Chapter IV: Part 4

Whether young Mr. Darling told the boys that Mr. Hoyt was “fresh” or not, will, perhaps, never be known; but, as Mr. Hoyt passed around among the slabs where they were at work, each made a contribution from the “stiff” he was at work upon to Mr. Hoyt's coat pockets unbeknown to him. While one was calling his attention to a limb that he was dissecting, another would cut off an ear, or a finger, or a nose, or dig out an eye, and drop the same into Mr. Hoyt's overcoat pockets. Finally, he bid the boys good-bye, thanked them for their courtesies in showing him around, told them if they ever came to Fond du Lac his pew in church was at their disposal, and he skipped for the train and got on board.

The seats were all occupied, and a middle aged lady, with a slim face and spectacles, and evidently an old maid, allowed him to sit beside her. The car was warm, and it was not long before the “remains” began to be heard from. He was talking to the lady about the “sweet by-and-by,” and the hope of a glorious immortality beyond the grave, and of the inducements held out by the good book to those who try to lead a different life here on earth, when he smelled something. The lady had been smelling it for some miles back, and she had got her eye on Mr. Hoyt, and had put her handkerchief to her nose. He took a long breath and said to the lady:

“The air seems sort o' fixed here in this car, does it not?” and he looked up at the transom.

“Yes,” said the lady, as she turned pale, and asked him to let her out of the seat, “it is very much fixed, and I believe _that you are the man that fixed it!_” and she took her satchel and went to the rear of the car, where she glared at him as though he was a fat rendering establishment.

Mr. Hoyt devoted a few moments to silent prayer, and then his attention was called to a new married couple, in the seat ahead of him. They had been having their heads close together, when suddenly the bride said:

“Hennery, have you been drinking?”

He vowed by all that was great and glorious that he had not, when she told him there was something about his breath that reminded her of strong drink, or a packing-house.

He allowed that it was not him, but admitted that he had noticed there was something wrong, though he didn't know but it was some of her teeth that needed filling.

They were both mad at the insinuations of the other, and the bride leaned on the window and cried, while the groom looked the other way, and acted cross.

Mr. Hoyt was very much annoyed at the smell.

The smell remained, and people all around him got up and went to the forward end of the car, or to the rear, and there were a dozen empty seats when the conductor came in, and lots of people standing up. The conductor got one sniff, and said:

“Whoever has got that piece of limberger cheese in his pocket, will have to go in the emigrant car!”

They all looked at Hoyt, and the conductor went up to him and asked him if he didn't know any bettor than to be carrying around such cheese as that?

Hoyt said he hadn't got no cheese.

The conductor insisted that he had, and told him to turn his pockets wrong side out.

Hoyt jabbed his hands into his pockets, and felt something cold and clammy. He drew his hands out empty, turned pale, and said he didn't have any cheese.

The conductor insisted on his feeling again, and he brought to the surface a couple of human ears, a finger, and a thumb.

“What in the name of the Apostles have you got there?” says the conductor. “Do you belong to any canning establishment that sends canned missionary to the heathen cannibals?”

Hoyt told the conductor to come in the baggage car, and he would explain all; and as he passed by the passengers, with both hands full of the remains, the passengers were ready to lynch Hoyt. He told the conductor where he had been, and the boys had played it on him, and the fingers and things were thrown beside the track, where some one will find them and think a murder has been committed.

Afterwards Hoyt went into the car and tried to apologize to the old maid, but she said if he didn't go away from her she would scream. Hoyt would always rather go away than have a woman scream.

He is trying to think of some way to get even with the boys of Rush Medical College.

CHANGED SATCHELS.

There was one of those old fashioned mistakes occurred on the train from Monroe to Janesville a week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl who was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, and their satchels were exactly alike, and the traveling man took the wrong satchel and got off at Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton.

The drummer went down to Vankirk's grocery and put his satchel on the counter, and asked Van how his liver was getting along, while he picked a piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his fingers and said “Whew!” Van said his liver was “not very torpid, thank you; how are you fixed for tea?” The drummer said he wished he had as many dollars as he was fixed for tea, and began to open his sample case. Van cut off a piece of cheese and was eating it while he walked along towards the drummer.

When the case was opened the drummer fell over against a barrel of brooms, and grasping a keg of maple syrup for support, turned pale and said he'd be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, “Fixed for tea! I should think you was, but it wasn't that kind of tea I want.”

