Peck's Sunshine. George W. Peck

CATTLE CARS.

       DUCK OR NO DINNER.

       THE GUINEA PIG.

       FAILURE OF A SOLID INSTITUTION.

“NOT GUILTY.”

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      Gentlemen of the Jury: I stand before you charged with an attempt to “remove” the people of America by the publication of a new book, and I enter a plea of “Not Guilty.” While admitting that the case looks strong against me, there are extenuating circumstances, which, if you will weigh them carefully, will go far towards acquitting me of this dreadful charge. The facts are that I am not responsible, I was sane enough up to the day that I decided to publish this book and have been since; but on that particular day I was taken possession of by an unseen power—a Chicago publisher-who filled my alleged mind with the belief that the country demanded the sacrifice, and that there would be money in it. If the thing is a failure, I want it understood that I was instigated by the Chicago man; but if it is a success, then, of course, it was an inspiration of my own.

      The book contains nothing but good nature, pleasantly told yarns, jokes on my friends; and, through it all, there is not intended to be a line or a word that can cause pain or sorrow-nothing but happiness.

      Laughter is the best medicine known to the world for the cure of many diseases that mankind is subject to, and it has been prescribed with success by some of our best practitioners. It opens up the pores, and restores the circulation of the blood, and the despondent patient that smiles, is in a fair way to recovery. While this book is not recommended as an infallible cure for consumption, if I can throw the patient into the blues by the pictures, I can knock the blues out by vaccinating with the reading matter.

      To those who are inclined to look upon the bright side of life, this book is most respectfully dedicated by the author.

      GEO. W. PECK. Milwaukee, Wis.,

      March, 1882.

PECK'S SUNSHINE.

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FEMALE DOCTORS WILL NEVER DO.

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      A St. Louis doctor factory recently turned out a dozen female doctors. As long as the female doctors were confined to one or two in the whole country, and these were experimental, the Sun held its peace, and did not complain; but now that the colleges are engaged in producing female doctors as a business, we must protest, and in so doing will give a few reasons why female doctors will not prove a paying branch of industry.

      In the first place, if they doctor anybody it must be women, and three-fourths of the women had rather have a male doctor. Suppose these colleges turn out female doctors until there are as many of them as there are male doctors, what have they got to practice on?

      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.

      Of course these female doctors are all young and good looking, and if one of them came into a sick room where a man was in bed, and he had chills, and was as cold as a wedge, and she should sit up close to the side of the bed, and take hold of his hand, his pulse would run up to a hundred and fifty and she would prescribe for a fever when he had chilblains. Then if he died she could be arrested for malpractice. O, you can't fool us on female doctors.

      A man who has been sick and had male doctors, knows just how he would feel to have a female doctor come tripping in and throw her fur lined cloak over a chair, take off her hat and gloves, and throw them on a lounge, and come up to the bed with a pair of marine blue eyes, with a twinkle in the corner, and look him in the wild, changeable eyes, and ask him to run out his tongue. Suppose he knew his tongue was coated so it looked like a yellow Turkish towel, do you suppose he would want to run out five or six inches of the lower end of it, and let that female doctor put her finger on it, to see how it was furred? Not much! He would put that tongue up into his cheek, and wouldn't let her see it for twenty-five cents admission.

      We have all seen doctors put their hands under the bed-clothes and feel a man's feet to see if they were cold. If a female doctor should do that, it would give a man cramps in the legs.

      A male doctor can put his hand on a man's stomach, and liver, and lungs, and ask him if he feels any pain there; but if a female doctor should do the same thing it would make a man sick, and he would want to get up and kick himself for employing a female doctor. O, there is no use talking, it would kill a man.

      Now, suppose a man had heart disease, and a female doctor should want to listen to the beating of his heart. She would lay her left ear on his left breast, so her eyes and rosebud mouth would be looking right in his face, and her wavy hair would be scattered all around there, getting tangled in the buttons of his night shirt. Don't you suppose his heart would, get in about twenty extra beats to the minute? You bet! And she would smile—we will bet ten dollars she would smile—and show her pearly teeth, and her ripe lips would be working as though she were counting the beats, and he would think she was trying to whisper to him, and——

      Well, what would he be doing all this time? If he was not dead yet, which would be a wonder, his left hand would brush the hair away from her temple, and kind of stay there to keep the hair away, and his right hand would get sort of nervous and move around to the back of her head, and when she had counted the heart beats a few minutes and was raising her head, he would draw the head up to him and kiss her once for luck, if he was as bilious as a Jersey swamp angel, and have her charge it in the bill; and then a reaction would set in, and he would be as weak as a cat, and she would have to fan him and rub his head till he got over being nervous, and then make out her prescription after he got asleep. No; all of a man's symptoms change when a female doctor is practicing on him, and she would kill him dead.

      The Sun is a woman's rights paper, and believes in allowing women to do anything that they can do as well as men, and is in favor of paying them as well as men are paid for the same work, taking all things into consideration; but it is opposed to their trifling with human life, by trying to doctor a total stranger. These colleges are doing a great wrong in preparing these female doctors for the war path, and we desire to enter a protest in behalf of twenty million men who could not stand the pressure.

CROSSMAN'S GOAT.

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      Mr. Crossman, of Marshall street, is a man who was once a boy himself, if his memory serves him, and no boy of his is going to ask him for anything that is in his power to purchase and be refused. But when his boy asked him to buy a goat Mr. Crossman felt hurt. It was not the expense of the goat that he looked at, but he never had felt that confidence in the uprightness of the moral character of a goat that he wanted to feel.

      A goat he always associated in his mind with a tramp, and he did not