I found multitudinous changes among old friends and associates when

I got home, and was struck with the ceaseless work of time's effacing

fingers, but nowhere did I find such cause for sorrow and regret as in

the falling off and change of base which I found in the matter of melon

cultivation.

We were exposed to the night air until past 1 o'clock, coming home

tired and disappointed with three small ones apiece, which we hid in the

hay-mow, according to a time-honored custom in the family, and retired.

The next day we both made a noble resolution to discard this unfortunate

habit which we had contracted, partly because we were old enough to know

better, and partly because we had in the hurry and precipitation of the

evening previous, stolen and carried four miles a half dozen melons of

the citron variety, that tasted like a premature pumpkin and smelled

like cod liver oil and convalescent glue.

I had also lost my revolver. When I go out nights I always go armed, and

for that reason I have gained the unenviable reputation of being a

bold, bad man. Many people think that I am thirsting for the lives of

my fellow-men and feel low-spirited and wretched unless I am shooting

large, irregular holes through the human family, but this is not true.

I never killed any one in my life, unless death was richly merited. I

have never taken a human life that society was not made better and safer

by the act.

This revolver was the same one that I used four years ago when I shot at

a burglar in Laramie. He was endeavoring, at the dead hour of midnight,

to get into the window, and I feared that his intentions were not

honorable. He knew that I was alone in the house, my wife having gone

away on a visit, and so taking advantage of her absence and my timidity,

he was endeavoring to force an entrance into the house. I don't know

what ever nerved me to such an act of lofty heroism, but I marched

softly out of the front door with noiseless tread and shot him.

Then I went back to bed and wondered what action the authorities would

take with me. Whether it would be considered justifiable homicide and

I exonorated, or whether I would be held without bail to answer at the

next term of court for murder. Then I wondered what I had better do with

the corpse. At first I thought I would run down and notify the coroner;

then I concluded to go and see the victim, and see if life were extinct.

Finally I compromised the matter by falling into a troubled sleep, from

which I awoke on the following morning. I went out to the place where

the burglar had been shot, but he was not there. With a superhuman

will-power he had dragged himself away somewhere to die. He had also

destroyed all traces of blood before getting away.

This was the last of the matter till the following September, when I

received this letter:

Omaha.

Dear Sir:--You doubtless think that I harbor ill-will and bitterness

toward you because you shot me last summer, but such is not the case. I

write to express my gratitude and everlasting friendship.

For years I had been an invalid, and last summer owing to my weak and

helpless condition and consequent loss of employment, I became deranged.

That accounts for my wild and insane idea that your residence was the

abode of wealth and affluence.

It was the delirium that precedes death. Ah, my benefactor, my noble

deliverer from death, how shall I tell you of my never-ending gratitude?

How like an angel of mercy you stood up before me that night in your

_robe de nuit_ and shot me!

How like a blessed seraph you looked at me, with your polished joints

glittering in the flash and dazzle of your peerless beauty!

I have been rapidly gaining ever since in weight and strength. I am now

married and happy, and I cheerfully point you out to my friends as the

one who, by your health-promoting markmanship and vitality-restoring

revolver, brought me back from death to hope, health and happiness.

Yours truly,

The-Man-You-Shot.

Since then I have called that revolver my Great Health Invigorator and

Blood Purifier.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXVIII--A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.

_An Important Movement.--The Requirements of a True Journalist.--Hold He

Should be Educated.--The Journalist at the Age of 95._

|A number of friends having personally asked me to express an opinion

upon the matter of an established school of journalism, as spoken of by

ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., and many more through

the West, who are strangers to me personally, having written me to

give my views upon the subject. I have consented in so far that I will

undertake a simple synopsis of what the course should embrace.

I most heartily indorse the movement, if it may be called such at this

early stage. Knowing a little of the intricacies of this branch of the

profession, I am going to state fully my belief as to its importance,

and the necessity for a thorough training upon it. We meet almost

everywhere newspaper men who are totally unfitted for the high office

of public educators through the all-powerful press. The woods is full

of them. We know that not one out of a thousand of those who are to-day

classed as journalists is fit for that position.

I know that to be the case, because people tell me so. I cannot call to

mind to-day, in all my wide journalistic acquaintance, a solitary man

who has not been pronounced an ass by one or more of my fellow-men. This

is indeed a terrible state of affairs.

In many instances these harsh criticisms are made by those who do not

know, without submitting themselves to a tremendous mental strain, the

difference between a "lower case" q and the old Calvinistic doctrine of

unanimous damnation, but that makes no difference; the true journalist

should strive to please the masses. He should make his whole life a

study of human nature and an earnest effort to serve the great reading

world collectively and individually.

This requires a man, of course, with similar characteristics and the

same general information possessed by the Almighty, but who would be

willing to work at a much more moderate salary.

The reader will instantly see how difficult it is to obtain this class

of men. Outside of the mental giant who writes these lines and two or

three others, perhaps----

But never mind. I leave a grateful world to say that, while I map out a

plan for the ambitious young journalist who might be entering upon

the broad arena of newspaperdom, and preparing himself at a regularly

established school for that purpose.

Let the first two years be devoted to meditation and prayer. This will

prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent profanity which

in a few years he may experience when he finds in his boss editorial

that God is spelled with a little g, and the peroration of the article

has been taken out and carefully locked up between a death notice and

the announcement of the birth of a cross-eyed infant.

The ensuing five years should be spent in becoming familiar with the

surprising and mirth-provoking orthography of the English language.

Then would follow three years devoted to practice with dumb bells, sand

bags and slung shots, in order to become an athlete. I have found in my

own journalistic history more cause for regret over my neglect of this

branch than any other. I am a pretty good runner, but aside from that I

regret to say that as an athlete I am not a dazzling success.

The above course of intermediate training would fit the student to enter

upon the regular curriculum.

Then set aside ten years for learning the typographical art perfectly,

so that when visitors wish to look at the composing room, and ask the

editor to explain the use of the "hell box," he will not have to blush

and tell a gauzy lie about its being a composing-stick. Let the young

journalist study the mysteries of type setting, distributing, press

work, galleys, italic, shooting-sticks, type lice and other mechanical

implements of the printer's department.

Five years should be spent in learning to properly read and correct

proof, as well as how to mark it on the margin like a Chinese map of the

Gunnison country.

At least fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of American

politics and the whole civil service. This time could be extended five

years with great profit to the careful student who wishes, of course, to

know thoroughly the names and records of all public men, together with

the relative political strength of each party.

He should then take a medical course and learn how to bind up

contusions, apply arnica, court plaster or bandages, plug up bullet

holes and prospect through the human system for buck shot. The reason of

this course, which should embrace five years of close study, is apparent

to the thinking mind.

Ten years should then be devoted to the study of law. No thorough

metropolitan editor wants to enter upon his profession without knowing

the difference between a writ of _mandamus_ and other styles of

profanity. He should thoroughly understand the entire system of American

jurisprudence.

The student will by this time begin to see what is required of him and

will enter with greater zeal upon his adopted profession.

He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years. He can then

write a telling editorial on the great question of What We Shall Do To

Be Saved without mixing up Calvin and Tom Paine with Judas Iscariot and

Ben Butler.

The closing ten years of the regular course might be profitably used

in learning a practical knowledge of cutting cord wood, baking beans,

making shirts, lecturing, turning double handsprings, preaching the

gospel, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour

in hot weather, learning the art of scissors grinding, punctuation,

capitalization, prosody, plain sewing, music, dancing, sculping,

etiquette, how to win the affections of the opposite sex, the ten

commandments, every man his own teacher on the violin, croquet, rules

of the prize ring, parlor magic, civil engineering, decorative

art, calsomining, bicycling, baseball, hydraulics, botany, poker,

calisthenics, high-low-jack, international law, faro, rhetoric,

fifteen-ball pool, drawing and painting, mule skinning, vocal music,

horsemanship, plastering, bull whacking, etc., etc., etc.

At the age of 95 the student will have lost that wild, reckless

and impulsive style so common among younger and less experienced

journalists. He will emerge from the school with a light heart and a

knowledge-box loaded up to the muzzle with the most useful information.

The heyday and spring-time of life will, of course, be past, but the

graduate will have nothing to worry him any more, except the horrible

question which is ever rising up before the journalist, as to whether

he shall put his money into government four per cents or purchase real

estate in some growing town.

