Chapter II: Part 2

Now, if the people who advance these ideas of heaven or hell, had a license to point to the moon, the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which would be plausible, to say the least, and say that it was heaven, and prove it, and could prove that the sun was the other place, which looks reasonable, according to all we have heard about 'tother place, the moon would be so full there would not be standing room, and they would have to turn republicans away, while the sun would be playing to empty benches, and there would only be a few editors there who got in on passes.

Of course, during a cold winter, when the thermometer was forty or fifty degrees below zero, and everybody was blocked in, and coal was up to seventeen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not prosper as much as it would in summer, because when you talked to a sinner about leading a different life or he would go to the sun, he would look at his coal pile and say that he didn't care a continental how soon he got there, but these discouragements would not be any greater than some that the truly good people have to contend with now, and the average the year round would be largely in favor of going to the moon.

The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is properly advertised as a celestial paradise, where only good people could get their work in, and where the wicked could not enter on any terms, there would be a great desire to take the straight and narrow way to the moon, and the path to the wicked sun would be grown over with sand burs, and scorched with lava, and few would care to take passage by that route. Anyway, this thing is worth looking into.

UNSCREWING THE TOP OF A FRUIT JAR.

There is one thing that there should be a law passed about, and that is, these glass fruit jars, with a top that screws on. It should be made a criminal offense, punishable with death or banishment to Chicago, for a person to manufacture a fruit jar, for preserving fruit, with a top that screws on. Those jars look nice when the fruit is put up in them, and the house-wife feels as though she was repaid for all her perspiration over a hot stove, as she looks at the glass jars of different berries, on the shelf in the cellar.

The trouble does not begin until she has company, and decides to tap a little of her choice fruit. After the supper is well under way, she sends for a jar, and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour the fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the kitchen, and proceeds to unscrew the top. She works gently at first, then gets mad, wrenches at it, sprains her wrist, and begins to cry, with her nose on the underside of her apron, and skins her nose on the dried pancake batter that is hidden in the folds of the apron.

Then the little house-wife takes hold of the fruit can, smilingly, and says she will show the girl how to take off the top. She sits down on the wood-box, takes the glass jar between her knees, runs out her tongue, and twists. But the cover does not twist. The cover seems to feel as though it was placed there to keep guard over that fruit, and it is as immovable as the Egyptian pyramids. The little lady works until she is red in the face, and until her crimps all come down, and then she sets it down to wait for the old man to come home. He comes in tired, disgusted, and mad as a hornet, and when the case is laid before him, he goes out in the kitchen and pulls off his coat, and takes the jar.

He remarks that he is at a loss to know what women are made for, anyway. He says they are all right to sit around and do crochet work, but whenever strategy, brain, and muscle are required, then they can't get along without a man. He tries to unscrew the cover, and his thumb slips off and knocks skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little of it into the crevice, and lets it soak, and then he tries again, and swears audibly.

Then he calls for a tack-hammer, and taps the cover gently on one side, the glass jar breaks, and the juice runs down his trousers leg, on the table and all around. Enough of the fruit is saved for supper, and the old man goes up the back stairs to tie his thumb up in a rag, and change his pants.

All come to the table smiling, as though nothing had happened, and the house-wife don't allow any of the family to have any sauce for fear they will get broken glass into their stomachs, but the “company” is provided for generously, and all would be well only for a remark of a little boy who, when asked if he will have some more of the sauce, says he “don't want no strawberries pickled in kerosene.” The smiling little hostess steals a smell of the sauce, while they are discussing politics, and believes she does smell kerosene, and she looks at the old man kind of spunky, when he glances at the rag on his thumb and asks if there is no liniment in the house. The preserving of fruit in glass jars is broken up in that house, and four dozen jars are down cellar to lay upon the lady's mind till she gets a chance to send some of them to a charity picnic. The glass jar fruit can business is played out unless a scheme can be invented to get the top off.

BUTTERMILK BIBBERS.

The immense consumption of buttermilk as a drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.

Another thing, buttermilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest. The complexion of the nose of a buttermilk drinker assues a pale hue which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a temperance society.

AN ÆSTHETIC FEMALE CLUB BUSTED.

