UC-NRLF B 3 33M Sb^ IMMMNHMI * w» " " immmmtmmummrmmmmmmmmmmmfm . r -Jit5 ■ •iff - &■?> ■ ■ . . °J ri^f/Z*- afri / ~*^ BILL NYB AND BOOMERANG; OR THE TALE OF A MEEK-EYED MULE, AND SOME OTHER LITERARY GEMS. BY BILL NYE HIMSELF. "And now, kind friends, what I have wrote I hope you will pass o'er, And not criticise as some has done, Hitherto, herebefore." — Sweet Singer of Michigan. CHICAGO, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO: BELFOED, CLARKE & CO. COPYRIGHT 1883. By Belford, Clarke & Go. 4^ EDITED BY" DoiiFiall U .mi £o Pft« TO MY MULE BOOMERANG, Whose bright smile haunts me still, and whose low, mellow notes are ever sounding in my ears, to whom I owe all that I am as a great man, and whose presence has inspired me ever and anon throughout the years that are gone, THIS VOLUME, this coronet of sparkling literary gems as it were, this wreath of fra- grant forget-me-nots and meek-eyed johnny-jump-ups, with all its wealth of rare tropical blossoms and high-priced exotics, is cheerfully and even hilariously dedicated By the Author. M 15784 THE APOLOGY. ( In my Boudoir, \ Nov. 17, 1880. Belford, Clarke & Co. : Gentlemen :— In reply to your favor of the 22d ult, I herewith transmit the material necessary for a medium size volume of my chaste and unique writings. The matter has been arranged rather hurriedly, and no doubt in classifying this rectangular mass of soul, I have selected some little epics and ethereal flights of fancy which are not as good as others that I have left out, but my only excuse is this : the literary world has been compelled to yield up first one well known historical or scientific work and then another, careful investigation having shown that they were unreliable. This left suffering humanity almost destitute of a reliable work to which it could turn in its hour of great need. So I have been compelled to hurry more than I wanted to. It affords me great pleasure, however, to know what a feeling of blessed rest and childlike confidence and assurance — and some more things of that nature — will follow the publication of this work. Print the book in large coarse type, so that the old people can get a chance at it. It will reconcile them to death, perhaps. Then sell it at a moderate price. It is really priceless in value, but put it within the reach of all, and then turn it loose without a word of warning. The Author. Laramie City, Wyoming. CONTENTS. Page. To My Mule Boomerang ■ The Apology ' Apostrophe to an Orphan Mule A Miners' Meeting— My Mine- A Mirage on the Plains 9 The True Story of Damon and Pythias *3 Sad Memories of the Dead Year ! 7 Letters from Paris 2S Prehistoric Crockery ..» Suggestions for a School of Journalism. • 3 1 The Fragrant Mormon *5 Recollections of the Opera 3 A Sunny Little Incident 39 He Rewarded Her 4 1 The Modern Parlor Stove 4 1 Remarks to Originators 43 Queer 45 Sic Semper Gloria Houseplant 45 How to Tel 1 , & Biooraphv of Colorow - Diary of a Saucy Young Thing = ^° Killing oft the James Boys 49 A Relic S ° Some Reasons why I can't be an Indian Agent 5 1 The Picnic Snoozer's Lament 54 Bill Nye and Boomerang in the Gold Mines • 55 Two Great Men • • • • 59 Dirty Murphy ^ A Rocky Mountain Sunset The Temperature of the Bumble-bee 6 3 Drawbacks of Public Lift » • • • * ** iv Contents, The Glad, Fre$ Life of the Miner 65 Some Thoughts of Childhood . .. 6S The New Adjustable Campaign Song 7° Sitting down on a Venerable Joke 7 3 A Hairbreadth Escape 74 Myself, Dr. Talmage and Other Divines 76 Fine-cut as a Means or Grace 79 The Weather and Some Other Things Si The Parable of the Unjust Steward S4 Ode to Spring 87 The Parable of the Prodigal Son S7 The Indian and the Everlasting Gospel 90 The Muse 94 Shoeing a Broncho 101 Pumpkin Jim ; or the Tale of a Busted Jackass Rabbit 104. William Nye and the Heathen Chinee 112 Hong Lee's Grand Benefit at Lead ville 115 You Fou 117 The Lop-eared Lovers of the Little Laramie 1 iS Speech of Spartacus 126 Correspondence 131 He Went Out West for His Health 137 A Quiet Little Wedding without any Frills 140 Thoughts on Spring 144 The Same Old Thing 145 The Veteran who died while getting his Pension 149 Gingerbread Poems and Cold Pickled Facts 152 Origin of Beautiful Snow 155 Ule Eloquence 159 The Aged Indian's Lament 161 How a Mining Stampede breaks out 163 The Great Rocky Mountain Re-union of Yaller Dogs 165 What Woman Suffrage has done for Wyoming 167 Portuguese without a Master 170 The Rocky Mountain Hog 173 The Buckncss wherewith the Buck Beer Bucketh 175 Billious Nye and the Amateur Stage 176 A Journalistic Correction 178 Bankrupt Sale of Literary Gems 179 Thoughts on Marriage 180 A Ute Presidential Convention 183 The Club-footed Lover of Piute Pass 190 The Automatic Liar 194 Some Post-office Fiends 196 Agriculture at an altitude of 7,500 feet. ,......, 199 CoJitents. V The Gentle Youth from Leadville •• 201 A Snide Journalist 2 °3 Thoughts of the Mellow Previously 209 He Was Blind 206 My Tombstone Mine 2I l Bankrupt Sale of a Circus 2I 4 Greeley versus Valley Tan 218 The Eternal Fitness of Things 2 *8 They Unanimously Arose and Hung- Him 220 Rhetoric versus Woodtick -•• •• 222 The Model Wife 226 Some Overland Tourists. 22 9 Catching Mountain Trout at an Elevation of 8,000 feet 233 Home-made Indian Relics 235 The Previous Reporter 2 39 The Peace Commission 2 4 I Some Answers to Correspondents 2 44 The Crow Indian and His Caws 247 The Nuptials of Dangerous Davis 250 The Holiday Hog 252 Some Census Conundrums 253 The Gentle Power of a Woman's Influence 255 The Native Inborn Shiftlessness of the Prairie Dogs 257 Answers to Correspondents • 258 The Secret of Garfield's Election 263 Perils of the Butternut Picker 265 A Word or Two about the Swallow 269 Laughing Sam ( 271 The Calamity Jane Consolidated 273 The Nocturnal Cow ...... 274. The Relentcss Garden Hose , 277 A Wail 278 The Great, Horrid Man Receiveth New Year Calls 279 JusttheThing 280 Thanks 281 An Anti-Mormon Town 283 A Christmas Ride in July 283 Examining the Brand on a Frozen Steer 2S4 Onion Peelin's ,,.,..., ,1........ • • 2S5 APOSTROPHE TO AN ORPHAN MULE. Oh! lonely, gentle, unobtrusive mule! Thou standest idly 'gainst the azure sky, And sweetly, sadly singeth like a hired man. Who taught thee thus to warble In the noontide heat and wrestle with Thy deep, corroding grief and joyless woe? Who taught thy simple heart Its pent-up, wildly-warring waste Of wanton woe to carol forth upon The silent air? I chide thee not, because thy Song is fraught with grief-embittered Monotone and joyless minor chords Of wild, imported melody, for thou Art restless, woe begirt and Compassed round about with gloom, Thou timid, trusting, orphan mule! Few joys indeed, are thine, Thou thrice-bestricken, madly- Mournful, melancholy mule. And he alone who strews Thy pathway with his cold remains Can give thee recompense Of lemoncholy woe. He who hath sought to steer Thy limber, yielding tail Ferninst thy crupper-band Hath given thee joy, and he alone. 8 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 'Tip true, he may hnve shot Athwart the Zodiac, and, looking O'er the outer walk upon The New Jerusalem, Have uttered vain regrets. Thou reckest not, O orphan mule, For it hath given thee joy, and Bound about thy bursting heart, And held thy tottering reason To its throne. Sing on, O mule, and warble In the twilight gray, Unchidden by the heartless throng. Sing of thy parents on thy father's side. Yearn for the days now past and gone; For he who pens these halting, Limping lines to thee Doth bid thee yearn, and yearn, and yearn. A MINERS' MEETING— MY MINE— A MIRAGE ON THE PLAINS. Camp on the New Jerusalem Mine, May 28, 1880. I write this letter in great haste, as I have just returned from the new carbonate discoveries, and haven't any sur- plus time left. While I was there a driving snow storm raged on the mountains, and slowly melting made the yellow ochre into tough plastic clay which adhered to my boots to such an extent that before I knew it my delicately arched feet were as large as a bale of hay with about the same symmetrical outlines. A miners' meeting was held there Wednesday evening, and a district to be called Mill Creek District, was formed, being fifteen miles each way. The Nellis cabin or ranch is situated in the center of the district. I presided over the meeting to give it an air of terror and gloom. It was very impressive. There was hardly a dry eye in the house as I was led to the chair by two old miners. I seated myself behind the flour barrel, and pounding on the head of the barrel with a pick handle, I called the august assemblage to order. Snuffing the candle with my fingers in a graceful and pleasing style, and wiping the black off on my pants, I said : " Gentlemen of the Convention : In your selection of a chairman I detect at once your mental acumen and intelli» 9 IO BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. gent foresight. While you feel confident that, in the rose- colored future, prosperity is in store for you, you still re- member that now you look to capital for the immediate de- velopment of your district. " I am free to state that, although I have been but a few hours in your locality, I am highly gratified with your ap- pearance, and I cheerfully assure you that the coffers which I command are at your disposal. In me you behold a capi- talist who proposes to develop the country, regardless of ex- pense. " I also recognize your good sense in selecting an old miner and mineral expert to preside over your meeting. Although it may require something of a mental strain for your chairman to detect the difference between porphyry and perdition, yet in the actual practical workings of a min- ing camp he feels that he is equal to any emergency. " After the band plays something soothing and the chaplain has drawn up a short petition to the throne of grace, I shall be glad to know the pleasure of the meeting." Round after round of applause greeted this little gem of oratory. A small boy gathered up the bouquets and filed them with the secretary, when the meeting proceeded with its work. Most of trhe delegates came instructed, and there- fore the business was soon transacted. I located a claim called the Boomerang. I named it after my favorite mule. I call my mule Boomerang because he has such an eccentric orbit and no one can tell just when he will clash with some other heavenly body. He has a siszh like the long- drawn breath of a fosr-horn. He likes to come to my tent in the morning about daylight and sigh in my ear before I am awake. He is a highly amusing- little cuss, and it tickles him a good deal to pour BILL NYE .VXD BOOMERANG. II about 13^ gallons of his melody into my ear while I am dreaming, sweetly dreaming. lie enjoys my look of pleas- ant surprise when I wake up. He would cheerfully pour more than 13^ gallons of sigh into my ear, but that is all my ear will hold. There is nothing small about Boomerang. He is generous to a fault and lavishes his low, sad, tremulous wail on every one who has time to listen to it. Those who have never been wakened from a sweet, sweet dream by the low sad wail of a narrow-gauge mule, so close to the ear that the warm breath of'the songster can be felt on the cheek, do not know what it is to be loved by a patient, faithful, dumb animal. The first time he rendered this voluntary for my benefit, I rose in my wrath and some other clothes, and went out and shot him. I discharged every chamber of my revolver into his carcass, and went back to bed to wait till it grot lighter. In a couple of hours I arose and went out to bury Boome- rang. The remains were off about twenty yards eating bunch grass. In the gloom and uncertainty of night, I had shot six shots into an old windlass near a deserted shaft. Boomerang and I get along first -rate together. When I am lonesome I shoot at him, and when he is lonesome he comes up and lays his head across my shoulder, and looks at me with great soulful eyes and sings to me. On our way in from the mines we saw one of those beauti- ful sights so common in this high altitude and clear atmos- phere. It was a mirage. In the party were a lawyer, a United States official, a banker and myself. The other three members of the quar- tet, aside from myself are very modest men and do not wish to have their names mentioned. They were very particular 12 B/LL NYE AND BOOMERANG. about it and I have respected their wishes. Whatever Messrs. Blake, Snow or Ivinson ask me to do I will always do cheerfully. But we were speaking about the mirage. Across to the northeast our attention was at first attracted by a rank of gray towers growing taller and taller till their heads were lifted into the sky above, while at their feet there soon ap- peared a glassy lake in which was reflected the outlines of the massive gray walls above. It was a beautiful sight. The picture was as still and lovely to look upon as a school ma'am. We all went into raptures. It looked like some beautiful scene in Palestine. At least Snow said so, and he has read a book about Palestine, and ought to know. There was a silence in the air which seemed to indicate the deserted sepulchre of other days, and the grim ruins towering above the depths of clear waters on whose surface was mirrored the visage of the rocks and towers on their banks, all spoke of repose and decay and the silent, stately tread of relentless years. By and by, from out the grey background of the picture, there stole the wild, tremulous, heart-broken wail of a mule. It seemed to jar upon the surroundings and clash harshly against our sensitive natures. Some one of the party swore a little. Then another one came to the front, and took the job off his hands. We all joined, in a gentlemanly kind of way, in condemning the mule for his lack of tact, to say the least. All at once the line of magnificent ruins shortened and became reduced in height. They changed their positions and moved off to the left, and our dream had melted into the matter of fact scene of twenty-two immigrant wagons drawn by rat-tail mules and driven by long-haired Mormons, BILL NYE AXD BOOMERANG. 1 3 with the dirt and bacon rinds of prehistoric times adhering to them everywhere. What a vale of tears this is anyway ! We are only marching toward the tomb, after all. We should learn a valuable lesson from this, and never tell a lie. THE TRUE STORY OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS. CHAPTER I. The romantic story of Damon and Pythias, which has been celebrated in verse and song, for over two thousand years, is supposed to have originated during the reign of Dionysius L, or Dionysius the Elder as he was also called, who resigned about 350 years B.C. He must have been called " The Elder," more for a joke than anything else, as he was by inclination a Unitarian, although he was never a member of any church whatever, and was in fact the wick- edest man in all Syracuse. Dionysius arose to the throne from the ranks, and used to call himself a self-made man. He was tyrannical, severe and selfish, as all self-made men are. Self-made men are very prone to usurp the prerogative of the Almighty and over- work themselves. They are not satisfied with the position of division superintendent of creation, but they want to be most worthy high grand muck-a-muck of the entire rancn, or their lives are gloomy fizzles. Dionysius was indeed so odious and so overbearing toward his subjects that he lived in constant fear of assassination at their hands. This fear robbed him of his rest and rendered life a dreary waste to the tyrannical king. He lived in con- stant dread that each previous moment would be followed V4 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. by the succeeding one. He would eat a hearty supper and retire to rest, but the night would be cursed with horrid dreams of the Scythians and White River Utes peeling off his epidermis and throwing him into a boiling cauldron with red pepper and other counter-irritants, while they danced the Highland fling around this royal barbecue. Even his own wife and children were forbidden to enter his presence for fear that they would put " barn arsenic " in the blanc- mange, or " Cosgrove arsenic " in the pancakes, or Paris green in the pie. During his rei^n he had constructed an immense subter- ranean cavernous arrangement called the Ear of Dionysius, because it resembled in shape and general telephonic power, the human ear. It was the largest ear on record. One day a workman expressed the desire to erect a similar ear of tin or galvanized iron on old Di. himself. Some one " blowed on him," and the next morning his head was thumping about in the waste paper basket at the General Office. When one of the king's subjects, who thought he was solid with the administration, would say : " Beyond the possibility of a doubt, your Most Serene Highness is the kind and loving guardian of his people, and the idol of his subjects," His Royal Tallness would say, " What ye givin' us ? Do you wish to play the Most Sublime Overseer of the Universe and General Ticket Agent Plenipotentiary for a China- man? Ha!!! You cannot fill up the King of Syracuse with taffy." Then he would order the chief executioner to run the man through the royal sausage grinder, and throw him into the Mediterranean. In this way the sausage grinder was kept running night and day, and the chief engineer who run the machine made double time everv month. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. ICJ CHAPTER II. I will now bring in Damon and Pythias. Damon and Pythias were named after a popular secret organization because they were so solid on each other. They thought more of one another than anybody. They borrowed_chewing tobacco, and were always sociable and pleasant. They slept together, and unitedly " stood off" the landlady from month to month in the most cheerful and harmonious manner. If Pythias snored in the night like the blast of a fog horn, Damon did not get mad and kick him in the stomach as some would. He gently but firmly took him by the nose and lifted him up and down to the merry rythm of " The Babies in Our Block." They loved one another in season and out of season. Their affection was like the soft bloom on the nose of a Wyoming legislator. It never grew pale or wilted. It was always there. If Damon were at the bat, Pythias was on deck. If Damon went to a church fair and invited star- vation, Pythias would go, too, and vote on the handsomest baby till the First National Bank of Syracuse would refuse to honor his checks. But one day Damon got too much budge and told the venerable and colossal old royal bummer of Syracuse what he thought of him. Then Dionysius told the chief engineer of the sausage grinder to turn on steam and prepare for business. But Damon thought of Pythias, and how Pythias hadn't so^ much to live for as he had, and he made a compromise by offering to put Pythias in soak while the only genuine Damon went to see his girl, who lived at Albany- Three days were given him to get around and redeem Pythias, and if he failed his friend would go to protest. \6 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. CHAPTER IU. We will now suppose three days to have elapsed since the preceding chapter. A large party of enthusiastic citizens of Syracuse are gathered around the grand stand, and Pythias is on the platform cheerfully taking off his coal. Near by stands a man with a broadax. The Syracuse silver cornet band has just played "It's funny when you feel that way," and the chaplain has made a long prayer, Pythias sliding a trade dollar into his hand and whispering to him to give him his money's worth. The Declaration of Independ- ence has been read, and the man on the left is running his thumb playfully over the edge of his meat ax. Pythias takes off his collar and tie, swearing softly to himself at his miser- able luck. CHAPTER IV. It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horse- man. The horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter from the dome of the court house and bathe SJ~ the green plains of Syracuse with mellow splendor. The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern sky look soft and vielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and all nature seems oppressed with thfc. solemn hush and stillness of the surrounding asd engulfing- horror* BIO, NYE AND BOOMERANG. 17 The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cayuse plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is singing a merry song. Damon has been delayed by road agents and washouts, and he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little too long and dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making up time now and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his part. He and Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of fine-cut from each other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before the curtain, bows and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders the band to play something soothing, gives Damon the appoint- ment of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Pythias the Syracuse post-office, and everything is lovely. Orches- tra plays something touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno. In hoc usufruct Nux Vomica est. SAD MEMORIES OF THE DEAD YEAR. It is with the deepest regret that I write in advance the obituary of the year 1S79, and pay a last tribute to another landmark in our history before it be consigned to the bound- less realms of the past. I do not write this as an item of local interest, because the year will fold its icy limbs and die at about the same time to the people of the East as to us. The limit of totality will strike us about the same. But I write of the last moments of 1879, as the subject seems to me. The year now nearly gone has been fraught with almost innumerable blessings. None of us can look back over it l8 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. without remembering many moments of pleasure. With what unalloyed bliss at this moment comes back to me the memory of that rich golden day of summer when the first watermelon billed the town and I mortgaged my little home and bought it. Then also I call to mind the day when the first strawberries began to be convalescent and were able to be out, and how forty or fifty of our leading business men formed a joint stock company and bought a whole box, Ah ! life gives no richer recompense for its numberless ills than the proud moments when one buys the first box of un- happy dyspeptic berries of the season, and then compromises with one's creditors at ten cents on the dollar. Then followed the ripe and radiant days of the Indian summer when the peaks of the distant mountains that bound the horizon, melt away into the soft warm sky, and the only sound that breaks the stillness is the merry roundelay of the John rabbit softly cooing to his mate. It is the choice sea- son of the year when there is a solemn hush resting over the whole broad universe, a stillness like that which falls upon a peasant's dance when the " E " string of the leading violin dissolves partnership, and hits the bass violinist in the eye. There are, indeed, many things for which we individually and as a people should be devoutly thankful. Think, for instance, how many Indians along our frontier have escaped violent deaths. Consider for a moment how a long and bloody war has been avoided by the more gentle sway of peace. See how the olive branch waves, where a few months ago the tocsin of war echoed from the rugged hills of the West. The saber now hangs idly in its sheath and the alarums of war have petered out. See what a kind and BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. I9 considerate policy toward the wild untutored savage will do toward promoting the advance of universal civilization. By- means of the Boston peace plan the opera and pin-pool and other adjuncts of wealth and refinement will be placed within the reach of the most illiterate and worthless sons of the forest. It is true we are looked upon by other nations as the re- public with a warm molasses poultice Indian policy; but right and softness and gentleness have overcome brute force and might. We of the West are too apt to be violent and radical in our treatment of the Indian. When he kills our family, all the family we have got, perhaps, too, and leaves us a lonely widower with the graves of our mangled house- hold to remember him by, we are too prone to be bitter, and say mean, hateful things about him, and run him down and destroy his boom. We do not stop to consider that this is all the fun he has. We should learn to control ourselves, and look upon the Indian as a diamond in the rough. That's the way I do. I look upon Colorow as a regular Kohinoor, if he were only polished. I would be willing to polish him, too, if I had time and felt strong enough. I would hold his nose against an emery wheel, or something of that kind, very cheerfully, if my time were not all taken up. But I have wandered away from what I was going to say relative to the old year and drifted into the Indian ques- tion, thus crowding out many sweet little things which I had mapped out to say of the snowy winding sheet which shrouds the dying year, and some more things of that kind, touching and beautiful in the extreme. I have allowed other matters to take the place of these little poetical pas- sages and make a dull, prosy article of what I had intended to construct into a frail and beautiful fabric, with slendef pinnacles, sublime arches and Queen Anne woodshed, 20 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. HERE WE COME! HERE WE COME! HERE WE COME! 13 I BILL NYE'S I 13 Thirteenth Grand Semi-Annual FAREWELL CIRCUS AND HIPPODROME. THE MAN-EATING LION, LIVER PAD. He eats nothing but fresh Ohio men. Do not fail to see our Mammoth Street Parade, the Grand Oriental and Princely Pageant, over nine miles in length, and don't you forget it! It has been pronounced by the crowned heads of the world to be the most Scrumptuous Mighty and Magnificent Confederation of Wonders. Knights in full panoply — ladies without any panoply on. Kndless ranks of gold bedizened cages, recherche chariots; BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 21 boss camels, with or without humps; cages of mammoth reptilian angle- worms; lions stuffed with baled