MODERN FICTION IS UNRELIABLE.

|Modern fiction has reached that pass where the twentieth chapter may

wind up with a funeral of twins. Death or dyspepsia may befall the hero

at any moment, and the old-time schedule has been abandoned. It is

as delightfully surprising as prospecting for a quartz lead. You may

discover a bonanza or sit down on a tarantula at any moment. You may

tumble out of an ore bucket and reach the foot of the shaft with

your shoulder blade in your pistol pocket, or you may sit down on an

ostensibly extinct blast to think over your past life and the next

moment go crashing through the milky way without clothes enough to keep

off the night air.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XXXIX--SOME FACTS OF SCIENCE.

_An Interesting Diary--Corn and Small Fruits Suffer--A Fourth of July

Dinner--A Good Ice Cream Country--The Diary Abruptly Ends._

|A reporter sent out to find the North Pole some years ago, has just

been heard from. An exploring party recently found portions of his

remains in latitude 4-11-14, longitude sou'west by sou' from the

pole, and near the remains the following fragment of a diary: July 1,

1884.--Have just been out searching for a sunstroke and signs of a thaw.

Saw nothing but ice floe and snow as far as the eye could reach. Think

we will have snow this evening unless the wind changes.

July 2.--Spent the forenoon exploring to the northwest for right of way

for a new equatorial and North Pole railroad that I think would be of

immense value to commerce. The grade is easy and the expense would be

slight. Ate my last dog to-day. Had intended him for the 4th, but got

too hungry, and ate him raw with vinegar. I wish I was at home eating

pie.

July 3.--We had quite a frost last night, and it looks this morning as

though the corn and small fruits must have suffered. It is now two weeks

since the last of the crew died and left me alone. Ate the leather ends

of my suspenders to-day for dinner. I did not need the suspenders,

anyway, for by tightening up my pants I find they will stay on all

right, and I don't look for any ladies to call, so that even if my pants

came off by some oversight or other, nobody would be shocked.

July 4.--Saved up some tar roofing and a bottle of mucilage for my

Fourth of July dinner, and gorged myself to day. The exercises were very

poorly attended and the celebration rather a failure. It is clouding up

in the west, and I'm afraid we're going to have snow. Seems to me we're

having an all-fired late spring here this year.

[Illustration: 0221]

July 5.--Didn't drink a drop yesterday. It was the quietest Fourth I

ever put in. I never felt so little remorse over the way I celebrated as

I do to-day. I didn't do a thing yesterday that I was ashamed of except

to eat the remainder of a box of shoe blacking for supper. To-day I ate

my last boot-heel, stewed. Looks as though we might have a hard winter.

July 6.--Feel a little apprehension about something to eat. My credit

is all right here, but there is no competition, and prices are therefore

very high. Ice, however, is still firm. This would be a good ice-cream

country if there were any demand, but the country is so sparsely settled

that a man feels as lonesome here as a greenbacker at a presidential

election. Ate a pound of cotton waste soaked in machine oil, to-day.

There is nothing left for to-morrow but ice-water and an old pocket-book

for dinner. Looks as though we might have snow.

July 7.--This is a good, cool place to spend the summer if provisions

were more plenty. I am wearing a seal-skin undershirt, with three woolen

overshirts and two bear-skin vests, to-day, and when the dew begins to

fall I have to put on my buffalo ulster to keep off the night air. I

wish I was home. It seems pretty lonesome here since the other boys

died. I do not know what I will get for dinner to-morrow, unless the

neighbors bring in something. A big bear is coming down the hatchway as

I write. I wish I could eat him. It would be the first square meal for

two months. It is, however, a little mixed whether I will eat him or he

eat me. It will be a cold day for me if he----

*****

Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and from the chewed-up appearance of

the book, we are led to entertain a horrible fear as to his safety.

A HAT DEPOSIT IN THE BLACK HILLS.

|An old hunter was out among the Black Hills, east of town, last summer,

hunting for cotton-tails and sage hens, and he ran across a little gulch

where the abrupt rocks closed together and formed a little atmospheric

eddy, so to speak. There in that lonely reservoir he found what he at

first considered a petrified hat store. It was a genuine deposit of

escaped straw hats and plug hats that the frolicsome zephyrs had caught

up and carried for ten miles, until this natural hat-rack had secured

them. Of course there were other articles of apparel, and some

debilitated umbrellas, but the deposit seemed to assay mostly hats.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XL--SORROWS OF A ONE-LEGGED MAN.

_The Man with a Cork Leg and a Chastened Air--Remarks on Home

Government--A Happy Time in Contemplation--A Wife's Prerogatives--What

is to Become of the One-Legged Minority?_

|Yesterday morning, while the main guy of the sanctum was putting some

carbolic acid in the paste pot, and unlimbering his genius, and turning

his lyre preparatory to yanking loose a few stanzas on the midsummer

cucumber, a man with a cork leg, and the chastened air of one who

is second lieutenant in the home circle under the able and efficient

command of his wife, came softly in and sat down on a volume containing

the complete poems of Noah webster.

He waited patiently till he could catch the eye of the speaker, humming

softly to himself--=

``"Green grows the grave by the wild, dashing river

``Where sleeps the brave with his arrow and quiver."=

When the time had arrived for the lodge to open up unfinished business,

communications and new business, he ran his wooden leg through the

rounds of a chair and said:

"I desire to make a few remarks on the subject of home government, and

the rights a husband may have which his wife is bound to respect."

"Yes; but we don't enter the family circle with our all-pervading

influence. We simply attack evils of a public or general nature. You

should pour your tale of woe into the ears of an attorney. He will dish

out the required balm to you at so much per balm."

"I know, but this is not strictly a case for the courts. It's a case

which raises the question of the husband's priority, and agitates the

whole social fabric.

"Last week I celebrated my 43d birthday, or I started to celebrate

it, and circumstances over which I had no control arose and busted the

programme, as mapped out by the committee of arrangements.

"It was the intention of the party, consisting of myself and several

others of our most eminent men, to go over to Sabille canyon with

a mountain wagon and a pair of pinto plugs for a little wholesome

recreation. We had some weapons for slaying the frolicsome jack rabbit

and the timid sage hen, and had provided ourselves against every

possible rattlesnake contingency also. We had taken more precautions in

this direction, perhaps, than in any other, and were in shape to enjoy

the wild grandeur of the eternal hills without fear from the poisonous

reptile of the rugged gulches and alkali bottoms of this picturesque

western country.

"We were all loaded up in good shape for the trip and drove around to

my house to get a camp kettle and some lemons. I went into the pantry to

get a couple of pounds of sugar and a nutmeg.

"My wife met me in the pantry and roughly and brutally smelled of my

breath.

"This was not the prerogative of a true wife, but she weighs 200 and

is middling resolute, so I allowed her to do so, although every man's

breath is his own property, and if he allows his wife to take advantage

of her marital vows to smell his breath on the most unlooked-for

occasions, what is to become of our boasted freedom?

"I then went upstairs into a closet after a lap robe and a pillow to use

in case any of us got sunstruck.

"My wife came in just then, and as I started away with the pillow, she

tripped me up so I fell inside the closet, and before I could recover

from my surprise, she sat down on me in such a solemn and impressive

manner that my eyes hung out on my cheeks like the bronze door knobs on

a Pullman car.

"There I was in the impenetrable gloom of a closet, with the trusting

companion of my home life flattening out my stomach till I could feel my

watch chain against my spinal column. She then unscrewed my cork leg

in a mechanical kind of a way and locked it up in the bureau drawer,

putting the key in her pocket.

"After that she fastened the closet door on the outside, and told the

party that I would be unable, owing to the inclemency of the weather, to

take part in the exercises at Sabille canyon.

"All through that long, long, weary day, I stood around on one leg and

looked out of the window, thinking what a potent spell is exerted over

the wooden-legged man by an able-bodied wife.

"It is a question, sir, which is of vital interest to us all. Must

the one-legged minority continue thus to subserve the interests of

the two-legged majority? I ask you, as the representative of the all

civilizing, all leveling, all powerful and all jewhillikin press, how

long the cork-limbed, taxation-without-representation masses must limp

around the house and sew carpet rags, writhing in the death-like grip of

a two-legged oligarchy?"

He did not wait for an answer. He simply gathered up a few of our

freshest exchanges and stole softly down the stairs.

We decline to make any comment one way or the other, because we do not

know that the country is ripe for the discussion of this question, but

it deserves cold, calm, candid thought on the part of all thinking men,

to say the least.

