The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  Why, some of our best doctors never think of curing a man until they get him mad a few times. It braces a man up to get mad and think, “Now that confounded old pill-bags has forgotten all about me, and I’ll bet he is in a saloon somewhere shaking the dice for the drinks.” A sick man gains strength, actually, lying in bed and thinking how he would like to kick the stuffin’ out of a doctor.

  A doctor who has only one patient is a damage to the patient, and Garfield has suffered more by having those doctors around when he ought to have been left alone till he yearned for them, than anybody imagines. Why, the feeling of a man’s pulse for half an hour, and timing it as you would a trotting horse, is enough to make a well man sick. What a doctor wants to do is to feel of a man’s pulse about one second, and then throw the patient’s hand down and say: “O, you are all right. We will have you entered in a walking match next week.”

  He wants to say something of this kind if the man is dying. A doctor has got to be a good deal of a liar, to succeed. We do not mean to say Bliss is not a liar, but somehow he does not seem to display judgment. He is too much of a stayer. Bliss is too frequent.

  THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ABE TALKING ABOUT.

  A celebrated writer on the state of the country, has an article in a magazine, in which occurs the following paragraph:

  “The defects of the New England girl may be done away with by giving less prominence to the purely intellectual or purely practical side of her education.”

  In the first place, we do not admit that there are any defects in the Boston girl, but if there are defects, as is alleged by the writer above, and by other scientific persons, we do not see how giving less prominence to her intellectuality is going to do away with them. For instance, there is a defect in the girl whereby she has a shin on both sides of her lower limb, or an indentation where there should be the customary calf—we say calf advisedly, because it is a calf, and no person need be ashamed of it, even if it is terrible slim—we don’t see how that defect can be done away with by giving less prominence to the purely practical side of her education. It does not stand to reason. Sawdust, or bran would be worth two of it.

  Or, again, suppose the New England girl has no hips to speak of, or her stomach is caved in where there should be a fullness, is the giving of less prominence to the purely intellectual side of her education going to do away with these defects, or fill up the waste places and make them glad? Not much! A sack of canary seed, or a rubber air cushion, or a bale of cotton, beats the Boston idea all hollow, and we will leave it to anybody that knows anything.

  Now, as to hair. Suppose the Boston girl has no more natural hair than one of these Mexican dogs, is education going to raise a crop of hair? Not by any means—she has got to buy it.

  No, you Boston magazine critters can theoretically take a plain, unvarnished New England girl with these defects, and give all the prominence you want to to the practical side of her education, and you may imagine you can do away with these defects and make her pass muster in a crowd, but when you get all through she will be homely as a stone fence, and some western girl, with no defects at all, just a natural born jolly girl, with not too much education and intellectuality, will come along there, and all Boston will go crazy after her.

  You fellows don’t seem to know what you are talking about. Well, we don’t know what we are talking about either, but we had to write something to fill up with, and girls are the easiest things in the world to write about.

  A KANSAS CYCLONE.

  The little town of Clyde, Kansas, is mighty full of vinegar for a place of its size. The principal amusement the boys have is to scare the daylights out of visitors from the States by telling big stories about cyclones.

  There are two young fellows in business there named Will May and Charley Armstrong. They have a store where they buy butter, and eggs, and things, and pack them for the Eastern market. Last June, Uncle Armstrong, father of Charley, and a young fellow named Charley Farmer, were out there visiting. The hosts entertained the guests to the most hair-standing stories about cyclones, until they were so nervous they couldn’t sleep at night.

  One night the guests had retired, and the zephyr was pretty loud. Will and Charley got into the room adjoining that occupied by the guests, and began to talk about funnel-shaped clouds, trees torn up by the roots, horses flying through the air, and wagons being taken up bodily and carried away—talking so the guests could hear them. Then they prayed for strength to pull them through the fearful ordeal; and, pretending that a cyclone was upon them, they started down stairs head over appetite, to get into the refrigerator, in the cellar, for safety, yelling to the guests to fly for their lives.

  Uncle Armstrong is getting pretty well along in years, but he got down to the cellar about ten stairs ahead of young Farmer, and asked to be allowed to get into the refrigerator first. It seemed a little cruel to the boys to let the guests get in there with nothing on but their undershirts, but they were going to have some fun, so they put them in among the cakes of ice, and Uncle Armstrong sat down on the zinc floor and allowed that if his life was spared till morning, he would never set foot in Kansas again.

  Young Farmer sat on a firkin of butter, and leaned against the zinc lined side of the refrigerator, and tried to pray, but he had forgotten the combination; and couldn’t make a first payment.

  Will and Charley went up stairs ostensibly to lock the safe, but really to go on with the programme. The first thing they did was to fire off a shotgun, and roll a keg of shingle-nails down the cellar stairs, and yell to the guests in the refrigerator to look out for God’s sake, as the house was struck by lightning.

