The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  We know there are those who will say that cats are not in misery when they give vent to those soul-stirring passages from unwritten opera, under the currant bushes, but we cannot but think that they are in the most crushing misery which it would be a charity to put them out of, or they would not chew their words so, and expectorate imaginary tobacco juice, mingled with hair and profanity. We know that human beings when they are enjoying each others society do not groan, and scratch, and Samantha around with their backs up, and their eyes sot, and run up board fences, and it is a safe inference to draw that these after dark cats are in pain. Of course cats are not human, though they are endowed with certain human instincts, such as staying out nights, and following other cats.

  Sitting on the sharp edge of a board fence for hours, gazing at a neighboring cat, and occasionally purmowing, may be likened by the student of nature, to human beings who sit for hours on a cast iron seat in the park, with arms around each other; but it is far different. We have yet to hear of instances where quantities of hair have been found on the ground in the parks, and no young man or young woman, after an evening in the park, comes to his place of business in the morning, with eyes clawed out, ears chewed, or so stiff as to be unable to get up from under the stove without being kicked. Weighing this matter carefully and in an unbiased manner, we must give the chromo for good conduct, correct deportment, and good citizenship, to the human beings who frequent the parks at night, over the cats who picnic under our gooseberry bustes, and play Copenhagen on our area fences, when those who have brought them up from innocent kittenhood think they are abed and asleep.

  So it is plain that the humane society has got work to do. We, as a people, have got tired of seeing a Thomas cat that never paid any taxes, get upon a pile of wood, swell his tail up to the size of a rolling pin, bid defiance to all laws, spit on his hands and say in ribald language to a Mariar cat, of a modest and retiring disposition, “Lay on, Mac Duff, and blanked be he who first cries purmeow.” This thing has got to cease. The humane society will soon be on the track of the enemy.

  We know that the war is about to commence, because Mr. Holton has resigned the presidency of the society. But there are bold men in the society that are not so tender-hearted as Brother Holton, and they will fight this cat question to the bitter end.

  We can almost see Mr. Oliver, with his trusty shot gun, going through back alleys at midnight, his white plume always to be found where cat hair is the thickest. John Woodhull will meet him, after the enemy is driven over the fence in disorder, and taken refuge under the shrubbery, and they will compare notes and cats. Good Mr. Spencer sees the handwriting on the wall, and his voice will be still for cats. Winfield Smith and Chas. Ray will go out in the pale moonlight with stuffed clubs and sell cats short, while Prof. McAllister and Chaplain Gordon, of the Light House, will sing a solemn requiem for the repose of the alleged souls of the midnight opera performers on the back fence, and a grateful people will pass resolutions of thanks that where once all was chaos and cat hair, all will be peace and good will towards morning. And may grace, mercy, peace and plenty of cat scalps abide with the bold night riders of the Humane society of Milwaukee. Scat!

  THE KNIGHT AND THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.

  There was one of those things occurred at a Chicago hotel during the conclave that is so near a fight and yet so ridiculously laughable that you don’t know whether you are on foot or a horseback. Of course some of the Knights in attendance were from the back woods, and while they were well up in all the secret workings of the order, they were awful “new” in regard to city ways.

  There was one Sir Knight from the Wisconsin pineries, who had never been to a large town before, and his freshness was the subject of remark. He was a large hearted gentleman, and a friend that any person might be proud to have. But he was fresh. He went to the Palmer House Tuesday night, after the big ball, tired nearly to death, and registered his name and called for a bed.

  The clerk told him that he might have to sleep on a red lounge, in a room with two other parties, but that was the best that could be done. He said that was all right, he “had tried to sleep on one of them cots down to camp, but it nearly broke his back,” and he would be mighty glad to strike a lounge. The clerk called a bell boy and said, “Show the gentleman to 253.”

  The boy took the Knight’s keister and went to the elevator, the door opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand. She was dressed in ball costume, with one of those white Oxford tie dresses, cut low in the instep, which looked, in the mussed and bedraggled condition in which she had escaped from the exposition ball, very much to the Knight like a Knight shirt. The astonished pinery man stopped pulling off his coat and turned pale. He looked at the woman, and then at the elevator boy, whom he supposed was the bridegroom, and said:

  “By gaul, they told me I would have to sleep with a couple of other folks, but I had no idea that I should strike a wedding party in a cussed little bridal chamber not bigger than a hen coop. But there ain’t nothing mean about me, only I swear it’s pretty cramped quarters, ain’t it, miss?” and he sat down on one end of the seat and put the toe of one boot against the calf of his leg, took hold of the heel with the other hand and began to pull it off.

  “Sir!” says the lady, as she opened her eyes and began to take in the situation, and she jumped up and glared at the Knight as though she would eat him.

  He stopped pulling on the boot heel, looked up at the woman, as she threw a loose shawl over her low neck shoulders, and said:

  “Now don’t take on. The bookkeeper told me I could sleep on the lounge, but you can have it, and I will turn in on the floor. I ain’t no hog. Sometimes they think we are a little rough up in Wausau, but we always give the best places to the wimmen, and don’t you forget it,” and he began tugging on the boot again.

