• • • t t 1 1 .• • • I* • ». t '^^"•'"-— — ~»iiii '"^ommimaam^u REMARKB BY BIIaK NYE. (EDGAR W. NYE.> Ah Sin was his name; And I shall not deny, In regard to the same, What the name might imply: Ikit his smile it was pensive and childlike, As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye. — Bret 1 1 arte. l7ITJi OVER ONE IR'XDRED AXD FIFTY IIJA'STRATIONS, B^■ J. H. SMITH. NEW YORK CITY: THE M. W. HAZEN COMPANY, 64 and 66 W. Twenty-Third St., 18S7. COPYRIGHT l8S6, By EDGAR W. NYE, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DIRECTIONS. ii 'HIS book is not designed specially for any one class of people. It is for all. It is a ivf^ universal repository of thought. Some of my best thoughts are contained in this Y^ book. Whenever I would think a thought that I thought had better remain unthought, I would omit it from this book. For that reason the book is not so large as I had in- '^'g tended. When a man coldly and dispassionately goes at it to eradicate from his work all that may not come up to his standard of merit, he can make a large volume shrink till it is no thicker than the bank book of an outspoken clergyman. This is the fourth book that I have published in response to the clamorous appeals of the public. WTienever the public got to clamoring too loudly for a new book from me and it got so noisy that I could not ignore it any more, I would issue another volume. The first was a red book, succeeded by a dark blue volume, after which I published a green book, all of which were kindly received by the American people, and, under the present yielding system of inter- national copyright, greedily snapped up by some of the tottering dynasties. But I had long hoped to publish a larger, better and, if possible, a redder boolc than the first; one that would contain my better thoughts, thoughts that I had thought when I was feel- ing well ; thoughts that I had emitted while my thinker was rearing up on its hind feet, if I may be allowed that term; thoughts that sprang forth with a wild whoop and demanded recog- nition. This book is the result of that hope and that wish. It is my greatest and best book. It is the one that will live for weeks after other books have passed away. Even to those who can- not read, it will come like a benison when there is no benison in the house. To the ignorant, the pictures will be pleasing. The wise will revel in its wisdom, and the housekeeper will find that with it she may easily emphasize a statement or kill a cockroach. The range of subjects treated in this book is wonderful, even to me. It is a library of uni- versal knowledge, and the facts contained in it are different from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As a result, I aiii al)le to come before the people Avith a set of new and attractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word would wither them in a moment. I believe there is nothing more to add, except that I most heartily endorse the book. It has been carefully read over by the proof-reader and myself, so we do not ask the public to do anything that we were not willing to do ourselves. ^g" I cannot be responsible for the board of orphans whose parents read this book and leave their children in destitute circumstances. BILL NYE. Hudson, Wis., November 1, 1886. CONTENTS. About Geoloj]ry 201 About Portraits 111 A Bright Future for Pugilism 458 Absent Minded -- 296 A Calm. ---- 276 Accepting the Laramie Postoffice 161 A Circular 373 A Collection of Keys 383 A Convention 407 A Father's Advice to his Son 89 A Father's Letter 21 A Goat in a Frame 495 A Great Spiritualist 369 A Great Upheaval — 78 A Journalistic Tenderfoot 162 A Letter of Regrets 468 All AlKmt Menials 491 All About Oratory 356 Along Lake Superior 97 A Lumber Camp 146 A Mountain Snowstorm. 391 Anatomy 27 Anecdotes of Justice 363 Anecdotes of the Stage 430 A New Autograph Albuiu 178 A New Play 412 An Operatic Entertainment 154 Answering an Invitation 476 Answers to Correspondents 401 A Peaceable Man 268 A Picturesque Picnic 289 A Powerful Speech 493 Archimedes 23 A Resign.... 180 Arnold Winkelreid 197 Asking for a Pass 210 A Spencerian Ass - 301 Astronomy 125 A Thrilling Experience 131 A Wallubi Night 204 B. Franklin, Deceased 57 Biography of Spartacus ... 271 Boston Common and Environs 332 Broncho Sam 43 Bunker Hill 143 Care of Hoiise Plants 265 Catching a Buffalo 134 Causes for Thanksgiving 302 Chinese Justice 399 Christopher Columbus 159 Coiue Back 409 Concerning Book Publishing 274 Concerning Coroners... 50 Cro^\^ls and Crowned Heads. 352 Daniel Webster 485 Dessicated Mule 345 Dogs and Dog Days 157 Doosedly Dilatory 307 " Done It A-Purpose " 234 Down East Rum 53 Dr. Dizart's Dog 396 Drunk in a Plug Hat 334 E-irly Day Justice 440 Eccentricities of Genius 502 Eccentricity in Lunch 91 Etiquette at Hotels 341 Every Man His Own Paper-Hanger 311 Extracts fiom a Queen's Diary 385 Farming in Maine 305 Favored a Higher Fine 225 Fifteen Years Apart .-- 343 Flying Machines 207 General Sheridan's Horse 371 George the Third -- 433 (vii) Vlll CONTENTS. Great Sacrifice of Bric-a-Brac 405 Habits of a Literary Man... _ 19 "Heap Brain" 258 History of Babylon 189 Hours With Great Men 48 How Evolution Evolves.. 45 In Ackuowledtrment 106 Insomnia in Domestic Animals 94 In Washin-jtou 172 "I Spy" 227 I Tried Milliuf? 1(X) John Adams 137 John Adams' Diary 251 John Adams' Diary, (No. 2,) 254 John Adams' Diary, (No. 3,) 256 Knife'htsof the Pen 117 Letter from New York 3"/) Letter to a Communist 324 Life Insurance as a Health Restorer 61 Literary Freaks.- _ 87 Lost Money 393 Lovely Horrors _ 192 Man Overbored 232 Mark Antony ._ 229 Milling in Pompeii.. 40 ISIodern Architecture 321 More Paternal Correspondence 65 Mr. Sweeney's Cat 30 Miirray and the Mormons 199 Mush and Melody 185 My Dog 287 My Experience as an Agriculturist 175 My Lecture Abroad 149 My Mine 183 My Physician 354 My School Days 11 Nero 242 No More Frontier _ 466 On Cyclones 71 One Kind of Fool. 249 Our Forefathers 103 Parental Advice 438 Petticoats at the Polls, 453 Picnic Incidents 238 Plato. 447 Polygamy as a Religious Duty 418 Preventing a Scandal 109 Railway Etiqtiette 55 Recollections of Noah Webster 13 Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss... 317 Roller Skating....' 464 Rosalinde 379 Sec6nd Letter to the President 37 She Kind of Coaxed Him 473 Shorts 387 Sixty Minutes in America 314 Skimming the Milky Way 125 Somnambulism and Crime 319 Spinal Meningitis 122 Spring 337 Squaw Jim 245 Squaw Jim's Religion 247 Stirring Incidents at a Fire 220 Strabismus and Justice 359 Street Cars and Curiosities 479 Taxidermy 291 The Amateur Carpenter 165 The Approaching Humorist 260 The Arabian Language 73 The Average Hen 167 The Bite of a Mad Dog... 195 The Blase Young Man 187 The Board of Trade 215 The Cell Nest.... _ 436 The Chinese God.... 366 The Church Debt 380 The Cow Boy 217 The Crops 84 The Duke of Rawhide 339 The Expensive Word - 450 The Heyday of Life... 33 The Holy Terror 329 The Indian Orator.... 443 The Little Barefoot Boy 223 The Miner at Home 151 The Newspaper 421 The Old South 114 The Old Subscriber 282 The Opium Habit 63 The Photograph Habit. 376 The Poor BhTid Pig. 482 The Sedentary Hen 456 The Silver Dollar. _ 415 The Snake Indian 461 CONTENTS. IX The Story of a Struggler 279 The Wail of a Wife 140 The Warrior's Oration 327 The Ways of Doctors 293 The Weeping Woman _ 81 The Wild Cow 120 They Fell 35 Time's Changes 347 To a Married Man. 496 To an Embryo Poet-- 499 To Her Majesty 15 To the President-Elect 25 Twombley's Tale- 68 Two Ways of Telling It 488 Venice 471 Verona 75 "We" 389 What We Eat. 202 Woman's Wonderful Influence 298 Woodtick William's Story 169 Words About W ashington 213 Wrestling With the Mazy 428 " You Heah Me, Sah ! " 445 /T\y Sef^ool Days. ^1 OOKING over my own school days, there are so many things that 1 ^ would rather not tell, that it will take very little time and sjjace for me to use in telling what I am willing that the carping public should know a '^~" about my early history. I began my educational career in a log school house. Finding that other great men had done that way, I began early to look around me for a log scliool house where I could begin in a small way to soak my system full of hurtl words and information. For a time I learned very rapidly. Learning came to me with very little effort at first. I would read my lesson over once or twice and then take my place in the class. It never bothered me to recite my lesson and so I stood at the head of the class. I could stick my big toe through a knot-hole in the floor and work out the most difficult problem. This became at last a habit with me. With my knot-hole I was safe, without it I would hesitate. A large red-headed boy, with feet like a summer squash and eyes like those of a dead codfish, was my rival. He soon discovered that I was very dependent on that knot-hole, and so one night he stole into the school house and plugged up the knot-hole, so that I could not work my toe into it and thus refresh my memory. Then the large red-headed boy, who had not formed the knot-hole habit, went to the head of the class and remained there. After I gi"ew larger, my parents sent me to a military school. That is where I got the fine military learning and stately carriage that I still wear. My room was on the second floor, and it was very difficult for me to leave it at night, l)ecause the turnkey locked us up at o'clock every evening. Still, I used to get out once in a while and wander around in the starlight. I do (11) 12 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. not kuow yet why I did it, but I presume it was a kind of somnambulism. I would go to bed thinking so intently of my lessons that I would get up and wander away, sometimes for miles, in the solemn night. One niglit I awoke and found myself in a watermelon patch. I was never so ashamed in my life. It is a very serious thing to be awakened so rudely out of a sound sleep, by a bull dog, to find yourself in the watermelon vine- yard of a man with whom you are not acquainted. I was not on terms of social intimacy with this man or his dog. They did not belong to our set. We had never been thrown together before. After that I was called the great somnambulist and men who had water- melon conservatories shunned me. But it cured me of my somnambulism. I have never tried to somnambule any more since that time. There are other little incidents of my schooldays that come trooping up in my memory at this moment, but they were not startling in their nature. Mine is but the history of one who struggled on year after year, trying to do bet- ter, but most always failing to connect. The boys of Boston would do well to study carefully my record and then — do differently. I^^' ^ relative to the habits, hours of work, and style and frequency of feed •^ylji^l adopted by literary men, and several parties having responded who ^ were no more essentially saturated with literature than I am, I now take my pen in hand to reveal the true inwardness of my literary life, so that boys, who may yearn to follow in my footsteps and wear a laurel wreath the year round in place of a hat, may know what the personal habits of a literary party are. I rise from bod the first thing in the morning, leaving my couch not because I am dissatisfied with it, but because I cannot carry it with me during the day. I then seat myself on the edge of the bed and devote a few moments to thought. Literary men who have never set aside a few moments on rising for thought will do well to try it. I then insert myself into a pair of middle-aged pantaloons. It is needless to say that girls who may have a literary tendency will find little to interest them here. Other clothing is added to the above from time to time. I then bathe myself. Still this is not absolutely essential to a literary life. Others who do not do so have been equally successful. Some literary people bathe before dressing. I then go down stairs and out to the barn, where I feed the horse. Some literary men feel above taking care of a horse, because there is really nothing in common between the care of a horse and literature, but simplicity is my Avatchword. T. Jefferson would have to rise early in the day to eclipse me in simplicity. I wish I had as many dollars as I have got simplicity. I then go in to breakfast. This meal consists almost wholly of food. I am passionately fond of food, and I may truly say, Avith my hand on my heart, that I owe much of my great success in life to this inward craving, this constant yearning for something better. During this meal I frequently converse with my family. I do not feel above my family; at least, if I do, I try to conceal it as much as possible. Buckwheat pancakes in a heated state, with maple syrup on the upper side, are extremely conducive to literature. Nothing jerks the mental faculties around with greater rapidity than buckwheat pancakes. (19) 20 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. After breakfast tlie time is put in to good advantage looking forward to the time Avhen dinner will be ready. From 8 to 10 A. M., however, I frequently retire to my private library hot-bed in the hay mow, and write 1,200 words in my forthcoming book, the price of which will be $2.50 in cloth and $4 with Russia back. I then play Copenhagen with some little girls 21 years of age, who live near by, and of whom I am passionately fond. After that I dig some worms, with a view to angling. I then angle. After this I return home, waiting until dusk, however, as I do not like to attract attention. Nothing is more distasteful to a truly good man of wonderful liter- ary acquirements, and yet with singular modesty, than the coarse and rude scrutiny of the vulger herd. In winter I do not angle. I read the "Pirate Prince" or the "Missourian's Mash," 6r some other work, not so much for the plot as the style, that I may get my mind into correct channels of thought. I then play " old sledge" in a rambling sort of manner. I sometimes spend an evening at home, in order to excite remark and draw attention to my wonderful eccentricity. I do not use alcohol in any form, if I know it, though sometimes I am basely deceived by those who know of my peculiar prejudice, and who do it, too, because they enjoy watching my odd and amusing antics at the time. Alcohol should be avoided entirely by literary workers, especially young women. There can be no more pitiable sight to the . tender hearted, than a young woman of marked ability writing an obituary poem while under the influence of liquor. I knew a young man who was a good writer. His penmanship was very good, indeed. He once ^vrote an article for the press while under the influence of liquor. He sent it to the editor, who returned it at once with a cold and cruel letter, every line of which was a stab. The letter came at a time when he was full of remorse. He tossed up a cent to see whether he should blow out his brains or go into the ready-made clothing business. The coin decided that he should die by his own hand, but his head ached so that he didn't feel like shooting into it. So he went into the ready-made clothing business, and now he pays taxes on ST5,000, so he is probably worth $150,000. This, of course, salves over his wounded heart, but he often says to me that he might have been in the literary business to-day if he had let liquor alone. f\ patl7er's l^etter. 4^^v^^Y DEAE SON. — Your letter of last week readied us yesterday, and > I \ \f ^ enclose $13, which is all I have by me at the present time. I r / _ V may sell the other shote next week and make up the balance of what you wanted. I will probably have to wear the old buffalo overcoat to meetings again this winter, but that don't matter so long as you are getting an education. I hope you will get your education as cheap as you can, for it cramps your mother and me like Sam Hill to put up the money. Mind you, I don"t com- plain. I knew education come high, but I didn't know the clothes cost so like sixty. I want you to be so that you can go anywhere and spell the hardest word. I want you to be able to go among the Romans or the Medes and Persians and talk to any of them in their own native tongue. I never had any advantages when I was a boy, but your mother and I de- cided that we would sock you full of knowledge, if your liver held out, regard- less of expense. We calculate to do it, only we want you to go as slow on swallow- tail coats as possible till we can sell our hay. Now, regarding that boat-paddling suit, and that baseball suit, and that bathing suit, and ihat roUer-rinktum suit, and that lawn-tennis suit, mind, I don't care about the expense, because you say a young man can't really edu- cate himself thoroughly without them, but I wish you'd send home v/hat you get through with this fall and I'll wear them through the winter under my other clothes. We have a good deal severer Avinters here than we used to, or else I'm failing in bodily health. Last winter I tried to go through Avithout under- clothes, the way I did when I was a boy, but a Manitoba wave came down our way and picked me out of a crowd with its eyes shet. In your last letter you alluded to getting injured in a little "hazing scuffle with a pelican from the rural districts." I don't Avant any harm to come to you, my son, but if I Avent from the rural districts, and another young gosling from the rural districts undertook to haze me, I Avould meet him when the sun (21) 22 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. goes down, and I would swat liim across the back of the neck with a fence board, and then I would meander across the pit of his stomach and put a blue forget-me-not under his eye. Your father aint much on Grecian mythology and how to get the square root of a barrel of pork, but he wouldn't allow any educational institutions to RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. haze him with impunity. Perhaps you remember once when you tried to haze your father a little, just to kill time, and how long it took you to recover. Anybody that goes at it right can have a good deal of fun with your father, but those who have sought to monkey with him, just to break up the monotony of life, have most always succeeded in finding what they sought. I ain't much of a pensman, so you will have to excuse this letter. We are all quite well, except old Fan, who has a galded shoulder, and hope this will find you enjoying the same great blessing. Your Father. /^ref?i/T\ede8. I^^KCHIMEDES, whose given name has been accidentally torn off and *\u yMf swallowed up in oblivion, was born in Syracuse, 2,171 years ago last lllkA^ spring. He was a philosopher and mathematical expert. During his -'^^^ life he was never successfully stumped in figures. It ill befits nie now, standing by his new-made grave, to say aught of him that is not of praise. We can only mourn his untimely death, and wonder which of our little band of great men will be the next to go. Archimedes was the first to originate and use the word "Eureka." It has been successfully used very much lately, and as a result we have the Eureka baking powder, the Eureka suspender, the Eureka bed-bug l)uster, the Eureka shirt, and the Eureka stomach bitters. Little did Archimedes wot, when he invented this term, that it would come into such general use. Its origin has been explained before, but it would not be out of place here for me to tell it as I call it to mind now, looking back over Archie's eventful life. King Iliero had ordered an eighteen karat crown, size 7^-, and, after receiv- ing it from the hands of the jeweler, suspected that it had been adulterated. He therefore applied to Archimedes to ascertain, if possible, whether sucli was the case or not. Archimedes liatl just got in on No. 3, two hours late, and covered with dust. He at once started for a hot ajul cold bath emporium on Sixteenth street, meantime wondering how the dickens he would settle that crown business. He filled the bath-tub level full, and, ])iliiig up his raiment on the floor, jumped in. Displacing a large (pinntity of water, ec^ual to his own bulk, he thereupon solved the question of specific gravity, and, forgetting his bill, for- getting his clothes, he sailed up Sixteenth street and all over Syracuse, clothed in shimmering sunlight and a plain gold ring, shouting "'Eureka!" He ran head-first into a Syracuse policeman and howled "Eureka!" The policeman said: " You'll have to excuse me; I don't know him." He scattered the Syr- (23) 24 REMAllKS BY BILL NYE. acuse Normal school on its way home, and tried to board a Fifteenth street bob-tail car, yelling "Eureka!" The car-cMver told him that Eureka wasn't on the car, and referred Archimedes to a clothing store. Everywhere he was greeted with surprise. He tried to pay his car-fare, but found that he had left his money in his other clothes. Some thought it was the revised statute of Hercules; that he had become weary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had started out for fresh air. I give this as I remember it. The story is foundered on fact. Archimedes once said: "Give me where I may stand, and I will move the world." I could write it in the original Greek, but, fearing that the nonpareil delirium tremens type might get ^ort, I give it in the English language. It may be tardy justice to a great mathematician and scientist, but I have a few resolutions of respect which I would be very glad to get printed on this solemn occasion, and mail copies of the paper to his relatives and friends: "Whekeas, It has pleased an All-wise Providence to remove from our midst Archimedes, who was ever at the fi'ont in all deserving labors and enter- prises; and "Whereas, We can but feebly express our great sorrow in the loss of Archimedes, whose front name has escaped our memory ; therefore " Resolved, That in his death we have lost a leading citizen of Syracuse, and one who never shook his friends — never weakened or gigged back on those he loved. '■'Resolved, That copies of these resolutions will be spread on the moments of the meeting of the Common Council of Syracuse, and that they be published in the Syracuse papers eodtfpdq&cod, and that marked copies of said papers be mailed to the relatives of the deceased." 5o t^e pre5ide9t-^I<^et. „ «vEAB SIR. — The painful duty of turiiiiiir over to you the administration Vn of these United States and the key to the front door of the White House has been assigned to ni.?. You will find the key haiT^ii;"- inside "^^ tne storm-door, and the cistern-pole up stairs in the haymow of the bam, I have made a great many suggestions to the outgoing administration relative to the transfer of the Indian bureau from the department of the Interior to that of the sweet by-and-by. The Indian, I may say, has been a great source of annoyance to me, several of their num- ber having jumped one of my most valuable mining claims on White river. Still, I do not complain of that. This mine, however, I am convinced would be a good paying property if properly worked, and should you at any time wish to take the regular army and such other help as you may need and re-cap- ture it from our red brothers, I would bo glad to give you a controlling inter- est in it. You will find all papers in their ap- propriate pigeon-holes, and a small jar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which you will be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that were the immedi- ate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are now all buried. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your own. They are none too good for you. You deserve them. AVe may differ politically, but that need not interfere with our warm personal friendship. (25) A DEAllTH OF SOAP IN THE LAUNDRY AND 15ATH-H00M. 26 REMARKS BY BILL NYE, Toil will observe on taking possession of the administration, that tlie navy is a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that it be newly painted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to receive a majority of the suffrages of the people for the office which you now hold, I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not influence you in the course which you may see fit to adopt. Tliere are many aflfairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in this brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity about appear- ing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein the public might charge me with interference. I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whatever your convictions may be upon great questions of national interest, either for- eign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out the gas on retiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond anticipations which are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people whose aggregated eye is now on to you. Bill Nye. P. S. — You will be a little surprised, no doubt, to find no soap in the laun- dry or bath-rooms. It probably got into the campaign in some way and was absorbed. B. N. /^Qatomy. y HE word anatomy is derived from two Greek spatters and three poly. wogs, which, when translated, signify "up through" and "to cut," so that anatomy actually, when translated from the original wappy- ""^ jawed Greek, means to cut up through. That is no doubt the reason why the medical student proceeds to cut up through the entire course. Anatomy is so called because its best results are obtained from the cutting or dissecting of organism. For that reason there is a growing demand in the neigh- borhood of the medical college for good second-hand organisms. Parties having well presei*ved organisms that they are not actually using, will do well to call at the side door of the medical college after 10 P.M. The branch of the comparative anat- omy which seeks to trace the unities of plan which are exhibited in diverse or- ganisms, and which discovers, as far as may be, the principles which govern the growth and development of organized bodies, and which finds functional analo- \ V^ 7/! Wlln'j^^' ^—t-^^^ ^^^^ ^^^'^^ structural homologies, is denom- ' "^ - -_.... iuated philosopliical or transcendental anatomy. ( This statement, though strictly true, is not original with me. ) Careful study of the human organism after death, shows traces of functional analogies and structural homologies in people who were supposed to have been in perfect health all their lives. (27) STUDYING ANATOMY. 28 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Probably many of those we meet in tlie daily walks of life, many, too, who wear a smile and outwardly seem ha|)py, have either one or both of these things. A man may live a false life and deceive his most intimate friends in the matter of anatomical analogies or homologies, but he cannot conceal it from the eagle eye of the medical student. The ambitious medical student makes a specialty of true inwardness. The study of the structure of animals is called zootomy. The attempt to study the anatomical structure of the grizzly bear from the inside has not been crowned with success. When the anatomizer and the bear have been thrown together casually, it has generally been a struggle between the two organisms to see which would make a study of the structure of the other. Zootomy and moral suasion are not homogeneous, analogous, nor indigenous. Vegetable anatomy is called phytonomy, sometimes. But it would not be safe to address a vigorous man by that epithet. "VVe may call a vegetable that, however, and be safe. Human anatomy is that branch of anatomy which enters into the description of the structure and geographical distribution of the elements of a human being. It also applies to the structure of the microbe that crawls out of jail every four years just long enough to whip his wife, vote and go back again. Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical. These terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals, specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, but really mean something else. I would explain here what they actually do mean if I had more room and knew enough to do it. Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, into fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles, angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or department of the interior, and so on. People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomy on subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but they are productive of insomnia, so I will not give them. I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have not been there since. When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it in the dissectinj'-room of a larije and flourishinjj medical collejje does not occur o o o o to me. I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no hesitation ANATOMY. 29 about mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting up other nation- alities. I should always fear, while pursuing ray studies, that I might be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do that. I should like to do any- thing that would advance the cause of science, but I should n(jt want to form the habit of dissecting people, lest some day I might be called upon to dissect a friend for who2n I had a great attachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me. /r\r. Su;ee9ey'5 Qat. g,,^OBEKT OEMSBY SWEENEY is a druggist of St. Paul, and though 3 a recent chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descend- ";),\\\( ant of a sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood in his veins that dates back where kings used to have some- thing to do to earn their salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling drugs at the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in order to place their goods within the reach of all. As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told him that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that as it hadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally wear it out. He is a mighty pleasant man to meet, anyhow, and you can have just as much fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in his veins. You could be with him for days on a fishing trip and never notice it at all. But I Avas going to speak more in particular about Mr. Sweeney's cat. Mr. Sweeney had a large cat, named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very fond. Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was known all over St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker took in the town after ofiice houi's, nobody seemed to know anything about it. She would be around bright and cheerful the next morning and attend to her duties at the store just as though nothing whatever had happened. One day last summer Mr. Sweeney left a large plate of fly-paper with water on it in the window, hoping to gather in a few quarts of flies in a de- ceased state. Dr. Mary Walker used to go to this window during the after- noon and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasant memories of her past life. That afternoon she thought she would call up some more memories, so she went over on the counter and from there jumped dov/ii on the window-sill, landing with all four feet in the plate of fly-paper. (30) MR. SWEENEY S CAT. 31 At first she regarded it as a joke, and treated the matter very lightly, hut later on she observed that the fly-paper stuck to her feet with great tenacity o£ purpose. Those who have never seen the look of surprise and deep sorrow that a cat wears when she finds herself glued to a whole sheet of fly-paper, cannot fully appreciate the way Dr. Mary Walker felt. She did not dash wildly through a $150 plate-glass window, as some cats would have done. She controlled herself and acted in the coolest manner, though you could have seen that men- tally she suffered intensely. She sat down a moment to more fully outline a plan for the future. In doing so, she made a great mistake. The gesture AT FIRST SHE REGARDED IT AS A JOKE. resulted in gluing the fly-paper to her person in such a way that the edge turned up behind in the most abrupt manner, and caused her great incon- venience. Some one at that time laughed in a coarse and heartless way, and I wish you could have seen the look of pain that Dr. Mary Walker gave him. Then she went away. She did not go around the prescription case as the rest of us did, but strolled through the middle of it, and so on out through the glass door at the rear of the store. We did not see her go through the glass door, but we found pieces of fly-paper and fur on the ragged edges of a large aperture in the glass, and we kind of jumped at the conclusion that Dr. Mary Walker had taken that direction in retiring from the room. 32 REMAllKS BY BILL NYE. Dr. Mary Walkor never retiirjuMl to 8t. Paul, and her exact whereabouts are not known, thougli every ejffiort was made to find her. Fragments of fly- paper and hrindle liair were found as far west as the Yellowstone National Park, and as far north as the British line, but the doctor herself was not found. My own theory is, that if she turned her bow to the west so as to catch the strong easterly gale on her quarter, with the sail she had set and her tail point- ing directly toward the zenith, the chances for Dr. Mary Walker's immediate return are extremely slim. Jf?e j^eyday of l^ife. HERE will always be a slight difference in the opin- ions of the young and the mature, relative to the general plan on which the solar system should be operated, no doubt. There are also points of disa- greement in other matters, and it looks as though there always would be. To the young the future has a more roseate hue. The roseate hue comes high, but we have to use it in this place. To the young there spreads out across the horizon a glorious range of possibilities. After the youth has endorsed for an intimate friend a few times, and purchased the paper at the bank himself later on, the horizon won't seem to horizon so tumultuously as it did aforetime. I remember at one time of purchasing such a piece of accom- modation paper at a bank, and I still have it. I didn't need it any more than a cat needs eleven tails at one and the same time. Still tlie bank made it an object for me, and I secured it. Such things as these harshly knock the flush and bloom ofp the cheek of youth, and prompt us to turn the strawberry-box bottom side up before we purchase it. Youth is gay and hopeful, age is covered with experience and scars where the skin has been knocked off and had to grow on again. To the young a dol- lar looks large and strong, but to the middle-aged and the old it is weak and inefficient. When we are in the heyday and fizz of existence, we believe everything ; but after awhile we murmur: " AVhat's that you are givin' us," or words of like character. Age brings caution and a lot of shop-worn experience, purchased at the highest market price. Time brings vain regrets and wisdom teeth that can be left in a glass of water over night. Still we should not repine. If people would repine less and try liarder to get up an appetite by persweating in someone's vineyard at so much per diem, (33) 34 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. it would be better. The American people of late years seem to have a deeper and deadlier repugnance for mannish industry, and there seems to be a grow- ing opinion that our crops are riiore abundant when saturated with foreign perspiration. European sweat, if I may be allowed to use such a low term, is very good in its place, but the native-born Duke of Dakota, or the Earl of York State should remember that the matter of perspiration and posterity should not be left solely to the foreigner. There are too many Americans who toil not, neither do they spin. They would be willing to have an office foisted upon them, but they would rather blow their so-called brains out than to steer a pair of large steel-gray mules from day to day. They are too proud to hoe corn, for fear some great man will ride by and see the termination of their shirts extending out through the seats of their pantaloons, but they are not too proud to assign their shattered finances to a friend and their shattered remains to the morgue. Pride is all right if it is the right kind, but the pride that prompts a man to kill his mother, because she at last refuses to black his boots any more, is an erroneous pride. The pride that induces a man to muss up the carpet with his brains because there is nothing left for him to do but to labor, is the kind that Lucifer had when he bolted the action of the convention and went over to the red-hot minority. Youth is the spring-time of life. It is the time to acquire information, so that we may show it ofp in after years and paralyze people with what we know. The wise youth will "lay Ioav" till he gets a whole lot of knowledge, and then in later days turn it loose in an abrupt manner. He will guard against tell- ing what he knows, a little at a time. That is unwise. I once knew a youth who wore himself out telling people all he knew fi'om day to day, so that when he became a bald-headed man he was utterly exhausted and didn't have any- thing left to tell anyone. Some of the things that we know should be saved for our own use. The man who sheds all his knowledge, and don''t leave enough to keep house with, fools himself. Jl?ey pell. n Wf'WO delegates to the General Convocation of the Sons of Ice Water „v^ were sitting in the lobby of the "Windsor, in the city of Denver, not L ; long ago, strangers to each other and to everybody else. One came ^ from Huerferno county, and the other was a delegate from the Ice Water Encampment of Correjos county. From the beautiful billiard hall came the sharp rattle of ivory balls, and in the bar-room there was a glitter of electric light, cut glass, and French plate mirrors. Out of the door came the merry laughter of the giddy throng, flavored with fragrant Havana smoke and the delicate odor of lemon and mirth and pine apple and cognac. The delegate from Correjos felt lonely, and he turned to the Ice Water representative from Huerferno: "That was a bold and fearless speech you made this afternoon on the demon rum at the convocation." "Think so?" said the sad Huerferno man, " Yes, you entered into the description of rum's maniac till I could almost see the red-eyed centipedes and tropical hornets in the air. How could you describe the jimjams so graphically?" "Well, you see, I'm a reformed drunkard. Only a little while ago I was in the gutter." "So was I." "How long ago?" "Week ago day after to-morrow." "Next Tuesday it'll be a week since I quit." "Well, I swan!" "Ain't it funny?" "Tolerable." *** * ***** "It's going to be a long, cold winter; don't you think so?" (35) 36 BEMARKS BY BILL NYE. "Yes, I dread it a good deal." ^|C ^ ^ TP TfP ^ *(& Tft TV "It's a comfort, though, to know that you never will touch rum again." "Yes, I am glad in my heart to-night that I am free from it. I shall never touch rum again." When he said this he looked up at the other delegate, and they looked into each other's eyes earnestly, as though each would read the other's soul. Then the Huerferno man said: "In fact, I never did care much for rum." Then there was a long pause. Finally the Correjos man ventured: "Do you have to use an antidote to cui'e the thirst?" "Yes, I've had to rely on that a good deal at first. Probably this vain yearning that I now feel in the pit of the bosom will disappear after awhile." "Have you got any antidote with you?" "Yes, I've got some up in 232^. If you'll come up I'll give you a dose." "There's no rum in it, is there?" "No." Then they went up the elevator. They did not get down to breakfast, but at dinner they stole in. The man from Huerferno dodged nervously through the archway leading to the dining-room as though he had doubts about getting through so small a space with his augmented head, and the man from Correjos looked like one who had wept his eyes almost blind over the woe that rum has wrought in our fair land. When the waiter asked the delegate from Correjos for his desert order, the red-nosed Son of Ice Water said: "Bring me a cup of tea, some pudding without wine sauce, and a piece of mince pie. You may also bring me a cork- screw, if you please, to pull the brandy out of the mince pie with." Then the two reformed drunkards looked at each other, and laughed a hoarse, bitter and joyous laugh. At the afternoon session of the Sons of Ice Water, the Huerferno delegate couldn't get his regalia over his head. ^e(^OT)d better to tl^e president. ^1 O THE PEESIDENT. — I write this letter not on my own account, but ''■-^l on behalf of a personal friend of mine who is known as a mugwump. He is a great worker for political reform, but he cannot spell very well, "^'^ so he has asked me to write this letter. He knew that I had been thrown among great men all my life, and that, owing to my high social position and fine education, I would be peculiarly fitted to write you in a way that would not call forth disagreeable remarks, and so he has given me the points and I have arranged them for you. In the first place, my friend desires me to convey to you, Mr. President, in a delicate manner, and in such language as to avoid giving ofPense, that he is some- what disappointed in your Cabi- net. I hate to talk this way to a bran-new President, but my friend feels hurt and he desires that I should say to you that he regrets your short-sighted pol- icy. He says that it seems to him there is very little in the course of the administration so far to encourage a man to shake off old party ties and try to make men better. He desires to say that after conversing with a large num- ber of the purest men, men who have been in both political parties off and on for years and yet have never been corrupted by office, men who have left con- (37) WORKING FOR REFORM. 38 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. vention after convention in years past because those conventions were corrupt and endorsed other men than themselves for office, he finds that your appoint- ment of Cabinet officers will only please two classes, viz: Democrats and Ke- publicans. Now, what do you care for an administration which will only gratify those two old parties? Are you going to snap your fingers in disdain at men who admit that they are superior to anybody else ? Do you Avaiit history to chron- icle the fact that President Cleveland accepted the aid of the pure and highly cultivated gentlemen who never did anything naughty or unpretty, and then appointed his Cabinet from men who had been known for years as rude, naughty Democrats ? My friend says that he feels sure you would not have done so if you had fully realized how he felt about it. He claims that in the first week of your administration you have basely truckled to the corrupt majority. You have shown yourself to be the friend of men who never claimed to be truly good. If you persist in this course you will lose the respect and esteem of my friend and another man who is politically pure, and who has never smirched his escutcheon with an office. He has one of the cleanest and most vigorous escutcheons in that county. He never leaves it out over night during the sum- mer, and in the winter he buries it in sawdust. Both of these men will go back to the Republican party in 1888 if you persist in the course you have thus far adopted. They would go back now if the Republican party insisted on it. Mr. President, I hate to write to you in this tone of voice, because I know the pain it will give you. I once held an office myself, Mr. President, and it hurt my feelings very much to have a warm personal friend criticise my official acts. The worst feature of the whole thing, Mr. President, is that it will encour- age crime. If men who never committed any crime are allowed to earn their living by the precarious methods peculiar to manual labor, and if those who have abstained from office for years, by request of many citizens, are to be denied the endorsement of the administration, they will lose courage to go on and do right in the future. My friend desires to state vicariously, in the strongest terms, that both he and his wife feel the same way about it, and they will not promise to keep it quiet any longer. They feel like crip;^:>ling the ad- ministration in every way they can if the present policy is to be pursued. SECOND LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. 39 He says he dislikes to begin thus early to threaten a President who has barely taken off his overshoes and drawn his mileage, but he thinks it may jjrevent a recurrence of these unfortunate mistakes. He claims that you have totally misunderstood the principles of the mugwumps all the way through. You seem to regard the reform movement as one introduced for the purpose of universal benefit. • This was not the case. While fully end .rsing and sup- porting reform, he says that they did not go into it merely to kill time or sim- ply for fun. He also says that when he became a reformer and supported you, he did not think there were so many prominent Democrats who would have claims upon you. He can only now deplore the great national poverty of offices and the boundless wealth of raw material in the Democratic party from which to supply even that meagre demand. He wishes me to add, also, that you must have over-estimated the zeal of his party for civil service reform. He says that they did not yearn for civil service reform so much as many people seem to think. I must now draw this letter to a close. We are all well Avith the exception of colds in the head, but nothing that need give you any uneasiness. Our large seal-brown hen last week, stimulated by a rising egg market, over-exerted herself, and on Saturday evening, as the twilight gathered, she yielded to a complication of pip and softening of the brain and expired in my arms. Sh(^ certainly led a most exemplary life and the forked tongue of slander couhl find naught to utter against her. Hoping that you are enjoying the same great blessing and that you will write as often as possible without waiting for me, I remain, Yery respectfully yours, Bill Nye. [Dictated Letter.] /T\ilIiF>(^ ii) po/T)peii. ^I^^^HILE visiting Naples, last fall, I took a great interest in the wonder- ^I'fWPtsE ful museum there, of obiects that have been exhumed from the fi Ifjp 'if ruins of Pompeii, It is a remarkable collection, including, among -"^^^ J other things, the cumbersome machinery of a large woolen factory, the receipts, contracts, statements of sales, etc., etc., of bankers, brokers, and usui'ers. I was told that the exhumist also ran into an Etruscan bucket-shop in one part of the city, but, owing to the long, dry spell, the buckets had fallen to pieces. The object which engrossed my attention the most, however, was what seems to have been a circular issued prior to the great volcanic vomit of 79 A. D., and no doubt prior even to the Christian era. As the date is torn off, however, we are left to conjecture the time at which it was issued. I was permitted to make a copy of it, and with the aid of my hired man, I have trans- lated it with great care. OFFICE OF LUCEETIUS & PKOCALUS, dealers in Flour, Bran, Shorts, Middlings, Screenings, Etruscan Hen Feed, and Other Choice Bric-a-beac. Highest Cash Pi^ice Paid for Neapolitan Winter Wheat ami Roman Corn. Why haul your Wheat through the sand to Herculaneum, ichen ive pay the same price here ? Office and Mill, Via VIII, near the Stabian Gate, Only Thirteen Blocks from the P. O., Pompeii. Dear Sir : This circular has been called out by another one issued last month by Messrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus, alleged millers and wheat buy- ers of Herculaueum, in which they claim to pay a quarter to a half-cent more per bushel than we do for wheat, and charge us with docking the farmers around Pompeii a pound per bushel more than necessary for cockle, wild buck- et) MILLING IN POMPEIL 41 wheat, and pigeon-grass seed. They make the broad statement that we have made all our money in that way, and claim that Mr. Lucretius, of our mill, has erected a fine house, which the farmers allude to as the "wild buckwheat villa." We do not, as a general rule, pay any attention to this kind of stufP ; but HI A C U L A N E U M when two snide romans, who went to Herculaneum without a dollar and drank stale beer out of an old Etrus- can tomato-can the first year they were there, assail our integrity, we feel jus- tified in making a prompt and final reply. We desire to state to the Ro- man farmers that we do not test their wheat with the crooked brass tester that has made more money for Messrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus than their old mill has. AVe do not do that kind of business. Neither do we buy a man's wheat at a cash price and then work ofp four or five hundred pounds of XXXX Imperial hog feed on him in part payment. When we buy a man's wheat we pay him in money. We do not seek to fill him up with sour Carthagenian cracked wheat and orders on the store. We would also call attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped to spit on his hands. The mill of our vile contemporaries at Herculaneum is an old one that was used around Naples one hundred years ago to smash rock for the Neapolitan road, and is entirely out of repair. It was also used in a brick-yard here near Pompeii ; then an old junk man sold it to a tenderfoot fi-om Jerusalem as an &^ TWO OLD ROMANS. 42 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. ice-cream freezer. He found that it would not work, and so used it to grind up potato bugs for blisters. Now it is grinding ostensible flour at Herculaneum. We desire to state to the farmers about Pompeii and Herculaneum that we aim to please. We desire to make a grade of flour this summer that will not have to be run through the coffee mill before it can be used. We will also pay you the highest price for good wheat, and give you good weight. Our capacity is now greatly enlarged, both as to storage and grinding. We now turn out a sack of flour, complete and ready for use, every little while. W^e have an extra handle for the mill, so that in case of accident to the one now in use, we need not shut down but a few moments. We call attention to our XXXX Git-there brand of flour. It is the best flour in the market for making angels' food and other celestial groceries. We fully warrant it, and will agree that for every sack containing whole kernels of corn, corncobs, or other foreign substances, not thoroughly pulverized, we will refund the money already paid, and show the person through our mill. We would also like to call the attention of far- mers and housewives around Pompeii to our cele- brated Dough Squatter, It is purely automatic in its operation, requiring only two men to work it. With this machine two men will knead all the bread they can eat and do it easily, feeling thoroughly refreshed at night. They also avoid that dark maroon taste in the mouth so common in Pompeii on arising in the morning. To those who do not feel able to bay one of these machines, w^e would say that we have made arrange- ments for the approaching season, so that those who wish may bring their dough to our mammoth squat- ter and get it treated at our place at the nominal price of two bits per squat. Strangers calling for their squat or unsquat dough, will have to be identified. iJ^^Do not forget the place, Yia VIII, near Stabian gate. Lucretius & Procalus, Dealers in choice family flour, cut feed and oatmeal with or without clinkers in it. Try our lumpless bran for indigestion. ^^^| ANCIENT ROMAN MILLER. Broi)ef?o Sam. c'f^^l PEAKING about cowboys, Sam Stewart, known from Montana to Old '^^^^^ Mexico as Broncho Sam, was the chief. He was not a white man, an ]\^yj Indian, a greaser or a negro, but he had the nose of an Indian warrior, ^^ the curly hair of an African, and the courtesy and equestrian grace of a Spaniard. A wide reputation as a "broncho breaker" gave him his name. To master an untamed broncho and teach him to lead, to drive and to be safely ridden was Sam's mission durino^ the warm weather when he Avas not ridino" the range. His special delight was to break the war-like heart of the vicious wild pony of the plains and make him the servant of man. I've seen him mount a hostile "bucker," and, clinchiusf his italic lecfs around the body of his adversary, ride him till the blood would burst from Sam's nostrils and spatter horse and rider like rain. Most everyone knows what the bucking of the barbarous Western horse means. The wild horse probably learned it from the antelope, for the latter does it the same way, ?'. c, he jumps straight up into the air, at the same instant curving his back and coming down stifP-legged, with all four of his feet in a bunch. The concus- sion is considerable. I tried it once myself. I partially rode a roan broncho one spring day, which will always be green in my memory. The day, I mean, not the broncho. It occupied my entire attention to safely ride the cunning little beast, and when he began to ride me I put in a minority report against it. I have passed through an earthquake and an Indian outbreak, but I would rather ride an earthquake without saddle or bridle than to bestride a successful broncho eruption. I remember that I wore a large pair of Mexican spurs, but I forgot them until the saddle turned. Then I remembered them. Sitting down on them iji an impulsive Avay l)rought them to my mind. Then the broncho steed sat down on me, and that gave the spurs an opportunity to make a more lasting impression on my mind. To those who observed the charger with the double "cinch" across his back and the saddle in front of him like a big leather corset, sitting at the (43) 44 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. same time on my person, there must have been a tinge of amusement; but to me it was not so frolicsome. There may be joy in a wild gallop across the boundless plains, in the crisp morning, on the back of a fleet broncho ; but when you return with your ribs sticking through your vest, and find that your nimble steed has returned to town two hours ahead of you, there is a tinge of sadness about it all. Broncho Sam, however, made a spe- cialty of doing all the riding himself. He wouldn't enter into any compro- mise and allow the horse to ride him. In a reckless moment he offered to bet ten dollars that he could mount and ride a wild Texas steer. The money was put up. That settled it. Sam never took water. This was true in a double sense. Well, he climbed the cross-bar of the corral-gate, and asked the other boys to turn out their best steer, Marquis of Queensbury rules. As the steer passed out, Sam slid down and wrapped those parenthet- ical legs of his around that high- headed, broad-horned brute, and he rode him till the fleet-footed animal fell down on the buffalo grass, ran his hot red tongue out across the blue horizon, shook his tail convulsively, swelled up sadly and died. It took Sam four days to walk back. A ten-dollar bill looks as large to me as the star spangled banner, some- times ; but that is an avenue of wealth that had not occurred to me. I'd rather ride a buzz-saw at two dollars a day and found. c^(B^^=~-^ A BRONCO ERUPTION. J^ou; Euolutioi) EuoIu<^s. "tei^HE following paper was read by me in a clear, resonant tone of voice, ^]| ii\v ^®^°^'^ ^1^® Academy of Science and Pugilism at Erin Prairie, last >'•'■ £Ji^i month, and as I have been so continually and so earnestly importuned to ^ print it that life was no longer desirable, I submit it to you for that purpose, hoping that you will print my name in large caps, with astonishers at the head of the article, and also in good display type at the close: SOME FEATURES OP EVOLUTION. No one could possibly, in a brief paper, do the subject of evolution full justice. It is a matter of great importance to our lost and undone race. It lies near to every human heart, and exercises a wonderful influence over our impulses and our ultimate success or failure. When we pause to consider the opaque and fathomless ignorance of the great masses of our felloAV men on the subject of evolution, it is not surprising that crime is rather on the increase, and that thousands of our race are annually filling drunkards' graves, with no other visible means of support, while multitudes of enlightened human beings are at the same time obtaining a livelihood by meeting with felons' dooms. These I would ask in all seriousness and in a tone of voice that would melt the stoniest heart: "Why in creation do you do it?" The time is rapidly approaching when there will be two or three felons for each doom. I am sure that within the next fifty years, and perhaps sooner even than that, instead of handing out these dooms to Tom, Dick and Hariy as formerly, every applicant for a felon's doom will have to pass through a competitive examination, as he should do. It will be the same with those who desire to fill drunkards' graves. The time is almost here when all positions of profit and trust Avill be carefully and judiciously handed out, and those who do not fit themselves for those positions will be left in the lurch, whatever that may be. It is with this fact glaring me in the face that I have consented to appear before you to-day and lay bare the wdiole hypothesis, history, rise and fall, (45) 46 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. modifications, anatomy, physiology and geology of evolution. It is for this that I have poured over such works as Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Moses in the bulrushes, Anaxagoras, Lucretius and Hoyle. It is for the purpose of advanc- ing the cause of common humanity and to jerk the rising generation out of barbarism into the dazzling effulgence of clashing intellects and fermenting brains that I have sought the works of Pythagoras, Democritus and Epluribus. Whenever I could find any book that bore upon the subject of evolution, and could borrow it, I have done so while others slept. That is a matter which rarely enters into the minds of those who go easily and carelessly through life. Even the general superintendent of the Academy of Science and Pugilism here in Erin Prairie, the hotbed of a free and untram- meled, robust democracy, does not stop to think of the midnight and other kinds of oil that I have consumed in order to fill myself full of information and to soak my porous mind with thought. Even the O'Eeilly College of this place, with its strong mental faculty, has not informed itself fully relative to the great effort necessary before a lecturer may speak clearly, accurately and exhaustingly of evolution. And yet, here in this place, where education is rampant, and the idea is patted on the back, as I may say; here in Erin Prairie, where progress and some other sentiments are wi'itten on everything ; here where I am addressing you to-night for $2 and feed for my horse, I met a little child with a bright and cheerful smile, who did not know that evolution consisted in a progress fi'om the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. So you see that you never know where ignorance lurks. The hydra-headed upas tree and bete noir of self-acting progress, is such ignorance as that, lurking in the very shadow of magnificent educational institutions and hard words of great cast. Nothing can be more disagreeable to the scientist than a bete noir. Nothing gives him greater satisfaction than to chase it up a tree or mash it between two shingles. For this reason, as I said, it gives me great pleasure to address you on the subject of evolution, and to go into details in speaking of it. I could go on for hours as I have been doing, delighting you with the intricacies and peculi- arities of evolution, but I must desist. It would please me to do so, and you would no doubt remain patiently and listen, but your business might suffer while you were away, and so I will close, but I hope that anyone now within the sound of my voice, and in whose breast a sudden hunger for more light on HOW EVOLUTION EVOLVES. 