George W. Peck

“ If the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a cockroach, and he runs about as though he was offended. When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one to find it out, and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when he goes into it and walks all over the cake till he strikes the bridal cake, when he gets onto it, stands on his head and seems to say, “Yum, yum,” and is tickled as a girl with a fresh beau.
There is human nature in a cockroach. ”

“ There is something, some sort of electricity that runs from a boy to a circus, and all the teachers in the world cannot break the connection. A circus is the boys' heaven.
You may talk to him about the beautiful gates ajar, and the angel band in heaven that plays around the great white throne, and he can't understand it, but the least hint about the circus tent, with the flap pulled to one side to get in, and the band wagon, and the girls jumping through hoops, and the clown, and he is onto your racket at a jump. ”

“ Then the cow or steer sits down on its haunches and the conversation flows in easy channels. You ask how they like the country, and if they have good times, and if they are not hard worked, and all that; and they yawn and say the country is splendid at this season of the year, and that when passing along the road they feel as though they would like to get out in some meadow, and eat grass and switch flies.
The steer asks the visitor if he does not want to look through the car, when he says he would like to if it is not too much trouble. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know that if anything happens the first thought of the conductor is the safety of the women and children, at the expense of his own safety. And when your loved ones come home safe, and you meet them at the train, and the conductor stands upon the platform as the train backs into the depot, looking at nobody, but his eye fixed upon the chances of accident, you always feel as though you wanted to put your arm around him and say, “Bully for you, old boy.” ”

“ Most actresses get lost entirely when anything occurs that is not in the play, and Miss Gray was the scaredest female that ever lived. She thought it was a judgment on her for playing a dying character, and thought the whole theatre had been struck by lightning, and was going to fall down. To save herself was her first thought, so she grabbed her night-dress,—which was embroidered up and down the front, and had point lace on the yoke of the sleeves,—in both hands and started for the orchestra, the wildest corpse that ever lived. ”

“ We are more than ever struck by the old adage that the ways of Providence are inscrutable, and past finding the right berth. We had gone out to the back part of the car, and stood in our stocking feet on the cold zinc floor for a couple or three minutes, looking out upon the beautiful Michigan landscape and waterscape, as the train passed Michigan City, and had asked the porter if there was any bar on the train, and had returned up the aisle to find our berth. ”

“ What the religion of this country wants, to make it take the cake, is a hell that the wayfaring man, though a democrat or a greenbacker, can see with the naked eye. The way it is now, the sinner, if he wants to find out anything about the hereafter, has to take it second handed, from some minister or deacon who has not seen it himself, but has got his idea of it from some other fellow who maybe dreamed it out. ”

“ It is singular the freaks that are taken by fashion. Years ago a red-headed girl, with a mouth like a slice cut out of a muskmelon, would have been laughed at, and now such a girl is worth going miles to see.
It is easier to color the hair red, and be in fashion, than it is to enlarge the mouth, though a mouth that has any give to it can be helped by the constant application of a glove stretcher during the day, and by holding the cover to a tin blacking box while sleeping. What in the world the leaders of fashion wanted to declare large mouths the style for, the heavens only can tell. ”

“ More matches have been broken up by hammocks than by all the Sunday schools in the world, and no girl who is bow-legged, or has an ankle like a rutabaga, should ever trust herself in a hammock, even though it is held by half a dozen friends, as the hammock will shy at a piece of paper as quick as a skittish horse, and in such a moment as ye think not you are on all fours, your head dizzy, and if there is a hole in your stocking as small as a Democrat's hope of election, it will look to outsiders as big as the gate to a fair ground. O, a hammock is worse than a bicycle. ”

“ But if Hamlet screams bloody murder, throws the skull at the grave digger, falls over into the grave, tears his shirt, jumps out of the grave and shakes his imaginary skirts, gathers them all up in his hands and begins to climb up the scenes like a Samantha cat chased by a dog, and gets on top of the first fly and raises Hamlet's back and spits, then Miss Dickinson is a woman. The country will watch eagerly for the result of the test, which we trust will be made at the Boston Theatre next week. ”

“ What kind of a place would a summer resort be without happy children? It would be a hospital for decayed roues, very old maids, women who hated children, smart Alecks who were mashers, dead beats and sour curmudgeons. The day would be put in in gossiping, exercising old flirts with stiff joints, drinking at somebody's expense, and fishing for rich husbands with graveyard coughs, and angling for women who wanted to be caught and didn't care a continental who caught them. ”

“ There is a great deal of religion in sitting in a smoking car, smoking dog-leg tobacco in a briar-wood pipe, and seeing happy faces in the smoke that curls up—faces of those you have made happy by kind words, good deeds, or half a dollar put where it will drive away hunger, instead of paying it out for a reserved seat in a gospel car. ”

“ It is about this time that a young man begins to realize that he has been a colossal fool, as he flies around to heat water and bring in the bath tub, and as he goes whooping after his mother or her mother, he turns pale around the gills, his hair turns red in a single night, and he calls high heaven to witness that if he lives till morning, which he has doubts about, he will turn over a new leaf and never get married again until he is older. ”

