Chapter X: Oiling the Wheels

No husband who has ever properly studied his mother-in-law can fail to be aware that woman's perception of heartless villainy and evidences of intoxication in man is often of that curiously fine order of vision which rather exceeds the best efforts of ordinary microscopes, and subjects the average human mind to considerable astonishment. The perfect ease with which she can detect murderous proclivities, Mormon instincts, and addiction to maddening liquors, in a daughter's husband--who, to the most searching inspection of everybody else, appears the watery, hen-pecked, and generally intimidated young man of his age--is one of those common illustrations of the infallible acuteness of feminine judgment which are doing more and more, every day, to establish the positive necessity of woman's superior insight, and natural dispassionate fairness of mind, for the future wisest exercise of the elective franchise and most just administration of the highest judicial office. It may be said that the mother-in-law is the highest development of the supernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since she usually has superior opportunities to study man in all the stages from marriage to madness; but with her whole sex, particularly after certain sour turns in life, inheres an alertness of observation as to the incredible viciousness of masculine character, which nothing less than a bit of flattery or a happily equivocal reflection upon some rival sister can either divert or mislead for a moment.

"Now don't you really think, OLDY," said Gospeler SIMPSON to his mother, as he sat watching her fabrication of an immense stocking for the poor, "that Hopeless Inebriate and Midnight Assassin are a rather too severe characterization of my pupil, Mr. MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON?"

"No, I do not, OCTAVE," replied the excellent old nut-cracker of a lady, who was making the charity stocking as nearly in the shape of a hatchet as possible. "When a young man of rebel sentiments spends all his nights in drinking lemon teas, and trying to spoil other young men's clothes in throwing such teas at them, and is only to be put down by umbrellas, and comes to his homes with cloves in his clenched fists, and has headaches on the following days, he's on his way either to political office or the gallows."

"But he hasn't done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, and reflected casually upon the late well-known Southern Confederacy."

"Don't tell me!" reasoned the fine old lady, holding up the stocking by its handle to see how much longer it must be to reach the wearer's waist. "I'm afraid you're a copperhead, OCTAVE."

"How you do cackle, OLDY!" said her son, who was very proud of her when she kept still. "You can't see anything good in MONTGOMERY, because, after the first seven or eight breakfasts with us, he said he was afraid that so many fishballs would make his head swim."

"My child," returned the old lady, thrusting an arm so far into the charity stocking that she seemed to have the wrong kind of blue worsted limb growing from one of her shoulders, "I have judged this dissipated young man exactly as though he were my own son-in-law, and know that he possesses an incendiary disposition. After the fireworks at Saint Cow's Church, on Saint VITUS'S Day, that devoted Ritualistic Christian, Mr. BUMSTEAD, came up to me in the porch, with his eyes nearly closed, on account of the solemnity of the occasion, and began feeling around my neck with both his hands. When I asked him to explain, he said that he wanted to see whether my throat was cut yet, as he had heard that we kept a Southern murderer at home. He was still very pale at what had taken place in his room over night, when he finally said 'Good-day, ladies,' to me.

"MONTGOMERY is certainly attached to me, at any rate," murmured the Gospeler, reflectively, "and has made no attempt upon my life."

"That's because his sister restrains him," asserted the mother, with a fond look. "I overheard her telling him, when she was at dinner here one day, that you might be taken for a Southerner, if you only wore dress-coat all the time and were heavily mortgaged. Withdraw her influence, and the desperate young man would tar and feather us all in our beds some night."

Falling silent after this unanswerable proof of Mr. PENDRAGON'S guilt, Mr. SIMPSON mused upon as much of the dear old nutcracker as was not hidden by the vast charity stocking. In her ruffled cap, false front, and spectacles, she was so exactly the figure one might picture Mr. JOHN STUART MILL to be, after reading his latest literary knitting on the Revolting Injustice of Masculine Society, that the Gospeler of Saint Cow's could not help feeling how perfectly useless it was to expect her to think herself capable of error.

