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.

    8/34
    Calendar for 1885, and •5- VANITY AND VEXATION .* ( Wr itten for The St. Jacobs Oil Family Calendar, 1885, by “Bill Nye.”) It is in March that the American people inaugurate the President, preparatory to his four years of national abuse on the part of those who consider it smart to say mean things of great men. No one has mentioned the matter of my candidacy for 1888, but to avoid any sur¬ prise or disappointment on the part of my friends, I desire to say now that it will be im¬ possible. Many boys look forward, with much pleasure, to the time when they will be President of the United States, and be thus, by their own unaided exertions, the greatest official on earth, but it never worried me much. I would rather be the obscure clerk of Joint-School District, Number Eight, and not feel bound to provide for three million office-seekers, whose pantaloons have a two-inch fringe at the base. In 1883 I had the pleasure of looking at a President through a knot-hole in a high board- fence. During our interview I was forcibly struck with the look of pain on the face of the Chief-Magistrate. He did not say much, but I could see that the burden of three or four million office-holders, and three or four million more who were willing to be office-holders, and forty or fifty million vocal or published criticisms each day, were making a big man sad. We elevate a man to a great height here in America and then we let him fall hard. My own career in politics, though brief, was extremely brilliant. It was indeed gratifying to receive the encomiums and such things as that which were heaped upon me by my fellow-citi¬ zens, and yet I saw that it was filling me with pride and unfitting me for the avocations of life. When I saw that public life, as a Justice of the Peace, was destroying my industrial and eco¬ nomical habits, and that I was getting above GLl- *=*r=9- i bringing in my own coal, and building the fires, as 1 had done while I was one of the common herd, I abandoned politics and retired to private life. We do not always consider how much sorrow goes with greatness. In every package of dis¬ tinction there is a prize. Either ingratitude, the loss of friendship or appetite, premature loss of hair, corns or contumely are one or all the common heritage of greatness. As the President takes his oath of office he becomes the servant of the Republic. His time is not his own, and even after office-hours, if he goes out on the plaza, he may be shot so full of holes that his clothes will not be available for the use of his successor. There are always at least two hun¬ dred and fifty men who claim that they, by their own individual efforts elected the President, and that therefore they ought to mark out the course of the administration. These men must be kept quiet in some way, or the air will be blue with dissatisfied wail. The President always has trouble with his enemies it is true, but they are not so hard to knock out in three rounds as his friends. Boys, you will do a smart thing if you carry your Ward, then your Town, then your County, then your Congressional District, then your State, and lastly become President, with two cranks on every corner waiting to kill you; but you will do a blamed sight more satisfactory,thing if you build up a nice business that win give you comfort, and leave your fiimily something to live on beside a hollow title, and perhaps a live and healthy political scandal, as big as the mortgage on your house. * [Copyright, 1884. The Charles A. Vogeler Co.] A MESSAGE FROM M E^IRY ENGLAND. Mr. R. H. Mardon, of the firm of Mardon, Son & Hall, the eminent Lithographers and Printers, established over fifty years, Bristol, England, writes: “ Last year, when suffering greatly from Neuralgia, I tried St. Jacobs Oil. I had before used it, when in Australia, for Rheumatism, with the greatest benefit, b ut hardly thought it would be efficacious for Neuralgia, yet I certainly found a wonderful relief from its ap¬ plication. So highly pleased was I with it that I obtained a case of one dozen bottles, for distri¬ bution amongst our work-people, some of whom have told me it proved invaluable. I gave a bottle to one of our leading clergymen, who was suffering with Lumbago, and he was delighted with the speedy cure it effected.” THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT. He was a well-meaning Boston man; but they had been married a long while, and when he playfully asked her what was next to nothing, she sarcastically answered that during the cold spells of the year she thought his winter flan¬ nels were. _ Aches, pains and bodily ailments, all suc¬ cumb to St. Jacobs Oil—the great pain-cure “ ____ jAD