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 wheiher 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 with 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 “square.”
That is the kind of practical religion a worldly man can occasionally practice without having a gospel car.
BANKS AND BANKING.
The subject of banking has engrossed the attention of your excellent Governor for, lo! these many weeks, and he is constrained to say that some radical changes must be made in the method of receiving deposits by banks, where an equivalent is not rendered, of His Excellency will be compelled to emerge from his present aristocratic quarters and take up his abode in the poor-house. I would call your attention to the practice certain banks have of issuing checks in lieu of cash. If these checks were available at the groceries it would be better than it is. Banks have got in a habit of issuing a species of ivory button in receipt for the green coin of the realm which is only good at the counter of the bank. These checks are not issued by the National Banks, but by the State Banks, denominated “Keno” and “Faro.” I would not charge that there is “skullduggery” or “shenanagen” going on in these institutions, as the president of one of them informed me, confidentially, that he dealt on the “square,” but it is a noticeable fact that the dividends received by those who do business with the banks, are almost, as it were, imperceptible. I trust that you will cause this branch of industry to be thoroughly investigated, and report by bill or otherwise. Our finances should be beyond suspicion of dishonesty.
LARGE MOUTHS ABE FASHIONABLE.
The fashion papers, which are authority on the styles, claim that ladies with large mouths are all the fashion now, and that those whose mouths are small and rosebud like are all out of style. It is singular the freaks that are taken by fashion. Years ago a red-headed girl, with a mouth like a slice cut out of a muskmelon, would have been laughed at, and now such a girl is worth going miles to see.
It is easier to color the hair red, and be in fashion, than it is to enlarge the mouth, though a mouth that has any give to it can be helped by the constant application of a glove stretcher during the day, and by holding the cover to a tin blacking box while sleeping. What in the world the leaders of fashion wanted to declare large mouths the style for, the heavens only can tell.
Take a pretty face and mortise about a third of it for mouth, and it seems to us as though it is a great waste of raw material. There is no use that a large mouth can be put to that a small mouth would not do better, unless it is used for a pigeon hole to file away old sets of false teeth. They can’t certainly, be any better for kissing.
You all remember the traveling man who attended the church fair at Kalamazoo, where one of the sisters would give a kiss for ten cents. He went up and paid his ten cents, and was about to kiss her when he noticed that her mouth was one of those large, open face, cylinder escapement, to be continued mouths. It commenced at the chin and went about four chains and three links in a northwesterly direction, then around by her ear, across under the nose and back by the other ear to the place of beginning, and containing twelve acres, more or less.
The traveling man said he was only a poor orphan, and had a family to support, and if he never came out alive it would be a great hardship upon those dependent upon him for support, and he asked her as a special favor that she take her hand and take a reef in one side of the mouth so it would be smaller. She consented, and puckered in a handful of what would have been cheek, had it not been mouth. He looked at her again and found that the mouth had become a very one-sided affair, and he said he had just one more favor to ask.
He was not a man that was counted hard to suit when he was at home in Chicago, but he would always feel as though he had got his money’s worth, and go away with pleasanter recollections of Kalamazoo, if she would kindly take her other hand and draw the other side of her mouth together, and he would be content to take his ten cents’ worth out of what was left unemployed.
This was too much, and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him his ten cents, saying, “Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago drummer, that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the best part of it? Go! Get thee to a nunnery,” and he went and bought a lemonade with the money.
We would not advise any lady whose mouth is small to worry about this new fashion, and try to enlarge the one nature has given her. Large mouths will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought after by the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones that pout, and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones will be for rent. The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized one, that has a dimple by its sides, which is always in style.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.
Under this heading I can think of nothing that appears more appropriate than the subject of the artificial propagation of fish. It is a subject that has arrested the attention of many of the ablest minds of the country, and the results of experiments have been thus far so satisfactory that it is almost safe to predict that within the next ten centuries every man, however poor, may pick bull-heads off of his crab apple vines and gather his winter supply of fresh shad from his sweet potato trees at less than fifty cents a pound. The experiments that have been made in our own state warrant us in going largely into the fish business. A year ago a quantity of fish seeds were sub soil plowed into the ice of Lake Mendota, and to-day I am informed that boarders at the hotels there have all the fish to eat that any reasonable man could desire. The expense is small and the returns a
re enormous. It is estimated that from the six quarts of fish seeds that were planted in the lake there are now ready for the market at least 11,000,000 car loads of brain-producing food, if you spit on your bait when you go fishing.
CHRISTMAS TREES.
There is too much dress parade about Christmas. Too many Christmas trees where rich children get club skates, and gold napkin rings, and poor children get pop corn strung on a string, and cornucopias full of peppermint candy.
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 a 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.
TERROR IN CHURCH.
A ridiculous scene occurred at Palmyra, the other day. The furnace in the basement of the church is reached by a trap door, which is right beside the pulpit. There was a new preacher there from abroad, and he did not know anything about the trap door, and the sexton went down there to fix the fire, before the new minister arrived. The minister had just got warmed up in his sermon, and was picturing to his hearers hell in all its heat. He had got excited and told of the lake of burning brimstone below, where the devil was the stoker, and where the heat was ten thousand times hotter than a political campaign, and where the souls of the wicked would roast, and fry, and stew until the place froze over.
Wiping the perspiration from his face, he said, pointing, to the floor, “Ah, my friends, look down into that seething, burning lake, and—” Just at this point the trap door raised a little, and the sexton’s face, with coal smut all over it, appeared. He wanted to come up and hear the sermon.
If hell had broke loose, the new minister could not have been more astonished. He stepped back, grasped his manuscript, and was just about to jump from the pulpit, when a deacon on the front seat said, “It’s all right, brother; he has only been down below to see about the fire.” The sexton came up and shut down the trap door, the color came back to the face of the minister, and he went on, though the incident seemed to take the tuck all out of him.
