The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1881-04-02
Intoxicated Geese.


geese to get intoxicated. In the first place
they have no hands to hold on to lamp
posts with; while at the best of times their
balance is precarious. Even when sober,
a fat goose, if travelling on uneven ground,
constantly cants forward on to its beak, or
backward on to its tail; but when inebria-
ted it is utterly hel pless. A short while
ago farmers wife in Germany had been
making some cherry brandy, but as she
found, during the process, that the fruit
was unsound, she threw the whole mass
out into the yard, and, without looking
what followed, shut the window. As it
fell, party of geese, good fellows all of
them, happened to be wadling by at the
time, and, seeing the cherries trundling
about, at once investigated them. The
preliminary inquiry proving satisfactory,
these misguided poultry set to and ate the
whole lot. "No heel taps" was the order
of the carouse, and so they finished all the
cherries off at one sitting, so to speak. The
effect of the spirituous fruit was soon ap-
parent, for on trying to make the gate which
led from the scene of the debauch to the
horse pond, they found everything against
then. Whether high wind had got up,
or what had happened, they could not tell,
but it seemed to the geese as if there was
an uncommonly high sea running, and the
ground set in toward them with steady
strong swell that was most embarrassing
to progress. To escape these difficulties
some lashed their ruders and hove to, others
tried to run before the wind, while The
rest tackled for the pig stye. But there
was no living in such weather, and one by
one the craft lurched over and went down
all standing. Meanwhile the dame, the
unconscious cause of this disaster, was al
tracted by the noise in the fowl yard, and
looking out saw all her ten geese behaving
as if they were mad The gander himself,
usually so solemn and decorous, was bal.
ancing himself on his beak, and spinning
around the while in prodigious furry of
feathers and dust, while the old gray
goose, remarkable, even among her kind
for the circumspection of her conduct,
was lying stomach upward in the gutter,
feebly gesticulating with herlegs. Others
of the party were no less conspicuous for
the extravagaHce Of their attitude and
gestures, while the remainder were to be
seen in helpless confusion of feathers in
the lee seupper-that is to say, the gutter
by the pig stye. Perplexed by the specta-
Gle, the dame called in her neighbors, and,
after careful investigation, it was decided
in council that the birds had died of poison.
Under these circumstances their carcasses
were worth nothing for food, but, as the
nsighbors said, the feathers were not poi
soned, and so they set to work then and
there aud plucked the ten geese bare.
Next morning the old woman got up as
usual, and, remembering the feathers down
stairs, dressed betimes, for it was market
day, and she hoped to get them off her
hands at once And then she bethought
her of the plucked bodies lying in the porch,
aud resolved that they should be buried
before she went out But as she approach
ed tie door, on these decent rites intent,
aud was turning the key, there fell on her
ears the sound of familiar voice, and then
another and another, until at last the as
tonished dame heard in full chorus the
well-kLow accents Of all her plucked and
poisoned geese The throat of the old
gander was, no doubt, trife husky, and
the gray goose spoke in muffied tones
suggestive Of chastening headache; but
there was no mistaking those tongues,
and the dame, fumbling at the door, won
dered what it all might mean. Has a
goose a ghost? Did any Ole ever read or
hear of the spectre of gander? The key
turned at last, the door opened, aud there,
quackiug in subduOd tones, suppliant and
shivering, stood all her flock. There they
stood, the ten miserable birds, with split
ting headaches and parched tongues, con-
trite and detected, asking to have their
feathers back, again. The situation was
painful to both parties. The forlorn geese
saw in each others persons the humiliat-
ing reflection of their own condition, while
the dame, guiltily conscious of that bagful
| of feathers and down, remembered how
that one lapse of Noah, in that "aged sur
prisal Of 600 years and unexpected inebria-
ton from the unknown effects of wine,
has been excused by religion and the
unanimous voice of his prosterity. She,
and her neighbors with her, however, had
hastily misjudged the geese, and finding
them dead drunk, had stripped them, with
out remembering for a moment, that if
feathers are easy to get off, they are very
hard to put on. So she called in her
neighbors again, but they proved only
sorry comEorters, for they reminded her
that after all, the fault was her own; that
it was she, and no one else, who had thrown
the branded cherries to the geese. As it
L L
ton" of her friends were harder for the
widow to bear "than the downright blows
of the devil, and so, turning FROM her
ncighbors she gathered all her bald poul-
try about her around the kitchen fire, and
set down to make them flannel jackets
London Punch
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