ANSWERS.

1. --Yes, it has indeed been of real benefit to the Territory in many

ways.

[Illustration: 9176]

Until woman's suffrage came among us, life was a drag--a monotonous

sameness, and simultaneous continuousness. Now it is not that way.

Woman comes forward with her ballot, and puts new life into the flagging

energies of the great political circles. She purifies the political

atmosphere, and comes to the polls with her suffrage done up in a little

wad, and rammed down into her glove, and redeems the country.

2. --It has accomplished more than the great outside world wots of.

Philosophers and statesmen may think that they wot; but they don't. Not

a wot.

To others outside of Wyoming, woman's suffrage is a mellow dream; but

here it is a continuous, mellow, yielding reality. We know what we are

talking about. We are acquainted with a lady who came here with the

light of immortality shining in her eye, and the music of the spheres

was singing in her ears. She was apparently on her last limbs, if we

may be allowed that expression. But woman's suffrage came to her with

healing on its wings, and the rose of health again bloomed on her cheek,

and her appetite came back like the famine in Ireland. Now she wrestles

with the cast-iron majolica ware of the kitchen during the day, and in

the evening works a cross-eyed elephant on a burlaps tidy, and talks

about the remonetization of the currency.

Without attempting to answer the last two questions in a short article

like this, we will simply give a few certificates and testimonials of

those who have tried it:

Prairie-Dog Ranche, Jan. 3, 1880.

"_Dear Sir_: I take great pleasure in bearing testimony to the efficacy

of woman's suffrage. It is indeed a boon to thousands. I was troubled

in the east beyond measure with an ingrowing nail on the most extensive

toe. It caused me great pain and annoyance. I was compelled to do my

work wearing an old gum overshoe of my husband's. Since using woman's

suffrage only a few months, my toe is entirely well, and I now wear my

husband's fine boots with perfect ease. As a remedy for ingrowing nails

I can safely recommend the woman's suffrage.

"Sassafras Oleson."

Miner's Delight, Jan 23, 1880.

"_Deer Sur_: Two year ago mi waife fell down into a nold sellar and

droav her varyloid through the Sarah bellum. I thot she was a Gonner. I

woz then livin' in the sou west potion of Injeanny. I moved to where i

now am leaving sevral onsettled accounts where i lived. But i wood do

almost anything to recover mi waifs helth. She tried Woman's Suffrins

and can now lick me with 1 hand tied behind hur. i o everything to the

free yuse of the femail ballot. So good bi. at Present

"Union Forever McGilligin."

Rawhide, Feb. 2, 1880.

"_Dear Sir_: I came to Wyoming one year ago to-day. At that time I only

weighed 153 pounds and felt all the time as though I might die. I was a

walking skeleton. Coyotes followed me when I went away from the house.

"My husband told me to try Woman's Suffrage. I did so. I have now run up

to my old weight of 213 pounds, and I feel that with the proper care and

rest, and rich wholesome diet, I mav be spared to my husband and family

till next spring.

"I am now joyful and happy. I go about my work all day singing Old Zip

Coon and other plaintive melodies. After using Woman's Suffrage two days

I sat up in a rocking chair and ate one and three-fourths mince pies.

Then I worried down a sugar-cured ham and have been gaining ever since.

"Ah! it is a pleasant thing to come back to life and its joys again.

"Yours truly, Ethel Lillian Kersikes."

PORTUGUESE WITHOUT A MASTER.

|I am spending my leisure moments these days studying the Portuguese

language.

It is not very generally used, it is true, but I might meet a Portuguese

some day who wanted to hold a conversation with me very much, and I

would feel more at ease if I could speak the language with elegance and

precision.

I am working at the task silently and earnestly without a master, and

I am sometimes a little mystified by the startling and original

exhibitions of imported syntax and etymology as shown in the English

translations given in the book which I am studying. It is a kind of

Portuguese primer, designed and constructed by Jose De Fonseca and Pedro

Carolino, and although the Portuguese part of it seems to be all right,

I am at times a little annoyed at the novel arrangement of the English

translations.

The authors in their preface seem to convey the impression that other

compilers and writers who have attempted this thing have not seemed to

meet the demands of the times, but Messrs. Fonseca & Carolino intimate

that they have supplied a want long felt, and they seem tickled almost

to death over the fact that they have the bulge on their predecessors.

