BILL NYE AND BOOMERANG;
Or, The Tale Of A Meek-Eyed Mule, And Some Other Literary Gems
By Bill Nye
Chicago, New York And San Francisco:
Bedford, Clarke & Co.
1883=
```"And now, kind friends, what I have wrote
```I hope you will pass o'er,
```And not criticise as some has done,
```Hitherto, herebefore."
`````Sweet Singer of Michigan.
[Illustration: 0001]
[Illustration: 0007]
MY MULE BOOMERANG,
|Whose bright smile haunts me still, and whose low, mellow notes are
ever sounding in my ears, to whom I owe all that I am as a great man,
and whose presence has inspired me ever and anon throughout the years
that are gone.
THIS VOLUME,
this coronet of sparkling literary gems as it were, this wreath of
fragrant forget-me-nots and meek-eyed johnny-jump-ups, with all its
wealth of rare tropical blossoms and high-priced exotics, is cheerfully
and even hilariously dedicated
By the Author.
THE APOLOGY.
{In my Boudoir,
{Nov. 17,1880.
Belford, Clarke & Co.:
Gentlemen:--In reply to your favor of the 22d ult., I herewith transmit
the material necessary for a medium size volume of my chaste and unique
writings.
The matter has been arranged rather hurriedly, and no doubt in
classifying this rectangular mass of soul, I have selected some little
epics and ethereal flights of fancy which are not as good as others that
I have left out, but my only excuse is this: the literary world has been
compelled to yield up first one well known historical or scientific
work and then another, careful investigation having shown that they were
unreliable. This left suffering humanity almost destitute of a reliable
work to which it could turn in its hour of great need.
So I have been compelled to hurry more than I wanted to.
It affords me great pleasure, however, to know what a feeling of blessed
rest and childlike confidence and assurance-and some more things of that
nature-will follow the publication of this work.
Print the book in large coarse type, so that the old people can get a
chance at it. It will reconcile them to death, perhaps.
Then sell it at a moderate price. It is really priceless in value, but
put it within the reach of all, and then turn it loose without a word of
warning. The Author.
Laramie City, Wyoming.
OSTROPHE 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 ceep, 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`
``Monotone 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`
``Ferninst thy crupper-band
```Hath given thee joy, and he alone.
```'Tip true, he may have shot`
``Athwart the Zodiac, and, looking`
``O'er the outer walls upon
`````The New Jerusalem,
```Have uttered vain regrets.=
```Thou reckest 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 the 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.
A MINERS' MEETING--MY MINE--A MIRAGE ON E PLAINS.
Camp on the New Jerusalem Mine, May 28, 1880.
|I write this letter in great haste, as I have just returned from the
new carbonate discoveries, and haven't any surplus time left.
While I was there a driving snow storm raged on the mountains, and
slowly melting made the yellow ochre into tough plastic clay which
adhered to my boots to such an extent that before I knew it my
delicately arched feet were as large as a bale of hay with about the
same symmetrical outlines.
A miners' meeting was held there Wednesday evening, and a district to
be called Mill Creek District, was formed, being fifteen miles each way.
The Nellis cabin or ranch is situated in the center of the district.
I presided over the meeting to give it an air of terror and gloom. It
was very impressive. There was hardly a dry eye in the house as I was
led to the chair by two old miners. I seated myself behind the flour
barrel, and pounding on the head of the barrel with a pick handle, I
called the august assemblage to order.
Snuffing the candle with my fingers in a graceful and pleasing
style, and wiping the black off on my pants, I said: "Gentlemen of the
Convention: In your selection of a chairman I detect at once your mental
acumen and intelligent foresight. While you feel confident that, in the
rose-colored future, prosperity is in store for you, you still remember
that now you look to capital for the immediate development of your
district.
"I am free to state that, although I have been but a few hours in your
locality, I am highly gratified with your appearance, and I cheerfully
assure you that the coffers which I command are at your disposal. In me
you behold a capitalist who proposes to develop the country, regardless
of expense.
"I also recognize your good sense in selecting an old miner and mineral
expert to preside over your meeting. Although it may require something
of a mental strain for your chairman to detect the difference between
porphyry and perdition, yet in the actual practical workings of a mining
camp he feels that he is equal to any emergency.
"After the band plays something soothing and the chaplain has drawn up
a short petition to the throne of grace, I shall be glad to know the
pleasure of the meeting."
Round after round of applause greeted this little gem of oratory. A
small boy gathered up the bouquets and filed them with the secretary,
when the meeting proceeded with its work. Most of the delegates came
instructed, and therefore the business was soon transacted.
I located a claim called the Boomerang. I named it after my favorite
mule. I call my mule Boomerang because he has such an eccentric orbit
and no one can tell just when he will clash with some other heavenly
body.
He has a sigh like the long drawn breath of a fog-horn. He likes to come
to my tent in the morning about daylight and sigh in my ear before I
am awake. He is a highly amusing little cuss, and it tickles him a good
deal to pour about 13 1/2 gallons of his melody into my car while I am
dreaming, sweetly dreaming. He enjoys my look of pleasant surprise when
I wake up.
He would cheerfully pour more than 13 1/2 gallons of sigh into my
ear, but that is all my ear will hold. There is nothing small about
Boomerang. He is generous to a fault and lavishes his low, sad,
tremulous wail on every one who has time to listen to it.
Those who have never been wakened from a sweet, sweet dream by the
low sad wail of a narrow-gauge mule, so close to the ear that the warm
breath of the songster can be felt on the cheek, do not know what it is
to be loved by a patient, faithful, dumb animal.
The first time he rendered this voluntary for my benefit, I rose in my
wrath and some other clothes, and went out and shot him. I discharged
every chamber of my revolver into his carcass, and went back to bed to
wait till it got lighter. In a couple of hours I arose and went out to
bury Boomerang. The remains were off about twenty yards eating bunch
grass. In the gloom and uncertainty of night, I had shot six shots into
an old windlass near a deserted shaft.
Boomerang and I get along first-rate together. When I am lonesome I
shoot at him, and when he is lonesome he comes up and lays his head
across my shoulder, and looks at me with great soulful eyes and sings to
me.
On our way in from the mines we saw one of those beautiful sights so
common in this high altitude and clear atmosphere. It was a mirage.
In the party were a lawyer, a United States official, a banker and
myself. The other three members of the quartet, aside from myself are
very modest men and do not wish to have their names mentioned. They were
very particular about it and I have respected their wishes. Whatever
Messrs. Blake, Snow or Ivinson ask me to do I will always do cheerfully.
But we were speaking about the mirage. Across to the northeast our
attention was at first attracted by a rank of gray towers growing taller
and taller till their heads were lifted into the sky above, while at
their feet there soon appeared a glassy lake in which was reflected the
outlines of the massive gray walls above. It was a beautiful sight. The
picture was as still and lovely to look upon as a school ma'am. We all
went into raptures. It looked like some beautiful scene in Palestine. At
least Snow said so, and he has read a book about Palestine, and ought to
know.
There was a silence in the air which seemed to indicate the deserted
sepulchre of other days, and the grim ruins towering above the depths of
clear waters on whose surface was mirrored the visage of the rocks and
towers on their banks, all spoke of repose and decay and the silent,
stately tread of relentless years.
By and by, from out the grey background of the picture, there stole the
wild, tremulous, heart-broken wail of a mule.
It seemed to jar upon the surroundings and clash harshly against our
sensitive natures. Some one of the party swore a little. Then another
one came to the front, and took the job off his hands. We all joined, in
a gentlemanly kind of way, in condemning the mule for his lack of tact,
to say the least.
All at once the line of magnificent ruins shortened and became reduced
in height. They changed their positions and moved off to the left,
and our dream had melted into the matter of fact scene of twenty-two
immigrant wagons drawn by rat-tail mules and driven by long-haired
Mormons, with the dirt and bacon rinds of prehistoric times adhering to
them everywhere.
What a vale of tears this is anyway!
We are only marching toward the tomb, after all. We should learn a
valuable lesson from this and never tell a lie.
THE TRUE STORY OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS.
CHAPTER I.
|The romantic story of Damon and Pythias, which has been celebrated
in verse and song, for over two thousand years, is supposed to have
originated during the reign of Dionysius I., or Dionysius the Elder as
he was also called, who resigned about 350 years B.C. He must have been
called "The Elder," more for a joke than anything else, as he was by
inclination a Unitarian, although he was never a member of any church
whatever, and was in fact the wickedest man in all Syracuse.
Dionysius arose to the throne from the ranks, and used to call himself
a self-made man. He was tyrannical, severe and selfish, as all self-made
men are. Self-made men are very prone to usurp the prerogative of
the Almighty and overwork themselves. They are not satisfied with the
position of division superintendent of creation, but they want to be
most worthy high grand muck-a-muck of the entire ranch, or their lives
are gloomy fizzles.
Dionysius was indeed so odious and so overbearing toward his subjects
that he lived in constant fear of assassination at their hands. This
fear robbed him of his rest and rendered life a dreary waste to the
tyrannical king. He lived in constant dread that each previous moment
would be followed by the succeeding one. He would eat a hearty supper
and retire to rest, but the night would be cursed with horrid dreams
of the Scythians and White River Utes peeling off his epidermis
and throwing him into a boiling cauldron with red pepper and other
counter-irritants, while they danced the Highland fling around this
royal barbecue.
Even his own wife and children were forbidden to enter his presence for
fear that they would put "barn arsenic" in the blanc-mange, or "Cosgrove
arsenic" in the pancakes, or Paris green in the pie.
During his reign he had constructed an immense subteroranean cavernous
arrangement called the Ear of Dionysius, because it resembled in shape
and general telephonic power, the human ear. It was the largest ear on
record. One day a workman expressed the desire to erect a similar ear of
tin or galvanized iron on old Di. himself. Some one "blowed on him," and
the next morning his head was thumping about in the waste paper basket
at the General Office. When one of the king's subjects, who thought he
was solid with the administration, would say: "Beyond the possibility
of a doubt, your Most Serene Highness is the kind and loving guardian of
his people, and the idol of his subjects," His Royal Tallness would say,
"What ye givin' us? Do you wish to play the Most Sublime Overseer of the
Universe and General Ticket Agent Plenipotentiary for a Chinaman?
"Ha!!! You cannot fill up the King of Syracuse with taffy." Then he would
order the chief executioner to run the man through the royal sausage
grinder, and throw him into the Mediterranean. In this way the sausage
grinder was kept running night and day, and the chief engineer who run
the machine made double time every month.
CHAPTER II.
|I will now bring in Damon and Pythias.
Damon and Pythias were named after a popular secret organization because
they were so solid on each other. They thought more of one another than
anybody. They borrowed chewing tobacco, and were always sociable and
pleasant. They slept together, and unitedly "stood off" the landlady
from month to month in the most cheerful and harmonious manner. If
Pythias snored in the night like the blast of a fog horn, Damon did not
get mad and kick him in the stomach as some would. He gently but firmly
took him by the nose and lifted him up and down to the merry rythm of
"The Babies in Our Block."
They loved one another in season and out of season. Their affection was
like the soft bloom on the nose of a Wyoming legislator. It never grew
pale or wilted. It was always there. If Damon were at the bat, Pythias
was on deck. If Damon went to a church fair and invited starvation,
Pythias would go, too, and vote on the handsomest baby till the First
National Bank of Syracuse would refuse to honor his checks.
But one day Damon got too much budge and told the venerable and colossal
old royal bummer of Syracuse what he thought of him. Then Dionysius told
the chief engineer of the sausage grinder to turn on steam and prepare
for business. But Damon thought of Pythias, and how Pythias hadn't so
much to live for as he had, and he made a compromise by offering to put
Pythias in soak while the only genuine Damon went to see his girl, who
lived at Albany. Three days were given him to get around and redeem
Pythias, and if he failed his friend would go to protest.
CHAPTER III.
|We will now suppose three days to have elapsed since the preceding
chapter. A large party of enthusiastic citizens of Syracuse are gathered
around the grand stand, and Pythias is on the platform cheerfully taking
off his coat. Near by stands a man with a broadax. The Syracuse silver
cornet band has just played "It's funny when you feel that way," and the
chaplain has made a long prayer, Pythias sliding a trade dollar into
his hand and whispering to him to give him his money's worth. The
Declaration of Independence has been read, and the man on the left is
running his thumb playfully over the edge of his meat ax. Pythias takes
off his collar and tie, swearing softly to himself at his miserable
luck.
CHAPTER IV.
|It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horseman. The
horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter
from the dome of the court house and bathe the green plains of Syracuse
with mellow splendor.
[Illustration: 0024]
The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern sky look soft and
yielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the
lea, and all nature seems oppressed with the solemn hush and stillness
of the surrounding and engulfing horror.
The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll
road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cayuse
plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is singing
a merry song. Damon has been delayed by road agents and washouts, and
he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little too long and
dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making up time now
and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his part. He and
Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of fine-cut from each
other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before the curtain, bows
and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders the band to play
something soothing, gives Damon the appointment of Superintendent of
Public Instruction and Pythias the Syracuse post-office, and everything
is lovely. Orchestra plays something touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno.
_In hoc usufruct Nux Vomica est_.
SAD MEMORIES OF THE DEAD YEAR.
|It is with the deepest regret that I write in advance the obituary of
the year 1879, and pay a last tribute to another landmark in our history
before it be consigned to the boundless realms of the past. I do not
write this as an item of local interest, because the year will fold its
icy limbs and die at about the same time to the people of the East as to
us. The limit of totality will strike us about the same. But I write of
the last moments of 1879, as the subject seems to me.
The year now nearly gone has been fraught with almost innumerable
blessings. None of us can look back over it without remembering many
moments of pleasure. With what unalloyed bliss at this moment comes
back to me the memory of that rich golden day of summer when the first
watermelon billed the town and I mortgaged my little home and bought it.
Then also I call to mind the day when the first strawberries began to
be convalescent and were able to be out, and how forty or fifty of our
leading business men formed a joint stock company and bought a whole
box, Ah! life gives no richer recompense for its numberless ills than
the proud moments when one buys the first box of unhappy dyspeptic
berries of the season, and then compromises with one's creditors at ten
cents on the dollar.
