The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  Men who have held responsible positions for fifteen years under managers who are the sharpest men in this country, are not apt to be crooked, and we notice that when there is a chance they are promoted, and if they leave the railroad it is always to enter into a better business, and they are honored everywhere.

  We hold that no man can occupy a position on one of our great railroads for ten years if he is crooked. It would not pay a conductor to steal, if he had the desire. They are all men of families, well connected, and many of them have children grown up. Would they do an act that would bring disgrace not only upon themselves but their relatives, wives, children, and forever debar them from society for a paltry few dollars that they could bilk a railroad company out of? The idea is preposterous, and an insult to their intelligence.

  As well say that the bookkeepers of our business houses, the managers of our manufactories, were systematically stealing from employers. The conductors have got sense. This talk about stealing is disgusting. You send your wives and children off on a train liable to meet with accident. The first thing you do if you are acquainted with the road is to find out what conductor is going to run the train. If it is one you know, you feel just as secure as though the wife and children were under the escort of your brother.

  You know that if anything happens the first thought of the conductor is the safety of the women and children, at the expense of his own safety. And when your loved ones come home safe, and you meet them at the train, and the conductor stands upon the platform as the train backs into the depot, looking at nobody, but his eye fixed upon the chances of accident, you always feel as though you wanted to put your arm around him and say, “Bully for you, old boy.”

  If your wife gets out of money on a journey the conductor goes down into his own pocket, and not into the railroad company’s, and tells her not to worry, as he hands her what money she wants. If your child is taken sick on the journey, who but the conductor sees to sending a dispatch to you quicker than lightning, and who brings a pillow in from the sleeper and makes the little one as comfortable as he would his own little one at home?

  You appreciate these things at the time, but some day you will say, “How can a man drive a fast horse on eighty dollars a month?” Then you think you are smart. We will tell you. The conductors are pretty sharp business men. They can’t travel all the time, and come in contact with all the world, and not be sharp. They see chances to make money outside of their business.

  For instance, one of them who is a good judge sees a horse at some interior town that he knows is worth three times as much in Milwaukee or Chicago as the owner asks for it. He would be a fool if he did not buy it. We have known a conductor to make more money on two horse trades than his salary would amount to for three months. Would you object to his doing it? He did not neglect the business the company paid him to perform.

  Sometimes a conductor feels in his inmost heart that the indications are that wheat is going up. Is it any worse for him to take a deal in wheat than it is for the deacon in his church? If he makes five hundred dollars on the deal, and puts an addition on his house, is it the square thing for you to say he stole it out of the company? Their knowledge of railroads and business frequently gives them an idea that stocks are liable to go up or down, and often they invest with good results.

  We will take the chances with conductors, as square men, by the side of any business men, and it makes us as mad as a wet hen to hear people talk about their stealing. As well say that because one bank cashier steals that they are all robbing the banks. Quit this, now.

  A HOT BOX AT A PICNIC.

