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 law to compel hotel keepers to provide rope ladders for every room
above the second floor, is said not to be enforced, though it should be by
all means. The law ought to be amended so as to compel guests to get up
once or twice during the night and run up or down the rope ladder, outside
the window, in their night clothes, so as to be in practice in case of
fire. When every room is provided with rope ladders there will be lots of
fun. Those men who invariably blow out the gas, will probably think they
have got to come down stairs on the rope ladder in the morning, and it
will take an extra clerk to stand in the alleys around a hotel, with a
shot gun, to keep impecunious guests from going away from the tavern via
rope ladder. And then imagine an Oshkosh man in a Milwaukee hotel, his
head full of big schemes, and his skin full of beer. He has been on a
"bum," and is nervous, and on being shown to his room he sees the rope
ladder coiled up under the window, ready to spring upon him. He stares at
it, and the cold sweat stands all over him. The rope ladder returns his
gaze, and seems to move and to crawl towards his feet. For a moment he is
powerless to move. His hair stands on end, his heart ceases to beat, cold
and warm chills follow each other down his trousers legs and he clutches
at the air, his eyes start from their sockets, and just as the rope ladder
is about to wind around him, and crush his life out, he regains strength
enough to rush down stairs head over appetite, and tell the clerk about
the menagerie up stairs. O, there is going to be fun with these rope
ladders, sure.
A DOCTOR OF LAWS.
A doctor at Ashland is also a Justice of the Peace, and when he is called
to visit a house he don't know whether he is to physic or to marry.
Several times he has been called out in the night, to the country, and he
supposed some one must be awful sick, and he took a cart load of
medicines, only to find somebody wanted marrying. He has been fooled so
much that when he is called out now he carries a pill-bag and a copy of
the statutes, and tells them to take their choice.
He was called to one house and found a girl who seemed feverish. She was
sitting up in a chair, dressed nicely, but he saw at once that the fatal
flush was on her cheek, and her eyes looked peculiar. He felt of her
pulse, and it was beating at the rate of two hundred a minute. He asked
her to run out her tongue, and she run out eight or nine inches of the
lower end of it. It was covered with a black coating, and he shook his
head and looked sad. She had never been married any before, and supposed
that it was necessary for a Justice who was going to marry a couple to
know all about their physical condition, so she kept quiet and answered
questions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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