“ Find a girl who has the elements of a noble woman; one whose heart is so large that she has to wear a little larger corset than some, but one who will make her home happy, and who is a friend to all; one who would walk further to do a good deed, and relieve suffering, than she would to patronize an ice cream saloon; one who would keep her mouth shut a month before she would say an unkind word, or cause a pang to another. Let your Committee settle on such a girl, and she is as welcome to that machine as possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is nothing that is so hard to explain as a long hair of another color, or hair pins and blue bows, and pieces of switch. They are gone, and we miss them. No more shall we hear the young Christian slip up on the golden stairs and roll down with his boot heel pointing heavenward, while the wail of a soul in anguish comes over the banisters, and the brother puts his hand on his pistol pocket and goes out the front door muttering a silent prayer, with blood in his eyes. ”

“ So it is plain that the humane society has got work to do. We, as a people, have got tired of seeing a Thomas cat that never paid any taxes, get upon a pile of wood, swell his tail up to the size of a rolling pin, bid defiance to all laws, spit on his hands and say in ribald language to a Mariar cat, of a modest and retiring disposition, “Lay on, Mac Duff, and blanked be he who first cries purmeow.” This thing has got to cease. The humane society will soon be on the track of the enemy. ”

“ A hotel proprietor who will thus insult the better part of the human race, should be ignored entirely by all who love children, and he should be compelled to stand on his deserted verandah all the season and see his rival across the way, who entertains children, surrounded by the richest and best guests, and the soulless creature, and the few soulless, dyspeptic boarders that he has, should be obliged to listen to the laughter of thousands of happy children running races and playing tag up and down the lawn of the man who has a soul. ”

“ It is not our desire to inaugurate any reform in religious matters, but we realize what a discouraging thing it must be for preachers to preach hell and have nothing to show for it. As the business is now done, they are compelled to draw upon their imagination for a place of endless punishment, and a great many people, who would be frightened out of their boots if the minister could show them hell as he sees it, look upon his talk as a sort of dime novel romance. ”

“ If a boy knows that there will be no school on the afternoon of circus day, he will study like a whitehead all the forenoon, and learn twice as much as he will in all day if he can't go. If he knows that there is a conspiracy on foot between his parents and the teachers to keep him from the circus, he begins to think of some lie to get out of school. ”

“ If a respectable citizen has a daughter that is the pride of his heart, he had rather she would go to a theatre or a party with a man who can protect her with his strong arm than with an effeminate curiosity that has his brain parted in the middle, and who would be afraid to meet a dwarf in the dark.
We advise every boy who reads The Sun to throw away the revolver he has bought to carry in his pistol pocket, or sell it to some coward, and use the money to hire somebody to teach him to box, and to strike a blow that will make any person sick to his stomach who insults the boy's sister. ”

“ Sitting on the sharp edge of a board fence for hours, gazing at a neighboring cat, and occasionally purmowing, may be likened by the student of nature, to human beings who sit for hours on a cast iron seat in the park, with arms around each other; but it is far different. We have yet to hear of instances where quantities of hair have been found on the ground in the parks, and no young man or young woman, after an evening in the park, comes to his place of business in the morning, with eyes clawed out, ears chewed, or so stiff as to be unable to get up from under the stove without being kicked. ”

“ There are people who believe that a hammock understands what is going on, and occasionally indulges in a joke.
It is certain that an old person with a lame back can swing in a hammock half the day and it will never kick up. Servant girls and children can get in a hammock as thick as three in a bed and there is no danger, but let a spoony young couple sit down in a hammock ever so carefully and it seems as though the confounded thing was alive, and had taken a contract to spill them out on the ground in all sorts of embarrassing shapes. ”

“ There is nothing that will cause a hot box in a buggy so quick as going to a picnic with girls. Particularly is this the case when one has two girls. No young man should ever take two girls to a picnic. He may think one cannot have too much of a good thing, and that he holds over the most of the boys who have only one girl, but before the picnic is over he will note the look of satisfaction on the faces of the other boys as they stray off in the vernal shade, and he will look around at his two girls as though his stomach was overloaded. ”

“ Years ago, if a young fellow wanted to take his girl out riding, and expected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, the worst in the livery stable, that would drive itself, or he never could get his arm around his girl to save him. If he took a decent looking team, to to put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with both hands, and if he even took his eyes off the team to look at the suffering girl beside him, with his mouth, the chances were that the team would jump over a ditch, or run away, at the concussion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is mighty poor consolation to the ladies of a church society, to give sociables, ice creameries, strawberry festivals and all kinds of things to raise money to buy a carpet for a church or lecture room, and wash their own dishes, and then hear that some infidel who is around the country calling God a pirate and a horse thief, at a dollar a head, to full houses, has miraculously struck a million dollar silver mine. ”

“ A man, if there was nothing the matter with him, might call in a female doctor; but if he was sick as a horse—and when a man is sick he is sick as a horse—the last thing he would have around would be a female doctor. And why? Because when a man wants a female fumbling around him he wants to feel well. He don't want to be bilious, or feverish, with his mouth tasting like cheese, and his eyes bloodshot, when a female is looking over him and taking an account of stock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a field open for women as confidence men. To have a female confidence game played on a man would leave less of a sting than to be bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is degrading. If a male burglar gets in your house, and he is discovered, you can shoot him, if you get the drop on him, or kick him down stairs; but who wants to shoot a female burglar, or kick her over the banisters? ”