Puck — July 10, 1878 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

was a little, dried up specimen of hu- manity, weighing probably ninety-five pounds. He was cross-eyed, his nose pointed around toward his left ear, and his clothes looked as if they had been fitted to his form when he was about thirteen years of age, and hadn’t been changed or washed since. He came in briskly, helped himself to a chair, took a small package wrapped up in an old newspaper from his pocket, carefully un- rolled it, displaying a pint-bottle ornamented with a flaming yellow label “There! just look at that, will you ?” he ex- claimed, holding the bottle up to the light and squinting in our direction with one eye, while the other was fastened on his property. We looked. “Do you know what that is?” he continued. We acknowledged that we did not. “Well, sir, that bottle contains the most wonderful remedy that was ever brought to the notice of perishing mankind—Dr. Snoops’s Elixir of Youth, price one dollar a bottle, or six bottles for five dollars. 1 am the sole and only agent for the United States, Canadas, South America, New Jersey, Van’ Dieman’s Land, and the Sandwich Islands, “The man or woman that uses this Elixir regularly will never grow old. A written guar- antee to this effect is given away with every bottle. “It is, so to speak, a fountain of perpetual youth and health. “The inventor, Dr. Snoops, is now just one hundred and thirty-seven years old to a day, and he is, to all appearances, as young and fresh as a boy of sixteen. “He runs nine miles every morning before breakfast, and practices on the horizontal-bar eleven hours cach day. “Armed with a pint-bottle of that wonder- ful preparation, he plunges into the greatest dangers without the slightest fear. “The accidents that the Elixir has carried the doctor through in safety would fill a whole library. “Once while Snoops was traveling in the wilds of the West, he fell off a precipice three or four hundred feet high, fracturing his skull and breaking his collar-bone in six places. “For a week he lay unconscious, but as soon as he came to and found out what was the matter, he hauled forth his flask of Elixir, took one swig, and in less than no time he was on his feet as sound as a trade dollar. “At another time he ran into a band of hostile Indians, and they went to work and shot him so full of holes that a fellow couid see to read a newspaper through him without any trouble at all. “Under the circumstances some men would have kicked the bucket. But Snoops didn’t, “The Elixir saved him, “If one of the bullets had hit the bottle, it would have been all day with him; but fortun- ately it was untouched, and the life-giving compound stood right up alongside of Snoops and pulled him through, And then oa another—” “That's all right, Captain,” we interrupted. ‘The stuff may do all you claim, but we don’t need any of it to-day, and we haven't got time to listen to any more of your yarns. Good day, sir.” He looked at us for a minute as if he didn’t exactly comprehend our remarks, and then went right on as if nothing had happened. “On another occasion Dr. Snoops's mother- in-law sat down on a buzz-saw, and got split in two as slick and neat as could be. “Well, the doctor picks up the two halves, claps them together, pours half a bottle of the Elixir down the old lady, and in’ three DOCTOR SNOOPS'S ELIXIR OF YOUTH. PUCK. Ir minutes by the thermometer she was up, boss- ing around the ranche as natural as ever, “T tell you, Dr. Snoops’s Elixir of Youth is a big thing, and if you don’t order half-a-dozen bottles you'll be sorry for it when the cholera morbus, or something of that sort, comes swooping down on you with its destroying breath and not a drop of the Elixir within reach, Shall I say six bottles for five dollars?” No, sir, you needn't say anything of the kind. We don’t want any of your trash around the place!” “All right,” he coolly replied. “Then, if you don’t want the six, I'll leave this one bottle for a dollar; or, if you want to be mean about it, take it for ninety-five cents. I don’t want to sce any man going down to an early grave when a single bottle of Snoops’s Elixir will save him!" And he carefully wrapped the bottle up and handed it toward us with a bow. We didn’t take it, We arose and grasped the brass-mounted villain by the coat-collar, and he and his bottle of Elixir struck the bottom stair simultaneously. If he ever comes back, he will need exactly four hogsheads of th:t Elixir for his own per- sonal use right away after we get through with him, ‘That's business! W.S. G. OF AULD LANG SYNE. SS a-many ‘0 blunder thro’, And every point of view, Be fortune ne'er so modest, lee fancy ne'er so free, ‘The funniest and the oddest Of all would seem to be ‘The sad, but not unpleasant, Awakenings that show How curiously the Present Becomes the