N her twenty-first birthday, this warm mamma met an over ripe quince who had been named Herman Pupick by his unfortunate parents. A word about Herman. Our hero was one of triplets. His father, Rudolph Pupick, a traveling salesman, rushed home from Milwaukee when he got the tidings.
After looking over the year’s crop, Mr. Pupick, Sr., said: “We’ll keep this one and drown the other two.” The one he kept was Herman. This was a mean break.
Our hero showed his disposition at an early age. He was a wet smack from the take off. When he was five months old he refused to nurse at his mother’s breast. He considered it immoral and obscene.
Before little Herman was nine years old, everybody knew he was the lily’s whiskers. He grew up to be one of those fireproof crepe hangers, who take orders only from God, and he married an autumn leaf named Emmaline, suffering from virginity.
When he was thirty-five years old the only flesh pots Herman had ever seen were those his wife tended on the kitchen stove. He had been married ten years and every night before sliding into the hay he and the dementia praecox case who shared his headaches would kneel beside their thorny couch and request God to keep them pure. And He did.
Herman himself was so pure that he cancelled his subscription to the Presbyterian Weekly during the War owing to a headline which appeared in that racy organ on March 3, 1917. The headline read, “Naval Maneuvers Described by Eye Witness.” Our right hand of God considered this headline too suggestive for an organ intended for the home.
This pious dingelberry had only one eye. The other one was made of glass. It cost seven dollars and a half and was painted green.
The way our hero lost his gig was like this. On the seventh anniversary of his wedding Herman brought home a quart of plain white ice cream.
“Tonight,” said Herman, “is the seventh anniversary of our joint fight against the Devil. It is, therefore, fitting that we should make merry.”
So they ate the ice cream, although Mrs. Pupick complained it gave her a headache. After this part of the bridal night had been relieved, Herman challenged his consort to a game of Tiddlywinks.
In the heat of this game, Mrs. Pupick snapped one of the tiddlywinks with unusual vigor, for marriage had not taken the fire out of her, and it flew into Herman’s lamp and put it out.
“God,” said our one-eyed Pilgrim, as he shelled out the seven and a half smackers for a new gig, “has smote me for my sins.” This was fair enough.
A few more words are necessary about Herman Pupick before launching into this great drama of sin and passion, to illustrate our hero’s ignorance of the world and its alleged humans. Herman thought that a brassiere was something to melt lead in; that bloomers was a slang term which meant a series of mistakes; that torso was the name of a notorious Spanish bullfighter and that passion was what happened when a carpenter hit his thumb with a hammer.
What, you ask, did this big ham do for a living? Stand back, kind reader, control yourself. Herman Pupick was a reformer. He was employed by the United States of America for $29 a week to plug up all the pitfalls of the great city.
Yes, it was Herman’s duty whenever he saw something wicked to jump on it with both feet and crush it into the ground, and although our razzberry pedlar had only one eye he saw plenty that was low and vile.
In fact, to Herman the whole world was just one big House of Shame and everybody excepting himself and his wife and an adenoid sufferer named Rev. Gurglelurgel were all inmates.
Nearly everything Herman saw he figured out incited other people to sin. And this made him mad. Once when God smote our undertaker’s plume with a severe attack of constipation he wrote a burning letter to the Voice of the People in the Tribune denouncing the immorality and obscenity of public toilets.
It was the same way with Madam Pupick. When Madam got all dressed up and ready to go to prayer meeting and tell God what she thought of herself, she looked as if she had forgotten to remove the Boncilla mud pack.
We will now leave this sweet minded team and leap into the maelstrom of tragedy and passion which fate was even then weaving on its maelstrom-loom.