THE TRUE POET LOVES SECLUSION.

|The true poet loves seclusion and soothing rest. That is the secret of

his even numbers and smooth cadences. Look at Dryden, and Walt Whitman,

and Milton, and Burns, and the Sweet Singer of Michigan. What could any

of them have done with the house full of children of the forest who were

hankering for a fresh pail of gore for lunch?

A PIE OPENER

|A handsome competence is in store for the man who will invent a neat,

durable and portable pie opener that will successfully reach the true

inwardness of the average, box-toed, Bessemer steel, gooseberry pie

which the hired girl casts in her kitchen foundry.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XLI--REVELATION IN UTAH.

_A Vacancy Amongst the Twelve Apostles--The Place Filled by

Revelation--How Would this System Work in Politics--There are Drawbacks

in this System._

|An esteemed and extremely connubial contemporary, says in a recent

editorial: "The Latter Day Saints will rejoice to learn that the

vacancies which have existed in the quorums ol the twelve apostles

and the first seven presidents of seventies are now filled. During the

conference recently held, Elder Abram II. Cannon was unanimously

chosen to be one of the first seven presidents of seventies, and he was

ordained to that office on Monday, October 9. Subsequently! the Lord,

by revelation through His servant, President John Taylor, designated by

name Brothers George Teasdale and Heber J. Grant, to be ordained to the

apostleship, and Brother Seymour B. Young to fill the remaining vacancy

in the presidency of the seventies. These brethren were ordained on

Monday, October 16, the two apostles, under the hands of the first

presidency and twelve, and the other under the hands of the twelve and

the presidency of the seventies."

Now, that's a convenient system of politics and civil service. When

there is a vacancy, the president, John Taylor, goes into his closet

and has a revelation, which settles it all right. If the man appointed

vicariously by the Lord is not in every way satisfactory, he may be

discharged by the same process. Instead, therefore, of being required to

rally a large force of his friends to aid him in getting an appointment,

the aspirant arranges solely with the party who runs the revelation

business. It will be seen at a glance, therefore, that the man who can

get the job of revelating in Zion, has it pretty much his own way. We

would not care who made the laws of Utah if we could do its revelating

at so much per revelate.

Think of the power it gives a man in a community of blind believers.

Imagine, if you please, the glorious possibilities in store for the

man who can successfully reveal the word of the Lord in an easy,

extemporaneous manner on five minutes' notice.

This prerogative does not confine itself to politics alone. The

Impromptu revelator of the Jordan has revelations when he wants to evade

the payment of a bill. He gets a divine order also if he desires to

marry a beautiful maid or seal the new school ma'am to himself. He has

a leverage which he can bring to bear upon the people of his diocese at

all times, even more potent than the press, and it does not possess the

drawbacks that a newspaper does. You can run an aggressive paper if you

want to in this country, and up to the time of the funeral you have a

pretty active and enjoyable time, but after the grave has been filled up

with the clods of the valley and your widow has drawn her insurance,

you naturally ask, "What is the advantage to be gained by this fearless

style of journalism?"

Still, even the inspired racket has its drawbacks. Last year a little

incident occurred in a Mormon family down in southern Utah, which

weighed about nine pounds, and when the _ex officio_ husband, who had

been absent two years, returned, he acted kind of wild and surprised,

somehow, and as he went through the daily round of his work he could be

seen counting his fingers back and forth and looking at the almanac,

and adding up little amounts on the side of the barn with a piece of red

chalk.

Finally, one of the inspired mob of that part of the vineyard thought it

was about time to get a revelation and go down there, so he did so.

He sailed up to the _de facto_ husband and _quasi_ parent and solemnly

straight ened up some little irregularities as to dates, but the

revelation was received with disdain, and the revelator was sent home in

an old ore sack and buried in a peach basket.

Sometimes there is, even in Utah, a manifestation of such irreverence

and open hostility to the church that it makes us shudder.

THE MODEL SLEEPING-CAR.

|One of these days they will invent a sleeper with a quart of pure air

for each person, instead of only a mouthful. If there could be more

pure air, and less mahogany corners on which to bump the system, and

the porter received a regular salary instead of mobbing the train with

a whisk broom, and garroting the passengers for $1 each, life would be

more desirable.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XLII--THE TONGUE-DESTROYING FRENCH LANGUAGE.

_The Rue de la Sitting Bull Difficulty in Getting the Drink, You

Want--Paris an Old Town--The Exposition Not Very Enjoyable._

|I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken

in the United States, for I am tired of the infernal lingo of this

God-forsaken country and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and

on some other subject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried

to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so

loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it

any more.

Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends

to step into a big drug store on the Rue de la Sitting Bull, to get a

glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some

cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place

probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians.

He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said:

"Ze vooly voo a la boomerang?"

I patted the soda fountain and said:

"No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your

truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I

will take about two fingers of bug juice in mine to sweeten my breath."

But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no

doubt, and got him a job in a drug store. So I said:

"Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you

just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and if you will put a little

tangle-foot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will pick up a pound

weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with _spirituous

frumenti_, old rye, benzine--bay rum--anything! _Parley voo, e pluribus

unum, sic semper go braugh!_ Do you understand _that?_"

But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him

stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de

la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives

on.

Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I

think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here

this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names

of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have

detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400.

I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to;

partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have

been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick

indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste

of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and

telescope the duodenum into the æsophagus. I used to stand that way

and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what

mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green, cold waves and the

wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this

weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap

my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it

all day.

I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am

trying to arrange it so as to go home by land. I think I can make up for

the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and

turned it over to the Atlantic ocean for inspection, than I have eaten

since I came here.

CARVING SCHOOLS.

|They are agitating the matter of instituting carving schools, in the

East, so that the rising generation will be able to pass down through

the corridors of time without its lap full of dressing and its bosom

laden with gravy and remorse. The students at this school will wear

barbed-wire masks while practicing. These masks will be similar to those

worn by German students, who slice each other up while obtaining an

education.

[Illustration: 0235]

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XLIV--ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

_Terrible Loss of Children--Strange Sympathy of the Health Officer--The

Old Man's Defense of his Boys--He Gives Free Utterance to his Heresies._

|Up in Polk county, Wis., not long ago, a man who had lost eight

children by diphtheria, while the ninth hovered between life and death

with the same disease, went to the health officer of the town and asked

aid to prevent the spread of the terrible scourge. The health officer

was cool and collected. He did not get excited over the anguish of the

father whose last child was at the moment hovering upon the outskirts of

immortality. He calmly investigated the matter, and never for a moment

lost sight of the fact that he was a town officer and a professed

Christian.

"You ask aid, I understand," said he, "to prevent the spread of the

disease, and also that the town shall assist you in procuring new and

necessary clothing, to replace that which you have been compelled to

burn in order to stop the further inroads of diphtheria. Am I right?"

The poor man answered affirmatively.

"May I ask if your boys who died were Christian boys, and whether they

improved their gospel opportunities and attended the Sabbath school, or

whether they were profane and given over to Sabbath-breaking?"

The bereft father said that his boys had never made a profession of

Christianity; that they were hardly old enough to do so, and that they

might have missed some gospel opportunities owing to the fact that they

were poor, and hadn't clothes fit to wear to Sabbath school. Possibly,

too, they had met with wicked companions, and had been taught to swear;

he could not say but they might have sworn, although he thought they

would have turned out to be good boys had they lived.

"I am sorry that the case is so bad," said the health officer. "I am led

to believe that God has seen fit to visit you with affliction in order

to express His divine disapproval of profanity, and I cannot help you.

It ill becomes us poor, weak worms of the dust to meddle with the just

judgments of God. Whether as an individual or as a _quasi corporation_,

it is well to allow the Almighty to work out His great plan of

salvation, and to avoid all carnal interference with the works of God."

The old man went back to his desolated home and to the bedside of his

only living child. I met him yesterday and he told me all about it.

"I am not a professor of religion," said he, "but I tell you, Mr. Nye,

I can't believe that this board of health has used me right. Somehow

I ain't worried about my little fellers that is gone. They was little

fellers, anyway, and they wasn't posted on the plan of salvation, but

they was always kind and they always minded me and their mother. If God

is using diphtheria agin perfanity this season they didn't know it. They

was too young to know about it and I was too poor to take the papers, so

I didn't know it nuther, i just thought that Christ was partial to

kids like mine, just the same as He used to be 2,000 years ago when the

country was new. I admit that my little shavers never went to Sabbath

school much, and I wasn't scholar enough to throw much light onto God's

system of retribution, but I told 'em to behave themselves, and they did,

and we had a good deal of fun together--me and the boys--and they was so

bright, and square, and cute that I didn't see how they could fall under

divine wrath, and I don't believe they did.

