Peck's Compendium of Fun. George W. Peck

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.

      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 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.

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      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.

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      HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS.

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      “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 concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he is now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.

      “One day I put some Castile soap in a drink of drandy, and Pa leaned over the back fence more than an hour, with his finger down his throat. The man that collects the ashes from the alley asked Pa if he had lost anything, and Pa said he was only ‘sugaring off.’ I don’t know what that is. When Pa felt better he came in and wanted a little whisky to take the taste out of his mouth, and I gave him some, with about a teaspoonful of pulverized alum in it. Well, sir, you’d a dide. Pa’s mouth and throat was so puckered up that he couldn’t talk. I don’t think that drugman will make anything by firing me out, because I shall turn all the trade that I control to another store. Why, sir, sometimes there were eight and nine girls in the store all at wonct, on account of my being there. They came to have me put extracts on their handkerchiefs, and to eat gum drops—he will lose all that trade now. My girl that went back on me for the telegraph messenger boy, she came with the rest of the girls, but she found that I could be as ‘hawty as a dook.’ I got even with her, though. I pretended I wasn’t mad, and when she wanted me to put some perfumery on her handkerchief I said ‘all right,’ and I put on a little geranium and white rose, and then I got some tincture of assafety, and sprinkled it on her dress and cloak when she