A SERIO-COMIC :F'os3:tvly\^ DENVER, COLO.: F. C. MESSLNGER & CO. 1881. T> Entered according tbt^Acttof Congress, in the year 1881, by F. C. :vife3SINGER & CO.. In the Clerk's OfGce of the District Court for th6 District of Colorado. ^^•C.^.^^'t--'' Cm- PREFACE. Prof. C. A, Grimmer, of San Jose, California, has published a pamphlet entitled "The Voice of the Stars, or the EtFectsof the com- ing Perihelion." This little book fell into the hands of the authoi of this little poem and furnished him wiih the subject. That the reader may be informed of what Prof. Grimmer write?, quotations of portions of his book are given in this preface. On page 5 he say.s, "The Perihelia of the four great planets, Jupiter, Uranup, Neptune and Saturn, will be coincident in 1881. * * * The effecto which this conjunction will produce are momentous. From 1880 to 1887 will be one universal carnival of death. No place on earth will be entirelj' free from the plague. * * ^^ Disease? will appear, the nature of which v;ill baffle the skill of the most eminent physicians* Every drop of water in the earth, on the earth, and above the earth, will be more or less poisonous. The atmosphere will be foul with noisome odors, and there will be but few constitutions able to resist the coming scourge." On page 6, "From the far East the pestilen- tial storm will sweep, .^nd its last struggle will end here in the far West. -)<■**** AH the weak and intemperate are sure to die. There is no escape from the inexorable plague-fiend. Fortunate, indeed, are those whose blood is pure and free from any taint or weaknesf!, for they alone will survive the human family. The intemperate and weak will join hands and go down to their graves in tens of thousands. Ancient races will be blotted from the face of the earth. Asia will be nearly depopulated, and the islands that border Asia will suffer frightfully from the scourge. Russia will be the first European nation that will suffer. * * * Unless correct sanitary measures are taken in 1880 the plague will be devastating large cities on the Atlantic coast of America. ■ America will loose more than fifteen millions of inhabitants." Page 7, "The Perihelia will bring other inflictions upon the inhabitants of the earth over which mankind can exert no restraining influence. There will come storms and tidal waves tliat will swamp whole cities, earthquakes That will swallow mountains and town?, and tornadoes ti)at will iswecD 'hundreds of villaces from the face of the earth ; niountays reader will ^aiu sullicieul frou) tlie quotations driven t(j en.iblf him fully to understand " Periheijox," is flie snle object of their [)iib!i- ration in this little volume. Perihelion is placed before a critical public with the full know- ledge that it will get a raking from parties who are interested in a war upon everythinri that does not emanate from their clique, no fuatter about its merit. The State of Colorado should not always be held in fee simple by a few who have pre-empted everything in it and above it, but some of ns "tenderfcet" will dare to dispute the title after awhile. Tfll^ .\UTHOK. Di-NVKR, CoL.. FebTuarv, ISSl. Pf:RIHELI()N'. Au lUiad of woes to this mundane sphere, Prophesy says will commence this year. The Prophet's own views will be found in a primmer PubKshed by the author, Professor Grimmer. He says that four planets,, while in Perihelion, Will cause the death of many a million. Bring ruin on cities without healthy sewers, Kill drunkards, and paupers, and even the brewers; That the weak and the old most surely will die, And the devil be bothered to care for his fry ; That sickness and death from the nasty old plague Will make more paupers than there's money to beg ; That cities will fester with dead not interred, Farms be deserted — no herdsman to herd, Forges all hushed and factories dumb, The toilers can rest for Perihelion has come; Merchants with stores full of glittering wealth, Leave all to clerks and flee for their health ; And the stores and the clerks will perish in flame. The city be pillaged — Perihelion to blame ; The Judge on the bench, lawyer at the bar, The preacher, the doctor, whoever they are, Will drop as if struck by a bolt from the sky, This awful Perihelion has doomed them to die. Funerals will cease in the churches of God ; Doomed wretches that die marked C. 0. D. Will start by express for the home of their maker, Where each will be known bv his. own undertaker. S rjilKlHEl.lON. This way of doins: will be equal and fair, As the dead, good or bad, will have nothing to wear, The living will n't stop to look at a hearse. Or care whether a corpse appears better or worse, But hasten it off, get it out of their sight. For the living are what Perihelion will blight. Volcanoes and earthquakes will also abound, Engulphing whole townships miles underground; States, nations and islands ceasing to be, On the map of the world only as sea. Anarch}' ruling earth, ocean, and air, 'i he devil will enter mankind everywhere; Plunder and rapine, with murderous hand, Rule on the sea as well ns the land ; Ships drifting on oceans will rot everywhere. No siilors to J2:uide tiiem