"I could tell you lots of smart little things that they used to do, Mr.

nye, but they wa'n't mean and cussed. They was just frolicky and gay

sometimes because they felt good. I don't believe God had it in for'em

bekuz they was like other boys, do you? Fer if I thought so it would

kind o' harden me and the old lady and make us sour on all creation.

"Mind you, I don't kick because I'm left alone here in the woods, and

the sun don't seem to shine, and the birds seems a little backward about

singin' this spring, and the house is so quiet, and she is still all

the time and cries in the night when she thinks I am asleep. All that

is tough, Mr. Nye--tough as old Harry, too--but it's so, and I ain't

murmurin', but when the board of health says to me that the Ruler of

the Universe is makin' a tower of northern Wisconsin, mowin' down little

boys with sore throat because they say 'gosh,' I can't believe it.

"I know that people who ain't familiar with the facts will shake their

heads and say that I am a child of wrath, but I can't help it. All I can

do is to go up there under the trees where them little graves is, and

think how all-fired pleasant to me them little, short lives was, and how

every one of them little fellers was when he come, poor as I was, and

how I rastled with poor crops and pine stumps to buy cloze for'em, and

didn't care a cent for style as long as they was well. That's the

kind of heretic I am, and if God is like a father that settles it.

he wouldn't wipe out my family just to establish discipline, I don't

believe. The plan of creation must be on a bigger scale than that, it

seems to me, or else it's more or less a fizzle.

"That board of health is better read than I am. It takes the papers and

can add up figures, and do lots of things that I can't do; but when

them fellers tell me that they represent the town of Balsam Lake and the

Kingdom of Heaven, my morbid curiosity is aroused, and I want to see the

stiffykits of election."

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE REVOLVER DIFFICULTY.

|If revolvers could not be sold for less than $500 a piece, with a

guarantee on the part of the vendee, signed by good sureties, that he

would support the widows and orphans, you would see more longevity lying

around loose, and Western cemeteries would cease to roll up such mighty

majorities.

THE FEMALE ARTISTE.

|Along the dreary pathway of this cloud-environed life of ours there

is no joy so pure, no triumph so complete, no success so fraught with

rapture, as that of the female artiste who hangs on the flying trapeze

by her chilblain and kisses her hand to the perspiring throng.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XLV--FUN OF BEING A PUBLISHER.

_Publishing Is Not All Joy and Johnny jump-ups--A Singular Letter--Plot

of a Novel--Algonquin and Sciatica._

|Being a publisher is not all sunshine, joy and johnny-jump-ups,

although the gentle and tractable reader may at times think so.

A letter was received two years ago by the publishers of this book, on

the outside of which was the request to the "P. Master of Chicago to

give to the most reliable man in Chicago and oblige."

The P. Master thereupon gave the letter to Messrs. Belford, Clarke &

Co., who have sent it to me as a literary curiosity. I want it to go

down to posterity, so I put it in this great work. I simply change the

names, and where words are too obscure, doctor them up a little:

Butler, Bates county, Mo., Jan., 1886.

I have a novle fresh and pure from the pen, wich i would like to be

examined by you. I wish to bring it before the public the ensuing

summer. I have wrote a good deal for the press, and always with great

success. I wrote once an article on the growth of pie plant wich was

copied fur and wide. You may have heard of me through my poem on "The

Cold, Damp Sea or the Murmuring Wave and its Sad Kerplunk."

I dashed it off one summer day for the Scabtown _Herald_.

In it, I enter the fair field of fancy and with exquisite word painting,

I lead the reader on and on until he forgets that breakfast is ready,

and follows the thrilling career of Algonquin and his own fair-haired

Sciatica through page after page of delirious joy and poetic rithum.

In this novle I have wove a woof of possibilities criss-crossed with

pictures of my own wild, unfettered fancy, which makes it a work at once

truthful and yet sufficiently unnatural to make it egorly sot for by the

great reading world.

The plot of the novle is this:

Algonquin is a poor artist, who paints lovely sunsets and things,

nights, and cuts cordwood during the day, struggling to win a competence

so that he can sue for the hand of Sciatica, the wealthy daughter of a

plumber.

She does not love him much, and treats him coldly; but he perseveres

till one of his exquisite pictures is egorly snapt up by a wealthy man

at $2. The man afterwards turns out to be Sciatica's pa.

He says unkind things of Algonquin, and intimates that he is a better

artist in four-foot wood than he is as a sunset man. He says that

Algonquin is more of a Michael Angelo in basswood than anywhere else,

and puts a wet blanket on Sciataca's love for Algonquin.

Then Sciataca grows colder than ever to Algonquin, and engages herself

to a wealthy journalist.

Just as the wedding is about to take place, Algonquin finds that he is

by birth an Ohio man. Sciataca repents and marries her first love.

He secures the appointment of governor of Wyoming, and they remove to

Cheyenne.

Then there are many little oursts of pictureskness and other things that

I would like to see in print.

I send also a picture of myself which I would like to have in the book.

Tell the artist to tone down the freckles so that the features may be

seen by the observer and put on a diamond pin so that it will have an

appearance of wealth, which the author of a book generally wears.

It is not wrote very good, but that won't make any difference when it is

in print.

When the reading public begins to devour it, and the scads come rolling

in, you can deduct enough for to pay your expenses of printing and

pressing, and send me the balance by postoffice money order. Please get

it on the market as soon as possible, as I need a Swiss muzzlin and some

other togs suitable to my position in liturary circles. Yours truly,

Luella Blinker.

A LESSON FROM THE MULE.

|We may often learn a valuable lesson from the stubborn mule, and guard

against the too protuberant use of our own ideas in opposition to other

powers against which it is useless to contend. It may be wrong for giant

powder to blow the top of a man's head off without cause, but repeated

contests have proved that even when giant powder is in the wrong, it is

eventually victorious.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XLVI--PERFORMANCE OF THE PHOENIX.

_Mr. Blackburn, the Heavy Villian--Difficulties With the Scenery--The

Play in New York--The Military Parade._

|At the performance of "The Phoenix" here, the other night, there was a

very affecting place where the play is transferred very quickly from

a street scene to the elegant apartments of Mr. Blackburn, the heavy

villain. The street scene had to be raised out of the way, and the

effect of the transition was somewhat marred by the reluctance of the

scenery in rolling up out of the way. It got about half way up, and

stopped there in an undecided manner, which annoyed the heavy villain

a good deal. He started to make some blood-curdling remarks about Mr.

Bludsoe, and had got pretty well warmed up when the scenery came down

with a bang on the stage.

[Illustration: 0245]

The artist who pulls up the curtain and fills the hall lamps, then

pulled the scene up so as to show the villain's feet for fifteen or

twenty minutes, but he couldn't get it any farther. It seemed that the

clothes line, by which the elaborate scenery is operated, got tangled up

some way, and this caused the delay. After that another effort was made,

and this time the street scene rolled up to about the third story of

a brick hotel shown in the foreground, and stopped there, while the

clarionet and first violin continued a kind of sad tremulo. Then a dark

hand, with a wart on one finger and an oriental dollar store ring

on another, came out from behind the wings and began to wind the

clothes-line carefully around the pole at the foot of the scene. The

villain then proceeded with his soliloquy, while the street scene hung

by one corner in such a way as to make a large warehouse on the corner

of the street stand at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

Laramie will never feel perfectly happy until these little hitches are

dispensed with. Supposing that at some place in the play, where the

heroine is speaking soft and low to her lover and the proper moment has

arrived for her to pillow her sunny head upon his bosom, that street

scene should fetch loose, and come down with such momentum as to knock

the lovers over into the arms of the bass-viol player. Or suppose that

in some death-bed act this same scene, loaded with a telegraph pole at

the bottom, should settle down all at once in such a way as to leave the

death-bed out on the corner of Monroe and Clark streets, in front of a

candy store.

Modern stage mechanism has now reached such a degree of perfection that

the stage carpenter does not go up on a step ladder, in the middle of a

play, and nail the corner of a scene to a stick of 2x4 scantling, while

a duel is going on near the step ladder. In all the larger theaters and

opera houses, now, they are not doing that way.

