves, our children, and our children's children, until the world shall make an assignment, and go out of business, and be pigeon-holed away in the archives of the Great Ruler, among the worlds that have ceased to exist. From the time that the last enemy of the young repub- lic laid down his arms, a hundred or so years ago, there was considerable of a crop of peace to the acre, up to eighteen years since, when the country had a cram]). The south rebelled against the north, took up arms, and it did seem as though the country was on the ragged edg:; of despair. We all remember with what emotions we read of the breaking out of war, and with what interest we scanned the papers to, see how much it would cost to go to Canada. How many of us, in rushing to the front, lost our way, and thinking we were fighting our enemy, invaded his soil, and defied him in his own stronghold. But you who were brave and didn't have any relatives in Canada, as I did, went south, met the enemy, and after tour years of such fighting as the world has seldom witnessed, peace was restored, and our country was once more on the road to such prosperity as no nation has ever seen. Your sons, brothers, and husbands may be quietly sleeping the long sleep beneath some southern magnolia, their graves unmarked, their resting place unknown, but our country lives, the two sections that warred are at peace, and we are thankful. We honor those who fell, and pray that no occa- sion may ever arise for a similar sacrifice. It may have been noticed that thus far I have made no allusion to the American Eagle, the National trade mark, patent applied for, but it is not that I do not appreciate the position that species of poultry occupies on these occasions. The poet, alluding to the eagle, says : "Bird of the broad and fleeting wing, Thy home is high in heaven." This is too true. He is a high old bird, and me commit- tee that selected the eagle as a National emblem should have been arrested for disorderly conduct. O, great bird ! You live on mice. You soar aloft on pinions airy, until you see a poor little mouse with one leg broke, and then you swoop down like a ward constable, and run him in. You are a 64 nice old bird for a trade mark for a nation of heroes, you old coward. You sit on a rock and watch a peasant woman hanging out clothes, and when she goes in the house to turn the clot'hes wringer, you, great bird, emblem of freedom, you representative of the land of the free and home of the brave, you swoop down on the plantation and crush your talons in the quivering flesh of her little baby, take him to your home in heaven, and pick his innocent little eyes out. You bald headed old reprobate, you would turn your tail and run at the attack of a bantam rooster. O, eagle, you look well on dress parade, but you are a unanimous coward, and you eat snakes. You are a fraud, and you were counted in by a vote of eight to seven. The bird that should have been selected as the emblem of our country, the bird of patience, forbearance, perseverance, and the bird of terror when aroused, is the mule. There i? no bird that combines more virtues to the square foot than the mule. With the mule emblazoned on our banners, we should be a terror to every foe. We are a nation of uncom- plaining hard workers. We mean to do the fair thing by everybody. We plod along, doing as we would be done by. So does the mule. We, as a nation are slow to anger. So is the mule. As a nation we occasionally stick our ears forward, and fan flies off of our forehead. So does the mule. We allow parties to get on and ride as long as they behave themselves. So does the mule. But when any nation sticks spurs into our flauks, and tickles our heels with a straw, we come down stiff legged in front, our ears look to the beauti- ful beyond, our voice is cut loose, and is still for war, and our subsequent end plays the snare drum on anything that gets in reach of us, and strikes terror to the hearts of all tyrants. So does the mule. When the country gets older, and Congress has time to get in its work, the eagle will be superseded as the National trade mark, and in its place will arise the mule in all his glory, and E. pluribus unum, our motto, will be changed to you pluribus mulitm, sic, distemper ; alapaca. Through the sacrifices of the Pilgrims, first, and the rev- olutionary patriots second, and the rest of us, third, we have got a country now that we will match against anything that stands on the earth. It is broad guage, double track, and well ballasted. We have schools that can turn out states- 65 men and stateswomen by the regiment. We have medical colleges that will give diplomas to butchers that have looked through a key hole. We have body snatchers that will not give the weary soul many minutes rest before deceased is in a pickling vat. We have railroads that run from everywhere to nowhere, through wildernesses, over mountains, through tunnels, and through bridges, into streams below. They can run faster, carry more passengers, and run over more tramps than all the railroads owned by the monarchies of the old world. Our mountains are as high as our groceries and provisions, our rivers are as deep as thought, and as shallow as our editorials, our farmers are as rich as mud, and as inde- pendent as hired girl.s, ministers are as good and as cheerful as mother-in-laws, our girls are as sweet, as the sweet by and by, our colleges are turning out some of the finest pirates that ever scuttled a ship or scalped a junior, and they are educating a class of boat racers with muscles like tramps, and heads like base balls. Our land is filled with peace and plenty of tramps, our pocket books are full of acceptances, our granaries are bursting with wheat which we are holding for a rise, our congress has adjourned, and everything is lovely and the goose hangs high. With all the advantages mentioned, and thousands that could be mentioned, if this was a protracted meeting, and with the undeveloped resources that are to be found on every hand, there is no limit to the possibilities of grandeur that this nation may attain. The day is not far distant when we can sit at our ease, in our arm chairs, with our ears at the hopper of a coffee mill, and hear the congressional de- bates, and the jingle of the coin as the member draws his back pay, and we can hear all the testimony of all the star liars of the investigating committees, as well as though we were at the capital of the nation. We shal'. have cheese factories established for preserving the voice in tin foil, the same as limberger cheese, so that in a thousand years we can hear repeated the breaches of promise that we commit- ted when you and I were young Maggie. The time is com- ing when every disease can be cured by eating gum drops, gray hair will be restored to its natural color by the use of the vapor bath, bald heads will raise a second crop of hair every summer, our swords shall be turned into railroad shares, our spears into pruning hooks and eyes, nations shall not 66 make war against nations, unless we have a hand in, and there never will be war any more unless some foreign coun- try treads on the tail of our coat. We have been away from home the most of the time since tne folks here have been having "Esther" so bad, and never saw the performance till Monday night. It was the most gorgeous spectacle ever put upon the stage in La Crosse, and each person engaged played his or her part to perfection. Perhaps we didn't exactly get the run of the business, but it seemed to us that a man named Haman was running for the United States Senate, and that there was a chap named C. C. Mordecai, who had promised not to contest for the position with Matt. H. Haman. The thing opened with Haman, dressed in a red dressing gown trimmed with white cat skin, surrounded with an extensive lobby of postmasters. He made a speech, and they said they would stick to him. Mordecai organized a bolt, and Haman offered 5,000 tal- ents of silver and a number of foreign missions for every bol- ter that could be caught in the act. Haman and King Bis- marck Keyes got together and got to drinking, and they called in Crippen's military to help them out. "Esther," the beauteous queen wanted to take a hand in the riot, and she issued invitations to a Baptist social, where she had pre- pared a banquet of oysters at two shillings a dish. Crippen, with his six salamander horse marines got up a funeral pro- cession, but the corpse was not ready, so they marched Bis- marck, the King, around a spell, to slow music. The con- test was getting hot when Walter Brown came in with a hop, skip and jump, and told the King that Hainan's life insur- ance policy had run out, and unless it was renewed, Haman's family would be left to the cold charities of the world. Finally the bolters united with the Democrats, and Haman's goose was cooked, and the High Priest telegraphed the platform to Mordecai, a Scotchman from Cork, and he accepted, and they took Haman out to draw him around on a sled with a rope. The thing wound up with the Star Spangled Banner and everybody seemed glad it terminated so happily. There might have been some other points that we failed to notice, but the above is substantially correct, as anybody can see by reading the Bible. 