Puck — September 19, 1877 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

PUCK. 13 4 “Why don’t you look a bit vexed?” said Me shook his head, looking at her beautiful face with delight. “Perhaps you didn’t keep your appoint- ment,” she suggested. “Oh, but I did, and waited there until the liceman regarded me with a suspicious eye. believe he thought I had sinister designs upon the lions.” “And weren't you terribly angry then ?” “No. My sentiments haven't altered since yesterday. i don’t forget that you are a lady.” René was genuinely pleased, and so forget- ting herself, acknowledged Hugh’s speech with a grand curtsey. “ What do you think of the alteration I have made in the studio?” “You have made it beautiful. And, oh! these are lovely flowers! Now this serves me right. If I hadn't been so lazy, these would have been mine.” “They are yours, whether or no, if you will have them. 1 bought them for no one else.” René turned round and looked at him, with such true gratitude in her eyes as Hugh had not seen there before, “You waited a long, long while for me; and then, instead of being angry, you spend money and carry two heavy pots all the way from Co- vent Garden here to give pleasure tome. Now that is generosity.” She sat patiently all the morning, and could not feel angry with this amiable cousin, When she was prepared to leave, she said: “Twill be as kind to these flowers as I was cruel to you, For your sake I will not neglect them, Aren't you going to do any more work to-day?” “ Yes; but I's falgar Square first. “Oh, no. It looks so foolish for a man to carry two pots of flowers.”” “Don't you think it is better to look foolish than to feel selfish? Unless you fear what peo- ple may think to see you with such a queer porter, I will carry them.” People in the street did stare at him with his tulips and clyclamens; but René was pleased with the service rendered her, and his manner of rendering it. Without regard to her social position, but for herself alone, Hugh was pay- ing her a compliment which she fully appreci- ated, Another gentleman might have carried the pos a cab; but she knew of none who would have made himself conspicuous without showing that he was making a sacrifice for her. Hugh was passionately fond of Nature, and the tulips gave him a subject to talk upon. Of primroses—where the first was to be found— and crocuses and sky-anemones he spoke; and then of birds and their songs, and the habits of squirrels and dormice. Of these simple things he talked with a pleasant freedom, as if rather to an old companion than to a young girl whose acquaintance was of to-day. Such conversa- tion was a novelty to René, whom men ad- dressed usually as if she could understand and appreciate nothing but verbal compliment and flattery. She experienced the delight of being treated by a man as his equal in agreeable taste and intelligence. Hugh's voice, too, was musi- cal and soft and sweet; in his whole manner there was to René an inexpressible charm, which soothed her spirit like the narcotic odor of some flowers, All too soon for both they reached Trafalgar Square, and there Hugh left her. “No wonder that little wretch loves him,” said René, with a capriciousness not inconsist- ent with her temper. And then, thinking of Mattie, she became angry again with Hugh— and herself. 1 (To be con all carry those flowers to Tra- ued. THE ASSUMPTION OF VICE. (Boucicaulted from the N. Y. Times.) OMADIC flirtation, or the sweet con- verse of two souls who travel in one railway-car, is the most ecstatic pleasure known to the mild young man who loves to put on the appearance of vice. The rural under- graduate, who never drinks anything stronger than currant-wine, and whose nearest approach to gallantry has been a game of backgammon with his maiden aunt, no sooner enters a railway- train on his way home to spend a vacation, than he joins with others of his kind in singing roaring bacchanalian choruses and loudly wishes that he had thought to bring a pack of cards with him, so that a game of euchre “ for the drinks” might be practicable. It is this longing to be credited with vices which, in his inmost heart, he spurns, that leads him to seize with avidity any opportunity to enter into con- versation with the first silly girl whose attention he may attract. Many a youth who would blush at a glimpse of his sister’s innocent stockings floating from the clothes-line, is ex- alted to the summit of bliss if he can imagine that some censorious person mistakes him for a hardened roué. In point of fact, this mistake is never made, since he bears the brand of innocence upon his brow, and proclaims by every action the harmless idiocy of his charac- ter. Nevertheless, his self-conceit is wounded by no suspicion of the truth, and he firmly be- lieves that his innocent ears are hidden by the lion's skin of vice in which he masquerades. ‘The delights of nomadic flirtation were re- cently signally illustrated by the experience of a