There was a long female night-shirt, clapboarded up in front with trimming and starch, and buttoned from Genesis to Revelations. Van took a butter tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a peck measure full of stuff that never belonged in no grocery. Van said: “If you are traveling for a millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a millinery store.”

The drummer wiped the perspiration from his face with a coffee sack and told Van he would give him a million dollars if he never would let the house in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the things back in. “What is this?” said Van, as he held up a pair of giddy looking affairs that no drummer ever wore on his own person. “Don't ask _me_” says the drummer, “I am not a married man.”

He took the satchel and went to Milton on the next train. The girl had opened the satchel which fell to her in the division to show her room-mate how to make a stitch in crochet, and when the brown sugar, coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, maccaroni and a pack of cards came in sight, she fairly squealed. Along after dinner the drummer called and asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, and it was hard to tell which blushed the most.

THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.

You may organize a church choir and think you have got it down fine, and that every member of it is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a moment as you think not you will find that one or more of them are full of the old Harry, and it will break out when you least expect it. There is no more beautiful sight to the student of nature than a church choir. To see the members sitting together, demure, devoted and pious looking, you think that there is never a thought enters their mind that is not connected with singing anthems, but sometimes you get left.

There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is about as near perfect as a choir can be. It has been organized for a long time, and has never quarreled, and the congregation swears by it. When the choir strikes a devotional attitude it is enough to make an ordinary christian think of the angel band above, only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females wear fashionable clothes.

You would not think that this choir played tricks on each other during the sermon, but sometimes they do. The choir is furnished with the numbers of the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, and they put a book mark in the book at the proper place. One morning they all got up to sing, when the soprano turned pale as an ace of spades dropped out of her hymn book, the alto nearly fainted when a queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and the rest of the pack was distributed around in the other books. They laid it onto the tenor, but he swore, while the minister was preaching, that he didn't know one card from another.

One morning last summer, after the tenor had been playing tricks all Spring on the rest of the choir, the soprano brought a chunk of shoemaker's wax to church. The tenor was arrayed like Solomon, in all his glory, with white pants, and a Seymour coat. The tenor got up to see who the girl was who came in with the old lady, and while he was up the soprano put the shoemakers' wax on the chair, and the tenor sat down on it. They all saw it, and they waited for the result. It was an awful long prayer, and the church was hot, the tenor was no iceberg himself, and shoemakers' wax melts at ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

The minister finally got to the amen, and read a hymn, the choir coughed and all rose up. The chair that the tenor was in stuck to him like a brother, and came right along and nearly broke his suspenders. It was the tenor to bat, and as the great organ struck up he pushed the chair off of his person, looked around to see if he had saved his pants, and began to sing, and the rest of the choir came near bursting. The tenor was called out on three strikes by the umpire, and the alto had to sail in, and while she was singing the tenor began to feel of first base to see what was the matter. When he got his hand on the shoemaker's warm wax his heart smote him, and he looked daggers at the soprano, but she put on a pious look and got her mouth ready to sing “Hold the Fort.”

Well, the tenor sat down on a white handkerchief before he went home, and he got home without anybody seeing him, and he has been, as the old saying is, “laying” for the soprano ever since to get even.

It is customary in all first-class choirs for the male singers to furnish candy for the lady singers, and the other day the tenor went to a candy factory and had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. On Christmas he took his lozenger to church and concluded to get even with the soprano if he died for it.

Candy had been passed around, and just before the hymn was given out in which the soprano was to sing a solo, “Nearer My God to Thee,” the wicked wretch gave her the loaded lozenger. She put it in her mouth and nibbed off the edges, and was rolling it as a sweet morsel under her tongue, when the organ struck up and they all arose. While the choir was skirmishing on the first part of the verse and getting scored up for the solo, she chewed what was left of the candy and swallowed it.

Well, if a democratic torch-light procession had marched unbidden down her throat she couldn't have been any more astonished. She leaned over to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow.

It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With a sweet tremulo she sung, “A Charge to Keep I Have,” and the congregation was almost melted to tears.

As she stopped, while the organist got in a little work, she turned her head, opened her mouth and blew out her breath with a “whoosh,” to cool her mouth. The audience saw her wipe a tear away, but did not hear the sound of her voice as she “whooshed.” She wiped out some of the pepper with her handkerchief and sang the other verses with a good deal of fervor, and the choir sat down, all of the members looking at the soprano.

