Puck — October 2, 1878 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

5 REMINISCENCE. (Paurrum,) STAND on the ripple-kissed shore; The breezes that blow from the sea Bring visions of days gone before— My boyhood returns unto me. sf ‘The breezes that blow from the sea Old memories wake in my breast; My boyhood returns unto me, , Ere my fingers a moustache caressed, Old memories wake in my breast, Life's springtime appears once again, Ere my fingers a moustache caressed, When I courted the sweet Mary Jane. Life’s springtime appears once again, When I loved that dear girl next to ma, When I courted the sweet Mary Jane, And called her my darling—-my star. When I loved that dear girl next to ma, nt of bliss To call her my darling—my star, To gain from her lips but a kiss. For me twas suffi For me ‘twas sufficient of bliss— For then I was verdant and fresh— To gain from her lips but a kiss, ‘To break of Love's net but a mesh. For then I was verdant and fresh; Hut now that I'm A/asé and old, ‘To break of Love's net every mesh Scems much like a story twice told, So now that I'm 4/asé and old, ‘The visions of days gone before Seem much like a story twice told, ‘As stand on the ripple kissed shore. W.M, Lixpsay. PULPIT GUSH. ‘Tuat kind of story that the Rev. Mathew Hale Smith told about Clara Morris and her savior, is very much resorted to by ministers in the pulpit where a yarn without a shadow of fact is invented to suit every point brought out in a sermon. Who has not heard rattled off glibly lies that are not only lies, but blas- phemies, such as the California Lying Club never aspires to, and Ingersoll would shudder at? ‘We must practice with faith and make it serve us even to the end,” says the ready- witted preacher; “half an hour before I came to this meeting I was with a darling child,” (husky voice here assumed,) “that went forth to meet Him who said, ‘suffer little children to come unto me!’ The tiny soldier of the lamb kissed mama good-bye; kissed aunty good-bye and then seeing papa enter the room, bright- ened up and said, ‘Oh, papa!’” (sob here). “You needn't mind the lemonade you were going out for. I am going to Heaven now, and Jesus will be kind enough to make some lemonade for me as soon as I get there.’” (Mur- mured applause.) ‘This sort of thing in achurch or at a prayer- meeting is always taken in as the legitimate cand regular thing, (the better the stories, the higher the salary); but when the clergymen transfer these tales to cold type and to every variety of reader—they meet a different recep- | . tion, and the man who writes them, as well as the paper in which they are found, earn general | distrust. By the way, the out-of-town papers, generally, have what they call a “/vef-scorner,” in which they print all sorts of diabolical compositions that show defiance to rhyme and reason. Why not establish something of the sort proclaiming hostility to truth and possibility for such stories as the above? HE DESPISED A LIAR. is before yesterday old Silas Tretcher, fe a prosperous Granger of Northeast tow! “*> ship, drove into town with a load of produce. While in Hammersmith’s store pur- chasing “some caliker for the old woman,” he picked up the county paper, and was soon ab- sorbed in its contents. “T despise a liar!” he presently exclaimed, with startling vehemence, laying down the pa- per and ejecting a stream of tobacco-juice into a cuspidor at his feet. “Them newspaper men ought to be arrested and fined forty dollars for | printin’ sech ‘tarnal lies.” “‘ What's the matter, Silas?” asked the dry- goodsman, as he ripped off twelve yards of seven-cent calico. “Well, this paper says Mr. Barkins, of Lin- coln township, has raised a beet which weighs ninety-seven pounds, and a head of cabbage as big round as a cart-wheel, I don't believe it. Barkins lies. I don't brag on raisin’ big wegetables myself, but when it comes to corn or oats, you will find ol:l Tretcher at the head of his class every time. I despise a liar, and always make it a part of my religion to stick to facts. Probably I hain’t got eddica- tion enough to believe these stories about big beets and big squashes, but I have intelleck enough to raise the tallest corn in the county, You sce, Mr. Hammersmith, my corn is grow- ing in two lots of two acres each, one field on the southern side and t’other on the northern side of the house. It is the ‘Great American Magic Sprouter’ variety. I despise a liar, but two months after it was planted it had shot up to the height of twelve feet and three an’ a half inches. Two months later { had to hire two men to help me look to the top of it, and then the labor strained our eyes putty badly. In July I had a couple of long ladders built to use in gathering my corn; for to cut the stalks off near the ground would 'a’ been death to the workmen, you know. By splicing these ladders, they will not reach half way to the top now. The thievin’ crows ‘light onto the top of the corn, an’ are out of reach of a rifle- ball. But they don’t steal much corn. You | see, it takes six able-bodied crows to lug off | one small grain of this corn, When they steal a grain they fly over a pile of rocks and let it drop. ‘Then they fly down an’ help themselves ! to the thousands of fragments. Crows, Mr. Hammersmith, is knowin’ birds, I despise a liar; but the other day a dozen crows was a- carryin’ off a partic’larly large grain, when they kicked up a muss a hundred yards overhead, and bimebye they let the corn drop, and it struck old Peters's cow and broke her back. Fact, Mr. Hammersmith. “One mornin’ last week my wife Maria gave me a shake and said, ‘Come, Silas, isn’t it time to get up?’ I told her no—that it was as dark as Egypt, and couldn’t be mor’n 3 aat. Putty soon she gave me another nudge, an’ said it must be mornin’. The room was still crowded with darkness, but I got up, struck a light, an’ looked at the clock. It was just 9 am. I thought maybe the old time-piece was cranky, ‘Then I went to the window and gazed out, and saw a streak of sunshine away off like. I dressed myself, hurried down-stairs, and made a bee-line for that streak of light, and putty soon I emerged into broad daylight, the sun about four hours high. I despise a liar, Mr. | Hammersmith, but the cause of my house be- ing enveloped in darkness was just this: The cars of corn having reached the size of pump- logs, the stalks became top-heavy, you know, and durin’ the night the two fields swayed over, and crushin’ together at the tops, formed an arch over my house, and shut out the lightof day. My house is now bein’ rapidly demolished, an ear of corn now an’ then crushin’ through the roof like a bom’-shell. I ’spect the value of the prodigious crop will more than compensate me for the loss of the house, though to hire bal- loons to gather it will eat up much of the pro- fits “As I said afore, Mr. Hammersmith, I de- spise a liar, an’ I don’t believe these newspaper yarns about big cabbages an’ turnips, an’ the likes, an’ it’s a great pity editors can’t get somethin’ containin’ more facts to fill np with. ‘Truth always pays best in the end, as I fre- kently tell my ole woman; an’ now, if you have any good six-cent muslin, you may measure me off five yards. w. "Tis now upon the windy slope The russet leaves repo: Now languid fades the heliotrope, ‘The daisy, and the rose, And the gauze undershirt. GREAT WESTERN PRODUCTS. British Tourist 1x THE West gracious, have you any more boys as tall as you out here?” Western Youtu.—‘‘You bet. Here’s my brother. Come around and see him. He's as big as Tam.” British Tourist (enlightened), see; quite too absurd, aw! “O, ah! I comicbooks.com