67 DEATH OF BOB INQERSOLL. Not long since the following utterance of Bob Ingersoll wert the rounds of the papers : Colonel Ingersoll says he "keeps a pocket-book in an open drawer and his children go and help themselves to money whenever they want it. They eat when they want to. They may sleep all day if they choose, and sit up all night if they desire. I don't try to coerce them. I never punish, never scold. They buy their own clothes and are masters of themselves." A gentleman living on Marshall street, who has a boy that is full as kitteny as his father, read the article, and pon- dered deeply. He knew that Col. Ingersoll was a success at raising children in the way they should go, and he thought he would try it. The boy had caused him considerable annoyance, and he made up his mind that he had not treated the boy right, so he called the boy in from the street where he was putting soft soap on the lamp post, in order to see the lamp lighter climb it, and said to him : "My son, I have decided to adopt a different course with you. Heretofore I have been careful about giving you money, and have wanted to know where every cent went to, and my supervision has no doubt been annoying to you. Now, I am going to leave my pocket book in the bureau drawer, with plenty of money in it, and you are at liberty to use all you want without asking me. I want you to buy anything you desire, buy your own clothes, and to feel as though the money was yours, and that you had not got to account for it. Just make yourself at home now and try and have a good lime." The boy looked at the old gentleman, put his hand on his head as though he feared he had "got 'em, sure," and went out to see the lamp lighter climb that soft soap. The next day the stern parent went out into the country shooting, and returned on the midnight train three days later. He opened the door with a night key, and a strange yellow dog grabbed him by the elbow of his pants and shook him, as he said, "like the ager." The dog barked and chewed, until the son came down in his night shirt and called him off. He told his father he had bought that dog of a fireman for eleven dollars, and it was probably the best dog bargain that had been made this season. He said the fireman told him he could sell the dog for a hundred dollars, if he could find a man that wanted that kind of a dog. The parent took oft" his pants, what the dog had not removed, and in the hall he stumbled over a birch bark canoe the boy bought of an Indian for nine dollars, and an army musket with an iron ramrod fell down from the corner. The boy had paid six dollars for that. He had also bought himself an overcoat with a seal skin collar and cuffs, and a complete outfit oi calico shirts and silk stockings. In his room the parent found the marble top of a soda fountain, a wheelbarrow and a shelf filled with all kinds of canned meat, preserves and crackers, and a barrel of apples. A wall tent and six pairs of blankets were rolled up ready for camping out, and a buckskin shirt and a pair of corduroy pants lay on the bed ready for putting on. Six fish poles and a basket full of fish lines were ready for business, and an oyster can full of grub worms for bait were squirming on the wash stand. The old gentleman looked the lay-out over, looked at his pocket book in the bureau drawer, as empty as a contribution box, and said : "Young man, the times have been too flush. We will now return to a specie basis. When you want money come to me and I will give you a nickel, and you will tell me what you intend to buy with it, or I'll warm you. You hear me !" And now that man stands around from the effects of the encounter with the yellow dog, and asks every man where a letter will reach Bob. Ingersoll. He says he will kill Inger- soll if it is the last noble act he ever accomplishes. An exchange says it is not the frost that makes the smack- ing noise at the front gate these nights. No, it is the sud- den thawing. An eight day sewing machine for sale at this office. Warranted, kind and gentle, and sound in wind, limb and tucker. Can burn either wood or coal in it. Will trade it for butter, beer, or Norwegian stock fish. Will let it out to husk corn on shares, or dig potatoes on election day.. Sufficient reason given for selling. The owner is busted. 69 EFFECTS OF MINERAL WATER. A woman from Mushwaukee, stopping at Sparta for the summer, had a serious accident the other day. She had her dress pinned back so tight that the exclamation point where she was vaccinated on the left arm was plainly visible, and as she stooped over at the artesian well to dip up a cup full of physic, a little dog belonging to a lady from Pilot Knob took hold of her striped stocking and shook it, thinking it was a blue racer. The lady was overcome with heat and sank down on the damp ground, and the 'result was con- gestion of the dog, for when she got up she kicked that dog over the Court house and sprained her stocking. It is said that beautiful and healthful summer resort is fast filling up and everybody swears it is the most enjoyable place on the continent. It is certainly the cheapest for us La Crosse folks to go. We don't know of a place where, for the money invested, one can have so much fun and get so much health. You can leave La Crosse at 5:45 and arrive at Sparta at 6:20, after a delightful ride of thirty miles, and you will enjoy a race, your train beating the Northwestern train, and running like lightning. If you have a pass, or sit on the hind platform, it will cost you nothing. You can walk down town, at small expense. You want to take sup- per before leaving home, if economy is what you are seek- ing in addition to health. Go to Condit, at the Warner House, and talk as though you were looking for a place to . send your family, and he will hitch up and drive you all over town. Tell Doc. Nichols you never tried a Turkish Bath, but that you are troubled with hypochondria and often wish you were dead, and that if you were sure the baths would help you, you would come down and take them regular. He will put you through for nothing, and give you a cigar. Then you can get a tooth pick at Con- dit's and put your thumb under your vest and go to the springs and talk loud about railroad stocks and bonds, and speculating in wheat. ( It takes two to do it up right. Frank Hatch and the writer are going down some night to "do" the watering place). Then you can swell around till half past ten, and sneak off to the depot on foot and come home, and your pocket book will be just as empty as when you started, unless you get a subscriber, and you will have 70 added bloom to your cheek, and had a high old time, and next winter you can talk about the delightful time you passed at Sparta last summer during the heated term. Let's get up a party and go down some night. Look not upon politics when it is red hot for at last it biteth like a catfish and stingeth like a pressboard across the calf of the shirt. Editors from abroad who may be at La Crosse at the races are requested to call at THE SUN office and get tickets for the races, if they are not already provided for. And come to THE SUN office anyway, and spit in our new spittoon. We like to see young good Templars have a hanker- ing after cold water, bright water, but when a Juvenile lodge, about to start on a pic nic, deliberately loads a hunk of ice belonging to THE SUN into an omnibus, we feel like reaching for the basement of their roundabouts with a piece of clapboard. Anna Dickinson is to go upon the stage, and it is said that she will open in San Francisco in the play of "Mazeppa." If there is any society for the prevention of cruelty to ani- mals on the Pacific coast, we trust before Anna is tied on the wild horse of Tartary that some one will see to it that a cushion is put on the back of the horse. If anything could reconcile us to the loss of our alapaca umbrella, it is the fact that two of the umbrella repairers that were here got into fight at Dubuque, in which the man Powers stabbed the man Johnson, killing him instantaneously. While that seems like a small punishment for a man that will steal a black alapaca umbrella from an editor, yet we are not inclined to pursue the villain beyond the grave, though we may, in this free country, be permitted ta express the opinion that where he is gone an umbrella would have the cover scorched off in ten seconds. 71 GETTING IT DOWN FINE. Boarders at thirteen boarding houses in the city met on Thursday evening, not as an indignation meeting, but to talk over the different methods that might be suggested for inducing landladies to put more bed clothes on the beds. Resolutions were adopted expressive of the sense of the meeting, which the secretary was instructed to have trans- cribed and forwarded by mail to the proprietors of the boarding houses represented at the meeting. After the bus- iness that brought them together had been transacted, the boarders exchanged views on the subject of boarding houses, and discussed the different methods of bringing landladies to terms. Mr. Smith said that he had suffered from stewed prunes at the table where he boarded for thirteen years. He had not touched a prune for eleven years, but a sauce plate full, soaked in tepid water, had been set beside his plate every night since he had been there. While he did not wish to complain, he thought the thing had been carried far enough and he would be thankful if any gentleman present would suggest a method by which a boarding house keeper could be induced to give prunes a furlough. Mr. Brown rose to his feet, and said, unaccustomed as he was to public speaking, he felt that he could not let the occasion pass without relating his experience. He said he had been troubled with prunes that way for six years, ten months and thirteen days. He got so that the sight