Perihelion will spare. Nations and ra<'es most ancient will first Feel the force of Perihelion and feel it th3 worst; China, the empire celestial, will claim Perihelion's best effort and be sent up in tlame. So the treaty just made to keep the race out Will never be needed — John goes up the spout. Poor John ! let us pray that his ancient race, Wherever they go will find a clean place. And get out of its filth in a land that is new, Have plenty of washing and ironing to do. With his Josh, his pig tail, puppies and mice. His strange little tricks, his chopsticks and rice, Minus his opium joint, vices and rum, lie '11 be greatly improved in his own "kingdom come. Russia, the stalwart, will also be scourged, The line of the Romanoff blood will be purged, The oppressor and oppressed will be on a level If Perihelion sends them both to the devil. The Nihilist thus will be nihil sure And the Czar be nihil — a Nihilist pure. England, the home of commerce and lore. Must suffer for wrongs done to the Boer. PEKIHELIOA'. y The Hindoo, Afghan, Caffir and Kurd, And al! of mankind she calls common herd. Wherever Victoria's armies have trod England has mocked the mandate of God, And her lords and ministers will tremble with fear When Perihelion commands them ail to appear; The Irish wail of famine and sorrow, Eno:land may hear in Perihelion to-morrow, With the thousands of wrongs done to the race In her wars for conquest, money and place ; And her own stjjrving millions all cry aloud, 'Gainst England the great, the haughty and proud. In the era coming she '11 be humble and low. While the nations she's wrong'd will laugh at her woe; Perihelion will do this and it shall be given The endorsement of man and approval of Heaven. And Home that has bulled an infidel race. Sinning more against man than he against Grace, Sending thousands to hell without a clean shirt For not beiug buried in consecrated dirt. Soiled the njime of an apostle so great As Peter, by wedding the church to the State, Together vvith all of her sisters in sin Will go to the pit where the devil is in Forever and ever; and never again Over a churcli or a kingdom will reign. Turkey, the land where oppression's foul rod Has banished from thence the image of God, "^^'ill lise up in strife, and the rotten old Porte, The scat of vile passions, be vile passion s sport; And Christian and Jew and many a million "Will shout hallalulah in praise of Perihelion. Thus Jupiter, NepUme, Uranus and Saturn Will set for the planets a very good pattern To go into the business one year in ten, And scourge from the earth the enslavers of men. Afric's lone shores Perihelion will blight Willi darkness as dark as the sliadow of night; 10 I'KKfHKI.luN. The lion and cobra will fiercely be driven From their haunts in the jungle by lightning of he;iven Till tamed by the dread presence of fire The fiercest of bensts lose beastly desire. And fawn at the feet of the Hottentot, when The fiercest of beasts and the lowest of men Are united in fire by Perihelion, thf n, Sahara and Etheopia no longer will be A desert waste but a deep rolling sea. Thus AlVic's clime in this era, of grace, Will be fitted for the home of a differi'nt I'ace, The children of llam in the 1 im! of the Moor Be blessed for a} e as heaven's own poor. For the word was written 'way b-.ck in the past, "The last shall be first and t!ie first shall be last." Uncle >am ( omes next -n the order of doom, The land of the Yanks will swell the big boom. For the many, ens'av( c1 by the few, will be Again and forever by ]*erilielion made free. The upheaval so general on t' other hemisphere, Will bn no criterion for the business here, Thi.ugh ])eople will die, cities will sink, Lakes of sulphur will simmer and stink, The eaith bf' cursed with numberless ills, The air be poisoned with vapor that kills, Ivivers o-o dry, and oceans of sand Bury the lakes and delude the land; Fvut the general outcome will be better far Than I'lnghmd'.'-, or Turkey's, or the land of the Czar. The map of the country may suifer a change, Mountains be valleys or vallcNS the range. Rivers run northward (hat used to run south, Bising, then, where they now have a mouth; But siill it will be in the tempe^'ate zone. And the Y.inks will have vvhat is left lor their own; Tdie newest on earth the land will endure, And the nation be spnred with a .covernment pure. Which will bloom like the rose after a storm. PEKltlKLlOiN. 