Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1883-06-06
BurdOck Coffee.

"Well, said the druggist TO young
man who came In after yard OF court
plaster and quart bottle OF arnica,
"thats the worst looking countenance !
ever saw in my life, and l served three
years in an army hospital. Did you let
house fall on you ?"
"Looks bad, don't it," said the youth
talking out of one corner of his mouth.
"Looks as though two sections OF a way
freight had run over my head. Feels that
way. No, there was u premature explo-
sion this morning at the breakfast table"
"Thcy don't load you fellows up with
dynamite rolls and gun cotton wafies, do
theyg If they do you must get right out
of here. My insurance don't cover Fenian
plots"
"No, this was burdock matinee, and
If you've got any burdock slowed away
In your drawers, you had better lock 'em
up and alarm the fire patrol. You sec
the girls up TO the house think they are
just too cute for any use, and last night
when my partner and had turned of the
gas and jumped into bed with our bare
legs, 1t did seem as though we had drop
ped right smack into the middle OF bed
OF Canada thistles. Guess there must
have been ton Of burdock burrs in that
bed, in between the sheets, and they just
rasped the hide off our legs and stuck fast
to our robes dc NUT, and it did seem Just as
though we had been mixed up with a lot
of old bacon rinds and thrown into the
fire. IL was perfect hades' that bed was,
and 1t beat all the hair brush and oyster
shell games | ever heard off, You see we
had been in the habit of putting whisk
brooms and oysters shells In the girls
beds, and they had dropped on the game,
nd I hnr1nnE
down here at your drug store. AT any
rate, they had the dead wood on us, for u
fact, and after we had crawled out and lit
the. gas again, and picked the burrs out of
our hair and scraped ourselves, we didn't
know for quite spell how to get even
with those girls. Finally my partner
said, I'll tell you what we'll do. Say we
90 down into the kitchen and stuff 'em
into the coffee pot. The cook always puts
the coffee into the coffee pot over night
and she won't notice the burrs, and well
see more fun than box of monkeys So
we tip.toed down into the kitchen, and
chucked lot of the burdock into the cof-
fec pot, and then crept back up stairs
again thinking we would get back oil
those girls in the best kind of shape.
Well, we did, for awhile, At the breakfast
table we said we wouldn't take any coffee,
that we had sworn of until New Years,
that it make us bilious, and the landlady
looked pleased TO think she was going to
save eight or ten cups of coffee every
morning, and she poured out some for the
postollcc clerk who sits next to me, and
he swallowed about half cup, and said
John =, Judas Iscariott and General X.
Pontius Plate, but I'm sickern a car
horse, and he got up and staggered out rs
white as ghost. Then one OF the girls
took gulp, and said my country, It's
of thee, but what's the matter with us?
aud she got right up, and tipped over her
chair and shot up stairs like shingles
blowing Off the roof. BY this time an
other one OF them had tackled their coffee,
and I'm blamed If didn't think she'd die
in her tracks. She got up as pale as n
clown in q pantomlme and swayed around
over the table, and weaved back and forth
and gaspcd, and her eyes popped out and
she said: Pm poisoned Burn all my let
tiers and don't let 'em open my coffin ut the
gravep Then she staggered out the room,
and the landlady said 1T just beats the
nation what's the matter with you folks.
What DO you suppose it Isl" she asked Of
me, and told her | thought something
must DC the matter with the coffee, and
then got up and went oyer to her side of
the table and took up the coffee pot and
just then the thing busted wide open-it
was spring cover-and the lid
struck me about on the point of my chin
and raked its way along up my face like
sprlngtooth drag, gnawing off my nose
and tearing its way through my eyebrows,
and scalding me with steam and hot bur-
dock poultice. That's just what it was
too; the consarned stuff had swclled and
steamed, and steamed and swelled inside
that coffee pot until it was no usc block
tin couldn't stand the pressure no longer,
and she busted, and nearly buried the
landlady with burdock grounds until she
looked as though load of hay had tipped
over on to her. And yelled Well, no, l
guess not. The explosion drove everybody
but us out the room. Knocked of dozen
yards of plasterng and cracked every
pane of glass in the windows. The hired
girl was just coming in the room with Il
plate of hot rolls, and she had Fenian
lover who had been sitting up nights with
her and telling her that he had some dyna-
mite boomshells, and she thought he had
somehow got in amongst us, and happen
cd TO be loaded and had gone of, and she
went right off, herself out into the alley
and up the street yelling 'Howly mither of
Christ They have assassinated me Ted
dy Muldoonn Well, that's about all there
was to it, but seeing as how you sold 'cm
the burdock, and / reckon you did, you
can afford To throw i'm this arnica and
sticking salve, can't ye? Ii you don't
blamed If won't have you arrested for
selling dangerous explosives, and that'll
put q deadener on your insurance policy
for fact."-Cheek.