In their apparently modest way they say:

"The works which we are conferring for this labor found use us for

nothing, but those who were publishing to Portugal or out, they were

most all composed for some foreign or some national, acquainted in the

spirit of both languages. It was resulting from that carelessness to

rest these works fill of imperfections, and anomalies of style, and

idiotisms, for this language in spite of the infinite typographical

faults which sometimes invert the sense of the periods."

Parties who have become cloyed with the spicy fragrance of "Fifteen"

might find pleasing diversion in the foregoing sentence. It is quaint

and unique in its style, and although I consider it perfectly original,

I am led to believe that there are little poetic gems from Walt Whitman

in it.

Further on the authors in poetic prose say:

"We expect them, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him and

for her typographical perfection) that may be worth the acceptation of

the studious persons and especially of the youth at which we dedicate

him particularly."

Ah, how well those dark-eyed dwellers in perpetual summer know how to

inspire even the dull and commonplace sentences of a preface with a

living, breathing soul! How the threadbare language of apology and

modest braggadocio used by the hesitating but puffed up author ever

since the first work published by Moses, is made to submit to the

tropical influence of sunny Portugal, and comes forth breathing the

seductive odors of that glad clime where the poet's song of undying love

to the dark-eyed maid is ever throbbing in passionate pulsations upon

the perfumed air.

But I must give a Portuguese translation rendered back into English, of

the well known anecdote told on the physician who didn't take his own

medicine:

"A physician eighty years of age, had enjoyed of a health unalterable.

Their friends did him of it compliments every days. 'Mister Doctor,'

they said to him, 'you are admirable man. What you make then for to bear

as well?' 'I will tell you it, gentlemen,' he was answered them, 'and I

exhort you in same time at to follow my example. I live of the product

of my ordering without take any remedy who I command to my sicks.'"

One fault with American wit, in my estimation, is its coarseness and

lack of polish. I have mentioned it a great many times and wept over it

in extreme sorrow. Here, however, we have it down fine. The Portuguese

joke is no doubt the most mirth provoking, and at the same time the

most refined and delicate joke now made. We send our manufactures to all

foreign countries to successfully compete with theirs; but our joke can

never hold up its head and ask for the award or bronze medal where these

Portuguese rib-ticklers and button-hole busters and suspender wrenchers

are allowed to compete for the free for-all prizes. The Portuguese joke

with facings of same held in place with bias folds of something else,

is really the most _recherche_ joke now on the market. Americans may for

years to come be able to furnish a good, fair, stoga joke that will do

to stub around home with, but they cannot design a joke that will do

to dress up in and wear on great occasions. The low-neck, Oxford-tie,

Portuguese burst of humor, hand-sewed, with sole leather counter and

steel shank, and with the name of the author blown in the bottle, is

bound to command the highest market price for a century or more to come.

We may command the smoking car and Congress trade, but Portugal must

furnish the easy riding, gentle, picnic and croquet joke. It may be also

fed to invalids with a spoon. A friend of mine who had been sick for

nine years took a Portuguese joke that I gave him right out of the can

without diluting it, and by that means gradually led up to fricasseed

oat-meal gruel stuffed with sawdust and other rich dishes. It saved

his life, but his intellect is impaired so that he don't know a calcium

light from the splendor of the New Jerusalem.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOG.

|In speaking of the domestic and useful animals of Laramie, it would not

be right to overlook the hog. I do not allude to him as useful at all,

but he is very domestic. He is more so than the people seem to demand. I

never saw hogs with such a strong domestic tendency as the Laramie hogs

have. They have a deep and abiding love for home, all of them, and they

don't care whose home it is either.

There is a tremendous pressure of hog to the square inch here. The town

is filled with homeless, unhappy and starving hogs.

[Illustration: 9182]

They run between your legs during the day, and stand in your front yard

and squeal during the night. Most of them are orphans. When Thanksgiving

comes it will bring no joy to them. It will be like any other day.

About all the fun they have is to root a gate off the hinges, and then

run off with a table cloth in their mouths. We should not be too severe,

however, on the hog. What means has he of knowing that there is a city

ordinance against his running about town? Kind reader, do you think the

innocent little hog would openly violate a law of the land if he knew of

its existence? Certainly not. It is pardonable ignorance on the part of

the hog, the same as it is with the Indian, which causes him to break

over the statutes and ordinances of his country.

Our plan, therefore, is to _civilize the hog_. Build churches and school

houses for him. Educate him and teach him the ways of industry. Put a

spade and a plow at his disposal, and teach him to till the soil. The

natural impulses of the hog are good, but he has been imposed upon by

dishonest white men.

