Was he a Dude?

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1830, 29 March 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Was he a Dude?

" Whoa, Carl Schurz ! " The eleventh Duke of G-ahvay leaned listlessly over the dashboard of the street-car as he spoke these fateful words in an imperious tone to the gallant palfrey. Pizarro M'Ginness, Earl of Blue Island Avenue, leaned listlessly against an ash-barrel, ana as the street- car rocked idly at its moorings a cold, cynical smile hovered like a last week's pie around his finely-chiselled lips. A hen flutteied through the back yard of the Castle Mulcahey, and a dead horse threw all the surrounding harmonies into a minor key. At last the sound of a clear, girlish voice broke the silence, and an instant later the Lady Constance Clancarty, daughter of the proud duke, emerged from the castle. Shooing with one wave of her hand a large flock of geese from the front yard, she walked in a stately fashion to the street-car. "Father," said she, stooping directly in front of the duke, " I loved Pizairo M'Gin--ness, and, God willing, will one day be his bride. Have you aught to say why this should nob be?" 11 Divil an aught," was the reply, " except that he is wan ay thim joods." ' In an instant the blood had left the face of Lady Constance, and she stood there as pallid as a marble statue. "Pizarro is not a dude, father," she said, in low, haggard tones. "And why not?" queried the duke in a sneering manner. " Because," she answered, bursting into a storm of sobs, "he has inherited the family feet."— From " And Yet a Woman," by Joseph Medill.

Peck's Bad Boy ami His Pa. " What ia this I hear about your father - creating a panic in a dry-goods store? " said the grocery man to the bad boy, a3 ho took a bnl.ter-tryc-r and run it into a pumpkin a few timo*. " They tell rae that he had about a hundred female clerks treed on ihe shelves, and on the counters, and all of them screaming bloody murder, and that a floor-walker hit him over the head with a roll of paper cinibiic, and somebody turned in a fire-alarm. How was it?" "WpII, if you will keep watch for pa at the doov, I will tell you all about it,'' said the boy. " Somebody has told pa that I was at the bottom of the whole business, and when a man loses confidence in bis boy, and rolls up a trunk-strap and carries it habitually, it fctands a boy in hand to keep his eye peeled. " You see, pa has been in a habit lately of going to the store a good deal and lallygagging with the girl clerks. Any girl that will smile on pa and look sweet catches him, and he would sit on a ftool in front of the counter ten hours a day, pretending to want to buy some kind of fringe or coisets, or something, and he would fairly talk the arms off the guls. Ma don't like it at all, and she told pa he ou»ht to be ashamed of himpelf, 'cause the gills was only making a fool of him, and all the people in the store were laffing at him t but pa said for her to shut her yawp, and he kept on trying to find excuses to go to the store. Ma told me about it, and she felt real sorry, and, by jinks, it made me mad io see an old man, old enough to have gout or paialysis, going around mashing clerks in a store, and I toid ma if she would let me I would break pa up in that sort of business, and she told mo to go ahead and make him jump like a box car. So t'other day ma gave pa a piece of ribbon to match and a corset to change for a larger size, and a pair of gloves to return because the thumb of one of 'em was ripped off, and told him to buy four yards of baby flannel, and see how much it would cost to have her sealskin cloak relined, and to see if her new hat was done. Pa acted as though he didn't want to go to the store, but ma aud mo knew that he looked upon it as a picnic, and he blacked his boots and changed ends with his cuffs, and pub on his new red necktie, and shaved hisself, and fixed up as theugh he as as going to be married. T asked him to let me go aloner to carry the packages, and ho said he didn't mind if I did go. " You have seen these injy rubber rats they have at the rubber stores, havn't you ? They look so near like a natuial rat that you can't toll the difference unless you offer the rubber rat some cheese. I got one of those rats and tied a fine thread to it, with a slipnoose on the end, and when pa got into the store I put the slipnoose over the hind button of his coattail, and put the rat on the floor, and it followed him along, and I swow it looked so natural I wanted to kick it. Pa walked along smiling, and stopped at the ribbon counter, and winked at a girl, and she bent over to see what he wanted, and then she saw the rat, and she screamed a- d crawled up on the shelf where the boxes weie, and put her feet under her, and said, take it ' away, kill it,' and she trembled all over. Pa thought she had gone into a fit, 'cause she was paralyzed on big shape, and he turned blue, and went on, 'cause he didn't want to kill her dead ; and as he walkpd along, the rat followed him, and just as he bowed to four girls who were standing together, talking about the fun they had at the Exposition the night before, they saw 1 the rat, and they began to yell, and climb up things. One of them got on a stool and pulled her clothes tight around her ankles, so a live rat couldn't have got in her stockings, let alone a rubber rat, and the girls all squealed just like when you tickle them in the ribs. Pa he looked scared, as though he was afraid he was breaking them all up with his shape, and he kept on, and another flock of girls saw the rat, and they jumped up on the counter and sat down on their feet, and yelled ' rat.' Then the others yelled • rat,' and in a minute about a hundred girls were getting up on things, and saying ' shoo,' and one of them got on a pile of blankets and the pile fell off on the floor with her, and the men had to dig her out. Pa's face was a study. He looked at one girl, and then another, and wondered what was the matter, and finally the floorwalker, came along and sec what it was, and he took pa by the collar and led him out doors, and told him if he ever came in there again he would send the police after him. I had gone by the time pa got out on the sidewalk, and he picked up the rubber rat and found it was hitched to his coat, and he went risjht home. Ma says he was so mad that he stuttered, and she thinks I better board around for a day or two. She tried to to rea&on with pa that it was intended for his good, to show him that he was making a fool of himself, but he does not look at it in that light.— Peck's Sun.

A kathhk verdant young man, conceited and censoiious, while talking ti> a young lady at a party, pointed towards a couple that he supposce to be in an adjoining room, and saul, "Just look at that conceited young prig I Isn't it perfectly absurd for such boys to go into society 1 " " Why," exclaimed his companion, " that isn't a door ; it's a mirror 1 "