Then followed the ripe and radiant days of the Indian summer when the
peaks of the distant mountains that bound the horizon, melt away into
the soft warm sky, and the only sound that breaks the stillness is the
merry roundelay of the John rabbit softly cooing to his mate. It is the
choice season of the year when there is a solemn hush resting over the
whole broad universe, a stillness like that which falls upon a peasant's
dance when the "E" string of the leading violin dissolves partnership,
and hits the bass violinist in the eye.
There are, indeed, many things for which we individually and as a people
should be devoutly thankful. Think, for instance, how many Indians along
our frontier have escaped violent deaths. Consider for a moment how a
long and bloody war has been avoided by the more gentle sway of peace.
See how the olive branch waves, where a few months ago the tocsin of war
echoed from the rugged hills of the West. The saber now hangs idly in
its sheath and the alarums of war have petered out. See what a kind
and considerate policy toward the wild untutored savage will do toward
promoting the advance of universal civilization. By means of the Boston
peace plan the opera and pin-pool and other adjuncts of wealth and
refinement will be placed within the reach of the most illiterate and
worthless sons of the forest.
It is true we are looked upon by other nations as the republic with
a warm molasses poultice Indian policy; but right and softness and
gentleness have overcome brute force and might. We of the West are too
apt to be violent and radical in our treatment of the Indian. When he
kills our family, all the family we have got, perhaps, too, and leaves
us a lonely widower with the graves of our mangled household to remember
him by, we are too prone to be bitter, and say mean, hateful things
about him, and run him down and destroy his boom. We do not stop to
consider that this is all the fun he has. We should learn to control
ourselves, and look upon the Indian as a diamond in the rough. That's
the way I do. I look upon Colorow as a regular Kohinoor, if he were only
polished. I would be willing to polish him, too, if I had time and
felt strong enough. I would hold his nose against an emery wheel, or
something of that kind, very cheerfully, if my time were not all taken
up.
But I have wandered away from what I was going to say relative to the
old year and drifted into the Indian question, thus crowding out many
sweet little things which I had mapped out to say of the snowy winding
sheet which shrouds the dying year, and some more things of that kind,
touching: and beautiful in the extreme. I have allowed other matters to
take the place of these little poetical passages and make a dull, prosy
article of what I had intended to construct into a frail and beautiful
fabric, with slender pinnacles, sublime arches and Queen Anne woodshed.
HERE WE COME!
[Illustration: 8028]
HERE WE COME! HERE WE COME!
13 BILL NYE'S 13
Thirteenth Grand Semi-Annual FAREWELL CIRCUS AND HIPPODROME.
[Illustration: 0028]
He eats nothing but fresh Ohio men.
Do not fail to see our Mammoth Street Parade, the Grand Oriental and
Princely Pageant, over nine miles in length, and don't you forget it!
It has been pronounced by the crowned heads of the world to be the most
Scrumptuous Mighty and Magnificent Confederation of Wonders. Knights
in full panoply--ladies without any panoply on. Endless ranks of gold
bedizened cages, _recherche_ chariots; boss camels, with or without
humps; cages of mammoth reptilian angle-worms; lions stuffed with baled
hay; petrified circus jokes; preserved seats; gazelle-like elephants,
and a bang-up outfit generally.
[Illustration: 0029]
It is well worth a journey of one hundred miles to see alone our mammoth
band chariot, flecked with burnished gold, and costing $250 per fleck.
We will not be outflecked! Bear in mind the time and place!
GRANITE CANON, AUGUST 14TH. Afternoon and evening, with Grand Matinee
for baldheaded men at 5 p.m. each day.
[Illustration: 5029]
I challenge the world to produce the equal of this highly intellectual
and amusing little cuss. He stands on four feet at one and the same
time, in the mammoth pavilion, and at one price of admission, eating out
of the hand with the utmost docility and reckless abandon. Boomerang is
the only living performing trick stallion ever born in captivity.
[Illustration: 0030]
In connection with the untold and priceless splendor of the glittering
pageant, I will introduce the Dynamo, Hydro-phosphatic, Perihelion
Electric Light, in comparison with which the mid-day sun looks like
a convalescent white bean. In brilliancy and refulgent splendor, it
without doubt lays over and everlastingly knocks the socks off all other
lights now in the known world.
[Illustration: 9030]
This statement I am prepared to back up with the necessary kopecks.
The wonderful Tattooed Steer from Stinking Water. If not exactly as
represented, your money will be refunded to you as you pass out the
door.
This costly and truly picturesque Queen Anne Steer was secured at great
cost to the management, and will positively appear every day in the
regular programme, and within the mammoth pavilion. If he does not in
every respect do as I advertise, and with one hand tied behind him, I
will be responsible.
[Illustration: 0031]
Before and after visiting my Mammoth Show.
The royal Mexican Plug, Billy English, and the truly remarkable mule
with the genuine camel's hair tail, Winfield Scott Hancock.
These animals, with almost human intelligence, walk around the ring,
stepping first on one foot and then on the other.
[Illustration: 9031]
They have been procured at enormous expense and may be found only with
my stupendous aggregation of trained animals.
They represent the perfect pyramid at each performance as represented in
the above engraving.
The steer which performs upon the flying trapeze and horizontal bar.
[Illustration: 7031]
The only steer that has ever successfully enacted the aeria-dive or
eagle swoop.
The wonderful performing steer, Zazel, is the only one-horned, one-eared
and bob-tailed steer ever born in captivity; This steer is found alone
with Bill Nye's Great Cast-Iron Hippodrome and 27-Karat Utopian
Giganticum.
THE PRESS CORDIALLY INVITED.
I extend to the members of the press everywhere a most hearty
invitation. They will be furnished with luxuriant reclining chairs,
porcelain cuspidores, and gold toothpicks to pick out the fragments of
lemonade from their pearly teeth.
A special clown will be devoted to the members of the press.
A guide will have charge of visiting journalists to show them the
curiosities, and see that they do not forget and carry anything away.
Members of the press will be allowed to sit on the top seats and let
their feet hang down.
Do not fool with the animals.
PRESS COMMENTS.
The Owltown _Bunghole_ says: "No living man has ever heretofore dared
to perform all he advertised. Bill Nye certainly has secured the most
wonderful and costly galaxy of arenic talent, and the most perfect
and oriental conglomeration of grand, gloomy and peculiar zoological
specimens from the four corners of the globe. The editor and his
nineteen children, with his wife and hired girl, were passed in
yesterday by the handsome and gentlemanly, modest and lady-like
proprietor of Bill Nye's ownest own and simultaneous world-renowned
hippodrome and menagerie."
A CARD.
A report has been set in circulation, probably by some unprincipled
rival showmen, to the effect that I will not exhibit with my entire show
at Granite Canon, but that the main show will be divided, the famous
Trakene Stallion, Boomerang, going to Greeley; the Royal Mexican Plug
Billy English, going to Whiskey Flat; the Mammoth Reptilian Angleworm
going to Last Chance; the famous Trick Mule, Winfield Scott Hancock,
going to Tie City, while the balance of the show would appear at Granite
Canon.
I pronounce this and all similar reports the most flagrant, lying
canards, as I shall not only appear at Granite Canon with my entire
aggregation of my own and only jam-up-and-scrumptuous show and North
American Boss and Supreme Oriental and Collossal Menagerie, but at all
points where I have advertised to appear. I make no show, but I can buy
and sell every show on the road before breakfast, and don't you forget
it.
[Illustration: 0033]
I travel on my own special train, and regular passenger and express
trains are held while I have the right of way with my elegant
drawing-room and palace cars for the animals, and colossal silver
chariots for the men.
I exhibit also under my acres and acres of canvas, and two-bits will
admit you to all parts of the show.
Special trains will run to and from Granite Canon on the day of the show
at regular rates.
Simultaneously yours,
Bill Nye.
LETTER FROM PARIS.
Paris, May 30th, 1878.
|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:
uZe vooly voo a la boomerang?"
[Illustration: 9034]
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 pluri-bus
unam, 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.
PREHISTORIC CROCKERY.
|During my rambles through the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky mountains
recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although
worn down somewhat and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope and
the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time very
large and high.
This, I was told, had, no doubt, been the burial place of some ancient
tribe or race of men, the cemetery, perhaps, of a nation now unknown.
Here in the heart of a new world, where men who had known the region
for fifteen or twenty years, are now called "old timers," where "new
discoveries" had been made within my own recollection, we found the
sepulchre of a nation that was old when the Pilgrims landed on the
shores of Columbia.
I am something of an antiquarian with all my numerous charms, and I
resolved to excavate at this spot and learn the hidden secrets of those
people who lived when our earth was young.
I started to dig into the vast sarcophagus. The ground was very hard.
The more I worked the more I felt that I was desecrating the burial
place of a mighty race of men, now powerless to defend themselves
against the vandal hands that sought to mar their eternal slumber.
I resolved to continue my researches according to the
Vicarious plan. I secured the services of a hardened, soulless hireling,
who did not wot of the solemn surroundings, and who could dig faster
than I could. He proceeded with the excavation business, while I sought
a shady dell where I could weep alone.
It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself--=
````The knights are dust,
````Their swords are rust;
````Their souls are with
```The saints, we trust.=
Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet,
made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States
mining laws.
I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process
between a piece of micaceous slate and a fragment of deodorized,
copper-stained manganese.
But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the woodticks.
Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe and which
we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is the
same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as "Silver Threads
Among the Gold."
It has been in one form and another through the ever shifting ages all
along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of
various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the
spring trade.
All we see or hear or feel, is old. Truth itself is old. Old and falling
into disuse, too. Outside of what I am using in my business, perhaps,
not over two or three bales are now on the market.
Here in the primeval solitude, undisturbed by the foot of man, I had
found the crumbling remnants of those who once walked the earth in their
might and vaunted their strength among the powers of their world.
No doubt they had experienced the first wild thrill of all powerful love,
and thought that it was a new thing. They had known, with mingled pain
and pleasure, when they struggled feebly against the omnipotent sway of
consuming passion, that they were mashed, and they flattered themselves
that they were the first in all the illimititable range of relentless
years who had been fortunate enough to get hold of the genuine thing.
All others had been base imitations.
Here, perhaps, on this very spot, the Aztec youth with a bright eyed
maiden on his arm had pledged life-long fidelity to her shrine, and in
the midnight silence had stolen away from her with a pang of vigorous
regret, followed by the sobs of his soul's idol and the demoralizing,
leaden rain of buckshot, with the compliments and best wishes of the old
man.
[Illustration: 9038]
While I was meditating upon these things a glad shout from the scene
of operations attracted my attention. I rose and went to the scene of
excavation, and found, to my unspeakable astonishment and pleasure, that
the man had unearthed a large Queen Anne tear jug, with Etruscan
work upon the exterior. It was simply one of the old-fashioned
single-barrelled tear jugs, made for a one-eyed man to cry into. The
vessel was about eighteen inches in height by five or six inches in
diameter, and similar to the cut above.
The graceful yet perhaps severe pottery of the Aztecs convinces me that
they were fully abreast of the present century in their knowledge of the
arts and sciences.
Space will not admit of an extended description of this
ancient tear cooler, but I am still continuing the antiquarian
researches--vicariously, of course,--and will give this subject more
attention during the summer.
SUGGESTION'S FOR A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
|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-May or Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Connecticut, 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 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, gallies, 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, and be as familiar with the more recent decisions of the
courts as New York people are with the semi-annual letter of Governor
Seymour declining the Presidency.
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, base ball, 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 hey day and springtime 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.
THE FRAGRANT MORMON.
|On Tuesday morning I went down to the depot to see a large train of
ten cars loaded with imported Mormons. I am not very familiar with the
workings of the Church of Latter-day Saints, but I went down to see the
350 proselytes on their way to their adopted home. I went simply out
of curiosity. Now my curiosity is satisfied. I haven't got to look at a
Mormon train again, and it fills my heart with a nameless joy about the
size of an elephant's lip, to think that I haven't got to do this any
more. All through the bright years of promise yet to come I need not
ever go out of my way to look at these chosen people.
When I was a boy I had two terrible obstacles to overcome, and I have
dreaded them all my life until very recently. One was to eat a chunk of
Limberger cheese, and the other was to look at a Mormon emigrant train.
After I visited the train I thought I might as well go and tackle the
Limberger cheese, and be out of my misery. I did so, and the cheese
actually tasted like a California pear, and smelled like the atter of
roses. It seemed to take the taste of the Mormons out of my mouth.
I sometimes look at a carload of Montana cattle, or Western sheep, and
they seem to be a good deal travel-worn and out of repair, but they are
pure as the beautiful snow in comparison to what I saw Tuesday morning.
Along the Union Pacific track, on either side, the green grass and
mountain flowers looked up into the glad sunlight, took one good smell
and died. Cattle were driven off the range, and the corpses of overland
tramps were strewn along the wake of this train, like the sands of the
sea.
Deacon Bullard, Joe Arthur, Timber Line Jones and myself went over
together. Deacon Bullard thought that the party was from Poland and
went through the train inquiring for a man named Orlando Standemoff.
I claimed that they were Scandinavians, and I followed him through the
cars asking for a man named Twoquart Kettleson and Numerousotherson.
Neither of us were successful.
One of these Mormons was overtaken near Point of Rocks, with an
irresistable desire to change his socks (no poetry intended) and before
the brakeman could lariat him and kill him, he had done so.
The Union Pacific will abandon this part of the road now and leave this
point several miles away rather than spend two millions of dollars for
disinfectants.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE OPERA.
|Most every one thinks that I don't know much about music and the opera,
but this is not the case. I am very enthusiastic over this class of
entertainment, and I will take the liberty to trespass upon the time
and patience of my readers for a few moments while I speak briefly but
graphically on this subject. A few evenings ago I had the pleasure of
listening to the rendition of the "Bohemian Girl" by Emma Abbott and her
troupe at the Grand Opera House. I was a little late, but the manager
had saved me a pleasant seat where I could alternately look at the stage
and out through the skylight into the clear autumn sky.
The plot of the play seems to be that "Arline," a nice little chunk of
a girl, is stolen by a band of gypsies, owned and operated by
"Devilshoof," who looks some like "Othello" and some like Sitting Bull.
"Arline" grows up among the gypsies and falls in love with "Thaddeus."
"Thaddeus" was played by Brignoli. Brignoli was named after a
thoroughbred horse.