Long before man came with his modern appliances, the hog was here. He

owned the land and used it to raise acorns and grub-worms on. But the

white man has entered on the fair domain, and, regardless of his solemn

treaties, has taken this land and asks that the hog, the original owner

of the soil, shall be penned up in a little reservation ten feet by

twelve, made of cheap pine slabs.

Every principle of right, and justice, and equity, and humanity cries

out against this tyrannical action on the part of the white man. Men who

would scorn to do a dishonorable act, ordinarily, snatch the broad lands

that were formerly owned by the hog, away from him, and deliberately go

to raising wheat on them. This is not right. We should remember that the

hog has certain rights which we are bound to respect.

Did you ever stop to think, dear reader, that the hog of the present

day is but a poor, degraded specimen of the true aboriginal hog, before

civilization had encroached upon him? Then do not join the popular cry

against him. Once he was pure as the beautiful snow.

THE BUCKNESS WHEREWITH THE BUCK BEER BUCKETH.

|Buck beer is demoralizing in its tendency when it moveth itself aright.

It layeth hold of the intellect and twisteth it out of shape.

My son, go not with them who go to seek buck beer, for at the last

it stingeth like the brocaded hornet with the red-hot narrative, and

kicketh like the choleric mule.

Who hath woe? Who hath babbling? Who hath redness of eyes? He that goeth

to seek the schooner of buck beer.

Who hath sorrow? Who striveth when the middle watch of the night hath

come, to wind up the clock with the 15 puzzle.

He that kicketh against the buck beer and getteth left.

Verily, the buckness of the buck beer bucketh with a mighty buck,

insomuch that the buckee riseth at the noon hour with a head that

compasseth the town round about, and the swellness thereof waxeth more

and more, even from Dan to Beer--sheba. (Current joke in the Holy Land.)

Who clamoreth with a loud voice and saith, verily, am not I a bad man?

Who is he that walketh unsteadily and singeth unto himself, "The bright

angels are waiting for me?" Who wotteth not even a fractional wot, but

setteth his chronometer with the wooden watch of the watchmaker, and by

means of a tooth-brush?

Go to. Is it not he who bangeth his intellect ferninst the bock beer,

even unto the eleventh hour?

BILLIOUS NYE AND THE AMATEUR STAGE.

|A great portion of my time at present is taken up in preparations for

my appearance in a few weeks on the amateur stage.

Excursion trains will run from Denver on this occasion, and no pains

will be spared to make the grand spectacular hoo-doo one long to be

remembered.

Whenever any society or association desires to make a few thousand

dollars for the relief of knock-kneed Piutes, or to purchase liver-pads

for impecunious Senegambians, it only has to advertise that I am to

appear on the amateur stage in a heavy part.

I am not a brilliant success in the "Say-wilt-be-mine" part. Just as I

get the heroine up close to me near the footlights, and begin to hug her

a little as I would at home, and I temporarily forget that a thousand

eyes are upon me, it comes over me that my wife is in the audience and

does not seem to enjoy the play. This throws a large four-dollar gloom

over the entire surroundings, and I seem to lose my grip, so to speak.

Many years ago when I was young and, as one might say, in the hey-day

of vigorous manhood, and had an appetite like a P. K. Dederick Perpetual

Hay Press, I consented to take a leading part, and although I could

generally worry through a little light comedy, I had not then learned

how rough and uncouth I appeared as the heavy lover. I therefore

consented to hug a beautiful young thing before five hundred people, and

in the full glare of the footlights, whom I would not have dared to wink

at in her father's parlor at midnight, with the lamp turned clear down.

I have an easy, gliding stage gait that is something between a "pace"

and a "rack." It is full of the very poetry of motion.

I "racked" up to the heroine at the proper time and told her how I loved

her and how it was tearing me all to pieces, and so forth. Just as I was

coming to the grand flourish, however, I forgot a word, and while I was

thinking that up, the remainder of the speech slowly drifted away to

where I couldn't get at it.

To add to the general hilarity of the occasion the stage manager, who

was furnishing at that moment some pale blue lightning and distant

thunder, and who happened to be drunk, threw in a heavy snow storm that

should have gone into another piece.

I stood there waiting and trying to think of my part about thirty years,

I should think. Any way, the snow got knee deep and the heroine excused

herself and went away to warm her feet. She told me to call her up by

telephone when I could think of my piece.

I thought the audience would be mad and mob me, but it didn't. There

seemed to be general good feeling and harmony all the way through. I

told them that I could not call to mind the exact words of my part,

but if those present would like to hear a little poem that had gone the

rounds of the press a good deal and which I composed myself, entitled

"The Burial of Sir John Moore," I would render it in my own choice and

happy style.