The organization of the “Cosmos” Club, of Chicago women, for the purpose of discussing “æsthetic” business, ancient poetry and pottery ware, calls to mind the attempt to organize such a club here in Milwaukee. Our people here are too utterly full of business and domestic affairs to take to the “æsthetic” very generally, and the lady from Boston who tried to get up a class in the new wrinkle went away considerably disgusted. She called about fifty of our splendidest ladies together at the residence of one of them, and told them what the ladies of Eastern cities were doing in the study of higher arts. She elaborated considerably on the study of Norwegian literature, ceramics, bric-a-brac and so forth, and asked for an expression of the ladies present. One lady said she was willing to go into anything that would tend to elevate the tone of society, and make women better qualified for helpmates to their husbands, but she didn't want any Norwegian literature in hers. She said her husband ran for an office once and the whole gang of Norwegian voters went back on him and he was everlastingly scooped.

The Boston lady held up her hands in holy horror, and was going to explain to the speaker how she was off her base, when another lady got up and said she wanted to take the full course or nothing. She wanted to be posted in ancient literature and ceramics. She had studied ceramics some already, and had got a good deal of information. She had found that in case of whooping cough, goose oil rubbed on the throat and lungs was just as good as it was in case of croup, and she felt that with a good teacher any lady would learn much that would be of incalculable value, and she, for one, was going for the whole hog or none.

The Boston lady saved herself from fainting by fanning herself vigorously, and was about to show the two ladies that they had a wrong idea of æsthetics, when a lady from the West Side, who had just been married, got up and said she felt that we were all too ignorant of æsthetics, and they should take every opportunity to become better informed. She said when she first went to keeping house she couldn't tell baking powder that had alum in it from the pure article, and she had nearly ruined her husband's stomach before she learned anything. And speaking of bric-a-brac, she felt that every lady should learn to economize, by occasionally serving a picked up dinner, of bric-a-brac that would otherwise be wasted.

The Boston lady found she could not speak understandingly, so she left-her chair and went around to the different groups of ladies, who were talking earnestly, to get them interested. The first group of four that she broke in on were talking of the best way to renovate seal-skin cloaks that had been moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all the æsthetic insect powder that was advertised in the papers, and the moths would fairly get fat on it, and beg for more; but last spring she found out that moths were afraid of whisky.

Her husband worked in a wholesale whisky store, and his garments became saturated with the perfume, and you couldn't hire a moth to go near him. So she got an empty whisky barrel and put in all her furs, and the moths never touched a thing. But she said the moths had a high old time all summer. They would get together in squads and go to the barrel and smell at the bung-hole, and lock arms and sashay around the room, staggering just as though there was an election, and about eleven o'clock they would walk up to a red spot in the carpet and take a lunch, just like men going to a saloon.

She said there was one drawback to the whisky barrel, as it gave her away when she first went out in company after taking her clothes out of the barrel. She wore her seal-skin cloak to the Good Templars' Lodge, the first night after taking it out, and they were going to turn her out of the Lodge on the ground that she had violated her obligation.

“You may talk about your Scandinavian literature,” said she, turning to the Boston lady, “but when it comes to keeping moths out of furs, an empty whisky barrel knocks the everlasting socks off of anything I ever tried.”

The Boston lady put on her æsthetic hat, and was about to take her leave, satisfied that she had struck the wrong crowd, when a sweet little woman, with pouting lips, called her aside. The Boston lady thought she had found at last one congenial soul, and she said:

“What is it, my dear?”

The little lady hesitated a moment, and with a tear in her eye she asked:

“Madam, can you tell me what is good for worms? Fido has acted for a week as though he was ill, and----”

That settled it. The Boston lady went away, and has never been heard of since.

*****

“A young fellow and his girl went out sleighing yesterday, and the lad returned with a frozen ear. There is nothing very startling in the simple fact of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the ear next to the girl that he was foolish enough to let freeze.”

A girl that will go out sleigh-riding with a young man and allow his ears to freeze, is no gentleman (“lady”??), and ought to be arrested. Why, here in Milwaukee, on the coldest days, we have seen a young man out riding with a girl, and his ears were so hot they would fairly “sis,” and there was not a man driving on the avenue but would have changed places with the young man, and allowed his ears to cool. Girls cannot sit too close during this weather. The climate is rigorous.