Of course little incidents occur, however, even on the best stages, and

where the whole thing works all right. For instance, the other day, a

young actor, who was kneeling to a beautiful heiress down East, got a

little too far front, and some scenery, which was to come together

in the middle of the stage to pianissimo music, shut him outside and

divided the tableau in two, leaving the young actor apparently kneeling

at the foot of a street lamp, as though he might be hunting for a half a

dollar that he had just dropped on the sidewalk.

There was a play in New York, not long ago, in which there was a kind of

military parade introduced, and the leader of a file of soldiers had his

instructions to march three times around the stage to martial music, and

then file off at the left, the whole column, of course, following him.

After marching once around, the stage manager was surprised to see the

leader deliberately wheel, and walk off the stage, at the left, with

the whole battalion following at his heels. The manager went to him

and abused him shamefully for his haste, and told him he had a mind

to discharge him; but the talented hack driver, who thus acted as the

military leader, and who had over-played himself by marching off the

stage ahead of time, said:

"Well, confound it, you can discharge me if you want to, but what was a

man to do? Would you have me march around three times when my military

pants were coming off, and I knew it? Military pride, pomp, parade

and circumstance, are all right; but it can be overdone. A military

squadron, detachment, or whatever it is, can make more of a parade,

under certain circumstances, than is advertised. I didn't want to give

people more show than they paid for, and I ask you to put yourself in my

place. When a man is paid three dollars a week to play a Roman soldier,

would you have him play the Greek slave? No, sir; I guess I know what

I'm hired to play, and I'm going to play it. When you want me to play

Adam in the Garden of Eden, just give me my fig leaf and salary enough

to make it interesting, and I will try and properly interpret the

character for you, or refund the money at the door."

FIRMNESS.

|Firmness is a good thing in its place, but we should early learn that

to be firm, we need not stand up against a cyclone till our internal

economy is blown into the tops of the neighboring trees. Moral courage

is a good thing, but it is useless unless you have a liver to go along

with it. Sometimes a man is required to lay down his life for his

principles, but the cases where he is expected to lay down his digester

on the altar of his belief, are comparatively seldom.

PUGILIST OR STATESMAN.

|Thousands of our own boys, who to-day are spearing frogs, or bathing in

the rivers of their native land and parading on the shingly beach with

no clothes on to speak of, are left to chose between such a career of

usefulness and greatness of brow, and the humdrum life of a bilious

student and pale, sad congressman. Will you rise to the proud pinnacle

of fame as a pugilist, boys, or will you plug along as a sorrowing,

overworked statesman? Now, in the spring-time of your lives, choose

between the two, and abide the consequences.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> NYE AS A CRITIC AND NYE AS A POET.

_POETIC CHESTNUTS_

_The Poet of the Greeley Eye--The Dying Cowboy and the Preacher--A

Mournful Stanza--Poems by Nye--Apostrophe to an Orphan Mule--Ode to

Spring--The Picnic Snoozeds Lament--Ode to the Cucumber--Apostrophe to

Oscar Wilde--An Adjustable Campaign Song--The Beautiful Snow._

A new and dazzling literary star has risen above the horizon, and is

just about to shoot athwart the starry vault of poesy. How wisely are

all things ordered, and how promptly does the new star begin to beam,

upon the decline of the old.

Hardly had the sweet singer of Michigan commenced to wane and to

flicker, when, rising above the western hills, the glad light of the

rising star is seen, and adown the canyons and gulches of the Rocky

mountains comes the melodious cadences of the poet of the Greeley Eye.

Couched in the rough terms of the West, robed in the untutored language

of the Michael Angelo slang of the miner and the cowboy, the poet at

first twitters a little on a bough far up the canyon, gradually waking

the echoes, until the song is taken up and handed back by every rock and

crag along the rugged ramparts of the mighty mountain barrier.

Listen to the opening stanza of "The Dying Cowboy and the Preacher:"=

``So, old gospel shark, they tell me I must die;

``That the wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut,

``Well, I will "pass in my checks" without a whimper or a cry,

``And die as I have lived--"a hard nut."=

This is no time-worn simile, no hackneyed illustration or bald-headed

decrepit comparison, but a new, fresh illustration that appeals to the

Western character, and lifts the very soul out of the kinks, as it were.

Wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut.

Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How

melodious and yet how real. None but the true poet would have thought to

compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off

hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.

In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel,

the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.

Now and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of

the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then

a calm falls upon the scene. Anon, the driver bangs the mule that is

ostensibly pulling his daylights out, but who is, in fact, humping up

like an angle worm, without nulling a pound.

Then the poet comes to the close of the cowboy's career in this style:

"Do I repent?

"No--of nothing present or past;

"So skip, old preach, on gospel pap I won't be fed;

"My breath comes hard; I--am going--but--I--am game to the--last."

And reckless of the future, as the present, the cowboy was dead.

If we could write poetry like that, do you think we would plod along

the dreary pathway of the journalist? Do you suppose that if we had the

heaven-born gift of song to such a degree, that we could take hold of

the hearts of millions and warble two or three little ditties like that,

or write an elegy before breakfast, or construct an ionic, anapestic

twitter like the foregoing, that we would carry in our own coal, and

trim our own lamps, and wear a shirt two weeks at a time?

No, sir. We would hie us away to Europe or Salt Lake, and let our hair

grow long, and we would write some obituary truck that would make people

disgusted with life, and they would sigh for death that they might leave

their insurance and their obituaries to their survivors.

POEMS BY BILL NYE

APOSTROPHE TO AN ORPHAN MULE.=

```Oh! lonely, gentle, unobtrusive mule!

```Thou standest idly 'gainst the azure sky,

```And sweetly, sadly singeth like a hired man.

````Who taught thee thus to warble

```In the noontide heat and wrestle with

```Thy deep, corroding grief and joyless woe?

```Who taught thy simple heart

````Its pent-up, wildly-warring waste

```Of wanton woe to carol forth upon

`````The silent air?

````I chide thee not, because thy

```Song is fraught with grief-embittered

```Monotony and joyless minor chords

```Of wild, imported melody, for thou

```Art restless, woe begirt and

```Compassed round about with gloom,

````Thou timid, trusting, orphan mule!

`````Few joys, indeed, are thine,

```Thou thrice-bestricken, madly

```Mournful, melancholy mule.

```And he alone who strews

```Thy pathway with his cold remains

```Can give thee recompense

`````Of lemoncholy woe.

```He who hath sought to steer

```Thy limber, yielding tail

```Fernist thy crupper-band

````Hath given thee joy, and he alone.

```'Tis true, he may have shot

```Athwart the Zodiac, and, looking

```O'er the outer walls upon

`````The New Jerusalem,

```Have uttered vain regrets.

```Thou reekest not. O orphan mule,

```For it hath given thee joy, and

```Bound about thy bursting heart,

```And held thy tottering reason

`````To its throne.

```Sing on, O mule, and warble

```In the twilight gray,

```Unchidden by th heartless throng.

```Sing of thy parents on thy father's side.

```Yearn for the days now past and gone;

```For he who pens these halting,

```Limping lines to thee

```Doth bid thee yearn, and yearn, and yearn.=

ODE TO SPRING.

FANTASIA FOR THE BASS DRUM; ADAPTED FROM THE GERMAN BY WILLIAM VON NYE.=

```In the days of laughing spring time,

````Comes the mild-eyed sorrel cow,

```With bald-headed patches on her,

````Poor and lousy, I allow;

```And she waddles through your garden

````O'er the radish-beds, I trow.=

```Then the red-nosed, wild-eyed orphan,

````With his cyclopædiee,

```Hies him to the rural districts

````With more or less alacrity.

```And he showeth up its merits

````To the bright eternitee.=

```How the bumble-bee doth bumble

````Bumbling in the fragrant air,

```Bumbling with his little bumbler,

````Till he climbs the golden stair.

```Then the angels will provide him

````With another bumbilaire.=`

THE PICNIC SNOOZER'S LAMENT.=

```Gently lay aside the picnic,

````For its usefulness is o'er,

```And the winter style of misery

````Stands and knocks upon your door.=

```Lariat the lonely oyster,

````Drifting on some foreign shore;

```Zion needs him in her business--

````She can use him o'er and o'er.=

```Bring along the lonely oyster,

````With the winter style of gloom,

```And the supper for the pastor,

````With its victims for the tomb.=

```Cast the pudding for the pastor,

````With its double iron door;

```It will gather in the pastor

````For the bright and shining shore.=

```Put away the little picnic

````Till the coming of the spring;

```Useless now the swaying hammock

````And the idle picnic swing.=

```Put away the pickled spider

````And the cold pressed picnic fly,

```And the decorated trousers

````With their wealth of custard pie.=

ODE TO THE CUCUMBER.=

```O, a cucumber grew by the deep rolling sea,

```And it tumbled about in reckless glee

```Till the summer waned and the grass turned brown.

