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.

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    <xD THE DAY WE CELEBRATED (Written for The St. Jacobs Oil Family Calendar, 1885, by “ Sill NyeJ) Theee are a number of little mementos by which we are reminded of the time when our ancestors lived in gopher-holes, or swung from bough to bough of the forest trees; but there is nothing, in my mind, that takes us back to those good old times when primeval man wore a Blue-Jay’s feather and a thoughtful expression, any more than the Fourth of July Barbecue of modern times. As the American citizen dances around the fricasseed ox, we naturally call to mind the days, when, in warmer climates per¬ haps, the fathers of a mighty race used to eat their enemies on the half-shell. The ox should not, as a matter of fact, be cooked at one fell swoop. He is better in sec¬ tions and installments. There are a good many drawbacks about the celebration of the anni¬ versary of the birth of American freedom, but I think the barbecue is the most disastrous. The average oration is tough, but it is not so tough as the roasted ox. The good hits in the speech are very rare, but they are not so rare as the gory slice of barbecue that follows it. You can swallow some of the sentiments expressed by the young and theoretical embryo statesman, but the warmed-up flanks of the lately deceased ox you cannot. Next to the roasting of the burnt sacrifice known as the barbecue, comes the young child from a distance, in the arms of its mother, as¬ sisting in the celebration. This child is invari¬ ably quite young, and the mother generally holds him so that he has to outglare the sun or shut his eyes. If George Washington could have seen tnis young mother, on the Fourth of July, holding her brand-new son up to the daz¬ zling July orb of day, while she listens to the band, and the sun peels the nose of her infant, he would have hesitated about being the Parent (tXs of his Country on its Father’s side. George evi¬ dently could not look into the future very far. He certainly did not know that he was about to inaugurate the custom of waking-up the Ameri¬ can citizen at four o’clock, by bursting into his dreams with the boom of the anvil, the cannon and the fire-cracker. He did not see that he was paving the way for the inhuman barbecue, and the malicious music of the brass band. Of late years the “ life, liberty and pursuit of hap¬ piness” business has very little to do with the Fourth of July celebration. “ The-Pilgrim- Fathers-where-are-they” do not have much to do with the modern annual symbol of liberty. A man with a big lemonade stand and booth, for the sale of Plaster of Paris ice-cream, secures a red-nosed band, orator, and eleven evergreen trees, and then while the pale orator plucks the plumage from the bird of freedom, the proprietor plucks the small change of the small boy. Still the Fourth of July is very enjoyable compared to the Fifth. If the writers of the Declaration of Independence had put in some provision or other by which to abolish the fifth day of July, instead of making it a day of National Sorrow, it would have been wise. There is more unavailing remorse on the fifth day of July, perhaps, than on any other day in the year. It is a time for memory, for tears, and a noble resolve to lead a better life. *[Copyriglit, 1884. The Charles A. Vogeler Co.] A Long Siege. Mr. J. B. Kaufman, Bourke St., Melbourne, Australia, writes, that he suffered continuously for seven years with a sprained ankle, but, by a few applications of St. Jacobs Oil—the great pain-reliever—he was completely cured. A bachelor returning from a ball, in a crowded coach, declared with a groan that he had not the slightest objection to “rings on his “ but he had a most unequivocal aversion fingers,” to “ belles on his toes.” The Saratoga chap who married a girl last summer, having fallen in love with her beautiful complexion, says now that it was a “ skin game.” WHAT’LL YOU TAKE?” Mr. Jerry P. Thomas, President of the Gourd Club and well-known as a dispenser of the most enjoyable compounds to the habitues of Central Park Hotel, 59th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, United States of America, writes as fol¬ lows: “ Last summer I suffered fearfully with Neuralgia and could not get any rest, night or day. A friend who had used St. Jacobs Oil thought so highly of its healing qualities that he gave me some to try. I tried it and obtained the first night’s rest in weeks, and was cured. I have found it to be the very best remedy. I keep it constantly in my house for my family, have recommended it to others, and would not be without it on any account.” --