11 Takin.2: the lead in national reform, Teaching on earth what is taught by the stars, A family of nations without any wars. After Perihelion this naui>hty Uncle Sam, Will be happy f ir a3'e and wiilnt care a damn. When its seAxn long years shall be o'er He '11 be a good boy, doing wrong nevermore; Keverniore will elections be carried by fraud, Nevermore State criminals travel abroad, Fever again will the difference in weight Of thousands of votes be balanced by eight, Never, no noA'er will the north or the south Oet mad if the other makes up a moulh. For both will be irood, live, love and thiive In the good time coming for all then alive. '1 hough the prophet says they'll be veiy few. They'll ha\e what is left, with little to do, Yet they '11 '-get up and git," for much is required When much is given, so says the inspired. The earth, the air, and man will be new, With life that is fresh and a future in view; Statesnien then uill govern the State, Not aping greatness for they will be great. No syndicate, then, will put up a job The nation's wealth to ])lunder and rob. Ivothschilds and Kelmont. wiloy old Jews, No white man will step into their i-hoes, And never a Jew with a thimble of brains, Will dare to, after Perihelion reigns. From eighteen-e'ghty-five to ei,L;hieen eighty-seven The flames of earth gai'nish high heaven, Forests and faims and cities in turn With suliduirous fires spontaneous burn Till all 'iJoisor.ous filth will petish from earth, Thus fitting it well for man's second birth. Cursed no longer it cer wil! bear Fruit UK et for a god and god To get in Perihelion — what else can it be ? "Well, what if they are?" says a bold thinker, '•'What can stars, that merely can blinker. Do to us here to make us all sick, (i€t into trouble and go to Old Nick ; They are so small and so very far off, 1 don't believe in any such stuff." Forewarned is forearmed. No prophet ere said What all would believe though he came from the dead. Some doubters have died with nothing but doubt. While believers believe what they know little about, And seeing is believing; though it may be too late, Let us watch events and continue to wait ; Eighty-one is now here, the planets have set In Perihelion — " but the end is not yet." We hear every day from over this zone Of winds the most terrible that ever have blowm, Towns all in ashes, others have small-pox, Murrain and rot is destroying flocks, Forests on fire, an earthquake in New York, A riot for bread is threatened in Cork, Railroad trains blocked by mountains of snow, A terrible flood at Sacramento, Murders and robberies from hellish desire, Every day come to us over the wire, A breakfast of homicides, dinner of crime. Suicides, fratricides ten at a time, Men go insane, seeming intent On trying Perihelion just as it 's sent. Yet this is only the beginning of woe. How long must these things be going on so. To stop all doubts that Perihelion is master And causing to come such fell disaster ? List these events fast as they come Till seven full years brings the cracking of doom. Then they that live have a happy fate given, A home on the earth nearly equal to heaven. The world rnttles aliblv of what it knows least. M PEKliiEL102*. Nature's laws are hidden from view of the beast, The book is not open to those who don't read, Noah was wise but the world didn't heed. The Flood and Perihelion never could be If bondaged nature could never get free. The light and the life that rules in the sky, Makes it needful to live and needful to die. Living to die and dying to live, "This will be wisdom Perihelion can give. Seven years seem 1 mg to be in a broil, Large bodies move slow, the planets are in toil, But the earth with the four that march into line, In Perihelion this year, will sp;irkle and shine ^Vith splendor more brilliant than ever before; Perihelion will do it again, nevermore. The Star of IJethlehem, in Cassiopia's chair. Will illume the sky more br.lHant and fair Than ever on earth, brighter than when Its lisflit brought "Peace and 2;ood will to men." The Prophet hears in the voice of the stars That this portends the coming of wars. North Ameiica's hot blood will be spilt With " war to the knife and knife to the hilt," "A word and a blow, and the blow be first," The very best man be the very worst, Every man makinir: some other a ghost, Meum, no tuum, devil take the hindmost. Yet the Star of Bethlehem will light up the scene Showing all in hea\en who the fight is between. So the dog that is under, seeing smiles divine, Can nobly scratch, bite or growJ, or ignobly whine ; While cheers from the clouds are heard far and nigh When brother kills brother and hi.s soul mounts the sky Thus angels of light can" watch and behold By the light of this star man's sins manifold Till earth runs red with the blood of the slain. And Abel is slaughtered and so is Cain. A war of the races now will begin. PEKIHELIOX. i'=> Sambo, the AiVican, mounts Ah Siri; And cuts off his cue just under his chin ; Then Pat, the Irishman, poor Sambo will whack, And lay him out cold on the flat of his back ; When the Teuton rushes in with a whoop-a-la-cheer, And tries to drown all in oceans of beer, But the Yank, who likes it noi very much, Now^ wades in and out-dutches the Dutch With a veiy strong beer, "so petter as good," His own manufacture of common logwood, Cocalus Indicus, Virginia plug, Flavored and scented with the oil of bed-bug, Put up in flasks, with this flaming label, ''Nectar of life, imported from Hell," A beer that makes drunk without making bile, Makes nobody fit and everybody smile, And live till they die — and that's a little while. The meaning and weight of this parajir^fph. Will better be seen if the reader don't laugh; For it's a serious thing for an American man, To try to drink often as a Teuton can ; A drink that is drunk bv a drinking Yank, He should drink and be