```And the farmer plucked it and took it to town.=

```Wrinkled and warty and bilious and blue,

```It lay in the market the autumn through;

```Till a woman with freckles on her cheek

```Led in her husband, so mild and meek.=

```He purchased the fruit, at her request,

```And hid it forever under his vest,

```For it doubled him up like a kangaroo,

```And now he sleeps 'neath the violets blue.=

APOSTROPHE ADDRESSED TO O. WILDE.=

````Soft eyed seraphic kuss

```With limber legs and lily on the side,

```We greet you from the raw

```And uncouth West.=

```The cowboy yearns to yank thee

```To his brawny breast and squeeze

```Thy palpitating gizzard

```Through thy vest.=

```Come to the mountain fastness,

```Oscar, with thy low neck shirt

```And high neck pants;

```Fly to the coyote's home,

```Thou son of Albion,

```James Crow bard and champion aesthete

```From o'er the summer sea.=

```Sit on the fuzzy cactus, king of poesy,

```And song,

```Ride the fierce broncho o'er the dusty plain,

```And le' the zephyr sigh among thy buttery locks.

```Welcome thou genius of dyspeptic song,

```Thou bilious lunatic from far-off lands.

```Come to the home of genius,

```By the snowy hills.

```And wrestle with the alcoholic inspiration

```Of our cordial home.

````We yearn

```To put the bloom upon thy alabaster nose,

```And plant the jim-jams

```In thy clustering hair.

```Hail, mighty snoozer from across the main!

````We greet thee

```With our free, untutored ways and wild

```Peculiar style of deadly beverage.

```Come to the broad, free West and mingle

```With our high-toned mob.=

```Come to the glorious Occident

```And dally with the pack-mule's whisk-broom tail;

```Study his odd yet soft demeanor,

```And peculiar mien.=

```Tickle his gambrel with a sunflower bud

```And scoot across the blue horizon

```To the tooness of the sweet and succulent beyond.=

````We'll gladly

```Gather up thy shattered remnants

```With a broom and ship thee to thy beauteous home.

```Forget us not,

```Thou bilious pelican from o'er the sea.=

````Thou blue-nosed clam

```With pimply, bulging brow, but

```Come and we will welcome thee

```With ancient omelet and fragrant sausage

````Of forgotten years.=

ADJUSTABLE CAMPAIGN SONG.=

```(Air--_Rally Round the Flag, Boys_.)=

```Oh, we'll gather from the hillsides,

````We'll gather from the glen,

```Shouting the battle cry of....

```And we'll round up our voters.

```Our brave and trusty men,

````Shouting the battle cry of.....=

`````Chorus.=

````Oh, our candidate forever,

`````Te doodle daddy a,

````Down with old....

````Turn a foodie diddy a,

````And we'll whoop de dooden do,

`````Fal de adden adden a,

````And don't you never forget it.=

````Ob, we'll meet the craven foe

`````On the fall election day,

````Shouting the battle cry of...

````And we'll try to let him know

````That we're going to have our way,

````Shouting the battle cry of...=

`````Chorus.=

````Oh, our candidate forever, etc.=

````Oh, we're the people's friends,

`````As all can plainly see,

````Shouting the battle cry of....

````And we'll whoop de dooden doo,

````With our big majority,

````And don't you never forget it.=

`````Chorus.=

```Oh. our candidate forever, etc.=

THE BEAUTIFUL SNOW.=

```O drifted whiteness covering

```The fair face of nature.

```Pure as the sigh of a blessed spirit

```On the eternal shores, you

```Glitter in the summer sun

```Considerable. My mortal

```Ken seems weak and

```Helpless in the midst of

```Your dazzling splendor,

```And I would hide my

```Diminished head like

```Serf unclothed in presence

```Of his mighty King.

````You lie engulphed

```Within the cold embrace

```Of rocky walls and giant

```Cliffs. You spread out

```Your white mantle and

```Enwrap the whole broad

```Universe, and a portion

```Of York State.

````You seem content

```Resting in silent whiteness

```On the frozen breast of

```The cold, dead earth. You

```Think apparently that

```You are middling white;

```But once I was in the

```Same condition. I was

```Pure as the beautiful snow,

```But I fell. It was a

```Right smart fall, too.

```It churned me up a

```Good deal and nearly

```Knocked the supreme

```Duplex from its intellectual

```Throne. It occurred in

```Washington, D. C.

````But thou

```Snow, lying so spotless

```On the frozen earth, as

```I remarked before, thou

```Hast indeed a soft,

```Soft thing. Thou comest

```Down like the silent

```Movements of a specter,

```And thy fall upon the

```Earth is like the tread

```Of those who walk the

```Shores of immortality.