of a prune set him into hysterics, and when he saw a barrel of them in a store it made him sea sick. Last summer, he said, he made up his mind to release prunes from their en- gagement at that house, if he broke up the business. He said he sat on the left side of the landlady at the table, and when she was not looking he put a dead mouse into her sauce dish. She took the mouse up on a tea spoon, and was just about to place it in amongst her false teeth, when he called her attention to the deceased. She shrieked, and took all the prunes off the table. He said there were no prunes for supper some days, but at length they came again, and he put a mouse into a dish belonging to an old maid on the other side of the table. She was near sighted, and thought the primes were thest preserved crab apples with 72 the stems on, and she took up the mouse by the tail, on that understanding, and bit it, hanging to the tail with her thumb and forefinger. Brown said he felt as mean as an Indian Commissioner when he saw her trying to masticate that crab apple, and when she gave it up, and adjusted her glasses and looked at it, and saw what she had done, and left the table, and the other boarders and the landlady looked at the mouse, he felt as though the days of prunes were numbered. That was last summer and he has not seen a prune since, and he said he could conscientiously recom- mend the mouse plan. As he sat down Mr. Smith asked what a good mouse trap would cost, or if any gentleman had a second hand mouse trap to sell. He said he would try it on his boarding house at once. Mr. Robinson said he had a mouse trap, a spell ago, but it'had got lost, and as he had found a piece of wire in his hash he had concluded that that the trap had got into the hash cutter by mistake. Mr. Jones said that was not necessarily the case, as he had found wire in his hash, also, and on tracing it up he found that a hair pin had been cut off in the flower of its youth. Mr. Harvey, in moving to adjourn, suggested that the boarders form a society, and meet once a week for the pur- pose of exchanging experiences, and devising ways and means to better their condition. The proposition was acted upon favorably and the society is to be known as the Board- er's Exchange and Anti-Hash Society. A committee was appointed to secure rooms in the Insurance building, and it was agreed to meet every Tuesday evening, and to invite THE SUN to send a reporter. A man in New York, stricken with paralysis on the street, fell down, was clubbed by a policeman, arrested for disor- derly conduct, and sentenced to three months on the island. He died. rown, the mind reader, was in Milwaukee last week, and some wags get him to practice on the " Timely Topics " editor of the Sentinel. He tried it one forenoon and said it was too fine print for him. He said they couldn't play that on him for a " mind," and that was what was the "matter." 73 CAN A COW JOKE. We don't believe that a cow has got horse sense enough to play a joke on a man, though we have known instances where it looked that way. There was that cow that ^at up brother Jones' garden, and then went across the street on Van Valdenburg's iron picket fence, and smiled at Brother Jones, when he tried to call her to him. The Fourth \vard has some of the jokingist cows we ever heard of. The other night after Doc. Palmer had got in bed, he heard a cow's tail lashing against the blinds, and he got up and looked out doors. Now Doc. is the last person in the wide, wide world that we should think a cow would pick on to play a joke. It was a bright moonlight night, and a trifle cold, but Doc. thought he could slip out and drive the cow out in about two seconds, so he put on his vest and slippers and run out Carefully be opened the gate, and getting on the milking side of the cow he told her to "shoo.' He "shooed" a little too loud, for the cow went by the gate and around the house. Doc. went after her with a piece of soft slab, and the cantering across the walks awoke the neighbors. Losey looked out the window and saw the procession, and told his folks that there was a church sociable over to Palmer's. The cow got around to the gate just as the wind closed it, and she went by into the corn. Doc. stopped and propped the gate open, and took a croquet mallet in his other hand, and started for the cow. He called her "Whay you confounded old fool," but she didn't whay as well as a well regulated cow ought to. She started towards the gate, and Doc. hit her on the rump with a slab, but she went by the gate just as though she never knew there was any gate there at all. McCulloch woke up and looked out of his window, just as Doc. and the cow went into the raspberry bushes. Me. said a man that would go out picking raspberries, at eleven o'clock at night, with nothing on but a vest and slippers, ought to be taken care of. He said Doc. looked at least eleven feet high. The air was full of croquet mallets, and the cow emerged from the raspberry bushes and walked out the gate just as though she had been looking for a chance to get out for a long time, and Doc. closed the gate just as a party of min- isters came along from a night session of the Baptist con- 7 74 vention, and he went in the house picking sand burrs off his legs. He wants to trade that cow for a sewing machine, to us, but we had rather suffer the evils we have than fly to others we know not of. Berlin has a saloon named "Hazel Dell." They call it the "Dazel Hell," the temperance people do, for short. The Pumpkinfests are over, and the politicians are follow- ing the plow, if there is a tarmer at the stern of it who is a voter. A Chicago lady cut a dog in two to recover an ear ring which the pup had swallowed. She was a delicate creature the dog was. If any convent has lost a nun, there is one traveling around the State advertising that she has escaped. Her name is Edith O'Gorman. It would hardly be necessary to employ a detective to find Edith, even if she was wanted. It is generally believed that she escaped from some livery stable, instead of a convent, or she wouldn't say so much about it. >y referring to the score made by the pigeon shoot- ers it will be seen that Frank Hatch made the best re- cord, even beating the celebrated "dead shot" of THE SUN. We could have borne to be defeated by a man that can see the birds, but for a blind old rooster, that could'nt tell a pig- eon from a flock of grain elevators, and who pointed into the air and pulled his gun at random, it is agonizing. We have been duck shooting with that man, when he would shoot all day at ducks that flew so near him that he could have killed them with a cistern pole, and he never touched a feather. We have known him, when hunting sand hill cranes, to shoot at a church steeple seven miles away, on the prairie, thinking it was a crane. We have known the boys to fix a trigger on a crow bar and get him to carry it all day and try to fire it off at a tame goose. So anybody can see that it is humiliating to be beaten at a first class pig- cou shoot by such a man. 75 A TRYINQ MOMENT. What a difference there is in men engaged in the same busi- ness. The other evening Mart. Watson was in his grocery, weighing out codfish, when a lady came in, her eyes red from weeping. Her bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and picking a piece off the codfish and nibbling it, she called Mart, to one side, away from the gaping multitude, and said she wanted to pour into his ear a tale of woe. She had come to him, of all men in this wide, wide world, to ask him to do her a favor, and asked him if he would grant it. Mart, said he was only a poor granger, and had not often in his uneventful life, been called upon to alleviate human suffering of the feminine gender, but he should not shrink from any duty, the prompt performance of which would cause the pearly tear drops to cease to flow from such beau- tiful eyes. She sat down on a sugar barrel, took another bite at the piece of codfish which she held between her beautiful taper finger and thumb, and gave vent to her pent up feelings in a sob that started the hoops on a sugar barrel. Mr. Watson was moved to tears, and with his shirt sleeve he wiped his weeping eyes. For a moment there was si- lence, when she said that never before had she been placed in a situation where she felt that it was incumbent upon her to appeal to a strange man for assistance, but that she had found that there were sorrows in this world of suffering and death, that could not be borne alone and in silence, and that she had come to him, of all other men, believing that his honesty of purpose and his purity of thought, would relieve them both of the suspicion that either had other than the purest motives in mingling their tears over the lifeless clay. Again she wept, and again the great sympathetic heart of the grocer overflowed, and the strong man gave way to his emotion. Finally he mastered himself, and said, "calm yourself, madam, and tell me of this calamity that is weighing you down, and tell me in what way I can assist you, for believe me, madam, you have awakened in me a sympathy that has only to be commanded to do you any service." "Oh," said she, wiping her nose on her polonaise, "I knew I could not be mistaken." "Well, I want to get you to stuff a dog for me ! Poor Fido, how I loved him." We have seen a great many astonished men in our day, but 76 we never saw such an expression of disgusted astonishment as Mart. wore. He asked where, in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, she had