Connecticut western news., 1879-01-15
THE COMING MOUSTACHE.
ABSTRACT or THE LECTURE ON 1.-THE RISE AND FALL OF A MOUSTACHE. BY BURDETTE OF THE "HAWKEYE."

BY BURDETTE OF THE "HAWKEYE."
 A boy asks questions. If there was any truth in the theory of transmigra- ton when boy died he would go into an Interrogation point. A boy knows where the first snowdrop lifts and where the last Indian paint fingers. His pockets are cabinets. He drags from them curious fossils that he don't know the names of. He knows where the herbs grow that have marvellous medicinal properties, and he nearly sends the rest of the family to the grave yard by making practical tests upon them. The boy has his superstitions and he carries in his pocket one particular marble-be it brummie, agate or blood alley-which when he loses he sees panic and bankruptcy coming and retires before the crash
 comes with his pockets full of shillings and a creditors meeting in the back room. He has charm to cure warts on the hand he has marvellous instinct for the woods. As he grows older he wants to be a missionary Or pirate, and so far as there is any preference he \ would rather be a pirate-a profession in which there are moro opportunities for making money and fewer chances of being devoured raw. He hates con- pany, for it carries him to the second table and leaves him no pie. He never walks down stairs, but adopts the single rail, narrow gauge passenger tramway and soon cures the other members of the family of the practice of setting the water-pitcher on the baluster post. He asks with alarming frequency for a new hat, and wears it in the air or on the ground ten times more than on his head. Poor Tom loves as he makes <! mischief. He musses his sisters rufile l and gets severely reprimanded.
 But some neighbor's Tom comes in and makes the most helpless, hopeless, l abject, chaotic wreck of that ruf1le that it can be distorted into, and all the re- preach he gets is, "Must he go so ! soon?" But poor Tom gets weary and drops off into the wonderland of boys dreams, and TO mother who has not dragged sleepy boy off the lounge at nine o'clock and led him upstairs can l understand the Herculean grasp with { which square sleep takes hold of boy, how fearfully Timber and limp it makes ! him and how it develops innumerable joints that work both ways. He never 1 relates his dreams till every one else in the family has told theirs, and there and then he comes in like back county with the necessary majority. In time Tom comes to desire a tail coat and glove fitting boots. Before he has worn l his fathers arctics-on his feet, and bis mothers slippers-on. his jacket. It dawns upon Tom that he has hands-a 1 pair, good hand. And when he goes l to the first church sociable with his sis ter on account of the absence of some other Tom, he finds that he has eleven hands, and he wonders where the elev- never cuts his hair with pair of scis- sors that have cut miles and miles of calico, and vast eternities of paper, and 1 snarls and tangles of string, and have snuffed candles, and pared apples, and trimmed lamp wicks, and pried up car pet jacks, and trimmed the family nails, and have done their level best at the annual struggle of cutting stove-pipe l lengths in two. Now he knows that mans upper lip was destined by nature to be mustache pasture. How ex- quisitely reserved he Is /; with what deli cate action does he make the first pre- liminary investigation in order that he may detect the first symptoms of a vel vety resistance. And when he has found that it is there and only needs to be brought out, how he walks down to the barbers shop, gazing anxiously into the window, and-walks past.
 At last. when he musters up courage enough to go inside and climbs into the chair and IS just on the point of whis- pering to the barber that he would like shave, in comes some modern Esau, with beard as long as Toms arm, and frightens 1t out of him and he has his hair cut again, for the third time that week, so short that the barber holds it in his teeth, cuts it with 8 file, trims it with Q smoothing plane and parts it with a straight edge and a scratch awl. No- body ever did know how boy gets hold of his fathers razor, and when the boy gets it he hardly knows what to do with it. In the course of few minutes 1 the blade buckles on him and cuts every one of his four fingers. Then he cuts the strop with it, and would cut it of tener If the strop lasted longer. Then
 he knocks it against the side of the mug,
 drops 1t on the floor and steps on it
 but is pleased to find that none of the hicks in it are as large as saw teeth, Then he wonders that mans nose is SC put upon his face that man cannot gel at his own with razor without stand. ing on his head. He slashes his nose
 cuts the corners of his mouth, and makes
 disagreeable cut on his lip that makes it look as though it had just come out o
 free fight with straw-cutter. But he learns just before he cuts his upper lip clear off and his moustache comes o1 again. Although without color it cal
 be felt-very soft felt. And then Ton
 has to endure in quiet every sort of at
 tack from the other members of tht family about his face being dirty; tha
 he had better use spoonful of cream