```You lie around all

```Winter drawing your

```Annuities till spring,

```And then the soft

```Breath from the south with

```Touch seductive bids you

```Go, and you light out

```With more or less alacrity.=

A BUSHEL OF SMALLER CHESTNUTS.

THE TRUE TALE OF WILLIAM TELL.

|William Tell ran a hay ranche near Bergelen, about 580 years ago. Tell

had lived in the mountains all his life, and shot chamois and chipmunks

with a cross-gun, till he was a bad man to stir up.

At that time Switzerland was run principally by a lot of carpet-baggers

from Austria, and Tell got down on them about the year 1307. It seems

that Tell wanted the government contract to furnish hay, at $45 a ton,

for the Year 1306, and Gessler, who was controlling the patronage

of Switzerland, let the contract to an Austrian who had a big lot of

condemned hay, farther up the gulch.

One day Gessler put his plug hat up on a telegraph pole, and issued

order 236, regular series, to the effect that every snoozer who passed

down the toll road should bow to it.

Gessler happened to be in behind the brush when Tell Went by, and he

noticed that Bill said "Shoot the hat," and didn't salute it; so he told

his men to gather Mr. Tell in, and put him in the refrigerator.

Gessler told him that if he Would shoot a crab-apple from the head

of his only son at 200 yards, with a cross-gun, he would give him his

liberty.

Tell consented, and knocked the apple higher than Gilroy's kite. Old

Gessler, however, noticed another arrow sticking in William's girdle,

and he asked what kind of a flowery break that was.

Tell told him that if he had killed the kid instead of busting the

apple, he intended to drill a hole through the stomach of Mr. Gessler.

This made Gessler mad again, and he took Tell on a picnic up the river,

in irons.

Tell jumped off when he got a good chance, and cut across a bend in the

river, and when the picnic party came down, he shot Gessler deader than

a mackeral.

This opened the ball for freedom, and weakened the Austrian government

so much that in the following November they elected Tell to fill the

long term, and a half-breed for the short term.

After that, Tell was recognized by the ruling power, and he could get

most any contract that he wanted to. He got the service on the stage

line up into the Alps increased to a daily, and had the contracts in the

name of his son Albert.

The appropriation was increased $150,000 per year, and he had a good

thing.

Tell lived many years after this, and was loved by the Swiss people

because he had freed their land.

Whenever he felt lonesome, he would take his crossgun and go out and

kill a tyrant. He had tyrant on toast most every day till Switzerland

was free, and the peasants blessed him as their deliverer.

When Tell got to be an old man he would go out into the mountains and

apostrophize them in these memorable words:

"Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again. I hold to you the hands

I held to you on previous occasions, to show you they are free. The

tyrant's crust is busted, so to speak. His race is run, and he himself

hath scooted up the flume. _Sic semper McGinnis, terra Anna, nux vomica,

Schweitzer lease, Timbuctoo, erysipelas, e pluribus unum, sciataca,

multum in parvo, vox populi, vox snockomonthegob_."

WHY WE WEEP.

|In justice to ourself we desire to state that the Cheyenne _Sun_ has

villified us and placed us in a false position before the public. It has

stated that while at Rock Creek station, in the early part of the week,

we were taken for a peanutter, and otherwise ill-treated at the railroad

eating corral and omelette emporium, and that in consequence of such

treatment we shed great, scalding tears as large as watermelons. This is

not true. We did shed the tears as above set forth, but not because of

ill-treatment on the part of the eating-house proprietor.

It was the presence of death that broke our heart and opened the

fountains of our great deep, so to speak, when we poured the glucose

syrup on our pancakes, the stiff and cold remains of a large beetle and

two cunning little twin cockroaches fell out into our plate, and lay

there hushed in an eternal repose.

Death to us is all powerful. The King of Terrors is to us the mighty

sovereign before whom we must all bow, from the mighty emperor down

to the meanest slave, from the railroad superintendent, riding in his

special car, down to the humblest humorist, all alike must some day curl

up and die. This saddens us at all times, but more peculiarly so when

Death, with his relentless lawn-mower, has gathered in the young anu

innocent. This was the case where two little twin cockroaches, whose

lives had been unspotted, and whose years had been unclouded by

wrong and selfishness were called upon to meet death together. In the

stillness of the night, when others slept, these affectionate little

twins crept into the glucose syrup and died.

We hope no one will misrepresent this matter. We did weep, and we are

not ashamed to own it. We sat there and sobbed until the tablecloth was

wet for four feet, and the venerable ham was floating around in tears.

It was not for ourself, however, that we wept. No unkindness on the part

of an eating house ever provoked such a tornado of woe. We just weep

when we see death and are brought in close contact with it. And we were

not the only one that shed tears. Dickinson and Warren wept, strong

men as they were. Even the butter wept. Strong as it was it could not

control its emotions.

We don't very often answer a newspaper attack, but when we are accused

of weeping till people have to take off their boots and wring out their

socks, we want the public to know what it is for.

ETIQUETTE FOR THE YOUNG.

|Young children who have to wait till older people have eaten all there

is in the house, should not open the dining-room door during the meal

and ask the host if he is going to eat all day. It makes the company

feel ill at ease, and lays up wrath in the parents' heart.

Children should not appear displeased with the regular courses at

dinner, and then fill up on pie. Eat the less expensive food first, and

then organize a picnic in the preserves afterward.

Do not close out the last of your soup by taking the plate in your mouth

and pouring the liquid down your childish neck. You might spill it on

your bosom, and it enlarges and distorts the mouth unnecessarily.

When asked what part of the fowl you prefer, do not say you will take

the part that goes over the fence last. This remark is very humorous,

but the rising generation ought to originate some new table jokes that

will be worthy of the age in which we live.

Children should early learn the use of the fork, and how to handle it.

This knowledge can be acquired by allowing them to pry up the carpet

tacks with this instrument, and other little exercises, such as the

parent mind may suggest.

The child should be taught at once not to wave his bread around over the

table, while in conversation, or to fill his mouth full of potatoes, and

then converse in a rich tone of voice with someone out in the yard.

He might get his dinner down his trochea and cause his parents great

anxiety.

In picking up a plate or saucer filled with soup or with moist food, the

child should be taught not to parboil his thumb in the contents of the

dish, and to avoid swallowing soup bones or other indigestible debris.

Toothpicks are generally the last course, and children should not be

permitted to pick their teeth and kick the table through the other

exercises. While grace is being said at table, children should know that

it is a breach of good breeding to smouge fruit cake, just because their

parents' heads are bowed down, and their attention for the moment turned

in another direction. Children ought not to be permitted to find fault

with the dinner, or fool with the cat while they are eating. Boys

should, before going to the table, empty all the frogs and grasshoppers

out of their pockets, or those insects might crawl out during the

festivities, and jump into the gravy.

If a fly wades into your jelly up to his gambrels, do not mash him with

your spoon before all the guests, as death is at all times depressing

to those who are at dinner, and retards digestion. Take the fly out

carefully, with what naturally adheres to his person, and wipe him on

the table cloth. It will demonstrate your perfect command of yourself,

and afford much amusement for the company. Do not stand up in your chair

and try to spear a roll with your fork. It is not good manners to do so,

and you might slip and bust your crust, by so doing. Say "thank you,"

and "much obliged," and "beg pardon," wherever you can work in

these remarks, as it throws people off their guard, and gives you an

opportunity to get in your work on the pastry and other bric-a-brac near

you at the time.

SWEET SAINT VALENTINE.

|It is the evening of St. Valentine's Day, and I am thinking of the long

ago. St. Valentine's Day is nothing now but a blessed memory. Another

landmark has been left behind in our onward march toward the great

hereafter. We come upon the earth, battle a little while with its joys

and its griefs, and then we pass away to give place to other actors on

the mighty stage.

Only a few short years ago what an era St. Valentine's Day was to me.

How I still get valentines, but they are different and they effect me

differently. They are not of so high an order of merit artistically, and

the poetry is more impudent and less on the turtle-dove order.

Some may be neglected on St. Valentine's Day, but I am not. I never go

away by myself and get mad because I have been overlooked. I generally

get valentines enough to paper a large hall. I file them away carefully

and sell them back to the dealer for next year. Then the following St.

Valentine's Day I love to look at the familiar features of those I have

received in the years agone.

One of these blessed valentines I have learned to love as I do my life.

I received it first in 1870. It represents a newspaper reporter with

a nose on him like the woman's suffrage movement. It is a large,

enthusiastic nose of a bright bay color with bias folds of the same,

shirred with dregs of wine. How well I know that nose. The reporter is

represented in tight green pants and orange coat. The vest is scarlet

and the necktie is maroon, shot with old gold.

The picture represents the young journalist as a little bit disposed to

be brainy. The intellect is large and abnormally prominent. It hangs out

over the deep-set eyes like the minority juror on the average panel.

I cannot help contrasting this dazzling five-cent valentine with the

delicate little poem in pale blue and Torchon lace which I received in

the days of yore from the red-headed girl with the wart on her thumb.

Ah! how little of genuine pleasure have fame and fortune to offer us

compared with that of sitting behind the same school desk with the

Bismarck blonde of the school and with her alternately masticating the

same hunk of spruce gum.

I sometimes chew gum nowadays to see if it will bring back the old

pleasant sensations, but it don't. The teacher is not watching me now.

There is too little restraint, and the companion, too, who then assisted

in operating the gum business, and used to spit on her slate with such

elegance and abandon, and wipe it thoughtfully off with her apron, she

too is gone. One summer day when the little birds were pouring forth

their lay, and the little lambs were frisking on the green sward, and

yanking their tails athwart the ambient air, she lit out for the

great untried West with a grasshopper sufferer. The fluff and bloom

of existence for her too is gone. She bangs eternal punishment out of

thirteen consecutive children near Ogallalla, Neb., and wears out her

sweet girlish nature working up her husband's underclothes into a rag

carpet. It seems tough, but such is life.

CARRYING REVOLVERS.

|The righteous war against the carrying of pistols is still going

bravely on all over the country, and the mayors of the larger cities are

making it red hot for every one who violates the law.

This is right. No man ever carried one that he did not intend to kill

some one with it. If he does not intend to kill some one, why does he

carry a deadly weapon? The result is that very often a man who, if he

