Peck's Compendium of Fun.

by George W. Peck.

THE NEW COAL STOVE.

We never had a coal stove around the house until last Sat.u.r.day. Have always used pine slabs and pieces of our neighbor's fence. They burn well, too, but the fence got all burned up, and the neighbor said he wouldn't build a new one, so we went down to Jones' and got a coal stove.

After supper we took a piece of ice and rubbed our hands warm, and went in where that stove was, resolved to make her draw and burn if it took all the pine fence in the first Ward. Our better-half threw a quilt over her, and shiveringly remarked that she never knew what real solid comfort was until she got a coal stove.

Stung by the sarcasm in her remark, we turned every dingus on the stove that was movable, or looked like it had anything to do with the draft, and pretty soon the stove began to heave up heat. It was not long before she stuttered like the new Silsby steamer. Talk about your heat! In ten minutes that room was as much worse than a Turkish bath as Hades is hotter than Liverman's ice-house. The perspiration fairly fried out of a tin water cooler in the next room. We opened the doors, and snow began to melt as far up Vine street as Hans...o...b..'s house, and people all round the neighborhood put on linen clothes. And we couldn't stop the confounded thing.

We forgot what Jones told us about the dampers, and she kept a biling. The only thing we could do was to go to bed, and leave the thing to burn the house up if it wanted to. We stood off with a pole and turned the damper every way, and at every turn she just sent out heat enough to roast an ox. We went to bed, supposing that the coal would eventually burn out, but about 12 o'clock the whole family had to get up and sit on the fence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TURNING THE PROPER DINGUS.]

Finally a man came along who had been brought up among coal stoves, and he put a wet blanket over him and crept up to the stove and turned the proper dingus, and she cooled off, and since that time has been just as comfortable as possible. If you buy a coal stove you got to learn how to engineer it, or you may get roasted.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED.

"Say, you leave here mighty quick," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in, with his arm in a sling, and backed up against the stove to get warm. "Everything has gone wrong since you got to coming here, and I think you are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene in the b.u.t.ter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is something wrong every time you come here. Now you leave."

"I aint no Joner," said the boy as he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. "I never swallered no whale.

Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale's belly, all night? I don't. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school last Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in there, and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale was fixed up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car, and Joner had a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on me, now, I won't have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your b.u.t.ter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, but you can charge it to Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into last summer, though I thought you did wrong in charging Christmas prices for dog days eggs. When my chum's Ma sc.r.a.ped his pants she said there was not an egg represented on there that was less than two years old. The Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I put kyan pepper on the stove, when they were singing 'Little Drops of Water,' and they all had to go out doors and air themselves, but I didn't mean to let the pepper drop on the stove. I was just holding it over the stove to warm it, when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives me a new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don't have it with him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun there is in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, three in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box, four in valises, two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs.

"That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee that is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet at our house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if my chum couldn't stay too, 'cause he is the healthiest infant to run after errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember that there musn't be no monkey business going on. I told him there shouldn't be no monkey business, but I didn't promise nothing about cats. Well, sir, you'd a dide. The committee was in the library by the back stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, at the top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put them in a clothes basket, and just as the minister was speaking, and telling what a great good was done by these oyster sociables, in bringing the young people together, and taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old tom cats in the basket gave a 'purmeow'

that sounded like the wail of a lost soul, or a challenge to battle. I told my chum that we couldn't hold the bread-board over the clothes basket much longer, when two or three cats began to yowl, and the minister stopped talking and Pa told Ma to open the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the matter up there. She thought our cat had got shut up in the storm door, and she opened the stair door to yell to the girl, and then I pushed the clothes basket, cats and all down the back stairs.

