The Lamoille news. (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1877-1881, 1878-01-02
A HUMORIsT'S LECTURE.
What the Darlington "Hawk-Eyem Editor
Knows Of Mustnche..

huoNs u 1NAsAaNas
Mr.. r. J. Burdetie, Of the Burlington
Hack Eye. appeared quite at home IN
the pulpit Of the Hanson Place Metho-
dist Church, Brooklyn, says a New York
paper. His lecture ON 1.-THE Rise and
Fall Of the Mustaehe" was received
with apparent delight. He followed the
history of the average boy, whom, to
personify, he called Tom, through the
trials Of childhood and youth, describing
infinitely his efforts at a mustache.
Tom is unfortunate enough to suffer
from his mothers tOnsorial arts. She
gnaws around his terrified locks with
shears that have cut miles and miles of
calico, snuffed innumerable candles,
trimmed lamp wicks, opened oyster cans,
pried up carpet-tacks, cleaned and trim
med the family nails, and many and
many a time have done their level best
to cut stove-pipe. She perseveres until
from the effects Of this overcoming
season for cropping his locks Tom
becomes an object of terror in the
neighborhood. Finally, impelled by
fate. he sits down in a BARRIERS chair,
and musters courage to call for ga
shave" when an Esau darkens the door
and he has his hair cut again. The
barber finds the boys closely cut head
very old pasturage for his ordinary
apparatus, so he holds Toms hair in his
teeth and files it, then Furnishes it, and
finally parts it with straight, edge ana
scrateh-all. Long before this epoch in
Toms history he has east longing eyes
on the ancestral shaving machine at
home. 1t is not necessary to follow the
process by which he obtains possession
of the paternal razor, but it is scarce in
his keeping before the blade buckles on
him. "Firsti blood" is claimed and
allowed for the steel. He manages to
nick it, but consols himself with the
thought that his "father will never
notice it." He soaks it with water at
$50 degrees Farenheit and slaps it
against his cheek, as he has seen his
ather dO-and swears as he had never
heard his father swear. A series of
grimaces comfort the upper lip into
proper shape to receive the razor. All
at once Tom, perceiving the embarrass-
ing nearness of the nose, falls to specu
lating why mans upper lip is so
situated that he himself cannot get at it
except by standing on his head.
After long and exciting "tilt, " Toms
upper lip suggested a free fight in n
straw-cutter In time Tom gets his
mustache to shat stage where it can be
felt-is felt, soft felt. His sister sug-
gests that he shave it with spoonful of
cream and the family cat, and at this
raillery he smiles, but with smile that
looks as though it had come up there to
weep at the baroness of the landscape.
The mustache is very short in the
middle and very-no longer at the ends.
Meanwhile he falls in love with some-
body, which causes a necktie epidemic,
in which he tries to find colors that will
match his mustache or Lauras dress.
He brushes his mustache to make it
stand out, and wakes it to make it lie
down; he prays for it and swears at it,
and resorts to "magic dyes" that are
warranted not to stain or iniure the
skin" The first application blackens
his lip 50 much that the room gets
darker-but each individual hair is
unstained and untainted. Rugged out
in boots too short at both ends he form
ulates nice speeches on his way to see
Laura. He passes from the weather to
philosophy, poetry and robustness, all
in imagination, But as he nears the
door he feels his ideas breaking up like
an early spring. His thoughts each,
every, all and several, on all subjects
that he ever knew about or ever hoped
to learn of-vanished. His record that
night as he leaves her home convinces
him that he is not very brilliant,
original, conversational success. His
pillow that night contains more Sleep
lessness than the mosquito that sat up
all night to sample a martyrs blood.
He hates everybody, and though he may
live to be as old as an army overcoat he
will never again feel the same degree OF
ecstatic wretchedness and heavenly
torlornness as he feels that night.
Mr.. Burdette saw Tom safely taken
up, ''if not taken in" by Laura, tri-
umphantly interview spa" and "ma >
described the alteration between these
two about Tom, until "the debate
closed and they went into executive
session" told how he demurely put
together much disiointed stove-pipe,
both ends of each piece of which was
bigger than any of the other ends il
the lot" and finally left him and Laurs
with another Tom, so irrepressible that
the sire has to hire q brass band to keer
from being lonesome when his hopeful
scion is out.