  By this time the elevator had reached the next floor, and as the door opened the woman shot out of the door, and the elevator boy asked the Knight what floor he wanted to go to. He said he “didn’t want to go to no floor,” unless that woman wanted the lounge, but if she was huffy, and didn’t want to stay there, he was going to sleep on the lounge, and he began to unbutton his vest.

  Just then a dozen ladies and gentlemen got into the elevator from the parlor floor, and they all looked at the Knight in astonishment. Five of the ladies sat down on the plush seat, and he looked around at them, picked up his boots and keister and started for the door, saying:

  “O, say, this is too allfired much. I could get along well enough with one woman and a man, but when they palm off twelve grown persons onto a granger, in a sweat box like this, I had rather go to camp,” and he strode out, to be met by a policeman and the manager of the house and two clerks, who had been called by the lady who got out first and who said there was a drunken man in the elevator. They found that he was sober, and all that ailed him was that he had not been salted, and explanations followed and he was sent to his room by the stairs.

  The next day some of the Knights heard the story, and it cost the Wausau man several dollars to foot the bill at the bar, and they say he is treating yet. Such accidents will happen in these large towns.

  THE HOUSE GIRL RACE.

  The Minneapolis fair has been for some months advertising a race of twenty miles between a California and a Minnesota girl, on horseback, and on Wednesday it occurred. The girls were splendid horsewomen, but they had to change horses each mile, and the horses were strangers to the girls, and excited, and the crowd of 30,000 was excited, and the girls were kicked, trampled on and jammed into saddles by main strength, and away the horses would go, the crowd howling, the horses flying and the poor girls sighing and holding on with their teeth and toe nails, expecting every moment to be thrown off and galloped over by the horses and the crowd.

  The pandemonium was kept up until the seventh round, when the saddle of
Miss Jewett, the Minnesota girl, slipped, and she was thrown to the ground on the back stretch, and the crowd clamored for the master of ceremonies to send her another horse, while the California girl whooped it up around the track. They had to send a stretcher for the girl, and she was brought to the judge’s stand as near a cold corpse as could be, her pale face showing through the dirt, and her limber form telling its own story.

  Then people that had been enjoying the “fun” looked at each other as much as to say, “We are the biggest fools outside of congress, to enjoy coldblooded murder, and call it fun.” The girl will live, though some of her bones are warped. This whole subject of lady horseback riding is wrong. The same foolish side saddles are used that were used before the flood, with no improvement since Eve used to ride to town after the doctor when Adam had the rheumatiz.

  Women can ride as well as men, if they are given a show, but to place them on a horse with both legs on one side of the animal, so they have to allow for the same weight of other portions of the body on the other side to balance them, is awkward and dangerous, and it is a wonder that more do not fall off and squash themselves, A well built woman is as able to ride as a man. Her legs are strong enough to keep her on a horse—we say legs understandingly, because that is the right name for them—if she can have one on each side, but to shut one leg up like a jack-knife and hang it up on a pommel, and get a check for it, and forget that she has got a leg, and to let the other one hang down listlessly beside the horse, the heel of the foot pounding him in the sixth rib, is all nonsense, and those two legs, that ought to be the main support of the rider, are of no more use than two base ball clubs would be hung to the saddle. For all the good legs do on a side saddle they might as well be taken off and left at home.

  Of course they are handy to have along if a lady wants to dismount, out in the woods, and pick flowers, or climb a tree after a squirrel, but the minute she gets in the saddle her legs are not worth the powder to blow them up. And talk about exercise and developing muscle, walking a mile is better than riding all summer.

  In walking, the legs and all the muscles of the body are brought into action, and the blood courses through the veins, and a girl looks like a thoroughbred, but in horseback riding the legs lay dormant, get to sleep and have to be waked up when the owner dismounts, and all the exercise is got by portions of the human frame that never has seemed to us as though there was absolute need of greater development.

  It is true that horseback riding makes the cheeks-red. Well, blood that wouldn’t rush to the head after being churned that way wouldn’t be worth having. It has to go somewhere. It can’t go to the legs, because they are paralyzed, being curled up like a tailor, mending trousers. Horseback exercise for ladies, on a side saddle, is a delusion and a snare, and does not amount to a row of pins, and it never will be worth a cent until women can ride like men. Then the lower limbs—now it is limbs—will be developed and health will be the result, and there will be no danger of a saddle turning and a helpless woman being dragged to her death.

  There is nothing indelicate about riding on both sides of a horse, if they once get used to it. But they have got to get over this superstition that to ride on horseback a woman must put her limbs up in curl papers.

  THE TROUBLE MR. STOREY HAS.

  A dispatch from Chicago says that Wilbur F. Storey, of the Times, is in a bad state, and that he gets around by leaning on his young wife with one hand and a cane with the other, that he believes his latter end is approaching, and that he is giving liberally to churches and has quit abusing ministers, and is trying to lead a different life.

  We should have no objections to Mr. Storey’s going to heaven. However much he might try to revolutionize things there, and run the place, there will be enough of us there to hold the balance of power and prevent him from doing any particular damage. Besides, we do not believe he is responsible for the cussedness of his newspaper. It is the wicked young men he keeps. The four that we know, Wilkie, Snowdon, Seymour and Doc Hinman, are enough to make the truly good Mr. Storey have night sweats. They never refuse when you ask them up, and they are full of guile.