FOOLING WITH THE BIBLE.

Reports from the stationers show that there is no demand at all for the revised edition of the Bible, and had it not been for the newspapers publishing the whole affair there would have been very few persons that took the trouble to even glance at it, and it is believed that not one reader of the daily papers in a hundred read any of the Bible, and not one in ten thousand read all of it which was published. Who originated this scheme of revising the Bible we do not know, but whoever it was made a miscue. There was no one suffering particularly for a revision of the Bible. It was good enough as it was. No literary sharp of the present day has got any license to change anything in the Bible.

Why, the cheeky ghouls have actually altered over the Lord's Prayer, cut it biased, and thrown the parts about giving us this day our daily bread into the rag bag. How do they know that the Lord said more than he wanted to in that prayer? He wanted that daily bread in there, or He never would have put it in. The only wonder is that those revisers did not insert strawberry shortcake and ice cream in place of daily bread. Some of these ministers who are writing speeches for the Lord think they are smart. They have fooled with Christ's Sermon on the Mount until He couldn't tell it if He was to meet it in the Chicago _Times_.

This thing has gone on long enough, and we want a stop put to it. We have kept still about the piracy that has been going on in the Bible because people who are better than we are have seemed to endorse it, but now we are sick of it, and if there is going to be an annual clerical picnic to cut gashes in the Bible and stick new precepts and examples on where they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our old Bible where the critters can't get at it, and throw the first book agent down stairs head first that tries to shove off on to us one of these new fangled, go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern improvements, and hell left out.

Now, where was there a popular demand to have hell left out of the Bible? Were there any petitions from the people sent up to this self-constituted legislature of pinchbeck ministers, praying to have hell abolished, and “hades” inserted? Not a petition. And what is this hades? Where is it? Nobody knows. They have taken away our orthodox hell, that has stood by us since we first went to Sunday school, and given us a hades. Half of us wouldn't know a hades if we should see it dead in the road, but they couldn't fool us any on hell.

No, these revisers have done more harm to religion than they could have done by preaching all their lives. They have opened the ball, and now, every time a second-class dominie gets out of a job, he is going to cut and slash into the Bible. He will think up lots of things that will sound better than some things that are in there, and by and by we shall have our Bibles as we do our almanacs, annually, with weather probabilities on the margins.

This is all wrong. Infidels will laugh at us, and say our old Bible is worn out, and out of style, and tell us to have our measure taken for a new one every fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this revision is a good thing, why won't another one be better? The woods are full of preachers who think they could go to work and improve the Bible, and if we don't shut down on this thing, they will take a hand in it. If a man hauls down the American flag, we shoot him on the spot; and now we suggest that if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella into him and spread it.

The old Bible just filled the bill, and we hope every new one that is printed will lay on the shelves and get sour. This revision of the Bible is believed to be the work of an incendiary. It is a scheme got up by British book publishers to make money out of pious people. It is on the same principle that speculators get up a corner on pork or wheat. They got revision, and printed Bibles enough to supply the world, and would not let out one for love or money. None were genuine unless the name of this British firm was blown in the bottle.

Millions of Bibles were shipped to this country by the firm that was “long” on Bibles, and they were to be thrown on the market suddenly, after being locked up and guarded by the police until the people were made hungry for Bibles.

The edition was advertised like a circus, and doors were to be opened at six o'clock in the morning. American publishers who wanted to publish the Bible, too, got compositors ready to rush out a cheap Bible within twelve hours, and the Britons, who were running the corner on the Word of God, called these American publishers pirates. The idea of men being pirates for printing a Bible, which should be as free as salvation. The newspapers that had the Bibles telegraphed to them from the east, were also pirates.

O, the revision is a three-card monte speculation; that is all it is.

Geo. W. Peck, of the _Sun_, recently delivered an address before the Wisconsin State Dairyman's Association. The following is an extract from the document:

_Fellow creamationists_: In calling upon me, on this occasion, to enlighten you upon a subject that is dear to the hearts of all Americans, you have got the right man in the right place. It makes me proud to come to my old home and unfold truths that have been folded since I can remember. It may be said by scoffers, and it has been said to-day, in my presence, that I didn't know enough to even milk a cow. I deny the allegation; show me the allegator. If any gentleman present has got a cow here with him, and I can borrow a clothes-wringer, I will show you whether I can milk a cow or not. Or, if there is a cheese mine here handy, I will demonstrate that I can--_runnet_.

