country is safe--again. In fact we begin to suspect that the nightmare
was, after all, the fond, familiar flea-bite of antiquity. At any
rate, the country is safe again--safe as a fire risk on crude
asbestos stored in a vacant lot. And then the resonance of Wyoming's
new, bewitching and lady-like female electoral vote splits fame's
brazen trumpet into hair-pins carrying the assurance that henceforth
presidents are liable to be nominated by intuition and elected by
instinct. Then, also, the men who helped to save it once if not
oftener--before, and are still willing diffidently to confess the
fact, rejoice with others at the latest victory. We have recently been
told in a magazine article, written by the meditative son of a
confederate sire, that the rebellion was put down chiefly by its own
pestiferous, irredeemable paper currency. This startling political
warning may well be subjected to searching cross-examination. The Old
Soldier of the Union neither affirms nor denies. He is content with
his limited measure of pardonable pride in some of the features of
that old, old story of daring and devotion and sacrifice in the days
when the country was saved once before--in the days of the deeds that
shaped up a country worth saving again, worthy of being saved again
and again, as many times as need be, by the generations yet to come.
The Old Soldier is satisfied to have borne an honorable, though
inconspicuous, part on the winning side and the right side of a
contest fraught with such tremendous consequences. In the vast sum
total of effort, achievement and sacrifice, no man other than the
favored and gifted two or three ultimate leaders did more than an
infinitesimal share. The shares of glory are proportionally
minute--even our U. S. colonial dame cuts but a sorry figure in
contrast with the daughter of seventeen revolutions from Venezuela.
Thus the up-to-date woman is coldly antedated! The Old Soldier claims
no undue meed of praise.
From corps commander to the man who bore a musket, individuals earned
but a fragmentary fraction of the full plentitude of honor. Comrades
of the flag were they, and all are equal now. He invites suspicion and
ridicule who struts to the front, while his hatband plays a sweet
symphonic tribute to his valor. No genuine Old Soldier attempts to
Weylerize his record. An occasional harmless effervescence of
exaggeration is charitably overlooked, but all are comrades and
equals. They only rank in priority of encomium who went up in chariots
of fire, through sulphurous battle-clouds, to advanced lines in the
battalions of the blessed.
Together they marched and camped and fought and conquered. Dying, they
sealed their sacrifice with martyrdom. Surviving, they proved their
willingness to die, and lived to clasp with joy the sweetness of
restored affection, pride and hope.
They died amid the battle clangors of five hundred crimson fields;
they died in hospitals where nerves were highways for the steps of
fever's scorching feet; they died in dismal prison pens, unshorn,
unsheltered, hungering, thirsting, desolate, despairing; they died,
four hundred thousand of them died, in the bloom of their beautiful
youth, that the slave might be unshackled, freedom apotheosized, the
nation saved.
They lived--a million of them live to-day. They lived to do men's work
in building up the land their valor sanctified. They lived to witness
development and prosperity beyond the stretches of their fondest
dream. They lived to see a prospective disintegration of the too solid
south, her trusted leaders standing with reluctant feet where politics
and finance meet. They lived to see South Carolina, cradle of
secession, thoroughly reformed by an application of bi-chloride of
Tillmanism for the drink habit, and the entire Southern social system
thoroughly rejuvenated by an invasion of graceful young Sophomores
from Vassar, each with a cogent thesis on the remedy for punctured
tires. They have lived to see the sun of Appomattox flood the planet
with its warming, brightening beams. They have lived to know that the
war's immortal hero, touring around the earth, penetrated no regions
so remote that his fame had not preceded him, and visited no
populations too ignorant to comprehend the significance of his
victories. They have lived to read that in mud-hovels in the deepest
heart of Africa, in thatched huts on the banks of the Ganges, in
cabins buried among Siberian snows, portraits of Lincoln are found,
venerated by benighted peoples as the saint of a new dispensation.
They have lived to see the horizon strewn with wrecks of stricken
dynasties--crowns crumbling, thrones trembling, the whole filmy
remainder of hoary despotisms shriveling like a gossamer scroll. They
have lived to see the flag of our republic floating resplendent in the
zenith, as a token that the Union lives, and that liberty reigneth
forever.
THE END.