had gone unarmed as he ought to, would have been a respected citizen,

becomes a caged murderer with a weeping, widowed wife and worse than

orphaned children at home.

We used to feel at times as though here in this western country we were

having a pretty lonesome time of it, never having killed anybody, and we

began to think that in order to command respect we would have to start a

private cemetery, so one time when we had a good opportunity we drew our

pop on a man and shot at him.

He often writes to us now and tells us how healthy he is. Before we shot

at him he used to have trouble with his digestion, and every spring

he was so bilious that he didn't care whether he lived or not. How he

weighs 200 and looks forward to a long and useful life.

Still the revolver is not always a health promoter. It is more deadly

as a general rule for the owner than any one else. Half at least of the

distressing accidents that occur as a result of carrying a pistol, are

distressing mainly to the man who carries the weapon.

We sometimes think that if editors would set the example, and instead

of going around armed to the teeth, would rely on the strength of their

noble manhood and a white oak club, others would follow and discard the

pistol. For a year we have been using a club, with the best results, and

although the exercise has been pretty severe at times, the death rate

has been considerably reduced, and many of our citizens have been spared

to bless the community with their presence.

Let the press of the country take hold of this thing, and the day will

come when a man may enter the editorial office as fearlessly as now he

goes into the postoffice.

Nothing unnerves a man like going into a sanctum and finding fragments

of an old acquaintance scattered over the velvet carpet, or ruthlessly

jammed into a porcelain cuspidore.

THE AGITATED HEN.

|Dear reader, did you ever wrestle with a hen that had a wild,

uncontrollable desire to incubate? Did you ever struggle on, day after

day, trying to convince her that her mission was to furnish eggs for

your table instead of hovering all day on a door knob, trying to hatch

out a litter of front doors?

William II. Root, of this place, who has made the hen a study, both in

her home life and while lying in the embrace of death, has struck upon

an argument which the average hen will pay more attention to than any

other he has discovered in his researches.

He says the modern hen ignores almost everything when she once gets the

notion that she has received a call to incubate. You can deluge her with

the garden hose, or throw old umbrellas at her, or change her nest, but

that don't count with the firm and stubborn hen. You can take the

eggs out of the nest and put a blooded bull-dog or a nest of new-laid

bumblebees in place of them, and she will hover over them as assiduously

as she did before.

William H. Root's hen had shown some signs of this mania, so he took out

the eggs and let her try her incubate on a horse rake awhile, just so

she could kind of taper off gradual and not have her mind shattered.

Then he tried her at hatching out four-tined forks, and at last her

taste got so vitiated that she took the contract to furnish the country

with bustles by hatching out an old hoop skirt that had gone to seed.

Mr. Boot then made an experiment. We were one of a board of scientists

who assisted in the consultation. The owner of the hen got a strip of

red flannel and tied it around her tail.

The hen seemed annoyed as soon as she discovered it, No hen cares to

have a sash hung on her system that doesn't match her complexion. A

seal-brown hen with a red flannel polonaise don't seem to harmonize, and

she is aware of it just as much as anybody is.

That hen seemed to have thought of something all at once that had

escaped her mind before, and so she went away.

She stepped about nine feet at a lick on the start and gained time as

she proceeded. When she bumped her nose against the corner of the stable

she changed her mind about her direction. She altered her course a

little, but continued her rapid style of movement.

Her eyes began to look wild. She seemed to be losing her reason. She got

so pretty soon that she did'nt recognize the faces of her friends.

She passed Mr. Root without being able to distinguish him from a total

stranger.

These peculiar movements were kept up during the entire afternoon, till

the hen got so fatigued that she crawled into a length of old stovepipe,

and the committee retired to prepare a report.

[Illustration: 0271]

It is the opinion of the press that this is a triumph of genius in hen

culture. It is not severe, though linn, in its treatment and while it

of course annoys and unmans the hen temporarily, it is salutary in its

results, and at the same time it furnishes a pleasant little matinee

for the spectators. We say to those upon whose hands time hangs heavily

these long-days, that there is nothing that soothes the ruffled mind and

fills the soul with a glad thrill of pleasure like the erratic movements

of a decorated hen. It may not be a high order of enjoyment, but it

affords a great deal of laugh to the superficial foot to those who are

not very accomplished, and who laugh at things and then consider its

propriety afterward.

A FRONTIER INCIDENT.

|Calamity is the name of a man who lives in the gold camp of Cummins

City. He has another name, but nobody seems to know what it is. It has

been torn off the wrapper some way, and so the boys call him Calamity.

He is a man of singular mind and construction. The most noticeable

feature about Calamity is his superstitious dread of muscular activity.

Some people will not tackle any kind of business enterprise on Friday.

Calamity is even more the victim of this vague superstition, and has

a dread of beginning work on any day of the week, for fear that some

disaster may befall him.

Last spring he had a little domestic trouble, and his wife made

complaints that Calamity had worn out an old long-handled shovel on her,

trying to convince her about some abstruse theory of his.

The testimony seemed rather against Calamity, and the miners told him

that as soon as they got over the rush a little and had the leisure they

would have to hang him.

They hoped he would take advantage of the hurry of business and go

away, because they didn't want to hang him so early in the season. But

Calamity didn't go away. He stayed because it was easier to stay than

it was to go. He did not, of course, pine for the notoriety of being

the first man hung in the young camp, but rather than pull up stakes and

move away from a place where there were so many pleasant associations,

he concluded to stay and meet death calmly in whatever form he might

come.

One evening, after the work of the day was done and the boys had eaten

their suppers, one of them suggested that it would be a good time to

hang Calamity. So they got things in shape and went down to the Big

Laramie bridge.

Calamity was with them. They got things ready for the exercise to begin,

and then asked the victim if he had anything to say. He loosened the

rope around his neck a little with one hand, so that he could speak with

more freedom, and holding his pantaloons on with the other, said:

"Gentlemen of the convention, I call you to witness that this public

demonstration toward me is entirely unsought on my part. I have never

courted notoriety.

"Plugging along in comparative obscurity is good enough for me. This

is the first time I have ever addressed an audience. That is why I am

embarrassed and ill at ease.

"You have brought me here to hang me because I seem harsh and severe

with my wife. You have entered the hallowed presence of my home life and

assumed the prerogative of subverting my household discipline.

"It is well. I do not care to live, so long as my authority is

questioned. You have already changed my submissive wife to an arrogant

and self-reliant woman.

"Yesterday I told her to go out and grease the wagon, and she

straightened up to her full height and told me to grease it myself.

"I have always been kind and thoughtful to her. When she had to go up

in the gulch in the winter after firewood, my coat shielded her from

the storm while I sat in the cabin through the long hours. I could name

other instances of unselfishness on my part, but I will not take up your

time.

"She uses my smoking tobacco, and kicks my vertebræ into my hat on the

most unlooked-for occasions. She does not love me any more, and life to

me is only a hollow mockery.

"Death, with its wide waste of eternal calm, and its shoreless sea of

rest, is a glad relief to me. I go, but I leave in your midst a skittish

and able-bodied widow who will make Rome howl. I bequeath her to this

camp. She is yours, gentlemen. She is all I have to give, but in giving

her to you, I feel that my untimely death will always be looked upon in

this gulch as a dire calamity.

"The day will come when you will look back upon this awful night and

wish that I was alive again; but it will be too late. I will be far

away. My soul will be in the land where domestic infelicity and cold

feet can never enter.

"Bury me at the foot of Vinegar Hill, where the sage hen and the fuzzy

bumblebee may gambol o'er my lowly grave."

When Calamity had finished, an impromptu caucus was called, and when it

was adjourned, Calamity went home to his cabin to surprise his wife. She

hasn't fully recovered from the surprise as we go to press.

BANKRUPT SALE OF LITERARY GEMS.

OFFICE OF THE MORMAN BAZOO.

|Little boys who are required by their teacher to write compositions at

school can save a great deal of unnecessary worry and anxiety by calling

on the editor of this paper, and glancing over the holiday stock of

second-hand poems and essays. Debating clubs and juvenile lyceums

supplied at a large reduction. The following are a few selections, with

price:

"Old Age," a poem written in red ink, price ten cents. "The Dog," blank

verse, written on foolscap with a hard pencil, five cents. "Who will

love me all the while?" a tale, price three cents per pound. "Hold me

in your clean, white arms," song and dance, by the author of "Beautiful

Snow," price very reasonable; it must be sold. "She ain't no longer

mine, nor I ain't hern," or the sad story of two sundered hearts; spruce

gum and licorice taken in exchange for this piece. "God: His attributes

and peculiarities," will be sold at a cent and a half per pound, or

traded for a tin dipper for the office. Give us a call before purchasing

elsewhere.

The stock on hand must be disposed of, in order to give place to the

new stock of odes and sonnets on spring, and contributions on the "the

violet" and the "skipful lamb."

HINTS ON LETTER-WRITING.

|Neat and beautiful penmanship is very desirable in business

correspondence, but it is most important that you should not spell God

with a little g or codfish with a k. Ornamental penmanship is good, but

it will not take the cuss off if you don't know how to spell. Read your

letter over carefully after you have written it, if you can; if not send

it with an apology about the rush of business. In ordering goods, state

whether you will remit soon or whether the account should be placed in

the refrigerator.

SUDDEN FAME.

|A man works twenty years to become known as a scholar, a newspaper man

and a gentleman, while the illiterate murderer springs into immediate

notoriety in a day, and the widow of his victim cannot even get her life

insurance. These things are what make people misanthropic and tenacious

of their belief in a hell.

THE ENGLISH JOKE.

|The average English joke has its peculiarities. A sort of mellow

distance. A kind of chastened reluctance. A coy and timid, yet trusting,

though evanescent intangibility which softly lingers in the untroubled

air, and lulls the tired senses to dreamy rest, like the subdued murmur

of a hoarse jackass about nine miles up the gulch.

He must be a hardened wretch, indeed, who has not felt his bosom heave

and the scalding tear steal down his furrowed cheek after he has read an

English joke. There can be no hope for the man who has not been touched

by the gentle, pleading, yet all potent sadness embodied in the humorous

paragraph of the true Englishman.

End of Project Gutenberg's Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New, by Bill Nye