got the idea that he stuffed dogs. She said she heard they had a stuffed dog at the engine house, and she went there to get her dog stuffed, and a dark complected man, with a long nose, with a star on, told her to come to him. Mart, finally recovered and sent her to Dave Law. He said chief engineers had to stuff all the dogs, and she went off looking for Dave. How different it would have been if she had gone .to Smith. He would have stuffed her dog. The latest new song is entitled "Hug Me to Death, Dar- ling." It is a duet. If love is blind, as they say it is, how is it that they always turn the light down so confounded low ? A lady at Little Falls is a little surprised at finding a diaper pin in a piece of cheese bought at a grocery. It is not singular at all in limberger cheese. Four men fell out of the Oshkosh jail the other day. If Oshkosh would only imitate Fond du lac, and paper the county jail with wall paper, it might become safe. A man at Oshkosh who was hauling stone, was seriously injured by the premature discharge of a mule. He said he didn't know the cussed mule was loaded. Forest street, Fond du Lac, is going to be a great place for sparking, one of these days. For three years all the children born on that street have been girls. Some lay it to the artesian well water. A skunk got under a church at Oshkosh during a prayer meeting, and nearly caused the breaking up of religious exercises there. The elder laid it to a deacon, and the deacon called him another, and they would have had a regular fight if a dog had not begun to bark under the house, which directed attention to the intruder. 77 PATENT APPLIED FOR. It is probable that very few know it except those immedi- ately interested, but it is a fact that Milwaukee is about to turn out a new invention that will cause a good deal of stir. A gentleman here has devised, and a manufacturing firm is engaged in building a new street car to be known as the "Telescope Car," which can be lengthened out to any desired length, the same as a telescope. The car is somewhat shorter than the ordinary street car, when in repose, or rather, when closed up, and will be used in that manner for ordinary travel. Three-fourths of the time street cars are not near full, and then they are too large. The new car is arranged so that when it is full a joint is let out. The pro- cess of letting out is simple. When it is desired to lengthen it, that is, when the straps are all full of people hanging on by their finger nails, the driver pulls a chord and an anchor is thrown out behind. The anchor catches on the track, or on the pavement, when the driver, who is provided with a club, begins to pound the mules, and they knuckle right down and pull out a section, which provides seats for half a dozen or more passengers, when the anchor is weighed, and the craft sails on until it is necessary to let out another hole. They were testing the car down on the south side the other day, and it worked very satisfactorily, pulling out the sec- tions, though an accident happened when they were closing the car up. A woman who was one of the passengers on the trial trip, kept her seat to observe how the car could be shortened, and when the sections telescoped together, and the seats of the car went into each other, her clothing was caught between the sections, and in less time than it takes to tell it but why multiply words. The new car is not a suc- cess in telescoping together, when there are persons in it. But that need not be counted against the invention. It will fill a want long felt, and the sooner the east side lines get some of the cars, the sooner, that is all. This is the season of the year to insist on having the cus- tomary toe nail cut. No one likes to have a sharp toe nail run the whole length of him, when he is asleep, if the toe nail is hitched to a nervous woman who has bet on the election. 78 SMITH'S WATCH DOG. Smith, the grocery man, had his grocery burgled one night. The burglars took out two panes of glass, and about two dollars in counterfeit scrip, that had been laying in Smith's drawers for a long time, which he couldn't shove off on to anybody. Smith didn't care so much about the money, but it made him mad to think that he had been training a dog for three or four years to make it hot for burglars, and when they actually came into the store and ransacked around, the confounded dog didn't hear them. Smith has thrown his whole soul into training that dog, and he has hired men to sneak around the back door evenings, so the dog could catch them at it and take a piece out of the seat of their pants. Smith got a man that visits a good deal in the store, to go around the back way one evening and roll a barrel out of the back room, promising him a can of oys- ters^ Smith waited until the carpenter had got the barrel nearly out doors, when he told " Bruno " there was strange work going on in the back room, and to go and see about it. The man was leaning over the barrel, which drew his pants remarkably tight around the shoulders, and Bruno took hold and shook the man a couple of times, when he dropped the barrel and came back and told Smith he would kick the liver out of his cussed dog if he ever bit him again. He was so mad that he wouldn't take the oysters until Smith threw in a couple of pounds of crackers to heal up the marks of the dog's teeth. Smith enjoyed it and said he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that dog. About a month ago, one evening when it was raining, and there was no trade, Smith thought he would practice with the dog. So he told Adams, the clerk, that he would go around the back way, and come in still, and steal some- thing, and see what the dog would do. So Smith went around to the back door, put a horse blanket over him, and took a codfish and started out, with the dog after him. Smith had got almost to the wagon shed, when Bruno seized him by the calf of the back, and shook the old man terribly. Smith yelled "fire," and climbed up the shed with the dog hanging on. He called the dog by name, and told him he was a "good dog." and all that, but Bruno hung to the rag- ged edge until Adams came out and reasoned with him 79 with a piece of slab. For a number of days Smith didn't sit down in the store at all. He told them he had rheuma- tism in the spine Some of the rubber in Smith's suspenders was badly stretched, and since then he has had his pants made with more siack. He fairly wore up the codfish on the dog when he got down. We wouldn't have such a temper as Smith has got, for anything. Bennett and May fought a duel in Maryland the other day, and as near as the truth can be arrived at neither party received a scratch. But their "honaw" was satisfied. They probably fought with syringes. Mon Kee, a Chinaman that was converted to regular United States religious doctrines, and opened a mission in New York for the purpose of converting more heathens and shethens, has been arrested for stealing. This is a terrible blow, and Mon Kee was a terrible blower. A few weeks since the religious papers made more blow over the coming into the fold of that Chinaman than they did over all the editors in the country, who went not astray. Now they have shut up their yawp about him, since he has proved to be no better than Tallmasre or Beecher. No person can make Lathrop believe his eye sight is fail- ing. He says it is just as good as it was twenty years ago. He wears spectacles to keep his eyes warm. He says this cold climate is terrible on the eyes. The other night Lath- rop had got one foot in bed when he saw a mosquito on the wall, and he dismounted and prepared to fight on foot. Throwing out flankers the command proceeded to surround the enemy. With one hand on each side of the enemy, on the wall, he suddenly slapped his hands together with a. force sufficient to have killed a baby elephant. He felt something hurt his hands and he opened them, and saw blood. The wife of his bosom remarked "O yes, you can see just as well as ever, but that is a carpet tack. It beats all ho\\ -you can see." The old man looked at his hand, and said, "Well, who in thunder said it was a mosquito ?" and giv- ing his boy ten cents not to say anything about it down town, he went to bed and grumbled about mosquitoes not being as large as they used to be. O, Lathrop can see. A BIDE ON AN ICE BOAT. If any of the readers of THE SUN ever go to Madison and a man comes along and asks them to take a ride on an ice boat, they had better say " not any ice boat for me, if you please." You want to say it firmly, too, and in a man- ner that will admit of no argument. The other day a man asked us if we didn't want to enjoy a little of the most ex- hilarating thing that ever struck this country. We told him we didn't mind if we did exhilarate a little, if it wasn't be- yond our means. He said it was as free as salvation, and terrible nice. We told him he could put us down for half a string, and then he asked us how we liked to ride. We told him that he had peeked right into our hand. He asked if we liked to ride real fast. We told him he couldn't get there a minute too soon for us. Going fast was what was the matter with all our people. Then he told us to put on our "ulcerated overcoat," and he would take us where gentle zephyrs would seem like a simoon. It was that cold day, when the thermometer had to be brought in to have diapers put on it. The man took us down toward the lake, and showed us a concern that looked like one of these triangles that they use to clear snow off the sidewalks. It had