hay; petri- fied circus jokes; preserved seats; gazelle-like elephants, nd a bang-up outfit generally. It is well worth a journey of one hundred miles to see a-one our mammoth band chariot, flecked with burnished gold, and costing $250 per fleck. ' 22P We wil1 not be outflecked! Bear in mind the time ar.d place! GRANITE CANON, AUGUST 14TH. Afternoon and evening, with Grand Matinee for bald- headed men at 5 p.m. each day. THE FAMOUS TRAKENE STALUON. BOOMERANG; 22 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. I challenge the world to produce the equal of this highl) intellectual and amusing little cuss. He stands on four feel at one and the same time, in the mammoth pavilion, and at one price of admission, eating out of the hand with the utmost docility and reckless abandon. Boomerang is the only living performing trick stallion ever born in captivity. MY MAMMOTH ELECTRIC LIGHT. In connection with the untold and priceless splendor of the glittering pageant, I will introduce the Dynamo, Hydro- phosphatic, Perihelion Electric Light, in comparison with which the mid-day sun looks like a convalescent white bean. In brilliancy and refulgent splendor, it without doubt lays over and everlastingly knocks the socks off all other lights now in the known world. This statement I am prepared to back up with the necessary kopecks. The wonderful Tat- tooed Steer from Stink- ing Water. If not exactly as represented, your money will be refunded to you as you pass out the door. This costly and truly picturesque Queen Anne Steer was secured at great cost to the management, BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2 3 and will positively appear every day in the regular pro- gramme, and within the mammoth pavilion. If he does not in every respect do as I advertise, and with one hand tied behind him, I will be responsible. Before and after visiting my Mammoth Show. The royal Mexican Plug, Billy English, and the truly remarkable mule with the genuine camel's hair tail, Win- field Scott Hancock, These animals, with almost human intelligence, walk around the ring, stepping first on one foot and then on the other. They have been procured at enormous expense and may be found only with my stupendous aggregation of trained animals. They represent the perfect pyramid at each performance as represented in the above enoravino- The steer which performs upon the flying trapeze and horizontal bar. The only steer that has ever successfully enacted the aerig. dive or eagle swoop. The wonderful performing steer, Zazel, is the only one. THE SENSATION. , , J horned, one-eared and bob. ^iled steer ever born in captivity- 24 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. This steer is found alone with Bill Nye's Great Cast-Iron Hippodrome aud 27-Karat Utopian Giganticum. THE PRESS CORDIALLY INVITED. I extend to the members of the press everywhere a most hearty invitation. They will be furnished with luxuriant reclining chairs, porcelain cuspidores, and gold toothpicks to pick out the fragments of lemonade from their pearly teeth A special clown will be devoted to the members of the press. A guide will have charge of visiting journalists to show them the curiosities, and see that they do not forget and carry anything away. Members of the press will be allowed to sit on the top seats and let their feet hang down. J^P 33 Do not fool with the animals. PRESS COMMENTS. The O wltown Bunghole says : " No living man has ever heretofore dared to perform all he advertised. Bill Nye certainly has secured the most wonderful and costly galaxy of arenic talent, and the most perfect and oriental conglome- ration of grand, gloomy and peculiar zoological specimens from the four corners of the globe. The editor and his nineteen children, with his wife and hired girl, were passed in yesterday by the handsome and gentlemanly, modest and lady-like proprietor of Bill Nye's ownest own and simul- taneous world-renowned hippodrome and menagerie." A CARD. A report has been set in circulation, probably by some unprincipled rival showmen, to the effect that I will not exhibit with my entire show at Granite Canon, but that the main show will he divided, the famous Trakene Stallion, Boomerang, going to Greeley \ the Royal Mexican Plug BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 25 Billy English, going to Whiskey Flat; the Mammoth Rep- tilian Angleworm going to Last Chance; the famous Trick Mule, Winfield Scott Hancock, going to Tie City, while the balance of the show would appear at Granite Canon. I pronounce this and all similar reports the most flagrant, lying canards, as I shall not only appear at Granite Canon with my entire aggregation of my own and only jam-up- and-scrumptuous show and North American Boss and Supreme Oriental and Collossal Menagerie, but at all points where I have advertised to appear. I make no show, but I can buy and sell every show on the road before breakfast, and don't you forget it. I travel on my own special train, and regular passenger and express trains are held while I have the right of way with my elegant drawing-room and palace cars for the animals, and colossal silver chariots for the men. I exhibit also under my acres and acres of canvas, and two-bits will admit you to all parts of the show. Special trains will run to and from Granite Canon on the day of the show at regular rates. Simultaneously yours, Bill Nye. z6 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG, LETTER FROM PARIS. Paris, May 30th, 1878. I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken in the United States, for I am tired of -the infernal lingo of this God-forsaken country, and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and on some other sub- ject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it any more. Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends to step into a big drug-store on the Rue de La Sitting Bull, to get a glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians. He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said : "Ze vcoly voo a la boomerang?" I patted the soda fountain and said: " No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I will take about two fingers of bug-juice in mine to sweeten my breath." But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no doubt, and got him a job in a drug ^^jjB ^P store. So I said : "Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and BILL NYE ANt> BOOMERANG. 27 if you will put a little tanglefoot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will picx: up a pound weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with spirituous frumenti, old rye, benzine — bay rum — anything! Parley voo, e flurl- bus unum, sic semper go braugh! Do you understand that? But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives on. Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400. I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to; partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and telescope the duodenum into the aesophagus. I used to stand that way and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green cold waves and the wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it all day. I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am trying to arrange it so as to go home by 28 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. land. I think I can make up for the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and turned it over to the Atlantic ocean for inspection, than I have eaten since I came here. PREHISTORIC CROCKERY. During my rambles through the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky mountains recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although worn down some- what and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope and the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time very large and high. This, I was told, had, no doubt, been the burial place of some ancient tribe or race of men, the cemetery, perhaps, of a nation now unknown. Here in the heart of a new world, where men who had known the region for fifteen or twenty years, are now called " old timers," where " new discoveries " had been made within my own recollection, we found the sepulchre of a nation that was old when the Pilgrims landed on the shores of Columbia. I am something of an antiquarian with all my numerous charms, and I resolved to excavate at this spot and learn the hidden secrets of those people who lived when our earth was young. I started to dig into the vast sarcophagus. The ground was very hard. The more I worked the more I felt that T was desecrating the burial place of a mighty race of men, now powerless to defend themselves against the vandal hands that sought to mar their eternal slumber. I resolved to continue my researches according to the lilLL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 1*) Vicarious plan. I secured the services of a hardened, soul- less hireling, who did not wot of the solemn surroundings, and who could dig faster than I could. He proceeded with the excavation business, while I sought a shady dell where I could weep alone. It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself — The knights are dust, Their swords are rust; Their souls are with The saints, we trust. Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet, made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States mining laws. I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process between a piece of micaceous slate and a ' fragment of deodorized, copper-stained manganese. But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the woodticks. Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe and which we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is the same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as " Silver Threads Among the Gold." It has been in one form and another through the ever shifting ages all along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the spring trade. All we see or hear or feel, is old. Truth itself is old. Old and falling into disuse, too. Outside of what I am using in my business, perhaps, not over two or three bales are now on the market. Here in the primeval solitude, undisturbed by the foot of man, I had found the crumbling remnants of those who 3° BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. once walked the earth in their might and vaunted their strength among the powers of their world. No doubt they had experienced the first wild thrill of all- powerful love, and thought that it was a new thing. They had known, with mingled pain and pleasure, when they struggled feebly against the omnipotent sway of consuming passion, that they were mashed, and they flattered them- selves that they were the first in all the illimititable range of relentless years who had been fortunate enough to get hold of the genuine thing. All others had been base imita- tions. Here, perhaps, on this very spot, the Aztec youth with a bright eyed maiden on his arm had pledged life-long fidelity to her shrine, and in the midnight silence had stolen away from her with a pang of vigorous regret, followed by the sobs of his soul's idol and the demoralizing, leaden rain of buckshot, with the compliments and best wishes of the old man. While I was meditating upon these things a glad shout from the scene of operations attracted my attention. I rose and went to the scene of excavation, and found, to my un- speakable astonishment and pleasure, that the man had unearthed a large Queen Anne tear jug, with Etruscan work upon the exterior. It was simply one of the old-fashioned single- barrelled tear jugs, made for a one-eyed man to cry into. The vessel was about eighteen inches in height by five or six inches in diameter, and similar to the cut above. The graceful yet perhaps severe pottery of the Aztecs convinces me that they were fully abreast of the present BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 3* century in their knowledge of the arts arc] sciences. Space will not admit of an extended description of this ancient tear cooler, but I am still continuing the antiquarian researches — vicariously, of course, — and will give this sub ject more attention during the summer. SUGGESTION'S FOR A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM. A number of friends having personally asked me to ex- press an opinion upon the matter of an established school of journalism, as spoken of by ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Connecticut, and many more through the West who are strangers to me personally, having written me to give my views upon the subject, I have consented in so far that I will undertake a simple synopsis of what the course should embrace. I most heartily indorse the movement, if it may be called such at this early stage. Knowing a little of the intricacies of this branch of the profession, I am going to state fully my belief as to its importance, and the necessity for a thorouo-h training upon it. We meet almost everywhere newspaper men who are totallv unfitted for the hiorh office of Dublic educators through the all-powerful press. The woods is full of them. We know that not one out of a thousand of those who are to-day classed as journalists is fit for that position. I know that to be the case, because people tell me so. I cannot call to mind to-day, in all my wide journalistic acquaintance, a solitary man who has not been pronounced an ass by one or more of my fellow-men. This is indeed z. terrible state of affairs. In many instances these harsh criticisms are made by those 3^ Kill nVe ArtD boomehak&. Who do not know, without submitting themselves to a tremendous mental strain, the difference between a " lower case " q and the old Calvinistic doctrine of unanimous dam- nation, bui that makes no difference; the true journalist should strive to please the masses. He should make his whole life a study of human nature and an earnest effort to serve the great reading world collectively and individually. This requires a man, of course, with similar characteristics and the same general information possessed by the Almighty but who would be willing to work at a much more moder- ate salary. The reader will instantly see how difficult it is to obtain this class of men. Outside of the mental giant who writes these lines and two or three others, perhaps But never mind. I leave a grateful world to say that, while I map out a plan for the ambitious young journalist who might be entering upon the broad arena of news- paperdom, and preparing himself at a regularly established school for that purpose. Let the first two years be devoted to meditation and prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent profanity which in a few years he may ex- perience when he finds in his boss editorial that God is spelled with a little g, and the peroration of the article has been taken out and carefully locked up between a death notice and the announcement of the birth of a cross-eyed infant. The ensuing five years should be spent in becoming fa- miliar with the surprising and mirth-provoking orthography of the English language. Then would follow three years devoted to practice with dumb bells, sand bags and slung shots, in order to become BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 33 an athlete. 1 have found in my own journalistic history more cause for regret over my neglect of this branch than any other. I am a pretty good runner, but aside from that I regret to say that as an athlete I am not a dazzling success. The above course of intermediate training would fit the student to enter upon the regular curriculum. Then set aside ten years for learning the typographical art perfectly, so that when visitors wish to look at the com- posing room, and ask the editor to explain the use of the " hell box," he will not have to blush and tell a gauzy lie about its being a composing stick. Let the young journalist study the mysteries of type setting, distributing, press work, gallies, italic, shooting" sticks, type lice and other mechanical implements of the printer's department. Five years should be spent in learning to properly read and correct proof, as well as how to mark it on the margin like a Chinese map of the Gunnison country. At least fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of American politics and the whole civil service. This time could be extended five years with great profit to the careful student who wishes, of course, to know thoroughly the names and records of all public men, together with the rela- tive political strength of each party. He should then take a medical course and learn how to bind up contusions, apply arnica, court plaster or bandages, plug up bullet holes and prospect through the human sys- tem for buck shot. The reason of this course which should embrace five years of close study, is apparent to the thinking mind. Ten years should then be devoted to the study of law . Ts T o thorough metropolitan editor wants to enter upon his profession without knowing the difference between a writ *3 24 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. of mandamus and other styles of profanity. He should thoroughly understand the entire system of American juris- prudence, and be as familiar with the more recent decisions of the courts as New York people are with the semi-annual letter of Governor Seymour declining the Presidency. The student will by this time begin to see what is required of him and will enter with greater zeal upon his adopted profession. He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years. He can then write a telling editorial on the great question of What We Shall Do To Be Saved without mixing up Calvin and Tom Paine with Judas Iscariot and Ben Butler. The closing ten years of the regular c course might be profit- ably used in learning a practical knowledge of cutting cord wood, baking beans, making shirts, lecturing, turning double handsprings, preaching the gospel, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour in hot weather, learn- ing the art of scissors grinding, punctuation, capitalization, prosody, plain sewing, music, dancing, sculping, etiquette, how to win the affections of the opposite sex, the ten com- mandments, every man his own teacher on the violin, cro- quet, rules of the prize ring, parlor magic, civil engineering, decorative art, calsomining, bicycling, base ball, hydraulics, botany, poker, calisthenics, high-low jack, international law, faro, rhetoric, fifteen-ball pool, drawing and painting, mule skinning, vocal music, horsemanship, plastering, bull whack- ing, etc., etc., etc. At the age of 95 the student will have lost that wild, reck- less and impulsive style so common among younger and less experienced journalists. He will emerge from the school with a light heart and a knowledge-box loaded up to the muzzle with the most useful information. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 35 The hey day and springtime of life will, of course, be past, but the graduate will have nothing to worry him any more, except the horrible question which is ever rising up before the journalist, as to whether he shall put his money into government four per cents or purchase real estate in some growing town. THE FRAGRANT MORMON. On Tuesday morning I went down to the depot to see a large train of ten cars loaded with imported Mormons. I am not very familiar with the workings of the Church of Latter-day Saints, but I went down to see the 350 prose- lytes on their way to their adopted home. I went simply out of curiosity. Now my curiosity is satisfied. I haven't got to look at a Mormon train again, and it fills my heart with a nameless joy about the size of an elephant's lip, to think that I haven't grot to do this any more. All through the bright years of promise yet to come I need not ever go out of my way to look at these chosen people. When I was a boy I had two terrible obstacles to over- come, and I have dreaded them all my life until very recently. One was to eat a chunk of Limberger cheese, and the other was to look at a Mormon emigrant train. After I visited the train I thought I might as well go and tackle the Limberger cheese, and be out of my misery. I did so, and the cheese actually tasted like a California pear, and smtMed like the atter of roses. It seemed to take the taste of the Mormons out of my mouth. I sometimes look at a carload of Montana cattle, or Western sheep, and they seem to be a good deal travel-worr, 36 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. and out of repair, but they are pure as the beautiful snow in comparison to what I saw Tuesday morning. Along the Union Pacific track, on either side, the green grass and mountain flowers looked up into the glad sunlight, took one good smell and died. Cattle were driven off the range, and the corpses of overland tramps were strewn along; the wake of this train, like the sands of the sea. Deacon Bullard, Joe Arthur, Timber Line Jones and myself went over together. Deacon Bullard thought that the party was from Poland and went through the train inquiring for a man named Orlando Standemoff. I claimed that they were Scandinavians, and I followed him through the cars asking for a man named Twoquart Kettlesonand Numerousotherson. Neither of us were successful. One of these Mormons was overtaken near Point of Rocks, with an irresistable desire to change his socks (no poetry intended) and before the brakeman could lariat him and kill him, he had done so. The Union Pacific will abandon this part of the road now and leave this point several miles away rather than spend two millions of dollars for disinfectants. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE OPERA. Most every one thinks that I don't know much about music and the opera, but this is not the case. I am very enthusiastic over this class of entertainment, and I will take the liberty to trespass upon the time and patience of my readers for a few moments while I speak briefly but graphi- cally on this subject. A few evenings ago I had the pleas- ure of listening to the rendition of the " Bohemian Girl " by Emma Abbott and her troupe at the Grand Opera House, I BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 37 was a little late, but the manager had saved me a pleasant seat where I could alternately look at the stage and out through the skylight into the clear autumn sky. The plot of the play seems to be that " Arline," a nice little chunk of a girl, is stolen by a band of gypsies, owned and operated by " Devilshoof," who looks some like " Othello " and some like Sitting Bull. " Arline " grows up among the gypsies and falls in love witn " Thaddeus." " Thaddeus " was played by Brignoli. Brignoli was named after a thoroughbred horse. " Arline " falls asleep in the gypsy camp and dreams a large majolica dream, which she tells to " Thaddeus." She says that she dreamed that she dwelt in marble halls and kept a girl and had a pretty fly time generally, but after all she said it tickled her more to know that " Thaddeus " loved her still the same, and she kept saying this to him in G, and up on the upper register, and down on the second added line below, and crescendo and diminuendo and deuodessimo, forward and back and swing opposite lady to place, till I would have given 1,000 shares paid-up non-assessable stock in the Boomerang if I could have been " Thad." Brignoli, however, did not enter into the spirit of the thing. He made me mad, and if it hadn't been for Em. I would have put on my hat and gone home. He looked like the man who first discovered and introduced Buck beer into the country. She would come and put her sunny head up against his cardigan jacket and put one white arm on each shoulder and sing like a bobolink, and tell him how all-fired glad she was that he was still solid. I couldn't help think- ing how small a salary I would be willing to play "Thad- deus " for, but he stood there like a basswood man with Tobias movement, and stuck his arms out like a sore toe, o8 BILL. NYE AND BOOMERANG. and told her in F that he felt greatly honored by her atten- tion, and hoped some day to be able to retaliate, or words to that effect. I don't want any trouble with Brignoli, of course, but I am confident I crfh lick him with one hand tied behind me, and although I seek no quarrel with him, he knows my post office address, and I can mop the North American continent with his remains, and don't you forget it. After awhile the " Gypsy Queen," who is jealous of "Ar- line," puts up a job on her to get her arrested, and she is brought up before her father, who is a Justice of the Peace for that precinct, and he gives her $25 and trimmings, or thirty days in the Bastile. By and by, however, he catches sight of her arm, and recognizes her by a large red God- dess of Liberty tattooed on it, and he remits the fine and charges up the costs to the county. Her father wants her to marry a newspaper man and live in affluence, but "Arline " still hankers for " Thad.," and turns her back on the oriental magnificence of life with a journalist. But " Thaddeus " is poor. All he seems to have is what he can gather from the community after office hours, and the chickens begin to roost high and he is despondent apparently. Just as " Arline " is going to marry the news- paper man, according to the wishes of her pa, " Thaddeus " sails m with an appointment as Notary Public, bearing the Governor's big seal upon it, and "Arline" pitches into the old man and plays it pretty fine on him till he relents and she marries " Thaddeus," and they go to housekeeping over on the West Side, and he makes a bushel of money as Notary Public, and everybody sings, and the band plays, and she is his'n, and he is her'n. BILL NYE AND KOOMERANG. 