Puck — August 8, 1877 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

| | RESIGNATION, He was a singularly grave man, even fora sexton. For nearly a half-century he had been a public functionary—had performed the con- spicuous duties of a sexton; yet no one had ever seen him smile. Occasionally he joked, but he did it in such a funereal manner that no one could accuse him of levity. One day he was standing on the church- steps, wiping his melancholy features with a red bandanna. A hearse stood near, and three or four carriages were drawn up behind it. The notes of the organ floated out of the windows with solemn effect. A stranger came along and said: “Funeral 2” And the old sexton gravely bowed his head —'t was. “Who's dead ?” ‘The old man again wiped his brow and gave the name of the deceased. “What complaint?” asked the inquisitive stranger. Solemnly placing his bandanna in his hat, and covering his bald head, the old sexton made answer: “There is no complaint; everybody is en- tirely satistied.— MWorcester Press.” Cherries ought to be healthy, for a cherry gives stone to the stomach.— IVhitehadl Times. Give us the dollars of anybody—what’s the use of being. particular?— Rochester Democrat. Beer was introduced to this country thirty years ago. It came over in a schooner.— Boston Post. Unmuzztep peaches have injured a number of small boys during the past week.— ome Sentinel. You had better learn to swim before you get drowned, as you will not probably have time afterwards.— Yonkers Gasetle. ‘THe thermometers are very sensible this warm weather. ‘hey are always quoted as being in the shade.— Phila. Bulletin. Artur, the leader of the strikers, would like to have the troubles settled by arbitration. We prefer R. B. Hayes to arbitraitors.— Fila. Bulletin, ASTRANGER was in town this morning offer- ing to bet, five dollars that the backbone of Winter was broken. No takers.—Norristown Herald. MukuTak Pasua prays five times a day, but then he only fights once a month, and that’s where the Russians get the bulge on him.— Burlington Hawkeye. Some fiend last week proposed to put down the ‘riots by distributing a car-load of green peaches and watermelons among the rioters.— Norristown Herald. Waar must be the potato-bug’s opinion of the humanity that goes around all day putting poison on the victuals of humble insects ?— Turner's Falls Reporter. | | Beecner walked across the temporary foot- bridge over the East River, last week. Itisn’t the first time that he has found himself ina state of wiry suspense.— Graphic. PUCK. Some excursion-boat will be going down with Tue strike has had a demoralizing effect upon all on board, one of those days, and then we | trade, and has paralyzed the business interests shall hear that old excuse, “didn’t know it was | of the country. A well-known manufacturer of loaded.— Chicago Journal. | skates informed us yesterday he had no demand Wuart is the use of experimenting to discover perpetual motion until some way has been in- vented to utilize the jaw of the captain of a base-ball nine.—Xome Sentinel. Genera Grant wanted to smoke a big cigar | in the presence of the Queen, but he abstained | when they told him she had laid aside her clay- } nipe forever.—Detroit Free Press. Some one has observed that America has no | emblematic national plant, as have most other | nations. ‘This some onc seems to have forgotten the tobacco plant.— Chicago Journal, “Horerut.” No, the rioters did not rip the paragrapher of the Pittsburgh Dispatch limb from limb. They hunted the town over, but could not find him.— Oi/ City Derrick. SMELL of almost any lake or river water and you can detect defunct fish. And some people have to drink this liquid because of the tem- | perance excitement.— Chicago Journal. Vinnie Ream is modeling the bust of Custer, (N.B.—The compositor will please be careful not to set this up, ‘‘ Vinnie Ream is modeling the cust of Buster.”)—- Norristown Herald, Ir will soon be time for the little boy to start for Sunday-school in the bright beautiful morn- ing, and fall out of a neighbor's fruit-tree before the church-bell rings.— Brookville Jeffersonian. A stroke of lightning the other day tore a boy's boot to pieces and’ didn’t harm the boy. The reason was that he had placed the boot under a tree and_ gone in swimming.—Ov City Call. ‘Ir. circus-poster crop is almost a total failure this season, and the owners of goats have been compelled to lay in an extra stuck of old bustles and second-hand fruit cans. — Norristown Herald. ‘Tue temporal harvest will soon be ended, and then cometh the camp-meeting with its spiritual harvest—out of a big black bottle around the edges of the grounds.