increased in business. Do you feel the need of an employe? Any light
employment that will be honorable without involving too much
perspiration would be acceptable.
I am traveling about a good deal these days, and if I can do you any
good as an agent or in referring to your smooth road-bed and the
magnificent scenery along your line, I would be glad to regard that in
the light of employment. Everywhere I go I hear your road very highly
spoken of.
Yours truly,
BILL NYE.
I shall write to some more roads in a few weeks. It seems to me there
ought to be work for a man who is able and willing to be an employe.
That Night
[Illustration]
You and I, and that night, with its perfume and glory!--
The scent of the locusts--the light of the moon;
And the violin weaving the waltzers a story,
Enmeshing their feet in the weft of the tune,
Till their shadows uncertain,
Reeled round on the curtain,
While under the trellis we drank in the June.
Soaked through with the midnight, the cedars were sleeping.
Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright
Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart leaping
Forever, forever burst, full with delight;
And its lisp on my spirit
Fell faint as that near it
Whose love like a lily bloomed out in the night.
O your glove was an odorous sachet of blisses!
The breath of your fan was a breeze from Cathay!
And the rose at your throat was a nest of spi'led kisses!--
And the music!--in fancy I hear it to-day,
As I sit here, confessing
Our secret, and blessing
My rival who found us, and waltzed you away.
The Truth about Methuselah
[Illustration]
We first met Methuselah in the capacity of a son. At the age of
sixty-five Enoch arose one night and telephoned his family physician to
come over and assist him in meeting Methuselah.
Day at last dawned on Enoch's happy home, and its first red rays lit up
the still redder surface of the little stranger. For three hundred years
Enoch and Methuselah jogged along together in the capacity of father and
son. Then Enoch was suddenly cut down. It was at this time that little
Methuselah first realized what it was to be an orphan. He could not at
first realize that his father was dead. He could not understand why
Enoch, with no inherited disease, should be shuffled off at the age of
three hundred and sixty-five years. But the doctor said to Methuselah:
"My son, you are indeed fatherless. I have done all I could, but it is
useless. I have told Enoch many a time that if he went in swimming
before the ice went out of the creek it would finally down him, but he
thought he knew better than I did. He was a headstrong man, Enoch was.
He sneered at me and alluded to me as a fresh young gosling, because he
was three hundred years older than I was. He has received the reward of
the willful, and verily the doom of the smart Aleck is his."
Methuselah now cast about him for some occupation which would take up
his attention and assuage his wild, passionate grief over the loss of
his father. He entered into the walks of men and learned their ways. It
was at this time that he learned the pernicious habit of using tobacco.
We cannot wonder at it when we remember that he was now fatherless. He
was at the mercy of the coarse, rough world. Possibly he learned the use
of tobacco when he went away to attend business college after the death
of his father. Be that as it may, the noxious weed certainly hastened
his death, for six hundred years after this we find him a corpse!
Death is ever a surprise, even at the end of a long illness and after a
ripe old age. To those who are near it seems abrupt; so to his
grandchildren, some of whom survived him, his children having died of
old age, the death of Methuselah came like a thunderbolt from a clear
sky.
Methuselah succeeded in cording up more of a record, such as it was,
than any other man of whom history informs us. Time, the tomb-builder
and amateur mower, came and leaned over the front yard and looked at
Methuselah, and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his scythe, and
went away whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for
nearly ten centuries, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the
general wreck of men and nations.
Even as the young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow
spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and passeth by on the other
side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-glass and his overworked
hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high
sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin of hair around the base
of it, mowed all around Methuselah and then passed on.
Methuselah decorated the graves of those who perished in a dozen
different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over nine hundred years
of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting places and offer
his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage
his grandchildren to go. Then Methuselah would sit around Noah's front
steps, and smoke and criticise the conduct of the war, also the conduct
of the enemy.
It is said of Methuselah that he never was the same man after his son
Lamech died. He was greatly attached to Lamech, and, when he woke up one
night to find his son purple in the face with membraneous croup, he
could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy
who had just rounded the glorious morn of his 777th year had never
occurred to him. But death loves a shining mark, and he garnered little
Lammie and left Methuselah to mourn for a couple of centuries.
Methuselah finally got so that he couldn't sleep any later than 4
o'clock in the morning, and he didn't see how any one else could. The
older he got, and the less valuable his time became, the earlier he
would rise, so that he could get an early start. As the centuries filed
slowly by, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle
into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large
slick-headed cane and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and
extricate himself from his clothes again and retire, he rose earlier and
earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks
sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that
sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But
one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the
whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his
red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah
passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience and a
long clean record.
