Judge — September 24, 1898 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

HIS HOODOO. 10, MADAM,” said the shifty-eyed man who had applied at the back-door for refreshments; “I am not a profes- sional tramp, but a man who has lost his luck. Fate has got it in for me, and no matter how hard I struggle it always turns me over on my back. “You wouldn’t think, madam, to look at me now that I was once a prosperous showman—the proprietor of as snappy a little museum and great moral show as you ever had the pleasure of visiting. In those days I wore my diamonds and a big black mustache, and put up a front like the late lamented Barnum; but, alas! when I least ex- pected it.I ran up against a hoodoo and got it where Adam got the apple, One day, while the aggregation was on the road, I made a pitch against a village prayer-meeting which had been called to supplicate for rain. The push all poured into my palace of wonders, and the prayer-meet- ing didn’t have enough of a quorum to fetch the much- needed rain. As a result the drought burned up the crops and caused much suffering, and I got a hoodoo on me then and there that has never left me. “ Although I kept on the road for some time longer, I never had a minute's luck after that. First the human snake broke his back trying to sleep in a chair-car, and next the bearded lady died and left a batch of bearded ; babies for me to care for. Then the giant got above his business and quit, and the forty-day faster was caught eating pie between meals and ceased to be a drawing attraction. The human rooster grew proud and struck because I couldn't afford to tar-and-feather him fresh every day. The mummy died in a fit; the lightning calculator lost his mind trying to figure out how much of a snake is body and how much is tail; the wild man quit drinking and ceased to be wild; the gentleman living skeleton grew fat, and the lady skeleton left to take a job as a model for an artist who drew fashion-plates, One-half of the two-headed girl eloped with the ossified man, and the young lady whom I hired to take her place wrangled so with the other half that I was forced to discharge NOT MUCH CITANCE. Dora (to herself)—"* I am afraid I'll meetithe fellow I was engaged to last year; bat then I don’t think he'll know me—I was'a blonde then.” them both, The human ostrich died in awful agony after eating a chunk of wedding-cake which Mr. and Mrs. Ossified Man sent to him, and the snake-charmer quit me cold to take a position in an inebriate-cure institute. “One by one I parted with my curiosities till they were all gone “* Mamma, is it true that beauty is only skin deep?” “Yes, Pearl; why do you ask?” “Then you're awful beautiful, aren't you?” and the aggregation was composed solely of deputy-sheriffs who had annexed themselves to it from time to time in the hope of collecting sundry bills. My bank-roll had melted away, my diamonds had gone glimmering, and my mustache had fallen out from worry, and at last the whole snap went to staves, The deputy-sheriffs seized the tent and properties and organized themselves into an ‘Uncle-Tom's- Cabin" company, and I flung my hand into the discard and quit the game flat broke. The hoodoo had got in its deadly work.” ‘TOM PF. MORGAN. BEFORE THE CYCLES OF CATHAY. SS\WWHEN those rascally Germans,” said Caesar to the faithful Pomponia, “saw me and my legions approaching, 1 tell you it was beautiful to see how they began to back-pedal.”” “ Back-pedal!” exclaimed Pomponia. “Thou speakest, Julius, in riddles, or in a tongue foreign to mine ear. ‘That was true, for bicycles were not used in Rome; and it only proves whatvhas often been observed—that Cesar was far in ad- vance of his time. THE COMBINATION FACE, ** No; it’s Cohen,” “It looks like Schwartzmayer,”