A traveling man who happened to be at the church tells us that he knows the minister was scared, for he sweat so that the perspiration run right down on the carpet and made a puddle as though a dipper of water had been tipped over there. The minister says he was not scared, but we don’t see how he could help it.
FISH HATCHING IN WISCONSIN.
I would suggest that you permit the subject of the artificial hatching of fish to engage your attention, and that you appropriate several dollars to purchase whale’s eggs, vegetable oysters and mock turtle seeds. The hatching of fish is easy, and any man can soon learn it; and it is a branch of industry that many who are now out of employment, owing to circumstances beyond their control, will be glad to avail themselves of. How, I ask you, could means better be adapted to the ends than for the retiring officers of our State to go to setting on fish eggs?
TRAINS WITHOUT CONDUCTORS.
Since the introduction of the patent air brake on passenger trains, by which brakemen have been dispensed with, a number of patent right men have been studying up some contrivance to do away with conductors. All have failed except one, and that fortunate inventor is Col. Johnson, of the Railroad Eating House, Milwaukee. He has been engaged for two years on this patent, and has got it so near completed that he has filed a caveat at the Patent Office, and as his rights are secured, it can do no harm to describe the invention, as it is destined to work quite a revolution in the railroad business. It has been Col. Johnson’s idea that an arrangement could be made so that an engineer of a train could have the whole train under his charge, to stop it, start it, collect fares, and bounce impecunious passengers, from his position on the engine, and do it all by steam, wind and water. A series of pneumatic tubes run from the door of each car to the engine, with speaking tubes. A passenger gets on the platform, and through the speaking tube asks the engineer what the fare is to such a place. The answer is returned, the fare is put in the hopper of the pneumatic tube, it goes to the engineer, he pulls a string, the door flies open and the passenger enters. Not the least important part of the machinery is the patent “æolian bouncer,” as it is called. A pair of ice tongs are placed so as to grasp the passenger by the seat of the pants or the polonaise, as the case may be, when he or she gets on the platform. These tongs are connected with the air brakes, in such a manner that by the engineer’s touching a spring the whole force of the compressed air takes possession of the tongs, and the passenger is snatched bald-headed, metaphorically speaking. For instance, a passenger gets on the platform at Portage, and the ice tongs grasp him or her securely. If he or she pays the fare, the door is opened, the tongs release their hold, and the person is allowed to enter. But if the engineer should find that they had no money, or that their pass had run out, and they were trying to beat their way, he would pull the string and they would be lifted back on the depot steps and stood on their heads, raised in the air and made to see stars. Col. Johnson has been offered a fabulous sum for his patent, but he has not decided whether to sell or lease it. A trial trip was made at Milwaukee, the other day, and though the machine was not perfect, the experiment was not altogether a failure. A car was arranged with the apparatus, and went out to the Soldier’s Home. Col. Johnson and a number of prominent railroad men were on board. They got a veteran soldier and a Polack waman to allow the machine to experiment on them. The machine took hold of the soldier and the engineer jerked. The man had one leg torn off, and the seat of his overcoat was ruined. He wouldn’t try again, so they let the woman step on the platform. The engineer turned it the wrong way, and the car seemed full of compressed air, and a smell of limberger cheese pervaded the premises. When the smoke cleared off the woman was not to be found. After voting the machine a success the party started for Milwaukee. On nearing the city a pair of wooden shoes were seen in the air coming down, and they lit in the the canal by the tannery. A pair of corsets struck on Plankinton’s packing house, and sections of spinal cord, and one leg of a pair of red drawers came down on the Soldier’s home, and hair was found on the top of the car. It is thought the engineer loaded the air bouncer too heavy, and that it kicked. However, Col. Johnson was not discouraged, and will soon have his patent on all cars. The husband of the Polack woman wanted Johnson to pay him three dollars, but he said he didn’t want to buy the woman. All he wanted was to hire her, anyway. Col. Johnson is a great inventor. It was he that invented the stomach pump, and the automatic candle enunciator, for awakening guests in the night to take early trains. The latter he so
ld to Mr. Williams, of Prairie du Chien, for a large amount and took his pay in trade.
RAISING ELEPHANTS.
Why not go to raising elephants? A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars. A pair of elephants can be bought by a community of farmers pooling their issues and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can be a menagerie of it own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thousand dollars from the sale of surplus elephants. It may be said that elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordinary farmer in a short time. Well, they can be turned out into the highway to browse, and earn their own living. This elephant theory is a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy.
THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE.
A justice of the peace at Menasha, wanted to kill Pratt, the editor of the Press. The matter has been compromised, however. Pratt got the justice cornered up, and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, “Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender.”
A TRYING SITUATION.
It was along in the winter, and the prominent church members were having a business meeting in the basement of the church to devise ways and means to pay for the pulpit furniture. The question of an oyster sociable had been decided, and they got to talking about oysters, and one old deaconess asked a deacon if he didn’t think raw oysters would go further at a sociable, than stewed oysters.
He said he thought raw oysters would go further, but they wouldn’t be as satisfying. And then he went on to tell how far a raw oyster went once with him. He said he was at a swell dinner party with a lady on each side of him, and he was trying to talk to both of them, or carry on two conversations, on two different subjects at the same time.
They had some shell oysters, and he took up one on a fork—a large, fat one—and was about to put it in his mouth, when the lady on his left called his attention, and when the cold fork struck his teeth, and no oyster on it, he felt as though it had escaped, but he made no sign. He went on talking with the lady as though nothing had happened. He glanced down at his shirt bosom, and was at once on the trail of the oyster, though the insect had got about two minutes start of him. It had gone down his vest under the waistband of his clothing, and he was powerless to arrest its progress.
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