"Arline" falls asleep in the gypsy camp and dreams a large majolica
dream, which she tells to "Thaddeus." She says that she dreamed that
she dwelt in marble halls and kept a girl and had a pretty fly time
generally, but after all she said it tickled her more to know that
"Thaddeus" loved her still the same, and she kept saying this to him
in G, and up on the upper register, and down on the second added line
below, and crescendo and diminuendo and deuodessimo, forward and back
and swing opposite lady to place, till I would have given 1,000 shares
paid-up non-assessable stock in the Boomerang if I could have been
"Thad."
Brignoli, however, did not enter into the spirit of the thing. He made
me mad, and if it hadn't been for Em. I would have put on my hat and
gone home. He looked like the man who first discovered and introduced
Buck beer into the country. She would come and put her sunny head up
against his cardigan jacket and put one white arm on each shoulder and
sing like a bobolink, and tell him how all-fired glad she was that he
was still solid. I couldn't help thinking how small a salary I would be
willing to play "Thaddeus" for, but he stood there like a basswood man
with Tobias movement, and stuck his arms out like a sore toe, and told
her in F that he felt greatly honored by her attention, and hoped some
day to be able to retaliate, or words to that effect.
I don't want any trouble with Brignoli, of course, but I am confident
I can lick him with one hand tied behind me, and although I seek no
quarrel with him, he knows my post office address, and I can mop the
North American continent with his remains, and don't you forget it.
After awhile the "Gypsy Queen," who is jealous of "Arline,"
puts up a job on her to get her arrested, and she is brought up before
her father, who is a Justice of the Peace for that precinct, and he
gives her $25 and trimmings, or thirty days in the Bastile. By and by,
however, he catches sight of her arm, and recognizes her by a large red
Goddess of Liberty tattooed on it, and he remits the fine and charges up
the costs to the county.
Her father wants her to marry a newspaper man and live in affluence, but
"Arline" still hankers for "Thad.," and turns her back on the oriental
magnificence of life with a journalist. But "Thaddeus" is poor. All
he seems to have is what he can gather from the community after office
hours, and the chickens begin to roost high and he is despondent
apparently. Just as "Arline" is going to marry the newspaper man,
according to the wishes of her pa, "Thaddeus" sails in with an
appointment as Notary Public, bearing the Governor's big seal upon it,
and "Arline" pitches into the old man and plays it pretty fine on him
till he relents and she marries "Thaddeus," and they go to housekeeping
over on the West Side, and he makes a bushel of money as Notary Public,
and everybody sings, and the band plays, and she is his'n, and he is
her'n.
There is a good deal of singing in this opera. Most everybody sings. I
like good singing myself.
Emma Abbott certainly warbles first-rate, and her lovemaking takes me
back to the halcyon days when I cared more for the forbidding future of
my moustache, and less for meal-time than I do now. But Brignoli is no
singer according to my aesthetic taste. He sings like a man who hasn't
taken out his second papers yet, and his stomach is too large. It gets
in the way and "Arline" has to go around it and lean up on his flank
when she wants to put her head on his breast.
A SUNNY LITTLE INCIDENT.
|Thursday evening, in company with a friend, I rode up into the city
on the Rock Island train and was agreeably surprised by seeing a Rocky
Mountain man, a few seats ahead, sitting with a lady who seemed to
be very much in love with him, and he was trying the best he knew
to out-gush her. Now the gentleman's wife was at home in Wyoming in
blissful ignorance of all this business while he was ostensibly buying
his fall and winter stock of goods in Chicago.
The most obtuse observer could see that the companion of this man was
not his wife, for she was gentle toward him, and looked lovingly in his
eyes. Every one in the car laid aside all other business and watched the
performance.
Then I whispered to my friend and said, "That is not the wife of that
man. I can tell by the way they look into the depths of each other's
eyes and ignore the other passengers. I'll bet ten dollars he has seven
children and a wife at home right now. Isn't it scandalous?"
"You can't always tell that way," said my friend. "I've seen people who
had been married twenty years who were just as loving and spooney as
that."
He was biting a little, so I kept at him till he put up the ten dollars
and agreed to leave it with the man himself. It was taking an advantage
of my friend, of course, but he had played a miserable joke on me only
a few days before; so I covered the $10, and walking up to the man I
slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hullo, George. How do you think
you feel?"
He looked around surprised and amazed, as I knew he would be, but he
wouldn't let on that he knew me. So I slapped him on the shoulder again,
and gurgled a low musical laugh that welled up from the merry depths of
my joyous nature, and filled the car full of glad and child-like melody.
My friend came forward and said, "Mr. Van Horn, let me make you
acquainted with Mr. Nye, of Wyoming, who lives in a wild country, where
every one goes up to every one else and says, hello, George or Jim, no
matter whether he is acquainted or not. You musn't pay any attention to
it at all; he don't mean anything by it. It is his way."
It was Mr. Van Horn, who had lived in Illinois for thirty-five years and
had been married ten years to the lady who sat with him. That evening my
friend and I went to Hooley's to see Robson and Crane, in the "Comedy of
Errors." The play is supposed to be funny. Several people laughed at the
performance at various stages, but I did not, for just as I would get to
feeling comfortable the man who sat next to me, and who claimed to be a
friend of mine, would lean over, and say:
"Hullo, George; how do you think you feel?" Then he would burst forth
into the coarsest and most vulgar laughter. How few people there are
in the world who seem to thoroughly understand the eternal fitness of
things, and how many there are who laugh gaily on in the presence of
those who suffer in silence, and with superhuman strength stifle their
corroding woe.
HE REWARDED HER.
|A noble, generous-hearted man in Cheyenne lost a wallet on Saturday, at
the Key City House, and an honest chambermaid found it in his room. The
warm heart of the man swelled with gratitude, and seemed to reach out
after all mankind, that he might in some way assist them with the $250
which was lost, and was found again. So he fell on the neck of the
chambermaid, and while his tears took the starch out of her linen
collar, he put his hand in his pocket and found her a counterfeit
twenty-five cent scrip. "Take this," he said, between his sobs, "virtue
is its own reward. Do not use it unwisely, but put it into Laramie
County bonds, where thieves cannot corrupt, nor moths break through and
gnaw the corners off."
THE MODERN PARLOR STOVE.
|In view of the new and apparently complex improvements in heating
stoves, and the difficulty of readily operating them successfully, a
word or two as to their correct management may not be out of place at
this time.
Some time since, having worn out my old stove and thrown it aside, I
purchased a new one called the "Fearfully and Wonderfully Maid." It had
been highly spoken of by a friend, so I set it up in the parlor, turned
on steam, threw the throttle wide open, and waited to see how it would
operate. At the first stroke of the piston I saw that something was
wrong with the reversible turbine wheel, and I heard a kind of grating
sound, no doubt caused by the rubbing of the north-east trunnion on the
face plate of the ratchet-slide. Being utterly ignorant of the workings
of the stove, I attempted to remedy this trouble without first reversing
the boomerang, and in a few moments the gas accumulated so rapidly that
the cross-head gave way, and the right ventricle of the buffer-beam
was blown higher than Gilroy's kite, carrying with it the saddle-plate,
bull-wheel and monkey-wrench. Of course it was very careless to overlook
what the merest school-boy ought to know, for not only were all these
parts of the stove a total wreck, but the crank-arbor, walking-beam
and throat-latch were twisted out of shape, and so mixed up with the
feed-cam, tumbling-rod, thumb-screw, dial-plate and colic indicator,
that I was obliged to send for a practical engineer at an expense of
$150, with board and travelling expenses, to come and fix it up.
Now, there is nothing more simple than the operation of one of these
stoves, with the most ordinary common sense. At first, before starting
your fire, see that the oblique diaphragm and eccentric shaft are in
their true position; then step to the rear of the stove and reverse
the guide plate, say three quarters of an inch, force the stretcher bar
forward and loosen the gang-plank. After this start your fire, throw
open the lemon-squeezer and right oblique hydraulic, see that the
tape-worm pinion and Aurora Borealis are well oiled, bring the rotary
pitman forward until it corresponds with the maintop mizzen, let go the
smoke stack, horizontal duodenum, thorough brace and breech-pin, and as
the stove begins to get under way you can slide forward the camera; see
that the ramrod is in its place, unscrew the cerebellum, allow the
water guage to run up to about 750 in the shade, keep your eye on the
usufruct, and the stove cannot fail to give satisfaction. The Fearfully
and Wonderully Maid may not be a cheap or durable stove, but for
simplicity and beauty of execution, she seems to excel and lay over, and
everlastingly get away with all other stoves, by a very large majority.
REMARKS TO ORIGINATORS.
|It is the wild delight which comes with the glad moment of discovery,
and the feeling that he is treading on unexplored ground, that thrills
the genius, whether he be a writer, a speaker, an inventor of electric
light, or the man who firsts gets the idea for a new style of suspender.
Think how Carl Schurz must have broken forth into a grand piano
voluntary, when he knew for a dead moral certainty that he had struck a
new lead in the Indian policy. It was the sweet feeling of newness,
such as we feel when for the first time we put on a new, rough flannel
undershirt, and it occupies our attention all the time and brings us to
the scratch.
Think how the 2571 originators of "Beautiful Snow" must have felt when
they woke up in the night and composed seventeen or eighteen stanzas of
it with the mercury at 43 degrees below par.
Think how Franklin must have felt when he invented electricity and knew
that he had at last found something that could be used in sending cipher
dispatches over the country.
Think how Hayes must have danced the highland fling around the executive
mansion when the first idea of civil service reform dashed like a sheet
of lightning through his brain.
These are only a few isolated illustrations of the unalloyed joy of
discovery. They go to show, however, that the true genius and the true
originator--whether he be simply the first man to work the vein of an
idea, or the inventor of a patent safety-pin--is the man who makes
the world better. He is the boss. He is the man to whom we look for
delightful surprises and pleasant items of the world's progress. Then do
not be discouraged, ye who linger along the worn-out ruts where others
have travelled. Brace up and press onward. Perhaps you may invent a new
style of spelling, or something unique in the line of profanity. Do
not lose hope. Hope on, hope ever. Give your attention to the matter of
improving the average Indian editorial. Or if you cannot do even this,
go into your laboratory and work nights till you invent a deadly poison
that will knock the immortal soul out of the average bedbug, or produce
a frightful mortality among cockroaches, or book agents, or some other
annoying insect. Invent a directory, or a glittering falsehood, or a
napkin-ring, or a dog-collar, or a cork screw. Do something, no matter
how small, for the advancement of civilization.
QUEER
|An exchange says that the people of that locality were considerably
excited the other day over a three-cornered dog fight that occurred
there. This is not surprising. Had it been simply a combat between
oblong or rectangular dogs, or even a short but common-place fight
between rhombohedral or octagonal dogs it would not have attracted any
attention, but an engagement between triangular dogs is something that
calls forth our wonder and surprise.
SIC SEMPER GLORIA HOUSEPLANT.
|Evidently it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Although this
severe weather froze up the water barrel and doubles the coal bill, I
am filled with a great large feeling of gratitude and pleasure this
evening, for the last pale house plant, which for two or three weeks
has been sighing for immortality, last night about midnight, got all the
immortality it wanted, and this morning no doubt it is blooming in the
new Jerusalem. I am glad it will bloom somewhere. It never got up steam
enough to bloom here.
The head of the house thought he heard the rustle of wings in the still
hours of night, and arising in all the voluptuous sweep of his night
robe, and with the clear white beams of the winter moon lighting up
the angles and gothic architecture of his picturesque proportions, he
stepped to the bedside of the sickly little thing to ask if there was
anything he could do, any last words that the little plant would like to
have preserved, or anything of the kind, but it was too late. John Frost
had been there, and touched the little thing with his icy finger, and
all was still. The agricultural editor breathed a sigh of relief and
went back to rest, neglecting to awaken the other members of the house,
because he did not want a scene.
Any one desiring a medium sized flower-pot as good as new, can obtain
one at this office very reasonably.
HOW TO TELL.
|For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be
called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your
time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your
evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave
doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye
to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which says
"_ty4-fritu, 3dp&wly, hcolnrm, br-jn7, 35tfwly, &df-codtf_," or something of
that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you
may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note
of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor
may or may not endorse the sentiments therein enunciated.
BIOGRAPHY OF COLOROW.
|Brigadier-General Wm. H. Colorow was born on the frontier in July,
1824, of poor but honest parents. Early in 1843, he obtained the
appointment to West Point through the influence of his Congressmen.
While at West Point he was the leader of the Young Men's Christian
Association, and now, if the army officers knew the grips, passwords
and signals of the Association, and would use them, much good might be
accomplished in bringing the General to terms, as he still respects the
organization. But most of the army officers are a little rusty in the
secret work of the Y. M. C. A.
Lieutenant Colorow, after graduating at the head of his class, came
west to engage in the scalp trade, in which he has been very successful.
"Colorow's Great Oriental Hair Raiser and Scalp Agitator" is known and
respected all over the civilized world.
He has also held the position of Master of Transportation on the air
line route from Colorado to Kingdom Come. His promotion has been rapid
and his career has been filled with wonderful incidents.
General Colorow is not above the medium height. He wears his hair
straight, and parted in the middle--a habit he contracted while at West
Point. He sometimes parts the white man's hair in the middle also. He
does it with his little hatchet. He is rather inclined to the brunette
order of architecture, with Gothic nose, Eastlake jaws, and ears of the
Queen Anne style. His hair is turning gray and his face is burned and
specked with powder, caused by an explosion which came near terminating
an eventful career.
Brigadier-General Colorow owns considerable stock in some of the best
North Park mines. Occasionally, he goes out to the Park to see how these
mines are panning out. Then the miners, out of respect for his feelings,
leave the mines and come into town to see what is the latest news from
the front. Some of the miners have neglected to come in at times when
the General was visiting the mines. They are there yet. I have a mine
out there but I am getting along first-rate without it, and I have been
thinking that when the General celebrates his silver wedding, I will
send up this mine to his residence, wrapped up in a clean napkin, with
his monogram worked on it.
DIARY OF A SAUCY YOUNG THING.
|It may be wrong to publish the contents of a diary, but the following
notes in a new diary found yesterday, are too good to lose:
Jan. 1, 1877. To-day is New Year's day. Last night was Sunday night. I
remember it distinctly. George and I watched the old year out and the
new year in. George is awful kind-hearted. He has quit using tobacco on
my account. He hasn't taken a chew this year.