47 this great subject may liave sprung up, will feel perfectly free to call on me and ask me about it or immerse himself in the numerous tomes that I have collected from friends, and Avhich relate to this matter. In closing I wish to say that I have made no statements in this paper rela- tive to evolution which I am not prepared to prove ; and, if anything, I have been over-conservative. For that reason I say now, that the person Avho doubts a single fact as I have given it to-night, bearing upon the great subject of evo- lution, will have to do so over my dumb remains. And a man who will do that is no gentleman. I presume that many of these statements will be snapped up and sharply criticised by other theologi- ans and many of our foremost thinkers, but they will do well to pause before they draw me into a controversy, for I have other facts in relation to evolution, and some personal reminiscences and family history, which I am prepared to inti'oduce, if necessary, together with ideas that I have thought up myself. So I say to those who may hope to attract notice and obtain notoriety by di'awdng me into a controversy, beware. It will be to your interest to beware ! J^ours U/itl; Qreat f\\eT). PRESUME that I could write an entire library of personal reminiscences relative to the eminent people with whom I have been thrown during a busy life, but I hate to do it, because I always regarded such things as '^ sacred from the vulgar eye, and I felt bound to respect the confidence of a prominent man just as much as I would that of one who was less before the people. I remember very well my first meeting with General W. T. Sherman. I would not mention it here if it were not for the fact that the people seem to be yearning for personal reminiscences of great men, and that is perfectly right, too. It was since the war that I met General Sherman, and it was on the line of the Union Pacific Railway, at one of those justly celebrated eating-houses, which I understand are now abandoned. The colored waiter had cut off a strip of the omelette with a pair of shears, the scorched oatmeal had been passed around, the little rubber door mats fried in butter and called pancakes had been dealt around the table, and the cashier at the end of the hall had just gone through the clothes of a party from Vermont, who claimed a rebate on the ground that the waiter had refused to bring him anything but his bill. There was no sound in the dining-room except the weak request of the coffee for more air and stimulants, or perhaps the cry of pain when the butter, while practicing with the dumb-bells, would hit a child on the head ; then all would be still again. General Sherman sat at one end of the table, throwing a life-preserver to a fly in the milk pitcher. We had never met before, though for years we had been plodding along life's rugged way — he in the war department, I in the postofiice department. Unknown to each other, we had been holding up opposite corners of the great national fabric, if you will allow me that expression. I remember, as well as though it were but yesterday, how the conversation began. General Sherman looked sternly at me and said: "I wish you would overpower that butter and send it up this way." "All right," said I, "if you will please pass those molasses." (49) HOUES WITH GREAT MEN. 49 Qfy^. AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE BUTTER. That was all that was said, but I shall never forget it, and probably he never will. The conversation was brief, but yet how full of food for thought ! How true, how earnest, how natural ! Nothing stilted or false about it. It was the natural expression of two minds that were too great to be verbose or to monkey with social, conversational flapdoodle. I remember, once, a great while ago, I was asked by a friend to go with him in the evening to the house of an acquaintance, where they were going to have a kind of musicale, at which there was to be some noted pianist, who had kindly consented to play a few strains, I did not get the name of the professional, but I went, and when the first piece was announced I saw that the light was very uncertain, so I kindly volunteered to get a lamp from another room. I held that big lamp, Aveigh- ing about twenty-nine pounds, for half an hour, while the pianist would tinky tinky up on the right hand, or bang, boomy to bang down on the bass, while he snorted and slugged that old concert grand piano and almost knocked its teeth down its throat, or gently dawdled with the keys like a pale moonbeam shimmering through the bleached rafters of a deceased horse, until at last there was a wild jangle, such as the accomplished musician gives to an instru- ment to show the audience that he has disabled the piano, and will take a slight intermission while it is sent to the junk shop. With a sigh of relief I carefully put down the twenty-nine pound lamp, and my friend told me that I had been standing there like liberty enlightening the world, and holding that heavy lamp for Blind Tom. * * * * * * * * * I had never seen him before, and I slipped out of the room before he had a chance to see me. AM glad to notice that iu the East there is a growing disfavor in the public mind for selecting a practicing physician for the office of coroner. This matter should have attracted attention years ago. Now it gratifies ^ me to notice a finer feeling on the part of the people, and an awakening of those sensibilities which go to make life more highly prized and far more enjoyable. I had the misfortune at one time to be under the medical charge of a cor- oner who had graduated from a Chicago morgue and practiced medicine along ■with his inquest business with the most fiendish delight. I do not know which he enjoyed best, holding the inquest or practicing on his patient and getting the victim ready for the quest. One day he wrote out a prescription and left it for me to have filled. I was siu'prised to find that he had made a mistake and left a rough draft of the verdict in my own case and a list of jurors which he had made in memorandum, so as to be ready for the worst. I was alarmed, for I did not know that I was in so dangerous a condition. He had the advantage of me, for he knew just what he was giving me, and how long human life could be sustained under his treatment. I did not. That is why I say that the profession of medicine should not be allowed to conflict with the solemn duties of the coroner. They are constantly clashing and infringing upon each other's territory. This coroner had a kind of tread- softly-bow-the-head way of getting around the room that made my flesh creep. He had a way, too, when I was asleep, of glancing hurriedly through the pockets of my* pantaloons as they hung over a chair, probably to see what evidence he could find that might aid the jury in arriving at a verdict. Once I woke up and found him examing a draft that he had found in my pocket. I asked him what he was doing with my funds, and he said that he thought he detected a draft in the room and he had just found out where it came from. (50) CONCERNING CORONERS. 51 After that I hoped that death would come to my relief as speedily as pos- sible. I felt that death would be a happy release from the cold touch of the amateur coroner and pro tern physician. I could look forward with pleasure, and even joy, to the moment when my physician would come for the last time in his professional capacity and go to work on me officially. Then the county would be obliged to pay him, and the undertaker could take charge of the frag- ments left by the inquest. The duties of the physician are with the living, those of the coroner with the dead. No effort, therefore, should be made to unite them. It is in viola- tion of all the finer feelings of humanity. When the jjhysician decides that his tendencies point mostly toward immortality and the names of his patients are nearly all found on the moss-covered stones of the cemetery, he may aban- don the profession with safety and take hold of politics. Then, should his tastes lead him to the inquest, let him gravitate toward the office of coroner; but the two should not be united. No man ought to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him profes- sionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which will be in strong contrast with the darker and more ignorant epochs of time, Avhen the practice of medicine was united with the profession of the barber, the well- digger, the farrier, the veterinarian or the coroner. Why, this physician plenipotentiary and coroner extraordinary that I have referred to, didn't know when he got a call whether to take his morphine syr- inge or his venire for a jury. He very frequently went to see a patient with a lung tester under one arm and the revised statutes under the other. People never knew when they saw him going to a neighbor's house, whether the case had yielded to the coroner's treatment or not. No one ever kne^v just when over-taxed nature would yield to the statutes in such case made and provided. When the jury was impanelled, however, we always knew that the medical treatment had been successfully fatal. Once he charged the county with an inquest he felt sure of, but in the night the patient got delirious, eluded his nurse, the physician and coroner, and fled to the foot-hills, where he was taken care of and finally recovered. 52 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. The experiences of some of the patients who escaped from this man read more like fiction than fact. One man revived during the inquest, knocked the fore- man of the jury through the window, kicked the coroner in the stomach, fed him a bottle of violet ink, and, with a shriek of laughter, fled. He is now traveling under an assumed name with a mammoth circus, feeding his bald head to the African lion twice a day at $9 a week and found. Dou/9 East I^um. UM has always been a curse to the State of Maine. The steady fight that Maine has made, for a century past, against decent rum, has been ^ worthy of a better cause. Who hath woe? who hath sorrow and some more things of that kind ? He that monkeyeth with Maine rum ; he that goeth to seek emigrant rum. In passing through Maine the tourist is struck with the ever-varying styles of mystery connected with the consumption of rum. In Denver your friend says: "AVill you come with me and shed a tear?" or "Come and eat a clove with me." In Salt Lake City a man once said to me: "William, which would you rather do, take a dose of Gentile damnation down here on the corner, or go over across the street and pizen yourself with some real old Mormon Valley tan, made last week from ground feed and prussic acid?" I told him that I had just been to dinner, and the doctor had forbidden my drinking any more, and that I had promised several people on their death beds never to touch liquor, and besides, I had just taken a large drink, so he would have to excuse me. But in Maine none of these common styles of invitation prevail. It is all shrouded in mystery. You give the sign of distress to any member in good standing, pound three times on the outer gate, give two hard kicks and one soft one on the inner door, give the password, "Rutherford B. Hayes," turn to the left, through a dark passage, turn the thumbscrew of a mysterious gas fixture 90 deg. to the right, holding the goblet of the encampment under the gas fixture, then reverse the thumbscrew, shut your eyes, insult your digester, leave twenty-five cents near the gas fixture, and hunt up the nearest cemetery, so that you will not have to be carried very far. If a man really wants to drink himself into a di'unkard's grave, he can cer- tainly save time by going to Maine. Those desiring the most prompt and vig- orous style of jim-jams at cut rates will do well to examine Maine goods before going elsewhere. Let a man spend a week in Boston, where the Maine liquor law, I understand, is not in force, and then, with no warning whatever, be taken into the heart of Maine ; let him land there a stranger and a partial orphan, with no knowledge of the underground methods of securing a drink, and to him the world seems very gloomy, very sad, and extremely arid. (53) 54 REMARKS BY BILL NYE, At the Bangor depot a woman came up to me and addressed me. She was rather past middle age, a perfect lady in her manners, but a little full. I said: "Madam, I guess you will have to excuse me. You have the advan- tage. I can't just speak your name at this moment. It has been now thirty years since I left Maine, a child two years old. So people have changed. You've no idea how people have grown out of my knowledge, I don't see but you look just as young as you did when I went away, but I'm a poor hand to remember names, so I can't just call you to mind," She was perfectly ladylike in her manner, but a little bit drunk. It is sin- gular how drunken people will come hundreds of miles to converse with me. I have often been alluded to as the "drunkard's friend," Men have been known to get intoxicated and come a long distance to talk with me on some subject, and then they would lean up against me and converse by the hour, A di'unken man never seems to get tired of talking with me. As long as I am will- ing to hold such a man up and listen to him, he will stand and tell me about him- self with the utmost confidence, and, no matter who goes by, he does not seem to be ashamed to have people see him talking with me, I once had a friend who was very much liked by every one, so he drifted into politics. For seven years he tried to live on free whiskey and popular approval, but it wrecked him at last. Finally he formed the habit of meeting rae every day and explaining it to me, and giving me free exhibitions of a breath that he had acquired at great expense. After he got so feeble that he could not walk any more, this breath of his used to pull him out of bed and drag him all over town. It don't seem hardly possible, but it is so. I can show you the town yet. He used to take me by the buttonhole when he conversed with me. This is a diagram of the buttonhole. If I had a son I would warn him against trying to subsist solely on popu- lar approval and free whiskey. It may do for a man engaged solely in seden- tary pursuits, but it is not sufiicient in cases of great muscular exhaustion. Free whiskey and popular approval on an empty stomach are highly injurious. THAT BUTTONHOLE. I^aiju/ay Etiquette. I'aANT people have traveled all their lives and yet do not know how to ,^ behave themselves when on the road. For the benefit and sfuidance L-(4-^)/] \l of such, these few crisp, plain, horse-sense rules of etiquette have -^e^y^-f^^ l^een framed. In traveling by rail on foot, turn to the right on discovering an approach- ing train. If you wish the train to turn out, give two lovid toots and get in be- tween the rails, so that you will not muss up the right of way. Many a nice, new right of way has been ruined by getting a pedestrian tourist spattered all over its first mortgage. On retiring at night on board the train, do not leave your teeth in the ice- water tank. If every one should do so, it would occasion great confusion in case of wreck. It would also cause much annoyance and delay during the res- urrection. Experienced tourists tie a string to their teeth and retain them during the night. If you have been reared in extreme poverty, and your mother supported you until you grew up and married, so that your wife could support you, you will probably sit in four seats at the same time, with your feet extended into the aisles so that you can wipe them ofp on other people, while you snore with your mouth open clear to your shoulder blades. If you are prone to drop to sleep and breathe with a low death rattle, like the exhaust of a bath tub, it would be a good plan to tie up your head in a feather bed and then insert the whole thing in the linen closet ; or, if you can- not secure that, you might stick it out of the window and get it knocked off against a tunnel. The stockholders of the road might got mad about it, l)ut you could do it in such a way that they wouldn't know whose head it was. Ladies and gentlemen should guard against traveling by rail while in a beastly state of intoxication. the dining car, while eating, do not comb your moustache with your fork. By all means do not comb your moustache with the fork of another. It is better to refrain altogether from combing the moustache with a fork while traveling, for the motion of the train might jab the fork into your eye and ir- ritate it. (55) 56 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. If your desert is very hot and you do not discover it until you have burned the rafters out of the roof of your moutli, do not utter a wild yell of agony and spill your coffee all over a total stranger, but control yourself, hoping to know more next time. In the morning is a good time to find out how many people have succeeded in getting on the passenger train, who ought to be in the stock car. Generally, you will find one male and one female. The male goes into the wash room, bathes his worthless carcass from daylight until breakfast time, walking on the feet of any man who tries to wash his face during that time. He wipes himself on nine different towels, because when he gets home he knows he will have to wipe his face on an old door mat. People who have been reared on hay all their lives, generally want to fill themselves full of pie and colic when they ti'avel. The female of this same mammal, goes into the ladies' department and re- mains there until starvation drives her out. Then the real ladies have about thirteen seconds apiece in which to dress. If you never rode in a varnished car before, and never expect to again, you will probably roam up and down the car, meandering over the feet of the por- ter wliile he is making up the berths. This is a good way to let people see just how little sense you had left after your brain began to soften. In traveling, do not take along a lot of old clothes that you know you will never wear. ,|[^-mENJAMIN FEANKLIN, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child. If seventeen cliildren had not come to bless the home of ^/ Benjamin's parents, they would have been childless. Think of o-etting "^^^^ up in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from amono- seventeen pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of spruce gum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window sill. And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea, and to avoid this he was ap- prenticed to his brother James, who was a printer. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests of freedom. It is claimed that Frank- lin at this time invented the deadly weapon known as the printer's towel. He found that a common crash towel could be saturated with glue, molasses, anti- mony, concentrated lye, T 11 .,• A DEADLY ONSLAUGHT, and roller composition? and that after a few years of time and perspiration it would harden so that the "Constant Eeader" or "Veritas" could be stabbed Avith it and die soon. (57) 58 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Many believe that Franklin's other scientific experiments were productive of more lasting benefit to mankind than this, but I do not agree with them. This paper was called the New Encjldiid Courant. It was edited jointly by James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want. Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The idea of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to the editorial page, but it was necessary for one to ran the paper while the other was in jail. In those days you couldn't sass the king, and then, when the king came -_^ in the office the next day and I stopped his paper, and took out his ad., you couldn't put it off on "our informant" and go right along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscribers wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tin dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side. How many of us to-day, fel- low journalists, would be willing to stay in jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of all our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while a double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses of ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us ? At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to Phila- delphia and New York, where he got a chance to "sub" for a few weeks, and then got a regular "sit." Franklin was a good printer, and finally got to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in the composing room and spitting on the stone, while he cussed the make-up and press work of the other papers. Then he would go into the editorial rooms and scare the editors to death with a wild shriek for more copy. He knew just how to con- duct himself as a foreman, so that strangers would think he owned the paper. STOPPING HIS PAPER. 3. FRANKLIN, DECEASED. 59 In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the Prnnsjjlva- nia Gazette. He was then regarded as a great man, and most everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him. Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of light- ning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the Gazette office by express for exam- ination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklin would tell the fore- man to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and an old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for a mess. In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster -general of the colonies. He made a good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes in distributing their mail than there has ever been since. If a man mailed a let- ter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it was addressed. Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly on business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speak- ing, and attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask the king: "How's trade?" Franklin never put on any frills, but he was not afraid of a croAvned head. He used to say, fi-equently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot. He did his best to prevent the Kevolutionary war, but he couldn't do it, "how's trade?" 60 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Patrick Henry head said that the war was inevitable, and given it permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquainted with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper. They also prom- ised him the county printing, but he said no, he would have to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him. Franklin wrote "Poor Richard's Almanac" in 1732-57, and it was repub- lished in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and, though he lived to be quite an old man, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but an illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, but he steadily refused to do so. Cife Ii^surapee as a j^ealtl? I^estorer. Insurance is a great tiling I Avould not he without it. My health got my new policy. Formerly I used to IFE '^ is greatly improved since I have a seal-brown taste in my mouth when I arose in the morning, "''^ but that has entirely disappeared. I am more hopeful and happy, and my hair if getting thicker on top. I would not try to keep house without life insurance. Last September I was caught in one of the most destruct- ive cyclones that ever visited a republican form of government. A great deal of property was de- stroyed and many lives were lost, but I was spared. People who had no insurance were mowed down on every hand, but aside from a broken leg I was entirely unharmed. I look upon life insurance as a great comfort, not only to the ben- eficiary, but to the insured, who very rarely lives to realize any- thing pecuniarily from his venture. Twice I have almost raised my wife to affluence and cast a gloom over the community in which I lived, but something hapj)ened to the physician for a few days so that he could not attend to me, and protected by life insurance. I recovered. For nearly two years I was under the doctor's care. He had his finger on my pulse or in my pocket all the time. He was a young western physician, who attended me on Tuesdays and Fridays. The rest of the week he devoted his medical skill to horses that were mentally broken down. He (61) 62 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE, said he attended me largely for my society. I felt flattered to know that he enjoyed my society after he had been thrown among horses all the week that had much greater advantages than I. My wife at first objected seriously to an insurance on my life, and said she would never, never touch a dollar of the money if I were to die, but after I had been sick nearly two years, and my disposition had suffered a good deal, she said that I need not delay the obsequies on that account. But the life in- surance slipped through my fingers somehow, and I recovered. In these days of dynamite and roller rinks, and the gory meat-ax of a new administration, we ought to make some provision for the future. J\)e Opium J^abit. ^ Have always had a horror of opiates of all kinds. They are so seductive and so still in their operations. They steal through the blood like a wolf on the trail, and they seize upon the heart at last with their Avhite fangs "^ till it is still forever. Up the Laramie there is a cluster of ranches at the base of the Medicine Bow, near the north end of Sheep Mountain, and in sight of the glittering, eternal frost of the snowy range. These ranches are the liomes of the young men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and now there are several "younger sons" of Old England, with herds of horses, steers and sheep, worth millions of dollars. These young men are not of the kind of whom the met- ropolitan ass writes as saying "youbetcherlife," and calling everybody "pard- ner." They are many of them college graduates, who can brand a wild Mave- rick or furnish the easy gestures for a Strauss waltz. They wear human clothes, talk in the United States language, and have a bank account. This spring they may be wearing chaparajos and swinging a quirt through the thin air, and in July they may be at Long Branch, or color- ing a meerschaum pipe among the Alps. Well, a young man whom we will call Curtis lived at one of these ranches years ago, and, though a quiet, mind-your-own-business fellow, who had abso- lutely no enemies among his companions, he had the misfortvme to incur the wrath of a tramp sheep-herder, who waylaid Curtis one afternoon and shot him dead as he sat in his buggy. Curtis wasn't armed. He didn't dream of trou- ble till he drove home from town, and, as he passed through the gates of a corral, saw the-hairy face of the herder, and at the same moment the flash of a Winchester rifle. That was all. A rancher came into town and telegraphed to Curtis' father, and then a half dozen citizens went out to help capture the herder, who had fled to the sage brush of the foot-hills. They didn't get back till toward daybreak, but they brought the herder (63) 64 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. with them. I saw him in the gray of the morning, lying in a coarse gray blanket, on the floor of the engine house. He was dead. I asked, as a reporter, how he came to his death, and they told me — opium ! I said, did I understand you to say "ropium?" They said no, it was opium. The murderer had taken poison when he found that escape was impossible. I was present at the inquest, so tliat I could report the case. There was very little testimony, but all the evidence seemed to point to the fact that life was extinct, and a verdict of death by his own hand was rendered. It was the first opium work I had ever seen, and it aroused my curiosity. Death by opium, it seems, leaves a dark purple ring around the neck. I did not know this before. People who die by opium also tie their hands together before they die. This is one of the eccentricities of opium poisoning that I have never seen laid down in the books. I bequeath it to medical science. Whenever I run up against a new scientific discovery, I just hand it right over to the public without cost. Ever since the above incident, I have been very apprehensive about people who seem to be likely to form the opium habit. It is one of the most deadly of narcotics, especially in a new country. High up in the pure mountain atmosphere, this man could not secure enough air to prolong life, and he expired. In a land where clear, crisp air and delightful scenery are abundant, he turned his back upon them both and passed away. Is it not sad to contem- plate ? /T\or(^ pat(^r9al (5orr(^spo9d<^9(;(^. Y DEAK SON.^ — I tried to write to you last week, but didn't get ^ -HEN I was young and used to roam around over the country, gath- |J ering water-melons in the light of the moon, I used to think I could J milk anybody's cow, but I do not think so now. I do not milk a ■^ coAV now unless the sign is right, and it hasn't been right for a good many years. The last cow I tried to milk was a common cow, born in obscu- rity ; kind of a self-made cow. I remember her brow was low, but she wore her tail high and she was haughty, oh, so haughty. I made a common-place remark to her, one that is used in the very best of society, one that need not have given offence anywhere. I said "So" — and she "soed." Then I told her to "hist" and she histed. But I thought she overdid it. She put too much expression in it. Just then I heard something crash through the window of the barn and fall with a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see what it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it in getting through the window. I asked the neighbors if the barn was still standing. They said it was. Then I asked if the cow was injured much. They said she seemed to be quite robust. Then I requested them to go in and calm the cow a little, and see if they could get my plug hat off her horns. I am buying all my milk now of a milkman. I select a gentle milkman who will not kick, and feel as though I could trust liim. Then, if he feels as though he could trust me, it is all right. (180) THE WILD COW. 121 Spiral /T\e9i9(^itiS. 'll^^l ^ iiiany people liave shown a pardonable curiosity about the above named 'N^^^ disease, and so few have a very clear idea of the thrill of pleasure it affords the patient, unless they have enjoyed it themselves, that I have decided to briefly say something in answer to the innumerable inquiries I have received. Up to the moment I had a notion of getting some meningitis, I had never employed a physician. Since then I have been thrown in their society a great deal. Most of them were very pleasant and scholarly gentlemen, who will not soon be forgotten ; but one of them doctored me first for pneumonia, then for inflammatory rheumatism, and finally, when death was contiguous, advised me that I must have change of scene and rest. I told him that if he kept on prescribing for me, I thought I might depend on both. Change of physicians, however, saved my life. This horse doctor, a few weeks afterward, administered a subcutaneous morphine squirt in the arm of a healthy servant girl because she had the headache, and she is now with the rest of this veterinarian's patients in a land that is fairer than this. She lived six hours after she was prescribed for. He gave her change of scene and rest. He has quite a thriving little cemetery filled with people who have succeeded in cording up enough of his change of scene and rest to last them through all eternity. He was called once to prescribe for a man whose head had been caved in by a stone match-box, and, after treating the man for asthma and blind staggers, he prescribed rest and change of scene for him, too. The poor asthmatic is now breathing the extremely rarified air of the New Jerusalem. Meningitis is derived from the Latin Meninges, membrane, and — itis, an afiSx denoting inflammation, so tliat, strictly speaking, meningitis is the inflam- mation of a membrane, and when applied to the spine, or cerebrum, is called spinal meningitis, or cerebro-spinal meningitis, etc., according to the part of the spine or brain involved in the inflammation. Meningitis is a characteristic and result of so-called spotted fever, and by many it is deemed identical with it. SPINAL MENINGITIS. 123 When we come to consider that the spinal cord, or marrow, runs down through the long, bony shaft made by the A^ertebrae, and that the brain and spine, though connected, are bound up in one continuous bony wall and cov- ered with this inflamed membrane, it is not difficult to understand that the thing is very hard to get at. If your throat gets inflamed, a doctor asks you to run your tongue out into society about a yard and a half, and he pries your mouth open with one of Eogers Brothers' spoon handles. Then he is able to examine your throat as he would a page of the Congressional Record, and to treat it with some local application. When you have spinal meningitis, how- ever, the doctor tackles you with bromides, ergots, ammonia, iodine, chloral hydrate, codi, bromide of ammonia, hasheesh, bismuth, valerianate of ammo- nia, morphine sulpli., nux vomica, turpentine emulsion, vox humana, rex mao-- nus, opium, cantharides, Dover's powders, and other bric-a-brac. These rem- edies are masticated and acted upon by the salivary glands, passed down the esophegus, thrown into the society of old gastric, submitted to the peculiar motion of the stomach and thoroughly chymified, then forwarded throuo-h the pyloric orifice into the smaller intestines, where they are touched up with bile, and later on handed over through the lacteals, thoracic duct, etc., to the vast circulatory system. Here it is yanked back and forth through the heart, lungs and capillaries, and if anything is left to fork over to the disease, it has to squeeze into the long, bony, air-tight socket that holds the spinal cord. All this is done without seeing the patient's spinal cord before or after taking. If it could be taken out, and hung over a clothes line and cleansed with benzine, and then treated Avitli insect powder, or rolled in corn meal, or preserved in alcohol, and then put back, it would be all right ; but you can't. You pull a man's spine out of his system and he is bound to miss it, no matter how care- ful you have been about it. It is difficult to keep house without the spine. You need it every time you cook a meal. If the spinal cord could be pulled by a dentist and put away in pounded ice every time it gets a hot-box, spinal meningitis would ]ose its stinger. I was treated by thirteen physicians, whose names I may give in a future article. They were, as I said, men I shall long remember. One of them said very sensibly that meningitis was generally over-doctored. I told him that I agreed with him. I said that if I should have another year of meningitis and thirteen more doctors, I would have to postpone my tri]) to Europe, where I had hoped to go and cultivate my voice. I've got a perfectly lovely voice, if I 124 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. could take it to Europe and liave it sand-papered and varnished, and mellowed down with beer and bologna. But I was speaking of my physicians. Some time I'm going to give their biographies and portraits, as they did those of Dr. Bliss, Dr. Barnes and others. Next year, if I can get railroad rates, I am going to hold a reunion of my physicians in Chicago. It will be a pleasant relaxation for them, and will save the lives of a large percentage of their patients. SHi/T\mi9^ tf^e fT[\\\y U/ay. THE COMET. HE comet is a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look some like planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hit anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on it, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giv- ing just as good satisfaction everywhere. The characteristic features of a comet are : A nucleus, a nebulous light or coma, and usually a luminous train or tail worn high. Sometimes several tails are observed on one comet, but this occurs only in flush times. When I was young I used to think I would like to be a comet in the sky, up above the world so high, with nothing to do but loaf around and play with the little new-laid planets and have a good time, but now I can see where I was wrong. Comets also have their troubles, their perihilions, their hyperbolas and their parabolas. A little over 300 years ago Tycho Brahe discovered that comets were extraneous to our atmosphere, and since then times have improved. I can see that trade is steadier and potatoes run less to tows than they did before. Soon after that they discovered that comets all had more or less periodicity. Nobody knows how they got it. All the astronomers had been watching them day and night and didn't know when they were exposed, but there was no time to talk and argue over the question. There were two or three hundi'ed comets all down with it at once. It was an exciting time. Comets sometimes live to a great age. This shows Ihat the night air is not so injurious to the health as many people would have us believe. The great comet of 1780 is supposed to have been the one that was noticed about the time of Caesar's death, 44 B. C, and still, when it appeared in Newton's time, seventeen hundred years after its first grand farewell tour, Ike said tliat it was very well preserved, indeed, and seemed to have retained all its faculties in good shape. (125) 126 REMARKS BY RILL NYE. Astronomers say that the tails of all comets are turned from the sun. I do not know why they do this, whether it is etiquette among them or just a mere habit. A later writer on astronomy said that the substance of the nebulosity and the tail is of almost inconceivable tenuity. Ho said this and then death came to his relief. Another writer says of the comet and its tail that "the curvature of the latter and the acceleration of the periodic time in the case of Encke's comet indicate their being affected by a resisting medium which has never been observed to have the slightest influence on the planetary periods." I do not fully agree with the eminent authority, though he may be right. Much fear has been the result of the comet's appearance ever since the world began, and it is as good a thing to worry about as anything I know of. If we could get close to a comet without frightening it away, we would find that we could walk through it anywhere as we could through the glare of a torchlight procession. We should so live that we will not be ashamed to look a comet in the eye, however. Let us pay up our newspaper subscription and lead such lives that when the comet strikes we will be ready. Some worry a good deal about the chances for a big comet to plow into the sun some dark, rainy night, and thus bust up the whole universe. I wish that was all I had to worry about. If any respectable man will agree to pay my taxes and funeral expenses, I will agree to do his worrying about the comet's crashing into the bosom of the sun and knocking its daylights out. TYCHO BRAKE AT WORK. THE SUN. This luminous body is 92,000,000 miles from the earth, though there have been mornings this winter when it seemed to me that it was further than that. A railway train going at the rate of 40 miles per hour would be 263 years going there, to say nothing of stopping for fuel or water, or stopping on side tracks to wait for freight trains to pass. Several years ago it was discovered that a slight error had been made in the calculations of the sun's distance SKIMMING THE MILKY WAY. 127 from tlie earth, and, owing to a misplaced logarithm, or something of that kind, a mistake of 3,000,000 miles was made in the result. People cannot be too careful in such matters. Supposing that, on the strength of the information contained in the old time-table, a man should start out Avith only provisions sufficient to take him 89,000,000 miles and should then find that 3,0000,000 miles still stretched out ahead of him. He would then have to buy fresh figs of the train boy in order to sustain life. Think of buying nice fresh figs on a train that had been en route 250 years! Imagine a train boy starting out at ten years of age, and perishing at the age of 60 years with only one-fifth of his journey accomplished. Think of five train boys, one after the other, dying of old age on the way, and the train at last pulling slowly into the depot with not a living thing on board except the worms in the "nice eating apples!" The sun cannot bo examined through an ordinary telescope with impunity. Only one man every tried that, and he is now wearing a glass eye that cost him $9. If you examine the sun through an ordinary solar microscope, you discover that it has a curdled or mottled appearance, as though suffering from bilious- ness. It is also marked here and there by long streaks of light, called faculse, which look like foam flecks below a cataract. The spots on the sun vary from minute pores the size of an ordinary school district to spots 100,000 miles in diameter, visible to the nude eye. The center of these spots is as l)lack as a brunette cat, and is called the umbra, so called because it resembles an umbrella. The next circle is less dark, and called the penumbra, because it so closely resembles the penumbra. There are many theories regarding these spots, but, to be perfectly candid with the gentle reader, neither Prof. Proctor nor myself can tell exactly what they are. If we could get a little closer, we flatter ourselves that we could speak more definitely. My own theory is they are either, first, open air caucuses held by the colored people of the sun ; or, second, they may be the dark horses in the campaign; or, third, they may be the spots knocked off the defeated candidate by the opposition. Frankly, however, I do not believe either of these theories to be tenable. Prof. Proctor sneers at these theories also on the ground that these spots do not appear to revolve so fast as the sun. This, however, I am prepared to explain upon the theory that this might be the result of delays in the returns. 128 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. However, I am free to confess tliat speculative science is filled with the intangible. The sun revolves upon his or her axletree, as the case may be, once in 25 to 28 of our days, so that a man living there would have almost two years to pay a 30-day note. "We should so live that when we come to die we may go at once to the sun. Regarding the sun's temperature, Sir John Herschel says that it is suffi- cient to melt a shell of ice covering its entire surface to a depth of 40 feet. I do not know whether he made this experiment personally or hired a man to do it for him. The sun is like the star spangled banner — as it is "still there." You get up to-morrow morning just be- fore sunrise and look away toward the east, and keep on looking in that direction, and at last you will see a fine siofht, if what I have been told is true. If the sunrise is as grand as the sunset, it indeed must be one of nature's most sublime phenomena. The sun is the great source of light and heat for our earth. If the sun were to go somewhere for a few weeks for relaxation and rest, it would be a cold day for us. The moon, too, would be useless, for she is largely de- Animal life would soon cease and real estate would be- come depressed in price. We owe very much of our enjoyment to the sun, and not many years ago there were a large number of people who worshiped the sun. When a man showed signs of emotional insanity, they took him up on the observatory of the temple and sacrificed him to the sun. They were a very prosperous and happy people. If the conqueror had not come among them with civilization and guns and grand juries they would have been very happy, indeed. THE STARS. There is much in the great field of astronomy that is discouraging to the savant who hasn't the time nor means to rummage around through the heav- ens. At times I am almost hopeless, and feel like saying to the great yearn- ful, hungry world: "Grope on forever. Do not ask me for another scientific fact. Find it out yourself. Hunt up your own new-laid planets, and let me A COLD DAY. pendent on the sun. SKIMMING THE MILKY WAY. 129 have a rest. Never ask me again to sit up all night and take care of a new- born world, while you lie in Led and reck not." I get no salary for examining the trackless void night after night when I ought to be in bed. I sacrifice my health in order that the public may know at once of the presence of a red-hot comet, fresh from the factory. And yet, what thanks do I get? Is it surprising that every little while I contemplate withdrawing from scien- tific research, to go and skin an eight-mule team down through the dim vista of relentless years? Then, again, you take a certain style of star, which you learn from Profes- sor Simon Newcomb is such a distance that it takes 50,000 years for its light to reach Boston, Now, we will suppose that after looking over the large stock of new and second-hand stars, and after examining the spring catalogue and price list, I decide that one of the smaller size will do me, and I buy it. How do I know that it was there when I bought it? Its cold and silent rays may have ceased 49,000 years before I was born and the intelligence be still on the way. There is too much margin between sale and delivery. Every now and then another astronomer comes to me and says: " Professor, I have discovered another new star and intend to file it. Found it last night about a mile and a half south of the zenith, running loose. Haven't lieard of anybody who has lost a star of the fifteenth magnitude, about thirteen hands high, with light mane and tail, have you?" Now, how do I know that he has discovered a brand new star? How can I discover whether he is or is not playing an old, threadbare star on me for a new one? We are told that there has been no perceptible growth or decay in the star business since man began to roam around through space, in his mind, and make figures on the barn door with red chalk showing the celestial time table. No serious accidents have occurred in the starry heavens since I began to observe and study their habits. Not a star has waxed, not a star has waned to my knowledge. Not a planet has season-cracked or shown any of the injuri- ous effects of our rigorous climate. Not a star has ripened prematurely or fallen off the trees. The varnish on the very oldest stars I find on close and critical examination to be in splendid condition. They will all no doubt wear as long as we need them, and wink on long after we have ceased to wink back. In 1806 there appeared suddenly in the northern crown a star of about the third magnitude and worth at least $250. It was generally conceded by 130 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. astronomers that this was a brand new star that had never been used, but upon consulting Argehmder's star catalogue and price list it was found that this was not a new star at all, l)ut an old, faded star of the ninth magnitude, with the front breadths turned wrong side out and trimmed with moonlight along the seams. After a few days of phenomenal bright- ness, it gently ceased to draw a salary as a star of the third magnitude, and walked home with an Uncle Tom's Cabin company. It is such things as this that make the life of the astronomer one of constant and discouraging toil. I have long contem- A NIGHTLY VIGIL. plated, as I say, the advisability of retir- ing from this field of science and allowing others to light the northern lights, skim the milky way and do other celestial chores. I would do it myself cheerfully if my health would permit, but for years I have realized, and so has my wife, that my duties as an astronomer kept me up too much at night, and my wife is certainly right about it when she says if I insist on scanning the heavens night after night, coming home late with the cork out of my telescope and my eyes red and swollen with these exhausting night vigils, I will be cut down in my prime. So I am liable to abandon the great labor to which I had intended to devote my life, my dazzling genius and my princely income. I hope that other savants will spare me the pain of another refusal, for my mind is fully made up that unless another skimmist is at once secured, the milky way will henceforth remain unskum. f\ '\\)n\\\r)<^ ExperieQce. HAD a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled an engagement in a strange city, and retired to my cozy room at the hotel. The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had been ^'^^ locked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company. The last loiterer had returned to his home, and the lights in the palace of the pork packer were extinguished. No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed. The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for another's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if lie would enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more safely. Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the bell-boy afterward testified that he heard me do so. The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assurance of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into a gentle repose. Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the regular features, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple. I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or (1S1> 132 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. other, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The room was in semi-darkness. Hark! A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a human being ! I Avas now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets. Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly Avrapper. Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it. I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life. But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my hard- earned wealth. Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be try- ing to suppress it. I reached gently under the pillow, and securing the money I put it in the pocket of my I'obe de unit. Then, with great care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson's great work on "How to Ventilate the Human Form." I said to myself that I would sell my life as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the trade. Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the corner. When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark corner. Also another sigh of relief later on. I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his pantaloons were hanging on a chair at the other end of the room. A THRILLING EXPERIENCE. 133 However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed to- ward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling. People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator. It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do so than have the affair garbled by careless hands. <5at(;f7i9^ a Buffalo. PLEASING anecdote is being told through the press columns recently, f of an encounter on the South Platte, which occurred some years ago !^ between a Texan and a buffalo. The recital sets forth the fact that the Texans went out to hunt buffalo, hoping to get enough for a mess during the day. Toward evening they saw two gentlemen buffalo on a neigh- boring hill near the Platte, and at once pursued their game, each selecting an animal. They separated at once. Jack going one way galloping after his beast, while Sam went in the other direction. Jack soon got a shot at his game, but the bullet only tore a large hole in the fleshy shoulder of the bull and buried itself in the neck, maddening the animal to such a degree that he turned at once and charged upon horse and rider. The astonished horse, with the wonderful courage, sagacity and sang froid peculiar to the broncho, whirled around two consecutive times, tangled his feet in the tall grass and fell, throwing his rider about fifty feet. He then rose and walked away to a quiet place, where he could consider the matter and give the buffalo an opportunity to recover. The infuriated bull then gave chase to Jack, who kept out of the way for a few yards only, when, getting his legs entangled in the grass, he fell so sud- denly that his pursuer dashed over him without doing him any bodily injury. However, as the animal went over his prostrate form. Jack felt the buffalo's tail brush across his face, and, rising suddenly, he caught it with a terrific grip and hung to it, thus keeping out of the reach of his enemy's horns, till his strength was just giving out, when Sam hove in sight and put a large bullet through the bull's heart. This tale is told, apparently, by an old plainsman and scout, who reels it off as though he might be telling his own experience. Now, I do not wish to seem captious and always sticking my nose into what is none of my business, but as a logical and zoological fact, I desire, in my cursory way, to coolly take up the subject of the buffalo tail. Those who have been in the habit of killing buffaloes, instead of running an account at (134) CATCHING A BUFFALO. 135 the butcher shop, will remember that this noble animal has a genuine camel's hair tail aboat eight inches long, with a chenille tassel at the end, which he throws up into the rarified atmosphere of the far west, whenever he is surprised or agitated. In passing over a prostrate man, therefore, I apprehend that in order to brush his face with the average buffalo tail, it would be necessary for him to sit down on the bosom of the prostrate scout and fan his features with the miniature caudal bud. The buffalo does not gallop an hundred miles a day, dragging his tail across the bunch grass and alkali of the bound- less plains. He snorts a little, turns his bloodshot eyes toward the enemy a mo- ment and then, throwing his cunning little taillet over the dash-boardlet, he wings away in an op- posite direction. The man who could lie on his back and grab -..-- e^^ AN UNEQUAL MATCH. that vision by the tail would have to be moder- ately active. If he suc- ceeded, however, it would be a question of the sixteenth part of a second only, whether he had his arms jerked out by the roots and scattered through space or whether he had strength of will sufficient to yank out the withered little frizz and hold the quivering ornament in his hands. Few people have the moral courage to follow a buffalo around over half a day holding on by the tail. It is said that a Sioux brave once tried it, and they say his tracks were 136 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. thirteen miles apart. After merrily sauntering around witli tlie buffalo one hour, during which time he crossed the territories of Wyoming and Dakota twice and surrounded the regular army three times, he became discouraged and died from the injuries he had received. Perhaps, however, it may have been fatigue. It might be possible for a man to catch hold of the meager tail of a meteor and let it snatch him through the coming years. It might be, that a man with a strong constitution could catch a cyclone and ride it bareback across the United tStates and then have a fresh one ready to ride back again, but to catch a buffalo bull in the full flush of manhood, as it were, and retain his tail while he crossed three reservations and two moun- tain ranges, requires great tenacity of purpose and unusual mental equipoise. Remember, I do not regard the story I refer to as false, at least I do not wish to be so understood. I simply say that it recounts an incident that is rather out of the ordinary. Let the gentle reader lie down and have a Jack- rabbit driven across his face, for instance. The J. Rabbit is as likely to brush your face with his brief and erect tail as the buffalo would be. Then carefully note how rapidly and promptly instantaneous you must be. Then closely at- tend to the manner in which you abruptly and almost simultaneously, have not retained the tail in your memory. A few people may have successfully seized the grieved and startled buffalo bj the tail, but they are not here to testify to the circumstances. They are d<'*id, abnormally and extremely dead. J0I79 f\dafr\^. xFTER viewing tlie birthplace of the Adamses out at Quincy I felt more rA=\\/ reconciled to my own birthplace. Comparing the house in which I was zltu±. ^o^^ with those in which other eminent philanthropists and high-priced "'^^ statesmen originated, I find that I have no reason to complain. Neither of the Adamses were born in a larger house than I was, and for gen- eral tone and eclat of front yard and cook-room on behind, I am led to believe that I have the advantage. John Adams was born before John Quincy Adams. A popular idea seems to prevail in some sections of the Union that inasmuch as John Q. was bald headed, he was the elder of the two; but I inquired about that while on the ground where they were both born, and ascertained from people who were familiar with the circumstances, that John was born first. John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was a lawyer by profession, but his atten- tion was called to politics by the passage of the stamp act in 1765. He was one of the delegates who represented Massachusetts in the first Continental Congress, and about that time he wrote a letter in which he said: "The die is now cast; I have passed the rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or per- ish with my country is my unalterable determination," Some have expressed the opinion that "the rubicon" alluded to by Mr. Adams in this letter was a law which he had succeeded in getting passed ; but this is not true. The idea of passing the rubicon first originated with Julius Caesar, a foreigner of some note who flourished a good deal B. C. In June, 1776, Mr. Adams seconded a resolution, moved by Richard Henry Lee, that the United States "are, and of right ought to be, free and independ- ent." Whenever Mr. Adams could get a chance to whoop for liberty now and forever, one and inseparable, he invariably did so. (137) PRESIDENTIAL SIM- PLICITY. 138 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. In 1796, Mr. Adams ran for president. In the convention it was nip and tuck between Thomas Jefferson and himself, but Jefferson was understood to be a Universalist, or an Universalist, whichever would look the best in print, and so he only got 68 votes out of a possible 139. In 1800, however, Jefferson turned the tables on him, and Mr. Adams only received 05 to Jefferson's 73 votes. Mr. Adams made a good president and earned his salary, though it wasn't so much of a job as it is now. When there was no Indian war in those days the president could put on an old blue flannel shirt and such other clothes as he might feel disposed to adopt, and fish for bull-heads in the Potomac till his nose peeled in the full glare of the fervid sun. Now it is far different. By the time we get through with a president now- adays he isn't good for much. Mr. Hayes stood the fatigue of being presi- dent better, perhaps, than any other man since the republic became so large a machine. Mr. Hayes went home to Fremont with his mind just as fresh and his brain as cool as when he pulled up his coat tails to sit down in the presi- dential chair. The reason why Mr. Hayes saved his mind, his brain and his salary, was plain enough when we stop to consider that he did not use them much during his administration. John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States and the eldest son of John Adams. He was one of the most eloquent of orators, and shines in history as one of the most polished of our eminent and bald-headed Americans. When he began to speak, his round, smooth head, to look down upon it from the gallery, resembled a nice new billiard ball, but as he warmed up and became more thoroughly stirred, his intellectual dome changed to a delicate pink. Then, when he rose to the full height of his eloquent flight, and prepared to swoop down upon his adi^ersaries and carry them into camp, it is said that his smooth intellectual rink was as red as the flush of rosy dawn on the 5th day of July. He was educated both at home and abroad. That is the reason he was so polished. After he got so that he could readily spell and pronounce the most difficult words to be found in the large stores of Boston, he was sent to Europe, where he acquired several foreign tongues, and got so that he could converse with the people of Europe very fluently, if they were familiar with English as she is spoke. John Quincy Adams was chosen president by the House of Representatives, there being no choice in the electoral contest, Adams receiving 84 votes, Andrew JOHN ADAMS. 