THE LAUGHTER-BOX.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1202, 15 March 1895, Page 11

THE LAUGHTER-BOX.

A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the widest inen. Hvdibras.

THE ARIZONA KICKER.i

PEOFESSOE FAIECHIFDS D. FANCY GIVES A JtOFFEE SKATING EX HIBITION, BUT IS NOT ENCOEED. Two weeks ago, when Professor Fairchilds D. Fancy reached this town and gave out that he intended to establish a roller skating rifik-for. winter, we sent him word to please - The Kicker office. He called, and we found him to be a well-dressed man who parted his hair in the centre, waxed his moustache, and wore the habitual smile of an end man. He informed us that he had leased the old stage stables on Chippewa street and would expend 600 dollars in fitting up a rink, and that he had assurance of a successful season. We put on our most fatherly demeanour and advised him to abandon his enterprise at once. He was warned that he didn’t know our people and was preparing for a calamity. We got down our county map and pointed out the spot dancing master was plantedlas't by the chap who hung .out his manicure w and chiropodist sign,, the ; •.* wilderness into which the chicken incubator’ man disappeared never to be heard of again. It was no use. The roller skating professor was sot in his ways -and bowed himself out to go on with his enterprise, v Saturday night last there was a grand opening of the Palace Skating Eink. Although we dropped in at an -early hour we found the - place " crawided. On the front seats, as usual, • were the forty or fifty men who wear a gun on each hip and decide the fate of a public entertainment. We had only to look into the faces of half a dozen of them to realise that Professor Fancy would fail in his project of crowding the twenty-first .century into the basket holding the twentieth* No one was saying anything, but every man’s face wore a hard anti stony expression. We found the. professor in his dressing room, and plainly told him , that there was going to be a thunder storm and a stampede of the herd, and he was likely to be the only one hurt.. He was still sot. We were politely informed that he knew his gait, and there was,nothing left for us to do but retire and wait for events. Ten minutes later he appeared in fancy costume and began his exhibition. He had cut just one single pigeon wing when old Jim Hewson, who invariably leads the shooting at public performances, pulled his gun and fired. Tha.t was the signal for a general fusillade. The rollers were shot from under tho-’e skates before the professor could cou.A ten, and as he gathered himself for flight the bullets were clipping his boot heels and carrying away straps and buckles,: The last seen of him he was headed for the hills and covering eight feet every jump, and at the present writing the Palace Eink is being turned into an arena for. the exhibition of bucking bronchos and lasso throwing. We are sorry for the professor, who went to an expense of several hundred dollars, and who will probably wander in the hills until he drops dead, but when a man is sot in his ways and thinks he knows his gait he must be left to take his chances. Fifty years hence our citizens may gather *1 at a rink and roll themselves to and fro and back and forth on roller skates and call it a good thing, but the professor was half a century aheacl of the game,— M .Quad, ’ ' ■