As, whenever the Reverend OCTAVIUS gave indication of a capacity for speechless thoughtfulness, his benignant mother at once concluded that he needed an anti-bilious pill, she now made all haste to the cupboard to procure that imitation-vegetable and a glass of water. It was the neatest, best-stored Ritualistic cupboard in Bumsteadville. Above it hung a portrait of the Pope, from which the grand old Apostolic son of an infallible dogma looked knowingly down, as though with the contents of that cupboard he could get-up such a _schema_ as would be palatable to the most skeptical Bishop in all the Oecumenical Council, and of which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a better _schema_, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly and sly, gave entrance to this treasury of dainties; and then what a rare array of disintegrated meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard! and, and mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The Smoked Beef, and Doughnuts, as being more sober and unemotional features of the pageant, appeared on either side the remains of a Cold Chicken, as rendering pathetic tribute to hoary age; while sturdy, reliable Hash and Fishballs reposed right and left in their mottled and rich brown coats, with a kind of complacent consciousness of having been created according to Mrs. GLASS'S standard dictum, First catch your Hair.

Gospeler SIMPSON, by natural law, alternated from this wonderful cupboard, very regularly, to another, or sister cupboard, also presided over by the good old maternal nut-cracker, wherein the energetic pill lived in its little pasteboard house next door to the crystal palace of smooth, insinuating castor oil; and passionate fiery essence of peppermint grew hot with indignation at the proximity of plebeian rhubarb and squills. In the present case he quietly took his anti-bilious globule: which, besides being a step in the direction of removing a pimple from his chin, was also intended as a kind of medical preparation for his coming services in the Ritualistic Church, where, at a certain part of the ceremonies, he was to stand on his head before the Banner of St. Alban and balance Roman candles on his uplifted feet. When the day had nearly passed, and the Vesper hour for those services arrived, he performed them with all the less rush of blood to the head for being thus prepared; yet there was still a slight sensation of congestion, and, to get rid of this, when he stepped forth from Saint Cow's in the twilight, it was to take an evening stroll along the shore of Bumsteadville pond.

(_To be Continued_.)

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CONDENSED CONGRESS.

SENATE.

Down again came the furious FRANK. But not the fiery Hun. Mr. STOCKTON was Frank. He said he represented New Jersey. (Enthusiastic Groans.) The constituents of New Jersey were a peculiar people. Such was their depravity that they said they would rather have fifty per cent taken off their taxes than to receive the speeches of their representatives in Congress free of charge. Under these circumstances they looked upon the franking privilege, he regretted to say, as a swindle, and remonstrated with him, with tears in their expressive and fish-like eyes, against being hidden by a shower of public documents. The Congressional Globe made a very inferior article of lamp-lighters, and the proud pigs of New Jersey declined to fatten upon the Patent Office reports.

Mr. TIPTON was in favor of the franking privilege. What good would it do anybody if Congressmen drew postage-stamps in lieu of writing their names. As for him, he found it much easier to draw postage-stamps than to write his name, and he was sure that none of them were so lost to a sense of their own dignity as to pay their own postages, like ordinary human beings.

Mr. STEWART said certainly not. The only thing was that there would be an account kept of the number of postage-stamps they drew, but nobody knew how often a man used his frank. He himself had been censured for franking a few tons of pig-iron from Washington to Nevada. But no amount of postage-stamps would have carried it.

Mr. DRAKE referred to the darkest hour of the late war, when postage-stamps were current, and when, if the proposed changes were effected, they could have made the Post-Office department pay for their drinks. But in the present state of the South, when the Ku-Klux Klan, in spite of his most earnest endeavors, refused to kill anybody, he saw no hope that those golden hours would return. Therefore he thought it best to cleave to his frank.

HOUSE.

Mr. LOGAN desired to expel WHITTEMORE permanently. WHITTEMORE had really gone too far, and if they let him in people would consider that they were no better, and institute investigations of a disagreeable nature into the conduct of Congress generally. Of course the House had a right to expel him. It had a right to expel everybody but himself.