Well, sir, I suppose no committee for a noyster supper, was ever more astonished. I heard Ma fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, 'scat,'

and I heard Pa say, 'well. I'm dam'd,' and a girl that sings in the choir say, 'Heavens, I am stabbed,' then my chum and me ran to the front of the house and come down the front stairs looking as innocent as could be, and we went in the library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any errands he wanted run my chum and me was just aching to run them, when a yellow cat without any tail was walking over the minister, and Pa was throwing a ha.s.sock at two cats that were clawing each other under the piano, and Ma was trying to get her frizzes back on her head, and the choir girl was standing on the lounge with her dress pulled up, trying to scare cats with her striped stockings, and the minister was holding his hands up, and I guess he was asking a blessing on the cats, and my chum opened the front door and all the cats went out. Pa and Ma looked at me, and I said it wasn't me, and the minister wanted to know how so much cat hair got on my coat and vest, and I said a cat met me in the hall and kicked me, and Ma cried, and Pa said 'that boy beats h.e.l.l,' and the minister said, I would be all right if I had been properly brought up, and then Ma was mad, and the committee broke up. Well, to tell the honest truth Pa basted me, and yanked me around until I had to have my arm in a sling, but what's the use of making such a fuss about a few cats. Ma said she never wanted to have my company again, 'cause I spoiled everything.

But I got even with Pa for basting me, this morning, and I da.s.sent go home. You see Ma has got a great big bath sponge as big as a chair cushion, and this morning I took the sponge and filled it with warm water, and took the feather cushion out of the chair Pa sits in at the table, and put the sponge in its place, and covered it over with the cushion cover, and when we all got set down to the table Pa came in and sat down on it to ask a blessing. He started in by closing his eyes and placing his hands up in front of him like the letter V, and then he began to ask that the food we were about to partake off be blessed, and then he was going on to ask that all of us be made to see the error of our ways, when he began to hitch around, and he opened one eye and looked at me, and I looked as pious as a boy can look when he knows the pancakes are getting cold, and Pa he kind of sighed and said 'Amen' sort of snappish, and he got up and told Ma he didn't feel well, and she would have to take his place and pa.s.s around the sa.s.sidge and potatoes, and he looked kind of scart and went out with his hand on his pistol pocket, as though he would like to shoot, and Ma she got up and went around and sat in Pa's chair. The sponge didn't hold more than half a pail full of water, and I didn't want to play no joke on Ma, cause the cats nearly broke her up, but she sat down and was just going to help me, when she rung the bell and called the hired girl, and said she felt as though her neuralgia was coming on, and she would go to her room, and told the girl to sit down and help Hennery. The girl sat down and poured me out some coffee, and then she said, 'Howly Saint Patrick, but I blave those pancakes are burning,' and she went out in the kitchen. I drank my coffee, and then took the big sponge out of the chair and put the cushion in the place of it, and then I put the sponge in the bath room, and I went up to Pa and Ma's room, and asked them if I should go after the doctor, and Pa had changed his clothes and got on his Sunday pants, and he said, 'never mind the doctor, I guess we will pull through,'

and for me to get out and go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, there is no harm in a little warm water, is there? Well, I'd like to know what Pa and Ma and the hired girl thought. I am the only real healthy one there is in our family."

THREE INCHES OF LEG.

Blanche Williams, of Philadelphia, who met with an accident 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.

MORE DANGEROUS THAN KEROSENE.

The regular weekly murder is reported from Peshtigo. Two men named Gla.s.s and Penrue, got to quarreling about a girl, in a hay loft, over a barn.

Gla.s.s 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.

TEN DAYS IN LOVE.

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?

BOYS WILL BE BOYS.

Not many months ago there was a meeting of ministers in Wisconsin, and after the holy work in which they were engaged had been done up to the satisfaction of all, a citizen of the place where the conference was held invited a large number of them to a collation at his house. After supper a dozen of them adjourned to a room up stairs to have a quiet smoke, as ministers sometimes do, when they got to talking about old times, when they attended school and were boys together, and _The Sun_ man, who was present, disguised as a preacher, came to the conclusion that ministers were rather human than otherwise when they are young.