139 Jackson 99, William H. Crawford 4i, and Henry Clay 37. Clay stood in with Mr. Adams in the House of Bepresentatives deal, it was said, and was appointed secretary of state under Mr, Adams as a result. This may not be true, but a party told me about it who got it straight from Washington, and he also told nie in confidence that he made it a rule never to prevaricate. Mr. Adams was opposed to American slavery, and on several occasions in Congress alluded to his convictions. He was in Congress seventeen years, and during that time he was fre- quently on his feet attending to little matters in which he felt an interest, and when he tbegan to make allusions, and blush all over the top of his head, and kick the desk, and throw ink-bottles at the presiding officer, they say that John Q. made them pay attention. Seward says, "with unwavering firmness, against a bitter and unscrupulous opposition, exasperated to the highest pitch by his pertinacity — amidst a perfect tempest of vituperation and abuse — he persevered in presenting his anti-slavery petitions, one by one, to the amount sometimes of 200 in one day." As one of his eminent biographers has truly said: " John Quincy Adams was indeed no slouch." 5l?e U/ail of a U/ife. I'^^THEL" lias written a letter to me and asked for a printed reply. ^Itf-^ Leaving off the opening sentences, which I would not care to have ]|M^i fall into the hands of my wife, her note is about as follows: ^^^^ " '■ Vt., Feb. 28, 1885. "My Dear Sir: ** **** **** * * * * * * * [Tender part of letter omitted for obvious reasons.] Would it be asking too much for me to request a brief reply to one or two questions which many other married women as well as myself would like to have answered? I have been married now for five years. To-day is the anniversary of my marriage. When I was single I was a teacher and supported myself in com- fort. I had more pocket-money and dressed fully as well if not better than I do now. Why should girls who are abundantly able to earn their own liveli- hood struggle to become the slave of a husband and children, and tie them- selves to a man when they might be free and happy ? I think too much is said by the men in a light and flippant manner about the anxiety of young ladies to secure a home and a husband, and still they do deserve a part of it, as I feel that I do now for assuming a great burden when I was comparatively independent and comfortable. Now, Avill you suggest any advice that you think would benefit the yet unmarried and self-supporting girls who are liable to make the same mistake that I did, and thus warn them in a manner that would be so much more uni- versal in its range, and reach so many more people than I could if I should raise my voice ? Do this and you will be gratefully remembered by Ethel." It would indeed be a tough, tough man who could ignore thy gentle plea, Ethel; tougher far than the pale, intellectual hired man who now addresses you in this private and underhanded manner, unknown to your husband. Please destroy this letter, Ethel, as soon as you see it in print, so that it will not fall into the hands of Mr. Ethel, for if it should, I am gone. If your hus- (140) THE WAIL OF A WIFE. 141 band were to run across this letter in tlie public press I could never look him in the eye again. You say that you had more pocket-money before you were married than you have since, Ethel, and you regret your rash step. I am sorry to hear it. Yon also say that you wore better clothes when you were single than you do now. You are also pained over that. It seems that marriage with you has not paid any cash dividends. So that if you married Mr. Ethel as a financial venture, it was a mistake. You do not state how it has affected your husband. Perhaps he had more pocket-money and better clothes before he married than he has since. Sometimes two people do well in business by themselves, but when they go into partnership they bust higher than a kite, if you will allow me the free, English translation of a Koman expression which you might not fully understand if I should give it to you in the original Roman. Lots of self-supporting young la- dies have married and had to go very light on pin-money after that, and still they did not squeal, as you, dear Ethel. They did not marry for revenue only. They married for pro- tection. ( This is a little political bon mot which I thought of myself. Some of my best jokes this spring are jokes that I thought of myself. ) No, Ethel, if you married expect- ing to be a dormant partner during the day and then to go through Mr. Ethel's pantaloons pocket at night and declare a dividend, of course life is full of bitter, bitter regret and dis- appointment. Perhaps it is also for Mr, Ethel. AnylK.w. I can't help feeling a pang of sympathy for him. You do not say that he is unkind or that he so far forgets himself as to wake you up in the morning with a harsh tone of voice and a yearling club. You do not say that he asks you for pocket-money, or, if so, whether you give it to him or not. Of course I want to do what is right in the solemn warning business, so I will give notice to all simple young women who are now self-supporting and FOR REVENUE ONLY. 142 BEMARKS BY BILL NYE. happy, that there is no statute requiring them to assume the burdens of wife- hood and motherhood unless they prefer to do so. If they now have abund- ance of i)in -money and new clothes, they may remain single if they wish with- 'out violating the laws of the land. This nile is also good when applied to young and self-supporting young men who wear good clothes and have funds in their pockets. No young man who is free, happy and independent, need in- vest his money in a family or carry a colicky child twenty-seven miles and two laps in one night unless he prefers it. But those who go into it with the right spirit, Ethel, do not regret it. I would just as soon tell you, Ethel, if you will promise that it shall go no farther, that I do not wear as good clothes as I did before I was married. I don't have to. My good clothes have accomplished what I got them for. I played them for all they were worth, and since I got married the idea of wearing clothes as a vocation has not occurred to me. Please give my kind regards to Mr. Ethel, and tell him that although I do not know him personally, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. Bui^Ker f^ill. AST week for the first time I visited the granite obelisk known all over ["^ the civilized world as Bunker Hill monument. Sixty years ago, if my memory serves me correctly, General La Fayette, since deceased, laid "5K the corner-stone, and Daniel Webster made a few desultory remarks which I cannot now recall. Eighteen years later it was formally dedicated, and Daniel spoke a good piece, composed mostly of things that he had thought up himself. There has never been a feature of the early history and unceas- ing struggle for American freedom which has so roused my admiration as this custom, quite prevalent among congressmen in those days, of writing their own speeches. Many of AVebster's most powerful speeches were written by himself or at his suggestion. He was a plain, unassuming man, and did not feel above writing his speeches. I have always had the greatest respect and admiration for Mr. AVebster as a citizen, as a scholar and as an extemporaneous speaker, and had he not allowed his portrait to appear last year in the Ccnfurjj, wear- ing an air of intense gloom and a plug hat entirely out of style, my respect and admiration would have continued indefinitely. Bunker Hill monument is a great success as a monument, and the view from its summit is said to be well worth the price of admission. I did not ascend the obelisk, because the inner staircase was closed to visitors on the day of my visit and the lightning rod on the outside looked to me as though it had been recently oiled. On the following day, however, I engaged a man to ascend the monument and tell me his sensations. He assured me that they were first-rate. At the feet of the spectator Boston and its environments are spread out in the glad sunshine. Every day Boston spreads out her environments just that way. Bunker Hill monument is 221 feet in height, and has been entirely ]iaid for. The spectator may look at the monument with perfect impunity, without being solicited to buy some of its mortgage bonds. This adds much to the genu- ine thrill of pleasure while gazing at it, (148) 144 KEMARKS BY BILL NYE. There is a Bunker Hill in Macoupin County, Illinois, also in Ingliam County, Michigan, and in liussell County, Kansas, but General Warren was not killed at either of these points. One hundred and ten years ago, on the 17th day of the present month, one of America's most noted battles Avith the British was fought near where Bunker Hill monument now stands. In that battle the British lost 1,050 in killed and wounded, Avhile the American loss numbered but 450. While the people of this country are showing such an interest in our war history, I am surprised that something has not been said about Bunker Hill. The Federal forces from Eoxbury to Cambridge were under command of General Artemus Ward, the great American humorist. When the American humorist really puts on his war paint and sounds the tocsin, he can organize a great deal of mourning. General Ward was assisted by Putnam, Starke, Prescott, Gridley and Pom- eroy. Colonel William Prescott was sent over from Cambridge to Charlestown for the purpose of fortifying Bunker Hill. At a council of war it was decided to fortify Breeds Hill, not so high but nearer to Boston than Bunker Hill. So a redoubt was thrown up during the night on the ground where the monu- ment now stands. The British landed a large force under Generals Howe and Pigot, and at 2 P. M. the Americans were reinforced by Generals Warren and Pomeroy. General Warren was of a literary turn of mind and during the battle took his hat off and recited a little poem beginning: "Stand, the ground's yonr own, my braves! Will ye give it np to slaves? " A man who could deliver an impromptu and extemporaneous address like that in public, and while there was such a bitter feeling of hostility on the part of the audience, must have been a good scholar. In our great fratricidal strife twenty years ago, the inferiority of our generals in this respect was painfully noticeable. We did not have a commander who could address his troops in rhyme to save his neck. Several of them were pretty good in blank verse, but it was so blank that it was not just the thing to fork over to poster- ity and speak in school afterward. Colonel Prescott's statue now stands where he is supposed to have stood when he told his men to reserve their fire till they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes. Those who have examined the cast-iron flint-lock weapon used in those days will admit that this order was wise. Those guns were injurious BUNKER HILL. 145 to healtli, of course, when used to excess, but not necessarily or immediately fatal. At the time of the third attack by the British, the Americans were out of ammunition, but they met the enemy with clubbed muskets, and it was found that one end of the rebel flint-lock was about as fatal as the other, if not more so. Boston still meets the invader with its club. The mayor says to the citi- zens of Boston: "Wait till you can see the whites of the visitor's eyes, and then go for him with your clubs." Then the visitor surrenders. I hope that many years may pass before it will again be necessary for us to soak this fair land in British blood. The boundaries of our land are now more extended, and so it would take more blood to soak it. Boston has just reason to be proud of Bunker Hill, and it was certainly a great stroke of enterprise to have the battle located there. Bunker Hill is dear to every American heart, and there are none of us who would not have cheerfully gone into the battle then if we had known about it in time. f\ ljJ/T)b(?r (^amp. ^ HAVE just returned from a little impromptu farewell tour in the lumber # camps toward Lake Superior. It was my idea to wade around in the snow '•J 1 for a few weeks and swallow baked beans and ozone on the ^ shell. The '^ affair was a success. I put up at Bootjack camp on the raging Willow River, where the gay-plumaged chipmunk and the spruce gum have their home. Winter in the pine woods is fraught with fun and frolic. It is more fraught with fatigue than funds, however. This winter a man in the Michi- gan and Wisconsin lumber camps could arise at -4:30 A. M., eat a patent pail full of dried apples soaked with Young Hyson and sweetened with Persian glucose, go out to the timber with a lantern, hew down the giants of the for- est, with the snow up to the pit of his stomach, till the gray owl in the gath- ering gloom whooped and hooted in derision, and all for ^12 per month and stewed prunes. I did not try to accumulate wealth while I was in camp. I just allowed others to enter into the mad rush and wrench a fortune from the hand of fate while I studied human nature and the cook. I had a good many pleasant days there, too. I read such literary works as I could find around the camp and smoked the royal Havana smoking tobacco of the cookee. Those who have not lum- bered much do not know much of true joy and sylvan smoking tobacco. They are not using a very good grade of the weed in the lumber regions this winter. When I say lumber regions I do not refer entirely to the circum- stances of a weak back. (Monkey-wrench, oil can and screwdriver sent with this joke ; also rules for working it in all kinds of goods. ) The tobacco used by the pine choppers of the notheru forest is called the Scandihoovian. I do not know why they call it that, unless it is because yon can smoke it in Wis- consin and smell it in Scandihoovia. AVhen night came we would gather around the blazing fire and talk over old times and smoke this tobacco. I smoked it till last week, then I bought a new mouth and resolved to lead a different life. (146) A LUMBER CAMP. 147 I shall never forgot the evenings we spent together in that log shack in the heart of the forest. They are graven on my memory where time's effac- ing fingers can not monkey with them. We would most always converse. The crew talked the Norwegian language and I am using the English language mostly this winter. So each enjoyed himself in his own quiet way. This seemed to throw the Norwegians a good deal together. It also threw me a good deal together. The Scandinavians soon learn our ways and our lan- guage, but prior to that they are quite clannish. The cook, however, was an Ohio man. He spoke the Sandusky dialect with a rich, nut brown flavor that did me much good, so thifit after I talked with I TOOK A PIE. the crew a few hours in English, and received their harsh, corduroy replies in Norske, I gladly fled to the cook shanty. There I could rapidly chano-e to the smoothly flowing sentences peculiar to the Ohio tongue, and while I ate the common twisted doughnut of commerce, we would talk on and on of the pleasant days we had spent in our native land. I don't know how many hours I have thus spent, bringing the glad light into the eye of the cook as I spoke to him of Mrs. Hayes, an estimable lady, partially married, and now living at Fremont, Ohio. I talked to him of his old home till the tears would unbidden start, as he rolled out the dough with a common Budweiser beer bottle, and shed the 148 KEMARKS BY BILL NYE, scalding into the flour barrel. Tears are always unavailing, but sometimes I think they are more so when they are shed into a barrel of flour. He was an easy weeper. He would shed tears on the slightest provocation, or anything else. Once I told him something so touchful that his eyes were blinded with tears for the nonce. Then I took a pie, and stole away so that he could be alone with his sorrow. He used to grind the coffee at 2 A. M. The coffee mill was nailed up against a partition on the opposite side from my bed. That is one reason I did not stay any longer at the camp. It takes about an hour to grind coffee enough for thirty men, and as my ear was generally against the pine boards when the cook began, it ruffled my slumbers and made me a morose man. We had three men at the camp who snored. If they had snored in my own language I could have endured it, but it was entirely unintelligible to me as it was. Still, it wasn't bad either. They snored on different keys, and still there was harmony in it — a kind of chime of imported snore as it were. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would begin his coffee mill overture and I would arise. When I got home I slept from Monday morning till Washington's Birth- day, without food or water. (T\y [eetiire /Abroad. II^^AVING at last yielded to the entreaties of Great Britain, I liave de- cided to make a professional farewell tour of England with my new and thrilling lecture, entitled "Jerked Across the Jordan, or the Sudden and Deserved Elevation of an American Citizen," I have, therefore, already written some of the cablegrams which will be sent to the Associated Press, in order to open the campaign in good shape in America on my return. Though I have been supplicated for some time by the people of England to come over there and thrill them with my eloquence, my thriller has been out of order lately, so that I did not dare venture abroad. This lecture treats incidentally of the ease with which an American citizen may rise in the Territories, when he has a string tied around his neck, with a few personal friends at the other end of the string. It also treats of the va- rious styles of oratory peculiar to America, with specimens of American ora- tory that have been pressed and dried especially for this lecture. It is a good lecture, and the few straggling facts scattered along through it don't interfere with the lecture itself in any way. I shall appear in costume during the lecture. At each lecture a different costume will be worn, and the costume worn at the previous lecture will be promptly returned to the owner. Persons attending the lecture need not be identified. Polite American dude ushers will go through the audience to keep the flies away from those who wish to sleep during the lecture. Should the lecture be encored at its close, it will be repeated only once. This encore business is being overdone lately, I think. Following are some of the cablegrams I have already written. If any one has any suggestions as to change, or other additional favorable criticisms, they will be gratefully received ; but I wish to reserve the right, however, to do as I please about using them: London, , . — Bill Nye opened his foreign lecture engagement here last evening with a can-opener. It was found to be in good order. As (149) 150 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. soon as tlie doors were opened there was a mad rush for seats, during which three men were fatally injured. They insisted on remaining through the lec- ture, however, and adding to its horrors. Before 8 o'clock 500 people had been turned away. Mr. Nye announced that he would deliver a matinee this afternoon, but he has been petitioned by tradesmen to refrain from doing so, as it will paralyze the business interests of the city to such a degree that they offer to "buy the house," and allow the lecturer to cancel his engagement. London, ■ ■, . — The great lecturer and contortionist. Bill Nye, last night closed his six weeks' engagement here with his famous lecture on "The Rise and Fall of the American Horse Thief," with a grand benefit and ovation. The elite of London was present, many of whom have attended every evening for six weeks to hear this same lecture. Those who can afford it will follow the lecturer back to America, in order to be where they can hear this lecture almost constantly. Mr. Nye, at the beginning of the season, offered a prize to anyone who should neither be absent nor tardy through the entire six weeks. After some hot discussion last evening, the prize was awarded to the janitor of the hall. [Associated Press Cablegram.] London, , . — Bill Nye will sail for America to-morrow in the steamship Senegambia. On his arrival in America he will at once pay off the national debt and found a large asylum for American dudes whose mothers are too old to take in washing and support their sons in affluence.' 1^ Jf^e fT\\T)er at \\of[\e. ECEIVING another notice of assessment on my stock in the Aladdin mine the other day, reminded me that I was still interested in a bottom- _^ «.. less hole that was supposed at one time to yield funds instead of ab- ^^ sorbing them. The Aladdin claim Avas located in the spring of '76 by a syndicate of journalists, none of whom had ever been openly accused of wealth. If we had been, we could have proved an alibi. We secured a gang of miners to sink on the discovery, consisting of a Chinaman named How Long. How Long spoke the Chinese language with great fluency. Being perfectly familiar with that language, and a little musty in the trans-Missouri English, he would converse with us in his own language, sometimes by the hour, courteously overlooking the fact that we did not reply to him in the same tongue. He would converse in this way till he ran down, generally, and then he would refrain for a while. Finally, How Long signified that he would like to draw his salary. Of course he was ignorant of our ways, and as innocent of any knowledge of the intricate details peculiar to a mining syndicate as the child unborn. So he had gone to the president of our syndicate and had been referred to the super- intendent, and he had sent How Long to the auditor, and the auditor had told him to go to the gang boss and get his time, and then proceed in the proper manner, after which, if his claim turned out to be all right, we would call a meeting of the syndicate and take early action in relation to it. By this, the reader will readily see that, although we were not wealthy, we knew how to do business just the same as though we had been a wealthy corporation. How Long attended one of our meetings and at the close of the session made a few remarks. As near as I am able to recall his language, it was very much as follows: " China boy no sabbe you dam slyndicate. You allee same foolee me too muchee. How Long no chopee big hole in the glound allee day for health. You Melican boy Laddee silver mine all same funny business. Me no likee slyndicate. Slyndicate heap gone all same woodbine. You sabbe me? How Long make em slyndicate pay tention. You April foolee me. You makee me (151) 152 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. tlired. Ton putee me too much on em slate. Slyndicate no good. Allee time stanemoff China boy. You allee time chin chin. Dlividend allee time heap gone." Owing to a strike which then took place in our mine, we found that, in order to complete our assessment work, we must get in another crew or do the job ourselves. Owing to scarcity of help and a feeling of antagonism on the part of the laboring classes toward our giant enterprise, a feeling of hos- tility which naturally exists be- tween labor and capital, we had to go out to the mine ourselves. We had heard of other men who had shoveled in their own mines and w^ere afterward worth millions of dollars, so we took some bacon and other delicacies and hied us to the Aladdin. Buck, our mining expert, went down first. Then he requested us to hoist him out again. We did so. I have forgotten what his first remark was when he got out of the bucket, but that don't make any difference, for I Avouldn't care to use it here anyway. It seems that How Long, owing to his heathenish ignorance of our customs and the unavoidable delay in adjusting his claim for work, labor and sei*vices, had allowed his temper to get the better of him, and he had planted a colony of American skunks in the shaft of the Aladdin. That is the reason we left the Aladdin mine and no one jumped it. We had not done the necessary work in order to hold it, but when we went out there the following spring we found that no one had jumped it. Even the rough, coarse miner, far from civilizing influences and beyond the reach of social advantages, recognizes the fact that this little, unostenta- I HAVE FORGOTTEN HIS FIRST REMARK. THE MINER AT HOME. 153 tious animal plodding along through life in its own modest way, yet wields a wonderful influence over the destinies of num. So the Aladdin mine Avas not disturbed that summer. We paid How Long, and in the following spring had a flattering offer for the claim if it assayed as well as we said it would, so Buck, our expert, went out to the Aladdin with an assayer and the purchaser. The assay of the Aladdin showed up very rich indeed, far above anything that I had ever hoped for, and so we made a sale. But we never got the money, for when the assayer got home he casually assayed his apparatus and found that his whole outfit had been salted prior to the Aladdin assay, I do not think our expert. Buck, would salt an assayer' s kit, but he -was charged with it at this time, and he said he would rather lose his trade than have trouble over it. He would rather suffer wrong than to do wrong, he said, and so the Aladdin came back on our hands. It is not a very good mine if a man wants it as a source of revenue, but it makes a mighty good well. The water is cold and clear as crystal. If it stood in Boston, instead of out there in northern Colorado, where you can't get at it more than three months in the year, it would be worth $150. The great fault of the Aladdin mine is its poverty as a mine, and its isolation as a well. f\T) Operatic E^tertair^mer^t. AST week we went up to the Coliseum, at Minneapolis, to hear Theodore Thomas' orchestra, the Wagner trio and Christine Nilsson. • The Coliseum is a large rink just out of Minneapolis, on the road between that city -^^ and St. Paul, It can seat 4,000 people comfortably, but the management like to wedge 4,500 people in there on a warm day, and then watch the per- spiration trickle out through the clapboards on the outside. On the closing afternoon, during the matinee' performance, the building was struck by light- ning and a hole knocked out of the Corinthian duplex that surmounts the oblique portcullis on the off side. The reader will see at once the location of the bolt. The lightning struck the flag-stafP, ran down the leg of a man who was repairing the electric light, took a chew of his tobacco, turned his boot 'Wrong side out and induced him to change his sock, toyed with a chilblain, wrenched out a soft corn and roguishly put it in his ear, then ran down the electric light wire, a part of it filling an engagement in the Coliseum and the balance following the wire to the depot, where it made double-pointed tooth- picks of a pole fifty feet high. All this was done very briefly. Those who have seen lightning toy with a cotton wood tree, know that this fluid makes a specialty of it at once and in a brief manner. The lightning in this case, broke the glass in the skylight and deposited the broken fragments on a half dozen parquette chairs, that were empty because the speculators who owned them couldn't get but $50 apiece, and were waiting for a man to mortgage his resi- dence and sell a team. He couldn't make the transfer in time for the matinee, so the seats were vacant when the lightning struck. The immediate and previ- ous fluid then shot athwart the auditorium in the direction of the platform, where it nearly frightened to death a large chorus of children. Women fainted, ticket speculators fell $2 on desirable seats, and strong men coughed up a clove. The scene beggared description. I intended to have said that before, but forgot it. Theodore Thomas drew in a full breath, and Christine Nilsson drew her salary. Two thousand strong men thought of their wasted lives, and (154) AN OPERATIC ENTERTAINMENT. 155 two thousand women felt for their back hair to see if it was still there. I say, therefore, without successful contradiction, that the scene beggared description. Chestnuts ! In the evening several people sang, "The Creation." Nilsson was Gabriel. Gabriel has a beautiful voice cut low in the neck, and sings like a joyous bobo- link in the dew-saturated mead. How's that? Nilsson is proud and haughty in her demeanor, and I had a good notion to send a note up to her, stating that she needn't feel so lofty, and if she could sit up in the peanut gallery where I Avas and look at herself, with her di'Bss kind of sawed off at the top, she would not be so vain. She wore a diamond necklace and silk skirt. The skirt was cut princesse, I think, to har- monize with her salary. As an old neighbor of mine said when he painted the top board of his fence green, he wanted it "to kind of corroborate with his blinds." He's the same man who went to AVashington about the time of the Guiteau trial, and said he was present at the "post mortise" examination. But the funniest thing of all, he said, was to see Dr. Mary AValker riding one of these "philoso- phers" around on the streets. But I am wandering. We were speaking of the Festival, Theodore Thomas is certainly a great leader. What a pity he is out of politics. He pounded the air all up fine there, Thursday. I think he has 25 small-size fiddles, 10 medium-size, and 5 of those big, fat owes that a bald-headed man generally annoys. Then there were a lot of wind instruments, drums, et cetera. There were 600 performers on the stage, counting the chorus, with 4,500 peo- ple in the house and 3,000 outside yelling at the ticket ofiice — also at the top MAKING HIMSELF USEFUL. 156 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. of their voices — and swearing because they couldn't mortgage their immortal souls and hear Nilsson's coin silver notes. It was frightful. The building settled twelve inches in those two hours and a half, the electric lights went out nine times for refi*eshments, and, on the whole, the entertainment was a grand success. The first time the lights adjourned, an usher came in on the stage through a side entrance with a kerosene lamp, I guess he would have stood there and held it for Nilsson to sing by, if 4,500 people hadn't with one voice laughed him out into the starless night. You might as well have tried to light benighted Africa with a white bean. I shall never forget how proud and buoyant he looked as he sailed in with that kerosene lamp with a soiled chim- ney on it, and how hurt and grieved he seemed when he took it and groped his way out, while the Coliseum trembled with ill-concealed merriment. I use the term "ill-concealed merriment" with permission of the proprietors, for this season only. Do(^s aT)d Do^ Day5. y TAKE occasion at this time to ask the American people as one man, what are we to do to prevent the spread of the most insidious and disagreeable disease knoAvn as hydrophobia? When a fellow-being has to be smoth- ^ ered, as was the case the other day right here in our fair land, a land where tyrant foot hath never trod nor bigot forged a chain, we look anxiously into each other's faces and inquire, what shall we do? Shall we go to France at a great expense and fill our systems full of dog virus and then return to our glorious land, where we may fork over that virus to posterity and thus mix up French hydrophobia with the navy-blue blood of free-born American citizens? I wot not. If I knew that would be my last wot I would not change it. That is just wot it would be. But again. What shall we do to avoid getting impregnated with the American dog and then saturating our systems with the alien dog of Paris ? It is a serious matter, and if we do not want to play the Desdemona act we must take some timely precautions. What must those precautions be ? Did it ever occur to the average thinking mind that we might squeeze along for weeks without a dog ? Whole families have existed for years after being deprived of dogs. Look at the wealthy of our land. They go on comfortably through life and die at last with the unanimous consent of their heirs dogless. Then why cannot the poor gradually taper off on dogs ? They ought not to stop all of a sudden, but they could leave off a dog at a time until at last they overcame the pernicious habit. I saw a man in St. Paul last week who was once poor, and so owned seven variegated dogs. He was confirmed in that habit. But he summoned all his will-power at last and said he would shake off these dogs and become a man. He did so, and to-day he owns a city lot in St. Paul, and seems to be the pic- ture of health. (157) 158 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. The trouble about maintaining a dog is that he may go on for years in a quiet, gentlemanly way, winning the regard of all who know him, and then all of a sudden he may hydrophobe in the most violent manner. Not only that, but he may do so while we have company. He may also bite our twins or the twins of our warmest friends. He may bite us now and we may laugh at it, but in five years from now, while we are delivering a humorous lecture, we may burst forth into the audience and bite a beautiful young lady in the par- quet or on the ear. It is a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to those who may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactory political re- form — I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purely ornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our children more. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would agree to feed with my only son. I know that we gradually become attached to a good dog, but some day he may become attached to us, and what can be sadder than the sight of a leading citizen drawing a reluctant mad dog down the street by main strength and the seat of his pantaloons? (I mean his own, not the dog's pants. f^^This joke will appear in book form in April. The book will be very readable, and there will be another joke in it also, eod tf. ) I have said a good deal about the dog, pro and con, and I am not a rabid dog abolitionist, for no one loves to have his clear-cut features licked by the warm, wet tongue of a noble dog any more than I do, but rather than see hy- drophobia become a national characteristic or a leading industry here, I would forego the dog. Perhaps all men are that way, however. When they get a little forehanded they forget that they were once poor, and owned dogs. If so, I do not wish to be unfair. I want to be just, and I believe I am. Let us yield up our dogs and take the affection that we would otherwise bestow on them on some human being. I have tried it and it works well. There are thousands of people in the world, of both sexes, who are pining and starving for the love and money that we daily shower on the dog. If the dog would be kind enough to refrain from introducing his justly cele- brated virus into the person of those only who kiss him on the cold, moist nose, it would be all right ; but when a dog goes mad he is very impulsive, and he may bestow himself on an obscure man. So I feel a little nervous myself. Q^ristopf^er Qplumbu5. ^jROBABLY few people have been more successful in the discovering line jr-o than Christopher Columbus. Living as he did in a day when a great J Iflj many things were still in an undiscovered state, the horizon was filled C with golden opportunities for a man possessed of Mr. C.'s pluck and am- bition. His life at first was filled with rebuffs and disapj^ointments, but at last he grew to be a man of importance in his own profession, and the j)eople who wanted anything discovered would always bring it to him rather than take it elsewhere. And yet the life of Columbus was a stormy one. Though he discovered a continent wherein a millionaire attracts no attention, he himself was very poor. Though he rescued from barbarism a broad and beautiful land in whose metropolis the theft of less than half a million of dollars is regarded as petty larceny, Chris himself often went to bed hungry. Is it not singular that the gray-eyed and gentle Columbus should have added a hemisphere to the history of our globe, a hemisphere, too, where pie is a common thing, not only on Sun- day, but throughout the week, and yet that he should have gone down to his grave pieless! Such is the history of progress in all ages and in all lines of thought and investigation. Such is the meagre reward of the pioneer in new fields of action. I presume that America to-day has a larger pie area than any other land in which the Cockney English language is spoken. Right here where millions of native born Americans dwell, many of whom are ashamed of the fact that they were born here and which shame is entirely mutual between the Goddess of Liberty and themselves, we have a style of pie that no other land can boast of. From the bleak and acid dried apple pie of Maine to the irrigated mince pie of the blue Pacific, all along down the long line of igneous, volcanic and strat- ified pie, America, the land of the freedom bird with the high instep to his nose, leads the world. Other lands may point with undissembled pride to their polygamy and their cholera, but we reck not. Our polygamy here is still in its infancy and our leprosy has had the disadvantage of a cold, backward spring, but look at our pie. Throughout a long and disastrous war, sometimes referred to as a fratricidal war, during which this fair land was drenched in blood, and also during which (159) IGO REMARKS BY BILL NYE. aforesaid war numerous frightful blunders were made which are fast coming to the surface — through the courtesy of participants in said war who have patiently waited for those who blundered to die ofp, and now admit that said particij^ants who are dead did blunder exceedingly throughout all this long and deadly struggle for the supremacy of liberty and right — -as I was about to say when my mind began to wobble, the American pie has shown forth resplendent in the full glare of a noonday sun or beneath the pale-green of the electric light, and she stands forth proudly to-day with her undying loyalty to dyspep- sia untrammeled and her deep and deadly gastric antipathy still fiercely burn- ing in her breast. That is the J)roud history of American pie. Powers, principalities, kingdoms and hand-made dynasties may crumble, but the republican form of pie does not crumble. Tyranny may totter on its throne, but the American pie does not tot- ter. Not a tot. No foreign threat has ever been able to make our common chick- en pie quail. I do not say this because it is smart; I simply say it to fill up. But would it not do Columbus good to come among us to-day and look over our fi*ee institutions? Would it not please him to ride over this continent which has been rescued by his presence of mind from the thraldom of barbarism and forked over to the genial and refining influences of prohibition and pie? America fills no mean niche in the great history of nations, and if you lis- ten carefully for a few moments you will hear some American, with his mouth full of pie, make that remark. The American is always frank and perfectly free to state that no other country can approach this one. We allow no little two-for-a-quarter monarchy to excel us in the size of our failures or in the calm and self -poised deliberation with which we erect a monument to the glory of a worthy citizen who is dead, and therefore politically useless. The careless student of the career of Columbus will find much in these lines that he has not yet seen. He will realize when he comes to read this little sketch the pains and the trouble and the research necessary before such an article on the life and work of Columbus could be written, and he will thank me for it ; but it is not for that that I have done it. It is a pleasure for me to hunt up and arrange historical and biographical data in a pleasing form for the student and savant. I am only too glad to jolease and gratify the student and the savant. I was that way myself once and I know how to sympathize with them. P. S.— I neglected to state that Columbus was a married man. Still, he did not murmur or repine. Office of- Daily Boomerang, Laeamie City, Wy., Aug. 9, 1882. HY DEAR GENERAL. — I have received by telegraph the news of ^ (C my nomination by the President and my confirmation by the 8en- W \ ate, as postmaster at Laramie, and wish to extend my thanks for the same. I have ordered an entirely new set of boxes and postoffice outfit, including new corrugated cuspidors for the lady clerks. I look upon the appointment, myself, as a great triumph of eternal truth over error and wrong. It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the Nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection. I do not know when I have no- ticed any stride in the affairs of state, which so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom. Now that we are co-workers in the same department, I trust that you will not feel shy or backward in consulting me at any time relative to matters concerning postoffice af- fairs. Be perfectly frank wdth me, and feel perfectly free to just bring anything of that kind right to me. Do not feel reluctant be- cause I may at times appear haughty and indifferent, cold or reserved. Perhaps you do not think I know the difPerence between a general delivery windoAv and a three-m quad, but that is a mistake. My general information is far beyond my years. With profoundest regard, and a hearty endorsement of the policy of the President and the Senate, whatever it may be, I remain, sincerely yours. a new office outfit. Bill Nye, P. M. Gen. Feank Hatton, Washington, D. C. (161) f\ Jour^alistie Je^derfoot. ^S^^nIPP^OST everyone who lias tried the publication of a newspaper will call mfWnw *° mind as he reads this item, a similar experience, though, perhaps, ^'ii. v. not so pronounced and protuberant. '-''^ -i.- -"- " Early one summer morning a gawky young tenderfoot, both as to the West and the details of journalism, came into the office and asked me for a job as correspondent to write up the mines in North Park. He wore his hair longish and tried to make it curl. The result was a greasy coat collar and the general tout ensemble of the genus "smart Aleck." He had also clothed him- self in the extravagant clothes of the dime novel scout and beautiful girl- rescuer of the Indian country. He had been driven west by a wild desire to hunt the flagrant Sioux warrior, and do a general Wild Bill business ; hoping, no doubt, before the season closed, to rescue enough beautiful captive maidens to get up a young Yassar College in Wyoming or Montana. I told him that we did not care for a mining correspondent who did not know a piece of blossom rock from a geranium. I knew it took a man a good many years to gain knowledge enough to know where to sink a prospect shaft even, and as to passing opinions on a vein, it would seem almost wicked and sacriligious to send a man out there among those old grizzly miners who had spent their lives in bitter experience, unless the young man could readily distinguish the points of difference between a chunk of free milling quartz and a fragment of bologna sausage. He still thought he could write us letters that would do the j^aper some eternal good, and though I told him, as he wrung my hand and left, to refrain from writing or doing any work for us, he wrote a letter before he had reached the home station on the stage road, or at least sent us a long letter from there. It might have been written before he started, however. The letter was of the "we-have-went" and "I-have-never-saw" variety, and he spelt curiosity "qrossity." He worked hard to get the word into his alleged letter, and then assassinated it. (162) A JOURNALISTIC TENDERFOOT. 163 Well, we paid no attention whatever to the letter, but meantime he got into the mines, and the way he dead-headed feed and sour mash, on the strength of his relations with the press, made the older miners weep. Buck Bramel got a little worried and wrote to me about it. He said that our soft-eyed mining savant was getting us a good many subscribers, and writ- ing up every little gopher hole in North Park, and living on Cincinnati quail, as we miners call bacon ; but he said that none of these fine, blooming letters, regarding the assays on "The Weasel Asleep," ''The Pauper's Dream," "The Mary Ellen" and "The Over Draft," ever seemed to crop out in the paper. Why was it? I wrote back that the white-eyed pelican from the buckwheat-enamelled plains of Arkansas had not remitted, was not employed by us, and that I would write and publish a little card of introduction for the bilious litterateur that would make people take in their domestic animals, and lock up their front fences and garden fountains. In the meantime they sent him up the gulch to find some "float." He had wandered away from camp thirty miles before he remembered that he didn't know what float looked like. Then he thougflit he would go back and in- quire. He got lost while in a dark brown study and drifted into the bosom of the unknow- able. He didn't miss the trail until a perpendicular wall of the Rocky Mountains, about 900 feet high, rose up and hit him athwart the nose. He communed with nature and the coyotes one night and had a pretty tough time of it. He froze his nose partially off, and the coyotes came and gnawed his little dimpled toes. He passed a wretched night, and was greatly annoyed COMMUNING WITH NATURE. 1G4 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. by the cold, which at that elevation sends the mercury tcAvard zero all through the summer nights. Of course he pulled the zodiac partially over him, and tried to button his alapaca duster a little closer, but his sleep was troubled by the sociability of the coyotes and the midnight twitter of the mountain lion. He ate moss agates rare and spruce gum for breakfast. When he got to the camp he looked like a forty-day starvationist hunting for a job. They asked him if he found any float, and he said he didn't find a blamed drop of water, say nothing about float, and then they all laughed a merry laugh, and said that if he showed up at daylight the next morning within the limits of the park, the orders were to burn him at the stake. The next morning neither he nor the best bay mule on the Troublesome was to be seen with naked eye. After that we heard of him in the San Juan country. He had lacerated the finer feelings of the miners down there, and had vio- lated the etiquette of San Juan, so they kicked a flour barrel out from under him one day when he was looking the other way, and being a poor tight-rope performer, he got tangled up with a piece of inch rope in such a way that he died of his injuries. Jbe /\/T\ateijr (^arpepter. N my opinion every professional man should keep a chest of carpenters' tools in his barn or shop, and busy himself at odd hours with them in constructing the varied articles that are always needed about the house. ■^^ There is a great deal of pleasure in feeling your own independence of other trades, and more especially of the carpenter. Every now and then your wife will want a bracket put up in some corner or other, and with your new, bright saw and glittering hammer you can put up one upon which she can hang a cast-iron horse-blanket lambrequin, with inflexible water lilies sewed in it. A man will, if he tries, readily learn to do a great many such little things and his wife will brag on him to other ladies, and they will make invidious comparisons between their husbands who can't do anything of that kind what- ever, and you who are "so handy." Firstly, you buy a set of amateur carpenter tools. You do not need to say that you are an amateur. The dealer will find that out when you ask him for an easy -running broad-ax or a green-gage plumb line. He will sell you a set of amateur's tools that will be made of old sheet-iron with basswood handles, and the saws will double up like a piece of stovepipe. After you have nailed a board on the fence successfully, you will very naturally desire to do something much better, more difficult. You will prob- able try to erect a parlor table or rustic settee. I made a very handsome bracket last week, and I was naturally proud of it. In fastening it together, if I hadn't inadvertently nailed it to the barn floor, I guess I could have used it very well, but in tearing it loose from the barn, so that the two could be used separately, I ruined a bracket that was in- tended to serve as the base, as it were, of a lambrequin which cost nine dol- lars, aside from the time expended on it. During the month of March I built an ice-chest for this summer. It was not handsome, but it was roomy, and would be very nice for the season of 1886, I thought. It worked pretty well through March and April, but as the weather begins to warm up that ice-chest is about the warmest place around the (165) 1G6 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. house. There is actually a glow of heat around that ice-chest that I don't notice elsewhere. I've shown it to several personal friends. They seem to think it is not built tightly enough for an ice-chest. My brother looked at it yesterday, and said that his idea of an ice-chest was that it ought to be tight enough at least to hold the larger chunks of ice so that they would not escape through the pores of the ice-box. He says he never built one, but that it stood to reason that a refrigerator like that ought to be constructed so that it Avould keep the cows out of it. You don't want to have a refrigerator that the cattle can get through the cracks of and eat up your strawberries on ice, he says. A neighbor of mine who once built a hen resort of laths, and now wears a thick thumb-nail that looks like a Brazil nut as a memento of that pullet cor- ral, says my ice-chest is all right enough, only that it is not suited to this cli- mate. He thinks that along Behring's Strait, during the holidays, my ice- chest would work like a charm. And even here, he thought, if I could keep the fever out of my chest there would be less pain. I have made several other little articles of vcrtu this spring, to the con- struction of which I have contributed a good deal of time and two finger nails. I have also sawed into my leg two or three times. The leg, of course, will get well, but the pantaloons wdll not. Parties wishing to meet me in my studio during the morning hour will turn into the alley between Eighth and Ninth streets, enter the third stable door on the left, pass around behind my Gothic horse, and give the countersign and three kicks on the door in an ordinary tone of voice. 5l?e f\\jerz(^e \\er). AM convinced that there is great economy in keeping hens if we have' sufficient room for them and a thorough knowledge of how to manage the fowl property. But to the professional man, who is not familiar Avith the "^ habits of the hen, and whose mind does not naturally and instinctively turn henward, I would say: Shun her as you would the deadly upas tree of Piscataquis county, Me. Nature has endowed the hen with but a limited amount of brain-force. Any one will notice that if he will compare the skull of the average self-made hen with that of Daniel Webster, taking careful measurements directly over the top from one ear to the other, the well-informed brain student will at once notice a great falling-off in the region of reverence and an abnormal bulging out in the location of alimentiveness. Now take your tape-measure and, beginning at memory, pass carefully over the occiputal bone to the base of the brain in the region of love of home and offspring and you will see that, while the hen suffers much in comparison with the statement in the relative size of sublimity, reflection, spirituality, time, tune, etc., when it comes to love of home and offspring she shines forth with great splendor. The hen does not care for the sublime in nature. Neither does she care for music. Music hath no charms to soften her tough old breast. But she loves her home and her country. I have sought to promote the interests of the hen to some extent, but I have not been a marked success in that line. I can write a poem in fifteen minutes. I always could dash off a poem whenever I wanted to, and a very good poem, too, for a dashed poem. I could write a speech for a friend in congress — a speech that would be printed in the Congressional Record and go all over the United States and be read by no one. I could enter the field of letters anywhere and attract attention, but when it comes to setting a hen I feel that I am not worthy. I never feel my utter un- worthiness as I do in the presence of a setting hen. When the adult hen in my presence expresses a desire to Set I excuse my- self and go away. That is the supreme moment when a hen desires to be (167) 1G8 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. aloue. That is no time for me to introduce my shallow levity. I never do it. It is after death that I most fully appreciate the hen. When she has been cut down early in life and fried I respect her. No one can look upon the still features of a young hen overtaken by death in life's young morning, snuffed out as it were, like an old tin lantern in a gale of wiiid, without being visibly affected. But it is not the hen who desires to set for the purpose of getting out an early edition of spring chickens that I am averse to. It is the aged hen, Avho is in her dotage, and whose eggs, also, are in their second childhood. Upon this hen I shower my anathemas. Overlooked by the pruning-hook of time, shallow in her remarks, and a wall-flower in society, she deposits her quota of eggs in the catnip conservatory, far from the haunts of men, and then in Au- gust, when eggs are extremely low and her collection of no value to any one but the antiquarian, she proudly calls attention to her summer's work. This hen does not win the general confidence. Shunned by good society during life, her death is only regretted by those who are called upon to assist at her obsequies. Selfish through life, her death is regarded as a calamity by those alone who are expected to eat her. And what has such a hen to look back upon in her closing hours ? A long life, perhaps, for longevity is one of the characteristics of this class of hens ; but of what has that life been productive? How many golden hours has she frittered away hovering over a porcelain door-knob trying to hatch out a litter of Queen Anne cottages. How many nights has she passed in solitude on her lonely nest, with a heart filled with bitterness toward all mankind, hoping on against hope that in the fall she would come off the nest with a cunning little brick block, perhaps. Such is the history of the aimless hen. While others were at work she stood around with her hands in her pockets and criticised the policy of those who labored, and when the summer waned she came forth with nothing but regret to wander listlessly about and freeze off some more of her feet during the winter. For such a hen death can have no terrors. THE RESULT OF PATIENCE. U/oodtie^ U/illiam's Story. f^E had about as ornery and triflin' a crop of kids in Calaveras county, thirty years ago, as you could gather in with a fine-tooth comb and a brass band in fourteen States. For ways that was '^'^ J kittensome they were moderately active and abnormally protu- berant. That was the prevailing style of Calaveras kid, when Mr. George W. Mulqueen come there and wanted to engage the school at the old camp, where I hung up in the days when the country was new and the mur- mur of the six-shooter was heard in the land. "George W. Mulqueen was a slender young party from the effete East, with conscientious scruples and a hectic flush. Both of these was agin him for a promoter of school discipline and square root. He had a heap of information and big sorrowful eyes. "So fur as I was concerned, I didn't feel like swearing around George or using any language that would sound irrelevant in a ladies' boodore ; but as for the kids of the school, they didn't care a blamed cent. They just hollered and whooped like a passle of Sioux. " They didn't seem to respect literary attainments or expensive knowledge. They just simply seemed to respect the genius that come to that country to win their young love with a long-handled shovel and a blood-shot tone of voice. That's what seemed to catch the Calaveras kids in the early days. (169) WINNING THEIR YOUNG LOVE. 170 REMAEKS BY BILL NYE. " George liad weak lungs, and they kept to work at him till they drove him into a mountain fever, and finally into a metallic sarcophagus. "Along about the holidays the sun went down on George W. Mulqueen's life, just as the eternal sunlight lit up the dewy eyes. You will pardon my manner, Nye, but it seemed to me just as if George had climbed up to the top of Mount Cavalry, or wherever it was, with that whole school on his back, and had to give up at last. "It seemed kind of tough to me, and I couldn't help blamin' it onto the school some, for there was a half a dozen big snoozers that didn't go to school to learn, but just to raise Ned and turn up Jack, "Well, they killed him, anyhow, Pud that settled it. 9p ¥^ ^p 7F ^ 'F 'F 'F 'F "The school run kind of wild till Feboowary, and then a husky young ten- derfoot, with a fist like a mule's foot in full bloom, made an application for the place, and allowed he thought he could maintain discipline if they'd give him a chance. Well, they ast him when he wanted to take his place as tutor, and he reckoned he could begin to tute about Monday follering. " Sunday afternoon he went up to the school-house to look over the ground, and to arrange a plan for an active Injin campaign agin the hostile hoodlums of Calaveras. "Monday he sailed in about 9 A. M. with his grip-sack, and begun the discharge of his juties. "He brought in a bunch of mountain-willers, and, after driving a big rail- road-spike into the door-casing, over the latch, he said the senate and house would sit with closed doors during the morning session. Several large, white- eyed holy terrors gazed at him in a kind of dumb, inquiring tone of voice, but he didn't say much. He seemed considerably reserved as to the plan of the campaign. The new teacher then unlocked his alligator-skin grip, and took out a Bible and a new self-cocking weepon that had an automatic dingus for throwing out the empty shells. It was one of the bull-dog variety, and had the laugh of a joyous child. "He read a short passage from the Scriptures, and then pulled off his coat and hung it on a nail. Then he made a few extemporaneous remarks, after which he salivated the palm of his right hand, took the self -cocking songster in his left, and proceeded to wear out the gads over the varied protuberances of his pupils. wooDTicK William's story. 171 "People passing by thought they must be beating carpets in the school- house. He pointed the gun at his charge with his left and manipulated the gad with his right duke. One large, overgrown Missourian tried to crawl out of the winder, but, after he had looked down the barrel of the shooter a moment, he changed his mind. He seemed to realize tliat it would be a violation of the rules of the school, so he came back and sat down. "After he wore out the foliage. Bill, he pulled the spike out of that door, put on his coat and went away. He never was seen there again. He didn't ask for any salary, but just walked off qiiietly, and that summer we accidently heard that he was George W. Mulqueen's brother." Ip U/asl7i9($toi7. Jl r HAVE just returned from a polite and recherche party here. "Washing- # ton is the hot-bed of gayety, and general headquarters for the recherche yl| business. It would be hard to find a bontonger aggregation than the one ■^ I was just at, to use the words of a gentleman who was there, and who asked me if I wrote "The Heathen Chinee." He was a very talented man, with a broad sweep of skull and a vague yearn- ing for something more tangible — to drink. He was in Washington, he said, in the interests of Mingo county. I forgot to ask him where Mingo county might be. He took a great interest in me, and talked with me long after he really had anything to say. He was one of those fluent conversationalists fre- quently met with in society. He used one of these web-perfecting talkers — the kind that can be fed with raw Roman punch, and that will turn out punc- tuated talk in links, like varnished sausages. Being a poor talker myself, and rather more fluent as a listener, I did not interrupt him. He said that he was sorry to notice how young girls and their parents came to Washington as they would to a matrimonial market. I was sorry also to hear it. It pained me to know that young ladies should allow themselves to be bamboozled into matrimony. Why was it, I asked, that matrimony should ever single out the young and fair? "Ah," said he, "it is indeed rough!" He then breathed a sigh that shook the foilage of the speckled geranium near by, and killed an artificial caterpillar that hung on its branches. "Matrimony is all right," said he, "if properly brought about. It breaks my heart, though, to notice how Washington is used as a matrimonial market. It seems to me almost as if these here young ladies were brought here like slaves and exposed for sale." I had noticed that they were somewhat exposed, but I did not know that they were for sale. I asked him if the waists of party dresses had always been so sadly in the minority, and he said they had. I danced with a beautiful young lady whose trail had evidently caught in a doorway. She hadn't noticed it till she had walked out partially through her costume. IN WASHINGTON. 