Mr. ELDRIDGE said that directly Mr. LOGAN would be claiming that he--Mr. ELDRIDGE--ought to be expelled. This would be unpleasant to him. He would not die in spring-time.

MR. BUTLER said, in default of getting San Domingo annexed, he would like to get the patent of a friend of his in Massachusetts extended.

Mr. FARNSWORTH objected, upon the ground that Mr. BUTLER had received shekels from the patentee.

Mr. BUTLER said, if he had, he hadn't so much hair on his face as FARNSWORTH.

The Comic Speaker performed a solo on the gavel, and said it was none of FARNSWORTH'S business anyhow.

Mr. FARNSWORTH said Mr. BUTLER had got $2,000, and hadn't earned it.

Mr. BUTLER said Mr. FARNSWORTH was a coward and an assassin.

The Comic Speaker said he rather thought FARNSWORTH was a coward, but assassin was unparliamentary.

Mr. FARNSWORTH said the evidence showed that BUTLER was on one side before he got a fee, and on the other afterwards.

Mr. BUTLER said there was nothing green in his eye. As for FARNSWORTH, nobody would ever pay him $2000 for anything.

The Comic Speaker said that all Mr. FARNSWORTH'S remarks were perfectly shocking. As for Mr. BUTLER, his conduct was admirable.

Mr. SCHENCK saw that the interest was absorbed by FARNSWORTH and BUTLER, and tried to divert it by getting up a little shindy with LOGAN. He said LOGAN wanted everything done in LOGAN'S way, when notoriously everything ought to be done in SCHENCK'S way.

Mr. LOGAN said SCHENCK had led the House by the nose for four weeks. Now he proposed to lead it for a few days himself--by the ear.

The Comic Speaker said he liked to see this. It made things lively for the boys. He hoped SCHENCK and LOGAN would keep on. But they didn't; and

Mr. DAWES said he had charged some time ago that the expenses of the Government had increased. He wished to take that back. It seemed there had been an error in the accounts. The Government had made a mistake against itself of seventy-six millions, and another in favor of itself of seventy-seven millions. Both added together made more than a hundred and fifty millions, which would reduce the expenses below those of the traitor, murderer, viper, and unpleasant person known as ANDREW JOHNSON.

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CURRENT FABLES.

THE BULLS AND THE BEAVERS.

The Lion claimed dominion over all the beasts wherever they were found, but some of them were rebellious. Among the malcontents were the Bulls, part of whom inhabited a pasture so rich that it was called the Green Isle, while others lived in a charming country with "the best government the world ever saw," owned and occupied by the Eagles. Adjoining the latter was a colony of quiet and inoffensive Beavers. The Bulls, angry at the Beavers for their humble submission to the rule of the remote Lion, resolved to make war upon them. Accordingly, those Bulls who lived in the Land of the Eagles proceeded to invade the colony, intending to dispossess the Beavers and form a government of their own. But the Eagles had a reasonable degree of respect for the Lion, not so much on account of his individual strength, which was comparatively trivial, but because he was the ruler of all manner of beasts. So their leader, after making the second memorable speech of his life, in which he said "The Eagles is at peace with the Lion," despatched a little Eaglet to arrest the progress of the Bulls. This messenger, flying to the edge of the Beaver's colony, caught and confined in a prison the leader of the Bulls, who, as he was being conducted to jail, cried out, "Verily it is not the strength of the individual, but the number of his supporters, which is the measure of his power."

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THERMOMETRICAL.

In the present torrid state of the weather, can the Oriental craftsmanship lately introduced here be properly termed Coolie labor?

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THEATRICAL NOTE.

The OATES troupe now performing at the Olympic Theatre must not be confounded with the Horse Opera.

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BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

It occurs in PUNCHINELLO, at this late day, to remark that the friends of America in England, even in the darkest hours of the rebellion, were ever disposed to look on the BRIGHT side.