The manufacture of cheese and butter has been among the earliest industries. Away back in the history of the world, we find Adam and Eve conveying their milk from the garden of Eden, in a one-horse wagon to the cool spring cheese factory, to be weighed in the balance. Whatever may be said of Adam and Eve to their discredit in the marketing of the products of their orchard, it has never been charged that they stopped at the pump and put water in their milk cans. Doubtless you all remember how Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel would not let him do the churning. We can picture Cain and Abel driving mooly cows up to the house from the pasture in the southeast corner of the garden, and Adam standing at the bars with a tin pail and a three-legged stool, smoking a meerschaum pipe and singing “Hold the fort for I am coming through the rye,” while Eve sat on the verandah altering over her last year's polonaise, and winking at the devil who stood behind the milk house singing, “I want to be an angel.” After he got through milking he came up and saw Eve blushing, and he said, “Madame, cheese it,” and she chose it.

But to come down to the present day, we find that cheese has become one of the most important branches of manufacture. It is next in importance to the silver interest. And, fellow cheese mongers, you are doing yourselves great injustice that you do not petition congress to pass a bill to remonetize cheese. There is more cheese raised in this country than there is silver, and it is more valuable. Suppose you had not eaten a mouthful in thirty days, and you should have placed on the table before you ten dollars stamped out of silver bullion on one plate and nine dollars stamped out of cheese bullion on another plate. Which would you take first? Though the face value of the nine cheese dollars would be ten per cent, below the face value of ten silver dollars, you would take the cheese. You could use it to better advantage in your business. Hence I say cheese is more valuable than silver, and it should be made legal tender for all debts, public and private, except pew rent. I may be in advance of other eminent financiers, who have studied the currency question, but I want to see the time come, and I trust the day is not far distant, when 412 1/2 grains of cheese will be equal to a dollar in codfish, and when the merry jingle of slices of cheese shall be heard in every pocket.

Then every cheese factory can make its own coin, money will be plenty, everybody will be happy, and there never will be any more war. It may be asked how this currency can be redeemed? I would have an incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, which is stronger and more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will waft to us the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall know that money is plenty.

The manufacture of cheese is a business that a poor man can engage in as well as a rich man. I say it, without fear of successful contradiction, and say it boldly, that a poor man with, say 200 cows, if he thoroughly understands his business, can market more cheese than a rich man who owns 300 oxen. This is susceptible of demonstration. If my boy showed a desire to become a statesman, I would say to him, “Young man, get married, buy a mooley cow, go to Sheboygan county, and start a cheese factory.”

Speaking of cows, did it ever occur to you, gentlemen, what a saving it would be to you if you should adopt mooley cows instead of horned cattle? It takes at least three tons of hay and a large quantity of ground feed annually to keep a pair of horns fat, and what earthly use are they? Statistics show that there are annually killed 45,000 grangers by cattle with horns. You pass laws to muzzle dogs, because one in ten thousand goes mad, and yet more people are killed by cattle horns than by dogs. What the country needs is more mooley cows.

Now that I am on the subject, it may be asked what is the best paying breed for the dairy. My opinion is divided between the south down and the cochin china. Some like one the best and some the other, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.

There are many reforms that should be inaugurated in the manufacture of cheese. Why should cheese be made round? I am inclined to the belief that the making of cheese round is a superstition. Who had not rather buy a good square piece of cheese, than a wedge-shape chunk, all rind at one end, and as thin as a Congressman's excuse for voting back pay at the other? Make your cheese square and the consumer will rise up and call you another.

Another reform that might be inaugurated would be to veneer the cheese with building paper or clapboards, instead of the time-honored piece of towel. I never saw cheese cut that I didn't think that the cloth around it had seen service as a bandage on some other patient. But I may have been wrong. Another thing that does not seem to be right, is to see so many holes in cheese. It seems to me that solid cheese, one made by one of the old masters, with no holes in it--I do not accuse you of cheating, but don't you feel a little ashamed when you see a cheese cut, and the holes are the biggest part of it? The little cells may be handy for the skipper, but the consumer feels the fraud in his innermost soul.