She called for water. The noble tenor went and got it for her, and after she had drank a couple of quarts, she whispered to him: “Young man, I will get even with you for that peppermint candy if I have to live a thousand years, and don't you forget it,” and then they all sat down and looked pious, while the minister preached a most beautiful sermon on “Faith.” We expect that tenor will be blowed through the roof some Sunday morning, and the congregation will wonder what he is in such a hurry for.

SENSE IN LITTLE BUGS.

There is a cockroach that makes his home on our desk that has got more sense than a delinquent subscriber. He--if it is a he one; we are not clear as to that--comes out and sits on the side, of the paste-dish, and draws in a long breath. If the paste is fresh he eats it, and wiggles his polonaise as much as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a cockroach, and he runs about as though he was offended. When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one to find it out, and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when he goes into it and walks all over the cake till he strikes the bridal cake, when he gets onto it, stands on his head and seems to say, “Yum, yum,” and is tickled as a girl with a fresh beau.

There is human nature in a cockroach. When a man comes in and sits around with no business, on our busy day, and asks questions, and stays and keeps us from working, the cockroach will come out and sit on the inkstand and look across at the visitor as much as to say:

“Why don't you go away about your business and leave the poor man alone, so he can get out some copy, and not keep us all standing around here doing nothing?”

But when the paper is out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can, and seems to enjoy it.

One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we poured about a spoonful of whisky in it, and stirred it up. The cockroach came out to breakfast, and we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the meal any more than the cockroach did. It seemed as though he couldn't get enough paste. Pretty soon he put one hand to his head and looked crosseyed. He tried to climb down off the paste-dish, and fell over himself and turned a flip-flap on the blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: “You think you are smart, don't you, old baldy?”

Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in meditation, and staggered off into a drawer, coming out presently with his arm around another cockroach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and _he_ filled up, too, and then they locked arms and paraded up and down on the green cloth of the desk, as though singing, “We won't go home till morning,” and they kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good deal like politicians after a caucus.

Finally, some remark was made by one of them that didn't suit, and they pitched in and had the worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed off as if after a policeman, and the other, staggered into his hole, and we saw no more of our cockroach till the next morning, when he came out with one hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and after smelling of the paste and looking sick, he walked off to a bottle of seltzer water and crawled up to the cork and looked around with an expression so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him in, and he drank as though he had been eating codfish. Since that day he looks at us a little suspicious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he goes and gets another cockroach to eat some of it first, and he watches the effect.

Now, you wouldn't believe it, but that cockroach can tell, the minute he sees a man, whether the man has come in with a bill, or has come in to pay money. We don't know how he does it, but when a man has a bill the cockroach begins to look solemn and mournful, and puts his hands to his eyes as though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, the cockroach looks glad, a smile plays around his mouth, and he acts kitteny. He acts the most human when ladies come into the office. If a book agent comes in, he makes no attempt to show his disgust.

One day an old person came in with a life of Garfield and laid it on the table, opened to the picture of the candidate, and left it. The cockroach walked through the violet ink and got his feet all covered, and then he walked all over that book, and left his mark. The woman saw the tracks, and thought we had signed our name, and she said she was sorry we had written our signature there, because she had another book for subscribers' names.

When a handsome lady comes in, the cockroach is in his element, and there is a good deal of proud flesh about him. He puts his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest and walks around.

One day we put our face up to a deaf young lady to speak to her, and the cockroach looked straight the other way, and seemed to be looking over an old copy of the _Christian Statesman_; but when he found we only yelled at the lady, he winked as much as to say:

“Well, how did I know?”

O, that cockroach is a thoroughbred!

SUMMER RESORTING.

The other day a business man who has one of the nicest houses in the nicest ward in the city, and who has horses and carriages in plenty, and who usually looks as clean as though just out of a band box and as happy as a schoolma'am at a vacation picnic, got on a street car near the depot, a picture of a total wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the collar tucked down under the neck band of his shirt, which had no collar on, his cuffs were sticking out of his coat pocket, his eyes looked heavy, and where the dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked pale, and he was cross as a bear.

A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, after a day's work, with a clean shirt on, a white vest and a general look of coolness, accosted the traveler as follows:

“Been summer resorting, I hear?”

The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a painful effort, as though his drawers stuck to his legs and almost peeled the bark off, and answered:

“Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck ten different hotels, and if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot weather, you can take my head for a soft thing,” and he wiped a cinder out of his eye with what was once a clean handkerchief.

“Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed yourself,” said the man who had not been out of town.

“Cool time, hell,” said the man, who has a pew in two churches, as he kicked his limp satchel of dirty clothes under the car seat. “I had rather been sentenced to the house of correction for a month.”

“Why, what's the trouble?”

“Well, there is no trouble, for people who like that kind of fun, but this lets me out. I do not blame people who live in Southern States for coming North, because they enjoy things as a luxury that we who live in Wisconsin have as a regular diet, but for a Chicago or Milwaukee man to go into the country to swelter and be kept awake nights is bald lunacy. Why, since I have been out I have slept in a room a size smaller than the closet my wife keeps her linen in, with one window that brought in air from a laundry, and I slept on a cot that shut up like a jack-knife and always caught me in the hinge where it hurt.

“At another hotel I had a broken-handled pitcher of water that had been used to rinse clothes in, and I can show you the indigo on my neck. I had a piece of soap that smelled like a tannery, and if the towel was not a recent damp diaper then I have never raised six children.

“At one hotel I was the first man at the table, and two families came in and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after an hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and baked potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a wash-tub and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of something on top that might be lemon peel, and it might be pumpkin rind.

“The only night's rest I got was one night when I slept in a car seat. At the hotel the regular guests were kept awake till 12 o'clock by number six headed boys and girls dancing until midnight to the music of a professional piano boxer, and then for two hours the young folks sat on the stair? and yelled and laughed, and after that the girls went to bed and talked two hours more, while the boys went and got drunk and sang 'Allegezan and Kalamazoo.'

“Why, at one place I was woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning by what I thought was a chariot race in the hall outside, but it was only a lot of young bloods rolling ten pins down by the rooms, using empty wine bottles for pins and China cuspidores for balls. I would have gone out and shot enough drunken galoots for a mess, only I was afraid a cuspidore would carom on my jaw. Talk about rest, I would rather go to a boiler factory.

“Say, I don't know as you would believe it, but at one place I sent some shirts and things to be washed, and they sent to my room a lot of female underclothes, and when I kicked about it to the landlord he said I would have to wear them, as they had no time to rectify mistakes. He said the season was short and they had to get in their work, and he charged me Fifth Avenue Hotel prices with a face that was child-like and bland, when he knew I had been wiping on diapers for two days in place of towels.

“But I must get off here and see if I can find water enough to bathe all over. I will see you down town after I bury these clothes.”

And the sticky, cross man got off swearing at summer hotels and pirates. We don't see where he could have been traveling.

THE GOSPEL CAR.

Because there are cars for the luxurious, and smoking cars for those who delight in tobacco, some of the religious people of Connecticut are petitioning the railway companies to fit up “Gospel cars.” Instead of the card tables they want an organ and piano, they want the seats arranged facing the centre of the car, so they can have a full view of whoever may conduct the services; instead of spittoons they will have a carpet, and instead of cards they want Bibles and Gospel song-books.--_Chicago News_.

There is an idea for you. Let some railroad company fit up a Gospel car according to the above prescription, and run it, and the porter on that car would be the most lonesome individual on the train. The Gospel hymn books would in a year appear as new as do now the Bibles that are put up in all cars. Of the millions of people who ride in the trains, many of them pious Christians, who has ever seen a man or woman take a Bible off the iron rack and read it a single minute? And yet you can often see ministers and other professing Christians in the smoking car, puffing a cigar and reading a daily paper.

Why, it is all they can do to get a congregation in a church on Sunday; and does any one suppose that when men and women are traveling for business or pleasure--and they do not travel for anything else--that they are going into a “Gospel car” to listen to some sky pirate who has been picked up for the purpose, talk about the prospects of landing the cargo in heaven?

Not much!

The women are too much engaged looking after their baggage, and keeping the cinders out of their eyes, and keeping the children's heads out of the window, and keeping their fingers from being jammed, to look out for their immortal souls. And the men are too much absorbed in the object of their trip to listen to gospel truths. They are thinking about whether they will be able to get a room at the hotel, or whether they will have to sleep on a cot.

Nobody can sing gospel songs on a car, with their throats full of cinders, and their eyes full of dust, and the chances are if anybody should strike up, “A charge to keep I have,” some pious sinner who was trying to take a nap in the corner of the gospel car would say:

“O, go and hire a hall!”

It would be necessary to make an extra charge of half a dollar to those who occupied the gospel car, the same as is charged on the parlor car, and you wouldn't get two persons on an average train full that would put up a nickel.