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POETRY VERSUS PROSE.

A traveller, who has lately been shipwrecked on the ocean, has a notion that there is precious little poetry in being Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

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THE ONLY GERMAN POET RECOGNIZED IN WALL STREET.

KOeRNER.

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FUN AND FIN.

Since President GRANT's famous trouting excursion to Pennsylvania, piscatorial pastimes appear to have become quite the thing among the magnates of the Government. The following item from Washington, cut from a morning paper, reads very like a bit of gossip from the history of the Court of CHARLES II:

"General SPINNER and some of his female Treasury clerks went to the Great Falls to-day to catch black bass."

Redolent of all that is rural and sweet, is the idea of SPINNER, surrounded by a bevy of his "female Treasury clerks," reclining upon a shady rock just over the Great Falls. We behold SPINNER, with our mind's eye, "fixing" a bait for one of the lovely young fisherwomen, while half a dozen of the others are engaged in fanning him and "Shoo-ing" the flies away from his expressive nose. The picture is a very pretty one, recalling to mind some brilliant pastoral by WATTEAU. There are numerous accessories arranged in the foreground, such as hampers of cold chicken pie, hams of the richest pink and yellow hues, and baskets of champagne, and it would be interesting to know who pays for all. "Spinning a minnow," as the anglers term it, for black bass, is a very appropriate pastime for SPINNER, but, for a fresh-water fisherman, there is something very Salt Lakey in that arrangement regarding the "female Treasury clerks."

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"LOT" ON A LOT OF PROVERBS.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO: One of my friends, who, much to the disgust of his fellow boarders, is constantly playing an adagio movement in B flat upon a flute, (that may not be the correct musical term, but no one will ever know it unless you tell,) informs me that you are astute; another friend, who makes cigar stumps into chewing tobacco, says, you're "up to snuff." Assuming the truth of those statements, I apply to you for information. You have the ability, have you also the inclination, to aid a poor, weary mariner on the voyage of life, (in the steerage,) who has been buffeted by reason, tempest-tossed by imagination, becalmed by fancy, wrecked by stupidity, (other people's,) and is now whirling helplessly in the Maelstrom of conundrums? (If that doesn't touch your heart, then has language failed to accomplish the end for which it was designed--to deceive others.)

I'm the great American searcher after truth, and, though I've been at the bottom of every well, except the Artesian ones, I am still a searcher. Can you refuse to throw a straw to a drowning man, or a crumb to a starving fellow-creature? Knowing that you have a mammoth heart, and abundance of straw, and lots of bread, I feel that you cannot. List! oh, list! and I will my caudal appendage unfold.

Is enough as good as a feast, if the former is enough of walloping and the latter is composed of pheasant and champagne? (i.e.: Is real pain as good as champagne?) TOM ALLEN evidently got enough in his late fight, but I'm inclined to think that he would rather strain his jaws at a feast than at a fisticuff. The Young Democracy once got enough staying out in the cold, but, when some of them were admitted to the feast, they did not appear to be at all satisfied, but grabbed at the choicest titbits.

Is one bird in the hand worth two in the bush, if the one in the hand is the Police Board, and those in the bush are the Supervisorship and the Health Board? And suppose you've succeeded in getting your fingers on those in the bush, wouldn't you try to make a haul? Why, I can imagine a man who might have the Governor's place in hand, and yet consider one bird in the bush better, if that bird could sing an old tune called White House.

How can it be possible that this world is all a fleeting show? I've visited a great many shows, and have found that all of them are conducted on the same principle. You pay your money at the door, sit undisturbed through the performance, unless some junk-man should take to junketing, and get out easily, the proprietor in fact seeming rather glad to get rid of you. But when you enter the world, you pay nothing, on your way through it you pay constantly, and getting out of it--at the present prices of coffins and bombazines--is one of the most expensive things on record.