iron shoes on and a mast with a sail. He introduced us to the machine, and we said we hoped for a better acquaintance. Well, it wasn't long before we got it. We got on one side of the ice boat, and the man got on the butt end, with one hand on the rudder, and the other hold of the sail rope. It was so cold that it did seem as though cucumber vines ought to be covered up with a buffalo robe, but there was nothing to cover with, so we pulled our overcoat tail over around, tucked our legs under us, and told the man to go on with his scraper. The wind was blowing right from Pembina, and was coming down like a Dells lobby, and as searching as an in- vestigating committee. The man cut her loose, told us to hang on to our hair. We suppose there are men who think they have experienced harrowing scenes, and been scared, but if those persons never rode on an ice boat they don't know sorrow. The minute the thing started, the mercury in us began to contract, and if we had had a line of figures down us, it would have found the bottom figure. Why, it 81 was awful cold. The machine started right across the lake, at the rate of a hundred miles in no time. We looked ahead and saw a crack in the ice that looked as big as the Mississippi river, and told the man that he had better turn her around and go back. He said the boat never went back. His eyes stuck out like locomotive headlights, and he said the crack was only a wind crack, and the boat would go over it easy. We shut our eyes, bid good bye to every fear, said "now I lay me," and the boat struck the wind crack. She must have gone over some eighty-five or ninety times. We hung on to one of the shoes, and were pounded by the mast and the other thing at the bottom of the sail. The boat never stopped at all, but landed the last time right side up, with an editor of THE SUN sitting on the ice hanging to the shoe, and she was going for all that was out. We must have rode a mile sitting on the ice, and cold ice it was, and not overly smooth. You know those corduroy pants of ours. Well, there isn't enough left of the subsequent end of them for a seat for one of those new counties. We didn't dare let go for fear we would freeze to death. In about a minute the boat neared the opposite shore, and we proposed to dismount, but before we could think a second time the whole shebang had gone up among the trees, and was try- ing to climb up one of them, the sail flapping, and the marl who run the machine was under the boat with his head scalped. We came to in a couple of minutes, and found the skin knocked off lots of places, and one arm in a sling, one eye blacked, a boot heel torn off, and the back veranda of a pair of pants blown off in the gale. We hired a farmer to take us to Madison, and we sat all the way in a bushel bas- ket of pine shavings, thinking of some way to kill off the man who invented ice boats. They are a delusion and a snare. On Tuesday next the law will permit the killing of prairie chickens both in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and many per- sons from this city will take in some of that dangerous but exciting sport. There have been a great many chickens picked this year before they were ripe, but as the vines have not been stacked it is believed there are some left yet. If THE SUN is not published for the next few weeks it need not be thought strange at all, for we have got pointer blood. 82 BESULT OP CHANGING YOUB BUSINESS. There was a girl in it, as there always is. Charley Boyn- ton is a correspondent of the Miiwaukee Sentinel, and a solicitor for business for that wicked publication. He is a young man with an auburn moustache and a black eye. That is, he has two black eyes. He struck La Crosse the other day, and before he had walked the length of Main street his left black eye came in contact with the right blue eye of an angel. Charles was "gone" in eleven seconds. He inquired who she was, and one report he got was that she worked in a milinery shop, and the other was that she taught school. The milinery theory had about three hun- dred and fifty majority in his mind, so he decided to get acquainted with her if he died for it. Young Mr. Caspary, of Caspary Bros., wholesale miliners, Milwaukee, was in the city, and Charley went to him and told him what he wanted. He said he wanted to take Caspary's milinery sample case and visit a certain milinery establishment. There was noth- ing mean about Caspary, so he fixed up a case for Charley, gave him the prices of the goods, gave him his blessing and started him out. Charley went in the store and said he was traveling for Caspary Bros., and would like to show the lady some goods, at the same time looking around for blue eyes. He opened his case and displayed some ruffling for night gowns. The lady asked the lowest price. Charley looked at his price list, and said, with a glance at the back room, that it would depend on how much space she wanted. A half column would be $75 for six months, subject to change. That was for the daily. In the weekly he would put it in for $60 a year. The lady looked frightened. He seemed to be the craziest he milliner she had ever encountered. He took out some hat frames and she asked him how high they came. He asked her how many hands she kept, and then he looked at the price list again and said that hat frames had fallen. He could let her have them, in clubs of ten, at $1.50 a year, in advance, with an extra copy to the getter up of the club. The lady looked in his eye, and thought she detected insanity, and was afraid to be alone, so she called a girl from another room. It proved to be the girl Charley had been stricken with. The lady asked Charley how he was on for feathers for trimming hats. "Feathers," 83 said he, "I wish I had as many dollars as I am on for feath- ers." He showed, among others, a white feather, and when the lady asked the pi ice, he said, with a look in the- blue eyes of the girl, " ten cents a line, each time, and d d be he who first cries hold, enough !" The miliner and the girl s\vept out of the room, Charley packed his sample case and went out singing, "Since Terence joined that gang." He has resumed his journalistic labors. P. T. Parnum advertises all his show for sale, at auction. We would give THE SUN a year for the hippopotamus that rode on the third wagon of the congress of Nations, with her hair down. What a goddess of Liberty she would make to put on top of a packing house. Within the past month the wives of two Wisconsin editors have had twins. Mrs. Reed, of Kewaunee, and Mrs. Hume, of Chilton, are the ladies. Some of the editors else- where are resorting to vaccination, thinking to prevent a spread of the disease throughout the whole fraternity. Prove an alibi, why don't you. A new industry is about to be developed in Chicago. It is the canning of bodies to send to the heathen. It is believed that when once the heathen become accustomed to canned human meat they will like it as well as they do the Iresh missionaries. It is a great expense to churches to send missionaries abroad. They have to be educated to the work, and then, half the time, after they get an education, and are fitted for the work, they change their minds and get married and settle down and say they guess they will preach here at home, if it is all the same. Now, the heath- en do not care how well educated the human meat is that they feed on. Education does not give it any flavor. They had just as soon have a slice off a tramp as anything. It is believed by the originators of the canning scheme, that tramps and persons who have no friends can be utilized, when they die, by canning them and sending them abroad and that many valuable missionaries will be,saved. There is no place better than Chicago to open such a branch of industry. 84 AN AWKWARD SQUAD OP OlTE. Reader, did you ever have a pair of box toed shoes ? If you didn'i^and want to prepare yourself for the hereafter that is if you are going down below, we will lend you a pair of shoes that will make you sick. We don't know what it was 'that Hanscom had against us, unless he laid that woman up ;' gainst us that drove him out of her field when we were all trouting up in Mormon Cooley. We didn't set her on *to him, and we can prove it by Root, who was along. 'Anyway, when we went in to buy a pair of shoes to wear to "Gen. Atwood's wedding at Madison, Hanscom smole a smile that will haunt us to our dying day, took a fresh chew of tobacco, spit on his hands and told a young man of eight- een summers to bring in "them shoes." The young man went twice for them, and finally set them down in a vacant portion of the store. We didn't like the looks of those shoes the minute we saw them, and told Hanscom that they didn't seem to us to be exactly the kind of shoes to wear to a wedding. Then he looked pained. He said we were the first man that had ever found fault with box toed shoes since he had been in business here. He said that he had dealt in shoes, man and boy for 45 years, and he had never expected to see the day when a person supposed to possess ordinary intelligence, should hesitate about purchasing box toed shoes. And with a tear in his eye he told the boy to remove the shoes, and he sat down in a sad state of mind, and began reading "The Christian at Work," utterly oblivious of our presence. We looked at Hanscom a moment, scanned his pall- bearer countenance, and at once felt that we had wronged him, and trifled with his finer feelings. We never felt so sorry for a man in the whole course of our life. We told him that we had no desire to offend him, and that we had intended to take the shoes all the time. We had lived neighbor to him two years, and never had a neighbor whose wood fitted our stove as exact as Hanscom's, and no man ever had a one-horned cow that opened our gate so gently at the dead hour of night, and eat our cabbages. We had reason to like Hanscom, and so we told him we would take the shoes, and well do we remember the smile he smole as- he marked it down on the slate. We put the shoes on and wore them down to Madison. 