Why, we know a Wisconsin Christian, worth a million dollars, who, when he comes up from Chicago to the place where he lives, hangs up his overcoat in the parlor car, and then goes into the forward car and rides till the whistle blows for his town, when he goes in and gets his coat and never says thirty-five cents to the conductor, or ten cents to the porter. Do you think a gospel car would catch him for half a dollar? He would see you in Hades first.

The best way is to take a little eighteen carat religion along into the smoking car, or any other car you may happen to be in.

A man--as we understand religion from those who have had it--does not have to howl to the accompaniment of an asthmatic organ, pumped by a female with a cinder in her eye and smut on her nose, in order to enjoy religion, and he does not have to be in the exclusive company of other pious people to get the worth of his money. There is a great deal of religion in sitting in a smoking car, smoking dog-leg tobacco in a briar-wood pipe, and seeing happy faces in the smoke that curls up--faces of those you have made happy by kind words, good deeds, or half a dollar put where it will drive away hunger, instead of paying it out for a reserved seat in a gospel car. Take the half dollar you would pay for a seat in a gospel car and go into the smoker, and find some poor emigrant that is going west to grow up with the country, after having been beaten out of his money at Castle Garden, and give it to him, and see if the look of thankfulness and joy does not make you feel better than to listen to a discussion in the gospel car, as to whether the children of Israel went through the Red Sea with life-preservers, or wore rubber hunting boots.

Take your gospel-car half dollar and buy a vegetable ivory rattle of the train boy, and give it to the sick emigrant mother's pale baby, and you make four persons happy--the baby, the mother, the train boy and yourself.

We know a man who gave a dollar to a prisoner on the way to State prison, to buy tobacco with, who has enjoyed more good square religion over it than he could get out of all the chin music and saw-filing singing he could hear in a gospel car in ten years. The prisoner was a bad man from Oshkosh, who was in a caboose in charge of the sheriff, on the way to Waupun. The attention of the citizen was called to the prisoner by his repulsive appearance, and his general don't-care-a-damative appearance. The citizen asked the prisoner how he was fixed for money to buy tobacco in prison. He said he hadn't a cent, and he knew it would be the worst punishment he could have to go without tobacco. The citizen gave him the dollar and said:

“Now, every time you take a chew of tobacco in prison, just make up your mind to be square when you get out.”

The prisoner reached out his hand-cuffed hands to take the dollar, the hands trembling so that the chains rattled, and a great tear as big as a shirt-button appeared in one eye--the other eye had been gouged out while “having some fun with the boys” at Oshkosh--and his lips trembled as he said:

“So help me God, I will!”

That man has been boss of a gang of hands in the pinery for two winters, and has a farm paid for on the Central Railroad, and is “squar.”

That is the kind of practical religion a worldly man can occasionally practice without having a gospel car.

INCIDENTS AT THE NEWHALL HOUSE FIRE.

There were a great many ludicrous scenes about the Newhall House during the fire of last Saturday morning. When people were notified that there was a fire in the house, but that the danger was not great, though it was thought best to give them all plenty of time to prepare for the worst, many jumped right out of bed and started down stairs.

When we arrived on the scene, our first inquiry was for the safety of the lady members of the Rice Surprise Party, the young women who had been cutting up on the stage all the week with so little apparel. We did not expect to find them in a greater state of barefootedness than they were when we saw them last, but in some instances they were.

We were kindly yet firmly informed by Mr. Rankin that the ladies had been rescued. It seemed that everybody wanted to save the girls. Mr. Rankin knew this, and knew that if the young and thoughtless gentlemen were allowed to rescue the girls it would cause remark. He said he was an old line democrat, and that his days of kittenhood were over, and that it was proper that he should superintend the removal of the girls.

Mr. McKittrick, the conductor, argued the matter with him. He said he had been running a train a good many years, and had seen all phases of humanity, and that he was inured to a life of hardship, and had seen many sad sights, in the sleeping cars, and he insisted that he be allowed to superintend the removal of the girls.

The discussion became warm, and finally they compromised by agreeing that McKittrick should rush into the rooms and drag them out of the fire and smoke and hand them to Mr. Rankin at the foot of the first pair of stairs, who would dispose of them in safety. They both agreed that the first outside vandal who laid a hand on them should die.

The first trouble they had was with Prof. Haskins.

