The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work up by where we sat, and we looked around, and may we never live to make a million dollars if it wasn’t the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow’s head, basket and all, and his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn’t it? Our plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to go right away from the fertilizer.

  The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don’t know as anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our cutter.

  Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave the horse one more cut and went the last block at a fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside us, so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we came out neck and neck, the Dutchman a little ahead because his horse was unchecked, and the crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, when the butcher came up alongside just as a carriage of beautiful ladies were passing, and as they turned up their noses at his load, he said:

  “Dot vas a nice race, ain’t it, Mister Beck?”

  We could have killed him in cold blood. Not that we dislike to be beaten. We have always been beaten. It isn’t that. But we don’t want to trot horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calculated for associating, in the horse arena, with a load of slaughter house refuse. It is asking too much. We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick, or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gordon, or any of those truly good men in whom there is no guile, and in whose cutters there is no foreign matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne we shall never go upon the track again with a butcher.

  There should be a law passed making it a penal offence for a person with a delivery wagon to tackle onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is wrong, and will lead to trouble. We have not given up racing entirely, but hereafter we shall look the avenue over very close for butchers before we let out our four legged telescope. A butcher is just as good as anybody, understand us, but they must keep their distance. We don’t want to look into, the hind end of no cutter that is filled with slaughter house ornaments, and we won’t. It is not pride of birth, or anything of that kind, but such people ought to drive on Wells street, or have slower horses.

  DOGS AND HUMAN BEINGS.

  Lorillard, the New York tobacco man, had a poodle dog stolen, and has offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the thief, and he informs a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if necessary, for the capture and conviction of the thief. [Applause.]

  The applause marked in there will be from human skye terriers, who have forgotten that only a few weeks ago several hundred girls, who had been working in Lorillard’s factory, went on a strike because, as they allege, they were treated like dogs. We doubt if they were treated as well as this poodle was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor, virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard would have offered as big a reward for the conviction of the human thief, as he has for the conviction of the person who has eloped with his poodle.

  We hope that the aristocracy of this country will never get to valuing a dog higher than it does a human being. When it gets so that a rich person would not permit a poodle to do the work in a tobacco factory that a poor girl does to support a sick mother, hell had better be opened for summer boarders. When girls work ten hours a day stripping nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that the fines for speaking are larger than the wages, and the fines go for the conviction of thieves who steal the girls’ master’s dog, no one need come around here lecturing at a dollar a head and telling us there is no hell.

  When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her work at daylight, looks out of the window at noon to see her master’s carriage go by, in which there is a five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket on, and a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin cushions, and the girl is fined ten cents for looking out of the window, you don’t want to fool away any time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such heartless employers are expected.

  It is seldom the Sun gets on its ear, but it can say with great fervency, “Damn a man that will work poor girls like slaves, and pay them next to nothing, and spend ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief!” If these sentiments are sinful, and for expressing them we are a candidate for fire and brimstone, it is all right, and the devil can stoke up and make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the through train.

  It seems now—though we may change our mind the first day at the fire—as though we had rather be in hades with a hundred million people who have always done the square thing, than to be in any heaven that will pass a man in who has starved the poor and paid ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief. We could have a confounded sight better time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It would be worth the price of admission to stand with our back to the fire, and as we began to smell woolen burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces at the ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were putting on style at the other place.

  * * * *

  Andrews’ Bazar says: “Gathered waists are very much worn.”

  If the men would gather the waists carefully and not squeeze so like blazes, they would not be worn so much. Some men go to work gathering a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and binding. They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery.

  The Black River Falls Independent says: “If you have any old pants to give to the poor, take or send them to the Ladies’ Relief Society.”

  Well, we have got plenty of them; but, bless you, we doubt if any member of the Ladies’ Relief Society could wear them. They don’t hook up.

  ARTHUR WILL KEEP A COW.