  Young Farmer got down off the firkin, and got on his knees, and tried to repeat some Sunday school lesson, but all he could think of was, “Evil communications corrupt two in the bush.” The old gentleman, who was struck in the small of the back by a piece of ice that fell off some butter, thought he was struck by lightning; so he began to sing, “A charge to keep I have.”

  The boys up stairs got a bag of buckshot, and opened it, and every little while would throw a handful onto the outside cellar door, right above the heads of the freezing occupants of the refrigerator, at the same time pounding a piece of sheet iron to make thunder. They kept this up for an hour, and then got a barrel and filled it with broken glass and pieces of crockery, and they would roll it across the floor above, while one would take an ax and pound on some bar iron that was leaning against the wall, making a most hideous noise.

  Charley Farmer said he supposed he was as well prepared to die as he ever would be, but he said he would give ten dollars if he had his pants down there.

  Uncle Armstrong asked him what difference it made whether he had his pants on or not, and Charley said he didn’t want to be ushered into the New Jerusalem with all his sins on his head, before the angels, and nothing on but a knit undershirt.

  They were discussing this question when they gave vent to a dying groan, closed their eyes, and then all was still.

  The prisoners thought it was all over, and they didn’t stir for about ten minutes. They thought the house had blown away, and left them alive, and they were inclined to be thankful even for that; when Charley and Will came down and opened the refrigerator, and told them the storm was over, but that it was the almightiest cyclone that ever passed over Kansas.

  HOW JEFF DAVIS WAS CAPTURED.

  The accounts of the capture of Jeff Davis, in his wife’s clothes, which have been published ever since the war, have caused many to laugh, and has surrounded the last days of the confederacy with a halo of ludicrousness that has caused much hard feeling between Mr. Davis and the American people. His friends would have been much better pleased if he had bared his breast to the cavalryman who captured him, and been run through with a sabre, and died with some proud last words on his lips, such as, “Who will care for mother now,” or “The cause is lost. Send out a search warrant to find it.”

  It was a terribly ridiculous ending to a great s
truggle, the way we have been in the habit of reading the story, but now we have a new light on the subject. Mr. Davis has written a book on the war, and in it he gives the following particulars of his capture and the bravery he displayed. Instead of sneaking off in his wife’s petticoat, after a pail of spring water, Mr. Davis describes that escape as being almost a bloody encounter. He says:

  “I had gone perhaps fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer, and, dropping the shawl and raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward him. He leveled his carbine at me, but I expected if he fired he would miss me, and my intention was, in that event, to put my hand under his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into his saddle and attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching, when she saw the soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around me. Success depended on instantaneous action, and, recognizing that the opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp and chilly, passed on to a fire beyond the tent.”

  This puts an entirely different face on the affair, and instead of being a childish coward, he represents himself to have been an arch conspirator, who disguised himself as a female to get a good chance to throw a boy off his horse and steal the horse. We can only admire the calm determination of the man, as he stood there waiting for the boy to shoot, so he could rush up, unarmed, put his hand under the soldier’s foot, tip him off the horse, get on himself, without receipting to the government for the horse, and skedaddle.

  It is not necessary to inquire what the boy would have been doing all the time Jeff was pulling him off the horse. We all know how easy it is for an unarmed old man to spill a healthy soldier off a horse. We can readily see that the soldier could not have whacked the old fellow over the head with the empty carbine, or drawn his sabre and run him through, or given him a few shots out of a revolver.

  Jeff had, no doubt, arranged in his own mind to chloroform the bold Michigan cavalryman, but his wife broke it all up by throwing her arms around him at an inopportune moment, thus pinioning the President of the Confederacy so he could not whip the Union army. And so, like Adam, Jeff lays the whole business to the woman. What would we do without women to lay everything to?

  And while Jeff must ever doubt the judgment of his wife in breaking up his plans at that trying moment, when so much was at stake, how that soldier, whose life was saved by her act, must revere her, memory! Had the woman not held Jeff the soldier must have been pitched off his horse, and striking on his head, he must have been killed.

  Mr. Davis does not say so, but we have no doubt his plan was to have the soldier strike on his head on a projecting root or stone, so he would be killed. If there should be another war, we should never join the cavalry branch of the service unless there was an understanding that no old men, armed with petticoats and tin water pails, should be allowed to charge on cavalrymen and throw them off their horses.

  It is said that during the late war no man ever saw a dead cavalryman, but if the tactics of Mr. Davis had been adopted early in the war, the mortality must have been fearful, and perhaps the result of the war would have been different. We cannot be too thankful that Jeff didn’t think of that way of demoralizing cavalry before.

  THOSE BOLD, BAD DRUMMERS.

  About seventy-five traveling men were snowed in at Green Bay during a late blockade, and they were pretty lively around the hotels, having quiet fun Friday and Saturday, and passing away the time the best they could, some playing seven up, others playing billiards, and others looking on. Some of the truly good people in town thought the boys were pretty tough, and they wore long faces and prayed for the blockade to raise so the spruce looking chaps could go away.