173 I do not think a lady ought to give too much thought to her apparel; neither shoukl slie feel too much above her clothes. I say this in the kindest spirit, because I believe that man should be a friend to woman. No family circle is complete without a woman. She is like a glad landscape to the weary eye. Individually and collectively, woman is a great adjunct of civilization and progress. The electric light is a good thing, but how pale and feeble it looks by the light of a good woman's eyes. The telephone is a great inven- tion. It is a good thing to talk at, and murmur into and deposit profanity in ; but to take up a conversation, and keep it up, and follow a man out through the fi'ont door with it, the telephone has still much to learn from Avoman. It is said that our government officials are not sufficiently paid ; and I pre- sume that is the case, so it became necessary to economize in every way ; but, why should wives concentrate all their economy on the waist of a dress? When chest protectors are so cheap as they now are, I hate to see people suffer, and there is more real suffering, more privation and more destitution, pervading the Washington scapula and clavicle this winter than I ever saw before. But I do not hope to change this custom, though I spoke to several ladies about it, and asked them to think it over. I do not think they will. It seems almost wicked to cut off the best part of a dress and put it at the other end of the skirt, to be trodden under feet of men, as I may say. They smiled good humoredly at me as I tried to impress my views upon them, but should I go there again next season and mingle in the mad whirl of Washington, where these fair women are also mingling in said mad whirl, I presume that I will find them clothed in the same gaslight waist, with trimmings of real vertebrae down the back. Still, what does a man know about the proper costume of a woman? He knows nothing whatever. He is in many ways a little inconsistent. Why does a man frown on a certain costume for his wife, and admire it on the first woman he meets? Why does he fight shy of religion and Christianity and talk very freely about the church, but get mad if his wife is an infidel ? Crops around Washington are looking well. AVinter wheat, crocusses and indefinite postponements were never in a more thrifty condition. Quite a number of people are here who are waiting to be confirmed. Judging from their habits, they are lingering around here in order to become confirmed drunkards. I leave here to-morrow with a large, wet towel in my plug hat. Perhaps 174 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. I should have said nothing on this dress reform question while my hat is fit- ting me so immediately. It is seldom that I step aside from the beaten path of rectitude, but last evening, on the way home, it seemed to me that I didnH do much else but step aside. At these parties no charge is made for punch. It is perfectly free. I asked a colored man avIio was standing near the punch bowl, and who replenished it ever and anon, what the damage was, and he drew himself up to his full height. Possibly I did wrong, but I hate to be a burden on anyone. It seemed odd to me to go to a first-class dance and find the supper and the band and the rum all paid for. It must cost a good deal of money to run this government. fr\y ^xperiepee as 39 /^^ri(;ulturi5t. URING the past season I was considerahly interested in agriculture, I met with some success, but not enough to madden me with joy. It takes a good deal of success to un- screw my reason and make it totter on its throne. I've had trouble with my liver, and various other abnormal conditions of the vital organs, but old reason sits there on his or her throne, as the case may be, through it all. Agriculture has a charm about it which I can not adequately describe. Every product of the farm is furnished by nature with something that loves it, so that it will never be neglected. The grain crop is loved by the weevil, the Hessian fly, and the chinch bug ; the watermelon, the squash and the cucumber are loved by the squash bug ; the potato is loved by the potato bug ; the sweet corn is loved by the ant, thou sluggard ; the tomato is loved by the cut- worm ; the plum is loved by the curculio, and so forth, and so forth, so that no plant that grows need be a wall-flower. [Early blooming and extremely dwarf joke for the table. Plant as soon as there is no danger of frosts, in drills four inches apart. When ripe, pull it, and eat raw with vinegar. The red ants may be added to taste. ] Well, I began early to spade up my angle-worms and other pets, to see if they had withstood the severe winter. I found they had. They were unusu- ally bright and cheerful. The potato bugs were a little sluggish at first, but as the spring opened and the ground warmed up they pitched right in, and did first-rate. Every one of my bugs in May looked splendidly. I was most worried about my cut-worms. Away along in April I had not seen a cut- worm, and I began to fear they had suffered, and perhaps perished, in the extreme cold of the previous winter. (ITS) 176 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. One morning late in the montli, however, I saw a cut-worm come out from behind a cabbage stump and take off his ear muff. He Avas a little stiff in the joints, but he had not lost hope. I saw at once now was the time to assist him if I had a s[)ark of humanity left. I searched every work I could find on agriculture to find out what it was that farmers fed their blamed cut- worms, but all scientists seemed to be silent. I read the agricultural reports, the dictionary, and the encyclopedia, but they didn't throw any light on the sub- ject. I got wild. I feared that I had brought bvit one cut-worm through the winter, and I was liable to lose him unless I could find out what to feed him. I asked some of my neighbors, but they spoke jeeringly and sarcastically. I know now how it was. All their cut- worms had frozen down last win- ter, and they couldn't bear to see me get ahead. All at once, an idea struck me. I haven't recovered from the concus- sion yet. It was this : the worm had wintered under a cabbage stalk; no doubt he was fond of the beverage. I acted upon this thought and bought him two dozen red cabbage plants, at fifty cents a dozen. I had hit it the first pop. He was passionately fond of these plants, and would eat three in one night. He also had several matinees and sauerkraut lawn festi- vals for his friends, and in a week I bought three dozen more cabbage plants. By this time I had collected a large group of common scrub cut- worms, early Swedish cut- worms, dwarf Hubbard cut-worms, and short-horn cut-worms, all doing well, but still, I thought, a little hide-bound and bilious. They acted languid and listless. As my squash bugs, currant worms, potato bugs, etc., were all doing well without care, I devoted myself almost exclusively to my cut-worms. They were all strong and well, but they seemed melancholy with nothing to eat, day after day, but cabbages. THEY SPOKE JEERINGLY. MY EXPERIENCE AS AN AGRICULTURIST. 177 I therefore bought five dozen tomato plants that were tender and large. These I fed to the cut- worms at the rate of eiglit or ten in one niglit. In a week the cut-worms had thrown off that air of ennui and languor that I had formerly noticed, and were gay and light-hearted. I got them some more tomato plants, and then some more cabbage for change. On the whole I was as proud as any young farmer who has made a success of anything. One morning I noticed that a cabbage plant was left standing unchanged. The next day it Avas still there, I was thunderstruck, I dug into the ground. My cut- worms were gone. I spaded up the whole patch, but there wasn't one. Just as I had become attached to them, and they had learned to look forward each day to my coming, when they would almost come up and eat a tomato- plant out of my hand, some one had robbed me of them. I was almost wild with despair and grief. Suddenly something tumbled over my foot. It was mostly stomach, but it had feet on each corner. A neighbor said it was a warty toad. He had eaten up my summer's work! He had swallowed my cunning little cut-worms. I tell you, gentle reader, unless some way is pro- vided, whereby this warty toad scourge can be wiped out, I for one shall relinquish the joys of agricultural pursuits. When a common toad, with a sallow complexion and no intellect, can swallow up my summer's work, it is time to pause. fi \\e\u f\ii\:o<^rzp\) f\\bufr\. w ^HIS autograph business is getting to be a little bit tedious. It is all ': one-sided. I want to get even some how, on some one. If I can't come back at the autograph fiend himself, perhaps I might make some "^ other fellow creature unhappy. That would take my mind off tlie woes that are inflicted by the man who is making a collection of the autographs of "prominent men," and who sends a printed circular formally demanding your autograph, as the tax collector would demand your tax. John Comstock, the President of the First National Bank, of Hudson, the other day suggested an idea. I gave him an autograph copy of my last great work, and he said: "Now, I'm a man of business. You gave me your auto- graph, I give you mine in return. That's what we call business." He then signed a brand new $5 national bank note, the cashier did ditto, and the two autographs were turned over to me. Now, how would it do to make a collection of the signatures of the presi- dents and cashiers of national banks of the United States in the above manner? An album containing the autographs of these bank officials would not only be a handsome heirloom to fork over to posterity, but it would possess intrinsic value. In pursuance of this idea, I have been considering the advisability of issuing the following letter: To the Presidents and Cashiers of the National Banks of the United States. Gentlemen — I am now engaged in making a collection of the autographs of the presidents and cashiers of national banks throughout the Union, and to make the collection uniform, I have decided to ask for autographs written at the foot of the national currency bank note of the denomination of ^5. I am not sectarian in my religious views, and I only suggest this denomination for the sake of uniformity throughout the album. Card collections, cat albums and so forth, may please others, but I prefer to make a collection that shall show future ages who it was that built up our finances, and furnished the sinews of war. Some may look upon this move as a mercenary one, but with me it is a passion. It is not simply a freak, it is a desire of my heart. (178) A NEW AUTOGRAPH ALBUM. 179 lu return I would be glad to give my own autograph, either by itself or attached to some little gem of thought which might occur to my mind at the time. I have always taken a great interest in the currency of the country. So far as possible I have made it a study. I have watched its growth, and noted with some regret its natural reserve. I may say that, considering meagre opportunities and isolated advantages afforded me, no one is more familiar with the habits of our national currency than I am; Yet, at times my laboratory has not been so abundantly supplied with specimens as I could have wished. This has been my chief drawback. I began a collection of railroad passes some time ago, intending to file them away and pass the collection down through the dim vista of coming years, but in a rash moment I took a trip of several thousand miles, and those passes were taken up. I desire, in conclusion, gentlemen, to call your attention to the fact that I have always been your friend and champion. I have never robbed the bank of a personal friend, and if I held your autographs I should deem you my personal friends, and feel in honor bound to discourage any movement look- ing toward an unjust appropriation of the funds of your bank. The auto- graphs of yourselves in my possession, and my own in your hands, would be regarded as a tacit agreement on my part never to rob your bank. I would even be willing to enter into a contract with you not to break into your vaults, if you insist upon it. I would thus be compelled to confine myself to the stage coaches and railroad trains in a great measure, but I am getting now so I like to spend my evenings at home, anyhow, and if I do well this year, I shall sell my burglars' tools and give myself up to the authorities. You will understand, gentlemen, the delicate nature of this request, I trust, and not misconstrue my motives. My intentions are perfectly honorable, and my idea in doing this is, I may say, to supply a long felt Avant. Hoping that what I have said will meet with your approval and hearty co- operation, and that our very friendly business relations, as they have existed in the past, may continue through the years to come, and that your bank may wallow in success till the cows come home, or words to that effect, I beg leave to subscribe myself, yours in favor of one country, one flag and one bank account. f\ l^esi(^9. PosTOFFiCE Divan, Lakamie City, W. T., Oct. 1, 1883. F70 THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If. Sir. — I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal ^'^ and the key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 33, 60 and 09, though I do not remember at this moment which comes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which direction you should turn it at first in order to make it operate. There is some mining stock in my private drawer in the safe, which I have not yet removed. This stock you may have, if you desire it. It is a luxury, but you may have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead of this min- ing stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it will cost less to keep him. You will find the postal cards that have not been used under the distributiiig table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery window. Looking over my stormy and eventful administration as postmaster here, I find abundant cause for thanksgiving. At the time I entered upon the duties of my office the department was not yet on a paying basis. It was not even self- sustaining. Since that time, with the active co-operation of the chief executive and the heads of the department, I have been able to make our postal system a paying one, and on top of that I am now able to reduce the tariff on average- sized letters from three cents to two. I might add that this is rather too too, but I will not say anything that might seem undignified in an official resigna- tion which is to become a matter of history. Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of office I have safely passed. I am able to turn over the office to-day in a higldy improved condi- tion, and to present a purified and renovated institution to my successor. Acting under the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up his (180) A RESIGN. 181 administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the feather bed a part of my official duties, I filed it away in an obscure place and burned it in e^gj^ also in the gloaming. Tliis act maddened my prede- r:^--^rwmm:!M'''^ll^flBWF^ cessor to such a degree, that he then and there be- came a candidate for justice of the peace on the Demo- cratic ticket. The Demo- cratic party was able, how- ever, with what aid it secured from the Republicans, to plow the old man under to a great degree. It was not long after I had taken my official oath before an era of unexampled prosperity opened for the American people. The price of beef rose to a remarkable altitude, and other vegfeta- bles commanded a good fig- ure and a ready market. We then began to make active preparations for the intro- duction of the strawberry- roan two- cent stamps and the black- and-tan postal note. One reform has crowded up- on the heels of another, until the country is to-day upon the foam -crested wave of permanent prosperity. Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without thanking yourself and the heads of departments at Washington for your active, cheery and prompt co- operation in these matters. You can do as you see fit, of course, about incor- porating this idea into your Thanksgiving proclamation, but rest assured it STRICT ATTENTION TO BUSINESS. 182 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. would not be ill-timed or inopportune. It is not alone a credit to myself. It reflects credit upon the administration also. I need not say that I herewith transmit my resignation with great sorrow and genuine regret. We have toiled on together month after month, asking for no reward except the innate consciousness of rectitude and the salary as fixed by law. Now we are to separate. Here the roads seem to fork, as it were, and you and I, and the cabinet, must leave each other at this point. You will find the key under the door-mat, and you had better turn the cat out at night when you close the office. If she does not go readily, you can make it clearer to her mind by throwing the cancelling stamp at her. If Deacon Hayford does not pay up his box-rent, you might as well put his mail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk and insists on a letter from one of his wives every day in the week, you can salute him through the box delivery with an old Queen Anne tomahawk, which you will find near the Etruscan water-pail. This will not in any manner surprise either of these parties. Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed only with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. I believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz: Those who are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannot receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, including Sunday. Mr. President, as an official of this Government I now retire. My term of office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for my eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers of a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickening thud. /ny fA'pe. -ciS^ y HAVE decided to sacrifice another valuable piece of mining property this spring. It would not be sold if I had the necessary capital to develop it. It is a good mine, for I located it myself. I remember well the day I climbed up on the ridge-pole of the universe and nailed my location notice to the eaves of the sky. It was in August that I discovered the Vanderbilt claim in a snow-storm. It cropped out apparently a little southeast of a point where the arc of the orbit of Venus bisects the milky way, and ran due east eighty chains, three links and a swivel, thence south fifteen paces and a half to a blue spot in the sky, thence proceeding west eighty chains, three links of sausage and a half to a fixed star, thence north across the lead to place of beti-innino-. The Vanderbilt set out to be a carbonate deposit, but changed its mind. I sent a piece of the cropping to a man over in Salt Lake, who is a good assayer and quite a scientist, if he would brace up and avoid humor. His assay read as follows to-wit: Salt Lake City, U. T., August 25, 1877. Mr. Bill Nye: — Your specimen of ore No. 35832, current series, has been submitted to assay and shows the following result: Metal. Ounces. Value per ton. Gold - -- .- Silver ._ Railroad iron 1 Pyrites of poverty 9 Parasites of disappointraent - 90 ]\IcViCKER, Assayer. Note. — I also find that the formation is igneous, prehistoric and erroneous. If I were you I would sink a prospect shaft below the vertical slide where the old red brimstone and preadamite slag cross-cut the malachite and intersect the schist. I think that would be schist about as good as anything you could do. Then send me specimens with ^2 for assay and Ave shall see what we shall see. Well, I didn't know he was "an humorist," you see, so I went to work on. (183) 184 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. the Vanderbilt to try and do what Mac. said. I sank a shaft and everything else I could get hold of on that claim. It was so high that w^e had to carry water up there to drink Avhen W6 began and before fall we had struck a vein of the richest water you ever saw. We had more water in that mine than the regular army could use. When w'e got down sixty feet I sent some pieces of the pay streak to the assayer again. This time he wrote me (]^uite a letter, and at the same time inclosed the certificate of assay. Salt Lake City, U. T., October 3, 1877. Me. Bill Nye: — Your specimen of ore No. 3G132, current series, has been submitted to assay and shows the following result: Metal. Oimces. Yalue per ton. Gold - - Silver ._ Stove polish trace .01 Old gray whetstone trace .01 Bromide of axle grease stain Copperas. trace 5c worth Blue vitrol trace 5c worth McViCKER, Assayer. In the letter he said there was, no doubt, something in the claim if I could get the true contact with calcimine walls denoting a true fissure. He thought I ought to run a drift. I told him I had already run adrift. Then he said to stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other things which grated harshly on my sensitive nature. The Vanderbilt mine, with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations, veins, sinuosities, rights, titles, franchises, prerogatives and assessments is now for sale. I sell it in order to raise the necessary funds for the development of the Governor of North Carolina. I had so much trouble with water in the Vander- bilt, that I named the new claim the Governor of North Carolina, because he was always dry. f^u$\) ai)d /r\(?lody. ATELY I have been giving a good deal of attention to hygiene — in other people. The gentle reader will notice that, as a rule, the man who gives the most time and thought to this subject is an invalid himself; just as ■^t^ the young theological student devotes his first sermon to the care of children, and the ward politician talks the smoothest on the subject of how and when to plant ruta-bagas or wean a calf from the parent stem. Having been thrown into the society of physicians a great deal the past two years, mostly in the role of patient, I have given some study to the human form; its structure and idiosyncracies, as it were. Perhaps few men in the same length of time have successfully acquired a larger or more select reper- toire of choice diseases than I have. I do not say this boastfully. I sira])ly desire to call the attention of our growing youth to the glorious possibilities that await the ambitious and enterprising in this line. Starting out as a poor boy, with few advantages in the way of disease, I have resolutely carved my way up to the dizzy heights of fame as a clironic invalid and drug-soaked relic of other days. I inherited no disease whatever. My ancestors were poor and healthy. They bequeathed me no snug little nucleus of fashionable malaria such as other boys had. I was obliged to acquire it myself. Yet I Avas not discouraged. The results have shown that disease is not alone the heritage of the wealthy and the great. The poorest of us may become eminent invalids if we will only go at it in the right way. But I started out to say something on the subject of health, for there are still many common people who would rather be healthy and unknown than obtain distinction with some dazzling new disease. Noticing many years ago that imperfect mastication and dyspepsia walked hand in hand, so to speak, Mr. Gladsto2ie adopted in his family a regular mas- tication scale; for instance, thirty-two bites for steak, twenty-two for fish, and so forth. Now I take this idea and improve upon it. Two statesmen can always act better in concert if they will do so. (185) 186 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. With Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the laws of health and my own musical genius, I have hit on a way to make eating not only a duty, but a pleasure. Eating is too frequently irksome. , There is nothing about it to make it attractive. What we need is a union of mush and melody, if I may be allowed that expression. Mr. Gladstone has given us the graduated scale, so that we know just what metre a bill of fare goes in as quick as we look at it. In this way the day is not far distant when music and mastication will march down through the dim vista of years together. The Baked Bean Chant, the Vermicelli Waltz, the Mush and Milk March, the sad and touchful Pumpkin Pie Refrain, the gay and rollicking Oxtail Soup Gallop, and the melting Ice Cream Serenade will yet be common musical names. Taking different classes of food, I have set them to music in such a way that the meal, for instance, may open with a Soup Overture, to be followed by a Roast Beef March in C, and so on, closing with a kind of Mince Pie La Som- nambula pianissimo in G. Space, of course, forbids an extended description of this idea as I propose to carry it out, but the conception is certainly grand. Let us picture the jaws of a whole family moving in exact time to a Strauss waltz on the silent remains of the late lamented hen, and we see at once how much real pleasure may be added to the process of mastication. Jt^e Blase Yoiiv)(^ fT\aj). HAVE just formed the acquaintance of a blase young man. I have been on an extended trip with him. He is about twenty-two years old, but he is already weary of life. He was very careful all the time never to be ^•^^ exuberant. No matter how beautiful the landscape, he never allowed him- self to exube. Several times I succeeded in startling him enough to say "Ah!" but that was all. He had the air all the time of a man who had been reared in luxury and fondled so much in the lap of wealth that he was weary of life, and yearned for a bright immortality. I have often wished that the pruning-hook of time would use a little more discretion. The blase young man seemed to be tired all the time. He was weary of life because life was hollow. He seemed to hanker for the cool and quiet grave. I wished at times that the hankering might have been more mutual. But what does a cool, quiet grave want of a young man who never did anything but breathe the nice pure air into his froggy lungs and spoil it for everybody else ? This young man had a large grip-sack with him which he frequently con- sulted. I glanced into it once while he left it open. It was not right, but I did it. I saw the following articles in it: 31 Assorted Neckties. 1 Powder Rag. 1 pair Socks (whole). 1 Gob ecru-colored Taffy. 1 pair do. (not so whole), 1 Hair-brush, with Ginger Hair in it. 17 Collars. 1 Pencil to pencil Moustache at night. 1 Shirt. 1 Bread and Milk Poultice to put on 1 quart Cuff-Buttons. Moustache on retiring, so that it 1 suit discouraged Gauze Underwear. will not forget to come out again 1 box Speckled Handkerchiefs. the next day. 1 box Condition Powders. 1 Box Trix for the breath. 1 Toothbrush (prematurely bald). 1 Box Chloride of Lime to use in case 1 copy Martin F. Tupper's Works. breath becomes unmanageable. 1 box Prepared Chalk. 1 Ear-spoon (large size). 1 Pair Tweezers for encouraging 1 Plain Mourning Head for Cane. Moustache to come out to break- 1 Vulcanized Rubber Head for Cane fast. (to bite on). (187) 188 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. in working Ears 1 Shoe-liorn to use into Ear-MufPs. 1 Pair Corsets. 1 Dark-brown Wash for Mouth, to be 1 Fancy Head for Cane (evening). 1 Picnic Head for Cane. used in the morning. 1 Large Box Emiiii, to be used in Society. 1 Box Spruce Gum, made in Chicago and warranted pure. 1 Gallon Assorted Shirt Studs. 1 Polka-dot Handkerchief to pin in side pocket, but not for nose. 1 Plain Handkerchief for nose. 1 Fancy Head for Cane (morning). Bottle Peppermint. do. Catnip. Waterbury Watch. Chains for same. B(jx Letter Paper. Stick Sealing Wax (baby blue), do " (Bismarck brindle). do " (mashed goose- berry). 1 Seal for same. 1 Family Crest (wash-tub rampant on a field calico). There were other little articles of virtu and bric-a-brac till you couldn't rest, but these were all that I could see thoroughly before he returned from the wash-room. I do not like the hlase young man as a traveling companion. He is nix honum. He is too E j)lurihus for me. He is not de ti'op or sciatica enough to siiit my style. If he belonged to me I would picket him out somewhere in a hostile Indian country, and then try to nerve myself up for the result. It is better to go through life reading the signs on the ten-story buildings and acquiring knowledge, than to dawdle and "Ah!" adown our pathway to the tomb and leave no record for posterity except that we had a good neck to pin a necktie upon. It is not pleasant to be called green, but I would rather be green and aspiring than blase and hide-bound at nineteen. Let us so live that when at last we pass away our friends will not be imme- diately and uproariously reconciled to our death. HE IS NIX BONUM. f^i5tory of Babylor). ^HE history of Babylon is fraught with sadness. It illustrates, only too ■^S* painfully, that the people of a town make or mar its success rather than the natural resources and advantages it may possess on the start. Thus Babylon, with 3,000 years the start of Minneapolis, is to-day a hole in the ground, while Minneapolis socks her XXXX flour into every corner of the globe, and the price of real estate would make a common dynasty totter on its throne. Babylon is a good illustration of the decay of a town that does not keep up with the procession. Compare her to-day with Kansas City. While Baby- lon was the capital of Chaldea, 1,270 years before the birth of Christ, and Kansas City was organized so many years after that event that many of the people there have forgotten all about it, Kansas City has doubled her popula- tion in ten years, while Babylon is simply a gothic hole in the ground. Why did trade and emigration turn their backs upon Babylon and seek out Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City and Omaha? Was it because they were blest with a bluer sky or a more genial sun ? Not by any means. While Babylon lived upon what she had been and neglected to advertise, other towns with no history extending back into the mouldy past, whooped with an exceeding great whoop and tore up the ground and shed printers' iidi; and showed marked signs of vitality. That is the reason that Babylon is no more. This life of ours is one of intense activity. We cannot rest long in idle- ness without inviting forgetfulness, death and oblivion. "Babylon was prob- ably the largest and most magnificent city of the ancient world." Isaiah, who lived about 300 years before Herodotus, and whose remarks are unusually free from local or political prejudice, refel's to Babylon as "tlie glory of king- doms, the beauty of the Chaldic's excellency," and, yet, while Cheyenne has the electric light and two daily papers, Babylon hasn't got so much as a skat- ing rink. (189) 190 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. A city foiirteen miles square with a brick wall around it 355 feet liigli, slie lias quietly forgotten to advertise, and in turn she, also, is forgotten. Babylon was remarkable for the two beautiful palaces, one on each side of the river, and the great temple of Belus. Connected with one of these pal- aces was the hanging garden, regarded by the Greeks as one of the seven wonders of the world, but that was prior to the erection of the Washington monument and civil service reform. This was a square of 400 Greek feet on each side. The Greek foot was not so long as the modern foot introduced by Miss Mills, of Ohio. This gar- den was supported on several tiers of open arches, built one over the other, like the walls of a classic theatre, and sustaining at each stage, or story, a solid platform from which the arches of the next story sprung. This struc- ture was also supported by the common council of Babylon, who came forward with the city funds, and helped to sustain the immense weight. It is presumed that Nebuchadnezzar erected this garden before his mind became affected. The tower of Belus, supposed by historians with a good memory to have been 600 feet high, as there is still a red chalk mark in the sky where the top came, was a great thing in its way. I am glad I was not contiguous to it when it fell, and also that I had omitted being born prior to that time. "When we turn from this picture of the past," says the historian, Rawlin- son, referring to the beauties of Babylon, "to comtemplate the present condi- tion of these localities, we are at first struck with astonishment at the small traces which remain of so vast and wonderful a metropolis. The broad walls of Babylon are utterly broken down. God has swept it with the besom of destruction," One cannot help wondering why the use of the besom should have been abandoned. As we gaze upon the former site of Babylon we are forced to admit that the new besom sweeps clean. On its old site no crumbling arches or broken columns are found to indicate her former beauty. Here and there huge heaps of debris alone indicate that here Godless wealth and wicked, sel- fish, indolent, enervating, ephemeral pomp, rose and defied the supreme laAvs to which the bloated, selfish millionaire and the hard-handed, hungry laborer alike must bow, and they are dust to-day. Babylon has fallen. I do not say this in a sensational way or to depreciate the value of real estate there, but from actual observation, and after a full HISTORY OF BABYLON. 191 investigation, I assert without fear of successful contradiction, that Babylon has seen her best days. Her boom let is busted, and, to use a political phrase, her oriental hide is on the Chaldean fence. Such is life. We enter upon it reluctantly ; we wade through it doubt- fully, and die at last timidly. How we Americans do blow about what we can do before breakfast, and, yet, even in our own brief history, how we have demon- strated what a little thing the common two-legged man is. He rises up rapidly to acquire much wealth, and if he delays about going to Canada he goes to Sing Sing, and we forget about him. There are lots of modern Babylonians in New York City to-day, and if it were my business I would call their atten- tion to it. The assertion that gold will procure all things has been so common and so popular that too many consider first the bank account, and after that honor, home, religion, humanity and common decency. Even some of the churches have fallen into the notion that first comes the tall church, then the debt and mortgage, the ice cream sociable and the kingdom of Heaven. Cash and Christianity go hand in hand sometimes, but Christianity ought not to confer respectability on anbody who comes into the church to purchase it. I often think of the closing appeal of the old preacher, who was more earnest than refined, perhaps, and in winding up his brief sermon on the Chris- tian life, said: "A man may lose all his wealth and get poor and hungry and still recover, he may lose his health and come down clost to the dark stream and still git well again, but, when he loses his immortal soul it is good-bye John." [pxjely J^orrors. DROPPED in the other day to see New York's great congress of wax figures and soft statuary carnival. It is quite a success. The first thing you do on entering is to contribute to the pedestal fund. New York this ^^ spring is mostly a large rectangular box with a hole in the top, through which the genial public is cordially requested to slide a dollar to give the goddess of liberty a boom. I was astonished and appalled at the wealth of apertures in Gotham through which I was exjjected to slide a dime to assist some deserving object. Every little while you run into a free-lunch room where there is a model ship that will start up and operate if you feed it with a nickle. I never visited a town that offered so many inducements for early and judicious investments as New York. But we were speaking of the wax works. I did not tarry long to notice the presidents of the United States embalmed in wax, or to listen to the band of lutists who furnished music in the winter garden. I ascertained where the chamber of horrors was located, and went there at once. It is lovely. I have never seen a more successful aggregation of horrors under one roof and at one price of admission. If you want to be shocked at cost, or have your pores opened for a merely nominal price, and see a show that you will never forget as long as you live, that is the place to find it. I never invested my money so as to get so large a return for it, because I frequently see the whole show yet in the middle of the night, and the cold perspiration ripples down my spinal column just as it did the fii'st time I saw it. The chamber of horrors certainly furnishes a very durable show. I don't think I was ever more successfully or economically horrified. I got quite nervous after a while, standing in the dim religious light watch- ing the lovely horrors. But it is the saving of money that I look at most. I have known men to pay out thousands of dollars for a collection of delirium tremens and new-laid horrors no better than these that you get on week days (192) LOVELY HORRORS. 193 for fifty cents and on Sundays for two bits. Certainly New York is tlie place where you get your money's worth. There are horrors there in that crypt that are well worth doul)le the price of admission. One peculiarity of the chamber of horrors is that you finally get nervous when anyone touches you, and you immediately suspect that he is a horror who has come out of his crypt to get a breath of fresh air and stretch his legs. That is the reason I shuddered a little when I felt a man's hand in my pocket. It was so unex- pected, and the surround- ings were such that I must have appeared startled. The man was a strano^er to me, though I could see that he was a perfect gen- tleman. His clothes were superior to mine in every way, and he had a certain refinement of manners which ])etrayed his ill- concealed Knickerbocker lineage high. I said, "Sir, you will find my fine cut tobacco in the other pocket." This startled him so that he wheeled about and wildly dashed into the arms of a wax policeman near the door. When he discovered that he was in the clutches of a suit of second-hand clothes filled with wax, he seemed to be greatly annoyed and strode rapidly away. I returned to view a chaste and truthful scene where one man had success- fully killed another with a club. I leaned pensively against a column with my own spinal column, wrapped in thought. Pretty soon a young gentleman from New Jersey with an Adam's apple on HE WAS GREATLY ANNOYED. 194 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. him like a full-grown yam, and accompanied by a young lady also from the mosquito jungles of Jersey, touched me on the bosom with his umbrella and began to explain me to his companion. "This," said the Adam's apple with the young man attached to it, "is Jesse James, the great out- law chief from Missouri. How life-like he is. Little would you think, Emeline, that he would as soon dis- embowel a bank, kill the entire board of directors of a railroad company and ride off the rolling stock, as you would wrap your- self around a doughnut. How tender and kind he looks. He not only looks gentle and peaceful, but he looks to me as if he wasn't real bright." I then uttered a pierc- ing shriek and the young man from New Jersey went away. Nothing is so embarrassing to an emi- nent man as to stand quietly near and hear peo- ple discuss him. But it is remarkable to see people get fooled at a wax show. Every day a wax figure is taken for a live man, and live people are mistaken for wax. I took hold of a waxen hand in one corner of the winter garden to see if the ring was a real diamond, and it flew up and took me across the ear in such a life-like manner that my ear is still hot and there is a roaring in my head that sounds very disagreeable, indeed. THIS JESSE JAMES. Y/ 5170 Bite of a /r\ad Doi^. "FAMILY PHYSICIAN," published in 1883, says, for the bite of a mad dog: "Take ash-colored ground liverwort, cleaned, dried, and tSi^ powdered, half an ounce ; of black pepper, powdered, a quarter of an ~'^i>^- ounce. Mix these well together, and divide the powder into four doses, one of which must be taken every morning, fasting, for four morninp-s successively in half an English pint of cow's milk, warm. After these four doses are taken, the patient must go into the cold bath, or a cold sprint or river, every morning, fasting, for a month. He must be dipped all over, but not stay in (with his head above water) longer than half a minute if the water is very cold. After this he must go in three times a week for a fortnight longer. He must be bled before he begins to take the medicine." It is very difficult to know just what is best to do when a person is bitten by a mad dog, but my OAvn advice would be to kill the dog. After that feel of the leg where bitten, and ascertain how serious the injury has been. Then go home and put on another pair of pantaloons, throwing away those that have been lacerated. Parties having but one pair of pantaloons will have to seques- ter themselves or excite remarks. Then take a cold bath, as suggested above, but do not remain in the bath (with the head above water) more than half an hour. If the head is under water, you may remain in the bath until the funeral, if you think best. When going into the bath it would be well to take something in your pocket to bite, in case the desire to bite something should overcome you. Some use a common shingle-nail for this purpose, while others prefer a personal friend. In any event, do not bite a total stranger on an empty stomach. It might make you ill. Never catch a dog by the tail if he has hydrophobia. Although that end of the dog is considered the most safe, you never know when a mad dog may reverse himself. If you meet a mad dog on the street, do not stop and tiy to quell him with (195) 196 REMARKS BY BILL NYE, a glance of the eye. Many have tried to do that, and it took several days to separate the two and tell which was mad dog and which Avas queller. The real hydrophobia dog generally ignores kindness, and devotes himself mostly to the introduction of his justly celebrated virus. A good thing to do on observing the approach of a mad dog is to flee, and remain fled until he has disappeared. Hunting mad dogs in a crowded street is great sport. A young man with a new revolver shooting at a mad dog is a fine sight. He may not kill the dog, but he might shoot into a covey of little children and possibly get one. It would be a good plan to have a balloon inflated and tied in the back yard during the season in which mad dogs mature, and get into it on the approach of the infuriated animal (get into the balloon, I mean, not the dog). This plan would not work well, however, in case a cyclone should come at the same time. When we consider all the uncertainties of life, and the danger from hydi'ophobia, cyclones and breach of promise, it seems sometimes as though the penitentiary was the only place where a man could be absolutely free from anxiety. If you discover that your dog has hydrophobia, it is absolutely foolish to try to cure him of the disease. The best plan is to trade him off at once for anything you can get. Do not stop to haggle over the price, but close him right out below cost. Do not tie a tin can to the tail of a mad dog. It only irritates him, and he might resent it before you get the can tied on. A friend of mine, who was a practical joker, once sought to tie a tin can to the tail of a mad dog on an empty stomach. His widow still points with pride to the marks of his teeth on the piano. If mad dogs would confine themselves exclusively to practical jokers, I would be glad to endow a home for indigent mad dogs out of my own private funds. f\rT}o\d \lI\T)\e\re\d. HIS great man lived in the old romantic days when it was a common thing for a patriot to lay down his life that his country might live. He knew not fear, and in his noble heart his country was always on ^ top. Not alone at election did Arnold sacrifice himself, but on the tented field, where the buffalo grass was soaked in gore, did he win for himself a deathless name. He was as gritty as a piece of liver rolled in the sand. Where glory waited, there you would always find Arnold Winkelreid at the bat, with William Tell on deck. One day the army of the tyrant got a scoop on the rebel mountaineers and it looked bad for the struggling band of chamois shooters. While Arnokrs detachment didn't seem to amount to a hill of beans, the hosts of the tyrannical Austrian loomed up like six bits and things looked for- bidding. It occurred to Colonel Winkelreid that the correct thing; would be to break through the war front of the enemy, and then, while in his rear, crash in his cranium with a cross gun while he was looking the other way. Acting on this thought, he asked several of his most trusted men to break through the Austrian line, so that the balance of the command could pass through and slaughter enough of the enemy for a mess, but these men seemed a little reticent about doing so, owing to the inclemency of the weather and the threatening aspect of the enemy. The armed foe swarmed on every hillside and their burnished spears (197) CLEAR THE TRACK. 198 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. glittered below in the canon. You couldn't throw a stone in any direction without hitting a phalanx. It was a good year for the phalanx business. Then Arnold took off his suspenders, and, putting a fresh chew of tobacco in aroong his back teeth, he told his men to follow him and he would show them his little racket. Marching up to the solid line of lances, he gathered an armful and put them in the pit of his stomach, and, as he sank to the earth, he spoke in a shrill tone of voice to posterity, saying, "Clear the track for Liberty." He then died. His remains looked like a toothpick holder. But he made way for Liberty, and his troops were victorious. At the inquest it was shown that he might have recovered, had not the spears sat so hard on his stomach. Probably A. "VVinkelreid will be remembered with gratitude long after the name of the Sweet Singer of Michigan shall have rotted in oblivion. He recognized and stuck to his proper spear. (This is a little mirthful deviation of my own. ) I can think of some men now, even in this $ age of the world, who could win glory by doing as A. W. did. They could offer themselves up. They could suffer for the right and have their names passed down to posterity, and it would be perfectly splendid. But the heroes of to-day are different. They are just as courageous, but they take a wheelbarrow and push it from New York to San Francisco, or they starve forty days and forty nights and then eat watermelon and lecture, or they eat 800 snipe in 800 years, or get an inspiration and kill somebody with it. The heroes of our day do not wear peaked hats and shoot chamois, and sass tyrants and knock the worm out of an apple at fifty-nine yards rise with a cross gun, as Tell did, but they know how to be loved by the people and get half of the gate money. They are brave, but not mortally. The heroes of our day all die of old age or political malaria. /T\ijrray ai^d tl^e /T\ormo9S. 1©|[0V- MUEKAY, the gritty Gentile governor of Utah, would be noticed -Jll IW-, in a crowd. He is very tall, yet well proportioned, square-built and iPyf handsome. He was called fine looking in Kentucky, but the narrow- ^ chested apostle of the abnormally connubial creed does not see any- thing pretty about him. Murray moves about through Salt Lake City in a cool, self-possessed kind of way that is very annoying to the church. Full- bearded, with brown moustache and dark hair parted a little to leeward of cen- ter ; clothed in a diagonal Prince Albert coat, a silk hat and other clothes, he strolls through Zion like a man who hasn't got a yelping majority of ignorant lepers, led by a remorseless gang of nickel-plated apostles, thirsting for liis young blood. I really believe he don't care a continental. The days of the avenging angel and the meek-eyed Danite, carrying a large sock loaded with buckshot, are over, perhaps ; but only those who try to be Gentiles in a land of polygamous wives and anonymous white-eyed children, know how very un- popular it is. Judge Goodwin, of the Tribune, feels lonesome if he gets through the day without a poorly spelled, spattered, daubed and profane valentine threatening his life. The last time I saw him he showed me a few of them. They generally referred to him as a blankety blank "skunk," and a "hound of hell." He said he hoped I wound pardon him for the apparent egotism, but he felt as though the Tribune was attracting attention almost everyday. Some of these little billet-doux invited him to call at a try sting place on Tribune avenue and get his alleged brains scattered over a vacant lot. Most all of them threat- ened him with a rectangular head, a tin ear, or a watch pocket under the eye. He didn't seem to care mvich. He felt pleased and proud. Goodwin was al- ways pleased with things that other men didn't like much. In the old days, when he and Mark Twain and Dan DeQuille were together, this was noticed in him. Gov. Murray is the same way. He feels the public pulse, and says to himself: "Sometime there's going to be music here by the entire baud, and I desire to be where I shan't miss a note." There are people who think the Mormons will not fight. Perhaps not. They won't if they are let alone, and allowed to fill the sage brush and line the (199) 200 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. banks of the Jordan with juvenile no)n do plumes. They are peaceful while they may populate Utah and invade adjoining territoties with their herds of ostensible wives and prattling progeny; while they can bring in every year via Castle Garden and the stock yards palace emigrant car, thousands of prose- lyted paupers from every pest house of Europe, and the free-love idiots of America. But when Murray gets an act of congress at his back and a squad of nervy, gamy, law-abiding monogamous assistants appointed by the president under that act of congress to knock crosswise and crooked the Jim Crow reve- lations of Utah and Mormondom, you will see the fur fly, and the fragrant fol- lower of a false prophet will rise up William Riley and the regular army will feel lonesome. I asked a staff officer in one of the territories last summer what would be the result if the Mormons, with their home drill and their arms and their devotion to home and their fraudulent religion, should awake Nicodemas and begin to massacre the Gentiles, and the regular army should be sent over the Wasatch range to quell the trouble. "Why," said he, "the white-eyed followers of Mormonism would kill the regular army with clubs. You can wear out a tribe of hostile Indians when the grass gives out and the antelope hunts the foothills, but the Mormons make everything they eat, drink and wear. They don^t care whether there's tariff or free trade. They can make everything from gunpowder to a knit undershirt, from a $250 revelation to a hand-made cocktail. When a church gets where it can make such cooking whisky as the Mormons do, it is time to call for volun- teers and put down the hydra-headed monster." If congress don't step on a technicality and fall down, it looks like amuse- ment ahead, and if a District of Columbia rule, or martial law, or tocsin of war is the result, Gov. Murray is a good style of war governor. He isn't the kind of a man to put on his wife's gossamer cloak and meander over into Montana. He would give the matter his attention, and you would find him in the neigh- borhood when the national government decided to sit down on disorderly con- duct in Utah. The first lever to be used will be the great wealth of which the Mormon church and its members privately are possessed. Then the oleagin- ous prophet will get a revelation to gird up his loins and to load the double- barrel shotgun, and fire the culverin, and to knock monogamy into a cocked hat. Money first and massacre second.. They can draw on their revelation supply house at three days, any time, for authority to fill the irrigation ditches of Zion with the blood of the Gentile and feed his vital organs to the coyote. /^bout Qeolo^y. 7^^! EOLOGY is that branch of natural science which treats of the structure 'ill '^^ of the earth's crust and the mode of formation of its rocks. It is a ^Kill pleasant and profitable study, and to the man who has married rich and 5"^ does not need to work, the amusement of busting geology with the Bible, or busting the Bible with geology is indeed a great boon. Geology goes hand in hand with zoology, botany, physical geography and other kindred sciences. Taxidermy, chiropody and theology are not kimh'ed sciences. Geologists ascertain the age of the earth by looking at its teeth and count- ing the wrinkles on its horns. They have learned that the earth is not only of great age, but that it is still adding to its age from year to year. It is hard to say very much of a gi-eat science in so short an article, and that is one great obstacle which I am constantly running against as a scientist. I once prepared a paper in astronomy entitled "The Chronological History and Habits of the Spheres." It was very exhaustive and weighed four pounds. I sent it to a scientific publication that was supposed to be working for the advancement of our race. The editor did not print it, but he wrote me a crisp and saucy postal card, requesting me to call with a dray and remove my stuff before the board of health got after it. In five short years from that time he was a corpse. As I write these lines, I learn with ill-concealed pleasure that he is still a corpse. An awful dispensation of Providence, in the shape of a large, wilted cucumber, laid hold upon his vitals and cursed him with an inward pain. He has since had the opportunity, by actual personal observation, to see whether the statements by me relating to astronomy were true. His last words were: "Friends, Bomans and countrymen, beware of the q-cumber. It will w up." It was not original, but it was good. The four great primary periods of the earth's history are as follows, viz, to-wit : 1. The Eozoic or dawn of life. 2. The Pala30zoic or period of ancient life. 3. The Mesozoic or middle period of life. 4. The Neozoic or recent period of life. (aoi) 202 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. Tliese are all subdivided again, and other words more difficult to spell are introduced into science, thus crowding out the vulgar herd who cannot afford to use the high priced terms in constant conversation. Old timers state that the primitive condition of the earth was extremely damp. With the onward march of time, and after the lapse of millions of years, men found that they could get along with less and less water, until at last we see the pleasant, blissful state of things. Aside from the use of water at our summer resorts, that fluid is getting to be less and less popular. And .(^- THE MASTODON. even here at these resorts it is generally flavored with some foreign substance. The earth's crust is variously estimated in the matter of thickness. Some think it is 2,500 miles thick, which would make it safe to run heavy trains across the earth anywhere on top of a second mortgage, while other scientists say that if we go down one-tenth of that distance we will reach a place where the worm dieth not. I do not wish to express an opinion as to the actual depth ABOUT GEOLOGY. 203 or thickness of tlie earth's crust, but I believe that it is none too thick to suit me. Thickness in the earth's crust is a mighty good fault. "We estimate the age of certain strata of the earth's formation by means of a union of our knowl- edge of plant and animal life, coupled with our geological research and a good memory. The older scientists in the field of geology do not rely solely upon the tracks of the hadrasaurus or the cornucopia for their data. They simply use these things to refresh their memory. I wish that I had time and space to describe some of the beautiful bacteria and gigantic worms that formerly inhabited the earth. Such an aggregation of actual, living Silurian monsters, any one of which would make a man a for- tune to-day, if it could be kept on ice and exhibited for one season only. You could take a full grown mastodon to-day, and with no calliope, no lithographs, no bearded lady, no clown with four pillows in his pantaloons and no iron- jawed woman, you could go across this continent and successfully compete with the skating rink. There would be but one difficulty. Your expenses would not be heavy. The mastodon would be willing to board around, and no one would feel like turning a mastodon out of doors if he seemed to be hungry ; but he might get away from you and frolic away so far in one night that you couldn't get him for a day or two, even if you sent a detective for him. If I had a mastodon I would rather take him when he was young, and then I could make a pet of him, so that he could come and eat out of my hand with- out taking the hand off at the same time. A large mastodon weighing a hun- dred tons or so is awkward, too. I suppose that nothing is more painful than to be stepped on by an adult mastodon. I hope at some future time to write a paper for the Academy of Science on the subject of "Deceased Fauna, Fossiliferous Debris and Extinct Jokes," showing how, when and why these early forms of animal life came to be extinct. f\ U/allula I^i(^l7t. HAVE just returned after a short tour in tlie far West. I made the tour with my ne^v lecture, which I am delivering this winter for the benefit, ^J L and under the auspices, of a young man who was a sufferer in the great "^^^ rise-up-William-Pviley-and-come-along-with-me cyclone, which occurred at Clear Lake, in this State, a year ago last September. In said cyclone, said young man was severely caressed by the elements, and tipped over in such a way as to shattea- the right leg, just below the gambrel joint, I therefore started out to deliver a few lectures for his benefit, and in so doing have made a 4,000 mile trip over the Northern Pacific railway, and the Oregon River and Navigation company's road. On the former line the passenger is fed by means of the dining-car, a very good style of entertain- ment, indeed, and well worthy of the age in which we live; but at Wallula Junction I stopped over to catch a west-bound Oregon Railway and N avigation train. That was where I fooled myself. I should have taken my valise and a rubber door mat from the sleeping-car, and crawled into the lee of a snow fence for the night. I did not give the matter enough thought. I just simply went into the hotel and registered my name as a man would in other hotels. This house was kept, or retained, I should say, by a relative of the late Mr. Shylock. You have lieard, no doubt, how some of the American hotels have frowned on Mr. Shylock's relatives. Well, Mr. Shylock's family got even with the whole American people the night I stopped in No, 2, second floor of the Abomination of Desolation. As a representative of the American people, I received for my nation, vicariously, the stripes intended for many generations. No. 2 is regarded as a room by people who have not been in it. By those who have, it is looked upon as a morgue. When I stepped into it, I noticed an odor of the dead past. It made me shudder my overshoes off. The first thing that attracted my attention after I was left alone, was the fact that other people had occupied this room before I (ao4) A WALLULA NIGHT. 