Pecks Compendium of Fun | Page 9

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.
HE WOULDN'T HAVE HIS FATHER CALLED NAMES.
A man died in Oshkosh who was over eighty years of age. After the
funeral the minister who conducted the services, said to the son of the
deceased, "your father was an octogenarian." The young man colored
up, doubled up his fist, and said to the minister that he would like to

have him repeat that remark. The minister said, "I say your father was
an old octogenarian." He had not more than got the word out of his
mouth before the young man struck him on the nose, knocked him
down, kicked him in the ear, and when pulled off by a policeman, he
said no holyghoster could call his dead father names, not around him.
The minister said he couldn't have been more surprised if some one had
paid a year's pew rent, than he was when that young man's fist hit him.
PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.
HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS.
"What are you loafing around here for," says the grocery man to the
bad boy one day this week. "It is after nine o'clock, and I should think
you would want to be down to the drug store. How do you know but
there may be somebody dying for a dose of pills?"
"O, darn the drug store. I have got sick of that business, and I have
dissolved with the drugger. I have resigned. The policy of the store did
not meet with my approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for
them to come and tender me a better position at an increased salary,"
said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel of prunes and lit a
fresh one.
"Resigned, eh?" said the grocery man as he fished out the cigar stub
and charged the boy's father with two pounds of prunes, didn't you and
the boss agree?"
"Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she asked for camphor
and water, and she made a show of herself. I thought I would fool her,
but she knew mighty well what it was, and she drank about half a pint
of gin, and got to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the
drug man came in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around
his neck and called him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and
told her she was drunk, she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia
and pointed it at him, and the cork came out like a pistol, and he
thought he was shot, and his wife fainted away, and the police came
and took the old gin refrigerator away, and then the drug man told me

to face the door, and, when I wasn't looking he kicked me four times,
and I landed in the street, and he said if I ever came in sight of the store
again he would kill me dead. That is the way I resigned. I tell you, they
will send for me again. They never can run that store without me.
"I guess they will worry along without you," said the grocery man.
"How does your Pa take your being fired out? I should think it would
brake him all up."
"O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had a soft snap with
me in the drug store, cause he has got to drinking again, like a fish, and
he has gone back on the church entirely; but after I had put a few things
in his brandy he