  The boys noticed that occasionally a lantern-jawed fellow would look pious at them, as though afraid he would be contaminated, so Sunday morning they decided to go to church in a body. Seventy-five of them slicked up and marched to the Rev. Dr. Morgan’s church, where the reverend gentleman was going to deliver a sermon on temperance. No minister ever had a more attentive audience, or a more intelligent one, and when the collection plate was passed every last one of the travelers chipped in a silver dollar.

  When the sexton had received the first ten dollars the perspiration stood out on his forehead as though he had been caught in something. It was getting heavy, something that never occurred before in the history of church collections at the Bay. As he passed by the boys, and dollar after dollar was added to his burden, he felt like he was at a picnic, and when twenty-five dollars had accumulated on the plate he had to hold it with both hands, and finally the plate was full, and he had to go and empty it on the table in front of the pulpit, though he was careful to remember where he left off, so he wouldn’t go twice to the same drummer.

  As he poured the shekels out on the table, as still as he could, every person in the audience almost raised up to look at the pile, and there was a smile on every face, and every eye turned to the part of the church where sat the seventy-five solemn looking traveling men, who never smole a smile. The sexton looked up to the minister, who was picking out a hymn, as much as to say, “Boss, we have struck it rich, and I am going back to work the lead some more.” The minister looked at the boys, and then at the sexton as though saying, “Verily, I would rather preach to seventy-five Milwaukee and Chicago drummers than to own a brewery. Go, thou, and reap some more trade dollars in my vineyard.”

  The sexton went back and commenced where he left off. He had his misgivings, thinking maybe some of the boys would glide out in his absence, or think better of the affair and only put in nickels on the second heat, but the first man the sexton held out the platter to planked down his dollar, and all the boys followed suit, not a man “passed” or “ra nigged,” and when the last drummer had been interviewed the sexton carried the biggest load of silver back to the table that he ever saw.

  Some of the silver dollars rolled off on the floor, and he had to put some in his coat pockets, but he got them all, and looked around at the congregation with a smile and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief and winked, as much as to say, “The first man that speaks disrespectfully of a traveling man in my presence will get thumped, and don’t you forget it.”

  The minister rose up in the pulpit, looked at the wealth on the table, and read the hymn, “A charge to keep I have,” and the congregation joined, the travelers swelling the glad anthem as though they belonged to a Pinafore chorus. They all bowed their heads while the minister, with one eye on the dollars, pronounced the benediction, and the services were over.

  The traveling men filed out through the smiles of the ladies and went to the hotel, while half the congregation went forward to the anxious seat, to “view the remains.” It is safe to say that it will be unsafe, in the future, to speak disparagingly of traveling men in Green Bay, as long as the memory of that blockade Sunday remains green with the good people there.

  ANGELS OR EAGLES.

  We are told that in the revision of the Bible the passage, “And I beheld an angel flying through the midst of heaven,” has been changed to “eagle,” and that all allusions to angels have been changed to “eagles.” This knocks the everlasting spots out of the angel business, and the poetry of wanting to be an angel, “and with the angels stand,” has become the veriest prose.

  We have never had any particular desire to stand with angels, not this year, but there was a certain beauty in the idea that we would all be angels when we got through whooping it up down here and went to heaven.

  Particularly was this the case with children and women, and old persons, and to have the angel business wiped out by a lot of white chokered revisers is too much. There are many of us that would never make very attractive angels, unless we were altered over a good deal, and made smaller.

  Some of us, to pass current among angels, would have to wear wigs. How would a male bald-headed angel, with a red nose, and one eye gone, look flying a matc
h through the blue ethereal space with a trim built girl angel? The other angels would just sit around on the ground, picking pin feathers out of their wings, and laugh so a fellow would want to go off somewhere and get behind a tree and condemn his luck.

  There are few men who would be improved by fastening wings on their shoulder blades, and we never believed they could make the thing work, but the preachers have kept pounding it into us until we all got an idea there would be some process that could transform us into angels that would pass in a crowd.

  Now, you take Long John Wentworth, of Chicago, a man seven feet high, and weighing four hundred pounds. What kind of an angel would he make? They would have to put wings on him as big as a side show tent, or he never could make any headway. Just imagine John circling around over the New Jerusalem, until he saw a twenty dollar gold piece loose in the pavement of the golden streets. He would cut loose and go down there so quick it would break him all up.

  And then suppose angel Storey, of the Times, and angel Medill, of the Tribune, should have got their eyes on that loose gold piece, and got there about the same time before angel John arrived, and should be quarreling over it? John would knock Storey over onto a hydrant with one wing, and mash angel Medill in the gutter with the other, and take the gold piece in his toes and fly off to where the choir was singing, and break them all up singing, “You’ll never miss the water till the well runs dry.”

  We have never taken a great deal of stock in the angel doctrine, because we knew pretty well what kind of material they would have to be made of, but we had rather be an angel than an eagle. Who the deuce wants to die and be an eagle, like “Old Abe,” and eat rats? In a heaven full of eagles there would be the worst clawing that ever was, and the air would be full of feathers. Eagles won’t do, and the revisers ought to have known it.