Jan. 3. I didn't get time to write anything yesterday.
Jan. 4. This is Thursday. Day after to-morrow will be Saturday, and the
next day will be Sunday.
Jan. 8. George was here last evening. I found some tobacco in his
overcoat. Can he be deceiving me? O what false hearts men have! We had
popcorn last evening. George and I ate a milk-pan full. He says popcorn
seems to supply a want long felt. I don't know where he heard that.
Jan. 9. Another long week before the blessed rest and quiet of the
Sabbath. I met George yesterday near the postoffice, and he didn't laugh
as he once laughed. I wonder what makes him so sad. Maybe it's going
without tobacco, or perhaps it's a boil. O what a world of woe!
Jan. 10. George is trying to raise a moustache. It looks like a
Norwegian's eyebrow. It is genuine camel's hair. George's mother treats
him unkindly, because he has pearl powder on his coat sleeves Monday
morning. Four more days and the peace and quiet of the Sabbath will be
here. I am a great admirer of Sunday.
Jan. 11. To-day is Thursday. O pshaw, I can't keep a diary.
KILLING OFF THE JAMES' BOYS.
|Now that a terrible mortality has again broken out among the James'
boys, it is but justice to a family who have received so many gratuitous
obituary notices, to say that the James' boys are still alive and
enjoying a reasonable amount of health and strength.
Although the papers are generally agreed upon the statement that they
are more or less dead, yet in a few days the telegraph will announce
their death again. They are dying on every hand. Hardly a summer zephyr
stirs the waving grass that it does not bear upon its wings the dying
groan of the James' boys. Every blast of winter howls the requiem of
a James' boy. James' boys have died in Texas and in Minnesota, in New
England and on the Pacific coast. They have been yielding up the ghost
whenever they had a leisure moment. They would rob a bank or a printing
office, or some other place where wealth is known to be stored, and then
they would die. When business was very active one of the brothers would
stay at home and attend to work while the other would go and lay down
his life.
Whenever the yellow fever let up a little the Grim Destroyer would go
for a James' boy, and send him to his long home.
The men who have personally and individually killed the James' boys from
time to time, contemplate holding a grand mass meeting and forming a new
national party. This will no doubt be the governing party next year.
Let us institute a reform. Let us ignore the death of every plug who
claims to be a James' boy, unless he identifies himself. Let us examine
the matter and see if the trade mark is on every wrapper or blown in
the bottle, before we fill the air with woe and bust the broad canopy
of heaven wide open with our lamentations over the untimely death of the
James' boys. If we succeed in standing them off while they live we can
afford to control our grief and silently battle with our emotions when
they are still in death, until we know we are snorting and bellowing
over the correct corpse.
A RELIC.
|The Hutchinson family gave a concert last evening at the Methodist
church, according to advertisement, and were greeted with a fair house.
The entertainment did not awaken very loud applause, nor very much of
it. The songs were not new. Many of them I had almost forgotten, but
they were trotted out last evening and driven around the track in pretty
fair time.
The fresh little quartette entitled, "Tommy, don't Go," was brought
forward during the entertainment. I could see that this song has failed
very much since I last met it. Its teeth are falling out, and it is
getting very bald-headed. It will probably make two or three more grand
farewell concerts and then it will be found dead in its bed some morning
before breakfast.
"Silver Threads Among the Gold" was omitted from the programme.
The old melodeon that I remember was rickety and out of repair when I
was a prattling infant, was on the stage last evening. It is about
the size of a mouth organ, but the tone is not as clear. It is getting
wheezy, and a short breath shows that it is beginning to feel the
infirmities of age. The pumping arrangement makes more noise than the
music, and something is the matter with the exhaust pipe. But when the
old man opened the throttle and gave her sand, she would make a good
deal of racket for such a little thing. After the concert was over, Mr.
Hutchinson rolled up the melodeon in his pocket handkerchief and took it
home.
Take the entertainment up one side and down the other, I was not
much tickled with it. For those who like to drift back into the musty
centuries gone by, and shake hands with the skeletons of forgotten ages,
it is all right; but the time has come when a troupe cannot travel upon
anything but true merit, and the public require that those who ask for
money shall give some kind of an equivalent.
SOME REASONS WHY I CAN'T BE AN INDIAN AGENT.
|I see by the Western press that my name has been suggested to the
Secretary of the Interior as a suitable one for the appointment of
Indian Agent at the Uncompahgre Agency to succeed Berry; and, while I
must express my grateful acknowledgment for the apparent faith and
childlike confidence reposed in me by the people of Colorado, I must
gently but firmly decline the proffered distinction.
In the first place, my other duties will not admit of it. My time is
very much occupied at present in my journalistic work, and should there
be a falling off in my chaste and picturesque contributions to the
press, the great surging world of literature would be surprised and
grieved.
Again, I could not entirely lay aside this class of work anyway, even
were I to accept the position, and as I cannot write without being
wrapped in the most opaque gloom and perfect calm I would be annoyed, I
know, by the war-whoops of the savage when he got to playing croquet in
the front yard, and whenever he got to shooting at me through the window
while I was composing a poem, I am perfectly positive that I would get
restless and the divine afflatus would cease to give down.
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?
Further than this, I have not that gentle magnetic power over the
untutored savage that some have. I am agitated all the time by a nervous
dread that if I go near him I may lose my self-command and kill him.
I would lose my temper some day when I felt irritable, I'm afraid, and
shoot into a drove of them and mangle them horribly if they refused to
dig the potatoes, or got rebellious and wouldn't do the fall plowing.
Then I would have to hunt up a suitable military post 200 or 300 miles
away and stay there till the popular feeling in the tribe had cooled
down a little.
Then, again, the Utes would invite me to attend the regular social hops
during the winter, and I wouldn't know what to do, for it would be
bad policy to refuse, and yet I don't know the first figure of the
war-dance. I dance like a club-footed camel, anyway, and when I got
mixed up in the scalp-dance the floor-manager would get mad at me
probably, and chop some large irregular notches in me with a broad-ax.
Then their costumes are so low-necked and so exceedingly dress, and
everything is so all-fired decolette, whatever that is. I would probably
insist on wearing a liver-pad on a chilblain, and they wouldn't dance
with me all the evening, and I would be a wall-flower, and they would
call me a perfect dud, and would laugh at the way my liver-pad was cut,
and I would go home and cry myself to sleep over the whole miserable
affair.
So that perhaps it would be just as well to plug along as I am and not
get ambitious. The life of the ostensible humorist may not be so fraught
with untrammeled nature and sylvan retreats, and wild, picturesque
canons, and bosky dells, and things of that kind, but it is cheering and
comforting to put your hand on the top of your head and feel that it is
still on deck, and, although wealth may not come pouring in upon you in
such an irresistible torrent as you may desire, you know that if you can
get enough to eat from day to day, and dodge the Vigilance Committee and
the celluloid pie, you are comparatively safe.
Besides all this, I am afraid I am not in proper spiritual shape to go
among the Indians., Suppose that on some softened, mellow, autumnal day
they were all clustered about me with the bacon grease and war paint on
every childlike countenance, and while I stood there in the midst of all
the autumn splendor with the woods clothed in all the gorgeous apparel
of the deceased year, telling them of the beauties of industry, and
peace, and the glad unfettered life of the buckwheat promoter, or while
I read a passage of Scripture to them and was explaining it, and they
were looking up into my face with their great fawnlike eyes, all at once
one of them should playfully shoot my wife--all the wife I had, too--or
my hired girl! The chances are about even that I would throw down the
Bible and fly into an ungovernable rage and swear, and be just as harsh,
and rude, and unreasonable as I could be. Then, after I had hammered the
immortal soul out of the entire tribe, and my wrath had spent itself, I
would probably bitterly regret it all.
O it's of no use. I can't accept the position. I've been in the habit
of swearing at the spring poet and the "constant reader" too long, and
I know just as well as any one how it unfits me for every walk of life
that requires meekness and gentle Christian forbearance.
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.=
BILLIOUS NYE AND BOOMERANG IN THE GOLD MINES.
|Whenever the cares of life weigh too heavily upon me, and the _ennui_
which comes to those who have more wealth than they know what to do with
settles down upon me, and I get weary of civilization, I like to load
up my narrow-gauge mule Boomerang and take a trip into the mountains. I
call my mule Boomerang because I never know where he is going to
strike. He is a perpetual surprise to me in this respect. A protracted
acquaintance with him, however, has taught me to stand in front of him
when I address him, for the recoil of Boomerang is very disastrous.
Boomerang is very much below the medium height, with a sad, faraway look
in his eye. He has an expression of woe and disappointment and gloom,
because life has been to him a series of blasted hopes and shattered
ambitions.
In his youth he yearned to be the trick-mule of a circus, and though he
fitted himself for that profession, he finds himself in the decline of
life with his bright anticipations nothing but a vast and robust ruin.
About all the relaxation he has is to induce some trusting stranger to
caress his favorite chilblain, and then he kicks the confiding stranger
so high that he can count the lamp-posts on the streets of the New
Jerusalem. When Boomerang and I visit a mining camp the supplies of
giant powder and other combustibles are removed to some old shaft
and placed under a strong guard. In one or two instances where this
precaution was not taken the site of the camp is now a desolate, barren
waste, occupied by the prairie-dog and the jack-rabbit. When Boomerang
finds a nitro-glycerine can in the heart of a flourishing camp, and
has room to throw himself, he can arrange a larger engagement for the
coroner than any mule I ever saw.
There is a new camp in the valley of the Big Laramie River, near the
dividing line between Wyoming and Colorado. A few weeks ago the murmur
of the rapid river down the canon and the cheerful solo of the cayote
alone were heard. Now several hundred anxious excited miners are
prospecting for gold, and the tent-town grows apace. Up and down the
sides of the river and over the side of the mountain every little way a
notice greets the eye announcing that "the undersigned claim 1,500 feet
in length by 300 feet in width upon" the lode known as the Pauper's
Dream, or the Blue Tail Fly, or the Blind Tom, or the Captain Kidd, or
the Pigeon-Toed Pete, with all the dips, spurs, angles, gold and silver
bearing rock or earth therein contained.
I have a claim further on in the North Park of Colorado. I have always
felt a little delicate about working it, because heretofore several
gentlemen from the Ute reservation on White River have claimed it. They
are the same parties who got into a little difficulty with Agent Meeker
and killed him. Of course these parties are not _bona fide_ citizens of
the United States, and therefore cannot hold my claim under the mining
law; but I have not as yet raised the point with them. Whenever they
would go over into the park for rest and recreation, I would respect
their feelings and withdraw. I didn't know but they might have some
private business which they did not wish me to overhear, so I came away.
Once I came away in the night. It is cooler travelling in the night, and
does not attract so much attention. Last summer Antelope and his band
came over into the park and told the miners that he would give them "one
sleep" to get out of there. I told him that I didn't care much for sleep
anyhow, and I would struggle along somehow till I got home. I told him
that my constitution would stand it first-rate without rest, and I felt
as though my business in town might be suffering in my absence. So
I went home. The mine is there yet, but I would sell it very
reasonably--very reasonably indeed. I do not apprehend any trouble from
the Indians, but I have lost my interest in mines to some extent, The
Indians are not all treacherous and bloodthirsty as some would suppose.
Only the live ones are that way. Wooden Indians are also to be relied
upon.
In digging an irrigating ditch on the Laramie Plains, last summer, the
skeleton of an Indian chief was plowed up. I went to look at him. He
had, no doubt, been dead many years; but in the dry alkaline divide, at
an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, his skull had been
preserved pretty well. I took it in my hand and looked it over and
shook the sand out of it, and convinced myself that life was extinct. An
Indian is not always dead when he has that appearance. I always feel a
little timid till I see his scapula, and ribs, and shin bones mixed
up so that Gabriel would rather arrange a 15 puzzle than to fix up
an Indian out of the wreck. Then I have the most child-like faith and
confidence in him. When some avenging fate overtakes a Ute and knocks
him into pi, and thus makes a Piute out of him, and flattens him
out like a postage stamp, and pulverizes him, and runs him over the
amalgator, and assays him so that he lies in the retort like a seidlitz
powder, then I feel that I can trust him. I do not care then how much
the cold world may scoff at him. Prior to that I am very reserved and
very reticent.
That is why I presented my mine to the Ute nation as a slight token of
my respect and esteem. Then I went away. I did not hurry much, but I
had every inducement and encouragement to reach home at the earliest
possible moment, and the result was very gratifying. Very much so,
indeed. I left my gun and ammunition, but it did not matter. It wasn't a
very good gun anyhow. I do not need it. Any one going into the park this
summer can have it. It is standing behind the door of the cabin between
the piano and the whatnot.
TWO GREAT MEN.
|Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, passed through here on his way to
San Francisco on Wednesday evening, with his party.
In company with Delegate Downey, Judge Blair and United States Marshal
Schnitger, I went into the Secretary's special car and talked with him
while the train stopped here.
The other members of the party did most of the talking and I eloquently
sat on the back of a chair and whistled a few bars from a little
operatta that I am having cast at the rolling-mill. I am not very
hilarious in the presence of great at men. I am not so much at home in
their society as I am in my own quiet little boudoir, with one leg over
the piano, and the other tangled up among the $2,500 lace curtains and
Majolica dogs.
Bye and bye I thought that I had better show the Secretary that I knew
more than the casual observer would suppose, and I said, "Mr. Thompson,
how's your navy looking this summer? Have you sheared your iron-clad
rams yet, and if so, what will the clip average do you think?" He
laughed a merry, rippling laugh, and said if he were at home he would
swear that he was in the presence of the mental giant, William G. Le
Duc.
I was very much pleased with the Secretary. This will insure the
brilliant success of his Western trip.
He paid the Laramie plains a high compliment; said they were greener,
and the grass was far superior to that of any part of the country
through which he had passed. He said he was as positive of Garfield's
election as he was of reaching San Francisco, and chatted pleasantly
upon the general topics of the day.
I could see that he was accustomed to the very best society, for
he stood there in the blinding glare of my dazzling beauty, as
self-possessed and cool as though he were at home talking with Ben
Butler and Conkling and Carpenter and other rising young men.