It is not a humorous poem, but the audience seemed to think it was, for

all the way through from the time the procession started out with Sir

John till he was planted, everybody was tickled nearly to death.

Now I do not take the part of the leading lover any more. The awkward

young man who carries dead bodies off the stage is good enough for me.

A JOURNALISTIC CORRECTION.

OFFICE OF THE MEEK-EYED TARANTULA.

|We have, it appears, said something, casually, in our kind-hearted way,

that the sensitive _Slimtown Harmonica_ has taken to heart, and feels

badly over, so we will try, as far as possible, to place ourself in a

correct position. We spoke of the _Harmonica_ in connection with another

subject which we took the liberty to write upon, and did so simply with

the idea of using the _Harmonica_ as a _simile_. We find, however, that

we were wrong. The _Harmonica_ is not a _simile_. On the contrary, it is

a parabola. It is a base, inferior isosceles, and its editor is nothing

but a cosmopolitan hypothenuse; and if he wants to take it up, we may be

found at our office at any time between the hours of A. m. and p. m. We

were wrong in speaking of the Harmonica as a comparison or a _simile_

but we want it distinctly understood that we know what the _Harmonica_

and its editor are, and we are not afraid to say so, either. They are

pre-Adamite, vicarious isotherms, and we think that it is time the

people of the west were apprized of that fact too..

BANKRUPT SALE OF LITERARY GEMS.

OFFICE OF THE MORMON BAZOO.

Little boys who are required by their teacher to write compositions at

school can save a great deal of unnecessary worry and anxiety by calling

on the editor of this paper, and glancing over the holiday stock of

second-hand poems and essays. Debating clubs and juvenile lyceums

supplied at a large reduction. The following are a few selections, with

price:

"Old Age," a poem written in red ink, price ten cents. "The Dog," blank

verse, written on foolscap with a hard pencil, five cents. "Who will

love me all the while?" a tale, price three cents per pound. "Hold me

in your clean white arms," song and dance, by the author of "Beautiful

Snow," price very reasonable; it must be sold. "She ain't no longer

mine, nor I ain't hern," or the sad story of two sundered hearts; spruce

gum and licorice taken in exchange for this piece. "God: his attributes

and peculiarities," will be sold at a cent and a half per pound, or

traded for a tin dipper for the office. Give us a call before purchasing

elsewhere.

The stock on hand must be disposed of, in order to give place to the new

stock of odes and sonnets on Spring, and contributions on "the violet"

and the "skipful lamb."

THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE.

|Marriage is, to a man, at once the happiest and saddest event of his

life. He quits all the companions and associations of his youth, and

becomes the chief attraction of a new home.

[Illustration: 9188]

Every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is to

be changed, and yet he flees with joy to the untrodden paths before

him. Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and

wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine

blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the

cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit

down on him. Little do women realize that all a man needs under the

broad cerulean dome of heaven is love--and board and clothes. Love is

his life. If some woman or other don't love him, and love him like a

hired man, he pines away and eventually climbs the golden stair. Man is

born with strong yearnings for the unyearnablc, and he does not care

so much for wealth as he does for some one who will love him under all

circumstances and in all conditions.

If women would spend their evenings at home with their husbands, they

would see a marked change in the brightness of their homes. Too many

sad-eyed men are wearing away their lives at home alone. Would that I

had a pen of fire to write in letters of living light the ignominy

and contumely and--some more things like that, the names of which have

escaped my memory--that are to-day being visited upon my sex.

Remember that your husband has the most delicate sensibilities, and

keenly feels your coldness and neglect. The former may be remedied by

toasting the feet over a brisk fire before going to bed, but the latter

can only be remedied by a total reform on your part. Think what you

promised his parents when you sued for his hand. Think how his friends,

and several girls to whom he had at different times been engaged, came

to you with tears in their eyes and besought you not to be unkind to

him. Do these things ever occur to you as you throw him over the card

table and mop the floor with his remains? Do you ever feel the twinges

of remorse after you have put an octagonal head on him for not wiping

the dishes drier? Think what a luxurious home you took him from, and

how his mother used to polish his boots and take care of him, and then

consider what drudgery you subject him to now. Think what pain it must

cause him when you growl and swear at him. Perhaps when you went away

to your work you did not leave him wood and coal and water; does he ever

murmur or repine at your neglect?

