Life — December 13, 1883 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

SCIENCE IN CLOVER. A FAMOUS general and Archzologist was one day walking in Central Park, when he encountered a little girl, who seemed in great distress. Upon asking the cause of her trouble, he found she had been hunting all the morning for a four-leaved clover, but had hunted in vain. “And why do you wish so much to find one?” asked the great man. “Because I have been promised fifty cents for it.” “Little girl,” said the great man as he seated him- self in the grass by her side, “1 will give you what you seek.” Plucking a three-leaved clover, he cunningly attached to it a fourth leaf by means of an almost invisible wire which he drew from his pocket. Smiling sweetly upon the child, he said, “ Now, run with this and get your fifty cents; then come back and we will divide—” “But, sir, this is not a real four-leaved clover, and—" “Tut! my child. “Yes, sir.” “Then, run and get your money, for Americans en- joy being humbugged. They prefer quantity to qual- ity. But should they discover the fraud—that is, the -er-restoration, you must stick to it through thick and thin, and black and white, that the leaf belonged there originally—now go.” The little girl went, but she soon returned with fifty cents, of which the great man retained forty-nine. Placing the remaining penny in her chubby hand, he said, with a friendly smile, “ Be virtuous and you will be happy,” and turning away he strode proudly across the lawn and disappeared within the recesses of the Metropolitan Museum. Is your friend an American ?” A LONG sPELL.—A Russian pet name. THE GOING MAN. ON a certain Monday morning, a Banker in his chair, Gazed vacantly upon his safe ; his Cashier was n’t there. And thus in peevish, fretful mood, with Much uneasy air, The banker heard a foot-fall a- Coming up the stair. The door was opened and he saw the Cashier’s wife in tears— “O, tell me where's my husband? Pray, Ease my anxious fears.” He took the situation in, with sym- Pathetic looks, Said she, “ Pray, search the river.” He, “ Pray, search the books !”” PauL Pry. Said AN EPISODE OF NEWPORT. There is a land of pure delight, Where the best circlers reign ; The 'lectric light dispels the night, And new clothes banish pain. Me & Watts. I" was midnight ; the sun had set, and young Thad- deus Warsaw Mt. Vernon sat in the billiard-room of his boarding-house on Catharine St., bathing with Pond’s extract the raw place on his throat made by his high collar. Thaddeus was the last surviving member of that illustrious old family which founded the cemetery which bears their name. His fourteenth great-grand- father had been the first colonial governor of Newark, and his own father would at least have been mayor had it not been for an unfortunate slip of his pen which got him into the penitentiary. Thaddeus was thus left alone to scrabble for him- self, so, buying a copy of William Black’s Therapeutics, he set up as a veterinary surgeon, and happily the ex- periment turned out a great success, as the public of course preferred having their animals killed by a member of a grand old family to having them cured by a vulgarian. But to return, As Thad. sat bathing his neck a brick suddenly came through the window, and on looking out he espied a young lady in a village cart who at once called out to him, saying, “I am Miss Pussy Cotter,—one of my hens has been. taken ill and you are to come at once; so Thad. seized his hobbles and firing-irons and ran down to the cart. “No, don't get on the back seat—you ‘Il lift the pony off his feet —here—that ’s it,” said Miss Pussy, and so they drove off to their patient who Thad. found very low with hysteria and tooth-ache, so he applied a porous plaster and tried to comfort Miss Pussy by telling her comicbooks.com