There is a striking resemblance between the Secretary and myself. We are
both tall and slender, with roguish eyes and white hair. His, however,
is white from age, and is a kind of bluish white. Mine is white because
it never had moral courage or strength of character enough to be any
other color. It also has more of a lemon-colored tinge to it than the
Secretary's has.
We resemble each other in several more respects. One is that we are
both United States officials. He is a member of the Cabinet, and I am a
United States Commissioner. We are both great men, but I have succeeded
better in keeping it a profound secret than he has.
DIRTY MURPHY.
|On Thursday a man known by the Castillian nom de plume of Dirty Murphy,
was engaged in digging out a frozen water-pipe in front of the New York
House, when the glowing inspiration came upon him that the frozen earth
could be blasted much easier than it could be dug, so he drilled a
hole down to the pipe and put in a shot preparatory to lifting a large
portion of the universe out by the roots and laying bare the foundations
of the earth.
John Humpfner, the ram-rod of the New York House, feared that the
explosion might break the large French plate glass windows of his
palatial hotel, and so put a wash tub over the blast. What the exact
notion of Mr. Humpfner was relative to the result in this case, I am
unable to say, but when the roar of the universal convulsion had died
away, and the result was examined by Mr. Humpfner and the Count de Dirty
Murphy, they looked surprised.
Instead of blowing out a large tract of land and laying bare the
entire water and gas system of the city, the blast blew out like a sick
fire-cracker with a loose fuse, and, taking the washtub with it, sailed
away into the realms of space. It crashed through the milky way and
passed on in its mad flight into the boundless stretch of the unknown.
Those who saw the affair and had no interest in the wash-tub, enjoyed
it very much, but to the incorporators and bondholders who held the
controlling interest in the tub, the whole thing seemed a hollow mockery
and a desolate, dreary waste. Don Miguel de Dirty Murphy swooned on
the spot. The hose has been playing on him ever since, but he has not
returned to consciousness. The later geological formations have
been washed away, and it is thought that by working a night shift,
prehistoric and volcanic encrustations will be removed so that the pores
may be opened and life and animation return, but it is a long, tedious
job, and the superintending geologist is beginning to despair.
A ROCKY MOUNTAIN SUNSET.
|Speaking of the hours of closing day reminds me that we have recently
witnessed some of the most brilliant and beautiful sunsets here that
I have ever seen. In justice to Wyoming, I will say that she certainly
deserves a word for the gorgeous splendor of her summer sunset skies.
The air is perfectly pure, and at that hour the sighing zephyr seems to
have sighed about all it wants to and dies away to rest. The pulse of
tired Nature is almost still, and the luxurious sense of rest is upon
the face of the silent world. The god of day drops slowly down the
crimson west, as though he reluctantly bade adieu to the grassy plains
and rugged hills. Anon the golden bars of resplendent light are shot
across the deep blue of heaven, the fleecy clouds are tipped and
bordered with pale gold, while the heavy billows of bronze are floating
in a mighty ocean of the softest azure. The blue grows deeper and the
gold more dazzling. The scarlet becomes intensified and the softened
east takes up the magnificent reflection. The hills and mountains are
bathed in the beams of this occidental splendor, and the landscape
adorns itself in honor of nature's most wonderful diurnal spectacle.
It is certainly the boss. These mountain sunsets in the pure, clear air
of Wyoming and Colorado, as thrilling triumphs of natural loveliness,
most unquestionably take the cake.
The Italian sunset is a good fair average sunset, but the admission is
too high. It also lacks expression and _embonpoint_, whatever that may
be.
May be it is not _embonpoint_ which it lacks, but it is something of
that nature.
These beautiful sights awake the poet's soul within me, and on one
occasion I wrote a little ode or apostrophe to the sunset, which was
as sweet a little thing as I ever saw in the English language, but
the taxidermist spoiled it. He left it out in the hot sun while he was
stuffing a sage hen, and the poor little thing seemed to wilt and retire
from the public gaze.
THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BUMBLE-BEE.
|A recent article on bees says, "If you have noticed bees very closely,
you may have seen that they are not all alike in size."
I have noticed bees very closely indeed, during my life. In fact I have
several times been thrown into immediate juxtaposition with them, and
have had a great many opportunities to observe their ways, and I am free
to say that I have not been so forcibly struck with the difference in
their size as the noticeable difference in their temperature.
I remember at one time of sitting by a hive watching the habits of the
bees, and thinking how industrious they were, and what a wide difference
there is between the toilsome life of the little insect, and the
enervating, aimless, idle and luxurious life of the newspaper man,
when an impulsive little bee lit in my hair. He seemed to be feverish.
Whereever he settled down he seemed to leave a hot place. I learned
afterward that it was a new kind of bee called the anti-clinker
base-burner bee.
O, yes, I have studied the ways of the bee very closely. He is supposed
to improve each shining hour. That's the great objection I have to him.
The bee has been thrown up to me a great deal during my life, and the
comparison was not flattering. It has been intimated that I resembled
the bee that sits on the piazza of the hive all summer and picks his
teeth, while the rest are getting in honey and beeswax for the winter
campaign.
DRAWBACKS OF PUBLIC LIFE.
|I always like to tell anything that has the general effect of turning
the laugh on me, because then I know there will be no hard feelings. It
is very difficult to select any one who will stand publicity when that
publicity is more amusing to the average reader than to the chief actor.
Every little while I run out of men who enjoy being written about in
my chaste and cheerful vein. Then I hate to come forward and take
this position myself. It is not egotism, as some might suppose. It is
unselfishness and a manly feeling of self-sacrifice.
Last year I consented to read the Declaration of Independence, as my
share of the programme, partially out of gallantry toward the Goddess
of Liberty, and partly to get a ride with the chaplain and orator of the
day, through the principal streets behind the band. It was a very proud
moment for me. I felt as though I was holding up one corner of the
national fabric myself, and I naturally experienced a pardonable pride
about it. I sat in the carriage with the compiled laws of Wyoming under
my arm, and looked like Daniel Webster wrapped in a large bale of holy
calm. At the grounds I found that most everybody was on the speakers'
stand, and the audience was represented by a helpless and unhappy
minority.
At a Fourth of July celebration it is wonderful how many great men
there are, and how they swarm on the speakers' platform. Then there are
generally about thirteen venerable gentlemen who do not pretend to be
great, but they cannot hear very well, so they get on the speakers'
stand to hear the same blood-curdling statements that they have heard
for a thousand years. While I was reading the little burst of humor
known as the Declaration, the staging gave way under the accumulated
weight of the Fourth Infantry band and several hundred great men who had
invited themselves to sit on the platform. The Chaplain fell on top
of me, and the orator of the day on top of him. A pitcher of ice water
tipped over on me, and the water ran down my back. A piece of scantling
and an alto horn took me across the cerebellum, and as often as I tried
to get up and throw off the Chaplain and orator of the day and Fourth
Infantry band, the greased pig which had been shut up under the stand
temporarily, would run between my legs and throw me down again. I never
knew the reading of the Declaration of Independence to have such a
telling effect. I went home without witnessing the closing exercises. I
did not ride home in the carriage. I told the committee that some poor,
decrepit old woman might ride home in my place. I needed exercise and an
opportunity to commune with myself.
As I walked home by an unfrequented way, I thought of the growth and
grandeur of the republic, and how I could get rid of the lard that had
been wiped on my clothes by the oleagineous pig. This year, when the
committee asked me to read the Declaration, I said pleasantly but firmly
that I would probably be busy on that day soaking my head, and therefore
would have to decline.
THE GLAD, FREE LIFE OF THE MINER.
|In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
He also looks forward to some means by which he can earn the bread and
oleomargarine on which he can subsist. There are several ways of doing
this. Some take to agriculture and spend the long days of golden summer
among the clover blossoms of the meadow, raking hay and hornets into
large winrows, while they sniff the refreshing odor of the mignonette
and the morning glory, and the boiling soft soap and potato bugs
that have been mashed into the sweet bye-and-bye. Others, by a
straightforward course become truthful newspaper men and amass untold
wealth as funny men. Others proclaim the glad news of salvation at so
much a proclaim.
Perhaps, however, the most exciting way to become wealthy in a speedy
manner and in a surprising style is that of the miner. He buys some
bacon, and tobacco, and flour, and whiskey, and a pick and some chewing
tobacco, and a shovel and some whiskey, and an axe and some smoking
tobacco and matches, and whiskey and blankets, and giant powder, and
goes to the mountains to get wealthy.
He works all day hard, walking up hill and down, across ravines and
rocky gulches, weary but happy and confident till night comes down
upon him and he goes home to camp, and around the fire he enters the
free-for-all lying match, and tired as he is gets away with the prize
for scrub-lying. I have met miners who would with a little chance hold
a pretty even race against the great stalwart army of journalists. I do
not say this intending to reflect upon the noble profession of mining,
for I have been taught to respect the pleasing lie which is told in a
harmless way, to cheer the great surging mass of humanity who get tired
of the same old truths that have been handed down from generation to
generation.
One man who ran against me for justice of the peace two years ago and
who, therefore, got left, is now independent, having sold out a prospect
in sight of town for a good figure, while I plug along and tell the
truth and have nothing under the broad blue dome of heaven but $150 per
month and my virtue. Of course virtue is its own reward, but how little
of glad unfettered mirthfulness it yields. Sometimes I wish I had a
little looser notions about what is right and what is wrong. But it is
too late now. I have become so hardened in these upright ways that when
I do wrong it pretty nearly kills me.
This summer, however, I will get me a little blue jackass and put a
sawbuck on his back, and pack some select oysters and gum-drops, and an
upright piano, and a hammock, and some sheet music, and a camera, and
some ice and frosted cake, and a Brussels carpet, and a tent on his
back, and I will hie me to the mines, join the big stampede, fall down
a prospect hole 200 feet deep, and my faithful jackass will pull me out,
and I shall nearly freeze to death nights, and starve to death days, and
I will have lots of fun.
I like the glad, free mountain life. I have tried it. Once I went out
to the mountains and slept on the lap of mother earth. That is, I
advertised to sleep, but I couldn't quite catch on. I lay on my back
till two o'clock, A. M., looking up into the clear blue ether, while
the stars above were twinkling. After they had about twinkled themselves
out, I concluded I would not try to woo the drowsy god any more. I got
up and made a pint of coffee, and drank it so hot that the alimentary
canal was rolled together like a scroll. It felt as though I had
swallowed a large slice of melted perdition, but it didn't warm me up
any. Then I went up the mountain five miles to see the sun rise. In
about four hours it rose. So did the coffee that I drank at two o'clock.
Somehow the sunrise didn't seem to cheer me. It looked murky and muddy;
all nature seemed to be shrouded in gloom. There was more gloom turned
loose there than I have ever seen. I wanted to go home. I needed some
one to pity me and love me a great deal. I needed rest and entire change
of scene. I went away from there because the associations were not
pleasant; roughing it doesn't seem to do me the required amount of good.
I am too frail. I need more of the comforts of civilization, and less
wealth of wild, majestic scenery. I find that my nature needs very
little awe-inspiring grandeur, and a good deal of woven wire mattress
and nutritious, digestible food.
SOME THOUGHTS OF CHILDHOOD.
|Childhood is the glad springtime of life. It is then that the seeds of
future greatness or startling mediocrity are sown.
If a boy has marked out a glowing future as an intellectual giant, it is
during these early years of his growth that he gets some pine knots to
burn in the evening, whereby he can read Herbert Spencer and the Greek
grammar, so that when he is in good society he can say things that
nobody can understand. This gives him an air of mysterious greatness
which soaks into those with whom he comes in contact, and makes them
respectful and unhappy while in his presence.
Boys who intend to be railroad men should early begin to look about
them for some desirable method of expunging two or three fingers and one
thumb. Most boys can do this without difficulty. Trying to pick a card
out of a job press when it is in operation is a good way. Most job
presses feel gloomy and unhappy until they have eaten the fingers off
two or three boys. Then they go on with their work cheerfully and even
hilariously.
Boys who intend to lead an irreproachable life and be foremost in every
good word and work, should take unusual precautions to secure perfect
health and longevity. Good boys never know when they are safe.
Statistics show that the ratio of good boys who die, compared to bad
ones, is simply appalling.
There are only thirty-nine good boys left as we go to press, and they
are not feeling very well either.
The bad ones are all alive and very active.
The boy who stole my coal shovel last spring and went out into the
grave-yard and dug into a grave to find Easter eggs, is the picture of
health. He ought to live a long time yet, for he is in very poor shape
to be ushered in before the bar of judgment.
When I was a child I was different from other boys in many respects. I
was always looking about to see what good I could do. I am that way yet.
If my little brother wanted to go in swimming contrary to orders, I was
not strong enough to prevent him, but I would go in with him and save
him from a watery grave. I went in the water thousands of times that
way, and as a result he is alive to-day.
But he is ungrateful. He hardly ever mentions it now, but he remembers
the gordian knots that I tied in his shirts. He speaks of them
frequently. This shows the ingratitude and natural depravity of the
human heart.
Ah, what recompense have wealth and position for the unalloyed joys of
childhood, and how gladly to-day as I sit in the midst of my oriental
splendor and costly magnificence, and thoughtfully run my fingers
through my infrequent bangs, would I give it all, wealth, position and
fame, for one balmy, breezy day gathered from the mellow haze of the
long ago when I stood full knee-deep in the luke-warm pool near my
suburban home in the quiet dell, and allowed the yielding and soothing
mud and meek-eyed pollywogs to squirt up between my dimpled toes.
THE NEW ADJUSTABLE CAMPAIGN SONG.
|I beg leave at this time to present to the public a melodious gem of
song which I am positive cannot fail to give satisfaction.
It will withstand the rigors of our mountain clime as well as the heat
and moisture of a lower altitude.
It is purely unpartisan, although it may be easily changed to any shade
of political opinion. It is cheap, portable and durable, and filled
with little pathetic passages that will add greatly to the enthusiasm of
presidential contests.
It is true that some harsh criticism has been called down upon this
little chunk of crystallized melody, as I may be pardoned for calling
it, and it has been suggested that it is too much fraught with a gentle,
soothing sense of vacuity, and that there is nothing in it particularly
one way or the other.
