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
dancers went to the cheese factory where the country people were gathered,
and after dancing a few quadrilles, the fiddlers struck up an old
fashioned waltz. While the visiting dancers were going into spasms to get
ready to wade in, the floor filled with the country couples, who were
waltzing around old fashioned, when all of a sudden those Ripon people
began to work. They flopped across the cheese factory, knocked down a
couple from Pickett's Corners, caromed on a fellow and his girl from
Brandon and sent them against a barrel of lemonade, glanced across the
hall and struck an old lady amidships that had just started to call her
girl off the floor because she was afraid the girl would catch those Ripon
cramps, knocked her under a bench, where she lay and called for her
husband Isaiah, to come and pick her up in a basket. In less than two
minutes all the other dancers hauled off, and stood on benches and looked
at them. Some of the country girls hid their heads and said they wanted to
go home. The visitors slid around the hall, caught each other on the fly,
run the bases, and come under the wire neck and neck, just as the man who
played second fiddle fell over the base viol in a dead faint, and the man
that played the piccalo rolled under the music stand, striken with
apoplexy. The manager of the dance called a constable who was present, and
told him to arrest the party, and handcuff them and take them to the
Oshkosh insane asylum, where they had escaped. The young men explained
that they were not crazy, and that it was only a new kind of dance, and
they were reluctantly allowed to remain, on condition that they "wouldn't
cut up any more of them city monkey shines, not afore folks."
SUMMER RESORTING.
The other day a business man who has one of the nicest houses in the
nicest ward in the city, and who has horses and carriages in plenty, and
who usually looks as clean as though just out of a band box and as happy
as a schoolma'am at a vacation picnic, got on a street car near the depot,
a picture of a total wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the collar
tucked down under the neck band of his shirt, which had no collar on, his
cuffs were sticking out of his coat pocket, his eyes looked heavy, and
where the dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked pale and he
was cross as a bear.
[Illustration: THE RESORTER.]
A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, after a day's work, with
a clean shirt on, a white vest and a general look of coolness, accosted
the traveler as follows:
"Been summer resorting, I hear?"
The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a painful effort, as though
his drawers stuck to his legs and almost peeled the back off, and
answered:
"Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck ten different
hotels, and if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot
weather, you can take my head for a soft thing," and he wiped a cinder out
of his eye with what was once a clean handkerchief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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