Ah, if wives knew the wealth of warm and true affection locked up in the

bosoms of their husbands, and would draw it out, instead of allowing the

hired girl to get all the benefit, what a change there would be in this

earth of ours. But they never do until the companion of their joys and

sorrows has winged his way to the ever-green shore and takes charge

of the heavenly orchestra, and then for about two weeks you will see a

violently red proboscis glimmering and sparkling under a costly black

veil, after which the good qualities of the deceased will be preserved

in alcohol, to be thrown up to No. 2 in the bright days to come.

Then, in conclusion, wives in Israel and other railroad towns, love your

husbands while it is yet day. Give him your confidence. If your active

corn manifests a wish to leave the reservation, go to your husband with

it. Lean on him. He will be your solid muldoon. He will get an old

wood rasp and make that corn look sick. He is only waiting for your

confidence and your trust. Tell him your business affairs and he will

help you out. He will, no doubt, offer to go without help in the house

in order to economize, and he will think of numberless other little ways

to save money. Do as we have told you and you will never regret it.

Your lives will then be one great combination of rare and beautiful

dissolving views. You will journey down the pathway of your earthly

existence with the easy poetical glide of the fat man who steps on the

treacherous orange peel. Your last days will be surrounded with a halo

of love, and as your eyes get dim with age and one by one your teeth

drop out, you can say with pride that you have never, never gone back on

your solid pard.

A UTE PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION.

|The presidential conventions of last summer, and their attendant

excitement, personal bitterness, and political sharpness, have called to

my mind an occurrence in the history of a nation, of whose politics and

whose statesmanship the civilized world knows but little.

Much has been said pro and con relative to the Indian character in

general, and recently, of the Ute nation in particular, but those who

knew the least have been most willing to shed information right and

left, and to beam down upon the great reading world with the effulgence

of the average cultivated lunatic.

I do not intend at this time to enlarge upon the question of western

intolerance and eastern hero worship, as applied to the Indian nation,

but simply to remark in my own gentle, soothing style, that those who

know the Indian best, have the least respect and veneration for him.

At some other time I may say something relative to the Indian's home

life, and attempt to show that while he appears in his public career to

great advantage, both as a general and as a statesman, he is prone,

like other great men, to little domestic irregularities. At this

time, however, I intend simply to give some particulars of the great

convention of 1875, which have never been brought to the eye of the

reading public.

In the autumn of the above year at that delightful season when=

````The maple turns to crimson,

````And the sassafras to gold.=

When the soft and mellow light of the declining year sheds a subdued

splendor of misty, dreamy languor over the snow-clad mountains and

wooded canyons of Colorado, when the deep green of the mountain pine is

darkly outlined against the pale gold of the poplar, and the cottonwood,

and the willow, the chairman of the Republican central committee of the

Ute nation, issued a call for a mammoth convention, to be held at Hot

Sulphur Springs, for the purpose of nominating a candidate for head

chief, to succeed Ula, whose term of office had expired by reason of his

having violated the provisions of his first general order, in which he

had pronounced himself as a champion of civil service reform.

The day for the grand convention had arrived, and Hot Sulphur Springs

had become, all at once, a lively, bustling city. From every point of

the compass came the wild shouts of the gathering delegates, with their

credentials in one pocket, and their patriotism in pint bottles in the

other.

The convention was called to order, and effected a permanent

organization by electing Shavano as permanent chairman.

Shavano rose with stalely gravity, bowed to the assembled convention,

and walked to the platform, escorted by his trainer. He gracefully

removed a quid of partially masticated government plug tobacco, and

laying it carefully on the speaker's desk, said:

"Warriors of the Ute Nation, and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are

gathered once more amid the solemn silence of the mountains, and under

the dying leaves of the forest, to nominate a candidate to serve as

executive of the Ute nation.

"Ula, the medicine man for this moon, who had hoped to be here, and who

had his impromptu speech written for this occasion, will not be able to

attend. I had hoped to see him here that he might act as secretary, but

last evening he was shot by request.

"It seems that he had diagnosed the case of Prairie Dog, the son of

Coyote, and had pronounced it to be membranous croup; but the coroner's

inquest developed the fact that Prairie Dog had climbed the golden

stair, the victim to a can of concentrated lye.

"A mighty nation, whose numbers are as the sands of the sea, can afford

to let its medicine men fool around with its people and experiment with

them till they meander up the flume, but the Ute nation is not large. It

is a mere handful. We have only enough for a quorum, and we can not

use any of them for scientific experiments. That is why Ula is on

the evergreen shore instead of acting as our secretary to-day. At the

request of the sorrowing friends of Prairie Dog, the medicine man's

license was revoked, and Ula was fixed up for an extempore shot-pouch;

so another person will have to act as your secretary.