85 They hurt in several places, but we supposed it was because they were not accustomed to riding on the cars. In get- ting out of the bus at the Vilas House, the right toe got caught under the pavement, and tore up a little of it, but we remember that the pavement always was loose. People noticed the shoes, and many asked us if the man who made them was yet living. We wore them to the wedding, and if there were any female clothes there that we didn't step on, they must have been in trunks up stairs. The toes seemed to be loaded with lead, and the box toe shingled with boiler iron, and the sole was thick, and the upper leather was made of some metal substance. When we walked up stairs, people trembled and put on their things to go home. If there is one thing that we want to be forgiven for, it is attempting to dance that night. It was in the man- sard roof, and the floor was canvassed, but that didn't muffle the squeak any, and when one of those pile drivers came down, it did seem as though the house would fall in. It was in the "alamand left" that the trouble was. We put out our left flipper towards a little angel from Columbus. She took it with her left bower, and we stepped on her dress with one of those shoes of Hanscom's. We could have got the foot off, only the other shoe caught under a bench. We were fastened. May our right hand forget its cunning before we forget the cunning look of compassion which that Columbus girl ventured upon our unprotected countenance. The bench was removed, and we finished the dance, and then went down stairs to the refreshment room. If any people went home with crushed toes, and didn't know the author of their misery, we hereby confess, and the doctor bills may be sent us. We kicked off more paint from the base boards and door casings, than Atwood could get put on again for sixty dollars. Finally we got the shoes home, and went to see Hanscom. He said he had been looking for some victim to sell that pair of shoes to for the past two years, and now that he had got them onto us, he could die happy. They were a pair he had used for a sign for thirteen years, and he bought them of an Indian trader, that had them on hand in an early day. We want to trade those shoes for a ticket in a lottery. Since we told the story about Hanscom stealing the bell off of his own cow, and throwing it down cellar in the smoke house, he has been laying for us. 86 DIDNT KNOW THE HORSE WAS FAST. Every good citizen who knows W. W. Jones, the hard- ware man, who is the business-like President of the Board of Trade, and the polite, gentlemanly usher who always gives strangers a cushioned seat at the Congregational Church, knows that he would not knowingly drive a fast horse. He has a bay horse, Father conservative in his move- ments, never in a hurry, to all appearances. When Mr. Jones desires the horse to accelerate its speed, he takes the whip, gently touches the animal on the offside of the rump, and with a bow, remarks, "Bucephalus, annihilate space by acceleration," and Buceph. moves in a mysterious way ; and eventually gets there. No one has ever supposed that Jones' horse was fast. But it is evident that the boys in the hard- ware store have been training the horse on the back streets, unbeknown to Mr. Jones, until the horse has become a terror on the road. This is wrong in the boys. On Wednesday evening Mr. Jones was driving up street on his way home, unconscious of impending danger. In front of the wagon were five joints of old stove pipe, and in the rear, behind the seat, a sheet iron stove and a tin boiler. Mr. Jones was pondering over the wretched state of business, and wonder- ing if in heathen lands, where we send our pennies, there was as much trouble in collecting bills, and if the " Radiant Home " stove sold as well there as here, when Bob. Scott drove by with his old "Flying Childers," at a rattling pace. In a second Jones' horse struck his gait and away he went, with the bit hard in his teeth, the soot flying up from the stove pipe, and the boiler behind jamming the sheet iron stove in the most unsocial manner. Mr. Jones reached around and held the stove with his left hand, put his two feet on five lengths of pipe, and with his right hand tried to hold the horse. But the pld hero was going, and the harder the modest President of the Board of Trade pulled, the faster the horse went. To say that Mr. Jones was astonished at the action of the horse, would be true. Every particle of soot on his face betokened astonishment. Finally he let go of the stove and pulled the horse down, and turned on to anothei street, where the animal cooled off, and Mr. Jones got his leg out of a length of the stove pipe, and he drove home on a walk, a sadder man. We should not mention 87 this matter, only we want to rebuke the bold, bad young men in the store who have been driving the Deacon's horse fast, and we also desire to call attention to the fact that Mr. Jones will now take orders for coal stoves to be furnished the coming fall. That's all. A young man advertises in a Milwaukee paper for a part- nership. He wants to invest one thousand dollars in some established business. Go to La Crosse and go to betting on election. It pays, and is an established business. There'i millions in it. The dispatches announce that a Methodist preacher at Cincinnati has been deposed from the ministry for holding heterodox opinions. The name of the girl does not appear, probably being suppressed on account of the respectability of the family. There is no sight more calculated to excite the sympathies of the young than to see an old maid in a street car, her lap full of bundles, an umbrella in one had, and a pet dog under her arm, and the lady trying to eat a juicy pear with a double set of false teeth that are loose. They are making everything out of rubber now. A man has invented a hunting dog that can be carried in the pocket. When you get in the field, all you have to do is to blow the dog up, and start it to going. This will be a great saving, as hunters will not have to pay baggage men a dollar for tying their dogs to a trunk, when they go off hunting. Chicago is to have a hotel built exclusively for men. Un- der no circumstances will a woman be admitted into it. There are so many men who go to Chicago, who are liable to wink at women at the table of the hotel, before they know their own heart, to lead a different life, that this new hotel, without temptation, has been decided upon. There will only be a few old bald headed roosters and persons with red noses and sore eyes stopping at the new hotel. A ho- tel without women would be almost as cheerful as a reform school, THE WICKED STAND ON SLIPPERY PLACES. Itwas the slipperiest day that ever was. The rain came down and froze as it struck, and the whole earth was as smooth as ice could possibly be made. Almost everybody had a little experience on ice. A ninth street woman started out to the summer kitchen with a couple of quarts of milk which she wanted to "set." Well, she "set" before the milk did, and though she did not raise much cream for coffee, she raised the neighbors. Both feet went from un- der her at one and the same time, and very suddenly, too, considering the size of them. One foot struck the pump spout and the other struck a boiler, her back hair struck the top step, her elbows struck the ice and slid along, taking the skin off, the small of her back struck the bottom step, and the large of it struck the ice in a ten fold ratio. She said she thought the world had come to an end. Well, the world had come to one end. And the milk. The pan of milk went up about eight feet, and tumbled over and came down just as the Ninth street lady had got fairly set down on the ice, and there wasn't a drop of it lost, as it all went on her. She looked as though the whitewasher had been working around the house. If it had been a man, he would have sworn. The worst case of slipping, however, was that of Smith. A customer had bought a can of kerosene, a box of baking powder, two quarts of molasses, some salt pickles, a peck of potatoes, twelve eggs, two rolls of butter, some ground cof- fee and a scouring brick. The goods were put in a basket, and Smith took them out to put them in the delivery wagon. He said as he started out of the door, people make too much fuss walking on the ice. All a man had to do was to .go -right along, aud jab his heels down, and he wouldn't fall. 