He came out of his room with nothing on but his glasses, an ascension robe and one boot. He rushed through the hall, and while in front of the room of the girl who wore the black tights with the crochet work on the limbs he ventured a joke. He is the telegraph manager and he said, “There is a line down here,” as a two inch stream struck him about the alleged pistol pocket. The girl, who was tying her wardrobe up in a napkin, heard him and said, “There is no _lying down_ here, not much.” Prof. Haskins was shocked that any female should thus mistake him for a democrat, and falling over a zinc trunk head first, he went back to his room to send his son Harry out to help.

Mr. McKittrick rushed into a room and grabbed a corset in his arms and handed it down stairs to Rankin There is no person who can fool Rankin. He didn't want to be rescued.

Just at this point a girl with a waterproof on came along the hall and Mr. Cole asked her if she didn't want to be rescued. She said she had been carried down stairs six times already by a big granger, and she would shoot the next man that attempted to rescue ner. She said there was no danger, and wanted to know why the big galoots did not go and help put the fire out.

On inquiry it was found that the girl had been carried down stairs six times and left on the sidewalk. She described the man who carried her out, and said he was excited, and no sooner would she get up stairs than he would grab her and carry her down again, until she was almost froze. He told her the last time that he had saved six girls from a fiery grave.

THE WAY WOMEN BOSS A PILLOW.

Among the recent inventions is a pillow holder. It is explained that the pillow holder is for the purpose of holding a pillow while the case is being put on. We trust this new invention will not come into general use, as there is no sight more beautiful to the eyes of man than to see a woman hold a pillow in her teeth while she gently manipulates the pillow case over it.

We do not say that a woman is beautiful with her mouth full of pillows. No one can ever accuse us of saying that, but there is something home-like and old-fashioned about it that can not be replaced by any invention.

We know that certain over-fastidious women have long clamored for some new method of putting on a pillow case, but these people have either lost their teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. They have tried several new methods, such as blowing the pillow case up, and trying to get the pillow in before the wind got out, and they have tried to get the pillow in by rolling up the pillow case until the bottom is reached, and then placing 'the pillow on end and gently unrolling the pillow case, but all these schemes have their drawbacks.

The old style of chewing one end of the pillow, and holding it the way a retriever dog holds a duck, till the pillow case is on, and then spanking the pillow a couple of times on each side, is the best, and it gives the woman's jaws about the only rest they get during the day.

If any invention drives this old custom away from us, and we no more see the matrons of our land with their hair full of feathers and their mouths full of striped bed-ticking, we shall feel that one of the dearest of our institutions has been ruthlessly torn from us, and the fabric of our national supremacy has received a sad blow, and that our liberties are in danger.

THE DEADLY PAPER BAG

There is a woman on the West Side who has learned a lesson that will last her a lifetime. She has been for years wearing these paper bags, such as the green grocers use, for bustles. The paper is stiff, and sticks out splendid, and makes the dress look well. Last Sunday morning while she was dressing, her young son got in the room and blew the paper bag full of wind and tied a string around the mouth of it, and left it in a chair. The good lady took it and tied it on and dressed herself for church. She bribed her husband to go to church with her, though he is a sort of Bob Ingersoll christian.

As they went down the aisle the minister was reading a hymn about “Sounding the Loud Hosan-na,” and the lady went into the pew first, and sat down while her husband was putting his hat on the floor. There was a report like distant thunder. You have heard how those confounded paper bags explode when boys blow them up, and crush them between their hands.

Well, it was worse than that, and everybody looked at the innocent husband, who was standing there a perfect picture of astonishment. He looked at his wife as much as to say: “Now, this is the last time you will catch me in church, if you are going to play any of your tricks on me. You think you can scare me into getting religion?”

The minister stopped reading the hymn and looked over his spectacles at the new comers as though it would not surprise him if that bad man should blow the church up. The poor lady blushed and looked around as much as to say, “I did not know it was loaded,” and she looked the hymn book through for the hymn, and as the choir rose to sing she offered one side of the book to her husband, but he looked mad and pious, and stood at the other end of the pew and looked out of the stained glass window.

After the service they started home together, and as they turned the first corner he said to his wife, “Well, you played hell on your watch, didn't you?” She told him there was no such thing as hell in the Bible now, but that she would make that boy think there had been no revision of the Bible that left hell out, when she got home. We only get the story from the husband.