  It is announced by telegraph from Washington that Gen. Arthur will keep a cow at the White House during his term, to furnish milk for the family, rather than be obliged to depend upon a milk man who is in the habit of selling a mixed drink, though the customers, prefer to take it-straight. There is nothing that will do more to convince people of the true simplicity of a President than for him to keep a cow. No man who habitually associates with a cow, and stirs up a bran mash, and watches her plow her nose down to the bottom in search of a potato paring, can be wholly bad. If the President selects a good, honest cow we have no fears that he will be a tyrant in his administration of affairs. A man is very apt to absorb many of the characteristics and traits of the cow that he milks. If she is a good natured, honest, law abiding cow, that “hoists” at the word of command, stands firm and immovable while being milked, and “gives down” freely, so that the fingers are not cramped, and she does not switch her tail in the face of the milker, the man will be a good natured, generous, honest man, but if the cow is one of those communists, and has to be tied to the manger, and you have to hold one leg to keep her from kicking over the pail, and she tries to run a horn into you, and keeps stepping around, and her tail knocks your hat off and gets in your eyes, and your nerves are unstrung for fear she is thinking of some deviltry to play on you, the man whose duty it is to draw the milk from her udder will become harsh, suspicious, cruel, tricky, and mean; and he will grind the face of the poor.

  The country will hope that Mr. Arthur, in selecting a cow, will use more judgment than in selecting a cabinet, and will bring his great mind to bear on the subject as though he appreciated the situation. We trust he will not buy a cow of a democrat. There may be good cows owned by democrats, but they are not for sale, and a democrat would sell him a kicking cow that was farrow, ju
st to injure his administration. Let him go to some friend in his own party, some man who is interested in the success of his administration, and state his case, and if possible get a cow on trial.

  This policy is wise from the fact that he could thus see if the cow was going to hold out as a good milker. Some cows give a good mess of milk when they first go to a new place, but in a week they let down and the first thing you know they dry up entirely. Mr. Arthur wants to look out for this. The country is full of bold, bad men, who would palm off a kicking cow, or one that was not a stayer, onto their best friends.

  Another thing, we would advise Mr. Arthur not to use a milking stool with one leg, but to get one with three legs. It is undignified in any man to stretch out on a barn floor, with a one-legged milk stool kicking him in the pistol pocket, a pail of milk distributing itself over his person, and a frightened cow backed up in a stall threatening to hook his daylights out, and it would be more undignified in a President of the United States. Get a three-legged stool, by all means, or use an empty soap box to sit on.

  If all this unsolicited but well meant advice is taken, the country will be in no danger from Arthur’s decision to keep a cow, and we shall hope to see him on some fine morning next summer, as the sun is tinging the eastern horizon with its ray as he slaps her on the rump with a piece of barrel stave, or we will accept an invitation to visit his barn and show him how to mix a bran mash that will wake to ecstacy the aforesaid cow, and cause her milk to flow like back pay from the treasury.

  When it comes to cows we deserve a cabinet position.

  SHALL THERE BE HUGGING IN THE PARKS?

  The law-abiding people of this community were startled on Tuesday, and the greatest indignation prevailed at an editorial article in the Sentinel denouncing the practice of hugging in the public parks. The article went on to show that the placing of seats in the parks leads to hugging, and the editor denounced hugging in the most insane manner possible.

  The Sun does not desire to enter politics, but when a great constitutional question like this comes up, it will be found on the side of the weak against the strong.

  The Sentinel advises the removal of the seats from the park because hugging is done on them. Great heavens! has it come to this? Are the dearest rights of the American citizen to be abridged in this summary manner? Let us call the attention of that powerful paper to a clause in the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that “all men are created free and equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When the framers of that great Declaration of Independence were at work on that clause, they must have had in view the pastime of hugging in the parks.

  Hugging is certainly a “pursuit of happiness.” People do not hug for wages—that is, except on the stage. Nobody is obliged to hug. It is a sort of spontaneous combustion, as it were, of the feelings, and has to have proper conditions of the atmosphere to make it a success. Parties who object to hugging are old, usually, and have been satiated, and are like a lemon that has done duty in circus lemonade. If they had a job of hugging, they would want to hire a man to do it for them.

  A man who objects to a little natural, soul-inspiring hugging on a back seat in a park, of an evening, with a fountain throwing water all over little cast-iron cupids, has probably got a soul, but he hasn’t got it with him. To the student of nature there is no sight more beautiful than to see a flock of young people take seats in the park, after the sun has gone to bed in the west, and the moon has pulled a fleecy cloud over her face for a veil, so as not to disturb the worshippers.