205 had, and, althougli they were gone, they had left a kind of an air of inferior- ity that clung to the alleged apartment, an air of plug tobacco and perspira- tion, if you will pardon the expression. They had also left a pair of Venetian pantaloons. From this clue, my active brain at once worked out the problem and settled the fact that the party who had immediately preceded me was a man. Long and close study of the habits and characteristics of humanity has taught me to reason out these mat- ters, and to reach accurate conclusions with astonishing rapidity. He was not only a man, but he was a short man, with parenthetical legs and a thoughtful droop to the seat of his pants. I also discovered that more of this man's life had been expended in sitting on a pitch pine log than in prayer. One of his front teeth was gone, also. This I learned from a large cast of his mouth, shown on the end of a plug of tobacco still left in the pocket. In "VVallula there is a marked feeling of childlike trust and confidence between people. It is a feature of Wallula society, I may say. The people of the junction trust strangers to a remark- able extent. In what other town in this whole republic would a pair of pantaloons be thus left in the complete power of a total stranger, a stranger, too, to whom pantaloons were a great boon? I could easily have caught those pantaloons off the nail, thrust them into my bosom, and fled past the drowsy night clerk, out into the great, sheltering arms of the silent night, but I did not. Anon through the long hours I would awake and listen fitfully to the wail of damned souls, as it seemed to me, the wail of those who tried to stay there a week, and had starved to death. Here was their favorite wailing place. Here was the place where damned souls seemed to throw aside all restraint and have a good time. I tried to keep out the sound by stuffing the pillow in my ear, but what is a cheap hotel pilloAV in a man's ear, if he wants to keep the noise out. IN SUSPENSE. 20G REMARKS BY BILL NYE. So I lay there and listened to the soft sigh of the bath tub, the loud, defi- ant challenge of the athletic butler down stairs, the last weak death rattle in the throat of the coffee pot in the dining room, and the wail of the damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had been rescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come back at night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority of hell as a refuge from the AVallula hotel. Now and then in the night I would almost yield to a wild impulse and catch those pantaloons off the hook, to rush out and go to Canada with them, and then I would softly go through the pockets and hang them back again. It was an awful night. When morning dawned at last, and I took the pil- low out of my ear and looked in the delirious and soap-spattered mirror, I saw that my beautiful hair, which had been such a source of pride to me ten years ago, had disappeared in places. I paid my bill, called the attention of the landlord to the fact that I had not taken those pantaloons nor betrayed his trust, and then I went away. plyii)(^ /r\ael7i9e5. A^K^ LONG and exhaustive examination of the history of flying machines jjfmu enables me to give briefly some of the main points of a few, for the |/ll'^ benefit of those who may be interested in this science. I give what I " ^" " do in order to prepare the public to take advantage of the different methods, and be ready at once to fly as soon as the weather gets pleasant. A I'renchman invented a flying-machine, or dof unny, as we scientists would term it, in IGOO and something, whereby he could sail down from the wood- shed and not break his neck. He could not rise from the ground like a lark and trill a few notes as he skimmed through the sky, but he could fall off an ordinary hay stack like a setting hen, with the aid of his wings. His name was Besnier. One hundred and twenty -five years after that a prisoner at Vienna, named Jacob Dagen, told the jailer that he could fly. The jailer seemed incredulous, and so Jake constructed a pair of double barrel umbrellas, that worked by hand, and fluttered with his machine into the air fifty feet. He came down in a direct line, and in doing so ran one of the umbrellas through his thorax. I am eflad it is not the custom now to wear an umbrella in the thorax. In England, during the present century, several inventors produced flying machines, but in an evil hour agreed to rise on them themselves, and so they died from their injuries. Some came down on top of the machines, while others preceded their inventions by a few feet, but the result was the same. The invention of flying machines has always been handicapped, as it were, by this fact. Men invent a flying machine and then try to ride it and show it off, and thus they are prevented by death from perfecting their rolling stock and securing their right of way. In 18J:2, Mr. William Henderson got out a "two-propeller" machine, and tried to incorporate a company to utilize it for the purpose of carrying letters, running errands, driving home the cows, lighting the Northern Lights and 208 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. skimming the cream off the Milky Way, but it didn't seem to compete very successfully with other modes of travel, and so Mr. Henderson wrapped it up in an old tent and put it away in the hay-mow. In 1853, Mr. J. H. Johnson patented a balloon and parachute dingus which worked on the principle of a duck's foot in the mud. I use scientific terms because I am unable to express myself in the common language of the vulgar hcrtl. This machine had a tail which, under great excitement, it would throw over the dash board as it bounded through the air. Probably the biggest thing in its way under this head was the revival of flying under the presidency of the Duke of Argyle, the society being called the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. This society made some valuable calculations and experiments in the interest of aerostation, adding much to oui* scientific knowledge, and filling London wdth cripples. In 1869, Mr. Joseph T. Kaufman invented and turned loose upon the peo- ple of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to ornithology as ^q fi}jupitliecricl^, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a clothes line to it and used it for a band wagon. Eufus Porter invented an aerial dewdad ten years ago in Connecticut, where so many crimes have been committed since Mark Twain moved there. This was called the "aeraport," and looked like a seed wart floating through space. This engine was worked by springs connected with propellers. A saloon was suspended beneath it, I presume on the principle that when a man is intoxi- cated he weighs a pound less. This machine flew around the rotunda of the Merchants' Exchange, in New York City, eleven times, like a hen with her head cut off, but has not been on the wing much since then. Other flying machines have been invented, but the air is not peopled with them as I write. Most of them have folded their pinions and sought the seclusion of a hen-house. It is to be hoped that very soon some such machine will be perfected, whereby a man may flit from the fifth story window of the Grand Pacific Hotel, in Chicago, to Montreal before breakfast, leaving nothing in his room but the furniture and his kind regards. PLYING MACHINES. 209 Such an invention would be liaileel A\itli niucli joy, and tlie sale would be &normous. Now, however, the matter is still iji its infancy. The mechanical birds invented for the purpose of skimming through the ether blue, have not skum. The machines were built with high hopes and a throbbing heart, but the aforesaid ether remains unskum as we go to press. The Milky Way is in the same condition, awaiting the arrival of the fearless skimmer. Will men ever be permitted to pierce the utmost details of the sky and ramble around among the stars with a gum overcoat on ? Sometimes I trow he will, and then again I ween not. /^sl^ii)^ for a pass. i^HE general passenger agent of a prominent road leading out of Chi- cago toward the south, tells me that he is getting a good many letters lately asking for passes, and he complains bitterly over the awkward ^ and unsatisfactory style of the correspondence. Acting on this sug- gestion and though a little late in the day, perhaps, I have erected the follow- ing as a guide to those who contemplate writing under similar circumstances: Office of The Evening Squeal, January 14, 1886. Geneeal Passenger Agent, Great North American Gitthere E. R, Chi- cago, III. Dear Sir. — I desire to know by return mail whether or no you would be pleased to swap transportation for kind words. I am the editor of "The Squeal," published at this place. It is a paper pure in tone, world wide in its scope and irresist- ible in the broad sweep of its mighty arm. I desire to visit the great exposition at New Orleans this winter, and would be willing to yield you a few words of editorial opinion, set in long primer type next to pure reading matter, and without advertising marks. My object in thus addressing you is two-fold. I have always wanted to do your road a kind act that would put it on its feet, but I have never be- fore had the opportunity. This winter I feel just like it, and am not willing, but anxious. Another object, though trivial, perhaps, to you, is vital to me. If I do not get the pass, I am afraid I shall not reach there till the exposition is over. You can see for yourself how important it is that I should have transportation. Day after day the president (210) the press. ASKING FOR A PASS. 211 will come on to the grounds and ask if I am there. Some official will salute him and answer sadly, "No, your highness, he has not yet arrived, but we look for him soon. He is said to be stuck in a mud hole somewhere in Egypt." Then the exposition will drag on again. You may make the pass read, "For self, Chicago to New Or- leans and return," and I will write the edito- rial, or you may make it read, "Self and wife" and I will let you write it yourself. Nothing is too good for my friends. When a man does me a kind act or shows signs of affection, I just allow him to walk all over me and make himself perfectly free with the policy of my paper. The "Evening Squeal" has been heard everywhere. We send it to the four winds of Heaven, and its influence is felt wherever the English language is respected. And yet, if you want to belong to my coterie of friends, you can make yourself just as free with its editorial columns as you would if you owned it. And yet "The Squeal" is a bad one to stir up. I shudder to think what the result would be if you should incur the hatred of "The Squeal." Let us avoid such a subject or the possibility of such a calamity. "The Squeal" once opposed the candidacy of a certain man for the office of school district clerk, and in less than four years he was a corpse! Struck down in all his wanton pride by one of the popular diseases of the day. My paper at one time became the foe of a certain road which tapped the great cranberry vineyards of northern Minnesota, and that very fall the cran-' berries soured on the vines! STUCK IN A MUD HOLE. 212 llEMARKS BY BILL NTE. I might go on for pages to show how the patliway of "The Squeal" has been strewn with the ruins of railroads, all prosperous and happy till they an- tagonized us and sought to injure us. I believe that the great journals and trunk lines of the land should stand in with one another. If you have the support and moral encouragement of the press you will feel perfectly free to run over any one who gets on your track. Besides, if I held a pass over your road I should feel very much reserved about printing the details of any accident, delay or w^ashout along your line. I aim to mould public opinion, but a man can subsidize and cor- rupt me if he goes at it right. I write this to kind of give you a pointer as to how you can go to work to do so if you see fit. Should you wish to pervert my high moral notions in relation to railways, please make it good for thirty days, as it may take me a week or so to mort- gage my property and get ready to go in good style. I will let you know on what day I will be in New Orleans, so that you caii come and see me at that time. Should you have difficulty in obtaining an audience with me, owing to the throng of crowned heads, just show this autograph letter to the doorkeeper, and he will show you right in. Wipe your boots before entering. Yours truly, Daniel Webster Briggs, Editor of "The Squeal." It is my opinion that no railroad official, however disobliging, would hesi- tate a moment about which way he would swing after reading an epistle after this pattern. Few, indeed, are the men who would be impolitic enough to in- cur the displeasure of such a paper as I have artfully represented "The Squeal" to be. U/ord5 /Ibout U/asl7i9(§t09. ^HE name of George Washington has always had about it a glamour _ that made him appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with \J large feet and a mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pump- '^ kin pie. I use the word glamour, not so much because I know Avhat glamour means, but because I have never used it before, and I am getting a little tired of the short, easy words I have been using so long. George Washington's face has beamed out upon us for many years now, on postage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze, in photo- graphs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged in prayer. We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe that he did not breathe our air or eat American s^roceries. But Geore^e Washing- ton was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study of his life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from the proud history of the Father of his Country, I say it simply that the boys of America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel so timid about trying it. When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the lime- kiln at Mount Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to show the boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble George Washington. That Avas one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamed of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk, and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice. There are lawyers who play poker year after year, and get regularly skinned, because they have heard that some of the able lawyers of the past century used to come home at night with poker chips in their pockets. Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have (213) 214 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. seen poets wlio relied solely on the potency of tlieir breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever did of the statutes, in such case made and provided. George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first in war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who \fould be first baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hour of the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in the hearts of his countrymen, George's postof&ce address was at once secured. Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear that in America! It is the place where it is a positive disadvantage to be born wealthy. And yet, sometimes I wish they had experimented a little that way on me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of coiu'se, because it is too late ; but it seems to me that, with my natural good sense and keen insight into human nature, I could have struggled along under the burdens and cares of wealth with great success. I do not care to die wealthy, but if I could have been born wealthy, it seems to me I would have been tickled almost to death. I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and to say that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong sometimes in his judgment of others, both individually and in the aggregate, but he who gets ready to be a great man will surely find the opportunity. Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it for me, but they will never find out. In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for three reasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his friends. Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule. Some people cannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue jackass. Another reason why Washington is loved and honored to-day, is that he died before we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly superior to the method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till their constitu- ency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die. 5l7 cry, such as a large, adult man might emit from his window on the •J 1171 night air. The town was not large, and the fire department, I had been "^^^ told, was not so effective as it should have been. For that reason I arose and carefully dressed myself, in order to assist, if possible. I carefully lowered myself from my room, by means of a staircase which I found concealed in a dark and mysterious corner of the passage. On the streets all was confusion. The hoarse cry of fire had been taken up by others, passed around from one to another, till it had swollen into a dull roar. The cry of fire in a small town is always a grand sight. All along the street in front of Mr. Pendergast's roller rink the blanched faces of the people could be seen. Men were hurrying to and fro, knocking the bystanders over in their frantic attempts to get somewhere else. With great foresight, Mr. Pendergast, wdio had that day finished painting his roller rink a dull-roan color, removed from the building the large card which bore the legend: ^ # : FEESH PAINT ! '. * so that those who were so disposed might feel perfectly free to lean up against the rink and watch the progress of the flames. Anon the bright glare of the devouring element might have been seen bursting through the casement of Mr. Cicero Williams's residence, facing on the alley west of Mr. Pendergast's rink. Across the street the spectator whose early education had not been neglected could distinctly read the sign of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Alonzo Burlingame, which was lit up by the red glare of the flames so that the letters stood out plainly as follows: ALONZO BUKLINGAME, Dealer in Soft and Haed Coal, Ice-Ceeam, Wood, Lime, Cement, Per- fumery, Nails, Putty, Spectacles, and Hoese Eadish. Chocolate Caeamels and Tae Koofing. (220) stirring incidents at a fire. 221 Gas Fitting and Undertaking in all Its Branches. Hides, Tallow, and Maple Syrup. Fine Gold Jewelry, Silverware, and Salt. Glue, Codfish, and Gent's Neckwear. Undertaker and Confectioner. I^^DisEASEs OF Horses and Children a Specialty. JNO. WHITE, Ptr. The flames spread rapidly, until tliey threatened the Palace rink of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Pendergast, whose genial and urbane manner has endeared him to all. With a degree of forethought worthy of a better cause, Mr. Leroy W. Butts suggested the propriety of calling out the hook and ladder company, an organization of which every one seemed to be justly proud. Some delay ensued in trying to find the janitor of Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company No. I's building, but at last he was secured, and, after he had gone home for the key, Mr. Butts ran swiftly down the street to awaken the foreman, but, after he had dressed himself and inquired anxiously about the fire, he said that he was not foreman of the company since the 2d of April. Meantime the firefiend continued to rise up ever and anon on his hind feet and lick up salt-barrel after salt-barrel in close proximity to the Palace rink, owned by our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Pendergast. Twice Mr. Pender- gast was seen to shudder, after which he went home and filled out a blank which he forwarded to the insurance company. Just as the town seemed doomed, the hook and ladder company came rush- ing down the street with their navy-blue hook and ladder truck. It is indeed a beauty, being one of the Excelsior noiseless hook and ladder factory's best instruments, with tall red pails and rich blue ladders. Some delay ensued, as several of the ofiicers claimed that under a new by- law passed in January they were permitted to ride on the truck to fires. This having been objected to by a gentleman who had lived in Chicago several years, a copy of the by-laws was sent for and the dispute summarily settled. The company now donned its rubber overcoats with great coolness and pro- ceeded at once to deftly twist the tail of the firefiend. It was a thrilling sight as James McDonald, a brother of Terrance Mc- Donald, Xrombone, Ind., rapidly ascended one of the ladders in the full glare of the devouring element and fell off again. 222 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Then a wild cheer arose to a height of about nine feet, and all again became confused. It was now past 11 o'clock, and several of the members of the hook and ladder company who had to get up early the next day in order to catch a train excused themselves and went home to seek much-needed rest. Suddenly it was discovered that the brick livery stable of Mr. Abraham McMichaels, a nephew of our worthy assessor, was getting hot. Leaving the Palace rink to its fate, the hook and ladder company directed its attention to the brick barn, and, after numerous attempts, at last succeeded in getting its laro'e iron prong fastened on the second story window-sill, which was pulled out. The hook was again inserted, but not so effectively, bringing down at this time an armful of hay and part of an old horse blanket. Another cour- ageous jab was made with the iron hook, which succeeded in pulling out about 5 cents worth of brick. This was greeted by a wild burst of applause from the bystanders, during which the hook and ladder company fell over each other and added to the horror of the scene by a mad burst of pale-blue profanity. It was not long before the stable was licked up by the firefiend, and the hook and ladder company directed its attention toward the undertaking, em- balming, and ice-cream parlors of our highly esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. A. Burlingame. The company succeeded in pulling two stone window-sills out of this building before it burned. Both times they were encored by the large and aristocratic audience. Mr. Burlingame at once recognized the efforts of the heroic firemen by tapping a keg of beer, which he distributed among them at 25 cents per glass. This morning a space forty-seven feet wide, where but yesterday all was joy and prosperity and beauty, is covered over with blackened ruins. Mr. Pendergast is overcome by grief over the loss of his rink, but assures us that if he is successful in getting the full amount of his insurance he will take the money and build two rinks, either one of which will be far more impos- ing than the one destroyed last evening. A movement is on foot to give a literary and musical entertainment at Burley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the "fire laddies," at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the Kobins Nest Ao-ain," and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Jo," a selection which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents for each offense. l^p^Let there be a full house. Jt7s and a red rib- bon in her hair. I tell you, pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, or else they're mighty economical with their cloze." " Did you go into the side show?" "No, sir. I studied the oil paintings on the outside, but I didn't go in. I met a handsome looking man there near the side show, though, that seemed to -^ I WAS A POOR CONVERSATIONALIST. Then there was the female ac- It's funny about them acrobat 236 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. take an interest in me. There was a lottery along with the show and he wanted me to go and throw for him." "Capper, probably?" " Perhaps so. Anyhow, he gave me a dollar and told me to go and throw for him." "Why didn't he throw for himself?" "O, he said the lottery man knew him and wouldn't let him throw." "Of course. Same old story. He saw you were a greeney and got you to throw for him. He stood in with the game so that you drew a big prize for the capper, created a big excitement, and you and the crowd sailed in and lost all the money you had. I'll bet he was a man with a velvet coat, and a mous- tache dyed a dead black and waxed as sharp as a cambric needle." "Yes; that's his description to a dot. I wonder if he really did do that a-purpose." "Well, tell us about it. It does me good to hear a blamed fool tell how he lost his money. Don't you see that your awkward ways and general green- ness struck the capper the first thing, and you not only threw away your own money, but two or three hundred other wappy- jawed pelicans saw you draw a big prize and thought it was yours, then they deposited what little they had and everything was lovely." "Well, I'll tell you how it was, if it'll do any good and save other young men in the future. You see this capper, as you call him, gave me a $1 bill to throw for him, and I put it into my vest pocket so, along with the dollar bill father gave me. I always carry my money in my right hand vest pocket. Well, I sailed up to the game, big as old Jumbo himself, and put a dollar into the game. As you say, I drawed a big prize, $20 and a silver cup. The man offered me $5 for the cup and I took it." " Then it flashed over my mind that I might have got my dollar and the other feller's mixed, so I says to the proprietor, ' I vnll now invest a dollar for a gent who asked me to draw for him.' "Thereupon I took out the other dollar, and I'll be eternally chastised if I didn't di"aw a brass locket worth about two bits a bushel," I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I asked him how the cap- per acted when he got his brass locket. " Well, he seemed pained and grieved about something, and he asked me if I hadn't time to go away into a quiet place where we could talk it over by "DONE IT A-PURPOSE." 237 ourselves ; but he liad a kind of a cruel, insincere look in his eye, and I said no, I believed I didn't care to, and that I was a poor conversationalist, any- how ; and so I came away, and left him looking at iiis brass locket and kicking holes in the ground and using profane language. "Afterward I saw him talking to the proprietor of the lottery, and I feel, somehow, that they had lost confidence in me. I heard them speak of me in a jeering tone of voice, and one said as I passed by : ' There goes the meek-eyed rural convict now,' and he used a horrid oath at the same time. " If it hadn't been for that one little quincidence, there would have been nothing to mar the enjoyment of the occasion." pier^ie Irjeide^ts. -." A^] AMPI J^ G out in summer for several weeks is a good thing generally. L f ^. freedom from social restraint and suspenders is a great luxury for a A^iMl time, and nothing purifies the blood quicker, or makes a side of bacon ^^ taste more like snipe on toast, than the crisp ozone that floats through the hills and forests where man can monkey o'er the green grass without violating a city ordinance. The picnic is an aggravation. It has just enough of civilization to be a nuisance, and not enough barbarism to make life seem a luxury. If our aim be to lean up against a tree all day in a short seersucker coat and ditto panta- loons that segregated while we were festooning the hammock, the picnic is the thino-. If we desire to go home at night with a jelly symphony on each knee and a thousand-legged worm in each ear, we may look upon the picnic as a success. But to those who wish to forget the past and live only in the booming present, to get careless of gain and breathe brand-new air that has never been used, to appease an irritated liver, or straighten out a torpid lung, let me say, pick out a high, dry clime, where there are trout enough to give you an excuse for going there, take what is absolutely necessary and no more, and then stay there long enough to have some fun. If we picnic, we wear ourselves out trying to have a good time, so that we can tell about it when we get back, but we do not actually get acquainted with each other before we have to quit and return. To camp, is to change the whole programme of life, and to stop long enough in the never-ending conflict for dollars and distinction, to get a full breath and look over the field. Still, it is not always smooth sailing. To camp, is some- times to show the material of which we are made. The dude at home is the dude in camp, and wherever he goes he demonstrates that he was made for naught. I do not know what a camping party would do with a dude unless they used him to bait a bear trap with, and even then it would be taking a mean advantage of the bear. The bear certainly has some rights which we are bound in all decency to respect. (238) PICNIC INCIDENTS. 239 James Milton Slierrod said he liad a peculiar experience once while he was in camp on the Povulre in Colorado. "We went over from Larmy," said he, "in July, eight years ago — four of us. There was me and Charcoal Brown, and old Joe and young Joe Connoy. We had just got comfortably down on the Lower Fork, out of the reach of everybody and sixty miles from a doctor, when Charcoal Brown got sick. Wa'al, we had a big time of it. You can imagine yourself somethin' about it. Long in the night Brown began to groan and whoop and holler, and I made a diagnosis of him. He didn't have much sand anyhow. He was tryin' to git a pension from the govern- ment on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide, and some such a blame thing or another, so I didn't feel much sympathy fur him. But when I lit the gas and examined him, I found that he had a large fever on hand, and there we was without a doggon thing in the house but a jug of emigrant whiskey and a pa- per of condition powders fur the mule, I was a good deal rattled at first to know what the dickens to do fur him. The whiskey wouldn't do him any good, and, besides, if he was goin' to have a long spell of sickness we needed it for the watchers. "Wa'al, it was rough. I'd think of a thousand things that was good fur fevers, and then I'd remember that we hadn't got 'em. Finally old Joe says to me, 'James, why don't ye soak his feet?' says he. 'Soak nuthin',' says I; 'what would ye soak 'em in?' We had a long-handle frying-pan, and we could heat water in it, of course, but it was too shaller to do any good, any- how ; so we abandoned that synopsis right ofP. First I thought I'd try the condition powders in him, but I hated to go into a case and prescribe so reck- lessly. Finally I thought of a case of rheumatiz that I had up in Bitter Creek years ago, and how the boys filled their socks full of hot ashes and put 'em all over me till it started the persbyterian all over me and I got over it. MAKING USE OF A DUDE. 240 EEMAKKS BY BILL NYE. PICNIC INCIDENTS. 241 So we begun to skirmish around the tent for socks, and I hope I may be tee- totally skun if there was a blame sock in the whole syndicate. Ez fur me, I never wore 'em, but I did think young Joe would be fixed. He wasn't though. Said he didn't want to be considered proud and high strung, so he left his socks at home. "Then we begun to look around and finally decided that Brown would die pretty soon if we didn't break up the fever, so we concluded to take all the ashes under the camp-fire, fill up his cloze, which was loose, tie his sleeves at the wrists, and his pants at the ankles, give him a dash of condition poAvders and a little whiskey to take the taste out of his mouth, and then see what ejosted nature would do. So we stood Brown up agin a tree and poured hot ashes down his back till he begun to fit his cloze pretty quick, and then we laid him down in the tent and covered him up with everything we had in our humble cot. Every- thing worked well till he begun to perspirate, and then there was music, and don't you forget it. That kind of soaked the ashes, don't you see, and made a lye that would take the peelin' off a telegraph pole. "Charcoal Brown jest simply riz up and uttered a shrill whoop that jarred the geology of Colorado, and made my blood run cold. The goose flesh riz on old Joe Connoy till you could hang your hat on him anywhere. It was awful. "Brown stood up on his feet, and threw things, and cussed us till we felt ashamed of ourselves. I've seen sickness a good deal in my time, but — I give it to you straight — I never seen an invalid stand up in the loneliness of the night, far from home and friends, with the concentrated lye oozin' out of the cracks of his boots, and reproach people the way Charcoal Brown did us. " He got over it, of course, before Christmas, but he was a different man after that. I've been out campin' with him a good many times sence, but he never complained of feelin' indisposed. He seemed to be timid about tellin' us even if he was under the weather, and old Joe Connoy said mebbe Brown was afraid we would prescribe fur him or sumthin'.". J^lero. EEO, who was a Pioman Emperor from 54 to 68 A. D., was said to liave been one of tlie most disagreeable monarcbs to meet that Rome ever had. He was a nephew of Culigula, the Emperor, on his mother's side, and a son of Domini- tius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was really Nero's name, but in the year 50, A. D., his mother married Claudius and her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germ aniens. This name he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, but- toned up in front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53, Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right to housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soon wearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the New Jerusalem. In 54, Nero's mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne for sev- eral weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steady job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary. His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried on durino- that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfully hold a man's coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed. He loved to go out riding over the battle fields, as soon as it was safe, in his gor- geously bedizened band chariot and he didn't care if the wheels rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man's gore. It gave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloat over the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as a gloater he has no rival in history. Nero's reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Ro- man fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome was de- stroyed. The emperor Avas charged with starting this fire in order to get the insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street. (242) NERO. 243 Instead of taking off liis crown, hanging it up in the hall and helping to put out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero took his violin up stairs and played, "I'll Meet You When the Sun Goes Down." This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part of those who opposed the administration. Several j^ersons openly criticised Nero's policy and then died. A man in those days, would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell his wife not to keep dinner waiting. " I am going down town to criticise the Em- peror a few moments," he would say. "If I do not get home in time for din- ner, meet me on the 'evergreen shore.'" Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppiiea Sabina. She died after- ward at her husband's earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so much about being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower always gratified and pleased him. He was a very zealous monarch and kept Rome pretty well stirred up dur- ing his reign. If a man failed to show up anywhere on time, his friends would look sadly at each other and say, "Alas, he has criticised Nero." A man could wrestle with the yellow fever, or the small -pox, or the Asiatic cholera and stand a chance for recovery, but when he spoke sarcastically of Nero, it was good-bye John. When Nero decided that a man was an offensive partisan, that man would generally put up the following notice on his ofiice door: "Gone to see the Emperor in relation to charge of offensive partisanship. Meet me at the cemetery at 2 o'clock." Finally, Nero overdid this thing and ran it into the ground. He did not want to be disliked and so, those who disliked him were killed. This made people timid and muzzled the press a good deal. The Roman papers in those days were all on one side. They did not dare to be fearless and outspoken, for fear that Nero would take out his ad. So they would confine themselves to the statement that: "The genial and urbane Af- ranius Burrhus had painted his new and reclierche picket fence last week," or "Our enterprising fellow townsman, Cicsar Kersikes, will remove the tail of his favorite bulldog next week, if the weather should be auspicious," or "Miss Agrippina Bangoline, eldest daughter of Rcmiulus Bangoline, the great Ro- man rinkist, will teach the school at Eupatorium, Trifoliatum Holler, this summer. She is a highly accomplished young lady, and a good speller." 244 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Nero got more and more fatal as lie grew older, and finally the Komans be- gan to wonder whether he would not wipe out tlie Empire before he died. His back yard was full all the time of people who had dropped in to be killed, so that tho^ t'Duld have it off their minds. Finally, Nero himself yielded to the great strain that had been placed upon him and, in the midst of an insurrection in Gaul, Spain and Eome itself, he fled and killed himself. The Homans were very grateful for Nero's great crowning act in the kill- ing line, but they were dissatisfied because he delayed it so long, and therefore they refused to erect a tall monument over his remains. While tliey admired the royal suicide and regarded it as a success, they censured Nero's negli- gence and poor judgment in suiciding at the wrong end of his reign. I have often wondered what Nero would have done if he had been Emperor of the United States for a few weeks and felt as sensitive to newspaper criti- cism as he seems to have been. Wouldn't it be a picnic to see Nero cross the Jersey ferry to kill off a few journalists who had adversely criticised his course? The great violin vii-tuoso and ligiit weight Eoman tyrant would probably go home by return mail, wrapped in tinfoil, accompanied by a note of regret from each journalist in New York, closing with the remark, that "in the midst of life we are in death, therefore now is the time to subscribe." 5qtiau; Ji/T). ^i a [, you long-haired, backslidden Caucasian nomad, why don't you say something? Brace up and tell us your experience. Were you kid- (^l^i napped when you were a kid and run off into the wild wickyup of ^1"^ the forest, or how was it that you came to leave the Yankee reserva- tion and eat the raw dog of the Sioux?" We were all sitting around the roaring fat-pine fire at the foot of the canon, and above us the full moon was filling the bottom of the black notch in the mountains, where God began to engrave the gulch that grew wider and deeper till it reached the valley where we were. Squaw Jim was tall, silent and grave. He was as dignified as the king of clubs, and as reticent as the private cemetery of a deaf and dumb asy- lum. He didn't move when Dutch Joe spoke to him, but he noticed the remark, and after awhile got up in the firelight, and later on the silent savage made the longest speech of his life. " Boys, you call me Squaw Jim, and you call my girl a half breed. I have no other name than Squaw Jim with the pale faced dude and the dyspeptic sky pilot who tells me of his God. You call mo Squaw Jim because I've married a squaw and insist on living with her. If I had married Mist-of-the-Waterfall, and had lived in my tepee with her sum- mers, and wintered at St. Louis with a wife who belonged to a tall peaked church, and who wore her war paint, and her false scalp-lock, and her false heart into God's wigwam, I'd be all right, probably. They would have (a45) "BOYS, YOU CALL ME SQUAW JIM." 246 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. laughed about it a little among the boys, but it would have been " wayno" in the big stone lodges at the white man's city. "I loved a pale faced girl in Connecticut forty years ago. She said she did me, but she met with a change of heart and married a bare-back rider in a circus. Then she ran aAvay with the swoi"d swallower of the side show, and finally broke her neck trying to walk the tight rope. The jury said if the rope had been as tight as she was it might have saved her life. "Since then I've been where the sun and the air and the soil were free. It kind of soothed me to wear moccasins and throw my biled shirt into the Missouri. It took the fever of jealousy and disappointment out of my soul to sleep in the great bosom of the unhoused night. Soon I learned how to par- ley-vous in the Indian language, and to wear the clothes of the red man. I married the squaw girl who saved me from the mountain fever and my foes. She did not yearn for the equestrian of the white man's circus. She didn't know how to raise XxYxZ to the nth power, but she was a wife worthy of the President of the United States. She was way off the trail in matters of eti- quette, but she didn't know what it was to envy and hate the pale faced squaw with the sealskin sacque and the torpid liver, and the high-priced throne of grace. She never sighed to go where they are filling up Connecticut's celes- tial exhibit with girls who get mysteriously murdered and the young men who did it go out lecturing. You see I keep posted. "Boys, you kind of pity me, I reckon, and say Squaw Jim might have been in Congress if he'd stayed with his people and wore night shirts and pared his claws, but you needn't. "My wife can't knock the tar out of a symphony on the piano, but she can mop the dew off the grass with a burglar, and knock out a dude's eyes at sixty yards rise. "My wife is a little foggy on the winter style of salvation, and probably you'd stall her on how to di'ape a silk velvet overskirt so it wouldn't hang one- sided, but she has a crude idea of an every day, all avooI General Superintend- ent of the Universe and Father of all-Humanity, whether they live under a horse blanket tepee or a Gothic mortgage. She might look out of place before the cross, with her chilblains and her childlike confidence, among the Tom cat sealskin sacques of your camel's hair Christianity, but if the world was sup- plied with Christians like my wife, purgatory would make an assignment, and the Salvation Army would go home and hoe corn. Sabe ? 5s'J3u/ Ji/T\'5 I^eli(^io9. EFEEEING to religious matters, the other day, Sqaw Jim said: "I was up at the Post yesterday to kind of rub up against royalty, and j! 'i^m refresh my memory with a few papers. I ain't a regular subscriber to any paper, for I can't always get my mail on time. We're liable to be here, there and everywhere, mebbe at some celebrated Sioux watering place and mebbe on the warpath, so I can't rely on the mails much, but I manage, generally, to get hold of a few old papers and magazines now and then. I don't always know who's president before breakfast the day after election, but I manage to skirmish around and find out before his term expires. "Now, speaking about the religion of the day, or, rather, the place where it used to be, it seems to me as if there's a mistake somewhere. It looks as if religion meant greenness, and infidelity meant science and smartness, accord- ing to the papers. I'm no scientist myself. I don't know evolution from the side of a house. As an evolver I couldn't earn my board, probably, and I wouldn't know a protoplasm from a side of sole leather ; but I know when I get to the end of my picket rope, and I know just as sure where the knowable quits and the unknowable begins as anybody. I mean I can crawl into a prairie dog hole, and pull the hole in and put it in my pocket, in my poor, weak way, just as well as a scientist can. If a man offered to trade me a spavined megatherium for a foundered hypothesis, I couldn't know enough about either of the blamed brutes to trade and make a profit. I never run around after delightful worms and eccentric caterpillers. I have so far controlled myself and escaped the habit, but I am able to arrive at certain conclusions. You think that because I am the brother-in-law to an Indian outbreak, I don't care whether Zion languishes or not; but you are erroneous. You make a very common mistake. "Mind you, I don't pretend to be up on the plan of salvation, and so far as vicarious atonement goes, I don't even know who is the author of it, but I've got a kind of hand-made religion that suits me. It's cheap, and portable, and durable, and stands our severe northern climate first rate. It ain't the pro- (247) 248 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. tuberant kind. It don't protudo into other people's way like a sore thumb. All-wool religion don't go around with a chip on it's shoulder looking for a personal deal. "If I had time and could move my library around with me during our summer tour, I might monkey with speculative science and expose the plan of creation, l)ut as it ^^ ^'^^■^ -^^^--;r„ .. ^ — - ■• is now, I really haven't time. "I say this, how- ever, friends, Ro- mans and backslid- ers : I think some- times when my lit- tle half-breed girl comes to me in the evening in her night dress, and kneels by me with her little brown face een my knees, and with 1 hands in her unbraided hair, that she's got something better than speculative science. "When she says: 'Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take: This I ask for Jesus' sake ; ' MOVING HIS LIBRARY ^^^^ ^ know that a million more little angels are saying that same thing, at that same hour, to that same imaginary God, I say to myself, if that is a vain, empty infatuation, blessed be that holy infatuation. "If that's a wild and crazy delusion, let me be always deluded. If forty mil- lions of chubby little angels bow their dimpled knees every evening to a false and foolish tradition, let me do so, too. If I die, then I will be in good com- pany, even if I go no farther than the clouds of the valley. Or)d of pool. ^Ki\ YOUNG man, with a plated watch-chain that would do to tie up a sacred Yfrt v( elephant, came into Denver the other day from the East, on the Jules- ill:'/\X burg Short line, and told the hotel clerk that he had just returned from ~'^>^^ Europe, and was on his way across the continent with the intention of publishing a book of international information. He handed an oilcloth grip across the counter, registered in a bold, bad way and with a flourish that scat- tered the ink all over the clerk's white shirt front. He was assigned to a quiet room on the fifth floor, that had been damao-ed by water a few weeks before by the fire department. After an hour or two spent in riding up and down the elevator and ringing for things that didn't cost anything, he oiled his hair and strolled into the dining-room with a severe air and sat down opjiosite a big cattle man, who never oiled his hair or stuck his nose into other people's business. The European traveler entered into conversation with the cattle man. He told him all about Paris and the continent, meanwhile polishing his hands on the tablecloth and eating everything within reach. While he ate another man's dessert, he chatted on gaily about Cologne and pitied the cattle man who had to stay out on the bleak plains and watch the cows, while others paddled around Venice and acquired information in a foreign land. At first the cattle man showed some interest in Europe, but after awhile he grew quiet and didn't seem to enjoy it. Later on the European tourist, with soiled cuffs and auburn mane, ordered the waiters around in a majestic way, to impress people with his greatness, tipped over the vinegar cruet into the salt and ate a slice of boiled egg out of another man's salad. Casually a tall Kansas man strolled in and asked the European tourist what he was doing in Denver. The cattle man, who, by the way, has been abroad five or six times and is as much at home in Paris as he is in Omaha, investigated the matter, and learned that the fresh French tourist had been herding hens on a chicken ranch in Kansas for six years, and had never seen m9) 250 REMARKS BY BILL NYE, blue water. He then took a few personal friends to the dining-room door, and they watched the alleged traveler. He had just taken a long, refreshing drink from the finger bowl of his neighbor on the left and was at that moment, try- ing to scoop up a lump of sugar with the wrong end of the tongs. There are a good many fools who drift around through the world and dodge the authorities, but the most disastrous ass that I know is the man who goes West with two dollars and forty cents in his pocket, without brains enough to soil the most delicate cambric handkerchief, and tries to play himself for a sa- vant with so much knowledge that he has to shed information all the time to keep his abnormal knowledge from hurting him. Jo[?9 /^dam5' Diary. 'ECEMBER 3, 1764. — I am determined to keep a diary, if possible, the IP^ rl rest of my life. I fully realize how difficult it will be to do so. Many '■'' others of my acquaintance have endeavored to maintain a diary, but '^^ have only advanced so far as the second week in January. It is my purpose to write down each evening the events of the day as they occur to my mind, in order that in a few years they may be read and enjoyed by my family. I shall try to deal truthfully with all matters that I may refer to in these pages, whether they be of national or personal interest, and I shall seek to avoid anything bitter or vituperative, trying rather to cool my temper before I shall submit my thouglits to paper. December 4. — This morning we have had trouble with the hired girl. It occurred in this wise: We had fully two-thirds of a pumpkin pie that had been baked in a square tin. This major portion of the pie was left over from our dinner yester- day, and last night, before retiring to rest, I desired my wife to suggest something in the cold pie line, which she did. I lit a candle and explored the pantry in vain. The pie was no longer visible. I told Mrs. Adams that I had not been successful, whereupon we sought out the hired girl, whose name is Tootie Tooterson, a foreign' damsel, who landed in this country Nov. 7, this present year. She does not understand our language, apparently, (251) "Where's the pie?" 252 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. especially when we refer to pie. The only thing she does without a strong foreign accent is to eat pumpkin pie and draw her salary. She landed on our coast six weeks ago, after a tedious voyage across the heaving billows. It was a close fight between Tootie and the ocean, but when they quit, the heaving billows were one heave ahead by the log. Miss Tooterson landed in Massachusetts in a woolen dress and hollow clear down into the ground. A strong desire to acquire knowledge and cold, hand- made American pie seems to pervade her entire being. She has only allowed Mrs. Adams and myself to eat what she did not want herself. Miss Tooterson has also introduced into my household various European eccentricities and strokes of economy which deserve a brief notice here. Among other things she has made pie crust with castor oil in it, and lubricated the pancake griddle with a pork rind that I had used on my lame neck. She is thrifty and saving in this way, but rashly extravagant in the use of dough- nuts, pie and Medford rum, which we keep in the house for visitors who are so unfortunate as to be addicted to the doughnut, pie or rum habit. It is discouraging, indeed, for two young people like Mrs. Adams and myself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such a robust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart upon such a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie so near to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut mastro and feminine virtuoso, but I did, and so I returned from the pantry des- olate. I told Abigail that unless we poisoned a few pies for Tootie the Adams family would be a short- lived race. I could see with my prophetic eye that unless the Tootersons yielded the Adamses would be wiped out. Abigail would not consent to this, but decided to relieve Miss Tooterson from duty in this department, so this morning she went away. Not being at all familiar with the English language, she took four of Abigail's sheets and quite a number of towels, handkerchiefs and collars. She also erroneously took a pair of my night-shirts in her poor, broken way. Being A PIE SOLOIST. I JOHN ADAMS' DIARY. 253 entirely ignorant o£ American customs, I presume that she will put a belt around them and wear them externally to church. I trust that she will not do this, however, without mature deliberation. IGNORANT OF AMERICAN CUSTOMS. I also had a bottle of lung medicine of a very powerful nature which the doctor had prepared for me. By some oversight, Miss Tooterson drank this the first day that she was in our service. This was entirely wrong, as I did not intend to use it for the foreign trade, but mostly for home consumption. This is a little piece of drollery that I thought of myself. I do not think that a joke impairs the usefulness of a diary, as some do. A diary with a joke in it is just as good to fork over to posterity as one that is not thus disfigured. In fact, what has posterity ever done for me that I should hesitate about socking a little humor into a diary ? When has posterity ever gone out of its way to do me a favor? Never! I defy the historian to show a single instance where posterity has ever been the first to recognize and remunerate ability. Jot7i7 f\dafr\$' Diary. (No. 2.) 'ECEMBER 6. — It is with great difficulty that I write this entry in my diary, for this morning Abigail thought best for me to carry the ole- ander down into the cellar, as the nights have been growing colder of ^ late. I do not know which I dislike most, foreign usurpation or the oleander. I have carried that plant up and down stairs every time the weather has changed, and the fickle elements of New England have kept me rising and falling with the thermometer, and whenever 1 raised or fell I most always had that scrawny oleander in my arms. Kiclily has it repaid us, however, with its long, green, limber branches and its little yellow nubs on the end. How full of promises to the eye that are broken to the heart. The oleander is always just about to meet its engage- ments, but later on it peters out and fails to materialize. I do not know what we would do if it were not for our house plants. Every fall I shall carry them cheerfully down cellar, and in the spring I will bring up the pots for Mrs. Adams to weep softly into. Many a night at the special instance and request of my wife I have risen, clothed in one simple, clinging garment, to go and see if the speckled, double and twisted Kise-up- William-Riley gera- nium was feeling all right. Last summer Abigail brought home a slip of English ivy. I do not like things that are English very much, but I tolerated this little sickly thing be- cause it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were the salient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do ? What might be its spe- cialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty of climbing. It was a climber from away back. "All right," I then to her did straightway say, "let her climb. It was a good early climber. It climbed higher than Jack's bean- stalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of our plants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or in ascending the golden stair most all the time, I descended the stairs with the oleander this morning, though the oleander got there a little more previously than I did. Parties desiring a good, second- hand oleander tub, with castors on it, will do well to give us a call before go- (254) JOHN ADAMS' DIAKY. 255 ing elsewhere. Purchasers desiring a good set of second-hand ear muffs for tulips will find something to tlieir advantage by addressing the subscriber. We also have tAvo very highly ornamental green dogoods for ivy vines to ramble over. We could be induced to sell these dogoods at a sacrifice, in order to make room for our large stock of new and attractive dogoods. These arti- cles are as good as ever. We bought them during the panic last fall for our vines to climb over, but, as our vines died of membranous croup in November, these dogoods still remain unclum. ^I^^^^econd-hand dirt always on hand. Orna- mental geranium stumps at bed-rock prices. Highest cash prices paid for slips of black-and-tan foliage plants. We are headquarters for the century plant that draws a salary for ninety-nine years and then dies. I do not feel much like writing in my diary to-day, but the physician says tliat my arm will be better in a day or two, so that it will be more of a pleasure to do business. We are still without a servant girl, so I do some of the cooking. I make a fire each day and boil the teakettle. People who have tried my boiled tea- kettle say it is very fine. Some of my friends have asked me to run for the Legislature here next election. Somehow I feel that I might, in public life, rise to distinction some day, and perhaps at some future time figure prominently in the affairs of a one-horse republic at a good salary. I have never done anything in the statesman line, but it does not look diffi- cult to me. It occurs to me that success in public life is the result of a union of severffl great primary elements, to-wit : Firstly — Ability to whoop in a felicitous manner. Secondly — Promptness in improving the proper moment in whicli to whoop. Thirdly — Ready and correct decision in the matter of which side to whoop on. Fourthly — Ability to cork up the whoop at the j)roper moment and keep it in a cool place till needed. And this last is one of the most important of all. It is the amateur states- man who talks the most. Fearing that he will conceal his identity as a fool, he babbles in conversation and slashes around in his shallow banks in public. As soon as I get the house plants down cellar and get their overshoes on for the winter, I will more seriously consider the question of our political affairs here in this new land where we have to tie our scalps on at night and where every summer is an Indian summer. Jot^Q /^da/T)$' Diary. (No. 3.) ^^ECEMBER 10. — I have put in a long and exhausting day in the court jjm to-day in the case of Merkins vs. Merkins, a suit for divorce in which I ^ am the counsel for the plaintiff, Eliza J, Merkins, The case itself is a peculiarly trying one, and the plaintiff adds to its horrors by consulting me when I want to do something else. I took her case at an agreed price, and so Mrs. Merkins is trying to get her money's worth by consulting me in a way I abhor. She has consulted me in every mood and tense that I know of; at my office, on the street, in church, at the festive board and at different funerals to which we both happened to be called. Mrs. Merkins has hung like a pall over several Massachusetts funerals which otherwise had every symptom of success. I am a great admirer of woman as a woman, but as a client in a suit for divorce she has her peculiarities. I have seen Eliza in every phase of the case. She has been calm and tearful, stormy and snorting, low-spirited and red-nosed, violent and menacing, resigned but sobby, trustful and confidential, high strung and haughty, crushed and weepy. She makes a specialty of shedding the red-hot scalding tear wherever she can obtain permission to do so. She has wept in my wood-box, in my new spittoon, on my desk and on my birthday, I told her that I wished she would please weep on something else. There were enough objects in nature upon which a poor woman who wept constantly and had no other visible means of support could shed the wild torrents of her grief, without weeping on my anni- versary. A man wants to keep his birthday as dry as possible. He hates to have it wept on by a client who has jewed him down to half price, and then insisted on coming in to sob with him in the morning before he has swept the office floor. One time she came and sobbed on my shoulder. Her tears are of the warm, damp kind, and feel disagreeable as they roll down the neck of a comparative stranger, who never can be aught but a friend. She rested her bonnet on my bosom while she wept, and I then discovered that she has been in the habit of wearing this bonnet while cooking her buckwheat pancakes. I presume she (256) JOHN ADAMS DIARY. 