University of Virginia Library

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47

COURT DECORUM IN NEVADA.

The deference usually accorded to judicial dignitaries in the older
sections of the country was not conspicuous in the early days of Nevada,
judging from a scene that occurred in one of the lively towns of that
region, related to us by one of the pillars of the Nevada bar.

On one occasion, court having been formerly opened, counsel in the first
case called took exceptions to the ruling of the court on a certain point,
and a dispute arose.

“If the court please, I wish to refer to this book a moment,” picking
up a law-book.

“No use referring to any books; I've decided the p'int,” responded the
court.

“But, your honor—”

“Now I don't want to hear anything further on the subject. I tell you
I've decided the p'int.”

“I tell you you are wrong,” retorted the counsel

“I am right,” reiterated the court.

“I say you ain't,” persisted the counsel.

“Crier!” yelled the judge, “I adjourn this court for ten minutes.

And, jumping from the bench, he pitched into the counsel, and after a
ively little fight placed him hors du combat, after which business was resumed.
But soon another misunderstanding arose.

“Crier!” said the court, “we will adjourn this time for twenty-minutes.”

And he was about taking off his coat, when the counsel said:

“Never mind judge; keep your seat. The p'int is yielded. My thumb's
out o' j'int, and I've sprained my shoulder.”

The court resumed her ermine.

A Chinese servant was brought home by the gentleman of the house,
and his mistress inquired his name. “Yung Hoo Wing.” “Oh,” said she,
“I cannot call you that; I will call you Charley.” “Whatee your name?”
he asked in return. “My name is Mrs. John Browning.” “Welle, I calle
you John!” exclaimed the Celestial.

John Van Dahm, of Fort Wayne, says the Cleveland Leader, was playing
with a pistol in his house the other day, when it went off and made an
eye-let hole in his hip. If he was named Jones he might be called a Jones
fool; if his name was Smith he might be called a Smith fool; but, unhappily,
his is another name.

An exchange has the following observation: “We always get mad
when we walk along a street about 9 o'clock, and passing a shaded porch
where a young man is bidding his beloved a good night, hear the girl exclaim
in a loud whisper, `Oh, stop, George, you haven't shaved.' ”

A Utica boy, who attempted to amputate a eat's tail, found that the
absence of the old woman who owns the cat is necessary to the perfect success
of such an experiment.

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48

Sewing Buttons.—The Danbury News is the best digestive pill that
has yet been discovered. Here is an item concerning buttons that should
be read immediately after dinner, or late supper, and is warranted to make
the reader proof against dyspepsia: It is bad enough to see a bachelor sew
on a button, but he is the embodiment of grace alongside of a married
man. Necessity has compelled experience in the case of the former, but
the latter has always depended upon some one else for this service, and
fortunately, for the sake of society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to
the needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right hand, or
runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it is then
the man clutches the needle around the neck, and forgetting to tie a knot
in the thread, commences to put on the button. It is always in the morning,
and from five to twenty minutes after he is expected to be down in the
street. He lays the button exactly on the site of its predecessor, and carefully
draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of its sticking up
for the lee way. He says to himself: “Well, if women don't have the
easiest time I ever see.”

Then he comes back the other way, and gets the needle through the
cloth well enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but in spite of a
great deal of patient jabbing, the needle point persists in bucking against
the solid part of that button, and finally, when he loses patience, his finger
catches the thread, and that three inches he had left to hold the button
slips through the eye in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across
the floor. He picks it up without a single remark, out of respect to his
children, and makes another attempt to fasten it. This time when coming
back with the needle he keeps both the thread and button from slipping by
covering them with his thumb and it is out of regard for that part of him
that he feels around for the eye in a very careful and judicious manner, but
eventually loses his philosophy as the search becomes more and more hopeless,
and falls to jabbing about in a loose and savage manner, and it is just
then the needle finds the opening, and comes up through the button and
part way through his thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can
guard against. Then he lays down the things, with a familiar quotation,
and presses the injured hand between his knees, then holds it under the
other arm, and finally jams it into his mouth, and all the while he prances
about the floor and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has
never been anything like it since the world was created, and howls, and
whistles, and moans, and sobs. After awhile he calms down and puts on
his pants, and fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his business a
changed man.

A Colored Philosopher thus unburdened himself on one of woman's
weaknesses: “Jim, de men don't make such fools of demselves about women
as de women do about men. If women look at de moon, dey see a man in
it. If dey hear a mouse nibbling, it's a man; and dey all look under de bed
de last thing at night to find a man. Why, I neber look under my bed to
find a woman, does you?”

A rural gentleman standing over a register in a Danbury store attracted
general attention to himself by observing to his wife: “Mariar, I guess I'm
going to have a fever, I feel such hot streaks a runnin' up my legs.”