39 There is a good deal of singing in this opera. Most everybody sings. I like good singing myself. Emma Abbott certainly warbles first-rate, and her love- making takes me back to the halcyon days when I cared more for the forbidding future of my moustache, and less for meal-time than I do now. But Brignoli is no singer accord- ing to my aesthetic taste. He sings like a man who hasn't taken out his second papers yet, and his stomach is too large. It gets in the way and "Arline" has to go around it and lean up on his flank when she wants to put her head on his breast. A SUNNY LITTLE INCIDENT. Thursday evening, in company with a friend, I rode up into the city on the Rock Island train and was agreeably surprised by seeing a Rocky Mountain man, a few seats ahead, sitting with a lady who seemed to be very much in love with him, and he was trying the best he knew to out- gush her. Now the gentleman's wife was at home in Wyoming in blissful ignorance of all this business while he was ostensibly buying his fall and winter stock of goods in Chicago. The most obtuse observer could see that the companion of this man was not his wife, for she was gentle toward him, and looked lovingly in his eyes. Every one in the car laid aside all other business and watched the performance. Then I whispered to my friend and said, " That is not the wife of that man. I can tell by the way they look into the depths of each other's eyes and ignore the other passengers. I'll bet ten dollars he has seven children and a wife at home tie prehistoric jokes that an antiquarian had given hirn. years ago. Finally he said : " Leadville is mighty cold ; it has such an allfired altitude, The summer is very short and unreliable, and the winter- long and severe, BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 73 "An old miner over in California gulch got off a pretty good joke about the climate there. A friend asked him about the seasons at Leadville, and he said that there they had nine months winter and three months late in the fall." Then he looked around to see me fall to pieces with mirth, but I restrained myself and said: " You will please excuse me for not laughing at that joke. I cannot do it. It is too sacred. "Do you think I would laugh at the bones of the Pilgrim Fathers, where are they? or burst into wild hilarity over the grave of Noah and his family ? "No, sir; their age and antiquity protect them. That is the way with your Phoenician joke. "Another reason why I cannot laugh at it is this: I am not a very easy and extemporaneous laugher, anyway. I am generally shrouded in gloom, especially when I am in hot pursuit of a wild and skittish joke for my own use. It takes a good, fair, average joke that hasn't been used much to make me laugh easy, and besides, I have used up the fund of laugh that I had laid aside for that particular joke. It has, in fact, overdrawn.some now, and is behind. " I do not wish to intrench on the fund that I have con- cluded to offer as a purse for young jokes that have never made it in three minutes. " I want to encourage green jokes, too, that have never trotted in harness before, and, besides, I must insist on using my scanty fund of laugh on jokes of the nineteenth century. I have got to draw the line somewhere. " If I were making a collection of antique jokes of the vintage of 1400 years B. C, or arranging and classifying little bon-mots of the time of Cleopatra or King Solomon, I would give you a handsome sum for this one of yours, but I 74 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. am just trying to worry along and pay expenses, and trying to be polite to every one I meet, and laughing at lots of things that I don't want to laugh at, and I am going to quit it. " That is why I have met your little witticism with cold and heartless gravity." A HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE. To-day I got shaved at a barber-shop, where I begged the operator to kill me and put me out of my misery. I have been accustomed to gentle care and thoughtfulness at home, and my barber at Laramie handles me with the utmost tenderness. I was, therefore, poorly prepared to meet the man who this morning filled my soul with woe. I know that I have not deserved this, for while others have berated the poor barber and swore about his bad breath and never-ending clatter and his general heartless- ness, I have never said anything that was not filled with child-like trust and hearty good will toward him. I have called the attention of the public to the fact that sometimes customers had bad breath and were restless and mean while being operated on, and then when they are all fixed up nicely, they put their hats on and light a cigar and hold up their finger to the weary barber and tell him that they will see him more subsequently. Now, however, I feel differently. This barber no doubt had never heard of me. He no doubt thought I was an ordinary plug who didn't know anything about luxury. I shall mark a copy of this paper and send it to him. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 75 Then while he is reading it I will steal up behind him with a pick handle and kill him. I want him to be reading this when I kill him, because it will assist the coroner in arriv- ing at the immediate cause of his death. The first whiff I took of this man's breath, I knew that he was rum's maniac. He had the Jim James in an advanced stage. Now, I don't object to being shaved by a barber who is socially drunk, but when the mad glitter of the maniac is in his eye and I can see that he is debating the question of whether he will cut my head off and let it drop over the back of the chair or choke me to death with a lather brush, it makes me nervous and fidgetty. This man made up his mind three times that he would kill me, and some one came in just in time to save me. His chair was near a window, and there was a hole in the blind, so that when he was shaving the off side of my face he would turn my head over in such a position that I could look up into the middle of the sun. My attention had never before been called to the appearance of the sun as it looks to the naked eye, and I was a good deal surprised. The more I looked into the very center of the great orb of day the more I was filled with wonder at the might and power that could create it. I began to pine for death im- mediately, so that I could be far away among the heavenly bodies, and in a land where no barber with the delirium tri- angles can ever enter. This barber held my head down so that the sun could shine into my darkened understanding, until I felt that my brain had melted and was floating around and swashing about in my skull like warm butter. His hand was very unsteady, too. I lost faith in him on y6 SiLL NYE AND BOOMERANG. the start when he cut off a mole under my chin and threw it into the spittoon. I did not care very particularly for the mole, and did not need it particularly, but at the same time I had not decided to take it off at that time. In fact I had worn it so long that I had become attached to it. It had also become attached to me. That is why I could not restrain my tears when the barber cut it off and then stepped back to the other end of the room to see how I looked without it. MYSELF, DR. TALMAGE, AND OTHER DIVINES. September 5, 1880. I am beginning to-day to keep a diary. It is not an agreeable task, but I feel that the wild, glad bursts of un- fettered thought which surge through my ponderous mind ought to be embalmed in eligible characters, and passed down to posterity. The thought may arise in the mind of the reader that this is taking a low and contemptible advantage of a posterity that never in word or deed ever harmed me; but I care not. Other able men have perpetrated their diaries upon me when I was not in a condition to help myself, and now that I can hand down and transmit to nations yet unborn, the same great heritage unimpaired, there is a sweet conscious- ness of a revenge that has been fully glutted. To day I have been to church. I do not speak of it as remarkable at all, for wherever I am, whether at home or abroad, my first thought is, where will I find a sanctuary? The minister was quite classical and he pumped the con- gregation so full of heathen mythology that he came very BILL NYE AXD BOOMERANG. 77 near forgetting that he had a word to say on behalf of Christianity as the advance agent of Zion. I do not wish to say one word that would sound like irreverence toward the cause which this man undertook to represent; but I want to jot down a little thought or two relative to this exponent, so that I may be placed squarely upon the record. I have often thought when I have watched this class of ministers, with one hand resting in a graceful and negligent posture on the altar rail, while the self-conscious Demos- thenes reeled off a 4th of July prayer to the miserable, wretched and undone sinners before him, how God has said that He is a jealous God ; and I have wondered if these prayers, arranged with great care to meet the criticism of the worshippers, and with an ofF-hand disregard to the feelings of the Almighty that is very cool and very refresh- ing indeed, whether they ever lay hold of the throne of grace or not, and whether they ever lift up mankind or make the world better. Speaking of divines, reminds me of the very pleasant trip I had over the Union Pacific on my way east with Brother Talmage. I call him Brother Talmage because he called me brother occasionall\\ He no doubt thought that in different walks of life, perhaps, but working in the same direction, we were both laboring to make the world better. Brother Talmage, General Crook, myself and two or three other eminent men together occupied the sleeper Boise City. Brother Talmage and I one day were seized with the same irresistable desire, at the same moment, to change our shirt c . He was a little nearer the wash-room than I was, so he got there first, and we stood up together smiling at each other sweetly, with a clean shirt in our 78 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. hands, and didn't know exactly how to express ourselves. I was the first to speak. I told the Doctor that it was of no consequence particularly, and I would wait. He said no, I must not wait for him, and insisted so cordially on my coming in there that we went in together and tackled the mysteries of our toilet at the same time. It was pretty tough on me, for I had been accustomed while peeling off a damp shirt to go through a few little vocal exercises and dance around on one leg and howl. Going from the mountains of Wyoming down into the tropical heat of Nebraska made me perspire a good deal, and nothing but the firm and irresistible restraint thrown about me by an eminent divine kept me from swearing. But the Doctor did not get mad. When he shoved his bald head into his shirt a large smile was on his face, and when it emerged at the tojo and he waved his arms above his head and struggled to climb up into the shirt, so that he could look out over the battlements, he was still smiling. He was not only smiling, but he was smiling a good deal. Those who have seen Dr. Talmaoe smile know now he throws his whole soul into it. If I could jam my head up through a wilderness of shirt and starch and saw off my windpipe as I looked out over the billowy, buttonless mass, and still smile, as Dr. Talmage does, I would give all my broad possessions in a moment. This offer will hold good up to the 15th. We got quite sociable and cordial toward the close, and I got the Doctor to reach up as far as he could on my spinal column and bring down the refractory end of a suspender, then I retaliated by going down into his true inwardness after a collar button that had dropped into oblivion. While he was smiling with that glad, free smile of his, BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 79 which he takes along with him instead of baggage, he told me a pretty good thing on the editor of the Herald of Salt Lake. He told it to me in confidence, he said, because he knew he could rely on a newspaper man. Then he laughed and seemed to think it was a good joke. It seems that when Dr. Talmage was in Salt Lake, the Tribune published what purported to be an interview be- tween a reporter of that paper and the Brooklyn divine. Shortly afterward, and while Dr. T. was in San Fran- cisco, he received a letter from the editor of the Herald and a marked copy of the paper, giving the Doctor a very flat- tering notice. In his letter the editor said: "I enclose a clipping from the Tribune purporting to be an interview between yourself and a reporter of that paper; will you be kind enough to write me whether it is or is not genuine?" The Doctor looked the clipping carefully over, and as it was nothing but a blood-curdling account of the merits of Day's Kidney pad, he had no hesitancy in pronouncing the alleged interview a fraud. Still he never wrote the editor of the Herald, and he no doubt still wonders why it is that Dr. Talmage don't come forward and state the facts, so that the Gentile Tribune may be shown up. The Doctor says that too much care cannot be used by the editor who wields the shears not to get his editorials mixed up with patent medicine advertisements. FINE-CUT AS A MEANS OF GRACE. The amateur tobacco chewer many times through lack of consideration allows himself to be forced into very awk- ward and unpleasant positions. As a fair sample of the So Sill nye And feooMERANS* perils to which the young and inexperienced masticator df the weed is subjected, the following may be given: A few Sabbaths ago a young man who was attending divine worship up on Piety Avenue, concluded, as the ser- mon was about one-half done and didn't seem to get Very exciting^ that he Would take a chew of tobacco. He wasn't a handsome chewer, and while he was sliding the weed out of his pocket and getting it behind his handkerchief and working it into his mouth, he looked as though he might be robbing a blind woman of her last copper. Then when he got it into his mouth and tried to look pious and anxious about the welfare of his never dying soul, the chew in his mouth felt as big as a Magnolia ham. Being new in the business, the salivary glands were so surprised that they began to secrete at a remarkable rate. The young man got alarmed. He wanted to spit. His eyes began to hang out on his cheek, and still the salivary glands continued to give down. He thought about spitting in his handkerchief or his hat, but neither seemed to answer the purpose. He was getting wild. He thought of swallowing it, but he knew that his stomach wasn't large enough. In his madness he resolved that he would let drive down the aisle when the pastor looked the other way. He waited till the divine threw his eyes toward heaven and then he shut his eyes and turned loose. An old gentleman about three pews down the aisle yawned at that moment and threw his open hand out into the aisle in such a manner as to catch the contribution without any loss to speak of. He did not put his hand out for that purpose and did not seem to want it, but he got it all right. He seemed to feel hurt about something. He looked like a man who has suddenly lost faith in humanity and be- BILL XYE AND BOOMERANG. 8 1 Come soured, as it were. Some who sat near him said he swore. Anyway, he lost the thread of the discourse. That part of the sermon he now says is a blank to him. It is several blanks. He called upon blank to everlastingly blank such a blankety blank blank, idiotic blank fool as the young man was. Meantime the young man has quit the use of tobacco. He did not know at first whether to swear off or kill him- self. The other day he said: "Only two weeks ago I stood up and said proudly I amateur. To-day, praise be to redeeming grace, I am not a chewer." (This joke for the first few days will have to be watered very carefully and wrapped in a California blanket, for it is not strong at all. However, if it can be worked through the cold weather it is no slouch of a joke.) THE WEATHER AND SOME OTHER THINGS. Sometimes I wish that Wyoming had more vegetation and less catarrh, more bloom and summer and fragrance and less Christmas and New Year's through the summer. I like the clear, bracing air of 7,500 feet above the civil- ized world, but I get weary of putting on and taking off my buffalo overcoat for meals all through dog days. I yearn for a land where a man can take off his ulster and overshoes while he delivers a Fourth of July oration, without flying into the face of Providence and dying of pneumonia. Perhaps I am unreasonable, but I can't help it. I have my own peculiar notions, and I am not to blame for them. As I write these lines I look out across the wide sweep of brownish gray plains dotted here and there with ranches *6 82 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. and defunct buffalo craniums, and I see shutting down over the sides of the abrupt mountains, and meeting the foothills, a white mist which melts into the gray sky. It is a snow storm in the mountains. I saw this with wonder and admiration for the first two or three million times. When it became a matter of daily occurrence as a wonder or curiosity, it was below mediocrity. Last July a snow storm gathered one afternoon and fell among the foothills and whitened the whole line to within four or five miles of town, and it certainly was a peculiar freak of nature, but it convinced me that whatever enter- prises I might launch into here I would not try to raise oranges and figs until the isothermal line should meet with a change of heart. I have just been reading Colonel Downey's poem. It is very good what there is of it, but somehow we lay aside the Congressional Record wishing that there had been more of it. Just as we get interested and carried away with it, having read the first five or six thousand words, it comes to an abrupt termination. I have often wished that I could write poetry. It would do me a heap of good. I would like to write a little book of poems with a blue cover and beveled edges and an index to it. It would tickle me pretty near to death. But I can't seem to do it. When I write a poem and de- vote a good deal of study and thought to it, and get it to suit me, the great seething mass of humanity, regardless of my feelings, get down on the grass and yell and hoot and kick up the green sward, and whoop at the idea of calling that poetry. It hurts me and grieves me, and has a tendency to sour my disposition, so that when a really deserving poet BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 83 comes to the front I haven't the good nature and sweetness of disposition to enter dispassionately upon the subject and say a kind word where I ought to, but I will say of Colonel Downey's poem that it certainly has great depth and width and length, and as you go on, it seems to broaden out and extend farther on and cover more ground and take in more territory and branch out and widen and lay hold of great tracts of thought and open up new fields and fresh pastures and make homestead claims and enter large desert land tracts and prove up under the timber culture act and the bounty land act and throw open the Indian reservation to settlement. The matter of decorating the Capitol with sacred subjects is one which would receive the hearty approval of all the people of the country, and I often wish that the Colonel had alluded to it in his poem. I have some curiosity to know what his ideas are on that point. I, for one, would be glad to see appropriate paintings of scriptural subjects decorating the walls of our national capi- tol, and have often been on the verge of offering to do it at my own expense. A cheerful painting to adorn the walls back of the Speaker's desk, would be a study by some great artist, representing Sampson mashing the Philistines with the jaw- bone of an ass. It would be historical and also symbolical ; but principally symbolical. Then another painting might be executed representing Balaam's ass delivering a speech on the Indian question. It would take first rate, and when visitors from abroad made a flying trip to Washington during the summer, and missed 84 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. seeing Wade Hampton, and felt disappointed, they could go and see Balaam's ass, and go home with their curiosity gratified. I have seen a very spirited painting somewhere ; I think it was at the Louvre, or the Vatican, or Fort Collins, by either Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Eli Perkins, which represented Joseph presenting a portion of his ulster over- coat to Potiphar's wife, and lighting out for the Cairo and Palestine 1 1 o'clock train, with a great deal of earnestness. This would be a good painting to hang on the walls of the Capitol, dedicated to Ben Hill and some other Congressional soiled doves. Then there are some simpler subjects which might be worked up and hung in the Congressional nursery to please the children till the session closed for the day, and their miscellaneous dads came to carry them home. I could think of lots of nice subjects for a painter to paint, or a sculptor to sculp, if I were to give my attention to it # But I haven't the time. THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD. Now there was a certain rich man in those days, who kept a large inn on the American plan. And the hegira from other lands over against Kabzul and Eder, and Breckinridge and Kinah, and Georgetown and Dimmonah, and Kedesh and Roaring Forks, and Hador and Ithnan, and the Gunnison country and Ziph, and Telem and Silver Cliff, Beoloth and Hadattah, and even beyond Hazar— Gadah and Buena Vista, was exceedingly simul- taneot*?; BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 85 And throughout the country roundabout was there never before an hegira that seemed to hegira with the same hegira with which this hegira did hegira. And behold the inn was overrun day by day with pil- grims who journeyed thither with shekels and scrip and pieces of silver. And the inn-keeper said unto himself, "Go to;" and he was very wroth, insomuch that he tore his beard and swore a large, dark-blue oath about the size of a man's hand. For behold the inn-keeper gat not the shekels, and he wist not why it was. Now, it was so that in the inn was one Keno-El-Pharo, the steward, and he stood behind the tablets wherein the pilgrims did write the names of themselves and their wives and their sons and their daughters. And Keno-El-Pharo wore purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, and he drank the wines of one Mumm, and they were extra dry, and so even was Keno-El-Pharo from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof. And behold one day the inn-keeper took a large tumble even unto himself, and also unto the racket of Keno-El- Pharo the son of Ahaz Ben Bunko. And he said unto Keno, " Give an account of thy steward- ship that tnou mayest be no longer steward." And Keno-El-Pharo cried with a loud voice and wept and fell down and rose up and went unto his place. And he looked into the mirror, and patted the soap lock on his brow and he saw that he was fair to look upon. But he was exceedingly sorrowful and he said, What shall 1 do? for my lord taketh away the stewardship, and rerily it was a good thiri^r to have. 86 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Alas! I know not what to do. I cannot get a position as mining expert, and to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what I will do. And he smiled unto himself, and the breadth of the smile was even six cubits from one end there- of even unto the other. So he called unto himself one of his lord's debtors, and he said, How much owest thou my lord? And he said, Even for seven days food and lodging at $3-5° P er day, together with my reckoning at the bar, amounting to thirty pieces of silver of the denomination known as the dollar even of our dads. And the steward said unto him, Take thy bill quickly and write fifteen. And it was so. And he said unto another, How much owest thou my lord? And he answered him and said, fifty pieces of silver. And the steward said unto him, take thy bill and write twenty-five. And it was so. And behold these two guests of the inn were solid with Keno El-Pharo from that hour. And when Keno-El-Pharo received the Oriental grand bounce from the inn-keeper, the guests of the inn, to whom Keno had shown mercy, procured him a pass over the road, and they whiled away the hours with Keno-El-Pharo, and he did teach them some pleasant games; and when the even was come he went his way unto Kansas City, and they with whom he had abode wot not how it was, for they were penniless. And Keno-El-Pharo abode long in the land over against St. Louis, and he was steward in one of the great inns for many years, and he wore good clothes day by day and BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 87 waxed fat, and he rested his stomach on the counter, and he said to himself, ha! ha! ODE TO SPRING. Fantasia for the Bass Drum; Adapted from the Germ/ n by Williamj Von Nyj. In the days of laughing spring time, Comes the mild-eyed sorrel cow, With bald-headed patches on her, Poor and lousy, I allow; And she waddles through your garden O'er the radish beds, I trow. Then the red-nosed, wild-eyed orphan, With his cyclopaediee, Hies him to the rural districts With mOre or less alacrity. And he showeth up its merits To the bright eternitee. How the bumble-bee doth bumble — Bumbling in the fragrant air, Bumbling with his little bumbler, Till he climbs the golden stair. Then the angels will provide him With another bumbilaire. THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON. Now, there was a certain man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, " Father, give me the portion of goed* that falleth to me." 88 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. And he divided unto him his living, and the younger son purchased himself an oil cloth grip-sack and gat him out of that country. And it came to pass that he journeyed even unto Buck- skin and the land that lieth over against Leadville. And when he was come nigh unto the gates of the city, he heard music and dancing. And he gat him into that place, and when he arose and went his way, a hireling at the gates smote upon him with a slung-shot of great potency, and the younger son wist not how it was. Now in the second watch of the night he arose and he was alone, and the pieces of gold and silver were gone. And it was so. And he arose and sat down and rent his clothes and threw ashes and dust upon himself. And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country, and he sent him down into a prospect shaft for to dig. And he had never before dug. Wherefore, when he spat upon his hands and lay hold of the long-handled shovel wherewith they are wont to shovel, he struck his elbow upon the wall of the shaft wherein he stood, and he poured the earth and the