Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1884 — No Such a Thing as a New Pun. [ARTICLE]

No Such a Thing as a New Pun.

Whenever a young man finds that he has given expression to a pun, he should take a piece of asafcetida about as big as a hickory nut and chew it. He will not feel like making another pun as long as the taste of the drug remains in his mouth. He should carry some of the drug in his vest pocket when he goes out in company, and keep a piece in his mouth constantly. It may be offensive to.tho company, but it will not be half so offensive as his old back-number, teeth-worn puns, and he will become a favorite. If this course will not cure him he had better go and drown himself.

There is no such a thing as a new pun, as every word that is susceptible of a pun has been punned upon for thousands of years, so when you hear a person make a pun you can be sure that it is a thousand years old. If a man or woman, when making a pun on a word, realized that the Egyptian mummy in the museum, when alive, had made the same pun, and laughed at it boisterously, he would be ashamed of his own attempt. The English language is good enough if you take it straight, and it is foolish to torture it. The man who imagines he is smart, as you can see by watching him as he laughs at his own smartness. As good a way as any to squelch a punster is to listen to his pun, look thoughtfully and say, “B. C.” or “Credit it to Adam.” Young men who get in the habit of making puns on all occasions lose their positions, girls go back on them and they go throug life alone, except in rare instances. A girl hates to face the prospect of a lifetime of poor puns, and they wfll think twice before marrying a punster, as he is liable to practice his puns on his wife. A druggist in western Wisconsin had a great habit of making puns a few years ago, and no customer was safe to go to the store to buy anything. They all got a pun with their medicine, and sometimes the pun was worse than the drug to take. One night a man named Otto Padman was stabbed in the breast, and was taken to the drug store to be sewed up. While the doctor was at work on the man the druggist came up and after looking at the wound he said: “You Otto had a liver Pad-man.” The! wounded and dying man heard it, and it was too ranch. He could stand the stab of cold steel, but to 'be stabbed with a pun was too much, and he hauled back one foot and kicked the druggist in the nose. The druggist has never made a pun since, and we don't know but a kick in the nose is about as good a cure as any. — Peck's Sun.

If other’s misfortunes deterred men from pushing ahead over the beaten path, few successes would be won.