Why mustn't you look a gift horse in the mouth, if you are prudent enough to do it on the sly? Besides, don't everybody look in the horse's mouth, as soon as the giver has departed? Suppose you're patriotic, and offer your son to Uncle SAM as a gift, to use in his civil service, isn't Mr. JENCKES's bill designed as a means of looking into your son's mouth? Maybe it's to find out if he's a public cribber. What I want to know is, does this prohibition apply to donkeys?

What possible connection can there be between doing handsome and being handsome? Now there's BROWN, who persuaded me, on or about black Friday, to buy his gold at the highest figures, and thus did a very handsome thing (for himself), but he is still the ugliest looking man in our street.

If it be true, as stated in "The Gates Ajar," that there will be pianos in heaven, haven't the men who learned harp-making, on the theory that it was a permanent business, been grossly deceived, and haven't they an action for damages against somebody, if they can find out who it is?

If all the world's a stage, what are cars? I admit that all Broadway is a stage, but is it at all probable that GOV. HOFFMAN vetoed the Arcade railroad bill on that account? Besides, if all the world's a stage, why should the men who carry passengers care about the duty on steel rails?

Is it true that a man must not laugh at his own jokes? Don't you suppose that the man who invented the _canard_ about the Jews in Roumania is laughing at the squabble which he has raised between the Associated Press and the American Press Association, by means of his little joke? And don't you suppose, when the returns of the last election came in, that Mr. TWEED laughed very vigorously at his little joke, called the new election law? If Congress should keep on joking for the rest of the session, and, as a result, the Republican party should be turned out of power, don't you suppose that the members will laugh--on the other side of their mouths?

There is a certain saying, which everybody retails, about the kind of people who tell the truth. Now I always tell the truth. I'm exactly like GEORGE WASHINGTON. If I had cut down the cherry tree, and my stern parent had appeared upon the scene with a rawhide and asked me who did it, I should have instantly replied, the hatchet. But I am not a child. Can it be that I am the other thing?

Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, can you do those sums? I have tried them in every possible way. I have let X equal the unknown quantity, but I don't know Y. If you can solve the problems, will you send me the answers by the first post?

Yours,

LOT.

[Our correspondent seems to labor under the impression that we are a primary arithmetic, or a dictionary, or a conundrum book. We regret his mistake, and can simply say that we are nothing of the sort. Any reasonable conundrums, such as, How old is the world? How many individuals is Mrs. BRIGHAM YOUNG? What becomes of the Fenian money? When will Cuba be free? we would willingly answer, but our correspondent cannot expect us to solve problems which are as old as BARNUM said JOYCE HETH was. He should be able to see such things as others see them. They are the unwritten law, and PUNCHINELLO does not propose to alter them.]

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CONCERNING THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN.

'Tis well enough that GOODENOUGH
Dr. LANAHAN should teach,
That, sure enough, there's law enough
Such slanderers to reach.

But, like enough, this GOODENOUGH
Dr. LANAHAN may impeach,
And prove enough that's bad enough
To justify his speech.

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UNKIND.

TOODLES made a solemn vow the other day, in presence of MUGGINS, that he "would never shave until he had paid off his debts," but MUGGINS, in relating the fact, said simply that "TOODLES had concluded to wear a full beard the rest of his life."

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THE POEMS OF THE CRADLE.

Old Mother Hubbard

GENTLE READER: You have a soul for poetry. Even when an infant, and in your cradle, you had a soul for poetry. You were not aware of it at this early stage, but your mother--if you had one--was. With what fond alacrity did she hasten to your cradle-side, when some wicked little pin was trying to insinuate itself into your affections much against your inclination, and soothe you with the pleasing strains of Mother Goose. And how your eyes brightened and your little feet and hands commenced playing tag, when you heard the wonders of Mother Goose extolled in pretty verse. Ah! those were the days of romance. I will leave them now, to search for the hidden beauties of one of your childhood's melodies, the eventful career of Mother HUBBARD and her dog.

I will begin with the opening Canto of the poem, and limit myself, for the present, with detailing the beauties of its many incidents.