'That pious man, Deacon Pernue Clark, was watching Smith and he rolled his eyes up and said to Smith "Let him that thinketh he stand take heed less he stand on his ear." And the Deacon reached under the counter and took a chew of Smith's tobacco just as Smith struck the sidewalk. There was a sound as though a Boston cracker had dropped, and Smith's pistol pocket was on the sidewalk, one leg was run through between the spokes of the forward wheel of the de- livery wagon, and his bald head was floating around on thi 89 ice. When he began to fall, he let go of the basket in order to use his hands to let himself down carefully on the side- walk. The basket flew up to the top of the awning, and it began to rain groceries and provisions on Smith. The first invoice that came was the potatoes, followed by the eggs, all of which struck Smith, except one egg. The two rolls of butter went to his bosom, and the ground coffee and molas- ses went to his head. The pickles and scouring brick carne along in due lime, and when Smith got up he looked for- saken. The crowd that had collected expected to hear an address on the subject of "the Polar wave," but that pious man only said, as he brushed the ground coffee out of his eyes: "It is pretty d d slippery, aint it Pernue." The Racine Journal accused us of not being a soldier, and we offered to show scars with the editor of that paper, but he declines on the ground that he would be liable to arrest for indecent exposure. Well, we didn't know where he was wounded. D. H. Pulcifer, of Shawano, announces that he is about to prepare a biography of all members of the territorial leg- islature and subsequent legislatures, state officers, members of congress, etc., and desires all men who may have been great or may be so now, to send in the particulars. Well, you can get our record at the adjutant general's office, though there is one mistake in that record. It was in June, 1862,, that we arrived in Canada, the day before the draft. The circus that is to be here to-day is an exceptionably good one, but there may be wicked men along, who will gamble with a game called three card monte, and we would caution people from investing in it. Especially would we caution the clergy and deacons from the country to beware, for in such a moment as ye think not the son-of-a-gun com- eth it on you, and your silver or gold watch, the present of some dear Sunday School, will go where all is vanity and vexation of spirit. The monte fellows had rather catch a deacon or minister then to dwell in the tents of the wicked. Again, beware ! Let he that thinketh he stand, take heed, lest he come down kerslap. 90 THE BOY PAPERS. For the past year or two the country has been flooded with publications for the boys of the land, and the news stands are covered. with "Youths' Companions," "Boys of America," "Our Boys' " and a dozen other names, all pub- lished to catch the boys, and hardly a boy that can read, but has his pistol pocket crammed with these publications. In almost every instance these papers are bad. Hardly one of them but has a picture of a small boy knocking down a grown person, or cleaning out a gang of men, the ground covered with prostrate men, who have been brought down by a fist not bigger than an oyster cracker, and an arm with no more muscle than a canary bird. The reading of these papers makes every boy think he is a whale, and he is liable to get mashed. A gentleman living on Ninth street, who owns half interest in a boy who has shown signs of speed, though he has never been trained, went out back that dark night after an armful of pine slabs, and just as he was going up the steps with his load, he felt a piece of carpet thrown over his head, by a person on the top step, and he was pushed roughly, when he tumbled over another person who had got down on all fours on the bottom step, and the man and the armful of slabs rolled over in the sand, and a voice shouted, "'Tis the pirate chief! S-s-h-h !" The man was frightened to death, and he lay still, thinking it was a gang of three card monte fellows. A voice evidently belonging to the commander, said, "Gomez, prepare to burn the pris- oner at the stake," and they began to pile pine slabs on him. The man looked out from under the carpet just as the hired girl came out with a light, and he sasv his own son, a boy that had cost him over $200, piling slabs on him. He caught that boy by the hind leg with one hand and a slab with the other, and the other two neighbor boys went over the fence in the alley head first. The old man went in the house with some of the pealing off his nose, his left ear a little out of true, his little finger out of joint, and his pants torn on a buck saw, and he had the boy by the ear, and presently there was a sound of revelry by night, and a still small voice was heard exclaiming, "Pa, don't! O! We didn't know it was you ! We thought it was the boy that comes after the swill. Ouch!" The reading of those papers will get a blister on more than one boy yet. 91 THE REVEREND THREE CARD MONTE CHAPS. One of the most ridiculous scenes was witnessed here last summer that ever occurred anywhere. There was a green sort of a giant that wanted to be a policeman. He bothered the chief and all the policemen nearly to death, telling what he could do. He had the material in him, he said, for one of the best detectives in the country, and all he wanted was a trial on the police force, and then he could get a job with Pinkerton. One day the chief thought he would have some fun with him, so he put up a job. Elder Huntly, the Meth- odist minister, at Madison, was in town visiting elder dough and the new policeman didn't know either of them. Now, Elder Clough is the last person in the world that a stranger would take for a Methodist minister. He is a husky looking thick set sort of a lumberman, his face looks sort of mad, and his whole appearance is that of a man that would knock six kinds of filling out of a man if his coat tail was tread on. And Huntly ! Well, Huntly is the same, only "Clougher." The first look at him one would say that he was fit for treason, stratagems, and "Boss" Keyes place. He has a sort of shoulder hitter look, a bad eye, and whether you should see him in the prize ring or the pulpit, you would expect he was going to roll up his sleeves and strike an atti- tude and say, "If you don't believe I'm a butcher, smell of me boots !"' God never made the works of two better men than Huntly and Clough, but in putting them into cases the gold cases and the German silver cases got mixed, and the fact is, their looks give them away. They came down together one summer morning, looking at the girls from under their slouch hats, as ministers sometimes will, and when they stopped by the Postoffice, Huntly slapped the editor of THE SUN on the shoulder and said, "Hello old sorrel top," and Clough said to us, "Come away, George, he will pick your pocket for the benefit of the Methodist church at Madison." The would be policeman saw the two fellows, heard the conversation, and made up his mind they were three pretty hard critters. J ust then Hatch took the "detec- tive" one side and said : "I want you to-day. You see those three men. They are the worst three card rnonte party on the river. Those t wo (pointing out the ministers) are iust from Manitoba, 92 driven out by the British troops, and they are on some job here. You watch them two, and I will watch this sandy whiskered cuss. See who they talk with, and see that they don't throw the cards. ^ They will talk about church matters, but that is only a blind. Now go ! Watch them." It would have been worth a fortune to see that fellow work on the ministers. They dropped in to Toms' store to talk with Deacon Toms, and the detective went in and looked at some lamps, and watched them out of one corner of his eye. Then they went into Mons Anderson's, and the detective went in and asked to look at some blue drilling. They went into the Batavian Bank, and the detective looked through the window, ready to pounce upon them if they made ai grab. They visited a number of our business men, and! "everywhere that Huntly went the detective lamb was sure: to go." Three or four of us that were in the secret watched' the party all the forenoon, and the look of intelligence and' the wink of secrecy that the detective put on, when he: caught Hatch's eye, was too killing. He looked as much, as to say, "Boss, you tend to that sorrel top cuss of yours,, and I will get away with these two Manitoba chaps."' Finally about noon he came to Frank out of breath and' said the two bummers had gone into a house out beyond. Cass street, near the Third Ward school house. (That was . Elder dough's residence.) He said they were a tough lot, and once they turned and came towards him, near an alley, . and he thought they were going to "mug" him, but they went into a grocery. Then Frank told the detective he was satisfied they were going to "work" the Methodist church as there was going to be a meeting there, and from what he could learn these two fellows were going to be there, and there would be trouble, and he wanted the detective to be there, and watch every move, and if any bad work was done to nail them at once, and call for assistance if necessary. The detective was on hand promptly, and took a seat near the door, and saw the audience come in, and finally the two men he had been shadowing came in and walked boldly up to the pulpit. He thought that was more cheek than he ever knew of. Presently one of the gentleman' from Manitoba got up and offered up a prayer, asking the assistance of the great Ruler of the universe in the grand undertaking that the brother; 93 was engaged in, and asking that the world might be purer, etc., or words to that effect. The detective became uneasy. Then the other gentleman from Manitoba, Huntly, took his place and preached one of the most eloquent sermons ever listened to in La Crosse, and wound up by asking donations to the laudable object of completing the Methodist church of Madison. While the choir was singing the doxology, a solitary detective might have been seen going up Fourth street. He came