He said he didn't know what it was that made the noise until they got home, and after a little skirmishing around his wife held up a bursted paper bag, and asked the boy if he blew that bag up. He said he did, but he did not know there was anything wrong about it. The boy and his mother and a press board paid a visit to the back kitchen, and there was a sound of revelry. Boys will be boys.

THE VIRGINIA DUEL.

The proposed duel between Senator Mahone and Jubal Early did not come off, for reasons that have not been made public. It is well known that Mahone is the thinnest man in Virginia. We do not allude to his politics, or his ability, in speaking of his being thin, but to his frame. He does not make a shadow. He could hide behind a wire fence. Gen. Early, after challenging Mahone, went to practicing at a piece of white wire clothes line, hung to the limb of a tree, but he could not hit it, and he felt that all the advantage would be on Mr. Mahone's side, so he asked Mahone to do the only thing in his power that would make the thing even, and that was to eat a quantity of dried apples the day before the duel, in order to swell his stomach out so that a gentleman could stand some show of hitting him.

Gen. Early pledged himself, on the honor of a Virginia gentleman, that he would not shoot at Mahone's stomach, but would aim at it, and then make a line shot either above or below.

Mahone replied that, while he appreciated the advantage he had over his opponent, and was willing to do anything reasonable to make the thing even, he could not consistently eat dried apples, as they would certainly kill him. He was willing to take his chances on the bullets of his opponent, because statistics showed that dueling was the most healthy business a man could engage in; and he pointed to the number of duellists that were now living at a ripe old age, who had fought hundreds of duels and never received a scratch or scratched an opponent, but on the other hand he could produce proof to show that many people had been injured, if not killed, by an over-indulgence in dried apples.

Mr. Mahone said he thought it was late in the day for him to produce any proof as to his own bravery, but in the face of the fact that he would be pointed at as one who had not sand, he should have to decline to eat dried apples in order to make himself a target.

Gen. Early said he appreciated the delicacy of his honorable and high-toned opponent, and respected his feelings, and would not insist on the dried apple act, but that he would go into training to reduce himself in flesh to the size of Mahone, and hoped that the affair might be declared off until he could diet himself. He said he should at once begin a course of treatment to reduce his flesh, by boarding at a summer resort hotel that he had heard of, where the desired effect might be produced.

So the duel is postponed for the present. Both Mahone and Early are high-toned gentlemen, and they will do nothing rash.

THE DIFFERENCE.

One of the great female writers on dress reform, in trying to illustrate how terrible the female dress is, says:

“Take a man and pin three or four table-cloths about him, fastened back with elastic and looped up with ribbons, draw all his hair to the middle of his head and tie it tight, and hairpin on five pounds of other hair and a big bow of ribbon. Keep the front locks on pins all night, and let them tickle his eyes all day, pinch his waist into a corset, and give him gloves a size too small and shoes the same, and a hat that will not stay on without torturing elastic, and a little lace veil to blind his eyes whenever he goes out to walk, and he will know what a woman's dress is.”

Now you think you have done it, don't you, sis? Why, bless you, that toggery would be heaven compared to what a man has to contend with. Take a woman and put a pair of men's four-shilling drawers on her that are so tight that when they get damp, from perspiration, sis; they stick so you can't cross your legs without an abrasion of the skin, the buckle in the back turning a somersault and sticking its points into your spinal menengitis; put on an undershirt that draws across the chest so you feel as though you must cut a hole in it, or two, and which is so short that it works up under your arms, and allows the starched upper shirt to sand paper around and file off the skin until you wish it was night, the tail of which will not stay tucked more than half a block, though you tuck, and tuck, and tuck; and then fasten a collar made of sheet zinc, two sizes too small for you, around your neck; put on vest and coat, and liver pad and lung pad and stomach pad, and a porous plaster, and a chemise shirt between the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a button-hook and a pocket-book and a pistol and a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe your person, and then go and drink a few whisky cocktails, and walk around in the sun with tight boots on, sis, and then you will know what a man's dress is.

Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis,--isn't it?

SPURIOUS TRIPE.

Another thing that is being largely counterfeited is tripe. Parties who buy tripe cannot be too careful. There is a manufactory that can make tripe so natural that no person on earth can detect the deception. They take a large sheet of rubber about a sixteenth of an inch thick for a background, and by a process only known to themselves veneer it with a Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. The unsuspecting boarding-house keeper, or restaurant man, buys it and cooks it, and the boarder or transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the damnable tripe with a pair of shears used in a tin shop for cutting sheet iron, and it is handed to the victim. He tries to cut it, and fails; he tries to gnaw it off, and if he succeeds in getting a mouthful, that settles him. He leaves his tripe on his plate, and it is gathered up and sewed on the original piece, and is kept for another banquet.