broken rocks over against the back of his neck. And he waxed exceeding wroth. And he tried even yet again, and behold! the handle or the shovel became tangled between his legs, and he filled his ear nigh unto full of decomposed slate and the porphyry which is in that region round about. And he wist not why it was so," BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 89 Now, after many days the shovelers with their shovels, and the pickers with their picks, and the blasters with their blasts, and the hoisters with their hoists, banded themselves together and each said to his fellow: Go to! Let us strike. And they stroke. And they that strake were as the sands of the sea for multitude, and they were terrible as an army with banners. And they blew upon the ram's horn and the cornet, and sacbut, and the alto horn, and the flute and the bass drum. Now, it came to pass that the younger son joined not with them which did strike, neither went he out to his work, nor on the highway, least at any time they that did strike should fall upon him and flatten him out, and send him even unto his home packed in ice, which is after the fashion of that people. And he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country ; and he sent him into the lunch room to feed tourists. And he would fain have filled himself up with the ada- mantine cookie s and the indestructible pie and vulcanized sandwiches which the tourists did eat. And no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants hath my father on the farm with bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. And he resigned his position in the lunch business and arose and went unto his father. But when he was yet a great way off he telegraphed to his father to kill the old cow and make merry, for behold! he had struck it rich, and the old man paid for the telegram. Nowj the elder son was in the north field plowing with a 9O BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. pair of balky mules, and when he came and drew nigh to the house he heard music and dancing. And he couldn't seem to wot why these things were thus. And he took the hired girl by the ear and led her away, and asked her, Whence cometh this unseemly hilarity? And she smote him with the palm of her hand and said : " This thy brother hath come, that was dead and is alive again," and they began to have a high old time. And the elder son kicked even as the government mule kicketh, and he was hot under the collar, and he gathered up an armful of profanity and flung it in among the guests, and gat him up and girded his loins and lit out. And he gat him to one learned in the law, and he replev- ied the entire ranch whereon they were, together with all and singular the hereditaments, right, title, franchise, estate, both in law and in equity, together with all dips, spurs, an- gles, crooks, variations, leads, veins of gold or silver ore, mill-sites, damsites, flumes, and each and every of them firmly by these presents. And it was so. THE INDIAN AND THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. William Henry Kersikes, D.D., Philadelphia, Penn- sylvania. Dear Sir : — Your esteemed favor of the 25th instant, is at hand, asking me to throw some light upon a few Indian conundrums propounded by you. I thank you most heartily for the unfaltering trust in me expressed by your letter. One of my most serious difficul- ties through life has been a growing tendency on the part of mankind, to refuse to trust me as I deserved. It has « BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 9 1 placed me in an extremely awkward position several times. But your letter is trust and reliance and childish faith per- sonified. You have done wisely in writing to me for my views on this important national question, and I give them to you cheerfully and even hilariously. If they were all the views I had it would be the same. I would squeeze along with- out any rather than refuse you. First— \ agree with you in your ideas relative to the cause of failure on the part of the Peace Commission. It was not calculated to soothe the ruffled spirits of the hostiles and produce in their breasts a feeling of rest and friendship and repose, but it was more in the nature of an arrogant de- mand for those who had in an unguarded moment snuffed out the light of the White river agent and the employes. This was not right or even courteous on the part of the Commission. You seem to understand the wants and needs of the In- dian more fully than any man with whom I am acquainted. By your letter I see at a glance that you are the man to deal with them. You shall be agent at White river here- after. I will use my influence for your appointment. If you think I have no influence with the administration you are exceedingly off. The emoluments of the office are not large, but what you lack in money will be made up to you in attention. You will get tons and tons of Indian affection. For every dol- lar that you would receive from the government you would get eleven dollars and fifty cents' worth of childlike trust and clinging affection. You could also write religious arti- cles for the Western press, and blow in a good many scads that way. By working that scheme judiciously I have gi BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. amassed quite a little fortune myself. Your leisure time could be filled up by organizing Temples of Honor, Subor- dinate Granges, etc. ; or you could get in an evening now and then playing a social game of draw poker with your charge. They are all, you will find, more interested in " draw " than they are in the Trinity. You can also hoe potatoes and do good. If time still hung heavy on your hands you could devote it to constructing a sheet-iron roof for your scalp. When the Utes came in from the warpath, foot sore and weary, you could go about from lodge to lodge and nurse them and read the Scriptures to them and drive away the blue-tail fly and other domestic insects, and lull the sufferingf savaee to rest with " Coronation " and other sooth- ing melodies. But I must pass on to your next question. Second — There have been several methods proposed for civilizing the wandering tribes of the House of Stand-up- and-eat-a-raw-dog, but few of them, I fear, will meet with your approval. My own plan is called the Minnesota plan. It was an experiment used on the Sioux nation at one time in its history, and consisted in placing the Indians upon a large elevated platform, and so arranging a fragment of lariat that in case the platform gave way, the lariat would support the performer by the neck. The Indian is generally stolid and indifferent to pain, but you give him a fall of seven and a half feet, allowing him to catch by his neck, and it is fun to see him try to kick a large piece out of the firmament. Thejlndian when called on to make the opening speech at a country fair does not make any demonstrations, but place him on one of these sleight-of-hand scaffolds, and let the bottom drop out, and he makes some of the most pow- erful and expressive gestures. BILL NYE and boomerang. 9$ Third — I am not prepared to answer fully your third question, as I haven't the statistics where I can lay my hand on them. I think, however, that the denominations are about equally divided among the Indians. Colorow is a Presbyterian, Ouray is a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, while Jack is a close communion Baptist. Few of them are regular attendants upon divine worship. At some of the Ute churches, I am told, very frequently there are not enough present for a quorum, especially during the busy season when they are gathering the fall crops of scalps. Fourth — As to the time which would be required to bring the entire outfit into the fold, I am a little unsettled as to the correct estimate. It might take some time. The roads might be blockaded, you know, or something of that kind; or some old buck might stampede and take up a good deal of time. At least, I would not advise you to hold your breath while listening for their glad hallelujahs to the throne. They might miss the connections in some way, and you would get very purple around the gills. However, do not get discouraged. Keep up your lick. Write on and speak on for this oppressed people. They de- serve it. They have brought it on themselves. Get some more dough-faced idiots to unite with you in writing up the Indian question. It will be a good thing. Write to the Indians themselves personally. Of course it will be a hor- rible death for them to die, but they have richly merited it. Do not write to me again, however. I am not strong any- way, and I need rest. If you could, therefore, direct your remarks to the Utes themselves, and keep it up during the cold weather while they are hungry and weak, you will probably use up nearly all of then;. If you will do so, I will see that the people of the West club together and give you a nice gold-headed cane. 94 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. THE MUSE. CRITICISM ON THE WORKS OF THE SWEET SINGER OF MICHIGAN. Through the courtesy of a popular young lady of Chi- cago, who recognizes struggling genius at all times, I have been permitted to carefully read and enjoy the lays of the sweet singer of Michigan; and I ask the reader to come with me a few moments into the great field of literature, while we flit from flower to flower on the wings of the Muse. There are few, indeed, of us who do not love the heaven- born music of true poesy. Hardened, indeed, must he be whose soul is dead to the glad song of the true poet, and we can but pity the gross, brutal nature which refuses to throb and burn with spiritual fire lighted with coals from the altar of the gods. I speak only for myself when I say that seven or eight twangs of the lyre stir my impressible nature so that I rise above the cares and woes of this earthly life, and I paw the ground and yearn for the unyearnable, and howl. Julia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan, was born some time previous to the opening of this chapter, of poor but honest parents, and although she couldn't have custard pie and frosted cake every day she, was middling chipper, as appears by a little poem in the collection, entitled, " The Author's Early Life," in which she says: My heart was gay and happy : This was ever in my mind, There is better days a coming, And I hope some day to find Myself capable of composing. It was my heart's delight To compose on a sentimental subject If it came in my mind just right BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 95 This would show that the Muse was getting in its work, as I might say, even while yet Julia was a little nut-brown maid trudging along to school with bare feet that looked like the back of a warty toad. In my visions I see her now standing in front of the teacher's desk, soaking the first three joints of her thumb in her rosebud mouth, and trying to work her off toe into a knot-hole in the floor, while out- side, the turtle-dove and the masculine Michigan mule softly coo to their mates. A portrait of the author appears on the cover of the lit- tle volume. It is a very striking face. There are lines of care about the mouth — that is, part way around the mouth. They did not reach all the way around because they didn't have time. Lines of care are willing to do anything that is reasonable, but they can't reach around the North Park without getting fatigued. These lines of care and pain look to the student of physiognomy as though the author had lost a good deal of sleep trying to compose obituary poems. The brow is slightly drawn, too, as though her corns might be hurting her. Julia wears her hair plain, like Alfred Tennyson and Sitting Bull. It hangs down her back in perfect abandon and wild profusion, shedding bear's oil ever the collar of her delaine dress, regardless of expense. I can not illustrate or describe the early vision of dimpled loveliness which Julia presented in her childhood, better lhan by giving a little gem from " My Infant Days:" When I was a little infant, And I lay in mother's arms, Then I felt the gentle pressure Of a lovins: mother's arms. 96 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. " Go to sleep my little baby, Go to sleep," mamma would saj'; " O, will not my little baby Go to sleep for ma to-day ? " When I read this little thing the other day it broke me alt up. It took me back to my childhood days when I lay in my little trundle bed, and was wakeful, and had a raging thirst, insomuch that I used to want a drink of water every fifteen seconds. Mamma didn't ask if I would "go to sleep for ma, to-day." She used to turn the bed-clothes back over the footboard, so that she could have plenty of sea room, and then she would take an old sewing-machine belt, and it would sigh through the agitated air for a few moments pretty plenty, till the writer of these lines would conclude to sob himself to sleep, and anon through the night he would dream that he had backed up against the Hill Smei*:':;~ works. That's the kind of " Go to sleep for ma to-day," that comes up vividly to my mind. But I must give another stanza or two from Julia's col- lection — as showing how this gifted writer can with a word dispel the chilling temperature of December, and run the thermometer up to 100 degrees in the shade. I will quote from the death of " Little Henry : " It was on the eleventh of December, On a cold and windy day, Just at the close of evening, When the sunlight fades away, Little Henry he was dying, In his little crib he lay, With the soft winds around him sighing, From early morn till close of day. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 97 One of Julia's poems opens out in such a cheerful, pleasant way, that I wish I could give it all, but space forbids. Shtf tunes her lyre so that it will mash all right, and then says: Come all kind friends, both far and near, O, come, and see what you can hear. Then she proceeds to slaughter some one. In looking over her poems one is struck with the terrible mortality which they show. Julia is worse than a Gatling gun. I have counted twenty-one killed and nine wounded, in the small volume which she has given to the public. In giving the circumstances which attended the death of one of her subjects, and the economical principles of the deceased, she says: And he was sick and very bad, Poor boy, he thought, no doubt, If he came home in a smoking car His money would hold out. He started to come back alone, He came one-third the way. One evening, in the car alone, His spirit fled away. That's the way Julia kills off a young man just as we get interested in him. You just begin to like one of her heroes or heroines and Julia proceeds to lay said hero or heroine out colder than a wedge. A sad, sad thing, which goes to the tune of Belle Mahone, starts out as follows : " Once there lived a lady fair, With black eyes and curly hair; She has left this world of care, Sweet Carrie Monroe." ♦7 98 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. To which I have added in my poor weak way — She could not her sorrows bear, For she was a dumpling rare; She has clum the golden stair, Sweet Carrie Monroe. 'Twas indeed a day of gloom When we gathered in her room, While she cantered up the flume, Sweet Carrie Monroe. I will give but one more example of Julia's exquisite word painting, and then after a word or two relative to her style generally I will close. After speaking tearfully of her life as a child, she says: My childhood days have passed and gone, And it fills my heart with pain, To think that youth will never more Return to me again. And now, kind friends, wh?.t I have wrote I hope you will pass o'er, And not criticise, as £ome have done, Hitherto herebefore. I know that it ill becomes me to assume the prerogative of criticising a poet's style or even to suggest any improve- ments, but sometimes an outsider may be able to stand off as it were and see little defects in a masterpiece which the author can not see. My idea would be to take these poems and remove the crown sheet, then put in new running gear, upset and bush the pitman, kalsomine the boiler plate, drill new holes in the eccentric, rim out the gas pipe, raise the posterior eccentric BILE NYE AXD BOOMERANG. 99 to a level with the gang 1 plank, slide the ash pan forward of the monkey wrench, securing it by draw bars to the top- gallant mizzen. Then, throwing open the condenser and allowing the cerebellum to rest firmly against the vicarious w hippety-whop, fair time may be made on a gentle grade. If I were to suggest anything further it would be that Ji lia have entire change of air and surroundings. Michigan is too healthy for an ambitious obituary poet. She naturally h.'is too much time on her hands. Let her go into the yellow fever districts next summer, where she can work in two or three of her cheerful little funeral odes every morning before breakfast. That's the place for her. It may kill her, but if it should we will trust in Providence to raise up some inspired idiot to take her place. We will struggle along anyway with George Francis Train and Denis Kearney and Dr. Mary Walker, even if Julia joins the glad throng of poets who let their hair grow long and kick up their heels in the green fields of Eden. One more suggestion which will, I know, be accepted as coming from one who never says anything but in the kind- est spirit. I think that Julia takes advantage of her poetic license. A poetic license, as I understand it, simply allows the poet to jump the 15 over the 14m order to bring in the proper rhyme, but it does not allow the writer to usurp the management of the entire system of worlds, and introduce dog-days and ice-cream between Christmas and New Year. It does not in any way allow the contractor of prize funeral puffs to sandwich a tropical evening with the scent of orange blossom and mignonette, in between two December days in Michigan, that would freeze the lightning rods off the houses, and when the owners of cast iron dogs have to bring them in, and stand them behind the parlor stove. IOO BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Julia can't fool me much on a Michigan winter. When the seductive breath from the north comes soughing across Lake Superior, redolent with the blossom rock of the copper mines, and dead cranberry vines, and slippery elm bark, the poet or poetess who could maliciously crawl into a buffalo overcoat, and write a dirge that worked in " sighing soft winds," just for the benefit of one whose spirit is in a land where house plants never freeze, should have no poetic license. I would be in favor of having such license revoked, or raising the price so high that none but good, reliable, square toed poets could practice. I would suggest $500 per year for poets driving one horse, and dealing in native poems on death, spring, beautiful snow, etc., etc.; $1,000 per year for two horse, platform spring poets, retailers of imported poems; and $1,500 per year for jx>ets who do a general business in manufactured Havana poems, or native wrap- pers with Havana fillers. We have too many poets in our glorious republic who ought to be peeling the epidermis off a bull train; and too many poetesses who would succeed better boiling soap- grease, or spiking a 6 x 8 patch on the quarter-deck o f a faithful husband's overalls. I do not refer entirely to Julia in the last few lines, for Julia is not deserving of such criticism. She was never intended to do the drudgery of housework. She is too frail. She couldn't cook, because her cake would be sad, and her soft, wavy hair, like the mane of a Cayuse plug, would get in the cod-fish balls, and cling to the butter. No, Julia, you don't look like a woman whose career as a housewife would be a success. From the mournful look in your limpid eye, I would say that your lignum- vitoe bread, and celluloid custard pie, and indestructible waffles, and fire- BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. IOI proof pancakes, and burglar-proof chicken pie, would give you away. Your mind would be far away in the poet's realm, and you would put shoe blacking in the blanc mange, and silver gloss starch in the tea, and cod liver oil in the sponge cake. So, Julia, you may continue right along as you Ire doing. It don't do much harm, and no doubt it does you a heap of good. SHOEING A BRONCO. Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco. Whenever I get low spirited and feel that a critical public don't appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown & Poole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better prepared to fight the battle of life. They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco, to the ends of which- the sinches, I mean— are attached ropes, four in number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped under his body and attached to the ropes. Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession. The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a 103 BILL NYE AND ROOMER ANG. artistically, and the poetry is more impu- KVh|£ dent and less on the turtle-dove order. Some may be neglected on St. Valen- tine's Day, but I am not. I never go away by myself and get mad because I have been overlooked. I generally get valentines enough to paper a large hall. I file them away carefully and sell them THE REPORTER - back to the dealer for next year. Then the following St. Valentine's Day I love to look at the familiar features of those I have received in the years agone. One of these blessed valentines I have learned to love as I do my life. I received it first in 1870. It represents a newspaper reporter with a nose on him like the woman's suffrage movement. It is a large, enthusiastic nose of a bright bay color, with bias folds of the same, shirred with dregs of wine. How well I know that nose. The report- er is represented in tight green pants and orange coat. The vest is scarlet and the necktie is maroon, shot with old gold. *14 2io Sill nye And boomerang. The picture represents the young journalist as a little bit disposed to be brainy. The intellect is large and abnorm- ally prominent. It hangs out over the deep-set eyes like the minority juror on the average panel. I can not help contrasting this dazzling five-cent valen- tine with the delicate little poem in pale blue and Torchon lace which I received in the days of yore from the red- headed girl with the wart on her thumb. _^, fc4 > ,v little of genuine pleasure have fame and fortune to offer us com- pared with that of sitting behind the same school desk with the Bismarck blonde of the school and with her alternately masticating the same hunk of spruce gum! I sometimes chew gum nowadays to see if it will bring back the old pleasant sensations, but it don't. The teacher is not watching me now. There is too little restraint, and the companion too who then assisted in operating the gum business, and used to spit on her slate with such elegance and abandon, and wipe it thoughtfully off with her apron, she too is gone. One summer day when the little birds were pouring forth their lay, and the little lambs were frisking on the green sward, and yanking their tails athwart the ambient air, she lit out for the great untried West with a grasshopper sufferer. The fluff and bloom of existence for her too is gone. She bangs eternal punishment out of thirteen consecutive children near Ogallalla, Nebraska, and wears out her sweet girlish nature working up her hus- band's underclothes into a rag carpet. It seems tough, but such is life. