Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 — John Shaqi
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 is one thing we want to set our face against and try and break up,
and that is the habit of young and middle aged persons going fishing on
Sunday, when going on the Summer excursions to the country. The devil,
or some other inventor, has originated a walking-stick that looks as
innocent as a Sunday school teacher, but within it is a roaring lion, in
the shape of a fish-pole. We have watched young fellows, and know their
tricks. Sunday morning they say to their parents that they have agreed
to go over on the West Side and attend early mass with a companion, just
to hear the exquisite music, and, by the way, they may not be home to
dinner. And they go from that home, with their new cane, looking as
pious as though they were passing the collection plate. When they get
around the corner they whoop it up for the depot, and shortly they
are steaming out into the country. They have a lot of angleworms in an
envelope in their vest pockets, and a restaurant colored man, who has
been seen the night before, meets them at the depot and hands them a
basket of sandwiches with a bottle sticking out.
Arriving at the summer resort, they go to the bank of the lake and take
a boat ride, and when well out in the lake they begin to unbosom the
cane. Taking a plug out of the end of it, they pull out a dingus and
three joints of fish-pole come out, and they tie a line on the end, put
an angle worm on the hook, and catch fish. That is the kind of “mass”
they are attending.
At night the train comes back to town, and the sunburnt young men, with
their noses peeled, hand a basket to the waiting colored man, which
smells of fish, and they go home and tell their parents they went out
to Forest Home Cemetery in the afternoon, and the sun was awful hot. The
good mother knows she smells fish on her son's clothes, but she thinks
it is some new kind of perfumery, and she is silent.
An honest up-and-up fish-pole is a thing of beauty and a joy forever,
if the fishing is good, but one of these deceptive, three carde monte,
political fish-poles, that shoves in and appears to be a cane, is
incendiary, and ought to be suppressed. There ought to be a law passed
to suppress a fish-pole that passes in polite society for a cane, and
in such a moment as ye think not is pulled out to catch fish. There is
nothing square about it, and the invention of that blasted stem winding
fish-pole is doing more to ruin this country than all the political
parties can overcome. If there was a law to compel the owners of those
wailking-sticks to put a sign on their canes, “This is a fish-pole,”
there would be less canes taken on these Sunday excursions in summer.
Look not upon the walking-stick when it is hollow, and pulls out, for at
last it giveth thee away, young fellow.
*****
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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