We can almost fancy how the physicians, who had disagreed about his case
all the way through, came and insisted on a post-mortem examination to
prove which was right and what was really the matter with him. We can
imagine how people went by shaking their heads and regretting that
Methuselah should have tampered with tobacco when he knew that it
affected his heart.
But he is gone. He lived to see his own promissory notes rise, flourish,
acquire interest, pine away at last and finally outlaw. He acquired a
large farm in the very heart of the county-seat, and refused to move or
to plot, and called it Methuselah's addition. He came out in spring
regularly for nine hundred years after he got too old to work out his
poll-tax on the road, and put in his time telling the rising generation
how to make a good road. Meantime other old people, who were almost one
hundred years of age, moved away and went West where they would attract
attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting
old around where Methuselah was, and being ordered about and scolded and
kept in the background by him.
[Illustration]
So when at last he died, people sighed and said: "Well, it was better
for him to die before he got childish. It was best that he should die
at a time when he knew it all. We can't help thinking what an
acquisition Methuselah will be on the evergreen shore when he gets
there, with all his ripe experience and his habits of early rising."
And the next morning after the funeral Methuselah's family did not get
out of bed till nearly 9 o'clock.
A Black Hills Episode
A little, warty, dried-up sort
O' lookin' chap 'at hadn't ort
A ben a-usin' round no bar,
With gents like us a-drinkin' thar!
And that idee occurred to me
The livin' minit 'at I see
The little cuss elbowin' in
To humor his besettin' sin.
There 're nothin' small in me at all,
But when I heer the rooster call
For shugar and a spoon, I says:
"Jest got in from the States, I guess."
He never 'peared as if he heerd,
But stood thar, wipin' uv his beard,
And smilin' to hisself as if
I'd been a-givin' him a stiff.
And I-says-I, a edgin' by
The bantam, and a-gazin' high
Above his plug--says I: "I knowed
A little feller onc't 'at blowed
Around like you, and tuck his drinks
With shugar in--and _his_ folks thinks
He's dead now--'cause we boxed and sent
The scraps back to the Settlement!"
* * * * *
The boys tells me, 'at got to see
His _modus operandum_, he
Jest 'peared to come onjointed-like
Afore he ever struck a strike!
And I'll admit, the way he fit
Wuz dazzlin'--what I see uv hit;
And squarin' things up fair and fine,
Says I: "A little 'shug' in mine!"
The Rossville Lecture Course
ROSSVILLE, Mich., March, '87.
Folks up here at Rossville got up a lectur'-course;
All the leadin' citizens they wus out in force;
Met and talked at Williamses, and 'greed to meet agin,
And helt another corkus when the next reports wuz in;
Met agin at Samuelses; and met agin at Moore's,
And Johnts he put the shutters up and jest barred the doors!--
And yit, I'll jest be dagg-don'd! ef didn't take a week
'Fore we'd settled where to write to git a man to speak!
Found out where the Bureau wus, and then and there agreed
To strike while the iron's hot, and foller up the lead.
Simp was secatary; so he tuck his pen in hand,
And ast what they'd tax us for the one on "Holy Land"--
"One of Colonel J. De-Koombs Abelust and Best
Lecturs," the circ'lar stated, "Give East er West!"
Wanted fifty dollars, and his kyar-fare to and from,
And Simp was hence instructed fer to write him not to come.
Then we talked and jawed around another week er so,
And writ the Bureau 'bout the town a-bein' sort o' slow
And fogey-like, and pore as dirt, and lackin' enterprise,
And ignornter'n any other 'cordin' to its size:
Till finally the Bureau said they'd send a cheaper man
Fer forty dollars, who would give "A Talk about Japan"--
"A regular Japanee hiss'f," the pamphlet claimed; and so,
Nobody knowed his languige, and of course we let him go!
Kindo' then let up a spell--but rallied onc't ag'in,
And writ to price a feller on what's called the "violin"--
A Swede, er Pole, er somepin--but no matter what he wus,
Doc Sifers said he'd heerd him, and he wusn't wuth a kuss!
And then we ast fer _Swingses_ terms; and _Cook_, and Ingersoll--
And blame! ef forty dollars looked like anything at all!
And then _Burdette_, we tried fer him; and Bob he writ to say
He wus busy writin' ortographts, and couldn't git away.
