Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
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Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
One two-hundred pound delegate with a cigar between his fingers, blew
the smoke out of the mouth which but a few hours before was uttering a
supplication to the Most High to make us all good, punched a thin elder
in the ribs with his thumb and said: “Jim, do you remember the time
we carried the cow and calf up into the recitation room?” For a moment
“Jim” was inclined to stand on his dignity, and he looked pained, until
they all began to laugh, when he looked around to see if any worldly
person was present, and satisfying himself that we were all truly good,
he said: “You bet your life I remember it. I have got a scar on my shin
now where that d--blessed cow hooked me,” and he began to roll up his
trousers leg to show the scar. They told him they would take his word,
and he pulled down his pants and said:
“Well, you see I was detailed to attend to the calf, and I carried the
calf up stairs, assisted by Bill Smith--who is now preaching in Chicago;
got a soft thing, five thousand a year, and a parsonage furnished, and
keeps a team, and if one of those horses is not a trotter then I am no
judge of horse flesh or of Bill, and if he don't put on an old driving
coat and go out on the road occasionally and catch on for a race with
some worldly-minded man, then I am another. You hear me--well, I never
knew a calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! Why, bless
your old alabaster heart, that calf walked all over me, from Genesis to
Revelations. And say, we didn't get much of a breeze the next morning,
did we, when we had to clean out the recitation room?”
A solemn-looking minister, with red hair, who was present, and whose
eyes twinkled some through the smoke, said to another:
“Charlie, you remember you were completely gone on the professor's niece
who was visiting there from Poughkeepsie? What become of her?”
Charlie put his feet on the table, struck a match on his trousers, and
said:
“Well, I wasn't gone on her, as you say, but just liked her. Not too
well, you know, but just well enough. She had a color of hair that I
could never stand--just the color of yours, Hank--and when she got
to going with a printer I kind of let up, and they were married. I
understand he is editing a paper somewhere in Illinois, and getting
rich. It was better for her, as now she has a place to live, and does
not have to board around like a country school ma'am, as she would if
she had married me.” A dark-haired man, with a coat buttoned clear
to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more
expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe
that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked
the ashes out in a spittoon, and said:
“Boys, do you remember the time we stole that three-seated wagon and
went out across the marsh to Kingsley's farm, after watermelons?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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