The tripe is expensive, owing to the royalty that has to be paid to the rubber company, and often the boarder succeeds in eating off some of the towel, so it has to be veneered over again; but take it the year round, and the tripe pays its way in a boarding-house.

A CASE OF PARALYSIS.

About as mean a trick as we ever heard of was perpetrated by a doctor at Hudson last Sunday. The victim was a justice of the peace named Evans. Mr. Evans is a man who has the alfiredest biggest feet east of St. Paul, and when he gets a new pair of shoes it is an event that has its effect on the leather market.

Last winter he advertised for sealed proposals to erect a pair of shoes for him, and when the bids were opened it was found that a local architect in leather had secured the contract, and after mortgaging his house to a Milwaukee tannery, and borrowing some money on his diamonds of his “uncle,” John Comstock, who keeps a pawnbrokery there, he broke ground for the shoes.

Owing to the snow blockade and the freshets, and the trouble to get hands who would work on the dome, there were several delays, and Judge Evans was at one time inclined to cancel the contract, and put some strings in box cars and wear them in place of shoes, but sympathy for the contractor, who had his little awl invested in the material and labor, induced him to put up with the delay.

On Saturday the shoes were completed, all except laying the floor and putting on a couple of bay windows for corns, and conservatories for bunions, and the judge concluded to wear them on Sunday. He put them on, but got the right one on the left foot, and the left one on the right foot. As he walked down town the right foot was continually getting on the left side, and he stumbled over himself, and he felt pains in his feet. The judge was frightened in a minute. He is afraid of paralysis, all the boys know it, and when he told a wicked republican named Spencer how his feet felt, that degraded man told the judge that it was one of the surest symptoms of paralysis in the world, and advised him to hunt a doctor.

The judge pranced off, interfering at every step, skinning his shins, and found Dr. Hoyt. The doctor is one of the worst men in the world, and when he saw how the shoes were put on he told the judge that his case was hopeless unless something was done immediately. The judge turned pale, the sweat poured out of him, and taking out his purse he gave the doctor five dollars and asked him what he should do. The doctor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, listened at his heart, shook his head, and then told the judge that he would be a dead man in less than sixty years if he didn't change his shoes.

The judge looked down at the vast expanse of leather, both sections pointing inwardly, and said, “Well, dam a fool,” and “changed cars” at the junction. As he got them on the right feet, and hired a raftsman to tie them up for him, he said he would get even with the doctor if he had to catch the smallpox. O, we suppose they have more fun in some of these country towns than you can shake a stick at.

MALE AND FEMALE MASHING.

There has been a great deal of talk in the papers about arresting “mashers,” that is, young men who stand on the corners and pulverize women, and a great many good people got the idea that it was unsafe to travel the streets. This is not the case. A woman might travel all day and half the night and not be insulted. Of course, once in a great while, a woman will be insulted by a man, the same as a man will be by a woman.

No woman, unless she throws out one eye, kind of cunning, is in danger of having a male man throw out his other eye the same way. There has got to be two parties to a mashing match, and one must be a woman. Too many women act sort of queer just for fun, and the poor male man gets to acting improper before he realizes the enormity of the crime, and then it is everlastingly too late.

But a female masher, one who is thoroughly bad, like the male loafers that have been driven from the corners, is a terror. She will insult a respectable man and laugh at his blushes. One of them was arrested the other day for playing her act on a policeman who was disguised as a respectable granger from Stevens Point. These female mashers are a tornado.

Why, one of them met a respectable church member the other night, and asked him how his liver complaint was. He was a man who had been troubled with the liver complaint, and supposing she was some acquaintance, he stopped on the corner and talked with the pullet for about ten minutes, explaining to her the course of treatment he had used to cure him, and dozens of people passing by that knew him, and knew that she was clear off.

Finally she asked him if he wouldn't take her to a restaurant and buy her a spring chicken and a small bottle. He told her if she would come up to his house she should have a hen, and there were lots of bottles, both large and small, that she was welcome to. She told him to go to Hades, and he went in a drug store and asked a clerk who that lady was he had been talking with, and when the clerk, who knew her, told him she was a road agent, a street walker, a female masher, the old man had to sit down on a box of drugs and fan himself with his hat.