Among the improvements made in the manufacture of cheese I must not forget that of late years the cheese does not resemble the grindstone as much as it did years ago. The time has been when, if the farmer could not find his grindstone, all he had to do was to mortise a hole in the middle of a cheese, and turn it and grind his scythe. Before the invention of nitro-glycerine, it was a good day's work to hew off cheese enough for a meal. Time has worked wonders in cheese.

COLORED CONCERT TROUPES.

Sometimes it seems as though the colored people ought to have a guardian appointed over them. Now, you take a colored concert troupe, and though they may have splendid voices, they do not know enough to take advantage of their opportunities. People go to hear them because they are colored people, and they want to hear old-fashioned negro melodies, and yet these mokes will tackle Italian opera and high toned music that they don't know how to sing.

They will sing these fancy operas, and people will not pay any attention. Along toward the end of the programme they will sing some old nigger song, and the house fairly goes wild and calls them out half a dozen times. And yet they do not know enough to make up a programme of such music as they can sing, and such as the audience want.

They get too big, these colored people do, and can't strike their level. People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Roze, and Gerster, are sick when a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to make her let go, and all the time she would be biting and shaking like a terrier with a rat, and finally give one kick at last at her red trail with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking as though she would have to be carried on a dustpan, and the people in the audience would look at each other in pity and never give her a cheer, when, if she had come out and patted her leg, and put one hand up to her ear, and sung, “Ise a Gwine to See Massa Jesus Early in de Mornin',” they would have split the air wide open with cheers, and called her out five times.

The fact is, they haven't got sense.

There was a hungry-looking, round-shouldered, sick-looking colored man in that same party, that was on the programme for a violin solo. When he came out the people looked at each other, as much as to say, “Now we will have some fun.” The moke struck an attitude as near Ole Bull as he could with his number eleven feet and his hollow chest, and played some diabolical selection from a foreign cat opera that would have been splendid if Wilhelmjor Ole Bull had played it, but the colored brother couldn't get within a mile of the tune. He rasped his old violin for twenty minutes and tried to look grand, and closed his eyes and seemed to soar away to heaven,--and the audience wished to heaven he had,--and when he became exhausted and squeezed the last note oat, and the audience saw that he was in a profuse perspiration, they let him go and did not call him back. If he had come out and sat on the back of a chair and sawed off “The Devil's Dream,” or “The Arkansaw Traveler,” that crowd would have cheered him till he thought he was a bigger man than Grant.

But he didn't have any sense. If some one will send a marked copy of this paper to some of these colored concert troupes, and they will take the hint, and sing nigger songs, they will make a heap of money, where now they have to live on a free lunch route.

COULDN'T GET AWAY FROM HIM.

A good many may have wondered why we so suddenly quit speeding our horse on the avenue. For two or three days we couldn't go down the avenue enough, and there is no person but will admit that our old pile driver trotted real spry. We did not get the idea that he was the fastest horse that ever was, but he seemed real soon. It takes a good deal of executive ability for a man who has a third-class horse to keep from going down the road with horses that are too fast. One must be a good judge, and when he finds a horse that he can beat, stick to him.

We got the thing down pretty fine, but one day a man drove along beside us, going up, who seemed bound to get into conversation. He was a red-faced man, with these side-bar whiskers, evidently a German. He was driving a sorrel horse to a long sled, with a box on behind the seat, a sort of delivery sleigh. He had a barrel in the sleigh, filled with intestines from a slaughter house, two baskets full of the same freight, a cow's head, and two sheep heads. He was evidently owner of a sausage factory somewhere, and as he kept along beside us his company was somewhat annoying. Not that we were proud, but we feared the people on the avenue would think we were a silent partner in a sausage factory, and that we were talking business.

The man was real entertaining in his conversation, but the load he had was not congenial, and we were glad when the foot of the hill was reached, so we could turn around and go down, and get away from him. We turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse, and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve get up and git.

Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work up by where we sat, and we looked around, and may we never live to make a million dollars if it wasn't the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow's head, basket and all, and his old horse was coming for all that was out. We blush for our sex. It would look nice to get in the papers that we had been racing our blue-blooded thoroughbred against a sausage butcher, wouldn't it? Our plan was formed in an instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and we took out the whip and touched our horse on a raw spot, intending to go right away from the fertilizer.

The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, and to have his pride touched, for he snorted and let out another link. We don't know as anyone would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and costly steed went, the faster that homely and cheap butcher horse climbed. People by the hundreds all along the line were watching the race. The baskets of sausage covets were slewing around from one side of his sled to the other, and we expected every moment one of them would flop over into our cutter.

Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave the horse one more cut and went the last block at a fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside us, so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we came out neck and neck, the Dutchman a little ahead because his horse was unchecked, and the crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, when the butcher came up alongside just as a carriage of beautiful ladies were passing, and as they turned up their noses at his load, he said:

“Dot vas a nice race, ain't it, Mister Beck?”

We could have killed him in cold blood. Not that we dislike to be beaten. We have always been beaten. It isn't that. But we don't want to trot horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calculated for associating, in the horse arena, with a load of slaughter house refuse. It is asking too much. We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick, or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gordon, or any of those truly good men in whom there is no guile, and in whose cutters there is no foreign matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne we shall never go upon the track again with a butcher.

There should be a law passed making it a penal offence for a person with a delivery wagon to tackle onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is wrong, and will lead to trouble. We have not given up racing entirely, but hereafter we shall look the avenue over very close for butchers before we let out our four legged telescope. A butcher is just as good as anybody, understand us, but they must keep their distance. We don't want to look into, the hind end of no cutter that is filled with slaughter house ornaments, and we won't. It is not pride of birth, or anything of that kind, but such people ought to drive on Wells street, or have slower horses.

DOGS AND HUMAN BEINGS.

Lorillard, the New York tobacco man, had a poodle dog stolen, and has offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the thief, and he informs a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if necessary, for the capture and conviction of the thief. [Applause.]

The applause marked in there will be from human skye terriers, who have forgotten that only a few weeks ago several hundred girls, who had been working in Lorillard's factory, went on a strike because, as they allege, they were treated like dogs. We doubt if they were treated as well as this poodle was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor, virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard would have offered as big a reward for the conviction of the human thief, as he has for the conviction of the person who has eloped with his poodle.

We hope that the aristocracy of this country will never get to valuing a dog higher than it does a human being. When it gets so that a rich person would not permit a poodle to do the work in a tobacco factory that a poor girl does to support a sick mother, hell had better be opened for summer boarders. When girls work ten hours a day stripping nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that the fines for speaking are larger than the wages, and the fines go for the conviction of thieves who steal the girls' master's dog, no one need come around here lecturing at a dollar a head and telling us there is no hell.

When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her work at daylight, looks out of the window at noon to see her master's carriage go by, in which there is a five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket on, and a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin cushions, and the girl is fined ten cents for looking out of the window, you don't want to fool away any time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such heartless employers are expected.

It is seldom the _Sun_ gets on its ear, but it can say with great fervency, “Damn a man that will work poor girls like slaves, and pay them next to nothing, and spend ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief!” If these sentiments are sinful, and for expressing them we are a candidate for fire and brimstone, it is all right, and the devil can stoke up and make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the through train.

It seems now--though we may change our mind the first day at the fire--as though we had rather be in hades with a hundred million people who have always done the square thing, than to be in any heaven that will pass a man in who has starved the poor and paid ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief. We could have a confounded sight better time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It would be worth the price of admission to stand with our back to the fire, and as we began to smell woolen burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces at the ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were putting on style at the other place.

*****

Andrews' _Bazar_ says: “Gathered waists are very much worn.”

If the men would gather the waists carefully and not squeeze so like blazes, they would not be worn so much. Some men go to work gathering a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and binding. They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery.

The Black River Falls Independent says: “If you have any old pants to give to the poor, take or send them to the Ladies' Relief Society.”

Well, we have got plenty of them; but, bless you, we doubt if any member of the Ladies' Relief Society could wear them. They don't hook up.