This I admit to be in a measure true. There is nothing in it as a poem,
but it must be borne in mind that this is not a poem. It is a campaign
song.
Campaign songs never have anything in them. They don't have to.
Editorials and speeches have to express human ideas and little
suggestions of original horse sense, but the campaign song is generally
distinguished by a wild, tumultuous torrent of attenuated space.
They are like the sons of great men--we do not expect any show of
herculean intellectual acumen from them.
Directions.--Set up the song with the feed bar down and pitman reversed.
Then turn the thumbscrew that holds the asterisks in place, take them
out and lay them away in the upper case, and in proper compartment.
Next set up desirable candidate, unless you can get candidate to set
them up himself, slug the standing galley, oil the cross-head, upset the
tripod, loosen the crown sheet a little, so that the obvious duplex will
work easily in the lallygag eccentric, and turn on steam.
Should the box in which the lower case candidates are stored get hot,
sponge off and lubricate with castor oil, antifat and borax in equal
parts.
Keep this song in a cool place.=
```(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.
```Oh, 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.
SITTING ON ON A VENERABLE JOKE.
|Near St. Paul, on the Sioux City road, I met the ever-present man from
Leadville again.
I had met him before on every division of every railroad that I had
traveled over, but I nodded to him, and he began to tell me all about
Leadville.
He saw that I looked sad, and he cheered me up with little prehistoric
jokes that an antiquarian had given him years ago. Finally he said:
"Leadville is mighty cold; it has such an all fired altitude, The summer
is very short and unreliable, and the winter long and severe.
"An old miner over in California gulch got off a pretty good joke about
the climate there. A friend asked him about the seasons at Leadville,
and he said that there they had nine months winter and three months late
in the fall."
Then he looked around to see me fall to pieces with mirth, but I
restrained myself and said:
"You will please excuse me for not laughing at that joke. I cannot do
it. It is too sacred.
"Do you think I would laugh at the bones of the Pilgrim Fathers, where
are they? or burst into wild hilarity over the grave of Noah and his
family?
"No, sir; their age and antiquity protect them. That is the way with
your Phoenician joke.
"Another reason why I cannot laugh at it is this: I am not a very easy
and extemporaneous laughter, anyway. I am generally shrouded in gloom,
especially when I am in hot pursuit of a wild and skittish joke for my
own use. It takes a good, fair, average joke that hasn't been used much
to make me laugh easy, and besides, I have used up the fund of laugh
that I had laid aside for that particular joke. It has, in fact,
overdrawn some now, and is behind.
"I do not wish to intrench on the fund that I have concluded to offer as
a purse for young jokes that have never made it in three minutes.
"I want to encourage green jokes, too, that have never trotted in
harness before, and, besides, I must insist on using my scanty fund of
laugh on jokes of the nineteenth century. I have got to draw the line
somewhere.
"If I were making a collection of antique jokes of the vintage of 1400
years B. C., or arranging and classifying little bon-mots of the time of
Cleopatra or King Solomon, I would give you a handsome sum for this one
of yours, but I am just trying to worry along and pay expenses, and
trying to be polite to every one I meet, and laughing at lots of things
that I don't want to laugh at, and I am going to quit it.
"That is why I have met your little witticism with cold and heartless
gravity."
A HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE.
|To-day I got shaved at a barber-shop, where I begged the operator to
kill me and put me out of my misery.
I have been accustomed to gentle care and thoughtfulness at home, and
my barber at Laramie handles me with the utmost tenderness. I was,
therefore, poorly prepared to meet the man who this morning filled my
soul with woe.
I know that I have not deserved this, for while others have berated the
poor barber and swore about his bad breath and never-ending clatter
and his general heartlessness, I have never said anything that was not
filled with child-like trust and hearty good will toward him.
I have called the attention of the public to the fact that sometimes
customers had bad breath and were restless and mean while being operated
on, and then when they are all fixed up nicely, they put their hats on
and light a cigar and hold up their finger to the weary barber and tell
him that they will see him more subsequently.
Now, however, I feel differently.
This barber no doubt had never heard of me. He no doubt thought I was an
ordinary plug who didn't know anything about luxury.
I shall mark a copy of this paper and send it to him.
Then while he is reading it I will steal up behind him with a pick
handle and kill him. I want him to be reading this when I kill him,
because it will assist the coroner in arriving at the immediate cause of
his death.
The first whiff I took of this man's breath, I knew that he was rum's
maniac.
He had the Jim James in an advanced stage. Now, I don't object to being
shaved by a barber who is socially drunk, but when the mad glitter of
the maniac is in his eye and I can see that he is debating the question
of whether he will cut my head off and let it drop over the back of the
chair or choke me to death with a lather brush, it makes me nervous and
fidgetty.
This man made up his mind three times that he would kill me, and some
one came in just in time to save me.
His chair was near a window, and there was a hole in the blind, so that
when he was shaving the off side of my face he would turn my head over
in such a position that I could look up into the middle of the sun. My
attention had never before been called to the appearance of the sun as
it looks to the naked eye, and I was a good deal surprised.
The more I looked into the very center of the great orb of day the more
I was filled with wonder at the might and power that could create it. I
began to pine for death immediately, so that I could be far away among
the heavenly bodies, and in a land where no barber with the delirium
triangles can ever enter.
This barber held my head down so that the sun could shine into my
darkened understanding, until I felt that my brain had melted and was
floating around and swashing about in my skull like warm butter.
His hand was very unsteady, too. I lost faith in him on the start when
he cut off a mole under my chin and threw it into the spittoon. I
did not care very particularly for the mole, and did not need it
particularly, but at the same time I had not decided to take it off at
that time. In fact I had worn it so long that I had become attached to
it. It had also become attached to me.
That is why I could not restrain my tears when the barber cut it off
and then stepped back to the other end of the room to see how I looked
without it.
MYSELF, DR. TALMAGE, AND OTHER DIVINES.
September 5, 1880.
|I am beginning to-day to keep a diary. It is not an agreeable task,
but I feel that the wild, glad bursts of unfettered thought which surge
through my ponderous mind ought to be embalmed in eligible characters,
and passed down to posterity.
The thought may arise in the mind of the reader that this is taking a
low and contemptible advantage of a posterity that never in word or deed
ever harmed me; but I care not. Other able men have perpetrated their
diaries upon me when I was not in a condition to help myself, and now
that I can hand down and transmit to nations yet unborn, the same great
heritage unimpaired, there is a sweet consciousness of a revenge that
has been fully glutted.
To day I have been to church. I do not speak of it as remarkable at all,
for wherever I am, whether at home or abroad, my first thought is, where
will I find a sanctuary?
The minister was quite classical and he pumped the congregation so full
of heathen mythology that he came very near forgetting that he had a
word to say on behalf of Christianity as the advance agent of Zion.
I do not wish to say one word that would sound like irreverence toward
the cause which this man undertook to represent; but I want to jot down
a little thought or two relative to this exponent, so that I may be
placed squarely upon the record.
I have often thought when I have watched this class of ministers, with
one hand resting in a graceful and negligent posture on the altar rail,
while the self-conscious Demosthenes reeled off a 4th of July prayer to
the miserable, wretched and undone sinners before him, how God has said
that He is a jealous God; and I have wondered if these prayers, arranged
with great care to meet the criticism of the worshippers, and with an
off-hand disregard to the feelings of the Almighty that is very cool
and very refreshing indeed, whether they ever lay hold of the throne of
grace or not, and whether they ever lift up mankind or make the world
better.
Speaking of divines, reminds me of the very pleasant trip I had over the
Union Pacific on my way east with Brother Talmage. I call him Brother
Tannage because he called me brother occasionally. He no doubt thought
that in different walks of life, perhaps, but working in the same
direction, we were both laboring to make the world better.
Brother Talmage, General Crook, myself and two or three other eminent
men together occupied the sleeper Boise City. Brother Talmage and I one
day were seized with the same irresistable desire, at the same moment,
to change our shirts. He was a little nearer the wash-room than I was,
so he got there first, and we stood up together smiling at each other
sweetly, with a clean shirt in our hands, and didn't know exactly how to
express ourselves.
I was the first to speak. I told the Doctor that it was of no
consequence particularly, and I would wait. He said no, I must not wait
for him, and insisted so cordially on my coming in there that we went in
together and tackled the mysteries of our toilet at the same time.
It was pretty tough on me, for I had been accustomed while peeling off
a damp shirt to go through a few little vocal exercises and dance around
on one leg and howl.
Going from the mountains of Wyoming down into the tropical heat of
Nebraska made me perspire a good deal, and nothing but the firm and
irresistible restraint thrown about me by an eminent divine kept me from
swearing.
But the Doctor did not get mad. When he shoved his bald head into his
shirt a large smile was on his face, and when it emerged at the top
and he waved his arms above his head and struggled to climb up into
the shirt, so that he could look out over the battlements, he was still
smiling. He was not only smiling, but he was smiling a good deal. Those
who have seen Dr. Talmage smile know now he throws his whole soul into
it.
If I could jam my head up through a wilderness of shirt and starch and
saw off my windpipe as I looked out over the billowy, buttonless
mass, and still smile, as Dr. Talmage does, I would give all my broad
possessions in a moment.
This offer will hold good up to the 15th.
We got quite sociable and cordial toward the close, and I got the Doctor
to reach up as far as he could on my spinal column and bring down the
refractory end of a suspender, then I retaliated by going down into his
true inwardness after a collar button that had dropped into oblivion.
While he was smiling with that glad, free smile of his, which he takes
along with him instead of baggage, he told me a pretty good thing on the
editor of the _Herald_ of Salt Lake. He told it to me in confidence, he
said, because he knew he could rely on a newspaper man. Then he laughed
and seemed to think it was a good joke.
It seems that when Dr. Talmage was in Salt Lake, the _Tribune_ published
what purported to be an interview between a reporter of that paper and
the Brooklyn divine.
Shortly afterward, and while Dr. T. was in San Francisco, he received a
letter from the editor of the _Herald_ and a marked copy of the paper,
giving the Doctor a very flattering notice. In his letter the editor
said: "I enclose a clipping from the _Tribune_ purporting to be an
interview between yourself and a reporter of that paper; will you be
kind enough to write me whether it is or is not genuine?"
The Doctor looked the clipping carefully over, and as it was nothing but
a blood-curdling account of the merits of Day's Kidney pad, he had no
hesitancy in pronouncing the alleged interview a fraud. Still he never
wrote the editor of the _Herald_, and he no doubt still wonders why it
is that Dr. Talmage don't come forward and state the facts, so that the
Gentile _Tribune_ may be shown up.
The Doctor says that too much care cannot be used by the editor who
wields the shears not to get his editorials mixed up with patent
medicine advertisements.
FINE-CUT AS A MEANS OF GRACE.
|The amateur tobacco chewer many times through lack of consideration
allows himself to be forced into very awkward and unpleasant positions.
As a fair sample of the perils to which the young and inexperienced
masticator of the weed is subjected, the following may be given:
A few Sabbaths ago a young man who was attending divine worship up
on Piety Avenue, concluded, as the sermon was about one-half done and
didn't seem to get very exciting, that he would take a chew of tobacco.
He wasn't a handsome chewer, and while he was sliding the weed out of
his pocket and getting it behind his handkerchief and working it into
his mouth, he looked as though he might be robbing a blind woman of her
last copper. Then when he got it into his mouth and tried to look pious
and anxious about the welfare of his never dying soul, the chew in his
mouth felt as big as a Magnolia ham. Being new in the business, the
salivary glands were so surprised that they began to secrete at a
remarkable rate. The young man got alarmed. He wanted to spit. His eyes
began to hang out on his cheek, and still the salivary glands continued
to give down. He thought about spitting in his handkerchief or his
hat, but neither seemed to answer the purpose. He was getting wild.
He thought of swallowing it, but he knew that his stomach wasn't large
enough.
In his madness he resolved that he would let drive down the aisle when
the pastor looked the other way. He waited till the divine threw his
eyes toward heaven and then he shut his eyes and turned loose. An old
gentleman about three pews down the aisle yawned at that moment and
threw his open hand out into the aisle in such a manner as to catch the
contribution without any loss to speak of. He did not put his hand out
for that purpose and did not seem to want it, but he got it all right.
He seemed to feel hurt about something. He looked like a man who has
suddenly lost faith in humanity and become soured, as it were. Some who
sat near him said he swore. Anyway, he lost the thread of the discourse.
That part of the sermon he now says is a blank to him. It is several
blanks. He called upon blank to everlastingly blank such a blankety
blank blank, idiotic blank fool as the young man was.
Meantime the young man has quit the use of tobacco. He did not know at
first whether to swear off or kill himself. The other day he said: "Only
two weeks ago I stood up and said proudly I amateur. To-day, praise be
to redeeming grace, I am not a chewer." (This joke for the first few
days will have to be watered very carefully and wrapped in a California
blanket, for it is not strong at all. However, if it can be worked
through the cold weather it is no slouch of a joke.)
THE WEATHER AND SOME OTHER THINGS.
|Sometimes I wish that Wyoming had more vegetation and less catarrh,
more bloom and summer and fragrance and less Christmas and New Year's
through the summer.
I like the clear, bracing air of 7,500 feet above the civilized world,
but I get weary of putting on and taking off my buffalo overcoat for
meals all through dog days. I yearn for a land where a man can take off
his ulster and overshoes while he delivers a Fourth of July oration,
without flying into the face of Providence and dying of pneumonia.
Perhaps I am unreasonable, but I can't help it. I have my own peculiar
notions, and I am not to blame for them.
As I write these lines I look out across the wide sweep of brownish gray
plains dotted here and there with ranches and defunct buffalo craniums,
and I see shutting down over the sides of the abrupt mountains, and
meeting the foothills, a white mist which melts into the gray sky. It is
a snow storm in the mountains.
I saw this with wonder and admiration for the first two or three million
times. When it became a matter of daily occurrence as a wonder or
curiosity, it was below mediocrity. Last July a snow storm gathered one
afternoon and fell among the foothills and whitened the whole line to
within four or five miles of town, and it certainly was a peculiar freak
of nature, but it convinced me that whatever enterprises I might launch
into here I would not try to raise oranges and figs until the isothermal
line should meet with a change of heart.
