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Peck's Sunshine, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Don't Leave Your Gum Around. |
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_ A woman at Wyocena, who chews gum, laid her "quid" on a green paper box, and when she came to chew it again was poisoned and it was with difficulty her life was saved. This reminds us of an accident that happened to Mary Anderson when she was here last. Mary will remember that in the second scene of "Ingomar," just when Parthenia was winding herself around the heart of the barbarian, she looked pale, and whenever she would try to say sweet words to him, she acted as though she was on a lake excursion. During some of the love passages we remember a far away look in her eyes, as though she was searching for the unfathomable, or looking for a friendly railing to lean over, and when her bosom heaved with emotion she acted as though she expected to hear from down country, and doubted whether her boots would remain on her feet or throw up their situation. Those who sat in the left box will remember that when she threw her head on Ingomar's shoulder, that she spit cotton over towards the back of the stage, and acted like the little girl that had been eating tomatoes. Ingomar seemed to notice that something was the matter, and he kept his face as far from Parthenia as the rules of polite society would admit, and the theory that she had been eating onions, which was advanced by a bald-headed man in the dress circle, found many believers. However, that was not the case, as we found by inquiring of a gentlemanly supe. It is well known that Miss Anderson is addicted to the gum chewing habit, and that when she goes upon the stage she sticks her chew of gum on an old castle painted on the scenery. There was a wicked young man playing a minor part in the play, who had been treated scornfully by Mary, as he thought, and he had been heard to say he would make her sick. He did. He took her chew of gum and spread it out so it was as thin as paper, then placed a chew of tobacco inside, neatly wrapped it up, and stuck it back on the old castle. Mary came off, when the curtain went down, and going up to the castle she bit like a bass. Putting the gum, which she had no idea was loaded, into her mouth, she mashed it between her ivories and rolled it as a sweet morsel under her tongue. It is said by those who happened to be behind the scenes, that when the tobacco began to get in its work there was the worst transformation scene that ever appeared on the stage. The air, one supe said, seemed to be full of fine cut tobacco and spruce gum, and Mary stood there and leaned against a painted rock, a picture of homesickness. She was pale about the gills, and trembled like ap aspen leaf shaken by the wind. She was calm as a summer's morning, and while concealment, like a worm in an apple, gnawed at her stomach, and tore her corset strings, she did not upbraid the wretch who had smuggled the vile pill into her countenance. All she said, as she turned her pale face to the painted ivy on the rock, and grasped a painted mantel piece with her left hand, as her right hand rested on her heaving stomach, was, "I die by the hand of an assassin." And the soft scenic moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down from the flies, and Mary was saved. Women can't be too careful where they put their gum. _ |
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