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 211 MY TOMBSTONE MINE. Camp on Alder Gulch, June 18, 1880. The general feeling of expectation and suspense which is the natural result of recent mineral discoveries near to any mining town, is still prevalent. If possible it is on the in- crease, and all the prevailing indications of profound mys- tery are visible everywhere. There is a general air of knowing something that other people do not. Almost every man is hugging to his bosom a ponderous secret which is slowly crushing him, while all his fellow men are trying to hold down the same secret. Occasionally a man comes to me, takes my ear and wrap- ping it around his arm two or three times so that I can't get away, he tells me that he knows where there is the rich- est thing in America. Only he and his wife and another man and his wife know where this wonderful wealth is to be found. He asks me to come into it so that capital will then be in- terested. I agree to it and on the way to the camp I over- take the able-bodied men of Wyoming, all of whom are trying in their poor, weak way to keep the same secret. Such is life. Sometimes I think that perhaps I had better give up mining. I do not seem to get the hang of the thing, some- how. All the claims I get hold of are rich in nothing but assessments, while less deserving men catch on to the bonanzas. Once I located a vein which showed what I called good indications of a permanent vein, staked it out under the United States law and Went to work on it. I paid out $11 for sharpening picks alone, in going down fen feet to hold 212 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. it. It was mighty hard quartz, but the lead grew wider and better defined all the time till I got down ten feet and had an assay. The assayer said that I had struck a marble quarry, but it was very inferior marble after all. Besides I found after- ward that it was owned by Jay Gould and some other tender feet from New York. Then I relocated the claim and called it The Marble-Top Cemetery Lode, and went away. Probably if I had gone down on it, the ore would have shown free milling tomb- stones and Power's Greek slaves and all that kind of busi- ness, but I felt kind of depressed all the time while I was at work on it. There was a kind of " Hark from the tombs a doleful sound," air about the whole mine. Cummins City still booms. Building lots have gone up to $100 each. This for a place where a few weeks ago the song of the coyote was heard in the land, and where the val- ley of the river, and bald sides of the rugged mountains were unscarred, is a good showing. The magical power of a mineral excitement to transform the bleak prairie and the rocky canyon into a thriving vil- lage at once, is something to command our admiration and wonder. Two months ago, I might say, the little village of Cum- mins City was nothing but a little caucus of prairie dogs, and a ward meeting of woodticks. Now look at it. Opera houses, orphan asylums, hurdy- gurdies, churches, barber shops, ice-cream saloons, dog-fights, musical soirees, spruce gum, bowling-allies, salvation, and three card monte. Everything in fact that the heart of man could yearn after* BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 213 As you drive up Euclid Avenue, you smell the tropicai fragrance of frying bacon, and hear the recorder of the district murmuring with a profane murmur because his bread won't raise. Here and there along the river bank, like a lot of pic-nickers, the guileless miners are panning pounded quartz, or submitting their socks to the old process for freeing them from decomj:>osed quartzite, and non- argentiferous clayite. Flying from the dome of the opera house is a red flannel shirt, while a pair of corpulent drawers of the same ruddy complexion, is gathering all the clear, bracing atmosphere of that locality. As a picturesque tower on the roof of the Grand Central, the architect has erected a minaret or donjon keep, which is made to represent a salt barrel. So true to life is this new and unique design, that sometimes the cattle which roam up and down Euclid Avenue, climb up on the mansard roof of the Grand Central, and lick the salt off the donjon keep, and fall over the battlements into the moated culverin, or stick their feet through the roof and rattle the pay gravel into the custard pie and cottage pudding. Bill Root, the stage driver, went out there during the early days of the camp, and with more or less red liquor stowed away among his vitals. William is quite sociable and entertaining, even under ordinary circumstances, but when he has thawed out his digestion with fire-water, he talks a good deal. He is soci- able to that extent that the bystander is steeped in profound silence while William proceeds to unfold his spring stock of information. On the following morning William awoke with a seal brown taste in his mouth, and wrapped in speech- less misery. There was no cardinal liquor in the camp, (a" Condition of affairs which does not now exist,) so that WO- 214 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. liam was silent. On the amputating table of the leading veterinary surgeon of Cummins City was found a tongue that had just been removed. It was really cut from the mouth of a horse that had nearly severed it himself, by draw- ing a lariat through it: but the story soon gained currency that an indignant camp had risen in its might, and visited its vengeance on William Root for turning loose his conversa- tional powers on the previous day. Great excitement was manifested throughout the camp, as William had not uttered a word as yet. Toward noon, however, a party of hardened miners, carrying a willow- covered lunch basket with a cork in the top, arrived in camp, and shortly after that it was ascertained that the con- versational powers of Mr. Root still remained unimpaired. The chaplain of the camp set a day for fasting and prayer, and the red flannel shirt on the dome of the opera house was hung at half-mast in token of the universal sorrow and distress. This is a true story, which accounts for the awkward manner in which I have told it. BANKRUPT SALE OF A CIRCUS. As I write these lines my heart is filled with bitterness and woe. There is a feeling of deep disappointment this morning that has cast my soul down into the very depths of sadness. Some years ago the legislature of Wyoming con- ceived the stupendous idea that the circus instead of being man's best friend and assistant in his onward march through life, was after all a snare and a delusion. This august body then passed a law that fixed the licenses BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 215 of circuses showing in Wyoming Territory at $250, which was of course an embargo on the show business that, as I might say, laid it out colder than a wedge so far as Wyom- ing Territory was concerned. The history of that law is a history of repeated injury and usurpation. Our people were bowed down to the earth with the iron heel of an unjust legislature and forced to drag out the weary years without the pleasures which come to other States and other Territories. In the midst of this overhanging gloom, there were two men»who were not afraid of the all powerful legislature, but boldly lifted up their voices and denounced with clarion tone and dauntless eye the great wrong that had been done to our people. One of these men was a tall, fine-looking man, with piercing eye and noble mein. He stood out at the front in this unequal war and with his silvery hair streaming in the mountain zephyrs, he told the legislature that a justly in- dignant people would claim at the hands of her law-makers a full and ample retribution for the tyrannical act. Judge Blair, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, whether at the social gathering or the quarterly meeting, never lost an opportunity to condemn the unright- eous act or to labor for its abolishment. He fearlessly ad^ journed court time after time in order that the jury might go to Denver or Salt Lake to attend the circus, and em- bodied in one of his opinions on the bench the everlasting truth that " the usurpation of the people's prerogatives by the lawmakers of any State or Territory, in so far as to de- prive them of a divine right inherent in their very natures, and compelling them to undergo a slavish isolation from the Mammoth Aggregation of Living Wonder? »?>d Colossal 2l6 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Galaxy of Arenic Talent, was unjust in its conception and criminal in its enforcement." See Boggs vs. Boggs, 981. The other dauntless antagonist of the tyrannical law was a young man with pale seldom hair, and a broad open brow that bulged out into space like a sore thumb. He was slender in form like a parallel of longitude, with a nose on him that looked like a thing of life. This young man was myself. Together we talked in season and out of season, laboring with the law-makers with an energy worthy of a better cause. • We met with scorn and rebuffs on every hand, and the cold, hard world laughed at us, and unfeelingly jeered at our ceaseless attempts. But we labored on till last winter, the welcome telegram was flashed over the wires that the despotic measure was no more. Then there was a general joy all over the Territory. Judge Blair sang in that impassioned way of his, which makes a confirmed invalid reconciled to death, and I danced. When I dance there is a wild originality about the gyra- tions that startles those who are timid, and causes the aver- age, unprotected ballroom-belle to climb up on the platform with the orchestra, where she will be safe. Bye-and-bye the young man with the step-ladder and the large oil paintings, and the long-handled paste brush came to town, and put some magnificent decalcomania pictures on the bill-boards and fences; and Judge Blair and I patted each other on the back,' and laughed seven or eight silvery laughs. But in the midst of our unfettered glee a telegram came from Denver that the circus that had billed our town had been attached by the sheriff* It seems that the elephant BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2l^J had broken into a warehouse in Denver and had eaten 160 bales of hay, worth $100 each in the Leadville market. The owner of the hay then attached the show in order to secure pay for the hay. This necessitated a long delay and finally a sale of the circus. Everything went, the big elephant and the baby elephant, the band chariot with a cross-eyed hyena painted on it, the steam calliope that couldn't play anything but M Silver Threads Among the Gold," the sacred jackass from North Park, the red-nosed babboon from New Jersey, the sore-eyed prairie dog from Jack Creek, the sway-backed grizzly bear from York State, and the second-hand clown from Dubuque, all had to go. Then they opened a package of petrified jokes and an- tique conundrums that had been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii. It seemed almost like sacrilege, but the ruthless auctioneer tore these prehistoric jokes from the sarcophagus and knocked them down to the gaping throng for whatever they would bring. The show was valued at $2,000,000 on the large illus- trated catalogues and bright-hued posters, but after the costs of attachment and sale had been paid there was only $231 left. Oh! what a sacrifice. How little there is in this brief transitory life of ours that is abiding. How few of our bright hopes are ever realized. How many glad promises are held out to us for the roseate future that never reach fruition. 2l8 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. GREELEY VERSUS VALLEY TAN. I stopped over one day at Greeley on my return. Greeley is the town after which Horace Greeley was named. It is enclosed by a fence and embraces a large tract of very fine agricultural land. The editor of the Tribune had just received a brand new power press. I asked him to come out and take something. He did not seem to grasp my meaning exactly. Afterward I wandered about the town thinking how much dryer the air is in Greeley than in Denver. The throat rapidly becomes parched, and yet the inducements for the visitor to step in at various places and chew a clove or two are very rare indeed. I thought what a dull, melan- choly day the Fourth of July must be in Greeley, and how tame and dull life must be to those who experience a uniform size of head from year to year. The blessed novelty of rising in the morning with a dark brown taste in the mouth and the cheerful feeling that your head is so large that you can't possibly get it out through your bed-room door, are sensations that do not enter here. All the water not used at Greeley for irrigating purposes is worked up into a light, nutritious drink for the people. THE ETERNAL FITNESS OF THINGS. An exchange comes out with an article giving the former residence and occupation of those who are immediately con- nected with the Indian management. It will be seen that they are, almost without an exception, from the Atlantic coa?t, where they have h^d about the same opportunity to BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2l<) become acquainted with the duties pertaining to their ap- pointment as Lucifer has had for the past two thousand years to form a warm personal acquaintance with the pro- phet Isaiah. With all due respect to the worthy descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, and not wishing to cast a slur upon the ability or the integrity of the dwellers along the rock-bound coast of New England, I will say in the mildest manner possible that these men are no more fit to manage hostile Indians than Perdition is naturally fitted for a powder house. A man may successfully cope with the wild and fierce codfish in his native jungle, or beard the salt water clam in his den, and still signally fail as an Indian agent. The cod- fish is not treacherous. He may be bold, blood-thirsty and terrible, but he will never go back on a treaty. Who ever heard of a codfish going back on "his word? Who ever heard of a codfish leaving the Reservation and spreading desolation over the land ? No one. The expression on the face of a codfish shows that he is perfectly open and above board. We might say the same of the clam. Of course if driven to the wall, as it were, he will fight; but we have yet to find a single instance in the annals of history where the c l am — unless grossly insulted and openly put upon, ever made an open outbreak. This is why we claim that clam culture and Indian man- agement are not analogous. They are not simultaneous nor co-extensive. They are not identical nor homogeneous. I feel that in treating this subject in my candid and truth- ful way, perhaps the Administration will feel hurt and grieved; but if so I can't help it. The great reading pub- lic seems to look to me, as much as to say : " What are 220 SILL NV£ ANft BOOMERANG* your views on this great subject which is agitating the pub- lic mind?" I can't evade it, and even if President Hayes were an own brother, instead of being a warm, personal friend and admirer, I would certainly speak right out as I have spoken out, and tell the whole broad Republic of Columbia that to successfully steer a hostile tribe of nervous, refractory and irritable Indian bummers past the rocks and shoals of war is one thing, and to drive a salt water clam up a hickory tree and kill him with a club, is entirely an- other thing. THEY UNANIMOUSLY AROSE AND HUNG HIM. I was talking the other day with a Laramie City man about Leadville, he said : "In addition to the fact of Laramie money being now in- vested there, we have sent many good citizens there to build up homes and swell the boom of the young city. We also sent several there of whom we are not proud. We still hold them in loving remembrance. Sometimes we go through the motions of getting judgments against these men, and making transcripts with big seals on them, and sending to Leadville to be placed on the execution docket of Lake county. " We also sent Edward Frodsham to Leadville. We in- timated to him that life was very brief and that if he wanted to gather a little stake to leave his family perhaps he could do so faster in Leadville than anywhere else. So he went. He is there now. He at once won the notice of the public there and soon became the recipient of the most flattering attentions. A little band of American citizens one evening felLL NYE AND BOOMEUANG. 22i took him out on the plaza, or something of that kind, and hung: him last fall. " The maple turned to crimson and the sassafras to gold, and when the morning woke the song of the bunko-steerer and the robin, Mr. Frodsham was on his branch all right, but he couldn't seem to get in his work as a songster. There seemed to be a stricture in the glottis, and the dia- phragm wouldn't buzz. The gorgeous dyes of the autumn sunrise seemed strangely at variance with the gen d'arm blue of Mr. Frodsham's countenance. " His death calls to mind one sunny day in the midsum- mer of '78. It was one of those days when there is a lull in the struggle for existence, and the dreamy silence and hush of nature seem to be concurred in by a committee of the whole. It was one of those days when, in the language of the average magazine poet — The flowers bloomed, the air was mild, The little birds poured forth their lay, And everything in nature smiled. " But soon from out the silence, bursting upon the quiet air, came the sharp report of a pistol. Then another and another in rapid succession. People who were going to trade in [that locality suddenly thought of other places of business where the same articles could be obtained cheaper. Men who were not afraid of danger in any form, went away because they didn't want to be called as witnesses on the inquest. " The shooting went on for some time. It sounded like the battle of the Wilderness. After a while it ceased. A large party of men went out to gather up the dead and ar- 222 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. range for a grand funeral. But the remains were not so dead as they ought to be. There were bullet holes to be sure, penetrating various parts of the combatants, but the funeral had to be postponed. The sidewalks were plowed up, signs were riddled and windows shattered, but Edward Frodsham got off with a bullet hole through the side. The doctor pronounced it a very close call, but not necessarily fatal. It was a terrible disappointment to every one. As a shooting match it was a depressing failure, and as a double funeral it was not deserving of mention. " The city council told Frodsham that if he couldn't shoot better than that he might select some young growing town outside of Wyoming and grow up with it. He did so. He favored Colorado with his stirring, energetic presence. "His grave grows green to-day on the sunny hill-side 'neath the bending willow, and the soft, sweet breath that is sighing through the pines and stirring the delicate ferns be- side the glassy depth of the mountain stream, is singing his requiem. [Perhaps, however, I am rushing the season for Leadville a little; if so the last refrain after the word 1 presence,' may be wrapped up in warm flannels and stored away till July.] " RHETORIC VS. WOODTICK. Camp on the New Jerusalem Mine, June 15. It is impossible at present to say anything about what the future of this district may bring forth. Every lead shows up beautifully, and so much so, in fact, that claim owners are working first one and then another in order to hold them under the new law, which requires an amount of work to BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 223 be done on the lead within sixty days which is generally only required within one year. This new regulation, which is the act of the district of course, may not stand any very severe test, but at present the miners are respecting it. It is severe on me, however, and virtually leaves me out. What I need is a law that will not ride over and overthrow and freeze out the poor man. This law is passed in the in- terest of capital and in direct violation of the rights and privileges of the great surging mass of horny-handed work- ingmen like Brick Pomeroy and myself. I havn't the time to particularize or describe the different mines visited, and if I were to do so the chances are that I wouldn't cover myself or the district with glory. It is true that I know a foot wall from a windlass, with one hand tied behind me, but if I were buying a mine I would be about as apt to purchase a deposit of sulphurets of expectations, showing traces of free milling telluride of disappointment, as anything else. The camp has about 300 miners and prospectors now within the city limits. All up and down the picturesque valley of the swift-flowing river the low cabin and white tent dot the green sward, and far above the everlasting hills rear their heads on high, torn by the Titanic power of giant heat in the days of the long ago. I said this to Professor Paige, the scientific correspondent of the Inter-Ocean, who accompanied me. I thought that perhaps it would tickle him to know that I could reel off a sentence like that, but it didn't affect him in that way. On the contrary, he seemed to think that the heat must have affected me in some way. We climbed Jehu mountain on the evening that we ar- rived in camp. We thought it would be the proper thing 224 SILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. to do, so we dug our toe-nails into the prehistoric granite and the micacious what's-his-name and climbed to the top. For a few minutes we didn't mind it much and got along rirst-rate, trying to make each believe that climbing moun- tains was our regular business. I began to tell the Professor a little harmless lie about how I had travelled among the Alps, but I didn't finish it. Somehow I felt like breathing in what atmosphere was not in actual use, but I didn't have any place to put it. The air at Jehu Mountain is good enough what there is of it, but it is too rare. If a man could let out the back straps of his vest and breathe in the unoccupied atmosphere lying between the Laramie river and the Zodiac it would be all right, but he can't do it. His intentions are good, but his skin isn't elastic enough to hold the diluted fluid. We climbed up to where we could see the silvery moon rising like a pale schoolma'am and looking sadly across the dark valley asleep in night's embrace. I thought it was time to say something. u Professor," said I, as my brow lighted up like a torch- light procession, and my voice broke upon the hush and solitude of evening like the tremulous notes of the buzz saw, " do you not think that far away amid the unknown worlds which drift through space and along whose track the drifting systems of planets wheel and circle through countless ages, while man, Clothed in a little brief authority, cuts such fantastic tricks Before high heaven as makes the angels weep, regarding himself as the center of the solar system, planning to frustrate the immutable laws of nature, violating the prime and co-ordinate common law of universes, going behind BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 225 the returns, as it were, trying to peer behind the veil, as I might say, prognosticating the unprognosticatable, evading the axioms and by laws which not only regulate worlds and their creation, but link the phantasmagoria of diagonal animalculae and cast broadcast the oleaginous incongruity of prehistoric usufruct?" The Professor didn't say anything. He didn't seem to have followed me. Somewhere the thread had been broken, and the glowing truths couched in such language as would light up the pages of history and astronomy, were lost upon, the silent air. The Professor seemed sad and anxious and preoccupied. There was a look of apprehension and doubt and distrust in his eye, and he moved about uneasily. I asked him if there were any last words that I could carry to his friends, and il there were any little acts of humanity and friendship which I could perform to render his last moments more pleasant. He said there were. ********* Then he told me that a wood-tick was slowly but surely boring a hole into his spinal column, near where the off scapula forms a junction with the nigh one, and asked me to help bring him to justice. We should learn from this that heaven-born genius, with the music of poetic language and aflame with an inspiration almost miraculous, sometimes makes less impression upon the listener than a little insect no larger than a grain of mustard seed. *15 226 BILI, NYE AND BOOMERANG. THE MODEL WIFE. Dr. Westwood lectured here on Wednesday evening on the Model Husband. He wanted me to sit upon the stage as the horrible example, but I declined. He was quite pointed in his remarks all the way through, and seemed to have me in his mind when he described the model husband, although of course he used a fictitious name. The lecture was a good one, and very well liked by the husbands who had to sit and take it for an hour and a half. Let the gentle male reader imagine himself sitting for that length of time with his own wife on one side of him and another man's wife on the other side of him, and when the speaker makes a point on the old man to get alternate jabs in the side from the delighted ladies. I shall lecture here during the winter on the subject of the " Model Wife." I will then get even. I will tell how the young man with bright hopes, and thinking only of the great, consuming love he has for his new sj:>ouse, is torn away from the hallowed ties of home and the sunny in- fluences of young companions, and buried in the poverty- stricken cottage of a woman who cannot begin to support him in the style in which he has been accustomed. It is high time that this course of disgraceful misrepre- sentation on the part of young women should be exposed. I once knew a young man with the most gentle and trust- ful nature. He had never known care or sorrow. But an adventuress with winsome smile and loving voice crossed his path and allowed him to think that she could maintain a husband like other women, and in his blind adoration for her he bade good-bye to his home and its joys and madly RILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 227 ^jtfked out with her into the great, untried future. She told him that he should never know the cruel sting of pov- erty, and other romantic trash, and look at him to-day. He is a broken-hearted man. His wife does not take him into society; dc^s not keep him clothed as other men are clothed, nnd grudgijgly gives him the little pittance from week to week which jhe earns by washing. Is it stran"-; that his pillow is wet with tears, and in his agony he cries jut upon the still air of night, "Oh, mother, why did I leavj thy kindly protection and overshadowing love and marry a total stranger?" Then the wom«n who has sworn to protect and love and cherish him kicks L'm in the pit of the stomach and harshly tells him to " dry up. ' I sometimes think tl at if mothers knew to what sorrow and gross and shamelesi treatment their sons were to submit all through their lives, ihey would put them out of their misery with a base-ball ci.ib. Some mothers do try this but they postpone it too long and the sons get too large and rnore difficult to kill than wlun their skulls are young and tender. I have always maintained tha^ 1 kind word and a caress will do more for the great yearning nature of the husband than harshness and severity. The jrue wife may reprove her husband when he spills coal all o\ jr the Brussels carpet and then steps on it and grinds it in, b .t how much better even that is than to kick him under thj bed and then sit down on him and gouge out his eyes wkh a pinking iron. I know that men are too often misunderstood. They may be rough on the exterior but they cai love Oh, so earnestly, so warmly, so truly, so deeply, so ,ntensely, so yearningly, so fondly and so universally! 228 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Always kiss your husband good-bye when you go down town to your work. It may be the last time. 1 once knew a wife who went down town to price a new dolman, and because she was vexed about something she did not kiss her husband but slammed the door and left him. When she returned he was a corpse! **!• *£* «I* il* sL* »A» «1* ^* >■. ^4 ^ ^ •!% "^ % "T» T* While peeling the potatoes for dinner with the carving knife, he had stepped on a clothes pin, which threw him forward over the baby carriage, the knife entering at the northeast corner of the gizzard and sticking out beneath the shoulder blade about two feet into space. What a scene for the now repentant wife. There, in the full vigor of his manhood, lay all that was mortal of* her companion — dead as a mackerel!!! Let us take this home to ourselves, and ask ourselves to- day if we are doing the square thing by the only husband we have. Are we loving him as we should, or are we turning this task over to the hired girl? Intemperance, too, is a fruitful cause of connubial unhap- piness. Young man, beware of a wife who loves the flow- ing bowl. I once knew a beautiful young lady, talented and with good business ability. The entire circle of her acquaintance admired and respected her, but alas ! one even- ing at a banquet her companion, with a heavenly smile, asked her to drink wine. Gradually the taste grew upon her, and although she married, she could not support her husband, and he gradually pined away and died broken- hearted. He used to sit up nights for her to come home, and he caught the inflammatory rheumatism and swelled up and died. It was a terrible thing. I tell you we cannot be too careful, You take a handsome young man like the BII.T. NYE AND BOOMERANG. 