Life — May 17, 1883 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

A SUGGESTION FOR A PICTURE. To the Editor of Lire: Sir: Excuse bad English and cor- rect bad spelling. I came from the mountains of Kentucky to New York for trading in cattle and wool, and for pleasure and seeing pictures in your paper. I bought one for the fun. Now, I write this, because I want you to do me a favor that comes in your line. It grows out of the kind of mud in the streets here. Where I live we have nothing like it, though we can brag on three or four kinds of mud when the subject comes up in earnest. For in- stance, there is the hill mud. The loose, flat rocks rest on it, and you just have to step on one and up go your heels, and you find yourself sliding down the mountain side faster than any sort of wheel can spin, till you bring up in the creek at the bottom. There you come to the second kind of mud. That kind is generally two feet deep, and hangs on to a fellow's foot like to pull his boot off, and at the last explodes with a loud sound. ‘This is suppos- ing the weather is wet Then, third, there is the yellow mud of the dirt roads, that gets thinner and thinner for rain and travel, and splashes all over a rider and horse, which is double trouble, the horse having to be cleaned too. But I never saw any mud out in Kentucky like you have on Broadway and some other streets on a bad day. Where the black, shiny, sticky, tough, slippery stuff comes from I can’t think. Does it come down with the rain, or ooze up from between the rocks? There is none when it’s dry. Anyhow, there ought to be some way of keeping the WHERE THE SHOE PINCHES. Uncle Reuben : Y Ass, EPHRIM, BUT YO SHOULD DO AS YO IS DONE BY. Eph: Yass, UNCLE RuBE, BUT DIS CHILE HAINT NEVER BEEN DONE ! streets clear of it, or else signs ought ~ to be stuck up giving strangers warning how it is more slippery than ice. While I am writing this I am waiting for my boots and breeches to dry for brushing, all being daubed from falling in Broadway, while in a hurry to dodge stages and wagons coming at me fast and slow, in droves, both ways. My hat, too. But what I started to tell you was about three young men on Fulton street, with beaver hats and slick over- coats and women’s shoes. They were crossing, one behind the other, and a-dodging the horses that were poking out their fore feet at them, like bad skaters. Without lying, just then the last of the three nice young men lost his footing, and at the same time that he lit back on his shoulders his feet struck the one ahead of him, where he couldn’t see back to dislodge the blow, and he was spun backwards on to his head, too, and his legs, reaching to the first fellow, it wasn’t more than half a second before all of them were sliding along and grabbing handfuls of the mud. Now, what I want you to do, is make me a picture of these three young men and the mud to take back with me to Kentucky. Truly yours, Simon MEnIFIc. Now the base-ball season has set in with its usual severity in our American institutions of learning, “Fielding” is a most seasonable title for a book. Un- fortunately it is only a volume of the English Men of Letters series by Austin Dobson. “Science in Short Chapters” is a newly Imported English book. Forthe American market it lacks a chapter on Scientific Humor, or the Extraction of Mer- ty Jests from the Bent Pin, the Upturned Tack, the Aggressive Stove-pipe, the Expensive Oyster and the Chicago Girl’s Broad-guage Foot. comicbooks.com