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
pretty good. First there came out about a dozen girls in tights, with
skirts as short as pie crust. Their legs were all round and well got up,
showing that the sawdust was evenly distributed, with no chance for
dissatisfaction. They capered around, and smiled at the reflection of the
red lights in the gallery upon the bald heads before them, and kicked up
like all possessed, and then they backed up against the wings and fooled
with the La Cross Assyrians, who came down like a wolf on the fold. Then
there came out two first-class dancers, one short, fat, plump, but mighty
small, so small that she didn't look as though she was big enough for a
cork to a jug. But she could dance. Well, she ought to, as she had no
clothes to bother her. Next came a brunette, evidently of French
extraction, with a face that was a protection against assault with intent
to kill, and legs of the Gothic style. Smith said she was spavined, but
that's a lie. She danced better than all of them, and walked on her big
toes till the audience yelled. Then the dancers all got tangled up
together, the brunette fell over on the little blonde, stuck her hind foot
right in the air as straight as a liberty pole struck by lightning,
somebody said "Tableau," and the curtain went down, and the audience
looked at each other as much as to say, "Let's go home." The boys in the
gallery cheered, and the curtain was rung up again, but her flag was still
there. Then they had a fighting scene, where everybody gets mad and goes
out into the dressing room and clashes old swords together, and come back
wounded. The king, after killing up a lot ahead, got a furlough and came
in and lallygaged with the Greek slave a spell, and then the battle was
lost, and "Sardine." said he might as well die for an old sheep as a lamb.
So he ordered a funeral pile built of red fire, and he got on it to be
burned up. The Greek slave said if that was the game she wanted a hand
dealt to her, as wherever "Sard." went she was going, as she had
an insurance policy against fire in the Northwestern Mutual. So he invited
her on to the kindling wood, and after hugging enough to last them through
perdition--and mighty good hugging it was too--the pile of slabs was
touched off, the flames rolled, and "Sard." and the Greek slave went down
to hell clasped in each other's embrace, and we went to the People's store
and bought a mackerel and went home and told our wife we had been to a
democratic caucus. We don't know what all the other fellows told their
wives, but there has been a heap of lying, we know that much.
[Illustration: "SARD." AND THE GREEK SLAVE.]
INSECURE ABODES.
Four men fell out of the Oshkosh jail the other day. If Oshkosh would only
imitate Fond du lac, and paper the county jail with wall paper, it might
become safe.
THE KNIGHT AND THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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