  An Oshkosh young man started for a picnic in a buggy with two girls, and when they got half way they got a hot box to the hind wheel of the buggy, and they remained there all the afternoon pouring water on the wheel, missing the picnic. There is nothing that will cause a hot box in a buggy so quick as going to a picnic with girls. Particularly is this the case when one has two girls. No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. He may think one cannot have too much of a good thing, and that he holds over the most of the boys who have only one girl, but before the picnic is over he will note the look of satisfaction on the faces of the other boys as they stray off in the vernal shade, and he will look around at his two girls as though his stomach was overloaded. We don’t care how attractive the girls are, or how enterprising a boy he is, or how expansive or far-reaching a mind he has, he cannot do justice to the subject if he has two girls. There will be a certain clashing of interests that no young boy in his goslinghood, as most boys are when they take two girls to a picnic, has the diplomacy to prevent. Now, this may seem a trifling thing to write about and for a great pious paper to publish, but there is more at the bottom of it than is generally believed. If we start the youth of the land out right in the first place they will be all right, but if they start out by taking two girls to a picnic their whole lives are liable to become acidulated, and they will grow up hating themselves. If a young man is good-natured and tries to do the fair thing, and a picnic is got up, the rest of the boys are liable to play it on him. There is always some old back number of a girl who has no fellow, who wants to go, and the boys, after they all get girls and buggies engaged, will canvass among themselves to see who shall take this extra girl, and it always falls to the good-natured young man. He says of course there is room for three in the buggy. Sometimes he thinks may be this old girl can be utilized to drive the horse, and then he can converse with his own sweet girl, with both hands, but in such a moment as ye think not he finds out that the extra girl is afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really requires some holding to keep her nerves quiet. The young man begins to realize by this time that life is one great disappointment. He tries to drive with one hand hand, and consoles his good girl, who is a little cross at the turn affairs have taken, with the other, but it is a failure, and finally his good girl says she will drive, and then he has to put an arm around them both, which will give more or less dissatisfaction, the best way you can fix it. If we had a boy that didn’t seem to have any more sense than to make a hat rack of himself to hang girls on in a buggy we should labor with him and tell him of the agonies we had experienced in youth, when the boys palmed off two girls on us to take to a country picnic, and we believe we can do no greater favor to the young men who are just entering the picnic of life than to impress upon them the importance of doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. Start right at first, and life will be one continued picnic buggy ride, but if your mind is divided in youth you will always be looking for hot boxes and annoyance.

  BROKE UP A PRAYER MEETING.

  A few months ago the spectacle presented itself of a very respectable lady of the Seventh Ward, wearing a black eye. There never was a case of ante-election that was any more perfect than the one this lady carried.

  We have seen millions of black eyes in our time, some of which were observed in a mirror, but we never saw one that suggested a row any plainer than the one the Seventh Ward lady wore. It was cut biased, that being the latest style of black eye, and was fluted with purple and orange shade, and trimmed with the same. Probably we never should have known about the black eye had not the lady asked, as she held her hand over one eye, if there was any truth in the story that a raw oyster would cure a black eye. She came to us as an expert. When we told her that a piece of beefsteak was worth two oysters she uncovered the eye.

  It looked as though painted by one of the old masters.

  Rather than have anybody think she had been having a row she explained how it happened. She was sitting with her husband and little girl in the parlor, and while the two were reading, the little one disappeared. The mother went to the girl’s room, on tip-toe, to see if she was asleep. She found the girl with all her dolls on the floor, having a doll’s prayer meeting. She had them all down on their knees, and would let them pray one at a time, then sing. One of the dolls that squeaked when pressed on the stomach was leader of the singing, and the little girl bossed t
he job. There was one old maid doll that the little girl seemed to be disgusted with because the doll talked too much, and she would say:

  “There, Miss, you sit down and let some of the other sisters get in a word edgeways. Sister Perkins, won’t you relate your experience?”

  After listening to this for a few moments the mother heard the girl say:

  “Now, Polly, you pass the collection plate, and nobody must put in lozengers, and then we will all go to the dancing school.”

  The whole thing was so ridiculous that the mother attempted to rush down stairs three at a time, to have her husband come up to prayer meeting, when she stubbed herself on a stair rod, and—well, she got the black eye on the journey down stairs, though what hit her she will probably never know. But she said when she began to roll down stairs she felt in her innermost soul as though she had broke up that prayer meeting prematurely.

  SHOOTING ON SUNDAY, WITH THE MOUTH.

  There is nothing in the world that is so beautiful as to see a sporting man, one who loves to shoot the wild prairie chicken and chase the bounding duck over the plains, have a respect for the Sabbath day. There are too many of our sporting friends who, if they are out for a week’s shooting, forget that they should lay away the deadly breech loader on Sunday, after oiling it, and busy themselves reading good books, or loading cartridges.

