Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
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
There were two old men who loaf a good deal around a grocery, discussing
the wound of the President, and one was trying to illustrate to the
other how it was. He put on his glasses and took up a butter tryer and
walked up to a lady customer who was leaning over the counter smelling
of some boarding-house prunes. She was a large lady, and perhaps as good
a subject as could have been found. The first old man called the other
up behind the woman, and said:
“There, the assassin stood about as you do, and looked, probably, the
same as you do. Now, you take this spigot and point to the woman, about
here--” and he put the butter tryer on her back, near the belt.
“Yes, I see,” said the second old man, as he nibbled a piece off a soda
cracker, and pointed the wooden spigot at the woman, with his finger on
the trigger. The woman was busy looking to see if there were any worms
in the prunes, and she didn't notice what was going on.
“There,” said the first old man, as he pushed the end of the butter
tryer a little harder against the woman. “The bullet went in here, and
went around here close to the liver, though probably it didn't touch
the liver, passed through the thin membrane, and is probably lodged in
here,” and he reached around the woman with his left hand to where
her apron was tied on. “Now, if they cannot extract the ball the great
danger is from peritonitis--”
At this point the woman observed what was going on, and she was about as
mad as a woman can be. Seizing a codfish that was on the head of a sugar
barrel by the tail she whacked the first old gent, who held the butter
tryer, over the head, and said:
“Peritonitis is beginning to set in, you bald-headed old villain, and
general prostration will be the result. I will teach you to put your arm
around me. I am no manikin. Do you take me for a dissecting room? Put
down that gun, you idiot,” said she, as she wafted the codfish toward
the second old man, who still held up the spigot.
The grocery man, who was cutting a cheese, came around the counter with
the cheese knife in his hand, and said he hoped there would be no more
bloodshed, and asked the old man to put down the butter tryer and go
out. The two old men went out on the sidewalk, when the woman told the
grocery man that no woman was safe a moment when those old reprobates
were allowed to run at large, and when she got so low down as to allow
people to practice assassination on her with wooden faucets and butter
tryers she would join a circus. When the two old men got out on the walk
the second one said to the first:
“Didn't you know the woman?”
“Know her? No. I didn't think it was necessary for a formal introduction
in a trying time like this, when we all want all the information we
can get about the great tragedy. There is no accommodation about some
people. But she has gone out now, so let us carry back the spigot and
butter tryer, and may be the grocery man will treat to the cider.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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