Dear Sir.--The painful duty of turning over to you the administration
of these United States and the key to the front door of the White
House has been assigned to me. You will find the key hanging inside the
storm-door, and the cistern-pole up stairs in the haymow of the barn. .
I have made a great many suggestions to the outgoing administration
relative to the transfer of the Indian bureau from the department of the
Interior to that of the sweet by-and-by. The Indian, I may say, has been
a great source of annoyance to me, several of their number having jumped
one of my most valuable mining claims on White river. Still, I do not
complain of that. This mine, however, I am convinced would be a good
paying property if properly worked, and should you at any time wish to
take the regular army and such other help as you may need and recapture
it from our red brothers, I would be glad to give you a controlling
interest in it.
You will find all papers in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and a small
jar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which
you will be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that
were the immediate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are
now all buried. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your
own. They are none too good for you. You deserve them. We may differ
politically, but that need not interfere with our warm personal
friendship.
You will observe on taking possession of the administration, that the
navy is a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that
it be newly painted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to
receive a majority of the suffrages of the people for the office which
you now hold, I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not
influence you in the course which you may see fit to adopt.
There are many affairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in
this brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity
about appearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter
wherein the public might charge me with interference.
I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whatever
your convictions may be upon great questions of national interest,
either foreign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out
the gas on retiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond
anticipations which are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people
whose aggregated eye is now on to you.
Bill Nye.
P. S.--You will be a little surprised, no doubt, to find no soap in the
laundry or bathrooms. It probably got into the campaign in some way and
was absorbed.