22Q author of these lines and his power for good or evil is un. told. I sometimes wish that I had not been constructed with so much dazzling beauty to the square inch, and I am almost tempted to go and disfigure myself some way. If I were to ask a fair gazelle on New Year's day to come and join me in a social glass and then throw one of those melt- ing 2 by 8 glances of mine on her, I know for a moral cer- tainty that before night she would be in the calaboose. But I shall guard against that. Nothing of that kind shall ever be laid at my door. I promised my aged parents when I left the old homestead that I would never set 'em up for anyone. SOME OVERLAND TOURISTS. The varied classes of tourists passing over the Union Pacific Railroad, representing as they do all classes of hu- manity, seem to call for a brief notice from the nimble pen of a great man. During my short but eventful life I have given a large portion of my time to studying human nature. Studying human nature and rustling for grub, as the Psalmist has it, have occupied my time ever since I arrived at man's estate. There is one style of tourist which I am more particularly devoted to, perhaps, than any other. It is the young man who is in search of health for his invalid mustache. Only last week I saw one of these gentle youths who was going to try sea air and California fruit to see if he couldn't rescue his consumptive mustache from the jaws of death. When he got off here and took the poor thing out to 23O BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. where it could look about and see the green plains and snow-capped mountains, I felt sorry for him. It is hard for one to be a successful tourist with a pale invalid along with him night and day, and I could imagine how that young man would have to get up nights when his mustache got restless and needed fresh air or wanted to take its tonic. It was certainly the most gentle, retiring, modest mus- tache I ever saw. It didn't seem to care for anything only to be loved. Every little while the youth would reach up to where it was and feel around nervously to see if it had climbed the golden stairs or was still on deck. It was not a heavy mustache at all. It was about as vo- luptuous as a buffalo gnat's eye-brow. I never saw a mustache before that brought the scalding tears to my eyes like that one. I thought how lonely the young man would be when it had glided up the flume and left him in this cold, uncharitable world with nothing to love and cliag to but an earnest and unhappy boil on the back of his neck that wouldn't come to a focus. Sometimes I go down to the train to see some fair young girl who is on the overland trip. But I am not always gratified. A short time ago I went over, feeling as though I would like to see a fair young creature full of life and joy and with the light of a joyous future shining in her lustrous eyes. It didn't seem to be her train. It was the day that a woman was on board with a Russia iron alapaca dress and white eyes. She was from Winnipewankiegingersuappety* magoggery, Maine. She had a little sore-eyed boy with cream-colored hair and freckles on his face as large as a veal cutlet. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 23! The boy would occasionally walk along the platform with his fore finger rammed into his mouth and hooked around his wisdom tooth. He would walk along looking up into the sky, and running into everybody and falling over the baggage truck till his mother got quite irritated, and I told the boy that the future looked dark for him unless he braced up and stopped pulverizing people's corns. Bye and bye the boy ran into a blind man and knocked the wind out of him, so that all he could do for ten minutes was to stand there and gasp for breath as though he want- ed to breathe in the vast realms of space. Then his mother extended a long, bony hand with a large silver ferule on the biggest finger, and she laid hold of that lemon-colored kid of her's and gathered in as much of his ear as her hand would hold. She churned him up pretty good, and it didn't seem to be very much exertion for her either. Every little while he would make an aerial flight and back he would come, his boots banging against the car with a loud report. Finally the woman with the white eye, from Winnipewankiegingersuappetymagoggery, Me., consolidated her efforts for one grand flourish, but while in mid-air the boy's ear unscrewed and he lit out through the firmament, falling in a shapeless mass on the other side of the second-class car, where his gentle mother found him and gathered him up in her gingham apron. There are lots of these little queer and amusing circum- stances taking place here almost every day, and I have often thought that if some one with a taste for the ridiculous would turn his attention in that direction he would make an interesting sketch of them. During the month of June we had a heavy snow storm, and it pleased the average tourist very much to be able to 232 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. snow ball in mid-summer, so that he could tell his friends about it when he got home. One intellectual Hercules, with a head about as large as a gum drop and a linen hat like the dome of the Mormon Temple, thought it would be a frisky little thing to throw some snow in the face of a sensible man engaged in conver- sation on the hotel pavement. The sensible man mopped the snow out of his face and went on with his conversation till the train was ready to start and the mental giant had forgotten all about it. Then the large man walked up to the watery-eyed youth with a big lunch basket full of snow and proceeded to stow it away around the features of the youthful snide with the skim -milk optic. He used what he could get near by, trying to fill his ears full, but couldn't get snow enough. Then he took what he had left and worked it down inside the voluptuous shirt collar of the bilious young man from the Normal school. I enjoyed it first-rate because I can not bear to see a femi- nine tourist like this young man, wearing men's clothes and trying to play himself for a man. When a man wants to be a merry laughing girl and can't, and he stands trembling on the dividing line between manhood and womanhood and hesitating which way to fall, I often wish that I had a foot like Brigham Young's tombstone with a swing to it like a pile driver and I would like to kick the young man with the old gold hat band and the polka dotted necktie so far into the realms of space that when he fell people would think he was a red-headed meteor looking for a soft place to fall jnto. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2 33 CATCHING MOUNTAIN TROUT AT AN ELEVATION OF 8000 FEET. A few days ago, in company with Dr. Hayford, I went over to Dale Creek on a brief extempore trouting expedi- tion. Dale Creek is a beautiful and romantic stream run- ning through a rugrsred canon and crossed by the beautiful iron bridge of the Union Pacific Railroad. We went up on No. 4 and returned on No. 3. Dale Creek at this season of the year is not very much of a torrent, and on the day we went over there all the trout had gone down to the mouth of the stream to get a drink. Every little while the Doctor would put on his glasses and hunt for the creek while I caught grasshoppers and looked at the scenery. I did not catch any trout myself, but the Doctor drove one into a prairie-dog hole and killed him. I am frantically fond of field sports although I am not always successful in securing game. I love to wander through the fragrant grass and wild flowers, listening to the song of the bobolink as he sways to and fro on some slender weed ; but it delays me a good deal to stop every little while and cut 234 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. my fly hooks out of my clothes. I throw a fly very grace. fully, but when it catches under my shoulder-blades, and I try to lift myself up in that manner, my companions laugh at me and make me mad. Dr. Hay ford, who had command of the expedition, told me that we would have an hour and three quarters to fish and then we would have to go back and catch the train. Therefore we hurried a good deal, and I had to leave a de- crepit trout that I had found in a dead pine tree and was almost sure of. We gathered a bouquet of wild roses and ferns and cut worms and went back to the bridge to wait for No. 3. We sat there for an hour or two on a voluptu- ous triangular fragment of granite, telling large three-ply falsehoods about catching fish and shooting elephants in Michigan. Then we waited two or three more long weary hours, and still the train didn't come. After a while it occurred to me that I had been made the victim of the man who had spent the most of his life telling the public about the pleasant weather of Wyoming. He enjoyed my misery and cheered me up by saying that per- haps our train had gone, and we would have to wait for the emigrant-train. We ate what lunch we had left, told a few more lies, and suffered on. At last the thunder of the train in the distance was borne down to us, and we rose with a sigh of relief, gathered up our bouquets and decomposed trout, and prepared to board the car. But it was a work train and didn't stop. Then I went away by myself and tried to control my fiendish temper. I thought of the doctor's interesting family at home, and how they would mourn if I were to throw him over Dale Creek bridge, and pulverize him on the rocks BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 235 below. So my better nature conquered and I went back to wait a few more weeks. The next train that came along was a freight train, and it made better time going past us than at any other point on the road. Toward evening the regular passenger train came along. I found out which coach the doctor was going to ride in, and I got into another one. I look my poor withered little bouquet and looked at it. All the flowers were dead and so were the bugs that were in it. It was a ghostly ruin that had cost me $9.25. An idea struck me, and I gave the bouquet to the train boy to sell. I told him what the entire array of ghastliness had cost me, and asked him to get what he could out of it. He took the collection and sold it out to the passengers, realizing, $21.35. Passengers bought them and sent them home as flowers collected at Dale Creek bridge in the Rocky mountains. Then a kind hearted gentleman on the train, who saw how sad I looked, and how ragged my clothes were, where I had cut fish-hooks out of them, took up a col- lection for me. Hereafter when a man asks me to join a fishing excursion to the mountains, I hope that I shall have the moral courage and strength of character to refuse. HOME-MADE INDIAN BELICS. Sherman, on the Union Pacific Railroad, is the loftiest by a considerable majority of any point on the road. This fact has occasioned some little notoriety for Sherman, and 236 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. on the strength of it a small reservoir of Western curiosities has been established there. I went over to the curiosity ranche while the train was taking breath, to see what I could see and buy it if the price were not too high. There were a great many Western curiosities from vari- ous parts of the country, and I got deeply interested in them. I love to find some old relic of ancient times or some antique weapon of warfare peculiar to the noble Aztecs. I can ponder over them by the hour and enjoy it first-rate. Among the living wonders I noticed a bale of Indian arrows. These arrows are beautiful to look upon, and are remarkably well preserved. They are as good as new. I asked, simply as a matter of form, if they were Indian arrows. The man said they were. Then I asked who made them, and he got mad and wouldn't speak to me. I do not think I am unreasonable to want to know who makes my Indian arrows, am I? I am willing to pay a fair price for the genuine Connecti- cut made arrow with cane shaft, and warranted cast steel point, but the Indian arrow made at Omaha is not durable. This curiosity man would make more money and com- mand a larger trade if he were not so quick-tempered. He had also some Western cactus as a curiosity for the tenderfoot who had never fooled with a cactus much. It was the clear thing, however. I sat down on one to test its genuineness. It stood the test better than I did. When you have doubts about a cactus and don't know whether it is a genuine cactus or a young watermelon with its hair banged, you can test it by sitting down on it. It may sur- prise you at first, but it tickles the cactus almost to death. For a high-priced house plant and gentle meek-eyed SILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 237 exotic that don't care much for affection, the Rocky Moun- tain cactus takes the cake. It is very easy to live, and don't require much fondling. It will enjoy life better if you will get mad at it about once a week and pull it up b'y the roots, and kick it around the yard. Water it carefully every four years; if you water it oftener than that, it will be surprised, and gradually pine away and die. Another item I must not forget in giving directions for the cultivation of this rare tropical plant: get some one to sit down on it occasionally — if you don't feel equal to it yourself. There's nothing that makes a cactus thrive and flourish so much as to have a victim with linen pants on, sit down on it and then get up impulsively like. If a cactus can have these little attentions bestowed upon it, it will live to a good old age, and insinuate itself through the panta- loons of generations yet unborn. Plant in a gravelly, coarse soil, and kick it every time you think of it. Returning to our subject, however, I think the Indian is a trifle uncertain and at times tricky by nature. Of course I do not wish to say anything that would have a tendency to injure the reputation of the Indian, for in all candor I will say that he means well. I do not wish to have what I may say published as coming from me, because the Indian has always used me well, perhajzis because I never allow myself to stray into his jurisdiction, but he has little, hateful, mean ways which I despise. Some think that if he were to have more chance to learn, more normal schools and base-ball clubs and up- right pianos, he would have more ambition to do right and get ahead, but I almost doubt it. I am very humane myself, but I am more apt to be harsh 23S BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. in my measures with the Indian than most Eastern people of culture are. Perhaps this is because I have seen people who had been shot full of large size bullet holes by the red man. This makes a difference, and I may be prejudiced. When the average philanthropist has seen a family lying scattered around promiscuous and shot so full of holes that even the coarsest kind of food is of no use, he begins to ask in his mind whether a more severe method of treatment would not be beneficial to the Indian. I want to look this matter calmly in the face, and ask whether night shirts and civilization and suspenders will make good citizens out of these unfettered children of the forest or not? Is it the opinion of the gentle reader that a nation of flea-bitten, smoke-tanned beggars will come for- ward and submit to the ennobling influences of Christianity and duck vests and horse-shoe scarf pins and quarterly meetings and gauze underwear? Methinks not. Nature constructed the noble red man with certain little mental, moral and physical eccentricities, and these eccen- tricities can be better worn away and remodeled on the evergreen shore. Poor, weak, fallible man cannot successfully grapple with the task of working over an entire nation of human beings and changing the whole trend, so to speak, of a nation's mental and moral nature. Let us not, therefore, usurp the prerogative or attempt to perform the Herculean task which a wise Creator has laid out for Himself. The policy of Divine administration, if I mistake not, is '.o improve the Indian and reform him in a future state in a large corral where the worm dieth not. This of course is only my private opinion, and I am offering it now in pack- BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 239 ages containing six each, securely boxed and sent free to any address on receipt of $1. I would sell it cheaper were it not for the excessive freight and the recent rise in white paper. Supposing then the above to be the correct theory, what can poor erring man do to forward the good work? Evi- dently he can do nothing unless it be to change the state of the red man from a discouraging and annoying mortality to a bright and shining immortality. I would suggest that this be done so far as possible by those who can spare the time and ammunition to do so. I will give to such all the encouragement and moral support I can. I would assist in the good work, but I am most too busy now planting my raspberry jam and setting out my early Swedish dried apple pie plant. THE PREVIOUS REPORTER. Fluke MaGilder, an old Washington reporter, who afterward was well known among Western newspaper men, was one of the most tireless and persistent news- gatherers I ever knew. He used to tell with considerable apparent pleasure how he didn't obtain the points on a prominent military court martial which was held at Chey- enne in 1876. It happened on this wise: When it was known for a dead certainty that the court- martial had closed, and that the result was sealed up in an envelope in the possession of General Pope, who roomed at the Inter-Ocean, Fluke got up an infernal lie to tell the General, and thus got him away from his room. He in- duced a little negro boy, by promising him an old pair of 24O BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. pants, to go up and deliver a note to General Pope, saying that General Merritt was out at Fort Russell, and that he wanted to see him immediately. After the General had gone Fluke crawled into the transom of his room, and began to ransack things. It turned out, however, that the documents were safe in the General's overcoat pocket, and MaGilder was baffled. He searched all the drawers in the room, looked under the bed, rummaged the pockets of all the extra clothes in the room, and the more he searched the madder he got, and when at last it dawned upon him that he was foiled, his wrath knew no bounds. He filled his pockets with the General's cigars, drank the General's wine, and wiped his nose on the General's best clean handker- chiefs. He spit tobacco juice in the General's slippers, wiped his feet on the pillow shams, dressed the coal-stove up in the General's night shirt, and spread a few spare hair- pins which he had in his pockets, under the General's pillow. He was pretty mad. He took the spittoon and stood it on the center-table, with a tooth brush sticking in the middle, and wound up by trying on the General's underclothes and tearing the ruffles off. It is so well established that Fluke had a great deal of embonpoint, that it is unnecessary to say he had a good deal of trouble to get into General Pope's apparel, as the General is a slim man. However, as Ma- Gilder stood in the position of a boy who is just on the point of going in swimming, and had the last garment drawn over his head, so that he could not see very well, General Pope slipped in with a large snow-shovel, which he applied with great vigor. When they offered Fluke a chair at a party after that he would murmur, "No, thank you, 1 prefer to stand up. I've been sitting down all day ttILL NYE AND BOCMKKANG. 24 1 and wish a change." But everybody knew that he hadn't sat down for over a week. THE PEACE COMMISSION. EVIDENCE OF JOHNSON BEFORE THE COURT. Los Pixos, Coe., Nov. 17. Chief Johnson was again called on the stand this morning, and administered the following oath to himself in a solemn and awe-inspiring manner: " By the Great Horn Spoons of the pale-face, and the Great Round Faced Moon, round as the shield of my fathers; by the Great High Muck-a-Muck of the Ute nation; by the Beard of the Prophet, and the Continental Congress, I dassent tell a lie ! " When Johnson had repeated this solemn oath — at the same time making the grand hailing sign of the secret order known as the Thousand and One — there was not a dry eye in the house. Question by General Adams. — What is your name and occupation, and where do you reside? Answer — My name'is Johnson, just plain Johnson. The rest has been torn off. I am by occupation a farmer. I am a horny-handed son of toil, and don't you forget it. I reside in Greeley, Colorado. Question — Did you, or did you not hear of a massacre at White River agency, during the fall, and if so, to what ex- tent? Objected to by defendant's counsel because it is irrelevant, immaterial, unconstitutional, imitation, and incongruous. *16 242 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Most of the forenoon was spent in arguing the point before the court, when it was allowed to go in, whereupon the defendant's counsel asked to have the exception noted on the court's moments. Answer — I did not hear of the massacre, until last even ing, when I happened to pick up a copy of the Evanston Age and read it. It was a very sad affair, I should think. Question — Were you, or were you not, present at the massacres? Objected to by defendant's counsel on the ground that the witness is not bound to answer a question which would criminate himself. Objection sustained, and question withdrawn by the prose- cution. Question — Where were you on the night that this massa- cre is said to have occurred? Answer — What massacre? Question — The one at White River? Answer — I was attending a series of protracted meetings at Greeley, in this State. Question — Were Douglass, Colorow and other Ute chiefs with you at that meeting in Greeley ? Answer — They were. Court adjourned for dinner. General Adams remarked to a reporter that he was get- ting down to business now, and that he had no doubt that in a few months he would convict all these Utes of false- hood in the first degree. After dinner, court was called, with Johnson at the bat and Douglass on deck; General Adams, short stop; Ouray, center field. Question — You say that you were not present at the BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 243 White River massacre; were you ever engaged in any massacre ? Objected to, but objection afterward withdrawn. Answer — No. Question — Never ? Answer — Never. Question — What! Never? Answer — Well, dam seldom. (Great applause and cries of " ugh !" ) Question — Did you, or did you not, know a man named N. C. Meeker? Answer — Yes. Question — Go on and state if you know where you met him and at what time. Answer — I met him in Greeley, Colorado, two or three years ago. After that I heard that he got an appointment as Indian Asrent somewhere out west. Question — Did you ever hear anything of him after that? Answer — Nothing whatever. Question — Did the account of the White River massacre that you read in the Age mention the death of Mr. Meeker? Answer — No. Is he dead? General Adams — Yes, he is dead. At that the witness gave a wild whoop of pain and anguish, fell forward into the arms of General Adams, and is unconscious as we go to press. We do not wish to censure General Adams. No doubt he is conducting this investigation to the best of his ability; but he ought to break such news as this as gently to the Indian as possible. 244 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. SOME ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. Lock Malone, Beaver, Utah, writes as follows: " I am now making some important scientific experiments with Limberger cheese as a motor, but have no data where- by to work. So new and unusual is the motor to science, that I am unable to get anything relative to its history. " i. When was Limberger cheese first discovered, and by whom ? " 2. What did he do it for anyway ? " 3. To what do you attribute the bad odor in which Limberger cheese is held by scientists? " 4. Looking from what may be termed a purely utili- tarian standpoint, and not allowing ourselves to be in- fluenced by incongruous incandescence, should you say in all respects that virtually in view of the heterogeneous mo- bility of attended animalculate it might had or couldn't possibly was?" ANSWER. i. Limberger cheese was first discovered by Galileo, floating through space, during his studies relative to the heavenly bodies. This was about 1609. The body had, however, been floating through space for many millions of years previous to that, as Galileo remarks in his diary that he wasn't proud of it at all for it was evi- dently in a very poor state of preservation. Galileo caught some of it and tamed it, but the scientific minds of that age had not yet made the attempt to utilize it as a motor. it The discovery was purely accidental* At about the BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. ^45 time referred to, Galileo had constructed his powerful tele- scope which would bring the moon down so that the valleys and hills of that body were plainly visible. One day the telescope brought down a fragment of Limberger cheese that was floating through space. It magnified the cheese to such an extent that Galileo could smell it distinctly. This was the true cause of Galileo's abandonment of the Copemican theory and eventually of astronomy. 3. The last answer really disposes of your third question. 