Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who
knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend.
He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine.
Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin,
where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After
receiving a meager schooling, he entered a lawyer's office where most
of his work consisted in sweeping the office and running errands. In his
idle moments the lawyer's library was at his service. Of this crude and
desultory reading he afterward wrote:
"I could read the same passage today that I did yesterday and it would
seem as fresh at the second reading as it did at the first. On the
following day I could read it again and it would seem as new and
mysterious as it did on the preceding day."
At the age of twenty-five, he was teaching a district school in Polk
County, Wisconsin, at thirty dollars a month. In 1877 he was justice of
the peace in Laramie. Of that experience he wrote:
"It was really pathetic to see the poor little miserable booth where
I sat and waited with numb fingers for business. But I did not see the
pathos which clung to every cobweb and darkened the rattling casement.
Possibly I did not know enough. I forgot to say the office was not a
salaried one, but solely dependent upon fees. So while I was called
Judge Nye and frequently mentioned in the papers with consideration, I
was out of coal half the time, and once could not mail my letters for
three weeks because I did not have the necessary postage."
He wrote some letters to the Cheyenne _Sun_ and soon made such a
reputation for himself that he was able to obtain a position on the
Laramie _Sentinel_. Of this experience he wrote:
"The salary was small, but the latitude was great, and I was permitted
to write anything that I thought would please the people, whether it was
news or not. By and by I had won every heart by my patient poverty and
my delightful parsimony with regards to facts. With a hectic imagination
and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper I scarcely
cared through the livelong day whether school kept or not."
Of the proprietor of the _Sentinel_ he wrote:
"I don't know whether he got into the penitentiary or the Greenback
party. At any rate he was the wickedest man in Wyoming. Still, he was
warm-hearted and generous to a fault. He was more generous to a fault
than to anything else--more especially his own faults. He gave me
twelve dollars a week to edit the paper--local, telegraph, selections,
religious, sporting, political, fashions, and obituary. He said twelve
dollars was too much, but if I would jerk the press occasionally and
take care of his children he would try to stand it. You can't mix
politics and measles. I saw that I would have to draw the line at
measles. So one day I drew my princely salary and quit, having acquired
a style of fearless and independent journalism which I still retain.
I can write up things that never occurred with a masterly and graphic
hand. Then, if they occur, I am grateful; if not, I bow to the
inevitable and smother my chagrin."
In the midst of a wrangle in politics he was appointed postmaster of his
town and his letter of acceptance, addressed to the Postmaster-General
at Washington, was the first of his writings to attract national
attention.
He said that, in his opinion, his being selected for the office was a
triumph of eternal right over error and wrong. "It is one of the epochs,
I may say, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and
perfection," he wrote. "I don't know when I have noticed any stride
in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its
wisdom."
Shortly after he became postmaster he started the _Boomerang_. The
first office of the paper was over a livery stable and Nye put up a sign
instructing callers to "twist the tail of the gray mule and take the
elevator."
He at once became famous and was soon brought to New York, at a salary
that seemed fabulous to him. His place among the humorists of the world
was thenceforth assured.
He died February 22,1896, at his home in North Carolina, surrounded by
his family.
James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, was for many years a close
personal friend of the dead humorist. When informed of Nye's death, he
said: "Especially favored, as for years I have been, with close personal
acquaintance and association with Mr. Nye, his going away fills me with
selfishness of grief that finds a mute rebuke in my every memory of him.
He was unselfish wholly, and I am broken-hearted, recalling the always
patient strength and gentleness of this true man, the unfailing hope and
cheer and faith of his child-heart, his noble and heroic life, and pure
devotion to his home his deep affections, constant dreams, plans and
realizations. I cannot doubt but that somehow, somewhere, he continues
cheerily on in the unbroken exercise of these same capacities."