  Storey got fooled the worst on Snowdon. Snow-don is a graduate of a nice Christian college at Ripon, a beautiful blonde young man with the most resigned and pious countenance we ever saw, one that seems to draw people to him. His heart is tender and he weeps at the recital of suffering. A stranger, to look at his face in repose, would say that he was an evangelist and the pillar of some church, and that he associated only with the truly good, but he plays the almightiest game of draw poker of any man in Chicago.

  The boys say that when Storey engaged Snowdon, after the fire, he got him to attend to the Sunday school department, and to keep track of the church sociables and to report the noon prayer meetings, but that while he was giving him instructions in the duties that he would be expected to perform, Storey suggested that as the evening was well advanced that they play a game of “old maid,” an innocent game played with cards.

  Mr. Snowdon hesitated at first, said it was something he never allowed himself to do, to touch a card, as he had promised his old professor, Mr. Merrill, of Ripon college, that he never would do anything that would bring reproach upon his almira mater, but seeing it was Storey he would play one game, just for luck. Well, you know how it is. One word brought on another, they drifted, by easy stages, into draw poker, and before Snowdon left he had won two hundred and eighty dollars and, an oroide watch chain of Storey.

  Mr. Storey told his wife the next morning that he never was so deceived in a pious looking young person in his life. “Why,” said he, as he was thumbing over the Bible to read a chapter before morning prayers, “the tow headed cuss would draw to a pair of deuces and get an ace full. Let us unite in prayer.”

  However, he was not going to see any other paper secure Snowdon’s talent, so he gave him a box stall up in the top of the Times building, and any day, after 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you can go there and borrow a couple of dollars of him, if you are in Chicago hard up.

  The Sun hopes Mr. Storey may live as long as he can make it pay, and when he dies that he may go to the celestial regions, but he must not go and build any temporary seats and charge a dollar a head for us fellows from the country to see the procession go by. We can stand those things here on earth, but when we get over there we must have a square deal, or jump the game.

  TRAGEDY ON THE STAGE.

  The tendency of the stage is to present practical, everyday affairs in plays, and those are the most successful which are the most natural. The shoeing of a horse on the stage in a play attracts the attention of the audience wonderfully, and draws well. The inner workings of a brewery, or a mill, is a big card, but there is hardly enough tragedy about it. If they could run a man or two through the wheel, and have them cut up into hash, or have them crowned in a beer vat? audiences could applaud as they do when eight or nine persons are stabbed, poisoned or beheaded in the Hamlets and Three Richards, where corpses are piled up on top of each other.

  What the people want is a compromise between old tragedy and new comedy. Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into a slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith shop or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter house, with all the paraphernalia for killing cattle, and supe butchers to stand around the star butcher with cleavers and knives.

  The star butcher could sit on a barrel of pigs’ feet, or a pile of heads and horns, and soliloquize over his unrequited love, as he sharpened a butcher knife on his boot. The hour for slaughtering having arrived, cattle could be driven upon the stage, the star could knock down a steer and cut its throat, and hang it up by the hind legs and skin it, with the audience looking on breathlessly.

  As he was about to cut open the body of the dead animal, the orchestra could suddenly break the stillness, and the heroine could waltz out from behind a lot of dried meat hanging up at one side, dressed in a lavender sati
n princess dress, en train, with a white reception hat with ostrich feathers, and, wading through the Blood of the steer on the carpet, shout, “Stay your hand, Reginald!”

  The star butcher could stop, wipe his knife on his apron, motion to the supe butchers to leave, and he would take three strides through the blood and hair, to the side of the heroine, take her by the wrist with his bloody hand, and shout, “What wiltest thou, Mary Anderson de Montmorence?” Then they could sit down on a box of intestines and liver and things and talk it over, and the curtain could go down with the heroine swooning in the arms of the butcher.

  Seven years could elapse between that act and the next, and a scene could be laid in a boarding house, and some of the same beef could be on the table, and all that. Of course we do not desire to go into details. We are no play writer, but we know what takes. People have got tired of imitation blood on the stage. They kick on seeing a man killed in one act, and come out as good as new in the next. Any good play writer can take the cue from this article and give the country a play that will take the biscuit.

  Imagine John McCullough, or Barrett, instead of killing Roman supes with night gowns on, and bare legs, killing a Texas steer. There’s where you would get the worth of your money. It would make them show the metal within them, and they would have to dance around to keep from getting a horn in their trousers. It does not require any pluck to go out behind the scenes with a sword and kill enough supes for a mess. Give us some slaughter house tragedy, right away.

  THE MISTAKE ABOUT IT.

  There is nothing that is more touching than the gallantry of men, total strangers, to a lady who has met with an accident. Any man who has a heart in him, who sees a lady whose apparel has become disarranged in such a manner that she cannot see it, will, though she be a total stranger, tell her of her misfortune, so she can fix up and not be stared at. But sometimes these efforts to do a kindly action are not appreciated, and men get fooled.