One two-hundred pound delegate with a cigar between his fingers, blew the smoke out of the mouth which but a few hours before was uttering a supplication to the Most High to make us all good, punched a thin elder in the ribs with his thumb and said: "Jim, do you remember the time we carried the cow and calf up into the recitation room?" For a moment "Jim"

was inclined to stand on his dignity, and he looked pained, until they all began to laugh, when he looked around to see if any worldly person was present, and satisfying himself that we were all truly good, he said: "You bet your life I remember it. I have got a scar on my shin now where that d--blessed cow hooked me," and he began to roll up his trouser leg to show the scar. They told him they would take his word, and he pulled down his pants and said:

"Well, you see I was detailed to attend to the calf, and I carried the calf up stairs, a.s.sisted by Bill Smith--who is preaching in Chicago; got a soft thing--five thousand a year, and a parsonage furnished, and keeps a team, and if one of those horses is not a trotter then I am no judge of horseflesh or of Bill, and if he don't put on an old driving coat and go out on the road occasionally and catch on for a race with some wordly-minded man, then I am another. You hear me--well, I never knew a calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! Why, bless your old alabaster heart, that calf walked all over me, from Genesis to Revelations. And say, we didn't get much of a breeze the next morning, did we, when we had to clean out the recitation room?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SACRED MEMORIES]

A solemn-looking minister, with red hair, who was present, and whose eyes twinkled some through the smoke, said to another:

"Charlie, you remember you were completely gone on the professor's niece who was visiting there from Poughkeepsie? What become of her."

Charlie put his feet on the table, struck a match on his trousers, and said:

"Well, I wasn't gone on her, as you say, but just liked her. Not too well, you know, but just well enough. She had a color of hair that I could never stand--just the color of yours, Hank--and when she got to going with a printer I kind of let up, and they were married. I understand he is editing a paper somewhere in Illinois, and getting rich. It was better for her, as now she has a place to live, and does not have to board around like a country school ma'am, as she would if she had married me."

A dark haired man, with a coat b.u.t.toned clear to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked the ashes out in a spittoon, and said:

"Boys, do you remember the time we stole that three-seated wagon and went out across the marsh to Kingsley's farm, after watermelons?"

Four of them said they remembered it well enough, and Jim said all he asked was to live long enough to get even with Bill Smith, the Chicago preacher, for suggesting to him to steal a bee-hive on the trip. "Why,"

said he, "before I had got twenty feet with that hive, every bee in it had stung me a dozen times. And do you remember how we played it on the professor, and made him believe that I had the chicken pox? O, gentlemen, a glorious immortality awaits you beyond the grave for lying me out of that sc.r.a.pe."

The fat man hitched around uneasy in his chair and said they all seemed to have forgotten the princ.i.p.al event of that excursion, and that was how he tried to lift a bull dog over the fence by the teeth, which had become entangled in a certain portion of his wardrobe that should not be mentioned, and how he left a sample of his trousers in the possession of the dog, and how the farmer came to the college the next day with his eyes blacked, and a piece of trousers cloth done up in a paper, and wanted the professor to try and match it with the pants of some of the divinity students, and how he had to put on a pair of nankeen pants and hide his ca.s.simeres in the boat house until the watermelon sc.r.a.pe blew over and he could get them mended.

Then the small brunette minister asked if he was not ent.i.tled to some credit for blacking the farmer's eyes. Says he: "When he got over the fence and grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he would have the whole gang in jail, I felt as though something had got to be done, and I jumped out on the other side of the wagon and walked around to him and put up my hands and gave him 'one, two, three' about the nose, with my blessing, and he let go that horse and took his dog back to the house."

"Well," says the red haired minister, "those melons were green, anyway, but it was the fun of stealing them that we were after."

At this point the door opened and the host entered, and, pushing the smoke away with his hands, he said: "Well, gentlemen, you are enjoying yourselves?"

They threw their cigar stubs in the spittoon, the solemn man laid the brier wood pipe where he got it, and the fat man said:

"Brother Drake, we have been discussing the evil effects of indulging in the weed, and we have come to the conclusion that while tobacco is always bound to be used to a certain extent by the thoughtless, it is a duty the clergy owe to the community to discountenance its use on all possible occasions. Perhaps we had better adjourn to the parlor, and after asking divine guidance take our departure."

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HE BECOMES A DRUGGIST.

"Whew! What is that smells so about this store? It seems as though everything had turned frowy," said the grocery man to his clerk in the presence of the bad boy, who was standing with his back to the stove, his coat-tails parted with his hands, and a cigarette in his mouth.