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 soon as
the doors were opened there was a mad rush for seats, during which three
men were fatally injured. They insisted on remaining through the lecture,
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.
The Miner at Home.
Receiving another notice of assessment on my stock in the Aladdin mine the
other day, reminded me that I was still interested in a bottomless hole
that was supposed at one time to yield funds instead of absorbing them.
The Aladdin claim was 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 superintendent, 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 tlired.
You 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 hostility which naturally exists between 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 were 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
wouldn't care to use it here anyway.
[Illustration: I HAVE FORGOTTEN HIS FIRST REMARK.]
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
services, 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,
unostentatious animal plodding along through life in its own modest way,
yet wields a wonderful influence over the destinies of man. So the Aladdin
mine was 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.
An Operatic Entertainment.
Last 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
perspiration trickle out through the clapboards on the outside. On the
closing afternoon, during the matinee performance, the building was
struck by lightning 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-staff, 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 toothpicks of a pole fifty feet
high. All this was done very briefly. Those who have seen lightning toy
with a cottonwood 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
residence 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 previous 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 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 bobolink 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 was and look at herself, with her dress
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
harmonize 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 Washington
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 Walker riding one of these “philosophers” around on the
streets.
[Illustration: MAKING HIMSELF USEFUL.]
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 ones 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 people in the house and 3,000 outside yelling it the ticket
office--also at the top 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
refreshments, 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 chimney 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.
Dogs and Dog Days.
I 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 known as hydrophobia? When a fellow-being has to be smothered, 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?