  However, we are proud to number among our acquaintances one sporting gentleman who would sooner cut a dog in two than to hunt on Sunday. It is related of him that on one occasion while in camp in a deer country, that his hounds got after a buck one Sunday morning, and that our friend was so incensed at the dogs that he seized his gun and shot one of the dogs dead, besides wounding the deer, and that he had to follow the deer over four miles before he could overtake the animal and put it out of its misery.

  A wicked companion said that he shot at the deer and killed the dog accidentally, but those who know Mr. Van Brunt would not believe the story for a moment. Not long since this gentleman left his home at Horicon and went to Owatonna, Minn., for a few weeks’ hunt. He hunted a good deal in town, and became somewhat acquainted with the fair sex as well as the chickens and other ducks of the prairies. However, Sunday came, and while the other wretches went out snooting on Sunday, our friend hied himself to the Sabbath school. His presence was observed by a teacher, and he, by the way, observed her presence, and being a stranger and a pious looking man, she invited him to help her teach her class. He accepted, and seated beside the fair teacher, he chipped in an occasional remark to the class, while he looked into the soulful, pious eyes of the handsome teacher. She introduced him to the superintendent as a pious young man from Wisconsin, and the superintendent invited him to address the school.

  It was new business to our friend, but he said he never had anything sawed off onto him unless he stood it like a man, so he got up, with the girl’s eyes on him, and told the children the beautiful story of the cross, and how Samson went up in a chariot of fire, and Adam was found in the bullrushes by a Sunday school teacher, while he was shooting blue wing teal, and how Noah and Sat Clark built an ark and coasted around Uoricon lake and landed on Iron Ridge and sent out a canvas-back duck to see if there was any living thing this side of Schleisingerville, and how the duck came back with a sprig of wild celery in its bill which it had found at Lake Koshkonong.

  He told how the locusts came down on the democratic party and lected Garfield, and counseled the children to be good and they would have a soft thing. He said evil communications corrupted two of a kind, and they could not be too careful with their pennies, and advised them to give up the soul destroying habit of buying taffy, and try and lead a different life, and put their money into the missionary box, where the wicked cease from troubling, and give us a rest.

  He would have gone on all the afternoon, only the superintendent of the Sunday school told the children that the exercises would close with “Little Drops of Water,” and our friend sat down and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

  The teacher said that his words had opened new beauties to her in the Scriptures, though he was a little off on some of his statistics. He told her, by way of apology, that she couldn’t expect much religion from a man that came from so strong a democratic county as Dodge county. This may be all a lie, but if it is, we got it from one of the best liars of the State.

  A WASHINGTON SURPRISE PARTY.

  When Mr. and Mrs. Hayes returned to Washington from the far west their Ohio friends got up a surprise party for them. They had just retired for the night, rather early on account of fatigue, when the door bell rung violently. Mr. Hayes put on his pants, and throwing one suspender over his shoulder and holding on to it with his hands, he went to the door and asked who was there. On being answered that John Sherman was there, Mr. Hayes supposed there was something important, and he opened the door.

  Mr. Sherman came in with a market basket of sandwiches, followed by about a hundred ladies and gentlemen, loaded down with articles usually taken to surprise parties. Mr. Hayes was taken entirely by surprise, and as he buttoned his trousers and tucked in his night shirt behind he said he hoped they would excuse him for a moment till he went up stairs and put on a collar and some stockings, and called Mrs. Hayes, who was in bed.

  Matt Carpenter said never mind; he would call Mrs. Hayes, and he gave a hop, skip and jump and went up stairs three at a time, followed by Mr. Hayes, who was shivering from the contact of his bare feet with the oil cloth in the hall.

  “What is the trouble, Rutherford?” said Mrs. Hayes, as Mr. Carpenter rushed into the room.

  “Get up and dress yourself, you are surrounded, and escape is impossible.”