I have just been reading Colonel Downey's poem. It is very good what
there is of it, but somehow we lay aside the _Congressional Record_
wishing that there had been more of it.
Just as we get interested and carried away with it, having read the
first five or six thousand words, it comes to an abrupt termination.
I have often wished that I could write poetry. It would do me a heap of
good. I would like to write a little book of poems with a blue cover
and beveled edges and an index to it. It would tickle me pretty near to
death.
But I can't seem to do it. When I write a poem and devote a good deal of
study and thought to it, and get it to suit me, the great seething mass
of humanity, regardless of my feelings, get down on the grass and yell
and hoot and kick up the green sward, and whoop at the idea of calling
that poetry. It hurts me and grieves me, and has a tendency to sour my
disposition, so that when a really deserving poet comes to the front
I haven't the good nature and sweetness of disposition to enter
dispassionately upon the subject and say a kind word where I ought to,
but I will say of Colonel Downey's poem that it certainly has great
depth and width and length, and as you go on, it seems to broaden out
and extend farther on and cover more ground and take in more territory
and branch out and widen and lay hold of great tracts of thought and
open up new fields and fresh pastures and make homestead claims and
enter large desert land tracts and prove up under the timber culture
act and the bounty land act and throw open the Indian reservation to
settlement.
The matter of decorating the Capitol with sacred subjects is one which
would receive the hearty approval of all the people of the country, and
I often wish that the Colonel had alluded to it in his poem.
I have some curiosity to know what his ideas are on that point.
I, for one, would be glad to see appropriate paintings of scriptural
subjects decorating the walls of our national capitol, and have often
been on the verge of offering to do it at my own expense.
A cheerful painting to adorn the walls back of the Speaker's desk,
would be a study by some great artist, representing Sampson mashing the
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.
It would be historical and also symbolical; but principally symbolical.
Then another painting might be executed representing Balaam's ass
delivering a speech on the Indian question. It would take first rate,
and when visitors from abroad made a flying trip to Washington during
the summer, and missed seeing Wade Hampton, and felt disappointed,
they could go and see Balaam's ass, and go home with their curiosity
gratified.
I have seen a very spirited painting somewhere; I think it was at the
Louvre, or the Vatican, or Fort Collins, by either Michael Angelo, or
Raphael, or Eli Perkins, which represented Joseph presenting a portion
of his ulster overcoat to Potiphar's wife, and lighting out for the
Cairo and Palestine 11 o'clock train, with a great deal of earnestness.
This would be a good painting to hang on the walls of the Capitol,
dedicated to Ben Hill and some other Congressional soiled doves.
Then there are some simpler subjects which might be worked up and hung
in the Congressional nursery to please the children till the session
closed for the day, and their miscellaneous dads came to carry them
home.
I could think of lots of nice subjects for a painter to paint, or a
sculptor to sculp, if I were to give my attention to it# But I haven't
the time.
THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD.
|Now there was a certain rich man in those days, who kept a large inn on
the American plan.
And the hegira from other lands over against Kabzul and Eder, and
Breckinridge and Kinah, and Georgetown and Dimmonah, and Kedesh and
Roaring Forks, and Hador and Ithnan, and the Gunnison country and
Ziph, and Telem and Silver Cliff, Beoloth and Hadattah, and even beyond
Hazar--Gadah and Buena Vista, was exceedingly simultaneous.
And throughout the country roundabout was there never before an hegira
that seemed to hegira with the same hegira with which this hegira did
hegira.
And behold the inn was overrun day by day with pilgrims who journeyed
thither with shekels and scrip and pieces of silver.
And the inn-keeper said unto himself, "Go to;" and he was very wroth,
insomuch that he tore his beard and swore a large, dark-blue oath about
the size of a man's hand.
For behold the inn-keeper gat not the shekels, and he wist not why it
was.
Now, it was so that in the inn was one Keno-El-Pharo, the steward, and
he stood behind the tablets wherein the pilgrims did write the names of
themselves and their wives and their sons and their daughters.
And Keno-El-Pharo wore purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously
every day, and he drank the wines of one Mumm, and they were extra dry,
and so even was Keno-El-Pharo from the rising of the sun until the going
down thereof.
And behold one day the inn-keeper took a large tumble even unto himself,
and also unto the racket of Keno-El-Pharo the son of Ahaz Ben Bunko.
And he said unto Keno, "Give an account of thy stewardship that thou
mayest be no longer steward."
And Keno-El-Pharo cried with a loud voice and wept and fell down and
rose up and went unto his place.
And he looked into the mirror, and patted the soap lock on his brow and
he saw that he was fair to look: upon.
But he was exceedingly sorrowful and he said, What shall I do? for my
lord taketh away the stewardship, and verily it was a good thing to
have.
Alas! I know not what to do. I cannot get a position as mining expert,
and to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what I will do. And he smiled
unto himself, and the breadth of the smile was even six cubits from one
end thereof even unto the other.
So he called unto himself one of his lord's debtors, and he said, How
much owest thou my lord?
And he said, Even for seven days food and lodging at $3.50 per day,
together with my reckoning at the bar, amounting to thirty pieces of
silver of the denomination known as the dollar even of our dads.
And the steward said unto him, Take thy bill quickly and write fifteen.
And it was so. And he said unto another, How much owest thou my lord?
And he answered him and said, fifty pieces of silver.
And the steward said unto him, take thy bill and write twenty-five.
And it was so.
And behold these two guests of the inn were solid with Keno El-Pharo
from that hour.
And when Keno-El-Pharo received the Oriental grand bounce from the
inn-keeper, the guests of the inn, to whom Keno had shown mercy,
procured him a pass over the road, and they whiled away the hours with
Keno-El-Pharo, and he did teach them some pleasant games; and when the
even was come he went his way unto Kansas City, and they with whom he
had abode wot not how it was, for they were penniless.
And Keno-El-Pharo abode long in the land over against St. Louis, and he
was steward in one of the great inns for many years, and he wore good
clothes day by day and waxed fat, and he rested his stomach on the
counter, and he said to himself, ha! ha!
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 PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON.
|Now, there was a certain man who had two sons.
And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the portion
of goods that falleth to me."
And he divided unto him his living, and the younger son purchased
himself an oil cloth grip-sack and gat him out of that country.
And it came to pass that he journeyed even unto Buckskin and the land
that lieth over against Leadville.
And when he was come nigh unto the gates of the city, he heard music and
dancing.
And he gat him into that place, and when he arose and went his way, a
hireling at the gates smote upon him with a slung-shot of great potency,
and the younger son wist not how it was.
Now in the second watch of the night he arose and he was alone, and the
pieces of gold and silver were gone.
And it was so.
And he arose and sat down and rent his clothes and threw ashes and dust
upon himself.
And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country, and he
sent him down into a prospect shaft for to dig.
And he had never before dug.
Wherefore, when he spat upon his hands and lay hold of the long-handled
shovel wherewith they are wont to shovel, he struck his elbow upon the
wall of the shaft wherein he stood, and he poured the earth and the
broken rocks over against the back of his neck.
And he waxed exceeding wroth.
And he tried even yet again, and behold! the handle or the shovel
became tangled between his legs, and he filled his ear nigh unto full of
decomposed slate and the porphyry which is in that region round about.
And he wist not why it was so.
Now, after many days the shovelers with their shovels, and the pickers
with their picks, and the blasters with their blasts, and the hoisters
with their hoists, banded themselves together and each said to his
fellow:
Go to! Let us strike. And they stroke.
And they that strake were as the sands of the sea for multitude, and
they were terrible as an army with banners.
And they blew upon the ram's horn and the cornet, and sacbut, and the
alto horn, and the flute and the bass drum.
Now, it came to pass that the younger son joined not with them which did
strike, neither went he out to his work, nor on the highway, least at
any time they that did strike should fall upon him and flatten him
out, and send him even unto his home packed in ice, which is after the
fashion of that people.
And he began to be in want.
And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country; and he
sent him into the lunch room to feed tourists.
And he would fain have filled himself up with the adamantine cookies and
the indestructible pie and vulcanized sandwiches which the tourists did
eat.
And no man gave unto him.
And when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants hath my
father on the farm with bread enough and to spare, and I perish with
hunger.
And he resigned his position in the lunch business and arose and went
unto his father.
But when he was yet a great way off he telegraphed to his father to kill
the old cow and make merry, for behold! he had struck it rich, and the
old man paid for the telegram.
Now the elder son was in the north field plowing with a pair of balky
mules, and when he came and drew nigh to the house he heard music and
dancing.
And he couldn't seem to wot why these things were thus.
And he took the hired girl by the ear and led her away, and asked her,
Whence cometh this unseemly hilarity?
And she smote him with the palm of her hand and said: "This thy brother
hath come, that was dead and is alive again," and they began to have a
high old time.
And the elder son kicked even as the government mule kicketh, and he
was hot under the collar, and he gathered up an armful of profanity and
flung it in among the guests, and gat him up and girded his loins and
lit out.
And he gat him to one learned in the law, and he replevied the
entire ranch whereon they were, together with all and singular the
hereditaments, right, title, franchise, estate, both in law and in
equity, together with all dips, spurs, angles, crooks, variations,
leads, veins of gold or silver ore, mill-sites, damsites, flumes, and
each and every of them firmly by these presents.
And it was so.
THE INDIAN AND THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL.
|William Henry Kersikes, D.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dear
Sir:--Your esteemed favor of the 25th instant, is at hand, asking me to
throw some light upon a few Indian conundrums propounded by you.
I thank you most heartily for the unfaltering trust in me expressed by
your letter. One of my most serious difficulties through life has been
a growing tendency on the part of mankind, to refuse to trust me as
I deserved. It has placed me in an extremely awkward position several
times. But your letter is trust and reliance and childish faith
personified.
You have done wisely in writing to me for my views on this important
national question, and I give them to you cheerfully and even
hilariously. If they were all the views I had it would be the same. I
would squeeze along without any rather than refuse you.
_First_ I agree with you in your ideas relative to the cause of failure
on the part of the Peace Commission. It was not calculated to soothe the
ruffled spirits of the hostiles and produce in their breasts a feeling
of rest and friendship and repose, but it was more in the nature of an
arrogant demand for those who had in an unguarded moment snuffed out the
light of the White river agent and the employes. This was not right or
even courteous on the part of the Commission.
You seem to understand the wants and needs of the Indian more fully than
any man with whom I am acquainted. By your letter I see at a glance that
you are the man to deal with them. You shall be agent at White river
hereafter. I will use my influence for your appointment. If you think I
have no influence with the administration you are exceedingly off.
The emoluments of the office are not large, but what you lack in money
will be made up to you in attention. You will get tons and tons of
Indian affection. For every dollar that you would receive from the
government you would get eleven dollars and fifty cents' worth of
childlike trust and clinging affection. You could also write religious
articles for the Western press, and blow in a good many scads that way.
By working that scheme judiciously I have amassed quite a little fortune
myself. Your leisure time could be filled up by organizing Temples of
Honor, Subordinate Granges, etc.; or you could get in an evening now and
then playing a social game of draw poker with your charge. They are all,
you will find, more interested in "draw" than they are in the Trinity.
You can also hoe potatoes and do good. If time still hung heavy on your
hands you could devote it to constructing a sheet-iron roof for your
scalp. When the Utes came in from the warpath, foot sore and weary,
you could go about from lodge to lodge and nurse them and read the
Scriptures to them and drive away the blue-tail fly and other domestic
insects, and lull the suffering savage to rest with "Coronation" and
other soothing melodies. But I must pass on to your next question.
_Second_--There have been several methods proposed for civilizing the
wandering tribes of the House of Stand-up-and-eat-a-raw-dog, but few of
them, I fear, will meet with your approval. My own plan is called the
Minnesota plan. It was an experiment used on the Sioux nation at one
time in its history, and consisted in placing the Indians upon a large
elevated platform, and so arranging a fragment of lariat that in case
the platform gave way, the lariat would support the performer by the
neck.
The Indian is generally stolid and indifferent to pain, but you give him
a fall of seven and a half feet, allowing him to catch by his neck, and
it is fun to see him try to kick a large piece out of the firmament.
The Indian when called on to make the opening speech at a country
fair does not make any demonstrations, but place him on one of these
sleight-of-hand scaffolds, and let the bottom drop out, and he makes
some of the most powerful and expressive gestures.
_'Third_--I am not prepared to answer fully your third question, as
I haven't the statistics where I can lay my hand on them. I think,
however, that the denominations are about equally divided among the
Indians. Colorow is a Presbyterian, Ouray is a member of the Dutch
Reformed Church, while Jack is a close communion Baptist. Few of them
are regular attendants upon divine worship. At some of the Ute churches,
I am told, very frequently there are not enough present for a quorum,
especially during the busy season when they are gathering the fall crops
of scalps.
_Fourth_--As to the time which would be required to bring the entire
outfit into the fold, I am a little unsettled as to the correct
estimate. It might take some time. The roads might be blockaded, you
know, or something of that kind; or some old buck might stampede and
take up a good deal of time. At least, I would not advise you to hold
your breath while listening for their glad hallelujahs to the throne.
They might miss the connections in some way, and you would get very
purple around the gills.
However, do not get discouraged. Keep up your lick. Write on and speak
on for this oppressed people. They deserve it. They have brought it
on themselves. Get some more dough-faced idiots to unite with you in
writing up the Indian question. It will be a good thing. Write to the
Indians themselves personally. Of course it will be a horrible death for
them to die, but they have richly merited it. Do not write to me
again, however. I am not strong anyway, and I need rest. If you could,
therefore, direct your remarks to the Utes themselves, and keep it
up during the cold weather while they are hungry and weak, you will
probably use up nearly all of them. If you will do so, I will see that
the people of the West club together and give you a nice gold-headed
cane.
THE MUSE.
CRITICISM ON THE WORKS OF THE SWEET SINGER OF MICHIGAN.
|Through the courtesy of a popular young lady of Chicago, who recognizes
struggling genius at all times, I have been permitted to carefully read
and enjoy the lays of the sweet singer of Michigan; and I ask the reader
to come with me a few moments into the great field of literature, while
we flit from flower to flower on the wings of the Muse.
There are few, indeed, of us who do not love the heaven-born music of
true poesy. Hardened, indeed, must he be whose soul is dead to the glad
song of the true poet, and we can but pity the gross, brutal nature
which refuses to throb and burn with spiritual fire lighted with coals
from the altar of the gods.
