Peck's Sunshine. George W. Peck

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 down 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 and 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 whenever 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 skin off the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer and calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little of it into the crevice, and lets it soak, and then he tries again, and swears audibly.

      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.

BUTTERMILK BIBBERS.

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      The immense consumption of buttermilk as a drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.

      Another thing, buttermilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest. The complexion of the nose of a buttermilk drinker assues a pale hue which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a temperance society.

AN ÆSTHETIC FEMALE CLUB BUSTED.

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      The organization of the “Cosmos” Club, of Chicago women, for the purpose of discussing “æsthetic” business, ancient poetry and pottery ware, calls to mind the attempt to organize such a club here in Milwaukee. Our people here are too utterly full of business and domestic affairs to take to the “æsthetic” very generally, and the lady from Boston who tried to get up a class in the new wrinkle went away considerably disgusted. She called about fifty of our splendidest ladies together at the residence of one of them, and told them what the ladies of Eastern cities were doing in the study of higher arts. She elaborated considerably on the study of Norwegian literature, ceramics, bric-a-brac and so forth, and asked for an expression of the ladies present. One lady said she was willing to go into anything that would tend to elevate the tone of society, and make women better qualified for helpmates to their husbands, but she didn't want any Norwegian literature in hers. She said her husband ran for an office once and the whole gang of Norwegian voters went back on him and he was everlastingly scooped.

      The Boston lady held up her hands in holy horror, and was going to explain to the speaker how she was off her base, when another lady got up and said she wanted to take the full course or nothing. She wanted to be posted in ancient literature and ceramics. She had studied ceramics some already, and had got a good deal of information. She had found that in case of whooping cough, goose oil rubbed on the throat and lungs was just as good as it was in case of croup, and she felt that with a good teacher any lady would learn much that would be of incalculable value, and she, for one, was going for the whole hog or none.

      The Boston lady saved herself from fainting by fanning herself vigorously, and was about to show the two ladies that they had a wrong idea of æsthetics, when a lady from the West Side, who had just been married, got up and said she felt that we were all too ignorant of æsthetics, and they should take every opportunity to become better informed. She said when she first went to keeping house she couldn't tell baking powder that had alum in it from the pure article, and she had nearly ruined her husband's stomach before she learned anything. And speaking of bric-a-brac, she felt that every lady should learn to economize, by occasionally serving a picked up dinner, of bric-a-brac that would otherwise be wasted.

      The Boston lady found she could not speak understandingly, so she left-her chair and went around to the different groups of ladies, who were talking earnestly, to get them interested. The first group of four that she broke in on were talking of the best way to renovate seal-skin cloaks that had been moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all the æsthetic insect powder that was advertised in the papers, and the moths would fairly get fat on it, and beg for more; but last spring she found out that moths were afraid of whisky.

      Her husband worked in a wholesale whisky store, and his garments became saturated with the perfume, and you couldn't hire a moth to go near him. So she got an empty whisky barrel and put in all her furs, and the moths never touched a thing. But she said the moths had a high old time all summer. They would get together in squads and go to the barrel and smell at the bung-hole, and lock arms and sashay around the room, staggering just as though there was an election, and about eleven o'clock they would walk up to a red spot in the carpet and take a lunch, just like men going to a saloon.

      She said there was one drawback to the whisky barrel, as it gave her away when she first went out in company after taking her clothes out of the barrel. She wore her seal-skin cloak to the Good Templars' Lodge, the first night after taking it out, and they were going to turn her out of the Lodge on the ground that she had violated her obligation.

      “You may talk about your Scandinavian literature,” said she, turning to the Boston lady, “but when it comes to keeping moths out of furs, an empty whisky barrel knocks the everlasting socks off of anything I ever tried.”

      The Boston lady put on her æsthetic hat, and was about to take her leave, satisfied that she had struck the wrong crowd, when a sweet little woman, with pouting lips, called her aside. The Boston lady thought she had found at last one congenial soul, and she said:

      “What is it, my dear?”

      The little lady hesitated a moment, and with a tear in her eye she asked:

      “Madam, can you tell me what is good for worms? Fido has acted for a week as though he was ill, and——”

      That settled it. The Boston lady went away, and has never been heard of since.

      “A young fellow and his girl went out sleighing yesterday, and the lad returned with a frozen ear. There is nothing very startling in the simple fact of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the ear next to the girl that he was foolish enough