Peck's Compendium of Fun: Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite HumoristPeck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Compendium of Fun: Comprising the Choicest Gems of Wit, Humor, Sarcasm and Pathos of America's Favorite Humorist
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
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.
AN ODOROUS BOHEMIAN.
A Bohemian on the train last night had some cheese in his vest pocket that
was too ripe, and the conductor had to disinfect the car, and order the
Bohemian to be quarantined before the train would be allowed to enter the
city. Cheese is all right in its place, but it don't want to be allowed to
lay above ground too long after it has departed this life. If farmers will
pay a little attention to cheese in its different stages, much trouble can
be avoided. In union there is strength. So there is in a smoking car.
TRAGEDY ON THE STAGE.
The tendency of the stage is to present practical, everyday affairs in
plays, and those are the most successful which are the most natural. The
shoeing of a horse on the stage in a play attracts the attention of the
audience wonderfully, and draws well. The inner workings of a brewery, or
a mill, is a big card, but there is hardly enough tragedy about it. If
they could run a man or two through the wheel, and have them cut up into
hash, or have them drowned in a beer vat, audiences could applaud as they
do when eight or nine persons are stabbed, poisoned or beheaded in the
Hamlets and Three Richards, where corpses are piled up on top of each
other.
What the people want is a compromise between old tragedy and new comedy.
Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into a
slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith shop
or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter house,
with all the paraphernalia for killing cattle, and supe butchers to stand
around the star butcher with cleavers and knives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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