Pecks Compendium of Fun | Page 8

treatment. He had a wart on his nose. You know
that wart. You remember how the minister told him if other peoples'
business had a button hole in it, Pa could button the wart in the
button-hole, as he always had his nose there. Well, I told Pa I could
cure that wart with caustic, and he said he would give five dollars if I
could cure it, so I took a stick of caustic and burned the wart off, but I
guess I burned down into the nose a little, for it swelled up as big as a
lobster. Pa says he would rather have a whole nest of warts than such a
nose, but it will be all right in a year or two."
A LOAN EXHIBITION.
"What is a loan exhibition?" asks a correspondent. Well, when a fellow
borrows ten dollars of you, to be paid next Saturday, and he lets it run a
year and a half, and don't pay it, and he meets you on the street and
asks for five dollars more, and you turn him around and kick him right
before the crowd, that is a loan exhibition.
THE WICKED MON KEE.
Mon Kee, a Chinaman that was converted to regular United States
religious doctrines, and opened a mission in New York for the purpose
of converting more heathens and shethens, has been arrested for

stealing. This is a terrible blow, and Mon Kee was a terrible plower. A
few weeks since the religious papers made more blow over the coming
into the fold of that Chinaman than they did over all the editors in the
country, who went not astray. Now they have shut up their yawp about
him, since he has proved to be no better than Talmage or Beecher.
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
away 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, 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 when 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 the skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and
calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little oil into the crevice, and lets
it soak, and then he tries again, and swears audibly.
[Illustration: THE OLD MAN TRIES HIS HAND.]
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