Long Ago! Lafe, like a nest of linnets, Was somehow used to sing, Full were the jovial minutes, ‘And all the seasons spring. What Rabelaisian fancies, What dauntless drinking bouts, | What Shoals of Nells and Nancies, We had to ease our doubts! Wat ah! these equinoxes— ‘They come, they come—and blow Our points and paradoxes Into the Long Ago! Alas, the bones we deviled! Alas, the coins we sank! Alas the lads that reveled While Time was lush and rank! Has Charles, so long the scapegrace, At last the married man, Begun with years to ape grace, ‘And ceased to clink the can? Is Lewis always fooling? Has James forgot to glow? ‘They ail accept my ruling Jn re the Long Ago! ‘There's Tony turned a student, At work from morn till night; And Bob's transformed to prudent And saves with all his might. And I myself—no matter! We won't commence afresh, Perhaps I'm getting fatter (I own to gaining fiesh!). ‘The makings of a logy Are in us all, and so 1 do Nor birl the cogie ‘As in the Long Ago. Indeed, the dance is over! My wife is out of town, Hut I'm no more a rover. No! No! I sit me down To toil and spin, forge.ful ‘Of all but these my rhymes, And scarcely balf-regretful Of those, the dear old times. Life's landscapes need assistance, And in our hearts we know It’s all mere air and distance, This grace of Long Ago. (From “The Cornbill.”) NILS JENSEN. an! lL Neus JENSEN lay on the ilat of his back 2 on the hillside, with his haads locked “behind his head, his long pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes fixed upon the cloudless sky, which was scarcely bluer than they. A circle of solemn litde white-headed children squatted round him, lis- tening intently to the story which he was re- lating, in a leisurely manner, between the whiffs of his pipe—his full, deep voice rising and fall- ing in a pleasant musical cadence, through the summer stillness. Beneath the little group lay the village of Bakke, with its toy-like wooden houses, its tiny landlocked harbor and its small fleet of fishing-boats; and beyond that, the the broad Hardanger Fjord stretched aways calm and blue, like a great lake, to meet the opposite shore, where a glorious confused mass of purple mountains snow-crowned and_ bask- ing in the warm sunlight, shut in the view. It was a magnificent summer day—such a day as is not too common on the rainy west coast of Norway, and Nils was enjoying it in his own manner. “ And so, you see,” said he, concluding his narrative, ‘because the man was an_ honest man, and had done what was right, the good spirits had given him contentment and a light heart, which are better things than money and lands, as you will find one of these days, if you live long enough; and the bad spirits left him, and fled away, moaning as they went, to the | dark, black place in the narrow fjord from | which they had come, where the rocks rise so high on either side that the blessed sunshine never touches the water, and where it is deep, deep—so deep that nobody has ever found the bottom. And the spirits plunged down under the waters; and there they must sit for another hundred years in darkness, because they tempt- ed a good man, and failed. But the good spirits, who had done their work, and gained the battle, spread their great white wings, and flew away rejoicing to the highest mountain- tops, where they rest in their beautiful ice- palace above the clouds, and listen to music so enchanting that the organ in church is a mere nothing to it, and——” “ But, Nils,” interrupted a practical member of the audience, who had probably had some six winters’ experience of the effects of ice and snow upon the human extremities, “isn’t it very cold up there?” “Not a bit of it,” replied the unabashed narrator—‘‘ not for them, at least. Spirits don’t mind the cold. And then what a palace they have got there underneath the ice! Such pillars and ceilings, and floors, and glittering thrones! You cannot even guess what it is like! But one of these days, when you are a big boy, I will take you up with me to the gla- cier, and we will peep down into one of the great blue rifts where the icicles hang, and where you can get a glimpse—but only a glimpse—of what is beyond. You can’t go down there, or hear the music that the spirits hear, or see the things that they see; but, if you grow up a good man, you will know all about it when you die; for then the spirits will come down for you, and take you up in their arms, and in a moment you will be across the fjord, and high up among the mountains, and then—”” “Nils, Nils!” broke in a grave voice from | the background, ‘‘ what nonsense is this that you are putting into the children’s heads?’ Nils started into a sitting posture, and saw between him and the sunlight a quaint, old- world figure, clad in a long black gown and an —Zondon, | Elizabethan’ ruff—the clergyman of Bakke, in comicbooks.com