* * * * *
The cover design of this volume is reproduced from a drawing in
_Edwin Forbes' Army Sketch Book_, with the kind permission of
the publishers, Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
* * * * *
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY'S STORIES OF THE
HUMORIST, EDGAR WILSON NYE
(BILL NYE)
BY
RUSSEL M. SEEDS
* * * * *
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY'S STORIES OF THE HUMORIST, EDGAR WILSON NYE (BILL
NYE)
(_Russel M. Seeds' Interview with James Whitcomb Riley in the
Indianapolis News._)
One morning James Whitcomb Riley dug up from the pile of recent books
Bill Nye's post-humorous work, "A Guest at the Ludlow and Other
Stories." It was not the first time he had seen it. Indeed; he has
given more care and attention to the bringing out of this last work of
his dead friend than he usually does to the mechanical and business
details of his own books, and he had read and reread everything in it
before it was given to the public. Yet he spent nearly an hour in
loving examination of the volume, reading again with thorough
enjoyment a number of the sketches.
The friendship that existed between the poet and the gentle humorist
was one of those remarkable bonds of sympathy that few men are
fortunate enough to find in life, and those who do seldom find it more
than once. The same keen sense of the ridiculous, the same shyness of
humor in conversation, the same gentleness of spirit and the same
tender anxiety to lighten each other's cares, welded this bond of
sympathy that lasted to the death of the one and will remain through
life a happy memory to the other.
"These stories are more like him than any he ever published while
alive," said Mr. Riley, sauntering over to the desk of the literary
editor and exhibiting the volume. "They breathe the spirit of Nye in
almost every line. Just listen to this." And in his inimitable way he
read an extract from the volume.
"The quaintness and whimsicality of Mr. Nye's humor," said Mr. Riley,
as he closed the little volume gently and held it in his lap, "was the
notable thing about him. It was unaccountable upon any particular
theory. It just seemed natural for his mind to work at that gait. He
recognized the matter-of-fact view others took of the general
propositions of life, and sympathized with it, but he did so with a
native tendency to surprise and astound that ordinary state of mind
and vision. He could say a ridiculous thing or perpetuate a ridiculous
act with a face like a Sphinx, knowing full well that those who saw or
heard would look to his face for some confirmation of their suspicion
that it was time to laugh. They had to make up their minds about it
unaided by him, however, for they never found any trace of levity in
his countenance. As he would say, he did his laughing 'elsewhere.'
"One day in midwinter the train stopped at a way station in the West,
and he had five minutes to wait. Mr. Nye's roving eye had discovered
that the plush-leather pillows of the sofa in the smoking compartment
of the car we were riding in were unattached. Without a word he picked
up the leather cylinders and placed one under each arm, with the
tassels to the front. He was an invalid in looks as well as in
strength, and when he appeared upon the platform thus equipped the
astounded natives watched him with silent, sympathetic curiosity as he
strode up and down, apparently seizing the opportunity for a little
much-needed exercise. The rest of us had to hide to keep from
exploding, but he was utterly oblivious to the stares and comments
until he returned to the car. No explanation was vouchsafed, and the
primitive inhabitants of that town are probably still wondering what
horrible malady compelled that invalid to wear those outlandish
cushions.
[Illustration: EXERCISING AT THE RAILWAY STATION.]
"A favorite amusement with him was the reading of imaginary signs at
the stations when we were traveling. When the train would stop and
that hush would come over the car, with half the people wondering who
their fellow-passengers were and the other half viewing the little
grocery on the one side, or the station, restaurant or bill-board on
the other, Mr. Nye would break forth and begin to read the bill-board
aloud: 'Soda water, crackers--highest prices paid for hides and
tallow--also ice cream, golden syrup and feathers.' The passengers
across the aisle would perk their ears, then rise and come, craning
their necks, to find the words he was reading from the bill-board, or
finally some old fellow would come up to the seat and declare that he
could not find where it said that. In a quiet way this would tickle
Nye beyond measure--away down in the deeps of his sad-pathetic spirit.
"His conferences with the train boys have often nearly given me
convulsions. When the boy handed him a book Nye would ask with great
interest what it was about, and listen patiently to all the boy knew
of its contents. 'Let's see it,' and he would open the book and read
aloud, in a monotonous sing-song, a lot of purest nonsense drawn from
his imagination. It was done so seriously that the boy's eyes would
begin to hang out as the reading went on. Finally Nye would shut the
book up with a snap, losing the place, and hand it back to the boy
with a puzzled air, as if he did not understand why the young man had
lied so about its contents. We could find that boy for an hour
afterwards searching diligently the pages of that book to find where
that stuff was printed.
