Puck — March 1877 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

PUCK. 5 PUCK’S ESSENTIAL OIL OF ALBANY. ASSEMBLY. MARCH rqtu. \ Mr. Gitpert said that Schools would always be common schools unless therewere uncommonly superior teach- ers, He believed in normal. ar- rangements. Mr. RucoLes knew that De- mocrats were fond of going to school—he was a Democrat, and wouldn't be contradicted. GENERAL SPINOLA now jumped into the air to such a height that it took the starch out of his shirt-collar, and said Republicans never went to school, and were morally and physically incapable of making speeches, but had to hire fellows to write them, and then learn them by heart. Mr. Giipert said he wrote his own speeches, and thought Spinola and his words should be. taken down a peg or two. Mr. Atvorp moved that General Spinola enjoy the society of the Sergeant-at-arms, unless he would take his oath that Republicans knew how to write and could make speeches. (This highly important question was ad- journed until the following day.) Mr. Corsa thought there ought to be a finer style of pavement in New York city, and intro- duced a bill for that purpose.— SENATE. MARCH istit. Mr. Jacoss had a little bill to authorize Brooklyn Park Commissioners to mend their ways, if they chose. In the appropriation bill Mr. Jacobs couldn't get $25,000 struck out for the investigation of the institutions who take your money, but don’t insure you. ASSEMBLY. Generat Spinota, under the soothing in- fluences of a clean shirt-collar, took back the objectionable remarks; and everybody sub- si LIGHT FROM LUBBOCK. SJLN a recent lecture (one of a series) on the BN habits of ants, the scientific English banker, Sir John Lubbock, said that even after a year’s separation ants recognize each other, and old companions are amicably received, whereas strangers, even when introduced in the mixed company of old friends, have a bad time. Slavery in certain kinds is a positive institution, the Amazon breed having slaves to clean and feed them. Rather than be at the trouble to do so themselves, they will die, though food be close by. They allow a curious blind wood- louse house-room, but as a kind of scavenger, and not from hospitable motives.— Sun. This piece of information arouses Puck's curiosity. He wants to know more. Ants, he is told, will recognize each other after a year's se] tion. Are they particular about a twelve- month? Willa highly-respectable ant cut an- other gentlemanly ant if he meets him three hundred and sixty-six days after a cruel fate tore them from each other’s embraces? And when ants do meet after the exact period speci- fied, does one ant say to the other ant: “What will you make it?” And has anybody ever writ- “Uncle Tom" bor ge in beta sit the es 3 of the “Amazon ili f wretches who are clanking then chalnge in thraldom? A Fifteenth Amendment is sadly needed among the ants. And—well, as to the last item, Puck can only express his respect for the cleverness of the ants. He has heard of men who were noted for a similar hospitality, but he never knew one with cheek enough to pretend that they tolerated their guests by way of a street-cleaning bureau, A RAPACIOUS REPTILE. (Por Miss Brown of Harlem has a most uncomfortable boarder, who, unlike Carl Schurz, has appointed himself Secretary of the Interior without nomination or confirm- ation, and refuses to retire in spite of bribes in the shape of unlimited supplies of whiskey. He has already, since Miss Brown in an unguarded moment drank water from a creck, served one term of six years, and there is, much to her annoyance, every prospect of his counting him- self in for a second term. ‘The majority of physicians are puzzled, not so Dr. Demarest, homeeopathic practitioner, who asserts she is suffermg from “Frog,” the sound emitted from Miss Brown resembling the voice of that inter- esting Batrachian. If this be so, why does not the doctor, on the principle of similia similibus curantur (like cures like), prescribe another frog? The .chances are, that Miss Brown's lodger will object to the intrusion, and a ter- rible intestine war may ensue, in which both may exterminate each other after the manner of the Kilkenny cats. Should the dose of frog not afford relief, it is obvious that it is some- thing else, and the doctor's diagnosis is faulty, so let Miss Brown then try a lizard or a conger- eel, and, as a last resource, a healthy alligator. The Aquarium might be turned into a dis- pensary, especially for Miss Brown’s case, an thus afford another useful purpose in the ad- vancement of science. Some kind of marine animal that would cure her would certainly be found there, although it is unfortunate the whale is dead, for that might have been the exact thing. What are we coming to with Telephones and peripatetic aquaria like Miss Brown Answers for the Anrious. GRraMMARIAN.—“Queer’”’ is an adjective, though there are many queer nouns. When a man does a thing ina way different from yourself, you say he isqueer. In all probability he thinks you are queer. The query thus arising is, who is the queer one? Reaper.—It is certainly always safer for a man to read his own poetry over to himself than to get anybody else into a corner and read it to him. ‘TRAVELER.—When you get into car and don’t find a seat, you may sit down in anybody else’s lap, but Puck isn’t answerable for the consequences. W. H. Y.—You think so? Now, do you know, we shouldn't have thought that you could have thought so? Crassic.—Is it possible that you do not know that it was Puck, in Shakspeare’s ‘‘ Midsummer- Night’s Dream,” who put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes? Whose girdle he took to do it with, is not on record. Honeymoon wishes to know how to keep carpets and furniture. Take a well-furnished house; if on Fifth avenue, so much the better. Don’t pay any rent, and deep the carpets and furniture. Just try it. Truton.—The -beer you refer to is Bock- bier, not Puck-bier. FITZNOODLE IN NEW YORK. Il. HE ATTENDS A “‘GER- Ya-as, he was a wather decent scrt of fellaw for an Amewican, Some fellaws at his club said he talked and dwessed like me, but I couldn’t see it, for fellaws who've anything todo with twade or pwofessions couldn’t be like me, that would be too widiculous. His guv’ner was, I believe, pwesident of a bank or “wan” twam- ways (horse railroads). I wonder what he wuns such things for. He asked Jack Carnegie and me if either of us would lead the German at some fwiends of his in a stweet called Madi- son’s avenue (why can’t they call stweets, stweets?). Lead a German? Ha! ha! Why the devil should he want to be led any more than an English fellaw or Amewican fellaw? Fancy what a guy I should look leading a German fellaw, without being intwoduced, like the child- wen on donkeys on Hampstead Heath. By Jove! I think this fellaw must have thought I was an a-a-ss. He saw | didn’t like it, (Jack only laughed), so he said he'd do it himself, and. called for us ina cawwidge. ‘There were alot of Amewican fellaws there and some wather pwetty girls, not badly dwessed. The musical fellaws began to play, and I looked wound for rman fellaw who was going to be such an idiot as to be led like a dancing bear. I didn’t see him, but our Amewican fwiend started off into a vewy cuwious arwangement and sewies of movements, something like qua- dwilles, lancers, Sir Woger de Coverly, and the deux temps, mixed together. I don’t dance now, it is only fit for vewy young fellaws, who havn't twaveled. Then the girls had some long wibbons, and twisted them about in a most bewilderwing manner, and fellaws went under the wibbons, and some went on their knees, and did vewy odd things. But the most surpwising and pwepostewous pwoceeding was ‘tn tall, not bad-looking, young cweature, coming to me with an absurd embwoidered wosette. Texamined it with my eye-glass in astonishment. She pinned it to my bweast, and led me out to dance, and sat me down again as if I were a baby. (Wonder if she thought I looked like a German.) Then came another wather in- tewesting girl with some more wosettes and flags, and before Jack and I left, we looked like harlequins in the pantomime, but I don’t understand even now where that German fel- law was, SIMIEAR SYMPTOMS. -comicbooks.com