ARTHUR WILL KEEP A COW.

It is announced by telegraph from Washington that Gen. Arthur will keep a cow at the White House during his term, to furnish milk for the family, rather than be obliged to depend upon a milk man who is in the habit of selling a mixed drink, though the customers, prefer to take it-straight. There is nothing that will do more to convince people of the true simplicity of a President than for him to keep a cow. No man who habitually associates with a cow, and stirs up a bran mash, and watches her plow her nose down to the bottom in search of a potato paring, can be wholly bad. If the President selects a good, honest cow we have no fears that he will be a tyrant in his administration of affairs. A man is very apt to absorb many of the characteristics and traits of the cow that he milks. If she is a good natured, honest, law abiding cow, that “hoists” at the word of command, stands firm and immovable while being milked, and “gives down” freely, so that the fingers are not cramped, and she does not switch her tail in the face of the milker, the man will be a good natured, generous, honest man, but if the cow is one of those communists, and has to be tied to the manger, and you have to hold one leg to keep her from kicking over the pail, and she tries to run a horn into you, and keeps stepping around, and her tail knocks your hat off and gets in your eyes, and your nerves are unstrung for fear she is thinking of some deviltry to play on you, the man whose duty it is to draw the milk from her udder will become harsh, suspicious, cruel, tricky, and mean; and he will grind the face of the poor.

The country will hope that Mr. Arthur, in selecting a cow, will use more judgment than in selecting a cabinet, and will bring his great mind to bear on the subject as though he appreciated the situation. We trust he will not buy a cow of a democrat. There may be good cows owned by democrats, but they are not for sale, and a democrat would sell him a kicking cow that was farrow, just to injure his administration. Let him go to some friend in his own party, some man who is interested in the success of his administration, and state his case, and if possible get a cow on trial.

This policy is wise from the fact that he could thus see if the cow was going to hold out as a good milker. Some cows give a good mess of milk when they first go to a new place, but in a week they let down and the first thing you know they dry up entirely. Mr. Arthur wants to look out for this. The country is full of bold, bad men, who would palm off a kicking cow, or one that was not a stayer, onto their best friends.

Another thing, we would advise Mr. Arthur not to use a milking stool with one leg, but to get one with three legs. It is undignified in any man to stretch out on a barn floor, with a one-legged milk stool kicking him in the pistol pocket, a pail of milk distributing itself over his person, and a frightened cow backed up in a stall threatening to hook his daylights out, and it would be more undignified in a President of the United States. Get a three-legged stool, by all means, or use an empty soap box to sit on.

If all this unsolicited but well meant advice is taken, the country will be in no danger from Arthur's decision to keep a cow, and we shall hope to see him on some fine morning next summer, as the sun is tinging the eastern horizon with its ray as he slaps her on the rump with a piece of barrel stave, or we will accept an invitation to visit his barn and show him how to mix a bran mash that will wake to ecstacy the aforesaid cow, and cause her milk to flow like back pay from the treasury.

When it comes to cows we deserve a cabinet position.

SHALL THERE BE HUGGING IN THE PARKS?

The law-abiding people of this community were startled on Tuesday, and the greatest indignation prevailed at an editorial article in the _Sentinel_ denouncing the practice of hugging in the public parks. The article went on to show that the placing of seats in the parks leads to hugging, and the editor denounced hugging in the most insane manner possible.

The _Sun_ does not desire to enter politics, but when a great constitutional question like this comes up, it will be found on the side of the weak against the strong.

The _Sentinel_ advises the removal of the seats from the park because hugging is done on them. Great heavens! has it come to this? Are the dearest rights of the American citizen to be abridged in this summary manner? Let us call the attention of that powerful paper to a clause in the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that “all men are created free and equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When the framers of that great Declaration of Independence were at work on that clause, they must have had in view the pastime of hugging in the parks.

Hugging is certainly a “pursuit of happiness.” People do not hug for wages--that is, except on the stage. Nobody is obliged to hug. It is a sort of spontaneous combustion, as it were, of the feelings, and has to have proper conditions of the atmosphere to make it a success. Parties who object to hugging are old, usually, and have been satiated, and are like a lemon that has done duty in circus lemonade. If they had a job of hugging, they would want to hire a man to do it for them.