"Nye's method of 'stringing' people," said Mr. Riley, "was
entertaining always, but never cruel and never earned him the
resentment of the people who were the victims of it. One of the most
artistic cases of this sort I recall was the way he got revenge on a
Chicago tailor. The tailor did not know him when he went to order his
suit, but he did know from his style that he was from the country. He
told Mr. Nye just what kind of a suit he wanted, selected the cloth
and measured him with the assurance that this was a beautiful fast
color and would wear like iron. It should be put up handsomely. When
Nye paid him for the suit and asked that it be shipped to a way
station in Iowa the tailor was sure that he was right in the mental
measurement he had taken of his customer. The suit arrived, neatly
lined with farmer's satin and Nye put it on. Day by day its bright
blue grew lighter and lighter, until, when we arrived in Chicago, six
weeks later, it was a kind of a dingy dun color. Nye remarked as the
train pulled in that his first duty in that city would be to go around
and interview that merchant-liar; and we went. He shambled back to the
rear end of the shop, where he found the man who sold him the
garments. He shook hands with him cordially, said he was glad to renew
the pleasant acquaintance and asked if he knew what had caused the
suit to change its beautiful color, at the same time turning up the
lapel of the coat and showing the striking contrast between the
original and the present color of the cloth.
"'Why, man!' cried the tailor, bristling with defensive indignation,
'what in the world have you been doing to that suit?'
"'Well,' replied Nye, in a tone of the meekest apology, 'you did not
warn me and I suppose it was my fault and I ought to have known
better. But since you insist, I'll tell you frankly what I did: I put
it on and wore it right out in the sun!'
"The tailor saw the point and insisted upon making another suit out of
cloth that was really good and would not accept pay for it.
[Illustration: CONVICTING THE TAILOR.]
"Mr. Nye's sudden comments made in the midst of a lecture were often
the means of bringing the house to its feet. He knew better than
anybody his lack of physical ability to fill a large hall with his
voice and he strained every nerve to meet it. Any extraordinary
commotion in the hall discomposed him and he would wait until it
subsided. It was not a pleasant thing for him to hear a voice from the
back of the hall calling 'louder.' Upon such occasions he had a habit
of turning the laugh upon his tormentor by elevating his voice,
looking puzzled and asking what that remark was he had just heard.
"I remember one occasion in particular when we had a remarkably large
hall, crowded to the walls. The entrance was at the further end of the
hall, opposite the platform. Mr. Nye, as usual, opened the evening,
very fearful of his ability to reach the whole throng. He had barely
got started when the doors opened and a great fellow about six feet
and two inches tall entered with two ladies and immediately fell into
an altercation with an usher about his seats. Nye paused and the
altercation could be heard all over the house, with this fellow
arraigning the usher in a very loud voice. Finally it died down a bit
and Nye resumed, but he was interrupted by the man, who held up his
hand and cried, 'Hold on, there, I have paid for seats for this
lecture and propose to hear all of it.'
"Nye replied with great composure: 'In view of the great size of the
hall,' said he, 'I was about to congratulate the audience upon the
foresight of the managers in securing a speaker for each end.'
"The house howled with delight and the applause beat back upon the
obstreperous interrupter with such force that it drove him from the
hall. After this episode Nye was always a great favorite in that city
and was recalled there many times.
"Mr. Nye was a fatalist--not a complaining one, but a fatalist no
less, and with considerable occasion. He was pursued by a spirit of
the perverse. Unexpected, trying things were always happening that
seemed especially in line to test his patience. Indeed, I was
sometimes jealous of him, for these things seemed to occur with
greater force and persistence to him than to me.
[Illustration: A CLOSE SHAVE.]
"I had frequently remarked upon the persistent recurrence of the
number thirteen with me during one of our trips in the South, but this
was one superstition at which Nye scoffed. He told me that at the next
hotel we struck if I objected to being 'incarcerated' in No. 13 he
would risk it once. And not long after I found myself registered for
that fatal number; whereupon I promptly informed Mr. Nye that I should
hold him to his promise. I remember I had a handful of mail I was very
anxious to see, but I would not open it until I had got another room.
Nye declared he wanted to first size up the room he had been assigned
to, and went on down the hall with the landlord. He soon returned with
the remark that he could not lose much and walked into the thirteen
room and set his grip down, returning to where I waited in the hall
outside. He had not more than got out of the door when the heavy
transom fell with a crash. He was convinced that that transom had been
waiting for him for years.
