Pecks Compendium of Fun | Page 5

number of times and he died. There
is nothing much more dangerous, unless it is kerosene, than two men
and a girl, in a hay loft quarreling.
TEN DAYS IN LOVE.
There is a fearfully harrowing story going the rounds of the papers
headed "Ten Days in Love." It must have been dreadful, with no
Sunday, no day of rest, no holiday, just nothing but love, for ten long
days. By the way, did the person live?
BOYS WILL BE BOYS.

Not many months ago there was a meeting of ministers in Wisconsin,
and after the holy work in which they were engaged had been done up
to the satisfaction of all, a citizen of the place where the conference was
held invited a large number of them to a collation at his house. After
supper a dozen of them adjourned to a room up stairs to have a quiet
smoke, as ministers sometimes do, when they got to talking about old
times, when they attended school and were boys together, and The Sun
man, who was present, disguised as a preacher, came to the conclusion
that ministers were rather human than otherwise when they are young.
One two-hundred pound delegate with a cigar between his fingers, blew
the smoke out of the mouth which but a few hours before was uttering a
supplication to the Most High to make us all good, punched a thin elder
in the ribs with his thumb and said: "Jim, do you remember the time we
carried the cow and calf up into the recitation room?" For a moment
"Jim" was inclined to stand on his dignity, and he looked pained, until
they all began to laugh, when he looked around to see if any worldly
person was present, and satisfying himself that we were all truly good,
he said: "You bet your life I remember it. I have got a scar on my shin
now where that d--blessed cow hooked me," and he began to roll up his
trouser leg to show the scar. They told him they would take his word,
and he pulled down his pants and said:
"Well, you see I was detailed to attend to the calf, and I carried the calf
up stairs, assisted by Bill Smith--who is preaching in Chicago; got a
soft thing--five thousand a year, and a parsonage furnished, and keeps a
team, and if one of those horses is not a trotter then I am no judge of
horseflesh or of Bill, and if he don't put on an old driving coat and go
out on the road occasionally and catch on for a race with some
wordly-minded man, then I am another. You hear me--well, I never
knew a calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! Why, bless
your old alabaster heart, that calf walked all over me, from Genesis to
Revelations. And say, we didn't get much of a breeze the next morning,
did we, when we had to clean out the recitation room?"
[Illustration: SACRED MEMORIES]
A solemn-looking minister, with red hair, who was present, and whose

eyes twinkled some through the smoke, said to another:
"Charlie, you remember you were completely gone on the professor's
niece who was visiting there from Poughkeepsie? What become of
her."
Charlie put his feet on the table, struck a match on his trousers, and
said:
"Well, I wasn't gone on her, as you say, but just liked her. Not too well,
you know, but just well enough. She had a color of hair that I could
never stand--just the color of yours, Hank--and when she got to going
with a printer I kind of let up, and they were married. I understand he is
editing a paper somewhere in Illinois, and getting rich. It was better for
her, as now she has a place to live, and does not have to board around
like a country school ma'am, as she would if she had married me."
A dark haired man, with a coat buttoned clear to the neck, and a
countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more expression than a
wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had
picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked the ashes
out in a spittoon, and said:
"Boys, do you remember the time we stole that three-seated wagon and
went out across the marsh to Kingsley's farm, after watermelons?"
Four of them said they remembered it well enough, and Jim said all he
asked was to live long enough to get even with Bill Smith, the Chicago
preacher, for suggesting to him to steal a bee-hive on the trip. "Why,"
said he, "before I had got twenty feet with that hive, every bee in it had
stung