Читать книгу Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture - Палмер Кокс - Страница 13

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It is not often that a poor fellow like myself can have a good laugh at the expense of a high dignitary. To-day, however, an opportunity presented itself, and happily I was in the right humor to appreciate it. Passing along a narrow street, I saw an old Irish woman unmercifully beating her boy with a rod, which, if it had not been divested of twigs and leaves, would have served as a Christmas tree for a good-sized family. This of itself was nothing to make one smile, and perhaps no person would more readily endorse such a sentiment than the boy himself. But the end was not yet.

It appears that while on his way from the grocery, with a pitcher of beer for his mother, the little fellow tripped-up and spilled nearly the whole contents in the street. This was something that Temperance folk might well rejoice over, but it was a serious matter for the boy. The old woman, with parched lips was standing at the gate, impatiently awaiting her youngster’s return. She saw him emerge from the store, pitcher in hand. Her quick eye caught sight of the light foam rising in airy bubbles above the brim, and she knew the grocer had sent her no stinted measure. In fancy she was already quenching her thirst with copious draughts of the cooling drink—when she saw the boy measuring his length upon the planks. Worst, and most lamentable of all, she saw the delectable beverage coursing down the sidewalk in a dozen foaming streams. Her rage knew no bounds. The moment the boy put his foot inside the gate, she seized him with the grip of a virago, and belabored him with the cudgel till he roared. So great was the outcry that every window in the vicinity was immediately crammed with heads. Taught by the lessons of my youth that he who meddles in other people’s affairs often treads upon his own corns, I maintained a wise silence; but I mentally prayed that the wrath of the old fury would be appeased, for the cries and wild antics of the little wretch began to grow monotonous.

A REAR ATTACK.

There chanced at that moment to be passing an eminent minister who weekly fills his fashionable, spacious church with a glittering congregation. He saw the woman was in a towering passion, and he ventured to remark: “My good woman, the rod of correction should never become the weapon of passion.” The remark, which seemed good and to the point, caused her temporarily to suspend hostilities; but she still retained her hold on the collar, as she turned around sharply to ascertain who dared criticise her method of training up a child in the way he should go.

For a minute she glared upon the clergyman with flashing eyes, as if astonished at his interference. Surveying him from the soles of his boots to the very crown swirl of his silk hat, she drew herself up to her full height, and, in the most indignant voice, shouted: “Away wid yer cotations, you ould sermon thief! It’s not from the likes of yees I learn me juty!”

The clergyman was nonplussed; he quailed before the fiery eyes and sarcastic tongue of the old vixen; and I fancied his face lit up with joy when he discovered that he was nigh a corner, around which he quickly disappeared.