  Mrs. Hayes screamed as she saw the bold buccaneer, pulled the bed clothes over her head and said, “We are lost.”

  At this point Hayes, who had got on a pair of woolen stockings, and was buttoning on a paper collar, said: “I say, Matt, of course this is all right, and I don’t want you to be offended, but won’t you just step out into the hall so Mrs. Hayes can get her clothes on.”

  “Why, to be sure,” said Matt, as he got up out of a rocking chair, on which there were three skirts, a red petticoat, an emancipation corset, and a pair of striped stockings with long suspenders arranged to button on the waist, “of course I will go out, but you need not mind me. I am near sighted.”

  Matt went down stairs with the crowd, and when he was gone Mrs. Hayes got her head out from under the clothes and wanted to know what the trouble was, and if they could not fly.

  Hayes told her not to be alarmed, as it was only one of those d—d surprise parties. He said there were two hundred hungry people down stairs, with baskets of sandwiches and pickles, and the chances were that they would eat up everything there was in the house, and mash crumbs and cold tongue into the carpet.

  Mrs. Hayes got up and sent Rutherford into the linen closet after a clean white skirt, and he returned with a night gown and had to be sent back. While she was taking her hair down out of the curl papers, and putting bandoline over her ears, she gave Mr. Hayes her opinion of surprise parties. She said that little shrimp, Alexander Stephens, would sit on the piano keys, and knock his boot heels against the piano case, and that Dave Davis would fall over the music rack, and sit down in her best rocking chair and break it.

  Just then she touched her nose with a curling iron that she had heated in a gas jet, and screamed and woke Mr. Hayes up, and he wanted to know what was the matter. She rolled over in bed, felt of her nose to see if it was there, and told Mr. Hayes she had been dreaming there was a surprise party came to the house.

  He said: “My dear, I trust there is no such fate in store for us. You are nervous. Try a little of that crab apple cider, and lay on your face, and see if you can’t go to sleep.”

  THE DIFFERENCE IN CLOTHES.

  There is something about the practice of “practical joking” that is mighty pleasant and enjoyable, if the joke is on somebody else. It was about six years ago that we quit practical jok
ing, and the reason was that the boys played one on us that fairly broke our back. We had always been full of it, and an opportunity to play a joke on a friend was a picnic for us, but this time we had all the tuck taken out and fairly unraveled.

  A party consisting of Hogan, Hatch, Root, Wood and Webb had been down from La Crosse to the marshes shooting ducks for a week. We had prepared to break camp and take the train to Brownsville at 2 o’clock, from which we took a little steamer for La Crosse.

  We were out shooting and did not get to camp until everything was packed up, and just had time to catch the train with our hunting clothes on. The rest of the fellows had been in camp an hour, and had put on their good clothes, and washed up and looked like gentlemen, as they were, while we looked like a tramp, which we were not. All got on the little steamboat, and hugged around the boiler with the other passengers, for it was a cold night.

  We felt a little ashamed of the old hunting clothes that had been worn so many years, and were covered with blood and dirt, but there was no chance to change, and we sat down with the boys. Finally Root, who was the biggest hector in the world, and a fine looking gentleman, turned to the captain of the boat and said, pointing to us:

  “I wish, captain, you would ask this red-headed muskrat trapper to sit on the other side of me. He smells bad.”

  If lightning had struck us we could not have been more astonished. The passengers all looked at the dirty looking “muskrat trapper,” and stuck up their noses. The captain asked us in a polite manner if we would not please move and get on the “lee side” of the passengers. He said he didn’t mean any offence, but the smell of muskrats oftentimes made people sick.

  Well, it was a pretty tight fix, but we forced a laugh and looked around at the rest of the boys in a familiar way, and began talking to them. Not a man of them would recognize us. The captain turned to Hogan and said, “Is this a friend of yours?” Hogan put on a look of disgust, and said he had never seen us before. “However,” says Jim, “he may be a very deserving person of his class.”