into the police office, his face pale, and the sweat standing out on his forehead as big as a piece of chalk. Frank looked up and in his cheerful manner, said : "Well, what luck ?" "Luck, h !" said the detective. "I am ruined. You have played two ministers on .me for three carders. I de- serve it. I'm a fool. But if you will keep this story from getting out for six hours, I will jump the town, and you never will hear from me again." The boys promised, and he took the night train east, and has never worked up any cases since, though it is said he is on Finkerton's force in Chicago. Hatch would have never played such a joke, only he wanted to teach the fellow a lesson, and he knew that Clough and Huntly would enjoy the joke as well as anybody. Up on Lake Superior the cakes of maple sugar have so much sand in them that they are hung up on the wall to light matches on. A Ninth street man went home the other night, looking guilty. He had drank a glass of beer against the peace and dignity of his wife, and he knew she would smell it before he got inside the gate. She was sitting in the rocking chair, with a low stool at her feet, aud he went up and sat down on the stool, and said, "My dear, the fact of it is, I felt a lit- tle sick, and I asked the doctor about it and he said "take a small glass" At that that moment he jumped up with a yell, and placing his hand convulsively on his pistol pocket, he removed a ball cf yarn and a darning need:e, which had stuck in there. He said he would be cussed if he didn't go down town and drink a whole barrel of alcohol. Women who darn stockings cannot be too careful about where they leave darning needles. 94 A MODEL COLLECTOR. Ben. Simonton, of the extensive commission house of J. P. Scott & Co., acts as the collecting agent of the firm, and to the close student of -human nature it is better than a cir- cus to watch Ben. approach his victims and to hear the words of wisdom, interspersed with business, that flow from him. But these hard times have nearly done for Ben. Customers that are usually good for money any moment, "stand him off" in the most reckless manner, and his good nature is the only thing that saves him. We have seen him ask a man for a little bill of $3.50, for oats furnished, and the man would take Ben. one side and tell him of the hard times, and pour into his ear a tale of woe, until Ben. would weep scalding tears, and lend the man five dollars, telling him for heaven's sake to say no more. The other day the firm had a bill to pay, for hay and green hides, and Ben. started out. Joe Scott told Ben. that he must not allow men to trifle with his feelings and stand him oft", but that he must get the money if he had to shed blood. Ben. borrowed a chew of tobacco and started out the hottest afternoon of the week. First he came to THE SUN office. Everybody does. After talking for an hour about newspaper business, and inquiring into the whole business of getting up a newspaper, he started to go away, but stopped as though he had forgotten something, and finally asked how it would be about paying that two dollars. We looked pained, and told him we- had a subscriber at Mindora that *we expected in the fore part of next week. Still, we didn't want to be mean, so we ordered two dollars worth more oats. Ben. went down stairs, slowly, muttering something about cheek. Then Ben. went up to Smith's. He inquired all about how Smith's dog was, after the fight with Sherman's dog, and asked if the dog caught cold when Smith sheared him. Finally Ben. produced a small bill. Smith, for a joke, took a long butter tryer, and started for Ben. on a run and jump, as though he would bore him through. Ben. said, come to look, the bill was paid, but if Smith ever carne down there again for oats he would thrash the ground with him. Then Ben. limped down to Front street and attacked Al. Roosevelt. Al. said he had not bought a bushel of oats in three months. Last spring he bought a bushel of oats of 95 a farmer. Ben. said he didn't care a cuss. He made out the bills just the same as though a man got the oats. The oats were at the warehouse, and Al. could have them if he wanted them. Suppose everybody bought a wagon load of oats at a time ? How could they do business. Al. picked up a piece of gas pipe, spit on his hands, and Ben. went out without a word. Then Ben. went down to Hart & Norton's. He knew that he could get money there. That was a place that never failed. He went in and ac- costed Deacon Grier in his blandest tones, and was just pull- ing out a bill, when Mr. Grier told him to be seated and he would be in directly, and he went into the back room. Ben. watched him, and he went to the elevator and drew himself up to the upper story. Ben. waited until supper time, and no deacon. Ben. swears that Grier stayed in that elevator all the afternoon, but those who saw the deacon wheeling a baby up and down Main street know that Mr. Simonton was mistaken. With a sad heart Ben. went down to the Minnesota house to interview uncle Alex. Whalan. He told Alex, that everybody had gone back on him, and his only hope for money was there. Alex, said that if he had been a few minutes sooner he could have let him have any quantity of money, but that he had just paid out a hundred and fifty dollars. Ben. said that wouldn't do. He had got to have money or blood, and that he should ap- point himself receiver, and sit there and gobble up every cent that come in. A man came in and bought a glass of beer, and when we came by Ben. and Alex, were having a heated argument as to which should have the money. As we passed the door Ben. had a stove poker and he remarked that he would murder the whole family and set fire to the house, and run away with the five cents by the lurid glare of the flames. We rushed up and sent the police down there, and don't know how the thing come out, though it is rumored that a compromise was effected, each party taking half the receipts for the beer. O, no, times are not hard. That is a mistake. The Liberal Democrat heads the election news, "Mene, Mene Tekel." Well, "Mene may be "Tekeled," but we are not. In the language of the Roman poet, "Nux v&mica t whooperup e pluribus Erin ouskasfiel" 96 GOT STUCK ON AN EASY WORD. They are telling a good joke on a young temperance man, that is almost too good to keep out of print, though we do not vouch for the truth of all of it. It seems that the new Temperance Hall, over the meat market, was being dedicated the other night, and all societies were represented, the Sons, the Good Templars, the Mendotas, the Temple of Honor, etc. After speeches by the resident clergy, the chief officer of each order stepped forward to formally dedicate the hall, each having something to say. In throwing up for the choice of positions, it fell to young Adams, who repre- sented the Temple of Honor, to repeat the Lord's Prayer, at the proper time. Now they ought to have given that part to some of the others. Adams is as good a fellow as ever rolled out a barrel of sugar or hoisted in a schooner of lager, but his religious literature has consisted largely of THE SUN, and you couldn't expect him to tumble to those beautiful psalms and prayers like some of the old apostles. Besides, he clerked for old Smith a year, and that would knock the religion out of a graven image. Adams had his doubts about the appropriateness of his part, but he said he wasn't the hair pin to squeal, after they had sawed anything off on him. So he got a shell with the Lord's Prayer engraved on the top, and carried it in his pistol pocket, and when he had leisure he would study it up. For several days those who traded at Hanscome's noticed how pious young Adams was getting. He would go behind a stack of codfish and repeat it, and then go and draw kerosene, and never miss a note. One day, in making change for an old lady from La Crescent, he whispered, "thine be the kingdom, and the power, and the glory," when the old lady got behind a barrel, thinking he was crazy. Well, the time arrived, and while the others were saying their pieces, he got nervous, but when his turn come he spit on his hands and waded in. In a firm voice he said "Our Father who art in heaven, hal- lowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is done in " There he stuck, unable to pull the load, and the cold sweat came out on his forehead. He scratched his head and repeated, "On earth as it is done in " and then he settled back in the harness and stopped. All the boys wanted to help him out. He cast an imploring 97 look at Brad. Waller, and Brad, whispered " Omaha." Adams thought it over in his mind, "On earth as it is done in Omaha," and he knew that did not sound right. "Chi- cago," whispered Tim McCarty. Adams shook his head. "Heaven!" said Elder Clough, in a stage whisper, anxious to help the brother along. But Adams had an idea they were all trying to mix him up, so he looked at the reverend gentleman, as much as to say "you can't fool the old man !" The thing was getting desperate, and after hoping that the floor would open and let him down into the sausage cutter, he wound upas follows: "Now I lay me down to sleep, yours truly, R. C. Adams," and sat down. Many in the audience supposed it was in the programme for him to slack up and then side track that way, but Adams said he felt so small that a boy's roundabout would have made him an ulster. There is something peculiar ab^ut flour. When wheat goes up ten cents a bushel flour finds it out by telegraph, but when wheat goes down flour gets the news from the east by canal,