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
But about the woodcock. This is, kind reader, purely a woodcock story, and
more or less must be said about the dollar bird. But this is neither here
nor there. It was over in the Root river bottoms. Finally we got on the
woodcock ground and went to work. Talk about mosquitoes! There was no end
to them. We ought not to say that, either, because there are spots on our
person that just fit the end of a mosquito. There was an end to them. If
you never saw mosquitoes in convention, you want to go over there. And
right here we will give a recipe for keeping mosquitoes from biting. You
take some cedar oil and put on your coat collar, if you are a man, and if
you are a woman put it on that gingerbread work around your neck, and a
mosquito will come up and sing to you and get all ready to take toll, when
she will smell that oil. She is the sickest mosquito you ever saw. She
turns over on her back and sends her husband for the nearest doctor. We
had a bottle of cedar oil, and if Jennings hadn't left it hanging up in
Hogan's store in his coat, we should have made those mosquitoes sick. As
it was they did it to us. There isn't a spot on us as big as a billiard
table but what you can find artesian wells made by mosquitoes.
Woodcock sell higher in the market than any other bird. Lots of people
that never saw them eat snakes, eat them. When they get up to fly they
talk Bohemian, and get behind a bush. You shoot right into the bush, and
if you kill one you think you are a good shot. Talk about getting tired.
You walk around in the woods several miles, with mosquitoes getting
acquainted with you, and all the time your nerves strung up in
anticipation of seeing a dollar bill fly up, and if you don't sleep
without rocking, we are no prophet. The sport, however, is exhilerating,
and we are glad we went. We are glad because it learned us one thing, and
that is, if we ever want a woodcock real bad, it will be cheaper, easier,
and better to buy it. It will be inferred that we did not see a woodcock.
Such is the case.
But we made the blackbirds sick.
A BALD-HEADED MAN MOST CRAZY.
Last Wednesday the bell to our telephone rung violently at 8 o'clock in
the morning, and when we put our ear to the earaphone, and our mouth to
the mouthaphone, and asked what was the matter, a still small voice,
evidently that of a lady, said, "Julia has got worms, doctor."
We were somewhat taken back, but supposing Julia was going fishing, we
were just going to tell her not to forget to spit on her bait, when a male
voice said, "O, go to the devil, will you?" We couldn't tell whose voice
it was, but it sounded like the clerk at the Plankinton House, and we sat
down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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