4. Grappling with the abstruse and alarmingly previous usufruct embodied in the omnipresent, and constantly em- anating and noticeably refractory diagnosis, herein set forth, and still wandering on through the ever changing yet con- stantly invariable and fluctuating, yet undeviating perihelion of the heavenly bodies, with unprejudiced mind and unbiased judgment. Arriving at the conclusion that perhaps in some cases it might not, or yet again it might or might not, and still it might. Numerous Husband, writes from Jehosephat Valley as follows : " I am twenty-seven and am going on twenty-eight years of age. A few vears ago I joined on to the Mormon Church, and with my usual enthusiasm begun to get married. " I have been getting married with more or less reck- lessness ever cents. When times was dull and I was out of employment, 1 would go and get married. " The ofishal count shows that I am an easy and graceful marryer. " I now find that I am hopelessly involved financially. I had intended tfaUi summer to bnild £f rollosle villa for mjf a/j.6 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. multitoodinous wife; but it will cost me more than I can now command. " Besides that the surkass is now on the weigh, and I am called upon to secure voluptuous woven wire mattress stuffed opera reserved seats, for my household aggregation of living wonders. "I am willing to take all I can pay for if she will sit on a hard blue seat with me, and let her feet dangle down; but I cannot abide by the excessive tariff for preserved seats. I love the high moral tone of the sho, and dearly love the grand display of arenick tallent,but I cannot croll under the canvuss with my domestic carryvan, without attracting attention. When I was a boy and had not yet entered with my wild impetuous nacher in 2 the mattrymoniall biziness, I used to carry water to the elephant, and thus see the World's Con- gress of Rair and Beautyful Zoologickal Wonders, but I cood not do that now. " By the time I got the Jordan carried up to the elephant, to pay my admittance, the sho would be over and gone, and I would be more or less left. " I thereupon ask in all kandor for your valyable advise on these points ? " ANSWER. The case before us is one which would evoke sympathy from the stoniest heart. It is also one which requires a close scrutiny and cool, deliberate investigation. You probably at first married a wife whom you consid- ered a treasure, and at once set yourself about amassing wealth of this kind until you find that you are carrying over on your inventory year after year, a large stock of undesir- able wives which you are unable to dispose of* BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 247 You probably thought when you first married, that there were only two or three unmarried young ladies in the broad and beautiful universe who were worthy of you. This was a fatal error, and one very common to the bran new bridegroom. The census will show that there are several, if not more, desirable young ladies who are still on deck. I am sorry that you have placed yourself in the position you have, and so far as possible will assist you; but these suggestions which I might offer, could only be partially suc- cessful. Could you earlier in the season have given your wives say a dozen able-bodied hens apiece, with instructions that they were to be stimulated to the utmost by their respective owners, the egg-crop might have assisted very materially in purchasing circus tickets with the consequent concert tickets and vermilion lemonade. There are other suggestions that might be made but it is too late now to make them. I can only offer one more balm to your deeply wounded and disappointed heart. You might by economy and frugality, secure an available point on the route with your mass meeting of household gods and goddesses, where you could sit on the fence and see the ele- phant meander by. Yours, enveloped in a large wad of dense gloom. THE CROW INDIAN AND HIS CAWS. Early in the week five Crow chiefs passed through here on their way to Washington. I went down to see them- They were as fine looking 248 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. children of the forest as I ever saw. They wore buck- skin pants with overskirt of same. The hair was worn Princesse, held in place with Frazer's axle grease and large mother of clamshell brooch. Down the back it was braided like a horse's tail on a muddy day, only the hair was coarser. When an Indian wants to crimp his hair he has to run it through a rolling mill first, to make it malleable. Then the blacksmith of the tribe rolls it up over the ordinary freight car coupling pin, and on the following morning it hangs in graceful Saratoga waves down the back of the untutored savage. I said to the interpreter who seemed to act as their trainer, « No doubt these Crows are going to Washington to try and interest Hayes in their Caws." He gave a low, gurgling laugh. 44 No," said he with a merry twinkle of the eye, as he laid his lip half way across a plug of government tobacco, " as spring approaches they have decided to go to Washington and ransack the Indian Bureau for their gauzy Schurz. I caught hold of a car seat and rippled till the coach was filled with my merry, girlish laughter. These Indians wear high expressive cheek-bones, and most of them have strabismus in their feet. They had their paint on. It makes them look like a chromo of Powhattan mashing the eternal soul out of John Smith with a Bologna sausage. One of these chiefs, named Raw-Dog-with-a-Bunion-on- the-Heel, I think, chief of the Wall-eyed Skunk Eaters, looked so guileless and kind that I approached him and said that no doubt the war-path in the land of the setting sun was overgrown with grass, and in his mountain home very )lkelv the beams of peace! lit up the feces 8? his tribe. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 249 He did not seem to catch my meaning. I asked him if his delegation was going to Washington uninstructed. In reply he made a short remark something like that which the shortstop of a match game makes when a hot ball takes him unexpectedly between the gastric and the liver pad. Somehow live Indians do not look so picturesque as the steel engraving does. The smell is not the same, either. Steel engravings of Indians do not show the decalcomania outline of a frying-pan on the buckskin pants where the noble red man made a misstep one morning and sat down on his breakfast. A dead Indian is a pleasing picture. The look of pain and anxiety is gone, and rest, sweet rest — more than he really needs — has come at last. His hands are folded peace- fully and his mouth is open, like the end of a sawmill. His trials are o'er. His swift foot is making pigeon-toed tracks in the shifting sands of eternity. The picture of a wild free Indian chasing the buffalo may suit some, but I like still life in art. I like the picture of a broad-shouldered, well-formed brave as he lies with his nerveless hand across a large hole in the pit of his stomach. There is something so sweetly sad about it. There is such a nameless feeling of repose and security on the part of the spectator. Some have such sensitive natures that they cannot look at the remains of an Indian who has been run over by two sections of freight, but I can. Somehow I do not feel that nervous distrust when I look at the red man with his oesophagus Wrapped around his head and tied in a double how knot, that T do when he i* full, of the vigor of health* 250 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. When a train of cars has jammed his thigh-bone through his diaphragm and flattened his head out like a soup plate, I feel then that I can trust him. I feel that he may be relied upon. I consider him in the character of ghastly remains as a success. He seems at last so in earnest and as though he could be trusted. When the Indian has been mixed up so that the closest scrutiny cannot determine where the head adjourns and the thorax begins, the scene is so suggestive of unruffled quiet and calm and gentle childlike faith that doubt and distrust and timidity and apprehension flee away. THE NUPTIALS OF DANGEROUS DAVIS. On the morning on which Adam Forepaugh entered the city of Laramie, and with a grand array of hump-backed dromedaries, club-footed elephants, and an uncalled-for amount of pride, and pomp, and circumstance, captured the town, Dangerous Davis, clad in buckskin and glass beads, and ornamented with one of Smith & Wesson's brass- mounted, self-cocking, Black Hills bustles, entered his honor's office, and walking up to the counter where the •Judge deals out justice to the vagabond tenderfoot, and bank- rupt non resident, as well as to the law-defying Laramite, called for $5.00 worth of matrimony. On his arm leaned the fair form of the one who had ensnared the heart of the frontiersman, and who had evidently gobbled up the manly affections of Dangerous Davis. She was resplendent in new clothes, and a pair of Indian moccasins, and when she glided up to the centre of the room, the casual observer might have been deceived BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 251 into the belief that she was moving through the radiant atmosphere like an $11.00 Peri, if it had not been for the gentle patter of her moccasin as it fell upon the floor with the sylph-like footfall of the prize elephant as he moves around the ring to the dreamy strains of " Old Zip Coon/ 1 A large " filled " ring gleamed and sparkled on her brown hand, and vied in splendor with a large seed-wart on her front finger. The ends of her nails were draped in the deepest mourning, and as she leaned her head against the off shoulder of Dangerous Davis, the ranche butter from her tawny locks made a deep and lasting impression on his buckskin bosom. At this auspicious moment His Honor entered the room, with a green covered German almanac for 1S52 and a copy of Robinson Crusoe under his arm, and as he saw the vouno- thills w ho was about to unite herself to the bold, bad man from Bitter Creek, he burst into tears, while Judge Blair, who had adjourned the District Court in order to wit- ness the ceremonv, sat down behind the stove and sobbed like a child. At this moment William Crout, who has been married under all kinds of circumstances and in eleven dif- ferent languages, entered the room and inspired confidence in the weeping throng. Dangerous Davis changed his quid of tobacco from one side of his amber mouth to the other, spat on his hands, and asked to see the Judge's matrimonial price list. The Judge showed him some different styles, out of which Dangerous Davis selected the kind he wanted. By this time about one hundred and thirteen men, who had been waiting around the court room during the past week in order to be drawn as jurymen, had crowded in to witness the ceremony. 252 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. After all the preliminaries had been gone through with, tne Judge commenced reading the marriage service out of a copy of the Clown's Comic Song Book. When he asked if anyone present had any objections to the proceedings, Price, from force of habit, rose and said, "I object;" but Dangerous Davis caressed his brass-mounted Grecian bend, and Price withdrew the objection. Everybody admitted Price's good judgment, under the circumstances, in with- drawing the objection. After the usual ceremony, the Judge put the bridegroom t hrough some little initiations, instructed him in the grand hailing signs, grips, passwords and signals, swore him to support the Constitution of the United States, pronounced the benediction on the newly-wedded pair, and the cere- mony closed with an extemporaneous speech by Judge Brown and profound silence and thoughtfulness on the part of Brock way, as he reflected upon the dangers which con- stantly surround us. Dangerous Davis mounted his broncho, and tying his new wife on behind him on the saddle with an old shawl strap, plunged his spurs into the panting sides of his calico colored steed, and in a few moments was flying ovec the green plains, while the mountain breeze caught up the oleaginous saffron-hued tresses of the bride and in wild glee mingled them with the broncho's sorrel tail, and tossed them to ths four winds of heaven. THE HOLIDAY HOG. Dear reader, did you ever go along past the marked these cold December mornings and study the expresssion of kILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2$$ the frozen holiday hog as he stands at the door with his mouth propped open by a chip, and the last hardened outlines of a diabolical smile lingering about the whole face ? Did it ever occur to you that he has ways like Charles Francis Adams? And yet he was not always thus — a cold, hard, immov- able pork statue. Once he was the pride of some Nebraska home. He was petted and caressed no doubt, and had more demoralized melon rinds, and cold potatoes, and dish water than he actually needed. But think of it, gentle, kind- hearted reader; he has been torn from those he loved, and butchered to make a Caucasian holiday; snatched from the home of his youth, and frozen into a double and twisted post mortem examination. Perhaps, dear reader, you have never had to stand as a model for the picture of the man in the front of the almanac, who looks like the victim of a buzz saw, with the various members of the Zodiac family floating around him. If you have not, and we will take your word for it, you cannot fully realize the feelings of the Nebraska hog on a December day, without a stitch of clothes to his back. SOME CENSUS CONUNDRUMS. It was in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool — When the census enumerator came to the sanctity of my home, and opened a valise which contained a large duo- decimo volume, and about nine gallons of brand new interro- gation points. He opened his note book, which was about the size of the White River Reservation, and proceeded to get acquainted. I thought at first that he had come from Chicago to inter- 254 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. view me about the Presidential convention, and get my views. This was not the case, however. I think he is going to write my biography and sell it at $2.00 each. I gave him all the information I could, and telegraphed to my old Sabbath School Superintendent at home for more. Among other little evidences of his morbid curiosity, I will give the following : When were you born, and looking calmly back at this important epoch in your life, do you regret that you took the step? If yes, state to what extent and under what circumstances? Do you remember George Washington, and if so to what amount? What is your fighting weight? Who struck Billy Patterson? Did you ever have membranous croup, and what did you do for it? Do you keep hens, or do you lavish your profanity on those of your neighbors? Have any of your ancestors ever been troubled with in- growing nails, or blind staggers? What is your opinion of rats? Are you a victim to rum or other alchoholic stimulants, and if so, at what hour do you usually succumb to the potent enemy ? Would you have any scruples in asking the enumerator to join you in wrestling with man's destroyer at that hour? Do you eat onions? Which side do you lie on while sleeping? Which side do you lie on during a political campaign? What is the chief end of man ? BILL XYF ANI? BOOMERANG. 255 Are you single, and if so what is your excuse? Who will care for mother now? THE GENTLE POWER OF A WOMAN'S INFLUENCE. Cummins City is still a crude metropolis. Society has not yet arrived at the white vest and lawn sociable period there. There is nothing to hamper any one or throw a tiresome restraint around him. You walk up and down the streets of the camp without feeling that the vigilant eye of the policeman is upon you, and when you register at the leading hotel the proprietor don't ask how much baggage you have, or insist upon it that your valise ought to be blown up with a quill to give it a robust ap- pearance. Speaking of this hotel, however, brings to my mind ? little incident which really belongs in here. There are two ladies at this place, the only ones in the city limits, if my memory serves me. One of these ladies owns a lot of poles or house logs which were, at the time of which I speak, on the dump, as it were, ready to be used in the construction of a new cabin. It seems that some of the prospectors of the corporation, without the fear of God or the Common Council of Cum- mins City, had been appropriating these logs from time to time until out of a good, fair assortment there remained only a dejected little pile of " culls." The owner had Watched with great annoyance the gradual disappearance of her property from day to day, and it made her lose faith in the final redemption of all mankind. She became cynical and misanthropical, lost her interest in the future, and became low spirited and unhappy. 2$6 felLL NYE AND feOOMERANG. One day, however, after this thing had proceeded about far enough she went to her trunk, and taking out the large size of navy revolver, the kind that plows up the vitals so successfully and sends so many Western men to their long home. Then she went out to where a group of men had scattered themselves out around camp to smoke. She wasn't a large woman at all, but these men respected her. Though they were only rough miners there in the wilderness they recognized that she was a woman, and they recognized it almost at a glance, too. There she was alone among a wHd group of men in the mountains, far from the protecting arm of the law and the softening influences of me- tropolitan life, and yet the common feeling of gallantry im- planted in the masculine breast was there. She indicated with a motion of her revolver that she de- sired to call the meeting to order. There seemed to be a general anxiety on the part of every man present to come to order just as soon as circumstances would permit. Then she made a short speech relative to the matter of house logs, and suggested that unless a certain number of those articles, now invisible to the naked eye, were placed at a certain point, or a certain amount of kopecks placed on file with the chairman of the meeting within a specified time, that perdi- tion w r ould be popping on Main Street in about two and one- half ticks of the chronometer. There didn't seem to be any desire on the part of the meeting to amend the motion or lay it on the table. Al- though it was arbitrary and imperative, and although an opportunity was given for a free expression of opinion, there didn't seem to be any desire to take advantage of it. A committee of three was appointed to carry out the suggestions of the chair, and in about half an hour, the BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2$>] house logs and kopecks having hcen placed on deposit al the places designated, the meeting broke up, subject to thd call of the chairman. It was not a very long session, but it was very harmo- nious — very harmonious and very orderly. There was no calling for the previous question or rising to a point of or- der. The pale-faced men who composed the convention did not look to the casual observers as though they had come there to raise points for debate over parliamentary practice. They kept their eye on the speaker's desk and didn't interrupt each other or struggle to see who would get the floor. It is wonderful this inherent strength of weakness, as I might say, which enables a woman amid a throng of reck- less men to command their respect and obedience some- times where main strength and akwardness would not avail. THE NATIVE INBORN SHIFTLESSNESS OF THE PRAIRIE DOGS. I had read in my Fourth Reader about prairie dogs, and I thought, according to Washington Irving, that they knew more than a Congressman. He says a great deal about the sagacity and general mental acumen of the prairie dog, but I don't just exactly somehow seem to see where it comes in. If it be an indication of shrewdness and forethought to establish a village nine hundred miles from a railroad, wood, water and grub, and live on alkali and moss agates and wan- der down the vista of time without a square meal, then the prairie dog is beyond the barest passibility of doubt, keen and shrewd to a wonderful degree. But if instinct or ani- 2C8 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. mal sagacity be reckoned according to the number and amount of creature comforts afforded within a given space, I have a cow in my mind that will double discount all the chuckle-headed, cactus eating prairie dogs west of the Mis- souri. I do not wish to say anything relative to Mr. Irving's opinion of the prairie dog which would not be perfectly re- spectful, for I learn with great sorrow that Mr. Irving is dead, but I do think that there is hardly an animal in the entire arcana of nature that will not beat the prairie dog two to one as a provider for his family or himself. I have an old hen at my home here who certainly ap- proximates very closely to my ideal of an irreclaimable fool that has grown childish with old age, and outside of the Democratic party perhaps she is entitled to distinction. But even she has lucid intervals, and she hasn't yet fallen to where she would willingly take up a home under the desert land act like a prairie dog. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. The following answers to correspondents contain a great deal of useful information, and I publish them in order to avoid the constant annoyance of writing the same in sub- stance to so many inquiring friends. " Sweet Sixteen " writes from " Hold-up Hollow ;" "I am betrothed to a noble youth from Rice Lake, Minnesota, but he seems too have soured on his betroth. " At first he seemed to love me according to Gunter, but he has grown cold. About the first of the round-up he went away, and I soon afterward heard that he was affi- anced to another. BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 2 59 "I understand that he says I am not of noble lineage enough for him. It is true. I may not be a thorough-bred, but I have a pure, loving nature, which is now running to waste. The name of my beloved is De Courtney Van D'Edbeete. He comes from the first families, and O, I love him so! " Can you tell me what to do? " Sweet Sixteen.* Answer. — Yes, I can tell you what to do. I have been there some, too. If you will only do as I tell you, you are safe. You must win him back. I think you can easily do so. Select a base-ball club of about the weight you can handle easily, and then go to him and win him back. You are too prone to give up easily. Do not be discour- aged. All will yet be well. He may think now that you are not of noble blood but you can make him change his mind. Go to him with the love light in your eye and put a triangular head on him with your base-ball club, and tell him that he does not understand the cravings of your nature. Drive him into the ground and sit down on him, and then tell him that you are nothing but a poor, friendless girl, and need some one to cling to. Then you can cling to him. All depends upon how successful you are as a dinger. I see at a glance that De Courtney needs to be flattened out a few times. Do not kill him, but bring him so near to the New Jerusalem that he can see the dome of the court house, and he will gradually come back to you and love you, and your life will be one long golden dream of never- fading joy, and De Courtney will wring out the colored clothes for you and help you do the washing, and he will 260 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. stay at home evenings and take care of the children while you go to prayer meeting, and he will not murmur when you work off an inexpensive meal of cold rice and fricasseed codfish on him. If he gets to feeling independent, and puts on the old air of defiance, you can diet him on cold mush and mackerel till he will not feel so robust, and then you can reason with him again, and while he is recovering you can take your base- ball club and your noble self-sacrificing love, and win him back some more. " Lalla Rookh " writes from Waukegan, Illinois, as fol- lowss to wit: " My classmates and I have had quite a serious discussion recently, on several questions of table etiquette, and we have finally agreed to leave the matter with you. " First — If one is asked to say grace at the table, and does not wish to do so, or is not familiar with the forms, what should he do? " Second— If one has anything in his mouth, or gets any foreign substance like apiece of bone or a seed in his mouth, how should he remove it, and what is the proper thing to do with it? "Third — Would. you kindly add a few general rules of table etiquette, which would be useful to the many admirers of your classic style?" Answer — It would be hazardous for a gentleman unaccus- tomed to asking grace at the table to attempt it, unless he be a naturally fluent extemporeaneous speaker. It is more difficult for one unacquainted with it, than to address a Sabbath school, or write a letter accepting the nomination for President. It is, therefore, preferable to say in a few terse remarks BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 261 that you are profoundly grateful for the high compliment, but that your health will not admit of its acceptance. Second — Care should be used while at table not to get large foreign substances like hair-pins, soup-bones, or clothes- pins into the mouth with food, as it naturally requires some little sang froid and tact to remove them. One accustomed to the mysteries of parlor-magic may slide the articles into his sleeve while coughing, and thence into the coat pocket of his host, thus easily getting himself out of an unpleasant situation, and at the same time producing roars of laughter at the expense of the host. If, however, you are not familiar with sleight of hand, you may take in a full breath, and expel the object across the room under the whatnot, where it will not be discovered until you have gone away. I will add a few general rules for table etiquette, which I have learned by actual experience to be of untold benefit to the active society man. First — It is proper to take the last of anything on the plate if it comes to you, instead of declining it. It is sup- posed that there is more in the house, or if not, the hos.t may go down town and get some. Do not, therefore, decline anything because it is the last on the dish, unless it looks as though it wouldn't suit you. Second — If by mistake you get your spoon in the gravy so far that the handle is more or less sticky, do not get ill- tempered or show your displeasure, but draw it through your mouth two or