257 A TENDER CASE. keeps her bonnet on all the time, so that she may be ready to dash out and con- sult me at all times without delay. Still, she ought not to do it, for when she leans her head on the bosom of her coun- sel in order to consult him, he detects the odor of the early sausage and the fleeting pancake. You may btist such a bonnet and crush it if you will, But the scent of the pancake will cling round it still. As soon as I saw that her object was to lean up against me and not only con- vulse herself with sobs, but that she in- tended to jar me also with her great woe, I told her that I would have to request her to avaunt. I then, as she did not act upon my suggestion, avaunted her myself. I avaunt- ed her into a chair with a sickening thud. She then burst forth in a torrent of vituperation. When the abnormal sobber is suddenly corked up, these sobs rankle in the system and burst forth in the shape of vituperation. In the course of her remarks, she stated in a vio- lent manner that she would denounce me throughout the country and retain other counsel. I told her I wished she would, as my sympathies were with Mr. Merkins. I told her that she must either pay me a larger fee or I should in- sist on her weeping in the alley before she came up. She then took her departure with a rising inflection. On the following day, however, I found her at the oflice door, and she stood near and consulted me again, while I took up the ashes and started a fire in the stove. Her case is quite peculiar. She wants a divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty to ani- mals, or something of that kind, and when she first told me about it I thought she had a case, but when we came to trial I found that she had had every rea- son to believe that if she could be segregated from Mr. Merkins she could at once become the bride of a gentleman who ploughed the raging main. Just as we went to the jury to-day with the case, she heard casually that the gentleman who had been in the main-ploughing business had just married without her knowleds^e or consent. "j^eap BraiQ." ^^;SA\^:*/'''V,^XTCH trouble lias l)oen done by a long haired phrenologist in the '^ West who has, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparison of a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no head examined Avould indicate anything less tlian a member of the lower house of congress. Artists, orators, prima- donnas and statesmen are plenty, but there are no charts showing the natural-born farmer, carpenter, shoemaker or chambermaid. That is the reason butter is so high west of the Missouri river to-day, while genius actually runs riot. What this day and age of the world needs, is a phrenologist who will paw around among the intel- lectual domes of free-born American citizens, and search out a few men w^ho can milk a cow in a cool and unimpassioned tone of voice. It is true that every man in America is a sover- eign, but he had better not overdo it. The man who sits up nights to be a sovereign and allows the calves to eat his brown-eyed beans, is not leading his fel- A FUTURE PEESIDENT. j^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^ higher and nobler life. The sover- eign business can be run in the ground if we are not careful. Very likely the white-eyed boy with the hickory dado along the base of his overalls is the boy who in future years is to be the president of the United States. But do not, oh, do not trow, fair young reader, that every Albino youth in our broad land who wears an isosceles triangle in navy blue flannel athwart his system, is going to be the chief magistrate of this mighty republic. We need statesmen and orators and artists very much ; ])ut the world at this moment also needs several athletic parties with the horse-sense adequate to produce flour and other vegetables necessary to feed the aforesaid states- men, orators, etc., etc. (258) "HEAP BRAIN." 259 Let me say a word to the briglit-eyed youth of America, Let me murmur in your ear this never dying trutli: When a long-haired crank asks you a dollar to tell you, you are a young Demosthenes, stand up and look yourself over at a distance before you swallow it all. There is no use talking, we have got to procure provisions in some manner, and in order to do so the natural-born bone and muscle of the country must go at and promote the growth of such things, or else we artists, poets and statesmen, will have to take off our standing collars and do it ourselves. Phrenology is a good thing, no doubt, if we can purify it. So long as it does not become the slave of capital, there is nothing about phrenology that is going to do harm ; but when it becomes the creature of the trade dollar, it looks as though the country would be filled up with w^ild-eyed genius that hasn't had a square meal for two weeks. The time will siirely come when America will demand less statesmanship and more flour ; when less statistics and a purer, nobler and more progressive style of beefsteak will demand our attention. I had hoped that phrenology would step in and start this reform ; but so far it has not, within the range of my observation. It may be, however, that the mental giant bump translator with whom I came in contract was not a fair representative. Still, he has been in the business for over thirty years, and some of our most polished criminals have passed under his hands. An erroneous phrenologist once told me that I would shine as a revivalist, and said that I ought to marry a tall blonde with a nervous, sanguinary tem- perament. Then he said, "One dollar, please," and I said, "All right, gentle scientist with the tawny mane, I will give you the dollar and marry the tall l)londe with the bank account and bilious temperament, when you give me a chart showing me how to dispose of a brown-eyed brunette with a thoughtful cast of countenance, who married me in an unguarded moment two years ago," He looked at me in a reproachful kind of way, struck at me with a chair in an absent-minded manner and stole away. Jf^e f\pproae\)\r)(^ jHamorist. ^HE following letter has been received, and, as it encloses no unsmirched postage stamp to insure a private reply, I take great pleasure in answering it in these pages: W^ Christiana, Kas., Sept. 22nd, 1884. Dear Sir. — I am studying for a Humorist. Could you help me to some of the JoLiEST Books that are written ? AVith some of the best Jokes of the Day &c &c &c, I Also what it would be best for me to do for to become an Humorist I am said to be a Natural Born Humorist by my friends and all I need is Cultivation to make my mark Please reply by return mail Kindly Yours Herman A. H. For some time I have been grieving over the dearth of humor in America, and wondering who the great coming humorist was to be. Several papers have already deplored the lack of humor in our land, but they have not been able to put their finger on the approaching humorist of the age. Just as we had begun to despair, however, here he comes, quietly and unostentatiously, modestly and ungrammatically. Unheralded and silently, like Maud S. or any other eminent man, he slowly rises above the Kansas horizon, and tells us that it will be impossible to conceal his identity any longer. He is the approaching humorist of the nineteenth century. It is a serious matter, Herman, to prescribe a course of study that will be exactly what you need to bring you out. Perhaps you might do well to take a Kindergarten course in spelling and the rudiments of grammar; still, that is not absolutely necessary. A friend of mine named Billings has done well as a humorist, though his knowledge of spelling seems to be pitiably deficient. Grammar is convenient where a humorist desires to put on style or show off before crowned heads, but it is not absolutely indispensable. Regarding the "Joliest Books" necessary for your perusal, In order to chisel your name on the eternal tablets of fame, tastes will certainly differ. I (260) THE APPROACHING HUMORIST. 261 am almost sorry that you wrote to me, because we might not agree. You write like one of these " Joly" humorists such as people employ to go along with a picnic and be the life of the party, and whose presence throughout the country has been so depressing. If one may be allowed to judge of your genius by the few autograph lines forwarded, you belong to that class of brain-workers upon whom devolves the solemn duty of pounding sand. If you are really a brain- worker, will you kindly inform the writer whose brain you are working now, and how you like it as far as you have gone ? American humor has burst forth from all kinds of places, nearly. The various professions have done their share. One has risen from a tramp until he is wealthy and dyspeptic, and another was blown up on a steamboat before he knew that he was a humorist. Suppose you try that, Herman. M. Quad, one of the very successful humorists of the day, both in a literary and financial way, was blown up by a steamboat before he bloomed forth into the full flush and power of success. Try that, Herman. It is a severe test, but it is bound to be a success. Even if it should be disastrous to you, it will be rich in its beneficial results to those who escape. ■\ t ^ U/l7at U/e (^at. jN 3d street, St. Paul, tliere stands a restaurant that lias outside as a sign, under a glass case, a rib roast, a slice of ham and a roast duck that I remembered distinctly having seen there in 1860 and be- ^^^ fore the war. I asked an epicure the other day if he thought it right to keep those things there year after year when so many were starving throughout the length and breadth of the land. He then straightway did take me up close so that I could see that the food was made of plaster and painted, as hereinbefore set forth and by me translated, as Walt Whitman would say. A day or two afterward, at a rural hotel, I struck some of that same roast beef and ham. I thought that the sign had been put on the table by mistake, and I made bold to tell the proprietor about it, on the ground that " any neglect or impertinence on the part of servants should be reported at the office." He received the information with great rudeness and a most disagreeable air. There are two kinds of guests who live at the average hotel. One is the party who gets up and walks over the whole corps cle hote, from the bald- headed proprietor to the bootblack, while the other is the meek and mild-eyed man, doomed to sit at the table and bewail the flight of time and the horrors of staiwation while waiting for the relief party to come with his food. I belong to the latter class. Born, as I was, in a private family, and early acquiring the habit of eating food that was intended to assuage hunger mostly, it takes me a good while to accustom myself to the style of dyspeptic microbe used simply to ornament a bill of fare. Of course it is maintained by some hotel men that food solely for eating purposes is becoming obsolete and outre, and that the stuff they put on their bills of fare is just as good to j)Our down the back of a guest as diet that is cooked for the common, low, perverted taste of people who have no higher aspiration than to eat their food. Of course the genial, urbane and talented reader will see at once the style of hotel I am referring to. It is the hotel that apes the good hotel and prints a bill of fare solely as a literary effort. That is the hotel where you find the moth-eaten towel and the bed-ridden coffee. There (262) WHAT WE EAT. 263 is where you get butter that runs the elevator clay times and sleeps on the flannel cakes at night. It is there that you meet the weary and way-worn steak that bears the toothprints of other guests who are now in a land where the early-rising cham- bermaid cannot enter. I also refer to the hotel where the bellboy is simply an animated polisher of banisters, and otherwise extremely useless. It is likewise the house where the syrup tastes like tincture of rhubarb, and the pancakes taste like a hekto- gra})h. The traveling man will call to mind the hotel to which I refer, and he will instantly name it and tell you that he has never spent the Sabbath there. I honestly believe that some hotel men lose money and custom by trying to issue a large blanket-sheet bill of fare every day, when a more modest list containing two or three things that a human being could eat with impunity would be far more acceptable, healthy and remunerative. Some people can live on cracked wheat, bran and skimmed milk, no matter where they go, and so they always seem to be perfectly happy ; but, while sim- plicity is my watchword, and while I am Old Simplicity himself, as it were, I haven't been constructed with stomachs enough to successfully wrestle with these things. I like a few plain dishes with victuals on them, cooked by a per- son who has had some experience in that line before. I am not so especially tied to high prices and finger-bowls, for I have risen from the common people, and during the first eighteen years of my life I had to dress myself. I was not always the pampered child of enervating luxury that I now am, by any means. So I can subsist for weeks on good, plain food, and never murmur or repine ; but where the mistake at some hotels seems to have been made, is in trying to issue a bill of fare every day that will attract the attention of literary minds and excite the curiosity of linguists instead of people who desire to assuage an internal craving for grub. I use the term grub in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. So, if I may take the liberty to do so, let me exhort the landlord who is gradually accumulating indebtedness and remorse, to use a plainer, less elabor- ate, but more edible list of refreshments. Otherwise his guests will all die young. Let him discard the seamless waffle and the kiln-dried hen. Let him abstain from the debris known as cottage pudding, that being its alias, while 264 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. the doctors recognize it as old Gastric Disturbance. Too much of our hotel food tastes like the second day of January or the fifth day of July. That's the Avhole thing in a few words, and unless the good hotels are nearer together we shall have to multiply our cemetery facilities. Poor hotels are responsible for lots of drunkards every year. The only time I am tempted to soak my sorrows in rum is after I have read a delusive bill of fare and eaten a broiled barn-hinge with gravy on it that tasted like the broth of perdition. It is then that the demon of intemperance and colic comes to me and, in siren tones, says: "Try our bourbon, with 'Polly Narius' on the side." Qar<^ of J^OiJ$5erib(^r. ^Mr^T tliis season of the year, we are forcibly struck with the earnest and W|lf honest effort that is being made by the publisher of the American f|^/^ newspaper. It is a healthy sign and a hopeful one for the future of ^^1^^^^ our country. It occurs to me that with the great advancement of the newspaper, and the family paper, and the magazine, we do not expect leaders and statesmen to think for us so much as we did fifty years ago. AVe do not allow the newspaper to mold us so much as we did. We enjoy reading the opinion of a bright, brave, and cogent editor because we know that he sits where he can acquire his facts in a few hours from all quarters of the globe, and speak truly to his great audience in relation to those facts, but we have ceased to allow even that man to think for us. What then is to be the final outcome of all this ? Is it not that the aver- age American is going to use, and is using, his thinker more than he ever did before ? Will not that thinker then, like the muscle of the blacksmith's arm, or the mule's hind foot, grow to a wondrous size as a result? Most assuredly. The day certainly is not far distant, when the American can not only out- fight, out-row, out-bat, out-run, out-lie, and out-sail all other nationalities ; but he will also be able to out-think them. We already point with pride to some of the wonderful thoughts that our leading thinkists, with their thinkers, have tliunk. There are native born Americans now living, who have thought of things that would make the head of the amateur thinker ache for a week. All this is largely due to the free use of the newspaper as a home educator. The newspaper is growing more and more ubiquitous, if I may be allowed the expression. Many poor people, who, a few years ago, could not afford the newspaper, now have it scolloped and put it on their pantry shelves every year. But I did not start out to enlarge upon the newspaper. I would like to say a word or two more, however, on that general subject. Very often we hear some wise man with the responsibility of the universe on his sholders, the man who thinks he is the censor of the human race now, and that he will be foreman of (28?) THE OLD SUBSCRIBER. 283 the grand jury on the Judgment Day — we hear this kind of man say every little Avhile: "We've got too many papers. We are loaded down with reading matter. Can't read all my paper every day. Lots of days I throw my paper aside be- fore I get it all read through, and never have a chance to finish it. All that is dead loss." It is, of course, a dead loss to that kind of a man. He is the kind of man that. expects his family to begin at one side of the cellar and eat right straight across it — cabbages, potatoes, turnips, pickles, apples, pumpkins, etc., etc., — Avithout stopping to discriminate. There are none too many papers, so far as the subscriber is concerned. Looking at it from the publisher's standpoint sometimes, there are too many. To the man who has inherited too large, wide, sinewy hands, and a brain that under the microscope looks like a hepatized lung, it seems some days as though the field had been over-crowded when he entered it. To the young man who was designed to maul rails or sock the fence-post into the bosom of the earth, and who has evaded that sphere of action and disregarded the man- date to maul rails, or to take a coal-pick and toy with the bowels of the earth, hoping to win an easier livelihood by feeding sour paste to village cockroaches, and still poorer pabulum to his subscribers, the newspaper field seems to be indeed jam full. But not so the man who is tall enough to see into the future about nine feet. He still remembers that he must live in the hearts of his subscribers, and he makes their wants his own. He is not to proud to listen to sugges- tions from the man who works. He recognizes that it is not the man with the diamond-mounted stomach who has contributed most to his success, but the man who never dij)S into society much with the exception of his family, per- haps, and that ought to be good society. A man ought not to feel too good to associate with his wife and children. Generally my sympathies are with his wife and children, if they have to associate with him very much. But if I could ever get down to it, I would like to say a word on behalf of the old subscriber. Being an old subscriber myself, I feel an interest in his cause ; and as he rarely rushes into print except to ask why the police contrive to keep aloof from anything that might look like a fight, or to inquire why the fire department will continue year after year to run through the streets killing little children who never injured the department in any way, just so that they 284 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. will be in time to chop a hole in the roof of a house that is not on fire, and pour some water down into the library, then whoop through an old tin dipper a few times and go away — as the old subscriber does not generally say much in print except on the above subjects, I make bold to say on his behalf that as a rule, he is not treated half as well as the prodigal son, who has been spend- ing his substance on a rival paper, or stealing his news outright from the old subscriber. Why should we pat the new subscriber on the back, and give him a new album that will fall to pieces whenever you laugh in the same room ? Why should you forget the old love for the new? Do we not often impose on the old subscriber by giving up the space he has paid for to flaming advertisements to catch the coy and skittish gudgeon who still lurks outside the fold? Do we not ofttimes offer a family Bible for a new subscriber when an old sub- scriber may be in a lost and undone state? Do we not asrain and again offer to the wife of our new subscriber a beau- tiful, plain gold ring, or a lace pin for a year's subscription and $1, while the wife of our old subscriber is just in the shank of a long, hard, cold winter, without a ring or a pin to her back? We ought to remember that the old subscriber came to us with his money when we most needed it. He bore with us when we were new in the business, and used such provincialisms as " We have saw" and "If we had knew." He bore with us when the new column rules were so sharp that they chawed the paper all up, and the office was so cold, waiting for wood to come in on sub- scription, that the "color" was greasy and reluctant. He took our paper and paid for it, while the new subscriber was in the penitentiary for all we know. He made a mild kick sometimes when he "didn't git his paper reggler;" but he paid on the first day of January every year in advance, out of an old calf- skin wallet that opened out like a concertina, and had a strap that went around it four times, and looked as shiny, and sweaty, and good-natured as the razor- strop that might have been used by Noah. The old subscriber never asked any rebate, or requested a prize volume of poetry with a red cover, because he had paid for another year ; but he simply warmed his numb finders, so that he could loosen his overalls and lower one side enough to let his hand into the pocket of his best pantaloons underneath, and there he always found the smooth wallet, and inside of it there was always a $2 bill, that had been put there to pay for the paper. Then the old sub- THE OLD SUBSCRIBER. 285 scriber would -warm liis hands some more, ask "How's tricks?" but never begin to run down the paper, and then he would go away to work for another year. I want to say that this country rests upon a great, solid foundation of old, paid-up subscribers. They are the invisible, rock-ribbed resting-place for the dazzling superstructure and the slim and peaked spire. "Whether we procure a new press or a new dress, a new contributor or a new printers' towel, we must bank on the old subscriber; for the new one is fickle, and when some other paper gives him a larger or a redder covered book, he may de- sert our standard. He yearns for the flesh-pots and the new scroll saws of other papers. He soon wearies of a uniformly good paper, with no chance to draw a town lot or a tin mine — in Montana. Let us, therefore, brethren of the press, cling to the old sub- scriber as he has clung to us. Let us say to him, on this approaching Christmas Eve, "Son, thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, that this, thy brother, who had been a subscriber for our vile contemporary many years, but is alive again, and during a lucid interval has subscribed for our paper ; but, after all, we would not go to him if we wanted to borrow a dollar. Remember that you still have our confidence, and when we want a good man to indorse our note at the bank, you will find that your name in our memory is ever fresh and green." Looking this over, I am struck with the amount of stuff I have successfully said, and yet there is a paucity of ideas. Some writers would not use the word paucity in this place without first knowing the meaning of it, but I am not that way. There are thousands of words that I now use freely, but could not if I postponed it until I could learn their meaning. Timidity keeps many ^'^^M^> THE RIGHT SORT OF SUBSCRIBER. 286 REMAEKS BY BILL NYE. of our authors back, I think. Many are more timid about using big words than they are about using other people's ideas. A friend of mine wanted to write a book, but hadn't the time to do it. So he asked me if I wouldn't do it for him. He was very literary, he said, but his business took up all his time, so I asked him what kind of a book he wanted. He said he wanted a funny book, with pictures in it and a blue cover. I saw at once that he had fine literary taste and delicate discrimination, but prob- ably did not have time to give it full swing. I asked him what he thought it would be worth to write such a book. "Well," he said, he had always sup- posed that I enjoyed it myself, but if I thought I ought to have pay besides, he would be willing to pay the same as he did for his other writing — ten cents a folio. He is worth $50,000, because he has documentary evidence to show that a man who made that amount out of deceased hogs, had the misfortune to be his father and then die. It was a great triumph to be born under such circumstances, and yet the young man lacks the mental stamina necessary to know how to successfully eat common mush and milk in such a low key that will not alarm the police. I use this incident more as an illustration than anything else. It illustrates how anything may be successfully introduced into an article of this kind with- out having any bearing whatever upon it. I like to close a serious essay, or treatise, with some humorous incident, like the clown in the circus out West last summer, who joked along through the performance all the afternoon till two or three children went into convulsions, and hypochondria seemed to reign rampant through the tent. All at once a bright idea struck him. He climbed up on the flying trapeze, fell off, and broke his neck. He was determined to make that audience laugh, and he did it at last. Every one felt repaid for the trouble of going to the circus. fT\y bo<^. HAVE owned quite a number of dogs in my life, but they are all dead now. Last evening I visited my dog cemetery — just between the gloaming and the shank of the evening. On the biscuit-box cover that stands at the head of a little mound fringed with golden rod and pickle bottles, the idler may still read these lines, etched in red chalk by a trembling hand: LITTLE KOSCIUSKO, NOT DEAD, — BUT JERKED HENCE By Request. S. Y. L, (See you Later.) I do not know why he was called Kosciusko. I dp not care. I only know that his little grave stands out tliere while the gloaming gloams and the sough- ing winds are soughing. Do you ask why I am alone here and dogless in this weary world ? I will tell you, anyhow. It will not take long, and it may do me good : Kosciusko came to me one night in winter, with no baggage and unidenti- fied. When I opened the door he came in as though he had left something in there by mistake and had returned for it. He stayed with us two years as a watch-dog. In a desultory way, he was a good watch-dog. If he had watched other people with the same unrelenting scrutiny with which he watched me, I might have felt his death more keenly than I do now. The second year that little Kosciusko was with us, I shaved off a full beard one day while down town, put on a clean collar and otherwise disguised myself, intending to surprise my wife. Kosciusko sat on the front porch when I returned. He looked at me as the cashier of a bank does when a newspaper man goes in to get a suspiciously (287) 288 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. large check cashed. He clid not know me. I said, " Kosciusko, have you forgot- ten your master's voice?" He smiled sarcastically, showing his glorious wealth of mouth, but still sat there as though he had stuck his tail into the door-steps and couldn't get it out. So I waived the formality of going in at the front door, and went around to the portcullis, on the off side of the house, but Kosciusko was there when I arrived. The cook, seeing a stranger lurking around the manor house, encouraged Kosciusko to come and gorge himself with a part of my leg, which he did. Acting on this hint I went to the barn. I do not know why I went to the barn, but somehow there was nothing in the house that I wanted. When THE COMBAT. a man wants to be by himself, there is no place like a good, quiet barn for thought. So I went into the barn, about three feet prior to Kosciusko. Noticing the stairway, I ascended it in an aimless kind of way, about four steps at a t?'me. What happened when we got into the haymow I do not now recall, only that Kosciusko and I frolicked around there in the hay for some time. Occasionally I would be on top, and then he would have all the dele- gates, until finally I got hold of a pitchfork, and freedom shrieked when Kos- ciusko fell. I wrapped myself up in an old horse-net and went into the house. Some of my clothes were afterward found in the hay, and the doctor pried a part of my person out of Kosciusko's jaws, but not enough to do me any good. I have owned, in all, eleven dogs, and they all died violent deaths, and went out of the world totally unprepared to die. f\ pieturi?$qu^ J I f but you are still in the fluff and bloom, and kindergarten of life, ^ Wait till you've been through what I have." "Where, for instance?" I asked him. "Well, say nothing about anything else, just look at the doctors we had in the war. We had a doctor in our regiment that looked as if he knew so much that it made him unhappy. I found out afterward that he ran a kind of cow found- ling asylum, in Utah before the war, and when he had to prescribe for a human being, it seemed to kind of rattle him. "I fell off'n my horse early in the campaign and broke my leg, I rickolect, and he sot the bone. He thouirht that a bone should be sot similar to a hen. He made what he called a good splice, but the break was above the knee, and he got the cow idea into his head in a way that set the knee behind. That was bad. "I told him one day tliat he was a blamed fool. He gave me a cigar and told me I must be a mind reader. HE GAVE ME A CIGAR. (293) 294 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. "For several weeks our colonel couldn't eat anything, and seemed to feel kind of billions. He didn'tknow what the trouble was till he went to the doc- tor. He looked at the colonel a few moments, examined his tongue, and told him right off that he had lost his cud. "He bragged a good deal on his diagnosis. He said he'd like to see the disease he couldn't diagnose with one hand tied behind him. "He was always telling me how he had resuscitated a man they hung over at Tie City in the early day. He was hung by mistake, it seemed. It was a BURIED WITH MILITARY HONORS. dark night, and the Vigilance committee was in something of a hurry, having another party to hang over at Dirty "Woman's ranch that night, and so they erroneously hung a quiet young feller fi'om Illinois, who had been sent west to cure a case of bronchitis. He was right in the middle of an explanation when the head vigilanter kicked the board from under him and broke his neck. "All at once, some one said: 'My God, we have made a ridiculous blunder. Boys, we can't be too careful about hanging total strangers. A few more such THE WAYS OF DOCTORS. 295 breaks as these, and people from the States will hesitate about coming here to make their homes. We have always claimed that this was a good country for bronchitis, but if we write to Illinois and tell this young feller's parents the facts, we needn't look for a very large hegira from Illinois next season. Doc, can't you do anything for the young man?' "Then this young physician stepped forward, he says, and put his knee on the back of the boy's neck, give it a little push, at the same time pulled the head back with a snap that straightened the neck, and the young feller, who was in the middle of a large word, something like 'contumely,' when the barrel tipped over, finished out the word and went right on with the explanation. The doctor said he lived a good many years, and was loved and esteemed by all who knew him. "The doctor was always telling of his triumphs in surgery. He did save a good many lives, too, toward the close of the war. He did it in an odd way, too. "He had about one year more to serve, and, with his doctoring on one side and the hostility of the enemy on the other, our regiment was wore down to about five hundred men. Everybody said we couldn't stand it more than another year. One day, however, the doctor had just measured a man for a porus plaster, and had laid the stub of his cigar carefully down on the top of a red powder-keg, when there was a slight atmospheric disturbance, the smell of burnt clothes, and our regiment had to apply for a new surgeon. "The wife of our late surgeon wrote to have her husband's remains for- warded to her, but I told her that it would be very difficult to do so, owing to the nature of the accident. I said, however, that we had found an upper set of store teeth imbedded in a palmetto tree near by, and had buried them with military honors, erecting over the grave a large board, on which was inscribed the name and age of the deceased and tliis inscription: ''Not (lead, Imt spontaneously distributed. Gone to meet liis (jlorified tlirong of patients. Ta, ta. vain world.'''' f\b^er)\: f[\\T)ded. EEMEMBER an attorney, who practiced law out West years ago, who used to fill his pipe with brass paper fasteners, and try to light it with a ruling pen about twice a day. That was his usual average. "^ He would talk in unknown tongues, and was considered a thorough and revised encyclopedia on everything from the tariff on a meerschaum pipe to the latitude of Crazy "Woman's Fork west of Greenwich, and yet if he went to the postoffice he would probably mail his pocketbook and carefully bring his let- ter back to the office. One day he got to thinking about the Monroe doctrine, or the sudden and horrible death of Judas Iscariot, and actually lost his ofiice. He walked up and down for an hour, scouring the town for the evanescent office that had escaped his notice while he was sorrowing over the shocking death of Judas, or Noah's struggles against malaria and a damp, late spring. Martin Luther Brandt was the name of this eccentric jurist. He got up in the night once, and dressed himself, and taking a night train in that dreamy way of his, rode on to Denver, took the Rio Grande train in the morning and drifted away into old Mexico somewhere. He must have been in that same old half comatose state when he went away, for he made a most ludicrous error in getting his wife in the train. When he arrived in old Mexico he found that he had brought another man's wife, and by some strange oversight had left his own at home with five children. It hardly seems possible that a man could be so completely enveloped in a brown study that he would err in the matter of a wife and five children, but such was the case with Martin Luther. Martin Luther couldn't tell you his own name if you asked him suddenly, so as to give him a nervous shock. This dreamy, absent-minded, wool-gathering disease is sometimes contag- ious. Pretty soon after Martin Luther struck Mexico the malignant form of brown study broke out among the greasers, and an alarming mania on the somnambulistic order seemed to follow it. A party of Mexican somuambuloes (296) ABSENT MINDED. 297 one night got together, and while the disease was at its height tied Martin Luther to the gable of a 'dobe hen palace. His soul is probably at this moment floundering around through space, trying to find the evergreen shore. An old hunter, who was a friend of mine, had this odd way of walking aimlessly around with his thoughts in some other world. I used to tell him that some day he would regret it, but he oidy laughed and continued to do the same fool thing. Last fall he saw a grizzly go into a cave in the upper waters of the Platte, and strolled in there to kill her. As he has not returned up to this inoment, I am sure he has erroneously allowed himself to get mixed up as to the points of the compass, and has fallen a victim to this fatal brown study. Some think that the brown study had hair on it. T U/oma^'s U/oQderful Ipfluepc^e. y OMAN wields a wonderful influence over man's destinies," said \llf Woodtick William, the other day, as he breathed gently on a >J /[% lirJ chunk of blossom rock and then wij^ed it carefully with the "Woman in most cases is gentle and long suffering, but if you observe her close for several consecutive weeks you will notice that she generally gets there with both feet. "I've been quite a student of the female mind myself. I have, therefore, had a good deal of opportunity to compare the everedge man with the everedge woman as regards ketch- in' on in our great gen- eral farewell journey to the tomb. " Woman has figgered a good deal in my own destinies. My first wife was a large, powerful woman, who married me before I hardly knew it. She married me down near Provost, in an early day. Her name was Lo- rena. The name didn't seem to suit her complexion and phizzeek as a general thing.' It was like call- ing the fat woman in the museum Lily. Lorena was a woman of great (298) YOU GO ON WITH YOUR PETITION. woman's wonderful influence. 299 strength o£ purpose. She was also strong in the wrists. Lorena was of foreign extraction, with far-away eyes and large, earnest red hands. You ou<'-ht to have saw her preserve order during the hour for morning prayers. I had a hired man there in Utah, in them days, who was inclined to be a scoffer at our plain liome-made style of religion. So I told Lorena that I was a little afraid that Orlando Whoopenkaugh would rise up suddenly while I was at prayer and spatter my thinker all over the cook stove, or create some other ruction that would cast a gloom over our devotions. " Lorena said : ' Never mind, William. You are more successful in prayer, while I am more successful in disturbances. You go on with your petition, and I will preserve order." "Lorena saved my life once in a singular manner. Be- ing a large, powerful woman, of course she no doubt pre- served me from harm a great many times ; but on this oc- casion it was a clear case. " I was then sinking on the Coopon claim, and had got the prospect shaft down a couple of hiindred foot and was drifting for the side wall with indifferent success. We was working a day shift of six men, blasting, hysting and a little timbering. I was in charge of the crew and eastern capital was fur- nishing the ready John Davis, if you will allow me that low term. "Lorena and me had been a little edgeways for several days, owing to a little sassy remark made by her and a retort on my part in which I thoughtlessly alluded to her brother, who was at that time serving out a little term for life down at Canyon City, and who, if his life is spared, is at it yet. If I wanted to make Lorena jump nine feet high and holler, all I had to do Avas just to allude in a jeering way to her family record. So she got madder and madder, till at last it ripened into open hostility, and about noon on the 13th day of September Lorena attacked LOIIENA JUMPING NINE FEET HIGH. 300 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. me with a largo butclior knife and drove me into the adjoining county. She told me, also, that if I ever returned to Provost she would cut me in two right be- tween the pancreas and the watch pocket and feed me to the hens. "I thought if she felt that way about it I would not return. I felt so hurt and so grieved about it that I never stopped till I got to Omaha. Then I heard liow Lorena, as a means in the hands of Providence, had saved my unprofitable life. "When she got back to the house and had i)ut away her butcher knife, a man came rushing in to tell her that the boys had struck a big pay streak of water, and that the whole crew in the Coopon was drowned, her husband among the rest. ''Then it dawned on Lorena how she had saved me, and for the first time in her life she burst into tears. People who saw her said her grief was terri- ble. Tears are sad enough when shed by a man, but when we see a strong woman bowed in grief, we shudder. "No one who has never deserted his wife at her urgent request can fully realize the pain and anguish it costs. I have been married many times since, but the sensation is just the same to-day as it was the first time I ever deserted my wife. "As I said, though, a woman has a wonderful influence over a man's whole life. If I had a chance to change the great social fabric any, though, I should ask woman to be more thoughtful of her husband, and, if possible, less severe. I would say to woman, be a man. Pise above these petty little tyrannical ways. Instead of asking your husband what he does with every cent you give him, learn to trust him. Teach him that you have confidence in him. Make him think you have anpvay, whether you have or not. Do not seek to get a whif, of his breath every ten minutes to see whether he has been drinking or not. If you keep doing that you will sock him into a drunkard's grave, sure pop. He will at first lie about it, then he wall use disinfectants for the breath, and then he will stay away till he gets over it. The tiinid young man says, ' Pass the cloves, please. I've got to get ready to go home pretty soon.' The man whose wife really has fun with him says, 'Well, boys, good-night. I'm sorry for you.' Then he goes home. "Very few men have had the opportunities for observation in a matrimo- nial way that I have, AVilliam. You see, one man judges all the wives in Christ- endom by his'n. Another does ditto, and so it goes. But I have made matri- woman's wonderful influence. 301 mony a study. It has been a life-work for me. Others have simply dabbled into it. I have studied all its phases and I am an expert. So I say to you that woman, in one way or another, either by strategy and winnin' ways or by main strength and awkwardness, is absolutely sure to wield an all-fired influ- ence over poor, weak man, and while grass grows and water runs, pardner, you will always find lier presiding over man's destinies and his ducats." (?au$e5 for 'l[)ZY)\[S(^mT)(^. E are now rapidly approaching the date of our great national thanks- liji giving. Another year has almost passed by on the wings of tire- Wmli less time. Since last we gathered about the festive board and spattered the true inwardness of the family gobbler over the table cloth, remorseless time, who knows not the weight of weariness, has sought out the good, the true and the beautiful, as well as the old, the sinful and the tough, and has laid his heavy hand upon them. We have no more fitting illustration of the great truth that death prefers the young and tender than the deceased turkey upon which we are soon to operate. How still he lies, mowed down in life's young morn to make a yankee holiday. How changed he seems! Once so gay and festive, now so still, so strangely quiet and reserved. How calmly he lies, with his bare limbs buried in the lurid atmosphere like those of a hippytehop artist on the west side. Soon the amateur carver will plunge the shining blade into the unresisting bird, and the air will be filled with stuffing and half smothered profanity. The Thanksgiving turkey is a grim humorist, and nothing pleases him so well as to hide his joint in a new place and then flip over and smile when the student misses it and buries the knife in the bosom of a personal friend. Few men can retain their sang froid before company when they have to get a step ladder and take down the second joint and the merry thought from the chandelier while people are looking at them. And what has the past year brought us ? Speaking from a Republican standpoint, it has brought us a large wad of dark blue gloom. Speaking from a Democratic standpoint, it has been very prolific of fourth-class postoffices worth from |200 down to $1.35 per annum. Politically, the past year has been one of wonderful changes. Many have, during the year just past, held office for the first time. Many, also, have gone out into the cold world since last Thanksgiving and seriously considered the great problem of how to invest a small amount of actual perspiration in plain groceries. (802) CAUSES FOR THANKSGIVING. 303 Many who considered the life of a politician to be one of high priced food and inglorious ease, have found, now that they have the fruit, that it is ashes on their lips. Our foreign relations have been mutually pleasant, and those who dwell across the raging main, far removed from the refining influences of our pro- hibitory laws, have still made many grand strides toward the amelioration of our lost and undone race. Many foreigners who have never experienced the pleasure of drinking mysterious beverages from gas fixtures and burial caskets in Maine, or from a blind pig in Iowa, or a Babcock fire extinguisher in Kan- sas, still enjoy life by bombarding the Czar as lie goes out after a scuttle of coal at night, or by putting a surprise package of dynamite on the throne of a tottering dynasty, where said tottering dynasty will have to sit down upon it and then pass rapidly to another sphere of existence. Many startling changes have taken place since last November. The poli- tical fabric in our own land has assumed a different hue, and men who a year agfo were unnoticed and unknown are even more so now. This is indeed a healthy sign. No matter what party or faction may be responsible for this, I say in a wholly non-partisan spirit, that I am glad of it. I am glad to notice that, owing to thaactive enforcement of the Edmunds bill in Utah, polygamy has been made odorous. The day is not far distant when Utah will be admitted as a State and her motto will be "one country, one fiag, and one wife at a time." Then will peace and prosperity unite to make the modern Zion the habitation of men. The old style of hand-made valley tan will give place to a less harmful beverage, and we will Avelcome the new sister in the great family circle of States, not clothed in the disagreeable en- dowment robe, but dressed up in the Mother Hubbard wrapper, with a surcin- gle around it, such as the goddess of liberty wears when she has her picture taken. Crops throughout the northwest have been fairly good, though the gain yield has been less in quantity and inferior in quality to that of last year. A Democratic administration has certainly frowned upon the professional, parti- san office seekers, but it has been unable to stay the onward march of the chintz bug or to produce a perceptible falling off in pip among the yellow- limbed fowls. While Jeffersonian purity and economy have seemed to rage with great virulence at Washington, in the northwest heaves and botts among horses and common, old-fashioned hollow horn among cattle have been the pre- vailing complaints. 304 EEMAltKS BY BILL NYE. And yet there is much for which we should be thankful. Many broad- browed men who knew how a good paper ought to be conducted, but who had no other visible means of support, have passed on to another field of labor, leav- ing the work almost solely in the hands of the vast army of novices who at the present are at the head of journalism throughout the country, and who sadly miss those timely words of caution that Avere wont to fall from the lips of those men whose spirits are floating through space, finding fault with the arrange- ment of the solar system. The fool -killer, in the meantime, has not been idle. With his old, rusty, unloaded musket, he has gathered in enough to make his old heart swell with pride, and to this number he has added many by using " rough on rats," a prep- aration that never killed anything except those that were unfortunate enough to belong to the human family. Still the fool-killer has missed a good many on account of the great rush of business in his line, and I presume that no one has a greater reason to be thankful for this oversight than I have. I parmii)^ ip f[\a\T)e. ^HE State of Maine is a good place in which to experiment with prohibi- tion, but it is not a good phice to farm it in very largely. In the first place, the season is generally a little reluctant. When I was up near Moosehead Lake, a short time ago, people were driving across that body of water on the ice with perfect impunity. That is one thing that interferes with the farming business in Maine. If a young man is sleigh- riding every night till midnight, he don't feel like hoeing corn the follow- ing day. Any man who has ever had his feet frost-bitten while bugging po- tatoes, will agree with me that it takes away the charm of pastoral pursuits. It is this desire to amalgamate dog days and Santa Clans, that has injured Maine as an agricultural hot-bed. Another reason that might be as- signed for refraining from agricultural pursuits in Maine, is that the agitator of the soil finds whgn it is too late that soil itself, which is essential to tlie suc- cessful propagation of crops, has not been in use in Maine for years. While all over the State there is a magnificent stone foundation on Avhich a farm might safely rest, the superstructure, or farm proper, has not been secured. If I had known when I passed through Minnesota and Illinois what a soil famine there was in Maine, I would have brought some with me. The stone crop this year in Maine Avill be very great. If they do not crack open during the dry Aveather, there will be a great many. The stone bruise is also looking unusually well for this season of the year, and chilblains were in full bloom when I Avas there. (305) -% A DAY-DREAM. 306 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. Ill the neighborhood of Pittsfield, the country seems to run largely to cold "water and chattel mortgages. Some think that rum has always kept Maine back, but I claim that it has been wet feet. In another article I refer to the matter of rum in Maine more fully. The agricultural resources of Pittsfield and vicinity are not great, the prin- cipal exports being spruce gum and Christmas trees. Hero also the huckle- berry hath her home. But the country seems to run largely to Christmas trees. They were not yet in bloom when I visited the State, so it was too early to gather popcorn balls and Christmas presents. Here, near Pittsfield, is the birthplace of the only original wormless dried apple pie, with which we generally insult our gastric economy when we lunch along the railroad. These pies, when properly kiln-dried and rivetted, with German silver monogram on top, if fitted out with Yale time lock, make the best fire and burglar-proof wormless pies of commerce. They take the place of civil war, and as a promoter of intestine strife they have no equal. The farms in Maine are fenced in with stone walls. I do not know way this is done, for I did not see anything on these farms that anyone would naturally yearn to carry away with him. I saw some sheep in one of these enclosures. Their steel-pointed bills were lying on the wall near them, and they were resting their jaws in the crisp, frosty morning air. In another enclosure a farmer was planting clovt/ seed with a hypodermic syringe, and covering it with a mustard plaster. He said that last year his clover was a complete failure because his mustard plasters were no good. He had tried to save money by using second-hand mustard plasters, and of course the clover seed, missing the warm stimulus, neglected to rally, and the crop was a failure. Here may be noticed the canvas-back moose and a strong antipathy to good rum. I do not wonder that the people of Maine are hostile to rum — if they judge all rum by Maine rum. The moose is one of the most gamey of the finny tribe. He is caught in the fall of the year with a double-barrel shotgun and a pair of snow-shoes. He does not bite unless irritated, but little boys should not go near the female moose while she is on her nest. The masculine moose wears a harelip, and a hat rack on his head to which is attached a placard on which is printed: JS®"" Please Keep Off the Grass. ""^H This shows that the moose is a humorist. Doo5edly Dilatory. INCE the investigation of Washington pension attorneys, it is a little Kg^ remarkable how scarce in the newspapers is the a2:)pearance of adver- tisements like this. ■^>" PENSIONS! Thousands of soldiers of the late war are still en- titled to pensions with the large accumulations since the injury was received. We procure pensions, back pay, allowances. Appear in the courts for non- resident .clients in United States land cases, etc. Address Skinnem & Co., Washington, D. C. I didn't participate in the late war, but I have had some experience in put- ting a few friends and neighbors on the track of a pension. Those who have tried it will remember some of the details. It always seemed to me a little more difficult someliow for a man who had lost both legs at Antietam, than for the man who got his nose pulled ofP at an election three years after the war closed. It, of course, depended a good deal on the extemporaneous affidavit qualifications of the applicant. About five years ago an acquaintance came to me and said he wanted to get a pension from the government, and tliat he ha;in't the first idea about the details. He didn't know whether he should apply to the President or to the Secretary of State. Would I "kind of put him onto the racket." I asked him what he wanted a pension for, and he said his injury didn't show much, but it prevented his pursuit of kopecks and happiness. He had nine children by his first wife, and if he could get a pen- sion he desired to marry again. ^ As to the nature of his injuries, he said that at the battle of Fair Oaks he supported his command by secreting himself behind a rail fence and harass- ing the enemy from time to time, by a system of coldness and neglect on his part. While thus employed in breaking the back of the Confederacy, a solid shot struck a crooked rail on which he was sitting, in such a way as to jar his spinal column. From this concussion he had never fully recovered. He didn't notice it any more while sitting down and quiet, but the moment he began to (307) 308 BEMARKS BY BILL NYE. do manual labor or to stand on his feet too long, unless he had a bar or some- thing to lean up against, he felt the cold chill run up his back and life was no object. I told him that I was too busy to attend to it, and asked him why he didn't put his case in the hands of some Washington attorney, who could be on the ground and attend to it. He decided that he would, so he wrote to one of these philanthropists whom we will call Fitznoodle. I give him the nom de \ plume of Fitznoodle to nip a $20,000 libel suit in the Inid. Well, Fitznoodle sent back some blanks for the claimant to sign, by wliicli he bound himself, his heirs, executors, representatives and assigns, firmly by these presents to j pay to said Fitznoodle, the necessary fees for postage, stationery, car fare, con- cert tickets, and office rent, while said claim was in the hands of the pension department. He said in a letter that he would have to ask for $2, please, to pay for postage. He inclosed a circular in which he begged to refer the claim- ant to a reformed member of the bar of the District of Columbia, a backslid- den foreign minister and three prominent men who had been dead eleven years by the watch. In a postscript he again alluded to the $2 in a casual way, waved the American flag two times, and begged leave to subscribe himself once more. "Yours Fraternally and professionally. Good Samaritan Fitznoodle Attorney at Law, Solicitor in Chancery, and Promoter of Even-handed Justice in and for the District of Columbia." The claimant sent his %2, not neces- sarily for publication, but as a guaranty of good faith. Later on Mr. Fitznoodle said that the first step would be to file a declara- tion enclosing %'o and the names of two witnesses who were present when the ■■ claimant was born, and could identify him as the same man who enlisted from Emporia in the Thirteenth Kansas Nighthawks. Five dollars must be enclosed to defray the expenses of a trip to the ofiice of the commissioner of pensions, which trip would naturally take in eleven saloons and ten cents in car fare. "P. S. — Attach to the declaration the signature and seal of a notary public of pure character, $5, the certificate of the clerk of a court of record as to the genuineness of the signature of the notary public, his term of appointment and $5." These documents were sent, after which there was a lull of about three months. Then the swelling in Mr. Fitznoodle's head had gone down a little, but there was still a seal brown taste in his mouth. So he wrote the claimant that it would be necessary to jog the memory of the department about $3 dollars worth ; and to file collateral testimony setting forth that claimant DOOSEDLY DILATORY. 309 was a native born American or that ho had declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, that he had not formed nor expressed an opinion for or against the accused, which the testimony would not eradicate, that he would enclose |3, and that he had never before applied for a pension. After awhile a circular from the pension end of the department was received, stating that the claimant's application had been received, filed and docketed No. 188,935,- 0G24, on page 9,847 of book G, on the thumb-hand side as you come iu on the New York train. On the strength of this document the claimant went to the grocery and bought an ecru-colored ham, a sack of corn meal and a pound of tobacco. In June Mr. Fitznoodle sent a blank to be filled out by the claim- ant, stating whether he had or had not been baptized prior to his enlistment ; and, if so, to what extent, and how he liked it so far as he had gone. This was to be sworn to before two witnesses, who were to be male, if possible, and if not, the department would insist on their being female. These witnesses must swear that they had no interest in the said claim, or anything else. On receipt of this, together with $5 in postoffice money order or New York draft, the document would be filed and, no doubt, acted upon at once. In July, a note came from the attorney saying that he regretted to write that the pension department was now 250,000 claims behind, and if business was taken up in its regular order, the claim under discussion might not be reached for between nine and ten years. However, it would be possible to "expedite" the claim, if $25 could be remitted for the purpose of buying a spike-tail coat and plug hat, in which to appear before the commissioner of pensions and mash him flat on the shape of the attorney. As the claimant didn't know much of the practical working of the machinery of government, he swallowed this pill and remitted the $25. Here followed a good deal of red tape and international monkeying during which the claimant was alternately taking an oath to sup- port the constitution of the United States, and promising to support the con- stitution and by-laws of Mr. Fitznoodle. The claimant was constantly assured that his claim was a good one and on these autograph letters written with a type-writer, the war-born veteran with a concussed vertebra, bought groceries and secured the funds to pay his assessments. For a number of years I heard nothing of the claim, but a few months ago, when Mr. Fitznoodle was arrested and jerked into the presence of the grand jury, a Washington friend wrote me that the officers found in his table a letter addressed to the man who was jarred in the rear of the Union army, 310 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. and in which (the letter, I mean), he alluded to tlie long and pleasant corres- 2:»ondence which had sprung up between thein as lawyer and client, and regret- ting that, as the claim would soon be allowed, their friendly relations would no doubt cease, would he please forward $13 to pay freight on the pension money, and also a lock of his hair that Mr. Fitznoodle could weave into a watchchain and wear always. As the claimant does not need the papers, he probably thinks by this time that Mr. Good Samaritan Fitznoodle has been kidnapped and thrown into the moaning, hungry sea. T would please me very mucli, at no distant day, to issue a small book filled with choice recipes and directions for making home happy. I have ^1 1 accumulated an immense assortment of these things, all of general use "'■^^ and all excellent in their way, because they have been printed in pa})ers all over the country — papers that would not be -wrong. Some of these recipes I have tried. I have tried the recipe for paste and directions for' applying wall paper, as published recently in an agricultural paper to which I had become very much attached. This recipe had all the characteristics of an ingenuous and honest docu- ment. I cut it out of the paper and filed it away where I came very near not finding it again. But I was unfortunate enough to find it after a long search. The scheme was to prepare a flour paste that would hold forever, and at the same time make the paper look smooth and neat to the casual observer. It consisted of so many parts flour, so many parts hot water and so many parts common glue. First, the walls were to be sized, however. I took a common tape measure and sized the w^alls. Then I put a dishpan on the cook stove, poured in the flour, boiling water and glue. This rapidly produced a dark brown mess of dough, to Avhich I was obliged to add more hot water. It looked extremely repulsive to me, but it looked a good deal better than it smelled. I did not have much faith in it, but I thought I would try it. I put some of it on a long strip of wall paper and got up on a chair to apply it. In the excitement of trying to stick it on the wall as nearly perpendicular as possible, I lost my balance Avhile still holding the paper and fell in such a manner as to wrap four yards of bronze paper and common flour paste around my wife's head, with the exception of about four feet of the paper which I applied to an oil painting of a Gordon Setter in a gilt frame. I decline to detail the dialogue which then took place between my wife and myself. Whatever claim the public may have on me, it has no right to (311) 312 IIEMAIIKS BY BILL NYE. demand this. It will continue to remain sacred. That is, not so very sacred of course, if I remember my exact language at the time, but sacredly secret from the prying eyes of the public. It is singular, but it is none the less the never dying truth, that the only time that paste ever stuck anything at all, was when I applied it to my wife ^ j //kj/'/L // ^^^'^ tl^^it picture. After that it ^^^ W /KWJW y/ did everything but adhere. It gourmed and it gummed every- thing, but that was all. The man who wrote the rec- ij)e may have been stuck on it, but nothing else ever was. Finally a friend came along who helped me pick the paper off the dog and soothe my wife. He said that what this paste needed was more glue and a quart of molasses. I added these ingredients, and constructed a quart of chem- ical molasses which looked like crude ginger bread in a molten state. Then, with the aid of my friend, I proceeded to paper the room. The paper would seem to adhere at times, and then it would refrain from adhering. This was annoying, but we succeeded in applying the paper to the walls in a way that showed we were perfectly sincere about it. "We didn't seek to mislead anybody or cover up anything. Any one could see where each roll of paper tried to be amicable with its neighbor — also where we had tried the laying on of hands in applying the paper. AVe got all the paper on in good shape — also the bronze. But they were in different places. The paper was on the walls, but the bronze was mostly on our clothes and on our hands. I was very tired when I got through, and I went to bed early, hoping to get much needed rest. In the morning, when I felt fresh and rested, I thought that the paper would look better to me. I LOST MY BALANCE. EVERY MAN HIS OWN PAPER-HANGER. 