Judge — February 16, 1889 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE : THE Polytechnic and Veterinary In- stitute is willing to confer upon its alumni all the advantages and many of the luxuries of the larger schools, but the boreal blasts will blight our bald heads before we will allow haz- ing. We have blanketed the young man from Cohoes whom you last even- ing conferred the sacred rite of rustling on, by leading up a step-ladder blind- folded and inducing him to clasp a greased pole, down which he slid ingloriously to the floor, thereby filling his sensitive breast with shame and pine splinters. You next stiffened his backbone, you claimed, by pouring cold water down his spine with a funnel, This must stop, or Professor Gouge and myself will sally out on your orgies some night and you will look next day as if you had been bob- bing down State street, Albany, at an ice carnival, You will all step forward and lay your gum on the gumboard and the lecture will commence. My theme this morning is BULLHEAD LUCK. Whether this expression came into use from comparison with the hum- ble fish whose name it bears, or from the similitude of the possessor of the above kind of luck to the fish, we cannot say. Anybody can have luck catching the bullhead, A brick for a sinker and an old ball of tarred rope for a line, with anything, from a piece of salt-pork to a rubber overcoat button, will do for bait. Industry is not necessary ; just wake up and pull in the brick and the bullhead, like the flag of our country, is still there. You need not play him like a trout to tire him out before you land him. The bullhead is already tired, and he would just as soon be landed as watered. When a man gets a string of them:as long as he can carry he comes home looking like an industrious rag-picker with a rope of old gum ‘overshoes he has picked up in back alleys. He has had bull- head luck, The ancients held that the bullhead was himself lucky. We are apt to attribute his formidable digestion and contentment under a regimen of old tin cans and fragments of old, discarded shoes to his serene disposition. There are men who believe that Wellington at Waterloo and Grant at Vicksburg had bullhead luck. Vanderbilt and Stewart got their millions by the same attribute, These men put their hands deep down into their pockets to fill an aching void and murmur, “ What bullhead luck!” Please roll this fact around under your mental vision. When a man begins to believe in bullhead luck you can see a fine fringe begin to form on the bottom of his trousers. He begins to bag at the knee and get long in the seat. His shoulder-blades begin to make two shiny spots on the back of his coat and he begins to walk on his uppers. Nobody but Joseph Cook can tell us why his views have this effect, but soit is. A belief in bullhead luck sust the lotteries where fifty dollars are taken in for tickets and five dollars go out in prizes, A belief in bullhead luck keeps Wall street alive and neces- sitates the use of a foolkiller as an adjunct of the city police. A belief in bullhead luck originated the western specula- tor who thinks he has foresight to select a town site, but he: doesn’t do it by a darn sight. Bullhead luck is the father of the chromo tea store, the brass jewelry envelope and the tin watch, Young men, there is no bullhead luck. If you stand around and wait for it you will gather a precarious living from the cold hunks at back doors and shiver in the cast-off garments of a more active and yet generous man. When you see a man who has got there with both feet you will find that he has a ticket, and it has been punched for every station on the road. When a bullhead has luck he uses it fike a bullhead. He Tue TRACHER— THE NEW Boy— 303 decorates his native town with a delicate pink tinge and rides through his luck with a full head of steam on and goes into the ditch at the first curve with a faint sizzle and a smell of burnt donkey's flesh. As long as the swindlers and sharpers of the world can keep alive a belief in bullhead luck they are sure of a good living. In the game of life there is always a big percentage in favor of the dealer, therefore keep the cards in your own hands. Luck is really success in along, stern contest. plasters, no good until they are ap- plied. Get down to hard work. If you have not the consti- tution and energy to undertake the arduous duties of an alderman or sena- tor thea choose the more simple labor of the wood-sawyer or coal-heaver, Do all the work you can between meals, This is recommend- ed by all the emi- nent physiologists. I find by the re- ports of eminent travelers that the figure found erect amid the ashes of Pompeii supposed to be a faithful sen- tinel at the gate was a man waiting for bullhead luck. Iam. sorry to dispel a poetical idea, but it istrue. A careful measurement of his head and the hole the top of it had punched in his helmet shows that he had a pine-apple head. He believed in bullhead luck and was snowed under. The janitor may unlock the door and let the class out, TMK OLD FROFESSOK. Theories are like porous AN UNFAIR CRITICISM. Sue—* Dear me, what an azefull dress that actress wears, to be sure! | out how any woman ‘can be so lost to a position as to dress in such a questionable manner. No wonder the papers have taken it up.” rae A BAD STARTER. You've not advanced very far, have you?” I'm so darned bashful, marm, I don't dare t’ step a foot nigher to ye.”