three times, laughing a merry laugh all the time. Do not attempt to polish it off with your hand- kerchief. It might spoil your handkerchief. Third — In drinking wine at table do not hang your eyes put on your cheek, or drink too fast and get it up your nose. 262 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. Do not drain your glass perfectly dry and then try to draw in what atmosphere there is in the room. This is not only vulgar, but it tends to cast large chunks of three-cornered gloom over the guests. When you have drained your glass, do not bang it vio- lently on the table and ask your host " how much he is out." This gives too much of the air of wild, unfettered freedom, and the unrestrained hilarity of the free-lunch. Fourth — When you get anything in your mouth that is too hot, do not get mad and swear, because the other guests will only laugh at you, but remove the morsel calmly and tell the waiter to put it on ice a little while for you. Fifth — When your coffee is out and you desire more, do not pound on your cup with your spoon, but be gentle and ladylike in your demeanor, telling some fresh little anecdote to please the guests, looking yearningly toward the coffee urn all the while. Sixth — If you have to leave the table as soon as you are through, do not jump up suddenly and upset the table, but make an original and spicy remark about "having to eat and run like a beggar," and this will create such a hearty laugh over your sally of wit that you can slip out, select the best hat in the hall, and be half way home before the com- pany can restrain its mirth. There are some more good rules that I have on hand, not only relative to the table, but the ball-room, the parlor, the croquet lawn, the train, the church, and, in fact, almost everywhere that the society man might be placed. These I will give the public from time to time, as the growing de- mand seems to dictate, • BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 263 THE SECRET OF GARFIELD'S ELECT ON. Headquarters in the Field, ) September 19, 1SS0. f As I start for Chicago to-morrow I take this opportunity to write. The trip so far has been one continuous ovation. I have been swinging round the circle, leaving the flag and the constitution with the people, and living out of a valise — and my friends — till I begin to yearn for home. It has been my fortune to run into several Garfield meetings during the time that I have been here, and to make short but telling speeches for the Republican candidates. As one of the local papers very truthfully said : " Mr. Xve certainly reaches the very core of the subject matter in his admirable campaign speeches this fall. His commanding appearance and wild, peculiar beauty win the attention of the audience even before he says one word, and when speaking his air of candor and searching truth secures the earnest and prayerful consideration of those before him. He seems to supply a want long felt, and in case of Gar- field's election we have no hesitation in saying that it will be due largely to the scorching truths and heaven-born o-cnius of this remarkable man." It is a novel sensation indeed, after five years of silent suffering in Wyoming, disfranchised and helpless, to mingle in the campaign and give free utterance to the blood-curdling truths that have for years been bottled up in these brain. Perhaps the people here do not deserve it, but they need purification through suffering. I have one Garfield speech that I have used here a number of times with telling effect, and which I shall turn over to the State Central Committee when I go West. 264 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. By taking out the front breadths, turning the overskirt and revising the peroration, it will wear till November easily. I would insert it in this letter only for the fact that it seems rather tame in print, owing to the absence of ges- tures. In my public speaking most everyone who is near me seems to be forcibly struck with my gestures. Hear what the press says. The Minneapolis Tribune, speaking of my wonderful effort, concludes as follows : " Perhaps the most potent weapon of this campaign is the soothing, poetical style of gesture owned and operated by William Nye. In his speech last evening before the Young Men's Republican club, those who were on the fence were harrassed with soul-destroying doubts as to which was most to be feared, the success of an unprincipled Democracy or the frolicsome gestures of the speaker. The general feeling at the close of the speech seemed to be that Minneapolis had never listened to a speech so rich with wild, impetuous and death-dealing gesticulations be- fore." The Stillwater Lumberman says : " The speech last evening was noticeable for its grandeur of conception and the picturesque grace of its calisthentics. The speaker seemed to be largely made up of massive brow and limbs. When he rose and with easy grace unrolled hi, speech and untangled his legs, a general smile seemed t ripple the faces of the immense audience, but when he tool a drink of water and began to make his new style of ges« ture, the mirthful manifestations gave place to a horrible apprehension of danger. Toward the close of the speech when Mr. Nye got warmed up to his work, and seemed to be lost in a wilderness of dissolving limbs, the police inter- fered and prevented the sacrifice of human life," BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 265 The Clear Lake News of the 17th says: " One of the distinguishing features of the meeting held here on Wednesday evening, under the management of the Temple of Honor, was a short speech on temperance by Bill Nye, of Wyoming. " His work in the line of temperance seems to have been mainly that of furnishing the horrible examples, so that young men might avoid the demon of rum. "After the speaker got well under way and began to emphasize his language with some gestures that he has im- ported at great expense for his own use, the congregation seemed at a loss whether it would be best as a matter of safety to flee from intemperance or the death-dealing ges- tures of the speaker. " Mr. Nye to-day gave bonds in the sum of $500 to keep the peace, shipped his gestures to Chicago, and will leave on the first south-bound train." PERILS OF THE BUTTERNUT PICKER. Speaking of trains reminds me that I have been scoot- ing around the country lately on mixed and accommodation trains. They are a good style of conveyance in some respects. For instance, if a man has a car-load of wheat that he wants to run into St. Paul with and sell, he can have it at- tached to the mixed train, and then he can get into the coach and go along with it, and attend to it personally. But where a man's time is worth $9 a moment, as mine is, it is annoying. At first I couldn't get accustomed to it. I couldn't over- 266 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. come my inertia when the car started or stopped, and it kept me worn out all the time apologizing to a corpulent old lady in the third seat from me. Had I been given a lit- tle time to select a lady whose lap I would prefer to sit down in, there were a dozen perhaps in the car more desir- able than this old lady, but in the hurry and agitation I always seemed to select her. Finally the conductor said that kind of business had gone far enough, and he tied me into my seat with a shawl-strap. The train was very long, and when it got under full head- way it was almost impossible to stop it at the various sta- tions. We either stopped out in the country prematurely or passed the station at the rate of nine miles a minute, and then repented and came back. I was Struck with the simi- larity of the first five or six towns on the line and spoke of it to a friend who accompanied me. It seemed to me that Clarksville, Mapleton, Eldorado Junction, Pine Grove and Brookville had been planned by the same architect, but my friend only laughed and showed me that we had been switched and side-tracked for two or three hours at the first-named place. We stopped in the woods once and I went out after but- ternuts. It was a lovely autumn day, and after the thick nutritious air of the car, it was paradise to get out into the forest, where the fresh, sweet odor of the falling leaves was every- where, and the hush of nature's annual funeral checked the thoughtless word and noisy laughter of the invader. I wandered on, thinking of the brevity and comparative unimportance of our human life. How short the race we run, and how unsatisfactory our achievements at last. How like the leaves of the forest we spring forth in the eurly BILL XYE AND BOOMERANG. 267 summer of our existence, nod pleasantly to our fellows a few brief mornings, ?■? ~r\\ turnips and sown my hunting- case summer squashes, and this cow went by trying to con- vey the impression that she was out for a walk. That night the blow fell. The queen of night was high in the blue vault of heaven amid the twinkling stars. All nature was hushed to repose. The people of Laramie were in their beds. So were my hunting-case summer squashes. I heard a stealthy step near the conservatory where my cel- luloid radishes and pickled beets are growing, and I arose. ******* It was a lovely sight. At the head of the procession there was a seal-brown cow with a tail like the handle on a pump, and standing at an angle of forty-five degrees. That was the cow. Following at a rapid gait was a bewitching picture of ala- baster limbs and Gothic joints and Wamsutta muslin night robe. That was me. The queen of night withdrew behind a clowd. 276 BILL. NYE AND BOOMERANG, The vision seemed to break her all up. Bye-and-bye there was a crash, and the seal-brown cow went home carrying the garden gate with her as a kind of keepsake. She had a plenty of garden gates at home in her collection, but she had none of that particular pattern. So she wore it home around her neck. The writer of these lines then carefully brushed the sand off his feet with a pillow sham and retired to rest. When the bright May morn was ushered in upon the busy world the radish and squash bed had melted into chaos and there only remained some sticks of stove wood and the tracks of a cow, interspersed with the dainty little footprints of some Peri or other who evidently stepped about four yards at a lick, and could wear a number nine shoe if neces- sary. Yesterday morning it was very cold, and when I went out to feed my royal self-acting hen, I found this same cow wedged into the hen coop. O, blessed opportunity! O, thrice blessed and long-sought revenge! Now I had her where she could not back out, and I secured a large picket from the fence, and took my coat off, and breathed in a full breath. I did not want to kill her, I simply wanted to make her wish that she had died of mem- branous croup when she was young. While I was spitting on my hands she seemed to catch my idea, but she saw how hopeless was her position. I brought down the picket with the condensed strength and eagerness and wrath of two long, suffering years. It struck the corner of the hen-house. There was a deafening crash and then all was still, save the low, rippling laugh of the cow, as she stood in the alley and encouraged me while I nailed up the hen-house again, BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 277 Looking back over my whole life, it seems to me that it is strewn with nothing but the rugged ruins of my busted anticipations. THE RELENTLESS GARDEN HOSE. It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form and I do not know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week and wearing one of those large floppy sun bonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the Mountains of Hepsidam. Water won't hurt anyone of course if care is used not to forget and drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty about facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross eyed woman that unnerves rne and paralyzes me. Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected where leaden rain and iron hail are thickest, as I would be in my own office writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I hate to be drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dr % y land and have my dying gaze rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a nar- row-gauge mule into convulsions and make him hate him- self to death. 2^8 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG* A WAIL. To -Ike Editor vf the Bass Drum: I appeai to the charity of more favored sister? of the east, who live in an atmosphere of music to throw a crumb of comfort to one who lives in the wilderness and has, in the past ten years, heard positively no music. I want a list of contralto songs for the voice, compass two octaves G, in bass clef to G, above the line, treble. I should also like a list of piano solos, third or fourth grade, the Trauemerei order of music preferred. I will make any compensation desired, and forever bless my friends in need. No Name. It is pretty sad to suffer along for ten years and not hear any music. It must seem dull and quiet, especially to one who has lived in an atmosphere of music. Ten years with no one at hand to churn up the atmosphere occasionally with something extending " from G in bass clef to G above the line treble " is a long while. But here in the " wilder- ness" we have to squeeze along the best way we can. We can't go and hear Ole Bull every two weeks here. Sitting Bull is about as near as we can approximate to the Bull family. It is pretty tough, and there is no denying it. Speaking about crumbs of comfort, however, if " No Name" will drop around to the Bass Drum office, say about 12 130 to-morrow, we will attend to the crumb business. We do not, as a general rule, warble much, but if she will come around at that hour we will trill two or three little olios for " one who lives in the wilderness, and has in the past ten years heard positively no music." If we had known that she was starving along that way without five BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 279 cents' worth of music to lay her jaw to, we would have hunted her up and given her a blast or two. There's nothing mean ahout us. We may be rough and perhaps impulsive at times, but we will never hush our merry lay so long as anybody is suffering. Always come right to us when hungry for music. THE GREAT, HORRID MAN RECEIVETH NEW YEAR CALLS. In my Boudoir, Dec. 20, 1879. New Year's Day will be Leap Year, and the ladies want to make calls. The masculine man will, therefore, have to receive. Some of us will club together at private houses and receive, while others will "hire a hall" and sling a great deal of agony, no doubt. I shall be at home to some extent. I shall wear my organdy, looped up with demi-overskirt of the same, and three-ply lambrequins of Swiss, with corded edges and button-holes of elephant's breath cut plain. My panier is down at the machine shop now and will be done in a few days. I shall be assisted by Superintendent Dick- inson and First Assistant Postmaster General Spalding of the Laramie post-office department, and the grand difficulty will no doubt occur at the residence of the latter. Mr. Dickinson will wear a lavender moire a?itique with all wool underclothes. The costume will be draped on the side with bevel pinions, and looped back with English but- ton-holes, and cut low in the neck. Mr, Spalding will wear a cveam-eolored walking suit with 28o BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. train No. 4. He will also wear buttons with buttonholes to match. Sleeves cut Princesse, with polished elbows of same. Boots plain with cranberry sauce. Brocaded silk overskirt, with lemon sauce. Fifty-three button kids, fastening to the suspenders, open back, with Italian dressing. I give these notes to the reporter in advance, because women are so apt to get these things all mixed up. After we have spent so much time constructing an elaborate ward- robe, we do not wish the journals of the Territory to come out the next day, and make each one of us appear like " a perfect dud." Our table will also look the nicest of any in town. We have designed it ourselves. We have arranged the hose so that we can play it on the dishes after we have used them, and save splashing around in hot water between meals. We intend to feed the first three or four delegations without doing any work on the dishes. After that we will of course have to turn on the hose. Visitors will be made to feel perfectly at home. Callers will be required not to spit on the floor. Parties making calls will not be allowed to throw peanut shells in the card -receiver, or leave their muddy articles on the piano. Callers will please remain seated while the frigid sustenance is circulated. No stand- ing callers allowed. Standing collars are going out of style anyhow. JUST THE THING. Office of The Twilight Bumble Bee. We have just received a copy of the Nebraska Staats Zeitung- Tribune, a hiee little eight page German papery BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. 281 published at Grand Island, Nebraska. We have not read it all through yet, but it is a mighty good paper. We do not understand much German. W r e are a little rusty. " Zwei o-lass laeer " is about all the German we know, and that fc> o isn't very pure. But this paper we like. There is a tone about it that seems to indicate a lofty conception of true journalism. A noble ambition to cope with vice and the prevailing errors of the day, and to conquer ignorance and wrong. As we said before, there are a great many things in the paper which we fail to quite " catch on " to, owing to our igno- rance of the German language, but there is a picture of a cook stove on the eighth page that is first-rate. It is in the English language. There is also a picture of a wind mill, in fractured English, on the same page. It is very correct in its sentiment, and we endorse it. In conclusion we will say that from what we have seen of this paper, we are prepared to say that it meets a want long felt. It is pure in tone, noble in politics, fearless in its attack upon the popular shortcomings of the day, and well deserving of the hearty approval of the public. THANKS. M. E. Post, M. C, of Cheyenne, will please accept our thanks for an indestructible pumpkin pie, presented on the 9th inst. It is the most durable pie that we ever wrestled with. Probably it was not picked early enough and got too ripe. It is the first genuine cane-bottomed pie, with patent dust damper and niekle-plated movement that we have 282 BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. tasted since we came west. He says it was raised on the Laramie plains. If this be true, we have opened up before us another resource of which we may be justly proud. We have valuable marble quarries, but marble may be cracked and broken. We also have mountains of iron and leads of valuable quartz, but all these must yield to the superior strength of man. This style of pie, however, will defy the power of mortal ingenuity, and withstand the effacing finger of time. Men may come and men may go but this pie will last forever. We make bold to say that when Cv^ric: sounds the proclamation that time is no more, this blasted pie will stand up without a blush and say : " Here, Gabriel, is where you get your nice, fresh pie, and don't you forget it, either." AN ANTI-MORMON TOWN. A Mormon missionary turned himself loose in Rawlins the other night and attempted to proselyte the good people into getting another invoice of wives to assist in taking off the chill of the approaching winter; but there was a feeling in the audience that the man who represented the church of the Latter Day Saints was a little off in addressing them, so they went to a dealer in old and rare antiquities and pur- chased some eggs that had a smell which is peculiar to eggs that have yielded to the infirmities of age. The Rawlins people raised the windows on the sides of the building and broke eleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many hens were not feeling well* Bill ttYE An + d Boomerang. 283 They broke them against the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets over his white lawn tie and boiled shii Rawlins is not strictly a Mormon town, and the lecturer who took some clothes through in a valise the other day bound for Evanston, where he could get them washed, was arrested by a New York detective who was sure he had at last caught the man who had Stewart's body. A CHRISTMAS RIDE IN JULY. I've just returned from a long ride to the Soda Lakes. The ride reminded me of a tour I took in July from Lara- mie over to Cheyenne, two years ago. We had experienced the pleasure of riding over the mountain, on the Union Pacific train, and had held our breath while crossing Dale Creek bridge, and viewed with wonder the broken billows of granite, lying here and there at the tip-top of the mighty divide. But some one had said that it was nothing com- pared with the mirth-provoking trip by carriage across the mountains, over a fine wagon road to Cheyenne. In the morning I nearly melted riding up the sandy can yon, and took off my coat and gliding pleasantly along- alternately sang one or two low throbs of melody, and alternately swore about the extreme heat. When we got nearly to the top, I thought it didn't look well for a man to whom the American people look for so much in the future, to be riding along the public highway without his coat, so I put it on. At the top of the mountain I put on a linen duster and gloves. Shortly after that I put 284 BILL NVfi AND BOOMERANG. on my overshoes and a sealskin cap. Later, I put on my buffalo overcoat, and got out and ran behind the carriage to keep warm. When I got to Cheyenne, the Doctor looked me over and said that he could save my feet because they had so much vitality, and were in such a good state of preservation ; but my ears — my pride and glory — the ears that I had defended through the newspapers for years, and had stood up for when all about was dark — they had to go That is, part of them had to go, and there was enough left to hear with; but the ornamental scallops and box plait- ing, and frills, the wainscoating, and royal Corinthian entabla- tures had to go. EXAMINING THE BRAND ON A FROZEN STEER. A stock owner went out the other day over the divide to see how his cattle were standing the rigorous weather, and found a large, fine steer in his last long sleep. The stockman had to roll him over to see the brand, and he has regretted his curiosity ever since. He told me that the brand looked to him like a Roman candle making about 2,000 revolutions per moment, and with 1S7 more prismatic colors than he thought were in existence. Sometimes a steer is not dead but in a cold, sleepy stupor which precedes death, and when stirred up a little and irritated because he cannot die without turning over and showing his brand, he musters his remaining strength and kicks the inquisitive stockman so high that he can see and recognize the features of departed friends. That was the way it happened on this fciLL NYE AND BOOMERANG 285 occasion. The stockman fell in the branches of a pine tree on Jack Creek, not dead but very thoughtful. He said he was near enough to hear the rush of wings, and was just going to register and engage a room in ih- New Jerusalem when he returned to consciousness. ONION PEELIN'S. The Chinese agriculturalist does his hair up in a Frencli twist because he don't want to have his cue cumber the ground. Almost every day there is a new liver pad or lung pad or kidney pad, but in its way nothing has succeeded in giving instant relief like the Leadville foot pad. A man can scratch his back against a hat rack or a what- not for a yeat 0/ two, and attribute it to buckwheat cakes, but after he has fe one on this way for about seven years, the public and his friends begin to lose faith in him. A handsome competence is in store for the man who will invent a neat, durable *nd portable pie opener that will sue- cessfully reach the true mwardness of the average box-toed, Bessemer steel, gooseberry pie which the hired girl casts in her kitchen foundry. Along the dreary pathway of this cloud-environed life oi ours there is no joy so pure, no triumph so complete, no success so fraught with rapture, as that of the female artiste who hangs on the flying trapeze by her chilblain and kisses her hand to the perspiring throng. It is not the disheartening sense of failure alone which 286 SILL NYE AND BOOMERANG. makes a man swear in the stilly night, nor yet the fact that he has slapped his alabaster limb harder • than he needed to, but it is the trifling and heartless way in which the mosquito kisses his hand to the audience, and soars away humming a Tyrolean lay. Putting up stovepipe is easy enough, if you only go at it right. In the morning, breakfast on some light, nutritious diet, and drink too cups of hot coffee. After which put on a suit of old clothes — or new ones if you can get them on time — put on an old pair of buckskin gloves, and when every thing is ripe for the fatal blow, go and get a good hardware man who understands his business. If this rule be strictly adhered to, the gorgeous eighteen-karat-stem-winding pro- fanity of the present day may be very largely diminished, and the world made better. It is strange that the human heait is so easily influenced by the change of seasons, and although spring succeeds winter, and summer follows upon the heels of spring, just as it did centuries ago, yet the transition from one to the other is ever new and pleasing, and the bosom is gladdened with the cheering assurance of spring, or the promise of the com- ing summer time, with its wealth of golden days, its cucum- bers and vinegar, its green corn, its string beans, its base- ball, its mammoth circus, its fragrant flowers, and its soda water flavored with syrup from a long-necked, wicker- covered bottle, just as it was in the days of Pharoah, and Hannibal, and Andrew Jackson. POPULAR BOOKS SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE OF BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., CHICAGO AND NEW YORK. Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union, Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, Seward, Gen. Thomas, etc., with new portraits. 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