I speak only for myself when I say that seven or eight twangs of the
lyre stir my impressible nature so that I rise above the cares and
woes of this earthly life, and I paw the ground and yearn for the
unyearnable, and howl.
Julia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan, was born
some time previous to the opening of this chapter, of poor but honest
parents, and although she couldn't have custard pie and frosted cake
every day she, was middling chipper, as appears by a little poem in the
collection, entitled, "The Author's Early Life," in which she says:=
````My heart was gay and happy:
````This was ever in my mind,
````There is better days a coming,
````And I hope some day to find`
```Myself capable of composing.
````It was my heart's delight`
```To compose on a sentimental subject`
```If it came in my mind just right=
This would show that the Muse was getting in its work, as I might say,
even while yet Julia was a little nut-brown maid trudging along to
school with bare feet that looked like the back of a warty toad. In my
visions I see her now standing in front of the teacher's desk, soaking
the first three joints of her thumb in her rosebud mouth, and trying
to work her off toe into a knot-hole in the floor, while outside, the
turtle-dove and the masculine Michigan mule softly coo to their mates.
A portrait of the author appears on the cover of the little volume. It
is a very striking face. There are lines of care about the mouth--that
is, part way around the mouth. They did not reach all the way around
because they didn't have time. Lines of care are willing to do anything
that is reasonable, but they can't reach around the North Park without
getting fatigued. These lines of care and pain look to the student of
physiognomy as though the author had lost a good deal of sleep trying to
compose obituary poems. The brow is slightly drawn, too, as though her
corns might be hurting her. Julia wears her hair plain, like Alfred
Tennyson and Sitting Bull. It hangs down her back in perfect abandon
and wild profusion, shedding bear's oil ever the collar of her delaine
dress, regardless of expense.
I can not illustrate or describe the early vision of dimpled loveliness,
which Julia presented in her childhood, better than by giving a little
gem from "My Infant Days:"=
```When I was a little infant,
````And I lay in mother's arms,
```Then I felt the gentle pressure`
```Of a loving mother's arms.=
```"Go to sleep my little baby,
````Go to sleep," mamma would say;
```"O, will not my little baby
````Go to sleep for ma to-day?"=
When I read this little thing the other day it broke me alf up. It took
me back to my childhood days when I lay in my little trundle bed, and
was wakeful, and had a raging thirst, insomuch that I used to want a
drink of water every fifteen seconds. Mamma didn't ask if I would "go
to sleep for ma, to-day." She used to turn the bed-clothes back over the
footboard, so that she could have plenty of sea room, and then she would
take an old sewing-machine belt, and it would sigh through the agitated
air for a few moments pretty plenty, till the writer of these lines
would conclude to sob himself to sleep, and anon through the night he
would dream that he had backed up against the Hill Smeltingg works.
That's the kind of "Go to sleep for ma to-day," that comes up vividly to
my mind.
But I must give another stanza or two from Julia's collection--as
showing how this gifted writer can with a word dispel the chilling
temperature of December, and run the thermometer up to 100 degrees in
the shade. I will quote from the death of "Little Henry:"=
```It was on the eleventh of December,
````On a cold and windy day,
```Just at the close of evening,
````When the sunlight fades away,
```Little Henry he was dying,
````In his little crib he lay,
```With the soft winds around him sighing,
````From early morn till close of day.=
One of Julia's poems opens out in such a cheerful, pleasant way, that I
wish I could give it all, but space forbids. She tunes her lyre so that
it will mash all right, and then says:=
````Come all kind friends, both far and near,
````O, come, and see what you can hear.=
Then she proceeds to slaughter some one. In looking over her poems one
is struck with the terrible mortality which they show. Julia is worse
than a Gatling gun. I have counted twenty-one killed and nine wounded,
in the small volume which she has given to the public. In giving the
circumstances which attended the death of one of her subjects, and the
economical principles of the deceased, she says:=
```And he was sick and very bad,
````Poor boy, he thought, no doubt,
```If he came home in a smoking car`
```His money would hold out.
```He started to come back alone,
````He came one-third the way.
```One evening, in the car alone,
````His spirit fled away.=
That's the way Julia kills off a young man just as we get interested
in him. You just begin to like one of her heroes or heroines and Julia
proceeds to lay said hero or heroine out colder than a wedge. A sad, sad
thing, which goes to the tune of Belle Mahone, starts out as follows:=
````"Once there lived a lady fair,
````With black eyes and curly hair;
````She has left this world of care,
`````Sweet Carrie Monroe,"=
To which I have added in my poor weak way--=
```She could not her sorrows bear,
```For she was a dumpling rare;
```She has clum the golden stair,
`````Sweet Carrie Monroe.=
```'Twas indeed a day of gloom`
``When we gathered in her room,
```While she cantered up the flume,
`````Sweet Carrie Monroe.=
I will give but one more example of Julia's exquisite word painting, and
then after a word or two relative to her style generally I will close.
After speaking tearfully of her life as a child, she says:=
```My childhood days have passed and gone,
````And it fills my heart with pain,
```To think that youth will never more`
```Return to me again.
```And now, kind friends, what I have wrote`
```I hope you will pass o'er,
```And not criticize, as some have done,
````Hitherto herebefore.=
I know that it ill becomes me to assume the prerogative of criticizing
a poet's style or even to suggest any improvements, but sometimes an
outsider may be able to stand off as it were and see little defects in a
masterpiece which the author can not see.
My idea would be to take these poems and remove the crown sheet, then
put in new running gear, upset and bush the pitman, kalsomine the boiler
plate, drill new holes in the eccentric, rim out the gas pipe, raise the
posterior eccentric to a level with the gang plank, slide the ash pan
forward of the monkey wrench, securing it by draw bars to the topgallant
mizzen. Then, throwing open the condenser and allowing the cerebellum to
rest firmly against the vicarious whippety-whop, fair time may be made
on a gentle grade.
If I were to suggest anything further it would be that Julia have entire
change of air and surroundings. Michigan is too healthy for an ambitious
obituary poet. She naturally has too much time on her hands. Let her go
into the yellow fever districts next summer, where she can work in
two or three of her cheerful little funeral odes every morning before
breakfast. That's the place for her. It may kill her, but if it should
we will trust in Providence to raise up some inspired idiot to take her
place. We will struggle along anyway with George Francis Train and Denis
Kearney and Dr. Mary Walker, even if Julia joins the glad throng of
poets who let their hair grow long and kick up their heels in the green
fields of Eden.
One more suggestion which will, I know, be accepted as coming from one
who never says anything but in the kindest spirit. I think that Julia
takes advantage of her poetic license. A poetic license, as I understand
it, simply allows the poet to jump the 15 over the 14 in order to bring
in the proper rhyme, but it does not allow the writer to usurp the
management of the entire system of worlds, and introduce dog-days and
ice-cream between Christmas and New Year. It does not in any way allow
the contractor of prize funeral puffs to sandwich a tropical evening
with the scent of orange blossom and mignonette, in between two December
days in Michigan, that would freeze the lightning rods off the houses,
and when the owners of cast iron dogs have to bring them in, and stand
them behind the parlor stove.
Julia can't fool me much on a Michigan winter. When the seductive breath
from the north comes soughing across Lake Superior, redolent with the
blossom rock of the copper mines, and dead cranberry vines, and slippery
elm bark, the poet or poetess who could maliciously crawl into a buffalo
overcoat, and write a dirge that worked in "sighing soft winds," just
for the benefit of one whose spirit is in a land where house plants
never freeze, should have no poetic license. I would be in favor of
having such license revoked, or raising the price so high that none but
good, reliable, square toed poets could practice. I would suggest $500
per year for poets driving one horse, and dealing in native poems on
death, spring, beautiful snow, etc., etc.; $1,000 per year for two
horse, platform spring poets, retailers of imported poems; and $1,500
per year for poets who do a general business in manufactured Havana
poems, or native wrappers with Havana fillers.
We have too many poets in our glorious republic who ought to be peeling
the epidermis off a bull train; and too many poetesses who would succeed
better boiling soap-grease, or spiking a 6 x 8 patch on the quarter-deck
of a faithful husband's overalls.
I do not refer entirely to Julia in the last few lines, for Julia is not
deserving of such criticism. She was never intended to do the drudgery
of housework. She is too frail. She couldn't cook, because her cake
would be sad, and her soft, wavy hair, like the mane of a Cayuse plug,
would get in the cod-fish balls, and cling to the butter.
No, Julia, you don't look like a woman whose career as a housewife would
be a success. From the mournful look in your limpid eye, I would
say that your lignum-vitæ bread, and celluloid custard pie, and
indestructible waffles, and fireproof pancakes, and burglar-proof
chicken pie, would give you away. Your mind would be far away in the
poet's realm, and you would put shoe blacking in the blanc mange, and
silver gloss starch in the tea, and cod liver oil in the sponge cake.
So, Julia, you may continue right along as you are doing. It don't do
much harm, and no doubt it does you a heap of good.
SHOEING A BRONCO.
|Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by
witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco.
Whenever I get low spirited and feel that a critical public don't
appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown
& Poole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious
bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better
prepared to fight the battle of life.
They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad
sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco,
to the ends of which--the sinches, I mean--are attached ropes, four in
number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are
wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like
a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped
under his body and attached to the ropes.
Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession.
The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand
aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a good deal and switches his
tail, while the ropes continue to work in the pulleys and the man at the
capstan spits on his hands and rolls up on the wheel.
[Illustration: 9110]
After a while the bronco hangs from the ceiling like a discouraged dish
rag, and after trying for two or three hundred times unsuccessfully to
kick a hole in the starry firmament, he yields and hangs at half
mast while the blacksmith shoes him.
Yesterday I felt as though I must see something cheerful, and so I went
over to watch a bronco getting his shoes on for the round-up. I was
fortunate. They led up a quiet, gentlemanly appearing plug with all the
weary, despondent air of a disappointed bronco who has had aspirations
for being a circus horse, and has "got left." When they put the sinches
around him he sighed as though his heart would break, and his great,
soulful eyes were wet with tears. One man said it was a shame to put a
gentle pony into a sling like that in order to shoe him, and the general
feeling seemed to be that a great wrong was being perpetrated.
Gradually the ropes tightened on him and his abdomen began to disappear.
He rose till he looked like a dead dog that had been fished out of the
river with a grappling iron. Then he gave a grunt that shook the walls
of the firmament, and he reached out about five yards till his hind feet
felt of a Greaser's eye, and with an athletic movement he jumped through
the sling and lit on the blacksmith's forge with his head about three
feet up the chimney. He proceeded then to do some extra ground and lofty
tumbling and kicking. A large anvil was held up for him to kick till he
tired himself out, and then the blacksmith put a fire and burglar proof
safe over his head and shod him.
The bronco is full of spirit, and, although docile under ordinary
circumstances, he will at times get enthusiastic and do things which he
afterwards, in his sober moments, bitterly regrets.
Some broncos have formed the habit of bucking. They do not all buck.
Only those that are alive do so. When they are dead they are more
subdued and gentle.
A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down
his life if necessary. His master's life, I mean.
When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and
asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the
ground that I have a family dependent on me, and furthermore, that I
am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government
hinges on me.
Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the
republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so
scarce.
Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some
unprincipled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner
or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!!
Lots of people never see this. They sec how smoothly the machinery of
government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They
do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed
through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house,
or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a
large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum.
This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public
will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me
while I am alive.
PUMPKIN JIM; OR THE TALE OF A BUSTED JACKASS RABBIT.
CHAPTER I.--PUMPKIN JIM.
|It was evening in the mountains. The golden god of day was gliding
slowly adown the crimson west. Here and there the cerulean dome was
flecked with snowy clouds.
The flecks were visible to the naked eye.
Meanwhile the golden god of day, hereinbefore referred to, continued to
glide adown the crimson west, with about the same symmetrical glide. It
had done so on several occasions previous to the opening of this story.
The katydid was singing sleepily in the long grass, and the grizzly bear
was trilling between eleven trills on the still air.
It was a spot where the foot of man had never trod, and the undisturbed
temple of nature with its hallowed hush and never ending repose. The
lofty pines were swaying softly to and fro in the gentle breeze of
evening, and the babbling brook went babbling along down its rocky bed
in the bottom of the canon, with a merry bab.
All at once, like a flash of dazzling light, a noble youth came slowly
down the mountain side, riding an ambling palfrey of the narrow-guage
variety, with a paint-brush tail on him--(that is the palfrey,
of course.) The palfrey was a delicate buckskin color, with high,
intellectual ears and Roman nose.
In crossing the stream the palfrey stubbed his toe, and fell on his
noble rider, breaking the man's leg in three places, and jamming one of
his ribs through the liver and into the ground, thus pinning him to the
earth, and preventing him from rising.
The buckskin palfrey, with almost human foresight, and wonderful
intelligence, found a soft place in the grassy bottom, and lay down.
There, in the slanting rays of the declining sun, and stretched out upon
the sedgy brink of the clear mountain stream, far from the reach of man
and miles beyond the outer line of civilization, lay Pumpkin Jim, the
Yipping, Yelling Yahoo of Dirty Woman's Ranch.
He lav there partially submerged in the stream and partially in the
clear, bracing atmosphere. Wild-eyed and beautiful he lay there, looking
up into the glad realms of space, with that murderous glitter in his
eye that wins a woman's love, and the sympathy of kind hearted
philanthropists.
Occasionally he would raise his broken limb and try to use it, but it
generally wilted and drooped like the leg of a rag doll.
Then he would struggle to raise himself up and drag his body out upon
the bank, but the broken rib would tear out large chunks of his liver,
and make him feel wretched and unhappy.
"Curses upon thee, thou base and treacherous mule!" he murmured,
brokenly. "By my beard, thou hast poorly repaid me for my unremitting
kindness to thee. Ah, alack, alack, alack--"
He was just about to alack some more, when a mellow, girlish voice came
floating down the gulch and fell in large fragments near where he lay.
He gathered up some of the chunks of melody to see what the song might
be. It was that wonderful masterpiece of Mozart's, "When Johnny Comes
Marching Home."
Then he swooned.
The gurgling brook still continued to gurg. We will let it gurg.