youthful student of one of the colleges in this State. While in a railway-car, this young man saw an unprotected young lady, and marked her for his prey. ‘Taking a seat beside her, he began a conversation by a few powerful and convincing remarks upon the weather. The young lady, who was quite his peer in amiable silliness, at first answered him in able mono- syllables, and finally, yielding to the wiles of her new acquaintance, joined with him in devouring the seductive peanut, and in trying her fortune with the prize-candy that cheats but does not inebriate—unless we may regard colic as an intoxication of the stomach. For nearly an hour this rare and radiant maiden, whom her parents named Sarah Jane, and this innocuous undergraduate, whose name is cha- ritably suppressed, flirted to their own immense satisfaction, and indulged in that curious though innocent amusement known as “tee- heeing,” until the other passengers even wished that they were dead. Finally, the young man felt that he must retire in order to chuckle in rivate and ease his strained mind by exult- ingly calling himself a “wild young devil,” and he thereupon sought the smoking-car and painfully began the consumption of a mild Connecticut cigar. His dream of bliss was soon interrupted by the appearance of the conductor, who abruptly demanded “that watch.” Now, the young man had no watch of any kind, and said so with a clearness that did him credit. The conductor then explained that he had stolen a young lady's watch, and that he must come with him and restore it without delay. Red as a rose was he when he confronted the young lady, with his collar in the tight grasp of the con- ductor’s hand, and timidly Kenied her fierce accusation that he wasa pickpocket. Of course, the incident created immense excitement in the car, and the young lady’s tears were accepted by everybody as conclusive evidence of the truth of her charge. One old gentleman, who had been unable to read his newspaper in con- sequence of the prolonged “‘tee-heeing” already mentioned, remarked that a man who would force hirself upon an innocent girl as the undergraduate had done would unquestionably pick pockets, or perpetrate any other detestable crime. Meanwhile the young man begged for mercy, and implored the young lady to look in her et and see if she could not find the missing watch. The conductor, who was a married man, and knew that the female pocket is never used for watch-carrying purposes, was so indignant at what he called the “cheek” of this suggestion that he called a brakeman to hold the miserable young man, so that he could “go through him,” as he metaphorically ex- pressed it. The young man was accordingly searched with great thoroughness, but with no notable result ‘save the discovery of a small comb, which he providently carried in his pocket in order to be prepared in case of a sudden and profuse growth of mustache. When it became evident that the watch was not concealed upon his person, it was decided that he had either swallowed it or secretly dropped it out of the window, and the con- ductor, partly in order to prevent the effusion of blood on the velvet cushions of the car, stopped the train and deposited the young man in a nice swampy spot. Precisely fifteen min- utes afterwards Miss Sarah Jane gave a joyful shriek and extricated the watch from some mys- terious locality immediately behind the front of her dress, into which it had accidentally slipped. ‘Thus was the innocence of the undergraduate established, and he thereupon sank in public estimation from a skillful pickpocket to the more degrading position of an unlimited idiot. But as the young man awakes to a full realization of his physical discomfort he weakens alto- gether on the pleasures of moral depravity, and concludes that it is much better to pursue the even tenor of manly chastity than to assume a vice, if you have it not, A stupenT in a Wisconsin college is named Evan Evan Evans.—£x. Evans! —Phila, Press. Science is discussing the question, ‘ What will become of the last man?” We know, He'll get left. A. BURGLAR can make no explanation of his presence that will satisfy a front-yard bull-dog. —New Orleans Picayune. “ Every cloud has a silver lining,” and man: a man wishes his pocketbook was a good-sized, healthy cloud.—Fiila. Bulletin. We may not all be artists, but we can appre- ciate the difference between an Italian sunset and a circus bill-board.— Oi/ City Call, Wuen Brigham Young wanted to talk lov- ingly to his wife, he always began by calling her “ sweet sixteen.”"—Phila, Herald, ‘Tuey have found a new planet out in Michi- gan, but it isn’t certain that it isn’t the tip end of Zach Chandler’s nose.—Boston Fost, Genera. Howarp is not personally ac- quainted with Chief Joseph. ‘This is what em- operations between them.—Danbury News, Somesopy says: ‘‘ Every failure is a step to success.” ‘This will explain why the oftener some men fail the richer they become.—Worr. Herald, comicbooks.com