313 There is wliere I fooled myself. It did not look better to me. It looked worse. All night long I could occasionally hear something crack like a Fourth of July. I (lid not know at the time Avliat it was, but in the morning I discovered. It seems that, during the night, tliat paper had wrinkled itself up like the skin on the neck of a pioneer hen after death. It had pulled itself together with so much zeal that the room was six inches smaller each way ami the carpet didn't fit. There is only one way to insure success in the publication of recipes. They must be tried by the editor himself before they are printetl. If you have a good recipe for paste, you must try it before you print it. If you have a good remedy for botts, you must get a botty horse somewhere and try the remedy before you submit it. If you think of publishing the antidote for a certain poison, you should poison some one and try the antidote on him, in order to test it, before you bamboozle the readers of your paper. This, of course, will add a good deal of extra work for the editor, but editors need more work. All they do now is to have fun with each other, draw their princely salaries, and speak sarcastically of the young poet who eings, " You have came far o'er the sea, And I've went away from thee." 5ixty /T\ii7ute$ \v) f\fr\(^r\c^3 . HE following selections are from the advance sheets of a forthcoming work with the above title, to be published by M. Foil de Koll. It is possible that other excerpts will be made from the book, in case the ''^'^ present harmonious state of affairs between France and America is not destroyed by my style of translation. In the preface M. Foil de EoU says: "France has long required a book of printed writings about that large, wide land of whom we listen to so much and yet so little sabe, as the piquant Californian shall say. America is considerable. America I shall call vast. She care nothing how high freedom shall come, she must secure him. She exclaims to all people: ' You like free- dom pretty well, but you know nothing of it. We throw away every day more freedom than you shall see all your life. Come to this place when you shall run out of freedom. We make it. Do not ask us for money, but if you want personal liberty, please look over our vast stock before you elsewhere go,' " So everybody goes to America, where he shall be free to pay cash for what the American has for sale. '* In this book will be found everything that the French people want to know of that singular land, for did I not cross it from New Jersey City, the town where all the New York people have to go to get upon the cars, through to the town of San Francisco ? "For years the writer of this book has had it in his mind to go across America, and then tell the people of France, in a small volume costing one franc, all about the grotesque land of the freedom bird." ********* In the opening chapter he alludes to New York casually, and apologizes for taking up so much space. "When you shall land in New York, you shall feel a strange sensation. The stomach is not so what Ave should call 'Rise up William Eiley,' to use an (314) SIXTY MINUTES IN AMERICA. 315 Americanism which will not bear translation. I ride along the Rue de Twenty-three, and want to eat everything my eyes shall fall upon. "I stay at New York all night, and eat one large supper at 6 o'clock, and again at 9. At 12 I awake and eat the inside of my hektograph, and then lie down once more to sleep. The hektograph will be henceforth, as the American shall say, no good, but what is that when a man is starving in a foreign land? "I leave New York in the morning on the Ferry de Pavonia, a steamer that goes to New Jersey City. Many j^eople go to New York to buy food and clothes. Then you shall see them return to the woods, where they live the rest of the time. Some of the females are quite petite and, as the Americans have it, 'scrumptious.' One stout girl at New Jersey City, I was told, was 'all wool and a yard wide.' "The relations between New York and New Jersey City are quite amicable, and the inhabitants seem to spend much of their time riding to and fro on the Ferry de Pavonia and other steamers. When I talked to them in their own language they would laugh with great glee, and say they could not parley voo Norwegian very good. "The Americans are very fond of witnessing what may be called the tour- nament de slug. In this, two men wearing upholstered mittens shake hands, and then one strikes at the other with his right hand, so as to mislead him, and, while he is taking care of that, the first man hits him with his left and knocks out some of his teeth. Then the other man spits out his loose teeth and hits his antagonist on the nose, or feeds him with the thumb of his upholstered mitten for some time. Half the gate money goes to the hospital where these men are in the habit of being repaired. "One of these men, who is now the champion scrapper, as one American author has it, was once a poor boy, but he was proud and ambitious. So he practiced on his wife evenings, after she had washed the dishes, until he found that he could ' knock her out,' as the American has it. Then he tried it on other relatives, and step by step advanced till he could make almost any man in America cough up pieces of this upholstered mitten which he wears in public. "In closing this chapter on New York, 1 may say that I have not said so much of the city itself as I would like, but enough so that he who reads with care may feel somewhat familiar with it. New York is situated on the east 316 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. side of America, near New Jersey City. The climate is cool and frosty a part of the year, but warm and temperate in the summer months. The surface is generally level, but some of the houses are quite tall. "I would not advise Frenchmen to go to New York now, but rather to wait until the pedestal of M. Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty has been paid for. Many foreigners have already been earnestly permitted to help pay for this pedestal." I^eu. /T\r. J^alleldjal^'s j^oss. %rrTf/HEKE are a good many difficult things to ride, I find, beside tlie bicycle ^'^ t and the bucking Mexican plug. Those who have tried to mount and ^^jij! successfully ride a wheelbarrow in the darkness of the stilly night '^'^ will agree with me. You come on a wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and you undertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find the wheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is, as a rule, phleg- matic and cool ; but when a total stranger startles it, it spreads desolation and destruction on every hand. This is also true of the perambulator, or baby-carriage. I undertook to evade a child's phteton, three years ago last spring, as it stood in the entrance to a hall in Main street. The child was not injured, because it was not in the carriage at the time ; but I was not so fortunate. I pulled pieces of per- ambulator out of myself for two weeks with the hand that was not disabled. How a sedentary man could fall through a child's carriage in such a man- ner as to stab himself with the awning and knock every spoke out of three wheels, is still a mystery to me, but I did it. I can show you the doctor's bill now. The other day, however, I discovered a new style of riding animal. The Rev. Mr. Hallelujah was at the depot when I arrived, and w^as evidently wait- ing for the same Chicago train that I was in search of. Rev. Mr. Hallelujah had put his valise down near an ordinary baggage-truck which leaned up against the wall of the station building. He strolled along the platform a few moments, communing with himself and agitating his mind over the subject of Divine Retribution, and then he went up and leaned against the truck. Finally, he somehow got his arms under the handles of the truck as it stood up between his back and the wall. Hq still continued to think of the plan of Divine Retribution, and you could have seen his lips move if you had been there. (317) 318 REMARKS RY RILL NYE. Pretty soon some young ladies came along, rosy in winter air, beautiful beyond compare, frosty crystals in their hair; smiled they on the preacher there. He returned the smile and bowed low. As he did so, as near as I can figure it out, he stepped back on the iron edge of the truck that the baggage- man generally jabs under the rim of an iron-bound sample-trunk when he goes to load it. Anyhow, Mr. Hallelujah's feet flew toward next spring. The truck started across the platform with him and spilled him over the edge on the track ten feet below. So rapid was the movement that the eye with difficulty followed his evolutions. His valise was carried onward by the same wild avalanch, and "busted" open before it struck the track be- low. I was surprised to see some of the articles that shot forth into the broad light of day. Among the rest there was a bran fired new set of ready-made teeth, to be used in case of accident. Up to that moment I didn't know that Mr. Hallelujah used the common tooth of commerce. These teeth slipped out of the valise with a Sabbath smile and vulcanized rubber gums. In striking the iron track below, the every-day set which the Kev. Mr. Hallelujah had in use became loosened, and smiled across the road-bed and right of way at the bran fired new array of incisors, cuspids, bi-cuspids and molars that flew out of the valise. Mr. Hallelujah got up and tried to look merry, but he could not smile without his teeth. The back seams of his New- market coat were more successful, however. Mr. Hallelujah's wardrobe and a small boy were the only objects that dared to smile. A RAPID MOVEMENT. 5o/T)93/T\buli5/T\ apd ^rim /^rel7it(^eturi>^ J Another summer is on the wane, and so are we. We are the wall- eyed waners from Wanetown. We have monopolized the wane business of the whole world. Autumn is almost here, and we have not yet gone upon the war path. The pale face came among us with the corn planter and the Desert Land Act, and we bow before him. What does the Fourth of July signify to us ? It is a hollow mockery ! Where the flag of the white man now waves in the breeze, a few years ago the scalp of our foe was hanging in the air. Now my people are seldom. Some are dead and others drunk. Once we chased the deer and the bufPalo across the plains, and lived high. Now we eat the condemned corned beef of the oppressor, and weep over the graves of our fallen braves. A few more moons and I, too, shall cross over to the Happy Beservation. Once I could whoop a couple of times and fill the gulch with warlike ath- letes. Now I may whoop till the cows come home and only my sickly howl comes back to me from the hillsides. I am as lonely as the greenback party. I haven't warriors enough to carry one precinct. Where are the proud chieftains of my tribe? Where are Old Weasel Asleep and Orlando the Hie Jacet Promoter? Where are Prickly Ash Berry and The Avenging Wart ? AVhere are The Pioman-nosed Pelican and Goggle- eyed Aleck, The-man-who-rides-tho-blizzard-bareback ? They are extremely gone. They are extensively whence. Ole Blackhawk, in whose veins flows the blood of many chiefs, is sawing wood for the Belle of the West deadfall for the whiskey. He once rode the war pony into the fray and buried his tomahawk in the phrenology of his foe. Now he straddles the saw-buck and yanks the woodsaw athwart the bosom of the basswood chunk. (327) • 328 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. My people once owned this broad land; but the Pilgrim Fathers (where are they?) came and planted the baked bean and the dried aj^jple, and my tribe vamoosed. Once we were a nation. Now we are the tin can tied to the American eagle. "Warriors! This should be a day of jubilee, but how can the man rejoice who has a boil on his nose ? How can the chief of a once proud people shoot firecrackers and dance over the graves of his race? How can I be hilarious with the victor, on whose hands are the blood of my children ? If we had known more of the white man, we would have made it red hot for him four hundred years ago when he came to our coast. We fed him and clothed him as a white-skinned curiosity then, but we didn't know there were so many of him. All he wanted then was a little smoking tobacco and love. Now he feeds us on antique pork, and borrows our annuities to build a Queen Anne wigwam with a furnace in the bottom and a piano in the top. Warriors ! My words are few. Tears are idle and unavailing. If I had scalding tears enough for a mill site, I would not shed a blamed one. The war- rior suffers, but he never squeals. He accepts the position and says nothing. He wraps his royal horse blanket around his Gothic bones and is silent. But the pale face cannot tickle us with a barley straw on the Fourth of July and make us laugh. You can kill the red man, but you cannot make him hilarious over his own funeral. These are the words of truth, and my warriors will do well to paste them in their plug hats for future reference. Jl?e J^oly Jerror. :HILE in New England trying in my poor, weak way to represent the "rowdy west," I met a sad young man who asked me if I lived in Chi-eene. I told him that if he referred to Cheyenne, I had been -' there off and on a good deal. He said he was there not long ago, but did not remain. He bought some clothes in Chicago, so that he could appear in Chi-eene as a "holy terror" when he landed there, and thus in a whole town of "holy terrors" he would not attract attention. I am not, said he, by birth or instinct, a holy terror, but I thought I would like to try it a little while, anyhow. I got one of those Chicago sombreros with a gilt fried cake twisted around it for a band. Then I got a yellow silk handkerchief on the ten cent counter to tie around my neck. Then I got a suit of smoke-tanned buckskin clothes and a pair of moccasins. I had never seen a bad, bad man from Chi-eene, but I had seen pictures of them and they all wore moccasins. The money that I had left I put into a large revolver and a butcher knife with a red Morocco sheath to it. The revolver was too heavy for me to hold in one hand and shoot, but by resting it on a fence I could kill a cow easy enough if she wasn't too blamed restless. I went out to the stock yards in Chicago one afternoon and practiced with my revolver. One of my thumbs is out there at the stock yards now. At Omaha I put on my new suit and sent my human clothes home to my father. He told me when I came away that when I got out to Wyoming, probably I wouldn't want to attract attention by wearing clothes, and so I could send my clothes back to him and he would be glad to have them. At Sidney I put on my revolver and went into the eating house to get my dinner. A tall man met me at the door and threw me about forty feet in an oblique manner. I asked him if he meant anytliing personal by that and he said not at all, not at all. I then asked him if he would not allow me to eat my dinner and he said that depended on what I wanted for my dinner. If I would lay down my arms and come back to the reservation and remain neutral to the Government and eat cooked food, it would be all right, but if I insisted on eating raw dining-room girls and scalloped young ladies, he would bar me out. (329) aso EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. We landed at Chi-eene in the evening. They had hacks and 'busses and carriages till you couldn't rest, all standing there at the depot, and a large colored man in a loud tone of voice remarked: "interocean HO-tel! ! ! !" I went there myself, It had doors and windows to it, and carpets and gas. r/^^tf-^ A EEAL COWBOY. The young man who showed me to my room was very polite to me. He seemed to want to get acquainted. He said: "You are from New Hampshire, are you not?" I told him not to give it away, but I was from New Hampshire. Then I asked him how he knew. He said that several New Hampshire people had been out there that sum- mer, and they had worn the same style of revolver and generally had one thumb done up in a rag. Then he said that if I came from New Hampshire he would show me how to turn off the gas. He also took my revolver down to the office with him and put it in the safe, because he said someone might get into my room in the night and kill me with it if he left it here. He was a perfect gentleman. THE HOLY TEEEOE. 331 They have a big opera house there in Chi-eeue, and while I was there they had the Eyetalian opera singers, Patty and Nevady there. The streets were lit up with electricity, and people seemed to kind of politely look down on me, I thought. Still, they acted as if they tried not to notice my clothes and dime museum hat. They seemed to look at me as if I wasn't to blame for it, and as if they felt sor- ry for me. If I'd had my United States clothes with me, I could have had a good deal of fun in Chi-eene, going to the opera and the lectures, and concerts, et cetera. Bat finally I decided to return, so I wrote to my parents how I had been knocked down and garroted, and left for dead with one thumb shot oil', and they gladly sent the money to pay funeral expenses. With this I got a cut-rate ticket home and surprised and horrified my par- ents by dropping in on them one morning just after prayers. I tried to get there prior to prayers, but was side-tracked by my father's new anti-tramp bull dog. BostOF) QD/nmoF) apd Ei^uiroQS. ^7^^l TKOLLING through the Public Garden and the famous Boston Com- ^^^ mon, the untutored savage from the raw and unpolished West is awed ]\^)j) and his wild spirit tamed by the magnificent harmony of nature and '^^^ art. Everywhere the eye rests upon all that is beautiful in nature, while art has heightened the pleasing effect without having introduced the ar- tistic jim-jams of a lost and undone Avorld. It is a delightful place through which to stroll in the gray morning while the early worm is getting his just deserts. There, in the midst of a great city, with the hum of industry and the low rumble of the throbbing Boston brain dimly heard in the distance, nature asserts herself, and the weary, sad-eyed stranger may ramble for hours and keep off the grass to his heart's content. Nearly every foot of Boston Common is hallowed by some historical inci- dent. It is filled with reminiscences of a time when liberty was not overdone in this new world, and the tyrant's heel was resting calmly on the neck of our forefathers. In the winter of 1775-6, over 110 years ago, as the ready mathemati- cian will perceive, 1,700 redcoats swarmed over Boston Common. Later on the local antipathy to these tourists became so great that they went away. They are still fled. A few of their descendants were there when I visited the Common, but they seemed amicable and did not wear red coats. Their coats this season are made of a large check, with sleeves in it. Their wardrobe generally stands a larger check than their bank account. The fountains in the Common and the Public Garden attract the eye of the stranger, some of them being very beautiful. The Brewer fountain on Flag- staff hill, presented to the city by the late Gardner Brewer, is very handsome. It was cast in Paris, and is a bronze copy of a fountain designed by Lienard of that city. At the base there are figures representing Neptune with his fabled pickerel stabber, life size ; also Amphitrite, Acis and Galatea. Surviving rela- tives of these parties may well feel pleased and gratified over the life-like ex- pression which the sculptor has so faithfully reproduced. (332) BOSTON COMMON AND ENVIRONS. 333 But the Coggswell fountain is probably the most eccentric squirt, and one which at once rivets the eye of the behoklor, I do not know who designed it, but am tokl that it was modeled by a young man who attended the codfish au- topsy at the market daytimes and gave his nights to art. The fountain proper consists of two metallic bullheads rampart. They stand on their bosoms, with their tails tied together at the top. Their mouths are abnormally distended, and the water gushes forth from their tonsils in a beau- tiful stream. The pose of these classical codfish or bullheads is sublime. In the spirited Groeco-Roman tussle which they seem to be having, with their tails abnormally elevated in their artistic catch-as-catch-can or can-can scufile, the desifirner has certainly hit upon a unique and beautiful impossibility. Each bullhead also has a tin dipper chained to his gills, and through the live-long day, till far into the night, he invites the cosmopolitan tramp to come and quench his never-dying thirst. The frog pond is another celebrated watering place. I saw it in the early part of May, and if there had been any water in it, it would have been a fine sight. Nothing contributes to the success of a pond like water. I ventured to say to a Boston man that I was a little surprised to find a lit- tle frog pond containing neither frogs or pond, but he said I would find it all right if I would call around during ofiice hours. While sitting on one of the many seats which may be found on the Com- mon one morning, I formed the acquaintance of a pale young man, who asked me if I resided in Boston, I told him that while I felt flattered to think that I could possibly fool anyone, I must admit that I was only a pilgrim and a stranger. He said that he was an old resident, and he had often noticed that the peo- ple of the Hub always Spoke to a Felloe till he was tired. I afterward learned that he was not an actual resident of Boston, but had just completed his junior year at the State asylum for the insane. He was sent there, it seems, as a confirmed case of unjustifiable Punist. Therefore the governor had Punist him accordingly. This is a specimen of our capitalized joke with Queen Anne do- funny on the corners. We are shipping a great many of them to England this season, where they are greedily snapped up and devoured by the crowned heads. It is a good hot weather joke, devoid of mental strain, perfectly simple and may be laughed at or not without giving the slightest offense. bruT)\{ \r) a piu^ j^at. \fpfr'7 HIS world is filled with woe everywhere you go. Sorrow is piled up in ^ the fence corners on every road. Unavailing regret and red-nosed re- f morse inhabit the cot of the tie-chopper as well as the cut-glass cage "^"^ of the millionaire. The woods are full of disappointment. The earth is convulsed with a universal sob, and the roads are muddy with tears. But I do not call to mind a more touching picture of unavailing misery and ruin, and hopeless chaos, than the plvig hat that has endeavored to keep sober and maintain self-respect while its owner was drunk. A plug hat can stand pros- perity, and shine forth joyously while nature smiles. That's the place where it seems to thrive. A tall silk hat looks well on a thrifty man with a clean collar, but it cannot stand dissipation. I once knew a plug hat that had been respected by everyone, and had won its way upward by steady endeavor. No one knew aught against it till one evening, in an evil hour, it consented to attend a banquet, and all at once its joyous career ended. It met nothing but distrust and cold neglect every- where, after that. Drink seems to make a man temporarily unnaturally exhilerated. During that temporary exhileration he desires to attract attention by eating lobster salad out of his own hat, and sitting down on his neighbor's. The demon rum is bad enough on the coatings of the stomach, but it is even more disastrous to the tall hat. A man may mix up in a crowd and carry off an overdose of valley tan in a soft hat or a cap, but the silk h;it will pro- claim it upon the house-tops, and advertise it to a gaping, wondering world. It has a way of getting back on the rear elevation of the head, or over the bridge of the nose, or of hanging coquettishly on one ear, that says to the eagle-eyed public: "I am chockfuU." I cannot call to mind a more powerful lecture on temperance, than the silent pantomime of a man trying to hang his plug hat on an invisible peg in (331) DRUNK IN A PLUG HAT. 335 1 I liis own hall, after lie had been watchin*^ tlie returns, a few years ago. I saw that he was excited and nervously unstrung when he came in, but I did not fully realize it until he began to hang his hat on the smooth wall. At first he laughed in a good-natured way at his awkAvardness, and hung it up again carefully ; but at last he became irritated about it, and almost forgot himself enough to swear, but controlled himself. Finding, however, that it refused to hang up, and that it seemed rather restless, anyhow, he put it in the corner of the hall with the crown up, pinned it to the floor with his umbrella, and heaved a sigh of relief. Then he took off his overcoat and, through a clerical error, pulled off his dress-coat also. I showed him his mistake and offered to assist him back into his apparel, but he said he hadn't got so old and feeble yet that he couldn't dress himself. Later on he came into the parlor, wearing a linen ulster with the belt drooping behind him like the broken harness hanging to a ship- wrecked and stranded mule. His wife looked at him in a way that froze his blood. This startled him so that he stepped back a pace or two, tangled his feet in his surcingle, clutched wildly at the empty gas-light, but missed it and sat down in a tall majolica cuspidor. There were three games of whist going on when he fell, and there was a good deal of excitement over the playing, but after he had been pulled out of the American tear jug and led away, everyone of the twelve whist-players had forgotten what the trump was. They say that he has abandoned politics since then, and that now he don't care whether we have any more November elections or not. I asked him once if he would be active during the next campaign, as usual, and he said he thought not. He said a man couldn't afford to be too active in a political cam- paign. His constitution wouldn't stand it. At that time he didn't care much whether the American people had a presi- dent or not. If every public-spirited voter had got to work himself up into a A POWERFUL LECTURE. 336 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. state of nervous excitability and prostration where reason tottered on its tlirone, he thought that we needed a reform. Those who wished to furnish reasons to totter on their thrones for the Na- tional Central Committee at so much per tot, could do so; he, for one, didn't propose to farm out his immortal soul and plug hat to the party, if sixty mil- lion people had to stand four years under the administration of a setting hen. 5prir>(^. il^^l PRING is now here. It lias been here before, but not so much so, per- cj^^^ haps, as it is this year. In spring the buds swell up and bust. The 5^^^ "violets" bloom once more, and the hired girl takes off the double win- ^J^ dows and the storm door. The husband and father puts up the screen doors, so as to fool the annual fly when he tries to make his spring debut. The husband and father finds the screen doors and Avindows in the gloaming of the garret. He finds them by feeling them in the dark with his hands. He finds the rafters, also, with his head. When he comes down, he brings the screens and three new intellectual faculties sticking out on his brow like the button on a barn door. Spring comes with joyous laugh, and song, and sunshine, and the burnt sacrifice of the over-ripe boot and the hoary overshoe. The cowboy and the new milch cow carol their roundelay. So does the veteran hen. The common egg of commerce begins to come forth into the market at a price where it can be secured with a step-ladder, and all nature seems tickled. There are four seasons — spring, summer, autumn and winter. Spring is the most joyful season of the year. It is then that the green grass and the lavender pants come forth. The little robbins twitter in the branches, and the horny-handed farmer goes joyously afield to till the soil till the cows come home. — Vir(jil. We all love the moist and fragrant spring. It is then that the sunlight waves beat upon the sandy coast, and the hand-maiden beats upon the sandy carpet. The man of the house pulls tacks out of himself and thinks of days gone by, when you and I were young, Maggie. Who does not leap and sing in his heart when the dandelion blossoms in the low lands, and the tremulous tail of the lambkin agitates the balmy air? The lawns begin to look like velvet and the lawn-mower begins to warm its joints and get ready for the approaching harvest. The blue jay fills the forest with his classical and extremely (lu revoir melody, and the curculio craAvls out of the plum-tree and files his bill. The plow-boy puts on his father's boots (337) 338 EEMAEKS BY BILL NYE. and proceeds to plow up the cunning little angle worm. Anon, tlie black-bird alights on the swaying reeds, and the lightning-rod man alights on the farmer with great joy and a new rod that can gather up all the lightning in two States and put it in a two-gallon jug for future use. AVho does not love spring, the most joyful season of the year ? It is then that the spring bonnet of the Workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatiijued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush will sing in the underbrush, and the prima donna will do up her voice in a red-flannel rag and lay it away. I go now into my cellar to bring out the gladiola bulb and the homesick turnip of last year. Do you see the blue place on my shoulder? That is where I struck when I got to the foot of the cellar stairs. The gladiola bulbs are looking older than when I put them away last fall. I fear me they will never again bulge forth. They are wrinkled about the eyes and there are lines of care upon them. I could squeeze along two years without the gladiola and the oleander in the large tub. If I should give my little boy a new hatchet and he should cut down my beautiful oleander, I would give him a bicycle and a brass band and a gold-headed cane. O spring, spring, You giddy young thing.* ♦From poems of passion and one thing another, by the author of this sketch. Sl^e Dul^e of I^au/I^ide. BELIEVE I've got about the most instinct bulldog in the United States," said Cayote Van Gobb yesterday. "Other pups may show cuteness and cunning, you know, but my dog, the Duke of Rawhide '^'^^ Buttes, is not only generally smart, but he keeps up with the times. He's not only a talented cuss, but his genius is always fresh and original." "What are some of his specialties, Van?" said I. "Oh, there's a good many of 'em, fust and last. He never seems to be content with the achievements that please other dogs. You watch him and you'll see that his mind is active all the time. When he is still he's working up some scheme or another, that he will ripen and fructify later on. "For three year's I've had a watermelon patch and run it with more or less success, I reckon. The Duke has tended to 'em after they got ripe, and I was going to say that it kept his hands pretty busy to do it, but, to be more accurate, I should say that it kept his mouth full. Hardly a night after the melons got ripe and in the dark of the moon, but the Dude would sample a cowboy or a sheep-herder from the lower Poudre. Watermelons were gener- ally worth ten cents a pound along the Union Pacific for the first tAvo weeks, and a fifty -pounder was worth $5. That made it an object to keep your mel- ons, for in a good year you could grow enough on ten acres to pay off the national debt. "Well, to return to my subject. Duke would sleep days during the sea- son and gather fragments of the rear breadths of Western pantaloons at night. One morning Duke had a piece of fancy cassimere in his teeth that I tried to pry out and preserve, so that I could identify the owner, perhaps, but he wouldn't give it up. I coaxed him and lammed him across the face and eyes with an old board, but he wouldn't give it to me. Then I watched him. I've been watchin' him ever since. He took all these fragments of goods, I found, over into the garret above the carriage shed. (839) 340 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. "Yesterday I went in there and took a lantern with me. There on the floor the Duke of Eawhide had arranged all the samples of Kocky Mountain pant- aloons with a good deal of taste, and I don't suppose you'd T)elieve it, but that blamed pup is collecting all these little scraps to make himself a crazy quilt. "You can talk about instinct in animals, but, so far as the Duke of EaAvhide Buttes is concerned, it seems to me more like all-wool genius a yard wide." Etiqu(^tt(? at J^ot<^Is. lo^jTIQUETTE at hotels is a subject that has been but lightly treated upon by -;)| our modern philosophy, and yet it is a subject that lies very near to every American heart. Had I not alreiady more reforms on hand than ^'"' I can possibly successfully operate I would gladly use my strong social influence and trenchant pen in that direction. Etiquette at hotels, both on the part of the proprietor, and his hirelings, and the guest, is a matter that calls loudly for improvement. The hotel waiter alone, would well repay a close study. From the tardy and polished loiterer of the effete East, to the off-hand and social equal of the bud- ding West, all waiters are deserving of philosophical scrutiny. I was thrown in contact with a waiter in New York last summer, whose manners were far more polished than my own. Every time I saw him standing there with his immediate pantaloons and swallow-tail coat, and the far-away, chastened look of one who had been unfortunate, but not crushed, I felt that I was unworthy to be waited upon by such a blue-blooded thoroughbred, and I often wished that we had more such men in Congress. And when he would take my order and go away with it, and after the meridian of my life had softened into the mel- low glory of the sere and yellow leaf, when he came back, still looking quite young, and never having forgotten me, recognizing me readily after the long, dull, desolate years, I was glad, and I felt that he deserved something more than mere empty thanks and I said to him: "Ah, sir, you still remember me after years of privation and suffering. When every one else in New York has forgotten me, with the exception of the confidence man, you came to me with the glad light of recognition in your clear eye. Would you be offended if I gave you this trifling testimonial of my regard?" at the same time giving him my note at thirty days. I wanted him to have something by which to always remember me, and I guess he has. Speaking of waiters, reminds me of one at Glendive, Montana. We had to telegraph ahead in order to get a place to sleep, and when we registered the (341) 342 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. landlord shoved out an old double-entry journal for us to record our names and postoftice address in. The office was the bar and before we could get our rooms assigned us, we had to wait forty-five minutes for the landlord to collect pay for thirteen drinks and lick a personal friend. Finally, when he got around to me, he told me that I could sleep in the night bar-tender's bed, as he Avould bo u}) all night, and might possibly get killed and never need it again, anyhow. It would cost me $4 cash in advance to sleep one night in the bar- tender's bed, he said, and the house was so blamed full that he and his wife had got to wait till things kind of quieted down, and then they would have to put a mattress on the 15 ball pool table and sleep there. I called attention to my valuable valise that had been purchased at great cost, and told him that he would be safe to keep that behind the bar till I paid ; but he said he wasn't in the second-hand valise business, and so I paid in advance. It was humiliating, but he had the edge on me. At the tea table I noticed that the waiter was a young man who evidently had not been always thus. He had the air of one who yearns to have some one tread on the tail of his coat. Meekness, with me, is one of my charac- teristics. It is almost a passion. It is the result of personal injuries received in former years at the hands of parties who excelled me in brute force and who succeeded in drawing me out in conversation, as it were, till I made remarks that were injudicious. So I did not disagree with this waiter, although I had grounds. "When he came around and snorted in my ear, "Salt pork, antelope and cold beans," at the same time leaning his full weight on my back, while he evaded the revenue laws by retailing his breath to the guests without a license, I thought I would call for what he had the most of, so I said if he didn't mind and it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would take cold beans. I will leave it to the calm, impassionate and unpartisan reader to state whether that remark ought to create ill-feeling. I do not think it ought. However, he was irritable, and life to him seemed to be cold and dark. So he went to the general delivery window that led into the cold bean laboratory, and remarked in a hoarse, insolent, and ironical tone of voice: '^Nother damned suspicious looking character wants cold beans." Fifteen Years /^part. »rWHE American Indian approximates nearer to what m,an should be — -^, - r|(^ manly, physically perfect, grand in character, and true to the instincts -'■'' jvlf of his conscience — than any other race, of beings, civilized or uncivil- ^ ized. Where do we hear such noble sentiments or meet with such examples of heroism and self-sacrifice as the history of the American Indian furnislies? "Where siiall we go to hear again such oratory as that of Black Hawk and Logan? Certainly the records of our so-called civilization do not furnish it, and the present century is devoid of it. They were the true children of the Great Spirit. They lived nearer to the great heart of the Creator than do their pale-faced conquerors of to-day who mourn over the lost and undone condition of the sav- age. Courageous, brave and the soul of honor, their cruel and awful destruction from the face of the eartii is a sin of such magnitude that the relics and the peo- ple of America may well shrink from the just punish- ment which is sure to follow the assassination of as brave a race as ever breathed the air of Heaven. I Avrote the above scathing rebuke of the x4.meri- can people when I was 15 years of age. I ran across the dissertation yesterday. As a general rule, it takes a youth 15 years of age to arraign Con- gress and jerk the administration bald-headed. The less he knows about things generally, the more cheer- fully will he shed information right and left. At the time I wrote the above crude attack upon the government, I had not seen any Indians, but I had read much. My blood boiled when I thought of the wrongs which our race had meted out to the red man. It was at the time when my blood was just coming to a boil that I penned the above paragraph. Ten years later I had changed my views some- (343) AT FIFTEEN. 344 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Avliat, relative to the Indian, and frankly wrote to the government of the change, AVhen I am doing the administration an injustice, and I find it out, I go to the president candidly, and say: "Look here, Mr. President, I have been doing you a wrong. You were right and I was erroneous. I am not pig-headed and stubborn. I just admit fairly that I have been hindering the administration, and I do not propose to do so any more." So I wrote to Gen. Grant and told him that when I was 15 years of age I wrote a composition at school in which I had arraigned the people and the administration for the course taken toward the Indians. Since that time I had seen some Indians in the mountains — at a distance — and from what I had seen of them I was led to believe that I had misjudged the people and the executive. I told him that so far as possible I would like to repair the great wrong so done in the ardor of youth and to once more sustain the arm of the government. He wrote me kindly and said he was glad that I was friendly with the gov- ernment again, and that now he saw nothing in the way of continued national prosperity. He said he would preserve my letter in the archives as a treaty of peace between myself and the nation. He said only the day before he had observed to the cabinet that he didn't care two cents about a war wdth foreign nations, but he would like to be on a peace footing Avith me. The country could stand outside interference better than intestine hostility. I do not know whether he meant anything personal by that or not. Probably not. He said he remembered very well when he first heard that I had attacked the Indian policy of the United States in one of my school essays. He still called to mind the feeling of alarm and apprehension which at that time per- vaded the whole country. How the cheeks of strong men had blanched and the Goddess of Liberty felt for her back hair and exchanged her Mother Hub- bard dress for a new cast-iron panoply of war and Pioman hay knife. Oh, yes, he said, he remembered it as though it had been yesterday. Having at heart the welfare of the American people as he did, he hoped that I would never attack the republic again. And I never have. I have been friendly, not only personally, but officially, for a good while. Even if I didn't agree with some of the official acts of the president I would allow him to believe that I did rather than harrass him with cold, cruel and adverse criticism. The abundant success of this policy is written in the country's wonderful growth and prosperous peace. Dessieated /T\ It is equally bad taste to govern a kingdom in a maroon robe with white horse hairs all over it. I once knew a king who invariably curried his horses in his royal robes ; and if the steeds didn't stand around to suit him, he would ever and anon welt them in the pit of the stomach with his cast-iron sceptre, It was greatly to the A HARD-WORKING MONARCH. interest of his horses not to incur the royal displeasure, as the reader has no doubt already surmised. The robe of the king should only be worn while his majesty is on the throne. When he comes down at night, after his day's work, and goes out after his coal and kindling-wood, he may take off his robe, roll it up carefully, and stick it under the throne, where it will be out of sight. Nothing looks more untidy than a fat king milking a bobtail cow in a Mother Hubbard robe trimmed with imitation ermine. (T\y pf7ysi(;ia9. L An Open Letter.] feEAK SIR: I liave seen recently an open letter addressed to me, and )/PJ written by you in a vein of confidence and strictly sub rosa. What ■^ you said was so strictly confidential, in fact, that you published the %^ letter in New York, and it was copied through the press of the country. I shall, therefore, endeavor to be equally careful in writing my reply. You refer in your kind and confidential note to your experience as an invalid, and your rapid recovery after the use of red-hot Mexican pepper tea in a molten state. But you did not have such a physician as I did when I had spinal menin- gitis. He was a good doctor for horses and blind staggers, but he was out of his sphere when he strove to fool with the human frame. Change of scene and rest were favorite prescriptions of his. Most of his patients got both, especially eternal rest. He made a specialty of eternal rest. He did not know what the matter was with me, but he seemed to be willing to learn. My wife says that while he was attending me I was as crazy as a loon, but that I was more lucid than the physician. Even with my little, shattered wreck of mind, tottering between a superficial knowledge of how to pound sand and a wide, shoreless ssa of mental vacuity, I still had the edge on my physician, from an intellectual point of view. He is still practicing medicine in a quiet kind of way, weary of life, and yet fearing to die and go where his patients are. He had a snbre wound on one cheek that gave him a ferocious appearance. He frequently alluded to how he used to mix up in the carnage of battle, and how he used to roll up his pantaloons and wade in gore. He said that if the tocsin of war should sound even now, or if he were to wake up in the night and hear war's rude alarum, he would spring to arms and make tyranny trem- ble till its suspender buttons fell off. Oil, he was a bad man from Bitter Creek. (354) MY PHYSICIAN. 855 " PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF.' One day I learned from an old neighbor that this physician did not have anything to do with preserving the Union intact, but that he acquired the scar on his cheek while making some experiments as a drunk and disorderly. He would come and sit by my bedside for hours, waiting for this mortality to put on immortality, so that he could collect his bill from the estate, but one day I arose during a temporary delirium, and extracting a slat from my couch I smote him across the pit of the stomach with it, while I hissed through my clenched teeth : "Physician, heal thyself." I then tottered a few minutes, and fell back into the arms of my attendants. If you do not believe this, I can still show you the clenched teeth. Also the attendants. I had a hard time with this physician, but I still live, contrary to his earnest so- licitations. I desire to state that should this letter creep into the press of the country, and thus become in a measure public, I hope that it will create no ill-feeling on your part. Our folks are all well as I write, and should you happeji to be on Lake Superior this winter, yachting, I hope you will drop in and see us. Our latch string is hanging out most all the time, and if you will pound on the fence I will call off the dog. I frequently buy a copy of your paper on the streets. Do you get the money ? Are you acquainted with the staff of TJie Century, published in New York? I was in TJie Century office several hours last spring, and the editors treated me very handsomely, but, although I have bought the magazine ever since, and read it thoroughly, I have not seen yet where they said that "tliey had a pleasant call from the genial and url)ane William Nye." I do not feel offended over this. I simply feel hurt. Before that I had a good notion to write a brief epic on the "Warty Toad," and send it to The Century for publication, but now it is quite doubtful. The Century may be a good paper, but it does not take the press dis- patches, and only last month I saw in it an account of a battle that to my cer- tain knowledge occurred twenty years ago. f\\\ f\bou\: Oratory. 'iPl^WENTY centuries ago last Christmas there was T3orn in Attica, near <^'fl\k^ Athens, the father of oratory, the greatest orator of whom history has /|Ji AT ^^YS. us. His name was Demosthenes. Had he lived until this spring, ^ he would have been 2,270 years old; but he did not live. Demosthe- nes has crossed the mysterious river. He has gone to that bourne whence no traveler returns. Most of you, no doubt, have heard about it. On those who may not have heard it, the announcement will fall with a sickening thud. This sketch is not intended to cast a gloom over your hearts. It was de- signed to cheer those who read it and make them glad they could read. Therefore, I would have been glad if I could have spared them the pain which this sudden breaking of the news of the death of Demosthenes will bring. But it could not be avoided. We should remember the transitory nature of life, and when we are tempted to boast of our health, and strength, and wealth, let us remember the sudden and early death of Demosthenes. Demosthenes was not born an orator. He struggled hard and failed many times. He was homely, and he stammered in his speech ; but before his death they came to him for hundreds of miles to get him to open their county fairs, and jerk the bird of freedom bald-headed on the Fourth of July. When Demosthenes' father died, he left fifteen talents to be divided be- tween Demosthenes and his sister. A talent is equal to about $1,000. I often wish I had been born a little more talented. Demosthenes had a short breath, a hesitating speech, and his manners were very ungraceful. To remedy his stammering, he filled his mouth full of pebbles and howled his sentiments at the angry sea. However, Plutarch says that Demosthenes made a gloomy fizzle of his first speech. This did not dis- courao"e him. He finally became the smoothest orator in that country, and it was no uncommon thing for him to fill the First Baptist Church of Athens (356) ALL ABOUT ORATORY. 357 full. There are now sixty of his orations extant, part of them written by De- mosthenes and part of them written by his private secretary. When he started in, he was gentle, mild and quiet in liis manner; but later on, carrying his audience Avith him, he at last became enthusiastic. He thun- dered, he roared, he whooped, he howled, he jarred the windows, he sawed the air, he split the horizon with his clarion notes, he tipped over the table, kicked the lamps out of the chandeliers and smashed the big bass viol over the chief fiddler's head. Oh, Demosthenes was business when he got started. It will be a long time before we see another off-hand speaker like Demosthenes, and I, for one, have never been the same man since I learned of his death. "Such was the first of orators," says Lord Brougham. " At the head of all the mighty masters of speech, the adoration of ages has consecrated his place, and the loss of the noble instrument with which he forged and launched his thunders, is sure to maintain it unapproachable forever." I have always been a great admirer of the oratory of Demosthenes, and those who have heard both of us, think there is a certain degree of similarity in our style. And not only did I admire Demosthenes as an orator, but as a man ; and, though I am no Vanderbilt, I feel as though I would be willing to head a sub- scription list for the purpose of doing the square thing by his sorrowing wife, if she is left in want, as I understand that she is. I must now leave Demosthenes and pass on rapidly to speak of Patrick Henry. Mr. Henry was the man who wanted liberty or death. He preferred liberty, though. If he couldn't have liberty, he wanted to die, but he was in no great rush about it. He would like liberty, if there was plenty of it ; but if the British had no liberty to spare, he yearned for death. When the tyrant asked him what style of death he wanted, he said that he would rather die of ex- treme old age. He was willing to wait, he said. He didn't want to go unpre- pared, and he thought it would take him eighty or ninety years more to pre- pare, so that when he was ushered into another world he wouldn't be ashamed of himself. One hundred and ten years ago, Patrick Henry said: "Sir, our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come!" 358 BEMARKS BY BILL NYE. In tlie spring o£ 1860, I used almost the same language. So did Horace Greeley. There were four or five of us who got our heads together and de- cided that the war was inevitable, and consented to let it come. Then it came. Whenever there is a large, inevitable conflict loafing around waiting for permission to come, it devolves on the great statesmen and bald- headed literati of the nation to avoid all delay. It was so with Patrick Henry. He permitted the land to be deluged in gore, and then he retired. It is the duty of the great orator to howl for war, and then hold some other man's coat while he fights. 5trabis/T\us a[)d Ju$tiee. 4^^VEE in St. Paul I met a man with eyes of cadet blue and a terra cotta 4f iJj'\r] nose. His eyes were not only peculiar in shape, but while one seemed S^zJl *° constantly probe the future, the other was apparently ransacking the "ii' "' dreamy past. While one rambled among the glorious possibilities of the remote yet golden iiltimately, the other sought the somber depths of the previously. He tt)l(l me that years ago he had a mild case of strabismus and that both eyes seemed to glare down his nose till he got restless and had them operated on. Those were the days when they used to fasten a crochet hook under the internal rectus muscle and cut it a little with a pair of optical sheep shears. The efPect of this course was to allow the eye to drift back to a direct line ; but this man fell into the hands of a drunken suri^eon who cut the muscle too much, and thereby weakened it so that it gradually swung past the point it ought to have stopped at, and he saw with horror that his eye was going to turn out and protrude, as it were, so that a man could hang his hat on it. The other followed suit, and the two orbs that had for years looked along the bridge of the terra cotta nose, gradually separated, and while one looked toward next Christmas with fond anticipations, the other loved to linger over the remem- brances of last fall. This thing continued till he had to peer into the future with his off eye closed, and vice versa. It is needless to say that he hungered for the blood of that physician and surgeon. He tried to lay violent hands on him and wipe up the ground with him and wear him out across a telegraph pole. But the authorities always prevented the administration of swift and lawful justice. Time passed on, till one night the abnormal wall-eyed man loosened a board in the sidewalk up town so that the physician and surgeon caught his foot in it and caused an oblique fracture of the scapula, pied his dura mater, busted his cornucopia and wrecked his sarah-bellum. (359) 3C0 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Perhaps I am in error as to some of these medical terms and their orthog- raphy, but that is about the way the man with the divergent orbs tokl it to me. The physician and surgeon was quite a ruin. He had to wear clapboards on himself for months, and there were other doctors, and laudable pus and threatened gangrene and doctors' bills, with the cemetery looming up in the near future. Day after day he took his own anti-febrile drinks, and rammed his busted system full of iron and strychnine and beef tea and dover's powders and hypodermic squirt till he wished he could die, but death would not come. He pawed the air and howled. They fed him his own nux vomica, tincture of rhubarb and phosphates and gruel, and brought him back to life with a crooked collar bone, a shattered shoulder blade and a look of woe. Then he sued the town for $50,000 damages because the sidewalk was im- perfect, and the wild-eyed man with the inflamed nose got on the jury. I will not explain how it was done, but there was a verdict for defendant with costs on the Esculapian wreck. The man with the crooked vision is not handsome, but he is very happy. He says the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they pulverize middling fine. f\ 5p69eeria9 f\8S. V>FTEPt I had accumulated a liaiidsome competence as city editor of the old Morning Senfincl at Laramie City, and had married and gone to ■ I ^\. housekeeping with a gas stove and other luxuries, my place on the Scm- ' '" Unci was taken by a newspaper man named Hopkins, who had just graduated from a business college, ami who brought a nice glazed grip sack and a di})loma with him that had never been used. Hopkins wrote a fine S})encerian hand and wore a black and tan dog wliere- ever he went. The boys were willing to overlook his copper-plate hand, but they drew the line at the dog. He not only wrote in beautiful ' i i/a^: ^^^^^^s^- ' style, but he copied his manuscript, so that when it went iii to the printer it was as pretty as a wed- ding invitation. Hopkins ran the city page nine days, and then he came into the city hall where I was trying a simple drunk and bade me adieu. I just say this to show how difficult it is for a fine penman to get ahead as a journalist. Of course good, readable writers like Knox and John Hancock may become great, but they have to be men of sterling ability to start with. I have some of the most blood- curdling horrors preserved for the purpose of showing Hopkins' won- derful and vivid style. I will throw them in. "A little son of our esteemed fellow townsman, J. H. Hayford, suffered greatly last evening with virulent colic, but this A. M., as we go to press, is sleeping easily." (361) HE THREW ME OUT. 362 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. Think of shaking the social foundations of a mountain mining and stock town with such grim, nervous prostrators as that! The next day he startled Southern AVyoming and Northern Colorado and Utah with the maddening statement that "our genial friend, Leopold Gussenhoven's fine, yellow dog, Florence Nightingale, had been seriously threatened with insomnia." That was the style of mental calisthenics he gave us in a town where death by opium and ropium was liable to occur, and where five men with their Mexi- can spurs on climbed one telegraph pole in one night and sauntered into the remote indefinitely. Hopkins told me that he had tried to do what was right, but that he had not succeeded very well. He wrung my hand and said: " I have tried hard to make the >S<:'w/meZ fill a long want felt, but I have not been fortunate. The foreman over there is a harsh man. He used to come in and intimate in a frowning and erect tone of voice, that if I did not produce that copy p. d. q., or some other abbreviation or other, that he would bust my crust, or words of like import. "Now thafs no way to talk to a man of a nervous temperament who is engaged in copying a list of hotel arrivals, and shading the capitals as I was. In the business college it was not that way. Everything was quiet, and there was nothing to jar a man like that. " Of course I would like to stay on the Sentinel and draw the princely sal- ary, but there are two hundred reasons why I cannot do it. So far as the physical effort is concerned, I could draw the salary with one hand tied behind me, but there is too much turmoil and mad haste in daily journalism to suit me, and another thing, the proprietor of the Seidinel this morning stole up behind me and struck me over the head with a wrought-iron side stick weighing ten pounds. If I had not concealed a coil spring in my plug hat, the blow would have been deleterious to me. " Then he threw me out of the door against a total stranger, and flung pieces of coal at me and called me a copper-plate ass, and said that if I ever came into the ofiice again he would assassinate me. "That is the principal reason why I have severed my connection with the Sentinel^'' As he said this, Mr. Hopkins took out a polka-dot handkerchief, wiped away a pearly tear the size of a walnut, wrung my hand, also the polka-dot wipe, and stole out into the great, horrid hence. 