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49

The Danbury News gives the following quaint descriptions of domestic
incidents:

Persuading a Hen.—When a woman has a hen to drive into the coop,
she takes hold of her hoops with both hands, and shakes them quietly toward
the delinquent, and says; “Shew! there.” The hen takes one look at
the object to convince herself that it's a woman, and then stalks majestically
into the coop in perfect disgust of her sex. A man don't do that way. He
goes out of doors and says: “It's singular nobody in this house can
drive a hen but myself.” and picking up a piece of wood, hurls it at the
offending biped, and observes, “Get in there, you thief.” The hen immediately
loses her reason, and dashes to the opposite end of the yard. The
man straightway dashes after her. She comes back again with her head
down, her wings out, and followed by an assortment of stove wood, and
fruit cans and coal clinkers, with a much puffing and very mad man in the
rear. Then she skims up on the stoop, and under the barn, and over a
fence or two, and around the house, and back again to the coop, all the
while talking as only an excited hen can talk, and all the while followed by
things convenient for handling, and by a man whose coat is on the saw
buck and whose hat is on the ground, and whose perspiration and profanity
appear to have no limit. By this time the other hens have come out to
take a hand in the debate, and help dodge the missiles—and then the man
says every hen on the place shall be sold in the morning, and puts on his
things and goes down street, and the woman dons her hoops and has every
one of these hens housed and contented in two minutes, and the only sound
heard on the premises is the hammering by the oldest boy as he mends the
broken pickets.

The Family Hammer.—There is one thing no family pretends to do
without. That is a hammer. And yet there is nothing that goes to make
up the equipment of a domestic establishment that causes one half as much
agony and profanity as a hammer. It is always an old hammer, with a
handle that is inclined to sliver, and always bound to slip. The face is as
round as a full moon and as smooth as glass. When it strikes a nail full
and square, which it has been known to do, the act will be found to result
from a combination of pure accidents. The family hammer is one of those
rare articles we never profit by. When it glides off a nail head, and mashes
down a couple of fingers, we unhesitatingly deposit it in the yard, and observe
that we will never use it again. But the blood has hardly dried on
the rag before we are out doors in search of that hammer, and ready to
make another trial. The result rarely varies, but we never profit by it.
The awful weapon goes on knocking off our nails, and mashing whole joints,
and slipping off the handle to the confusion of mantel ornaments, and
breaking the commandments, and cutting up an assortment of astounding
and unfortunate antics, without let or hindrance. And yet we put up with
it, and put the handle on again, and lay it away where it won't get lost,
and do up our mutilated and smarting fingers; and yet if the outrageous
thing should happen to get lost we kick up a regular hullabooloo until it is
found again. Talk about the tyranizing influence of a bad habit! It is
not to be compared to the family hammer.

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50

Putting a Hoop on the Family Flour Barrel is an operation that will
hardly bear an encore. The woman generally attempts it before the man
comes home to dinner.

She sets the hoop up on the end of the staves, takes a deliberate aim
with the rolling-pin, and then shutting both eyes, bring the pin down with
all the force of one arm, while the other instinctively shields her face.

Then she makes a dive for the camphor and unbleached muslin, and
when the man comes home she is sitting back of the stove, thinking of St.
Stephen and the other martyrs, while a burnt dinner and the camphor are
struggling heroically for the mastery.

He says if she had kept her temper she wouldn't have got hurt.

And he visits the barrel himself, and puts the hoop on very carefully,
and adjusts it so nicely to the top of every stave that only a few smart
knocks apparently are needed to bring it down all right, then he laughs to
himself to think what a fuss his wife kicked up over a simple matter that
only needed a little patience to adjust itself, and then he gets the hammer,
and fetches the hoop a short rap on one side, and the other flies up, and
catches him on the bridge of the nose, filling his soul with wrath and his
eyes with tears, and the next instant that barrel is flying across the room,
accompanied by the hammer, and another candidate for camphor and rag is
enrolled in the great army that is unceasingly marching toward the grave.

They Wouldn't Fight That Way.—About the commencement of the
war Judge Rice made a speech in South Alabama, in which he said that
the Southern soldiers could whip the Yankees with pop-guns. Since the
war he chanced to make another speech at the same place.

A big, double-jointed fellow was present, who heard and remembered
the former speech, and being in no amiable frame of mind, concluded to go
for Sam.

Rolling up his sleeves and popping his flat in the palm of his hand, he
propounded the fearful question:

“Sam Rice, didn't you make a speech here in 1861?”

“I did,” said Sam.

“And didn't you say we could whip the Yankees with pop-guns?

“Certainly I did, but the rascals wouldn't fight us that way!”

An Englishman and a German were traveling together in a diligence,
and both smoking. The German did all in his power to draw his companion
into conversation, but to no purpose; at one moment he would,
with a superabundance of politeness, apologize for drawing his attention to
the fact that the ash of his cigar had fallen on his waistcoat, or a spark
was endangering his neckerchief. At length the Englishman exclaimed,
“Why the dickens can't you leave me alone? Your coat tail has been
burning for the last ten minutes, but I didn't bother you about it.”

Caught.—The misery of being called upon suddenly to make a speech
was got over by a mathematician, who delivered himself in this fashion:
“Gentlemen, a morbid desire for originality prevents me from saying, `This
is the proudest moment of my life,' and it does not occur to me to say anything
else.”