At last--along in Aprile--we signed to take this-here
Bill Nye of Californy, 'at was posted to appear
"The Humorestest Funny Man 'at Ever Jammed a Hall!"
So we made big preparations, and swep' out the church and all!
And night he wus to lectur', and the neighbors all was there,
And strangers packed along the aisles 'at come from ever'where,
Committee got a telegrapht the preacher read, 'at run--
"Got off at Rossville, Indiany, stead of Michigun."
[Illustration]
The Tar-heel Cow
[Illustration]
ASHEVILLE, N. C., December 9.--There is no place in the United States,
so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I
may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life,
than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum
and the anonymous distiller have their homes.
Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of
butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular
farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she
contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies,
it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.
The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes
and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the
sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her
black retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose into the blue grass from
ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her
overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the
life of a Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.
[Illustration]
Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated
from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the
cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is
obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic
details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor
of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.
The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something,
when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to
market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru
colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in
the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an
object of the greatest interest.
Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as
has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have
seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it
is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the
burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners
eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully
to salt the mines.
The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine
oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull
some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.
Here the jackass at times becomes a co-worker with the cow in hauling
tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further
in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press
alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the
butter industry.
The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single
by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman,
who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he
adds a small pair of ear-bobbs during the holidays.
The cow is attached to each shaft and a small single-tree, or
swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a
breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her
escort.
I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than that of a new milch
cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a
steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak
manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson Democratic wagon loaded
with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign
to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of
business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly
can feel very little interest.
Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for
smoking purposes. It is the highest-price tobacco produced in this
country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of
what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco
while growing.
He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all
about the tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any
new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this
country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant
things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about
me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by
furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but
which may be of incalculable value to the press.
As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches
deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did
not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing
their thoughtlessness to-day.
A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the
climate. When they have remained here for one winter, however, they
decide to leave it where it is.
It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I
did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.
Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a
good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to these columns, I shall
watch for it with great interest.
Yours as here 2 4,
BILL NYE.
P. S.--I should have said, relative to the cow of this State, that if
the owners would work their butter more and their cows less they would
confer a great boon on the consumer of both.
B. N.
A Character
[Illustration]
I.
Swallowed up in gulfs of tho't--
Eye-glass fixed--on--who knows what?
We but know he sees us not.
Chance upon him, here and there--
Base-ball park--Industrial Fair--
Broadway--Long Branch--anywhere!
Even at the races,--yet
With his eye-glass tranced and set
On some dream-land minaret.
At the beach, the where, perchance--
Tenderest of eyes may glance
On the fitness of his pants.
Vain! all admiration--vain!
His mouth, o'er and o'er again
Absently absorbs his cane.
Vain, as well, all tribute paid
To his morning coat, inlaid
With crossbars of every shade.
He is oblivious, tho
We played checkers to and fro
On his back--he would not know.
II.
So removed--illustrious--
Peace! kiss hands, and leave him thus
He hath never need of us!
Come away! Enough! Let be!
Purest praise, to such as he,
Were as basest obloquy.
Vex no more that mind of his,
We, to him, are but as phizz
Unto pop that knows it is.
Haply, even as we prate
Of him HERE--in astral state--
Or jackastral--he, elate,
Brouses 'round, with sportive hops
In far fields of sphery crops,
Nibbling stars like clover-tops.
He, occult and psychic, may
Now be solving why to-day
Is not midnight.--But away!
Cease vain queries! Let us go!
Leave him all unfathomed.--Lo,
He can hear his whiskers grow.
The Diary of Darius T. Skinner
[Illustration]
"FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, New York, Dec. 31, 188-.--It hardly seems possible
that I am here in New York, putting up at a hotel where it costs me $5
or $6 a day just simply to exist. I came here from my far away-home
entirely alone. I have no business here, but I simply desired to rub up
against greatness for awhile. I need polish, and I am smart enough to
know it.
"I write this entry in my diary to explain who I am and to help identify
myself in case I should come home to my room intoxicated some night and
blow out the gas.
"The reason I am here is that last summer while whacking bulls, which is
really my business, I grub-staked Alonzo McReddy and forgot about it
till I got back and the boys told me that Lon had struck a First
National bank in the shape of the Sarah Waters claim. He was then very
low with mountain fever and so nobody felt like jumping the claim.
Saturday afternoon Alonzo passed away and left me the Sarah Waters.
That's the only sad thing about the whole business now. I am raised from
bull-whacking to affluence, but Alonzo is not here. How we would take in
the town together if he'd lived, for the Sarah Waters was enough to make
us both well fixed.