1 f\T)eedote$ of Ju5tieG. ^HE justice of the peace is sometimes a peculiarity, and if someone does not watch him he will exceed his jurisdiction. It took a con- stable, a sheriff, a prosecuting attorney and a club to convince a "VVy- ^ oming justice of the peace that he had no right to send a man to the penitentiary for life. Another justice in Utah sentenced a criminal to be hung on the following Friday between twelve and one o'clock of said day, but he couldn't enforce the sentence. A Wisconsin justice of the peace granted a divorce and in two weeks married the couple over again — ten dollars for the divorce and two dollars for the relapse. Another Badger justice bound a young man over to appear and answer at the next term of the Circuit Court for the crime of chastity, and the evidence was entirely circumstantial, too. Another one, when his first case came up, jerked a candle box around be- hind the dining-room table, put his hat on the back of his head, borrowed a chew of tobacco from the prisoner and said: "Now, boys, the court's open. The first feller that says a word unless I speak to him will get paralyzed. Now tell your story." Then each witness and the defendant reeled off his yarn without being sworn. The justice fined the defendant ten dollars and made the complaining witness pay half the costs. The justice then took the fine and put it in his pocket, adjourned court, and in an hour was so full that it took six men to hold his house still long enough for him to get into the doors. A North Park justice of the peace and under-sheriff formed a partnership years ago for the purpose of supplying people with justice at New York prices, and by doing a strictly cash business they dispensed with a good deal of jus- tice, such as it was. It was a misdemeanor to kill game and ship it out of the State, and as there was a good deal killed there, consisting of elk, antelope and black tail deer es- pecially, and as it could not be hauled out of the Park at that season without (363) 364 REMABKS BY BILL NYE. going across the Wyoming line and back again into tlie State of Colorado, the iinder-slieriff would load himself down with warrants, signed in blank, and sta- tion himself on horseback at the foot of the pass to the North. He would then arrest everybody indiscriminately who had any fraction of a deer, ante- lope or elk on his wagon, try the case then and there, put on a fine of S25 to 375, which if paid never reached the treasury, and then he would wait for another victim. The average man would rather pay the fine than go back a hundred miles through the mountains to stand trial, so the under-sheriff and justice thrived for some time. But one day the under-sheriff served liis patent automatic w^arrant on a young man who refused to come down. The officer then drew one of those large baritone instruments that generally has a coward at one end and a corpse at the other. He pointed this at the }'oung man and assessed a fine of $50 and costs. Instead of paying this fine, the youth, wdio was quite nimble, but unarmed, knocked the bogus officer down with the butt end of his six-mule whip, took his self-cocking credentials away and lit out. In less than a w^eek the justice and his copper were in the refrigerator. I was once a justice of the peace, and a good many funny little incidents occurred while I held that office. I do not allude to my official life here in order to call attention to my glowing career, for thousands of others, no doubt, could have administered the affairs of the office as well as I did, but rather to speak of one incident which took place while I was a J. P. One night after I had retired and gone to sleep a milkman, called Bill Dun- ninor, rang the bell and ajot me out of bed. Then he told me that a man who owed him a milk bill of $35 was all loaded up and prepared to slip across the line overland into Colorado, there to grow up with the country and acquire other indebtedness, no doubt. Bill desired an attachment for the entire wagon- load of goods and said he had an officer at hand to serve the writ. "But," said I, as I wrapped a "welcome" husk door mat around my glori- ous proportions, "how do you know while we converse together he is not wing- ing his way down the valley of the Paudre?" "Never mind that, jedge," says William, "You just fix the dockyments and I'll tend to the defendant." In an hour Bill returned with $35 in cash for himself and the entire costs of the court, and as we settled up and fixed the docket I asked Bill Dunning how he detained the defendant while we made out the affidavit bond and writ of attachment. ANECDOTES OF JUSTICE. 365 "You reckollect, jeclge," says William, "that the waggin wheel is held onto the exle with a big nut. No waggin kin go any length of time without that there nut onto the exle. Well, when I diskivered that what's-his-name was packed up and the waggin loaded, I took the liberty to borrow one o' them there nuts fur a kind of momento, as it were, and I kept that in my pocket till we served the writ and he paid my bill and came to his milk, if you'll allow me that expression, and then I says to him, ' Pardner,' says I, 'you are going far, far away where I may never see you again. Take this here nut,' says I, 'and put it onto the exle of the oft hind wheel of your wag- gin, and whenever you look at it hereafter, think of poor old Bill Dunning, the milkman.'" Jf^e <^\)\T)e^e Qod. PRESUME that I shall not be accused of sacrilege in referring to the Chinese god as an inferior piece of art. Viewed simply from an artistic and economical standpoint, it seems to me that the Chimaman should have less pride in his bow-legged and inefficient god than in any other national institution, I do not wish to be understood as interfering with any man's religious views ; but when polygamy is made a divine decree, or a bass-wood deity is whittled out and painted red, to look up to and to worship, I cannot treat that so-called religious belief with courtesy and reverence, I am quite liberal in all relig- ious matters. People have noticed that and remarked it, but the Oriental god of commerce seems to me to be greatly over-rated. He seems to lack that genuine decision of character which should be a feature of an over-ruling power. I ask the phrenologist to come with me and examine the head of the al- leged Josh, and to state whether or not he believes that the properly balanced head of a successful god should not have a more protuberant knob of spirit- uality, and a less pronounced alimentiveness. Should the bump of combative- ness hang out over the ear, while time, tune and calculation are noticeably reticent? I certainly wot not. Again, how can the physiognomy of the Celestial Josh be consistent with a moral and temperate god? The low brow would not indicate a pronounced omniscience, and the Jumbo ears and the copious neck would not impress me with the idea of purity and spirituality. It is, no doubt, wrong to attack sacred matters for the purpose of gaining notoriety; but I believe I am right, when I assert that the Chinese god must go. We should not be Puritanical, but we might safely draw the line at the bow-legged and sedentary goddess of leprosy. If Confucius bowed the suppliant knee to that goggle-eyed jim-jam Josh, I am grieved to know it. If such was the case, the friends of Confucius should keep the matter from me. I cannot believe that the great philosopher (366) THE CHINESE GOD. 367 wallowed in the dust at the feet of such a polka-dot carricature of a gorilla's horrid dream. I bought a Chinese god once, for four bits. He was not successful in the profession which he aimed to follow. Whatever he may have been in China, he was not a very successful god in the English language. I put him upon ^Mmmm:^ THE DOG EXITS. the mantel, and the clock stopped, the servant girl sent in her resignation, and a large dog jumped through the parlor -window. All this happened within two hours from the time I erected the lop-eared, knocked-kneed and club-footed Oolong in my household. Perhaps this may have been largely due to my ignorance of his habits. Possibly if I had been more familiar with his eccentricities, it would have 368 REMAliKS BY ]5ILL NYE. been all ri<^lit ; hut as it was, there -was no book of instructions given with him, and I couldn't seem to make him work. During the week following, the prospect shaft of the Now Jerusalem mine struck a subterranean gulf-stream and water-logged the stock, a tall yellow do<'', under the weight of a great woe, picked out my cistern to suicide in, and I skated down the cellar-stairs on my my shoulder-blades and the phrenologi- cal location known as Love of Home, in such a terrible manner as to jar the foundations of the earth, and kick a large hole out of the bosom of the night. I then met with a change of heart, and overthrew the warty heathen god, and knocked him galley west. My hens at once began to watch the produce market, and, noticing the high price of eggs, commenced to orate with great zeal instead of standing around with their hands in their pockets. I saw the new moon over my right shoulder, and all nature seemed gay once more. The above are a few of my reasons for believing that the Chinese god is either greatly over-estimated, or else shippers and producers are flooding the market with fraudulent gods. P dreat 5piritiiali5t. Mr HAVE an uncle who is a physician, and a very busy one at that. He is - ' a very active man, and allows himself very little relaxation indeed. How II Ovj^i many times he has said to me, "Well, I can't stand here and fool away my ^^ time with you. I've got a typhoid fever patient down in the lower end of town who will get well if I don't get over there this forenoon." He never allows himself any relaxation to speak of, except to demonstrate the truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural, and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincing him of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignore two cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and help convince a doubting Thomas on the spirit question. I believe that he and I, together with a little time in which to prepare, could convince the most skeptical. He says that with a friend to assist him, who is en rajyjyort, and who has a little practice, he can reach the stoniest heart. He is a very susceptible medium indeed, and created a great furore in his own town. He said it was a great comfort to him to converse with his former patients, and he felt kind of attached to them, so that he hated to be separated from them, even in death. Spiritualism had quite a run in his neighborhood at one time, as I have said. Even his own family yielded to the convincing proof and the astound- ing phenomena. If his wife hadn't found some of his spiritual tracks down cellar, she would have remained firm, no doubt, but the doctor forgot and left his step-ladder down there, and that showed where the hole in the floor opened into his mysterious cabinet. He said if he had been a little more careful, no doubt he could have convinced anybody of the presence of spirits or anything else. He said he didn't intend to give up as long as there was anything left in the cellar. He had such unwavering confidence in the phenomena that all he asked of anybody was faith and a buckskin string about two feet long. 870 BEMARKS BY BILL NYE. He and his brother, a reformed member of Congress, read the inmost thoughts of a skeptical friend all one evening by the aid of supernatural pow- ers and a tin tube. The reformed member of Congress acted as medium, and the doctor, who was unfortunately and ostensibly called away into the country early in the evening, remained at the window outside, where he could read the queries written by the victim on a slip of paper. Then he would run around the house and murmur the same through a tin tube at another window by the medium's ear. It Avas astounding. The skeptical man would w^ite some deep question on a slip of paper, and after the medium had felt of his brow, and groaned a few hollow groans, and rolled his eyes up, he would answer it without having been ■ Avithin twenty feet of the question or the questioner. The victim said he Avould never doubt again. "What a comfort it was to know that immortality was an established fact. If he could have heard a man talking in a low tone of voice through an old tin dipper handle, at the south window on the ground floor, and occasionally swearing at a mosquito on the back of his neck, he would have hesitated. An old-timer over there said that Woodworth would be a mighty good phy- sician if he would let spiritualism alone. He claimed that no man could be a great physician and surgeon and still be a fanatic on spiritualism. (i(?9 ^o"^' ^""-^ o^^^ g*^^*^^ pumpkin pies on the half-shell. We look upon it as 'i^^^ the month of glorious })erfection in the handiwork of the seasons and "^J"' the time when the ripened fruits are falling; when the red sun hides behind the bronze and misty evening, and says good night with reluctance to the beautiful harvests and the approching twilight of the year. It was on a red letter day of this kind, years ago, that Wheeler and myself started out under the charge of Judge Blair and Sheriff Baswell to visit the mines at Last Chance, and more especially the Keystone, a gold mine that the Judge had recently become president of. The soft air of second summer in the Eocky Mountains blew gently past our ears as we rode up the valley of the Little Laramie, to camp the first night at the head of the valley behind Sheep Mountain. The whole party was full of joy. Even Judge Blair, with the frosts of over sixty winters in his hair, broke forth into song. That's the only thing I ever had against Judge Blair. He would forget himself some- times and burst forth into song. The following day we crossed the divide and rode down the gulch into the camp on Douglass Creek, where the musical thunder of the stamp mills seemed to jar the ground, and the rapid stream below bore away on its turbid bosom the yellowish tinge of the golden quartz. It was a perfect day, and Wheeler and I blessed our stars and, instead of breathing the air of sour paste and hot presses in the newspaper offices, away in the valley, we were sprawling in the glorious sunshine of the hills, playing draw poker with the miners in the even- ing, and forgetful of the daily newspaper where one man does the work and the other draws the salary. It was heaven. It was such luxury that we wanted to swing our hats and yell like Arapahoes. The next morning we were surprised to find that it had snowed all night and was snowing still. I never saw such flakes of snow in my life. They came sauntering through the air like pure, white Turkish towels falling from celestial clothes-lines. We did not return that day. AVe played a few games of chance, but they were brief. We finally made it five cent ante, and, as I (391) 392 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. ■was working then for an alleged newspaper man who paid me $50 per month to edit his paper nights and take care of his children daytimes, I couldn't keep abreast of the Judge, the Sheriff and the Superintendent of the Keystone. The next day we had to go home. The snow lay ankle-deep everywhere and the air was chilly and raw. Wheeler and I tried to ride, but the mountain road was so rough that the horses could barely move through the snow, drag- ging the buggy after them. So we got out and walked on ahead to keep warm. We gained very fast on the team, for we were both long-legged and measured off the miles like a hired man going to dinner. I wore a pair of glove-fitting low shoes and lisle-thread socks. I can re- member that yet. I would advise anyone going into the mines not to wear lisle-thread socks and low shoes. You are liable to stick your foot into a snow-bank or a mud hole and dip up too much water. I remember that after we had walked through the pine woods down the mountain road a few miles, I no- ticed that the bottoms of my pantaloons looked like those of a drowned tramp I saw many years ago in the morgue. We gave out after a while, waited for the team, but decided that it had gone the other road. All at once it flashed over us that we were alone in the woods and the storm, wet, nearly starved, ignorant of the road and utterly worn out! It was tough! I never felt so blue, so wet, so hungry, or so hopeless in my life. We moved on a little farther. All at once we came out of the timber. There was no snow whatever! At that moment the sun burst forth, we struck a deserted supply wagon, found a two-pound can of Boston baked beans, got an axe from the load, chopped open the can, and had just finished the tropical fruit of Massachusetts when our own team drove up, and joy and hope made their homes once more in our hearts. We may learn from this a valuable lesson, but at this moment I do not know exactly what it is. IT WAS TOUGH. IpS^ fr\oi)ey. :OST anyone could collect and tell a good many incidents about losf money that has been found, if he would try, but these cases came ||i-iy1\l under my own observation and I can vouch for their truth. ^^^^i^^^^ A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid ^1,000 while he was loading hay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay he discovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole load into the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, a handful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tine came up with a 3100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got it all. A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth and asked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen miles away and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before I had amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told the fore- man that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimate friend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, no doubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values he was obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparatively useless after they had been used one season. I went back over the same road the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although a hundred teams had passed by it. A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under, and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and, though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they were sent and redeemed. I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my house and the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the road between the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I then advertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations of the bills and stating, (393) 394 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. as was the case, that there was an ehastic band around the roll when lost. The paper liad not been issued more than an hour before I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of my other vest. This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, the ut- ter folly of two vests at the same time. Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S. Kelley, ci^mmonly called "Black Jim." He failed himself along in the fifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but Lo Bartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of ^18. He got this money, finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name of which has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivion business about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there. Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said: "Your money is up in the Wild Cat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it." "No use, old man, she's gone up." "No! !" " Yes, she's a total wreck." Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could, considering that his breath was coming so harcL "Who's there?" "It's Jim Kelley, Black Jim, and I'm in something of a hurry." " Well, I'm very busy, Mr. Kelley. Come again this afternoon." " That will be too remote. I am very busy myself. Now is the accepted time. Will you open the door or shall I open it." The president opened it because it was a good door and he wanted to pre- serve it. Black Jim turned the key in the door and sat down. "What did you want of me?" says the president. " I wanted to see you about a certificate of deposit I've got here on your bank for eighteen dollars." " We can't pay it. Everything is gone." "Well, I am here to get $18 or to leave you looking like a giblet pie. Eighteen dollars will relieve you of this mental strain, but if you do not put up I will paper this wall with your classic features and ruin the carpet with what remains." LOST MONEY. 395 The president hesitated a moment. Then ho took a roll out of his boot and paid Jim eighteen dollars. "You will not mention this on the street, of course," said the president. "No," says Jim, "not till I get there." When the crowd got back, however, the president had fled and he has re- mained fled ever since. The longer he remained away and thought it over, the more he became attached to Canada, and the more of a confirmed and incur- able fugitive he became. I saw Black Jim last evening and he said he had passed through two bank failures, but had always realized on his certificates of deposit. One cashier told Jim that he was the homeliest man that ever looked through the window of a busted bank. He said Kelley looked like a man who ate bank cashiers on toast and directors raw with a slice of lemon on top. Dr. Dizart'5 Do(^. AsS^ MAN whose motlier-iii-law had been successfully treated by the doctor, J f r "Vf °^® '^^y presented him with a beautiful Italian hound named Nemesis. ^Ic^% When I say that the able physician had treated the mother-in-law suc- -sjs,:sr' cessfully, I mean successfully from her son-in-law's standpoint, and not from her own, for the doctor insisted on treating her for small-pox when she had nothing but an attack of agnostics. She is now sitting on the front stoop of the ofolden whence. So, after the last sad rites, the broken-hearted son-in-law presented the physician with a handsome hound with long, slender legs and a wire tail, as a token of esteem and regard. The dog was young and playful, as all young dogs are, so he did many lit- tle tricks which amused almost everyone. One day, while the doctor was away administering a subcutaneous injection of morphine to a hay-fever patient, he left Nemesis in the office alone with a piece of rag-carpet and his surging thoughts. At first Nemesis closed his eyes and breathed hard, then he arose and ate part of an ottoman, then he got up and scratched the paper off the office wall and whined in a sad tone of voice. A young Italian hound has a peculiarly sad and depressing song. Then Nemesis got up on the desk and poured the ink and mucilage into one of the di"awers on some bandages and condition-powders that the doctor used in his horse-practice. Nemesis then looked out of the window and wailed. He filled the room with robust wail and unavailing regret. After that he tried to dispel his e)iiiui with one of the doctor's old felt hats that liuncr on a chair ; but the hair oil with which it was saturated changed his mind. The doctor had magenta hair, and to tone it down so that it would not raise the rate of fire insurance on his office, he used to execute some studies on it in oil — bear's oil. (396) DR. DIZART S DOG. 397 This gave his hair a rich mahogany shade, and his hat smelled and looked like an oil refinery. That is the reason Nemesis spared the hat, and ate a couple of porous- plasters that his master was going to use on a case of croup. At that time the doctor came in, and the dog ran to him with a glad cry of pleasure, rubbing his cold nose against his master's hand. The able yeter- BUSTLE AND CONFUSION. inarian spoke roughly to Nemesis, and throwing a cigar-stub at him, broke two of the animal's delicate legs. After that there was a low discordant murmur and tlio angry hum of medi- cal works, lung-testers, glass jars containing tumors and other bric-a-brac, paper-weights and Italian grayhound bisecting the orbit of a red-headed horse- physician with dude shoes. When the police came in, it was found that Nemsis had jumped through a glass door and escaped on two legs and his ear. Out through the autumnal haze, across the intervening plateau, over the low foot-hills, and up the Medicine Bow Eange, on and ever onward sped the 398 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. timid, grieved and broken-hearted pup, accumulating with wonderful eager- ness the intervening distance between himself and the cruel promoter of the fly -blister and lingering death. How often do we thoughtlessly grieve the hearts of those who love us, and drive forth into the pitiless world those who would gladly lick our hands with their warm loving tongues, or warm their cold noses in the meshes of our necks. How prone we are to forget the devotion of a dumb brute that thoughtlessly eats our lace lambrequins, and ere we have stopped to consider our mad course, we have driven the loving heart and the warm wet tongue and the cold little black nose out of our home-life, perhaps into the cold, cold grave or the bleak and relentless pound. Q7i9/virW5^ i" K. /- A <; OPEN-AIR EXERCISE. Anyone desiring to monkey with the carpenter's trade, will do well to con- sult my catalogue and price-list. I will throw in a white holly corner-bracket, put together with fence nails, and a rustic settee that looks like the Cincinnati riot. Young men who do not know much, and invalids whose minds have be- come affected, are cordially invited to call and examine goods. For a cash trade I will also throw in arnica, court-plaster and salve enough to run the tools two weeks, if ordinary care be taken. If properly approached, I might also be wheedled into sacrificing an easy- running domestic wheelbarrow. I have domesticated it myself and taught it a great many tricks. p <^09ueF)tio9. HE officers and members of the Home for Disabled Butter and Hoary- headed Hotel Hash met at their mosque last Saturday evening, and, after the roll call, reading of the moments of the preceding meeting by '^'' the Secretary, singing of the ode and examination of all present to as- certain if they were in possession of the quarterly password, explanation and signs of distress, the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi, having reached the order of communications and new business and good of the order, stated that the society was now ready to take action, or, at least, to discuss the feasibility of holding a series of entertainments at the rink. These entertainments had been proposed as a means of propping up the tottering finances of the society, and j^rocuring much-needed funds for the ptirpose of purchasing new regalia for the Most Esteemed Duke of the Dishrag and the Most Esteemed Hired Man, each of whom had been wearing the same red calico collar and cheese-cloth sash since the organization of the society. Funds were also necessary to pay for a brother who had Avalked through a railroad trestle into the shoreless sea of eternity, and whose widow had a j^olicy of $135.25 against this society on the life of her husband. Various suggestions were made ; among them Avas the idea advanced by the Most Highly Esteemed Inside Door-Slammer that, as the society's object Avas, of course, to obtain funds, would it not be well to consider, in the first place, whether it would not be as well for the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi to appoint six brethren in good standing to arm themselves with great care, gird up their loins and muzzle the pay-car as it started out on its mission. He simply offered this as a suggestion, and, as it was a direct method of securing the coin necessary, he would move that such a committee be ap])oint( d by the Chaii' to wait on the pay -car and draw on it at sight. The Most Esteemed Keeper of the Cork-screw seconded the motion, in order, as he said, to get it before the house. This brought forward very hot discussion, pending which the presiding officer could see very plainly that the motion was unpopular. (407) 408 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. A visiting brotlier from Yellowstone Park Creamery No. 17, stated that in their society ''an entertainment of this kind had been given for the purpose of pouring a Hood of wealth into the coffers of the society, and it had been fairly successful. Among the attractions there had been nothing of an immoral or lawless nature whatever. In the first place, a kind of farewell oyster gorge had been given, with cove oysters as a basis, and $2 a couple as.an after-thought A can of cove oysters entertained thirty people and made ^30 for the society. Besides, it was found after the party had broken up that, owing to the adhe- sive properties of the oysters, they were not eaten; but the juice, as it were, had been scooped up and the puckered and corrugated gizzards of the sea had been preserved. Acting upon this suggestion, the society had an oyster patty debauch the following evening at ^2 a couple. Forty suckers came and put their means into the common fund. "We didn't have enough oysters to quite go around, so some of us cut a dozen out of an old boot leg, and the enter- tainment was a great success. We also had other little devices for making money, which Avorked admirably and yielded much profit to the society. Those present also said that they had never enjoyed themselves so much before. Many little games were played, which produced great merriment and consider- able coin. I could name a dozen devices for your society, if desired, by which money could be made for your treasury, without the risk or odium necessarily resulting from robbing the pay-car or a bank, and yet the profit will be nearly as great in proportion to the work done." Here the gavel of the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi fell wnth a sickening thud, and the visiting brother was told that the time assigned to communica- tions, new business and good of the order had expired, but that the discussion would be taken up at the next session, in one week, at which time it was the purpose of the chair to hear and note all suggestions relative to an entertain- ment to be given at a future date by the society for the purpose of obtaining the evanescent scad and for the successful flash of the reluctant boodle. Qpme Bae^. I^ERSONAL. — Will tlie young woman who used to cook in our family, and w^lio went away ten pounds of sugar and five and a lialf pounds of jj l^-'/L tea ahead of the game, please come back, and all will be forgiven. '^^ If she cannot return, will she please write, stating her present address, and also give her reasons for shutting up the cat in the refrigerator when she went away? If she will only return, we will try to forget the past, and think only of the glorious present and the bright, bright future. Come back, Sarah, and jerk the waffle-iron for us once more. Your manners are peculiar, but we yearn for your doughnuts, and your style of streaked cake suits us exactly. You may keep the handkerchiefs and the collars, and we will not refer to the dead past. We have arranged it so that when you shore it will not disturb the night police, and if you do not like our children we will send them aAvay. We realize that you do not like children very well, and our children espe- cially gave you much pain, because they were not so refined as you were. AVe have often wished, for your sake, that we had never had any cliildren ; but so long as they are in our family, the neighbors will rather expect us to take care of them. Still, if you insist upon it, we will send them away. We don't want to seem overbearing with our servants. We would be willing, also, to give you more time for mental relaxation than you had before. The intellectual strain incident to the life of one who makes gravy for a lost and undone world must be very great, and tired nature must at last succumb. We do not want you to succumb. If anyone has got to succumb, let us do it. All we ask is that you will let us know when you are going away, and leave the crackers and cheese where we can find them. (409) 410 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. It Avas rather roiigli on us to have you go away when we had guests in the house, but if you had not taken the key to the cooking department we could have worried along. You ought to let us have company at the house sometimes if we will let you have company when you want to. Still, you know best, perhaps. You are older than we are, and you have seen more of the world. We miss your gentle admonitions and your stern reproofs sadly. Come back and reprove us again. Come back and admonish us once more, at so much per admonish and groceries. -^i^^; "WE HOPE YOU WILL DO THE SAME BY US. We will agree to let you select the tender part of the steak, and such fruit as seems to strike you favorably, just as we did before. We did not like it when you were here, but that is because we were young and did not know what the custom was. If a life-time devoted to your welfare can obliterate the injustice we have done you, we will be glad to yield it to you. If you could suggest a good place for us to send the children, where they COME BACK. ^11^ would be well taken care of, and where they would not interfere with some other cook who is a friend of yours, we would be glad to have you write us. My wife says she hopes you will feel perfectly free to use the piano when- ever you are lonely or sad, and when you or the bread feel depressed you will be welcome to come into the parlor and lean up against either one of us and sob. We all know that when you were with us before we were a little reserved in our manner toward you, but if you come back it will be different. AVe will introduce you to more of our friends this time, and we hope you will do the same by us. Young people are apt to get above their business, and we admit that we were wrong. Come back and oversee our fritter bureau once more. Take the portfolio of our interior department. Try to forget our former coldness. Keturn, oh, wanderer, return! f\ fiew piay. ^HE following letter was written, recently, in reply to a dramatist wlio \!^,p proposed the matter of writing a play jointly. ^^^ Hudson, Wis., Nov. 13, 1886. Scott Marble, Esq. — Dear Sir: I have just received your favor of yes- terday, in which you ask me to unite with you in the construction of a new play. This idea has been suggested to me before, but not in such a way as to inaugurate the serious thought which your letter has stirred up in my seething mass of mind. I would like very much to unite with you in the erection of such a dramatic structure that people wo aid cheerfully come to this country from Europe, and board with us for months in order to see this play every night. You will surely agree with me that someone ought to write a play. Why it has not been done long ago, I cannot understand. A well known comedian told me a year ago that he hadn't been able to look into a paper for sixteen months. He could not even read over the proof of his own press notices and criticisms, to ascertain whether the printer had set them up as he wrote them or not, simply because it took all his sjiare time off the stage to examine the manuscripts of plays that had been submitted to him. But I think we could arrange it so that we might together construct some- thins in that line which would at least attract the attention of our families. Would you mind telling me, for instance, how you write a play ? You have been in the business before, and you could tell me, of course, some of the salient points about it. Do you write it with a typewriter, or do you dictate your thoughts to someone who does not resent being dictated to ? Do you write a play and then dramatize it, or do you write the drama and then play on it? Would it not be a very good idea to secure a plot that would cost very little, and then put the kibosh on it, or would you put up the (412) A NEW PLAY. 413 lines first, and tlien liang the plot or drama, or whatever it is, on the lines ? Is it absolutely necessary to have a prologue ? If so, what is a prologue ? Is it like a catalogue? I have a great many crude ideas, but you see I am not practical. One of my crude ideas is to introduce into the play an artist's studio. This would not cost much, for we could borrow the studio evenings and allow the artist to use it daytimes. Then we would introduce into the studio scene the artist's living model. Everybody would be horrified, but they would go. They would walk over each other to attend the drama, and we would do well. Our living model in the studio act would be made of common wax, and if it worked well, we would discharge other members of the company and substitute wax. Gradu- ally we could get it down to where the company would be wax, with the excep- tion of a janitor with a feather duster. Think that over. But seriously, a play, it seems to me, should embody an idea. Am I correct in that theory or not? It ought to convey some great thought, some maxim or aphorism, or some such a thing as that. How would it do to arrange a play with the idea of impressing upon the audience that "the fool and his money are soon parted?" Are you using a hero and a heroine in your plays now? If so, Avould you mind writing their lines for them, wliile I arrange the details and remarks for the young man who is discovered asleep on a divan when the curtain rises, and who sleeps on through the play with his mouth slightly ajar till the close^the close of the play, not the close of his mouth — when it is discovered that he is dead. He then plays the cold remains in the closing tableau, and fills a new-made grave at $9 per week. I could also write the lines, I think, for the young man who comes in wearing a light summer cane and a seersucker coat so tight that you can count his ver- tebrae. I could write what he would say without great mental strain, I think. I must avoid mental strain or my intellect might split down the back and I would be a mental wreck, good for nothing but to strew the shores of time with myself. Various other crude ideas present themselves to my mind, but they need to be clothed. You will say that this is unnecessary. I know you will at once reply that, for the stage, the less you clothe an idea the more popular it will be, but I could not consent to have even a bare thought of mine make an appearance night after night before a cultivated audience. What do you think of introducing a genuine case of small-pox on the stage? 414 EEMARKS BY BILL NYE. You say in your letter that what the American people clamor for is something "catchy." That would be catchy, and it would also introduce itself. I wish you would also tell me what kind of diet you confine yourself to Avliile writing a play, and how you go to work to procure it. Do you live on a mixed diet, or on your relatives ? Would you soak your head while writing a play, or would you soak your overcoat? I desire to know all these things, because, Mr. Marble, to tell you the truth, I am as ignorant about this matter as the babe unborn. In fact, posterity would have to get up early in the morning to know less about play -writing than I have succeeded in knowing. If we are to make a kind of comedy, my idea would be to introduce some- thing facetious in the middle of the comedy. No one will expect it, you see, and it will tickle the audience almost to death. A friend of mine suggests that it would be a great hit to introduce, or rather to reproduce, the Hell Gate explosion. Many were not able to be there at the time, and would willingly go a long distance to wdtness the reproduction. I wish that you would reply to this letter at an early date, telling me what you think of the schemes suggested. Feel perfectly free to express yourself fully. I am not too proud to receive your suggestions. 5t?e 5''uer Dollar. rll rT would seem at this time, while so little is being said on the currency jf-\ question, and especially by the men who really control the currency, that yj| a word from me would not be out of place. Too much talking has been ^'^^ done by those only who have a theoretical knowledge of money and its eccentric habits. People witli a mere smattering of knowledge regarding national currency have been loquacious, while those who have made the matter a study, have been kept in the background. At this period in the history of our country, there seems to be a general stringency, and many are in the stringency business who were never that Avay before. Everything seems to be demonetized. The demonetization of gro- ceries is doing as much toward the general wiggly palsy of trade as anything I know of. But I may say, in alluding briefly to the silver dollar, that there are worse calamities than the silver dollar. Other things may occur in our lives, which, in the way of sadness and three-cornered gloom, make the large, robust dollar look like an old-fashioned half -dime. I met a man the other day, who, two years ago, was running a small paper at Larrabie's Slough. He was then in his meridian as a journalist, and his paper was frequently quoted by such widely-read publications as the Knight of Lahor at Work, a humorous semi-monthly journal. He boldly assailed the silver dollar, and with his trenchant pen he wrote such burning words of denunciation that the printer had to set them on ice before he could use the copy. Last week I met him on a Milwaukee & St. Paul train. He was very tliiu in flesh, and the fire of defiance was no longer in his eye. I asked him how he came on with the paper at Larrabie's Slough. He said it was no more. "It started out," said he, "in a fearless way, but it was not sustained." He then paused in a low tone of voice, gulped, and proceeded: (415) 416 EEMAIIKS BY BILL NYE. "Folks told me wlioii I began that I ought to attack almost everything. Make the paper non-partisan, but aggressive, that was their idea. Sail into everything, and the paper would soon be a power in the land. So I aggressed. "Friends came in very kindly and told me what to attack. They would neglect their own business in order to tell me of corruption in somebody else. I went on that way for some time in a defiant mood, attacking anything that happened to suggest itself. "Finally I thought I would attack the silver dollar. I did so. I thought that friends would come to me and praise me for my manly words, and that I could afford to lose the friendship of the dollar provided I could win friends. "In six months I took an unexpired annual pass over our Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge, or Orphan Eoad, and with nothing else but the clothes I wore, I told the plaintiff how to jerk the old Washington press and went away. Tlie dear old AVashington press that had more than once squatted my burning Avords into the pure white page. The dear old towel on which I had wiped my soiled hands for years, until it had almost become a part of my- self, tne dark blue Gordon press with its large fly wheel and intermittent chattel mortgage, a press, to which I had contributed the first joint of my front finger ; the editor's chair ; the samples of large business cards printed in green with an inflamed red border, which showed that we could do colored work at Larrabie's Slough just as well as they could in the large cities; the files of our paper; the large wilted potato that Mr. Alonzo G. Pinkham of Erin Cor- ners kindly laid on our table- — ^all, all had to go. "I fled out into the great, hollow, mocking world of people who had requested me to aggress. They were people who had called my attention to various things which I ought to attack. I had attacked those things. I had also attacked the Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge Railroad, but the manager did not see the attack, and so my pass was good. "What could I do? "I had attacked everything, and more especially the silver dollar, and now I was homeless. For fourteen weeks I rode up the narrow-gauge road one day and back the next, subsisting solely on the sample of nice pecan meat that the newsboy puts in each passenger's lap. " You look incredulous, I see, but it is true. "I feel differently toward tlie currency now, and I wish I could undo what I have done. Were I called up again to jerk the xlrchimedean lever, I THE SILVER DOLLAIl. 417 would not be so aggressive, especially r.s regards the currency. Whether it is inflated or not, silver dollars, paper certificates of deposit or silver bullion, it does not matter to me. "I yearn for two or three adult doughnuts and one of those thick, dappled slabs of gingerbread, or slat of pie with gooseberries in it. I presume that I could write a scathing editorial on the abuses of our currency yet, but I am not so much in the scathe business as I used to be. "I wish you would state, if you will, through some great metropolitan jour- nal, that my views in relation to the silver coinage and the currency question have undergone a radical change, and that any plan whatever, by which to make the American dollar less skittish, will meet with my hearty approval. "If I have done anything at all through my paper to injure or repress the flow of our currency, and I fear I have, I now take this occasion to cheerfully regret it." He then wrung my hand and passed from my sight. polygamy as a i^<^Ii(^ious Duty. URING the past few years in the history of our republic, we have had leprosy, yellow fever and the dnde, and it seemed as though each one iS^^ would wreck the whole national fabric at one time. National and inter- '^^ national troubles of one kind and another have gradually risen, been met and mastered, but the great national abscess known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints still obstinately refuses to come to a head. I may be a radical monogamist and a rash enthusiast upon this matter, but I still adhere to my original motto, one country, one flag and one wife at a time. Matrimony is a good thing, but it can be overdone. We can excuse the man Avho becomes a collection of rare coins, stamps, or autographs, but he who wears out his young life making a collection of wives, should be looked upon with suspicion. After all, however, this matter has always been, and still is, treated with too much levity. It seems funny to us, at a distance of 1,600 miles, that a thick-necked patriarch in the valley of the Jordan should be sealed to thirteen or fourteen low-browed, half human females, and that the whole mass of hu- manity should live and multiply under one roof. Those who see the wealthy polygamists of Salt Lake City, do not know much of the horrors of trying to make polygamy and poverty harmonize in the rural districts. In the former case, each wife has a separate residence or suite of rooms, perhaps; but in the latter is the aggregation of vice and deprav- ity, doubly horrible because, instead of the secluded character which wicked- ness generally assumes, here it is the common heritage of the young and at once fails to shock or horrify. Under the All -seeing eye, and the Bee Hive, and the motto, "Holiness to the Lord," with a bogus Bible and a red-nosed prophet, who couldn't earn $13. per month pounding sand, this so called church, hanging on to the horns of (418) POLYGAMY AS A RELIGIOUS DUTY. 419 the altar, as it were, defies the statutes, and while in open rebellion against the laws of God and man, refers to the constitution of the United States as pro- tecting: it in its "religious belief." In a poem, the patient Mormon in the picturesque valley of the Great Salt Lake, where he has "made the desert blossom as the rose," looks well. With the wonderful music of the great organ at the tabernacle sounding in your ears, and the lofty temple near by towering to the sky, you say to yourself, there is, after all, something solemn and impressive in all this ; but when a greasy apostle in an alapaca duster, takes his place behind the elevated desk, and with bad grammar and slangy sentences, asks God in a businesslike way to bless this buzzing mass of unclean, low-browed, barbarous scum of all for- eign countries, and the white trash and criminals of our oAvn, you find no rev- erence, and no religious awe. The same mercenary, heartless lunacy that runs through the sickly plagi- arism of the Book of Mormon, pervades all this, and instead of the odor of sanctity you notice the flavor of bilge water, and the emigrant's own hailing sign, the all- pervading fragrance of the steerage. Education is the foe of polygamy, and many of the young who have had the means by which to complete their education in the East, are apostate, at least so far as polygamy is concerned. Still, to the great mass of the poor and illiterate of Mormondom this is no benefit. The rich of the Mormon Church are rich because their influence with this great fraud has made them so ; and it would, as a matter of business, injure their prospects to come out and bolt the nomination. Utah, OA^en with the Edmunds bill, is hopelessly Mormon ; all adjoining States and Territories are already invaded by them, and the delegate in Congress from Wyoming is elected by the Mormon vote. I believe that I am moderately liberal and free upon all religious matters, but when a man's confession of faith involves from three to tAventy-seven old corsets in the back yard every spring, and a clothes line every Monday morn- THE FAMILY WASH. 420 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. mg tliat looks like a bridal trossoau emporium struck by a cyclone, I must admit that I am a little bit inclined to be sectarian in my A'iews. It's bad enough to be slapped across the features by one pair of long wet hose on your way to the barn, but to have a whole bankrupt stock of cold, wet garments every week fold their damp arms around your neck, as you dodge under the clothes line to drive the cow out of the yard, is wrong. It is not good for man to be alone, of course, but why should he yearn to fold a young ladies' seminary to his bosom ? Why should this morbid senti- ment prompt him to marry a Female Suffrage Mass Meeting? I do not wish to be considered an extremist in religious matters, but the doctrine that requires me to be sealed to a whole emigrant train, seems unnatural and inconsistent. Jl^e )Nfeu;spaper. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE WISCONSIN STATE PRESS ASSOCIATION, AT WHITE- WATER, WIS., AUGUST 11, 1885. ^'"^ "Wv^' I^I*^ESIDENT AND Gentlemen of the Press of Wisconsin: >, / \ / 1;' I f^™ sure that when you so kindly invited me to address you J lt'i2JL\\ \[ to-day, you did not anticipate a lavish display of genius and ges- ^r)a\e Ipdiai). ^'rT^/HEEE are about 5,000 Snake or Shoshone Indians now extant, the ^'^ i| nVi^ greater part being in Utah and Nevada, though there is a reservation -'"'^jl^j in Idaho and another in Wyoming. ^ The Shoshone Indian is reluctant to accept of civilization on tlie European plan. He prefers the ruder customs which have been handed down from father to son along with other hairlooms. I use the word hairlooms in its broadest sense. There are the Shoshones proper and the Utes or Utahs, to which have been added by some authorities the Com- anclies, and Moquis of New Mexico and Arizona, the Netelas and other tribes of California. The Shoshone, wherever found, is clothed in buckskin and blanket in winter, but dressed more lightly in summer, wearing nothing but an air of intense gloom in August. To this he adds on holidays a necklace made from the store teeth of the hardy pioneer. The Snake or Shoshone Indian is passionately fond of the game known as poker among us, and which, I learn, is played with cards. It is a game of chance, though skill and a thorough knowledge of firearms are of great use. The Indians enter into this game with great zeal, and lend to it the wonderful energy which they have pre- served from year to year by abstaining from the debilitating effects of manual labor. All day long the red warrior sits in his skin boudoir, nursing the sickly and reluctant "flush," patient, silent and hopeful. Through the cold of winter, in the desolate mountains, he continues to " Hope on, hope ever," (461) HOLIDAY COSTUME. 402 REMARKS BY BILL NYE. That he will "draw to fill." Far away up the canyon he hears the sturdy blows of his wife's tomahawk as she slaujjfhters the jjroase Avood and the sa^^e brush for the fii'S in his gilded hell where he sits and woos the lazy Goddess of Fortune. AYitli the Shoshone, poker is not alone a relaxation, the game wherewith to wear out a long and listless evening, but it is a passion, a duty and a devotion. ■ I He has a face designed especially for poker. It _\ .' I ' never shows a sign of good or evil fortune. You \ I \ I might as well try to win a smile from a railroad right of way. The full hand, the fours, threes, pairs and bob-tail flushes are all the same to him, if you judge by his face. When he gets hungry he cinches himself a little tighter and continues to "rastle" with fate. You look at his smoky, old copper cent of a face, and you see no change. You watch him as he coins the last buckshot of his tribe and later on when he goes forth a pauper, and the corners of his famine-breed- ing mouth have never moved. His little black, smoke- inflamed eyes have never lighted with triumph or joy. He is the great aboriginal stoic and sylvan dude. He does not smile. He does not weep. It certainly must be intensely pleasant to be a wild, free, lawless, irresponsible, natural born fool. The Shoshones proper include the Bannocks, which are again subdivided into the Koolsitakara or Buffalo Eaters, on Wind Eiver, the Tookarika or Mountain Sheep Eaters, on Salmon or Suabe Rivers, the Shoshocas or White Knives, sometimes called Diggers, of the Humbolt River and the Great Salt Lake basin. Probably the Hokandikahs, Yahooskins and the Wahlpapes are subdivisions of the Digger tribe. I am not sure of this, but I shall not sus- pend my business till I can find out about it. If I cannot get at a great truth right off I wait patiently and go right on drawing my salary. The Shoshones live on the government and other small game. They will eat anything when hungry, from a buffalo down to a woodtick. The Shoshone does not despise small things. He loves insects in any form. He loves to make pets of them and to study their habits in his home life. GOING AWAY BROKE. THE SNAKE INDIAN. 463 Formerly, when a great Sliosliouo warrior died, tliey killed his favorite wife over his grave, so that she could go to the hapi)y hunting grounds with him, but it is not so customary now. I tried to impress on an old Shoshone brave once that they ought not to do that. I tried to show him that it would encourage celibacy and destroy domestic ties in his tribe. Since then there THE HOME CIECLE, has been quite a stride toward reform among them. Instead of killing the widow on the death of the husband, the husband takes such good care of his health and avoids all kinds of intellectual strain or physical fatigue, that late years there are no widows, but widowers just seem to swarm in the Shoshone tribe. The woods are full of them. Now, if they would only kill the widower over the grave of the wife, the Indian's future would assume a more definite shape. I^oller 5K3ti9^. HAVE once more tried to ride a pair of roller skates. That is the reason I irot down on the rink and down on roller skates. That is the reason several people got down on me. That is also the reason why I now state ^ in a pnblic manner, to a lost and undone race, that unless the roller-rink is at once abolished, the whole civilized race will at once be plunged into arnica. I had tried it once before, but had not carried my experiments to a suc- cessful termination. I made a trip around the rink last August, but was ruled out by the judges for incompetency, and advised to skate among the people who were hostile to the government of the United States, while the proprietors repaired the rink. On the 9th of June I nestled in the bosom of a cyclone to excess, and it has required the bulk of the succeeding months for nature to glue the bone of my leg together in proper shape. That is the reason I have not given the attention to roller-skating that I should. A few weeks ago I read what Mr. Talmage said about the great national vice. It was his opinion that, if we skated in a proper spirit, we could leave the rink each evening with our immortal souls in good shape. Somehow it got out that on Thursday evening I would undertake the feat of skating three rounds in three hours with no protection to my scruples, for one- half the gate money, Talmage rules. So there was quite a large audience present with opera glasses. Some had umbrellas, especially on the front rows. These were worn spread, in order to ward off fragments of the rink which might become disengaged and set in motion by atmospheric disturbances. In obedience to a wild, Wagnerian snort from the orchestra, I came into the arena with my skates in hand. I feel perfectly at home before an audi- ence when I have my skates in hand. It is a morbid desire to wear the skates on my feet that has always been my hete noire. Will the office boy please give me a brass check for that word so that I can get it when I go away ? My first thought, after getting myself secured to the skates, was this: "Am I in the proper frame of mind? Am I doing this in the right spirit? (464) KOLLElt SKATING. 465 Am I about to skate in sucli a way as to lift the fog of unbelief which now envelopes a sinful world, or shall I deepen the opaque night in which my race is wrapped?" Just then that end of the rink erupted in a manner so forthwith and so font ensemble that I had to push it back in place with my person. I never saw anything done with less delay or less languor. The audience went wild with enthusiasm, and I responded to the encore by writing my name in the air with my skates. This closed the first seance, and my trainer took me in the dressing-room to attend a consultation of physicians. After the rink carpenter had jacked up the floor a little I went out again. I had no fears about my ability to per- form the mechanical part assigned me, but I was still worried over the ques- tion of whether it would or would not be of lasting benefit to mankind. Those who have closely scrutinized my frame in repose have admitted that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Students of the human frame say that they never saw such a wealth of looseness and limberness lavished upon one person. They claim that nature bestowed upon me the hinges and joints intended for a whole family, and therefore when I skate the air seems to be perfectly lurid with limbs. I presume that this is true ; though I have so lit- tle leisure while skating in which to observe the method itself, the plot or animus of the thing, as it were, that my opinion would be of little value to the scientist. I am led to believe that the roller skate is certainly a great civilizer and a wonderful leveler of mankind. If we so skate that when the summons comes to seek our ward in the general hospital, where each shall heal his busted cuticle within the walls where rinkists squirm, we go not like tiie moral wreck, morally paralyzed, but like a hired man taking his medicine, and so forth — we may skate with perfect impunity, or anyone else to whom we may be properly introduced by our cook. jNio /r\orC^ "^ "^ THE LIBRARY ^?-^^^'^f5<^" bl ^' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ^•' 'Ov •'Sir ^'•■'^'•n " ■■■■■■Ik. , ' ..^.^^-^i;i^-*^^'>^i* •H^*Pv:rSvi->,.^^ -