"Mr. Nye was an invalid, but again, as it would seem, it was the
perversity of fate that made the public unwilling to believe that a
humorist could ever be ill or have any reasonable excuse for breaking
an engagement. He never got the benefit of the excuses made for others
when they failed to appear or to write according to expectation.
"One awful winter he was compelled to quit work in the middle of the
season here and go South for his health and to escape the rigors of
this climate. That was the winter that quit right in the middle of its
business here and struck for the South, where they had the coldest
weather they had ever known prior to Mr. Nye's advent. And there,
though he was nearly dead, his syndicate letters had to go on just the
same; and in fancy I can see that heroic, almost dying man on the flat
of his back, writing laboriously upon a scratch-pad, with the wind
blowing the rag carpet on the floor up in billows. He suffered all the
hardship of rigorous winter in summer quarters.
"And while thus ill word reached him of the sudden death of his father
in Wisconsin, so far away that even if he had been able to make the
journey it would have been a physical impossibility for him to have
reached his father's house before the burial. It was a peculiarly hard
blow to him, for they had been friends and chums, as well as father
and son. Yet by the time the news reached him his father had been
buried.
"To the last this perverse fate denied to him and his wife that one
pleasure that married couples usually enjoy if they have nothing
else--a wedding journey. He was very poor to begin with, but of a
sanguine temperament, and at the time of his marriage goodnaturedly
informed his bride fully of his circumstances. She, a brave woman and
worthy partner, probably foresaw the force of the man and his coming
recognition in time; at any rate she had great faith in him, and very
cheerfully accepted the situation. Their wedding journey, denied them
in the beginning by their poverty, was deferred from one cause and
another for years, so long that they came to refer to it as to be
taken upon the marriage of their eldest child, when the two couples
could take the journey together.
"But Nye was yet an invalid, and one year when California had been
prescribed for him, we had made a line of engagements toward the
Pacific slope after the regular season. It had been arranged that Mrs.
Nye was to meet us in Kansas City and the trip from there to the coast
was to be the long-deferred wedding journey. He had built great hopes
upon this prospect, and in the pleasure of anticipation had devised a
dozen little schemes for the surprise and entertainment of his wife,
who had already left their home, on Staten Island, to join us. She had
left their four children in care of her niece, a very worthy young
woman, and was somewhere on her way to Kansas City when we arrived
there.
"Nye had expected to find her there, but instead he was confronted
with a telegram from his Staten Island physician stating that all four
of the children had been stricken with scarlet fever. Through the
influence of the physician, who was a great friend of Nye, they had
not been removed to the hospital, as the regulations required, but had
been permitted to remain at home, with the house quarantined. During
the next few hours prior to Mrs. Nye's arrival, and in all agony of
suspense and apprehension, Mr. Nye busied himself with canceling all
further lecture dates, and when Mrs. Nye finally arrived he broke to
her the painful news of their children's illness, and took the next
train back East, not knowing if their little ones would be alive to
greet them when they came.
"Arriving home after that terrible journey, they found the children so
ill that they could not be told of the arrival of the father and
mother; and Nye, with his heart breaking, sat downstairs and wrote to
the children he was not permitted to see in their rooms above, long
and happy letters from California, telling them what jolly lovely
times their mother and father were having in the land of flowers.
"And, therefore," said Mr. Riley, in conclusion, again fondly
referring to the volume, "I am especially rejoiced to see my old
comrade at his best in this last published utterance, and the book
itself so befittingly presented--so handsome and so dignified a
volume, that I am certain a sight of it could but have been highly
gratifying to the gentle humorist himself."
RUSSEL M. SEEDS.
* * * * *
A Guest at the Ludlow
BY EDGAR WILSON NYE
[BILL NYE]
Go, little booklet, go!--
Bearing an honored name,
'Till everywhere that you
have went,
They're glad that you
have came.
A volume of humorous stories and sketches, with twenty-one full page
and twelve smaller designs, the latter by the author.
By arrangement with Mrs. Edgar W. Nye, The Bowen-Merrill Co. announce
a volume of humorous stories by Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye), prepared
for publication by him during the last months of his life, entitled
"A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW"
AND OTHER STORIES.
It is printed, bound and illustrated in a style surpassing anything
heretofore issued of Mr. Nye's in book form, and containing the famous
humorist's best and most finished work. Twenty-eight stories and
numerous illustrations, including the author's introduction in
fac-simile. It is the handsomest copyrighted book published this
season for the price, $1.25, sent postpaid to any address on receipt
of the price.
THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO., Publishers, Indianapolis and Kansas City
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.