— Brookville | Jeffersonian. Iv was a Vassar girl who, when a sailor of forty years voyagings had been pointed out to her as | an “old salt,” subsequently alluded to him as “ancient chloride of sodium.”—New York Commercial. | A LECTURER against women’s rights, named ‘Tait, was hissed by the women of Mattoon, Ill, recently, They should remember that the women who hiss a Tait are lost.— Cincinnati Saturday Night. ‘THe body of a man who was carried over ; Niagara Falls has been recovered from the whirlpool. It was stripped as clean as if it had fallen among the hackmen. It was also dead. — St. Louis Times. A poem in an exchange begins with the line, “A smile, who will refuse a smile?” We think | the person who would refuse a smile these times | must be either very sick or constitutionally | unable to drink.—Rockland Courier, | Civitization has weaned men from canni- | balism, it is thought; but ten times as many | lobsters are eaten to-day as were devoured ten years ago. The moral responsibility is shifted —that’s all.— Zurner’s Falls Reporter. “Ts that a heavy draft razor?” inquired a customer of a Titusville barber, yesterday. “Heavy draft rayzur? Wot yo’ mean, boss?” “O, nuthin’; only thought it might be one; ‘cause it pulls so infernally, you know.—O// | City Derrick. | —Detroit Free Fress. | past. for his goods at all.— Phila, Bulletin, Mrs. Mutock Craik has written some verses about ‘When a Man Comes Home.” She says, ‘When a man comes home, let him enter smiling.” But pretty often he has “smiled” so much before he comes home, that it is almost impossible for him ta enter at all.— Morristown Herald. Ir was a Rome undertaker who assumed a sad expression and intended to say, ‘‘ Gather them in,” but he got confused, and merely re- | marked, “ Whoop ‘em up,” when the mourners | sadly but expeditiously bounced him.—Xome Sentinel, Ir is claimed by papers of that city that Al- bany is a summer resort. Once let a place get a legislature, and she is ready to claim any- thing. We expect to hear in a few days that Albany is the seat of the Eastern war.— Rochester Democrat. How beautiful is the sea. One can stand upon the rocks of the coast and watch the in- | coming waves and listen delighted to their low music for hours at a time, and yet it is the sea that causes thousands of strong men to swear, chew plug, drink rum, go without suspenders, and smell of tar.— Danbury News. ‘Tue song of the jail-bird is in many bars.— Herald P. 1. So is the song of the soap-maker. So is the song of the toper.— Rochester Democrat. So is the song of the Mississippi pilot New York Graphic. So is-—but we forbear. We have yet to hear from the Hawkeye man.— Albany Journal. Wuen the average woman is engaged in the manufacture of a woolen undershirt for a heathen ofthe torrid zone, she pities his blind ignorance; but when she finds that the cake she intended for the charity festival is burned at the bottom, she respects, yea, envies the Hindoo who can swear by 130,000 gods.— Brookville Jeffersonian, ‘Tue act of the milkman in leaving open his patron’s gates looks like a freak of genius; but the truth is, there is deep cunning in this seem- ing negligence. Gates open, goats get in and destroy the shrubbery, prejudice is excited against the goats, goats can give no more milk, and there is no further competition with the milkman.— Courier-Journal. Last year at this time you were prancing around in a white oilcloth-cape with a torch in hand, and a mouth full of party enthusiasm. This year,you sit in the grocery and ache your jaw over Turko-Russian names, or lean over the fence and watch your neighbor pursue the | bounding potato-bug. Life is full of mutations, —Catskill Recorder. Or late the matutinal pouring of kerosene on the kitchen-fire, to expedite combustion, has apparently become one of the customs of the But a plan fully as effective and deadly, and one that is sure to meet the approval of the Undertakers’ Union, has been discovered by the Baltiinore man who inspected a leaky gas- metre with a lighted candle.— xchange. A “high government functionary,” as the reporters called him, recently took tea with a lady in Philadelphia, and after a while she, ob- serving that he had no teaspoon, exclaimed: “Why, Mr. —, it isn’t possib/e that I forgot to give you a spoon. I coudd not have made such a mistake.” ‘The “high government function- ary” at once arose, and, with the air of 2 veteran, offered his pockets for ‘ investiga- tion.” ‘The lady said, she didn't mean /hat, and the affair was dropped. — Exchange uniden- | tified,