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
The only persons that are real sure that their calling and election is
sure, and that they are going to heaven across lots, are the men who are
hung for murder. They always announce that they have got a dead thing on
it, just before the drop falls. How encouraging it must be to children to
listen to the prayers of our ministers in churches, who admit that they
are miserable sinners, living on God's charity, and doubtful if they would
be allowed to sit at His right hand, and as they tell the story of their
own unworthiness the tears trickle down their cheeks. Then let the
children read an account of a hanging bee, and see how happy the condemned
man is, how he shouts glory hallelujah, and confesses that, though he
killed his man, he is going to heaven. A child will naturally ask, why
don't the ministers murder somebody, and make a dead sure thing of it?
THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.
You may organize a church choir and think you have got it down fine, and
that every member of it is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a
moment as you think not you will find that one or more of them are full of
the old Harry, and it will break out when you least expect it. There is no
more beautiful sight to the student of nature than a church choir. To see
the members sitting together, demure, devoted and pious looking, you think
that there is never a thought enters their mind that is not connected with
singing anthems, but sometimes you get left.
There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is about as near perfect as a
choir can be. It has been organized for a long time, and has never
quarreled, and the congregation swears by it. When the choir strikes a
devotional attitude it is enough to make an ordinary Christian think of
the angel band above, only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females
wear fashionable clothes.
You would not think that this choir played tricks on each other during the
sermon, but sometimes they do. The choir is furnished with the numbers of
the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, and they put a bookmark in
the book at the proper place. One morning they all got up to sing, when
the soprano turned pale, as an ace of spades dropped out of her hymn book,
the alto nearly fainted when the queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and
the rest of the pack was distributed around in the other books. They laid
it onto the tenor, but he swore, while the minister was preaching, that he
didn't know one card from another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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