A man who objects to a little natural, soul-inspiring hugging on a back seat in a park, of an evening, with a fountain throwing water all over little cast-iron cupids, has probably got a soul, but he hasn't got it with him. To the student of nature there is no sight more beautiful than to see a flock of young people take seats in the park, after the sun has gone to bed in the west, and the moon has pulled a fleecy cloud over her face for a veil, so as not to disturb the worshippers.

A couple, one a male and the other a female, will sit far apart on the cast-iron seat for a moment, when the young lady will try to fix her cloak over her shoulders, and she can't fix it, and then the young man will help her, and when he has got it fixed he will go off and leave one arm around the small of her back. He will miss his arm, and wonder where he left it, and go back after it, and in the dark he will feel around with the other hand to find the hand he left, and suddenly the two hands will meet; they will express astonishment, and clasp each other, and be so glad that they will begin to squeeze, and the chances are that they will cut the girl in two, but they never do. Under such circumstances, a girl can exist on less atmosphere than she can when doing a washing.

There is just about so much hugging that has to be done, and the _Sentinel_ should remember that very many people have not facilities at their homes for such soul-stirring work, and they are obliged to flee to the parks, or to the woods, where the beneficent city government has provided all of the modern improvements.

Hugging is as necessary to the youth of the land as medicine to the sick, and instead of old persons, whose days of kittenhood are over, throwing cold water upon the science of hugging, they should encourage it by all legitimate means.

When, in strolling through the parks, you run on to a case of sporadic hugging, instead of making a noise on the gravel walk, to cause the huggists to stop it, you should trace your steps noiselessly, get behind a tree, and see how long they can stand it without dying. Instead of removing the cast-iron seats from the parks, we should be in favor of furnishing reserved seats for old people, so they can sit and watch the hugging.

It doesn't do any hurt to hug.

People think it is unhealthy, but nobody was ever known to catch cold while hugging. It is claimed by some that young people who stay out nights and hug, are not good for anything the next day. There is something to this, but if they didn't get any hugging they wouldn't be worth a cent any time. They would be all the time looking for it.

No, good Mr. _Sentinel_, on behalf of fifty thousand young people who have no organ to make known their wants, we ask you to stay your hand, and do not cause the seats to be removed from the parks. Remember how many there are who have yet to learn the noble art of hugging, and give them a chance.

THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.

The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State. There was no change, particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner's breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem of the democratic party that crawls into a hole and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.

The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a _sic semper Americanus scunch_. We do not complain that the sailor with the Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer. These things are of minor importance, but the docking of that badger's tail, and setting it up like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upon every citizen of the State, and when the democrats get into power that tail shall be restored to its normal condition if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, and this work of the republican incendiaries shall be undone. The idea of Wisconsin appearing among the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is repugnant to all our finer feelings.

CANNIBALS AND CORK LEGS.

Great results are expected from an experiment recently tried by the American Missionary Society. Last fall they sent as missionary to the cannibal Islands a brother who had lost both arms and both legs in a railroad accident. He was provided with cork limbs, and his voice being, in good condition it was believed he could get in his work with the heathen as well as though he was a whole man. The idea was to allow the cannibals to kill him and eat him, believing that the heathen would see the error of their ways and swear off on human flesh.

A report has been received which is very encouraging. It seems that the cannibals killed the good missionary, and cut off his arms and legs for a sort of stew, or “boyaw,” thus falling directly into the trap set for them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred concert about like our national “Whoop it up, Liza Jane,” and when they stuck a fork into the boiling limbs, and found that the “meat” seemed water soaked, they set the table and sounded the loud timbrel for breakfast.

The surviving missionary says he shall never forget the look of pain on the face of a buck cannibal as he bit into the elbow joint of the late lamented and struck a brass hinge. He picked it out as an American would pick a buckshot out of a piece of venison, and laid it beside his plate in an abstracted manner, and began to chew on the cork elbow. Any person who has ever tried to draw a cork out of a beer bottle with his teeth can realize the feelings of these cannibals as they tried to draw sustenance from the remains of the cork man. They were saddened, and it is safe to say they are incensed against the missionary society.