"I can imagine Lon's look of surprise and pride as he looks over the
outer battlements of the New Jerusalem and watches me paint the town.
Little did Lon think when I pulled out across the flat with my whiskers
full of alkali dust and my cuticle full of raw agency whisky, that
inside of a year I would be a nabob, wearing biled shirts every single
day of my life, and clothes made specially for me.
"Life is full of sudden turns, and no one knows here in America where
he'll be in two weeks from now. I may be back there associating with
greasers again as of yore and skinning the same bulls that I have
heretofore skun.
"Last evening I went to see 'The Mikado,' a kind of singing theater and
Chinese walk-around. It is what I would call no good. It is acted out by
different people who claim they are Chinamen, I reckon. They teeter
around on the stage and sing in the English language, but their clothes
are peculiar. A homely man, who played that he was the lord high
executioner and chairman of the vigilance committee, wore a pair of
wide, bandana pants, which came off during the first act. He was cool
and collected, though, and so caught them before it was everlastingly
too late. He held them on by one hand while he sang the rest of his
piece, and when he left the stage the audience heartlessly whooped for
him to come back.
"'The Mikado' is not funny or instructive as a general thing, but last
night it was accidently facetious. It has too much singing and not
enough vocal music about it. There is also an overplus of conversation
through the thing that seems like talking at a mark for $2 a week. It
may be owing to my simple ways, but 'The Mikado' is too rich for my
blood.
"We live well here at the Fifth Avenue. The man that owns the place puts
two silver forks and a clean tablecloth on my table every day, and the
young fellows that pass the grub around are so well dressed that it
seems sassy and presumptions for me to bother them by asking them to
bring me stuff when I'd just as soon go and get it myself and nothing
else in the world to do.
"I told the waiter at my table yesterday that when he got time I wished
he would come up to my room and we could have a game of old sledge. He
is a nice young man, and puts himself out a good deal to make me
comfortable.
"I found something yesterday at the table that bothered me. It was a new
kind of a silver dingus, with two handles to it, for getting a lump of
sugar into your tea. I saw right away that it was for that, but when I
took the two handles in my hand like a nut cracker and tried to scoop up
a lump of sugar with it I felt embarrassed. Several people who were
total strangers to me smiled.
"After dinner the waiter brought me a little pink-glass bowl of lemonade
and a clean wipe to dry my mouth with, I reckon, after I drank the
lemonade. I do not pine for lemonade much, anyhow, but this was
specially poor. It was just plain water, with a lemon rind and no sugar
into it.
"One rural rooster from Pittsburg showed his contempt for the blamed
stuff by washing his hands in it. I may be rough and uncouth in my
style, but I hope I will never lower myself like that in company."
[Illustration: THE MAN IN THE MOON]
O, The Man in the Moon has a crick in his back;
Whee!
Whimm!
Ain't you sorry for him?
And a mole on his nose that is purple and black;
And his eyes are so weak that they water and run
If he dares to dream even he looks at the sun,--
So he just dreams of stars, as the doctors advise--
My!
Eyes!
But isn't he wise--
To just dream of stars, as the doctors advise?
And The Man in the Moon has a boil on his ear--
Whee!
Whing!
What a singular thing!
I know; but these facts are authentic, my dear,--
There's a boil on his ear, and a corn on his chin--
He calls it a dimple,--but dimples stick in--
Yet it might be a dimple turned over, you know;
Whang!
Ho!
Why, certainly so!--
It might be a dimple turned over, you know!
And The Man in the Moon has a rheumatic knee--
Gee!
Whizz!
What a pity that is!
And his toes have worked round where his heels ought to be.--
So whenever he wants to go North he goes South,
And comes back with porridge-crumbs all round his mouth,
And he brushes them off with a Japanese fan,
Whing!
Whann!
What a marvelous man!
What a very remarkably marvelous man!
[Illustration: His Christmas Sled.]
I watch him, with his Christmas sled;
He hitches on behind
A passing sleigh, with glad hooray,
And whistles down the wind;
He hears the horses champ their bits,
And bells that jingle-jingle--
You Woolly Cap! you Scarlet Mitts!
You miniature "Kriss Kringle!"
I almost catch your secret joy--
Your chucklings of delight,
The while you whizz where glory is
Eternally in sight!
With you I catch my breath, as swift
Your jaunty sled goes gliding
O'er glassy track and shallow drift,
As I behind were riding!