St. Jacobs Oil family calendar and book of health and humor for the million : 1885 : containing original humorous articles & illustrations by the leading humorists of America / the Charles A. Vogeler Company.

  • Charles A. Vogeler Company
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: St. Jacobs Oil family calendar and book of health and humor for the million : 1885 : containing original humorous articles & illustrations by the leading humorists of America / the Charles A. Vogeler Company. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/34
    / St. Jacobs Oil Faintly Calendar for 1885, and ( Written for The St. Jacobs Oil Family Calendar, 1885, by C. B. Lewis, “ M Quad,” of the “Detroit Free Press.”) It was the glorious First of April—late in the afternoon. A barrel stood on the sidewalk—a whiskey- barrel. If it wasn’t a whiskey-barrel the heads shouldn’t have been branded : “PUBE (KY.) BOUBBON.” XXX. 1865. The public accepted it as a whiskey-barrel with yellow heads and something good inside, but it excited no special comment until a man in his shirt-sleeves suddenly appeared beside it. He looked from the barrel to the doorway, and two pedestrians halted. He spit on bis hands, and five others stopped as if shot. He then dis¬ appeared within the doors of a saloon on the corner, to be seen no more for an hour. “I ’spose they want to get this bar’l up¬ stairs ?” observed one of the group of seven. “ I presume that’s the idea,” replied a second, while a third paced off the distance from the barrel to the doorway of an up-stairs restaurant. The distance was seventeen feet. Just as this vital point had been decided, the group swelled from seven to thirteen. “ I’d use a block-and-tackle to haul ’er up,” observed one of the group. “Well, I dunno,” replied another, as he care¬ fully squinted, up his left eye; “a couple of skids on the stairway and two stout men behind the bar’l would fetch it.” At this point another man paced off the dis¬ tance. He made it seventeen feet and six inches. He was offering to bet two to one he was right, when the crowd grew to twenty. “ Bad thing to git up there,” said a lawyer, as he glanced up the stairway. “ Seems to me I’d hoist it through a window.” Why didn’t he order it in half-barrels, I’d like to know?” inquired a grocer. (IXj___ Co. b. edJ “Suppose he gits it half-way up and she comes down with a rush ?” remarked a tailor. Twenty-six men favored rolling it up by brute force. p; Thirty-four others favored hoisting it through a window. While one man was hunting for skids and a second for tackle, a third mounted a box and called out: “ Feller pioneers, the way to git that bar’l up¬ stairs is to put up a derrick and hoist it to the roof, and lower it through the scuttle! Some of you hunt around and find a derrick!” A policeman then came up and wanted to know who had dropped dead of heart-disease, or been killed by a falling sign, and when in¬ formed of the true state of the case he cried out: “Gentlemen, move on!—move on! Indeed, you must move on!” “Never!” called two hundred voices in chorus. “As free-born American citizens we bow to no tyrant, no matter what the size of his paper-collar!” The skid-man now returned with a piece of scantling on his shoulder, and the crowd wel¬ comed him with cheers, groans and yums. “ I tell you he wants a tackle!” “ No, he don’t!” “ He’ll never get that bar’l up-stairs !” “ What do you know about it ?” The tackle-man now appeared, with a piece of rope about ten feet long in his grasp, and while a part of the crowd cheered the remain¬ der hooted at him. “ I say he’ll never git it up!” “ I say he will!” “ Git a tackle!” While several fights were taking place in the crowd, a lonesome-looking man mounted a box and asked to be heard. He would place the bar’l on a hand-cart and have the cart drawn up-stairs. Up to this time sixty different men had meas¬ ured the distance between the barrel and the doorway. There were two hundred and fifty different opinions as to how the barrel should be taken up. At least fifty men had called fifty other men liars, and the prospect for a street riot was A 1, when the saloon-man in his shirt¬ sleeves suddenly reappeared. Then a deep hush fell upon the multitude. The voice of a red-headed man who had lost both coat-tails was plainly heard as he whispered: “ It isn’t the black eye nor the smashed nose I care so much about, but the idea of somebody carrying my coat-tails around to prove that I fight hind-side first is what harrow’s up my feelings!” The man in his shirt-sleeves drew a breath and looked over the crowd. The silence was profound. “ Shentlemens!” he said, in deep, calm tones, “ dot vhas one paper parrel, wat got noddings in it. It vhas yust my new saloon sign, an’ I vhas much oblige, dot you make some pig April fool mit me! Goot-pye!” Saying this he grasped the barrel in one hand and disappeared. ^[Copyright, 1884. The Charles A. Vogeler Co.] ---iAT) ----*5=*® long