  A couple, one a male and the other a female, will sit far apart on the cast-iron seat for a moment, when the young lady will try to fix her cloak over her shoulders, and she can’t fix it, and then the young man will help her, and when he has got it fixed he will go off and leave one arm around the small of her back. He will miss his arm, and wonder where he left it, and go back after it, and in the dark he will feel around with the other hand to find the hand he left, and suddenly the two hands will meet; they will express astonishment, and clasp each other, and be so glad that they will begin to squeeze, and the chances are that they will cut the girl in two, but they never do. Under such circumstances, a girl can exist on less atmosphere than she can when doing a washing.

  There is just about so much hugging that has to be done, and the Sentinel should remember that very many people have not facilities at their homes for such soul-stirring work, and they are obliged to flee to the parks, or to the woods, where the beneficent city government has provided all of the modern improvements.

  Hugging is as necessary to the youth of the land as medicine to the sick, and instead of old persons, whose days of kittenhood are over, throwing cold water upon the science of hugging, they should encourage it by all legitimate means.

  When, in strolling through the parks, you run on to a case of sporadic hugging, instead of making a noise on the gravel walk, to cause the huggists to stop it, you should trace your steps noiselessly, get behind a tree, and see how long they can stand it without dying. Instead of removing the cast-iron seats from the parks, we should be in favor of furnishing reserved seats for old people, so they can sit and watch the hugging.

  It doesn’t do any hurt to hug.

  People think it is unhealthy, but nobody was ever known to catch cold while hugging. It is claimed by some that young people who stay out nights and hug, are not good for anything the next day. There is something to this, but if they didn’t get any hugging they wouldn’t be worth a cent any time. They would be all the time looking for it.

  No, good Mr. Sentinel, on behalf of fifty thousand young people who have no organ to make known their wants, we ask you to stay your hand, and do not cause the seats to be removed from the parks. Remember how many there are who have yet to learn the noble art of hugging, and give them a chance.

  THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.

  The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State. There was no change, particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner’s breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem of the democratic party that crawls into a hole and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.

  The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a sic semper Americanus scunch. We do not complain that the sailor with the Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer. These things are of minor importance, but the docking of that badger’s tail, and setting it up like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upon every citizen of the State, and when the democrats get into power that tail shall be restored to its normal condition if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, and this work of the republican incendiaries shall be undone. The idea of Wisconsin appearing among the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is repugnant to all our finer feelings.

  CANNIBALS AND CORK LEGS.

  Great results are expected from an experiment recently tried by the American Missionary Society. Last fall they sent as missionary to the cannibal Islands a brother who had lost both arms and both legs in a railroad accident. He was provided with cork limbs, and his voice being, in good condition it was believed he could get in his work with the heathen as well as though he was a whole man. The idea was to allow the cannibals to kill him and eat him, beli
eving that the heathen would see the error of their ways and swear off on human flesh.

  A report has been received which is very encouraging. It seems that the cannibals killed the good missionary, and cut off his arms and legs for a sort of stew, or “boyaw,” thus falling directly into the trap set for them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred concert about like our national “Whoop it up, Liza Jane,” and when they stuck a fork into the boiling limbs, and found that the “meat” seemed water soaked, they set the table and sounded the loud timbrel for breakfast.

  The surviving missionary says he shall never forget the look of pain on the face of a buck cannibal as he bit into the elbow joint of the late lamented and struck a brass hinge. He picked it out as an American would pick a buckshot out of a piece of venison, and laid it beside his plate in an abstracted manner, and began to chew on the cork elbow. Any person who has ever tried to draw a cork out of a beer bottle with his teeth can realize the feelings of these cannibals as they tried to draw sustenance from the remains of the cork man. They were saddened, and it is safe to say they are incensed against the missionary society.

  Whether they will conclude that all Americans have become tough, and quit trying to masticate them, is not known, though that is the object sought to be attained by the society. One of the cannibals said he knew, when those legs and arms would not stay under water when they were boiling, and had to be loaded down with stones, that the meat wasn’t right, but his wife told him “some pork would bile so.”

  The experiment is worth following up, and we suppose hereafter there will be a great demand for men with cork arms and legs to be sent as missionaries. After a few such experiences the cannibals may see the error of their ways and become Christians, and eat dog sausage and Limberg cheese.