"Warriors, I do not wish to trespass on your time. You have selected me

as your chairman, and I thank you for the honor.

"We are now a small and powerless nation. Our war-cry is answered by the

hilarious laughter of our foes. Once we were great. Our hunting grounds

were without limit and our villages were as the leaves of the forest.

"To-day the white man plants his Swedish turnips above the graves of our

ancestors. We are the orphan children of a great people and our sun is

set.

"Once we were wealthy and powerful. Now we are poor and weak, and our

wives cannot keep a hired girl.

"Why do the wails of our people echo among the canyons and desolated

villages?

"Why are we left to mourn the loss of our wild horses and why are our

own hillsides dotted with the locations and prospect holes of the pale

face?

"Who is at fault that the graves of our fathers are staked as the 'Gilt

Edge,' or the 'Bullion Lode,' or the 'Lucky Sal,' or the 'Calamity

Jane,' or the 'Cross-Eyed Hannah with a Cork Limb?'

"I charge these woes of our people upon the puerile policy and

fire-water reign of a democratic administration over the nation.

[Deafening cheers.]

"Warriors and gentlemen of the convention: I have only one more word to

say. I ask that the rotten fabric of the Ula, Bourbon, dyed-in-the-wool

administration be overturned, that peace and prosperity may once more

smile upon us.

"In conclusion I would ask the further pleasure of the convention."

[Uproarious applause; the audience joining in "Old John Brown he had a

little Injun."]

A committee on credentials was then selected, consisting of five

members, of which Buffalo Tripe was chairman.

An adjournment to the following day at 10 A. m. was next taken by the

convention.

The delegates were formally invited by the proprietor of the Jack Rabbit

house to attend a little social walk-around and select scalp-dance on

the following evening.

At the appointed hour the convention was called to order by the chair,

and a report from the committee on credentials was called for.

Buffalo Tripe, on behalf of the committee, submitted the report that

the delegates present were all entitled to seats, except that Dead Man's

canyon had a double delegation.

The report of the committee on credentials was accepted, and the

committee discharged. The chair then selected a new committee to examine

the two delegations from Dead Man's canon, and instructed it to report

adversely on the drunkest one.

This was regarded as a victory for the friends of Ouray, the favorite

son from Stray Horse Gulch.

Nominations then being in order, the Silver-Tongued Cactus Plant from

Middle Park arose majestically and said:

"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention: Our people have called

us to do their work around the council fire and name for them a chief.

[Loud cheers.] They look to us to-day for the assurance of their future

prosperity.

"We stand in the moccasins of mighty men to-day with our tribes. Let us

not betray their confidence. Let us be able to return to our squaws and

pappooses with the smile of the Great Father upon us. [Applause.] It is

a solemn moment for our whole nation, and the silence of a mighty forest

amid the gathering storm is upon us. Mr. Chairman, I have the pleasure

of nominating for our executive, Ouray, the man who never told a lie."

[Thunders of applause and wild demonstrations throughout the entire

wigwam.]

After the excitement had died away Hohne-pah-Snocke-monthegob, which

in the Ute tongue means the man-with-the-patent-liver-pad, arose, and,

laying aside a chew of tobacco about the size of an early rose potato,

said:

"Mr. Chairman and delegates of the convention: I wish to put in

nomination to-day Douglas, the amusing little cuss from Stinking Water.

[Cheers.] I nominate him because he is a dark horse. As a candidate he

is extremely brunette. His record is also on that order. I think he will

run, as I may say, like a bay steer in the cucumber-patch. He is the

swift-foot of the prairie, and the Mountain Zephyr of Cheyenne can not

overtake him. He is also intellectual, and has written several little

gems on spring. He is a philosopher, a scholar and a judge of whisky. He

will harmonize the disaffected elements of our tribe, and secure the

German vote. Douglas has a staving war record, and is lazy and shiftless

enough to command the respect and esteem of the entire nation. The

crisis seems to demand a standard-bearer who will meet the cunning of

the pale face with the cunning of the red man, and I therefore make this

nomination in order that I may go to my camp in the Gunnison country

feeling that I have done my duty by calling the attention of my people

to a man who is well calculated to lead us to success. Douglas has

filled almost every position of trust or profit in our nation. He has

held nearly every office within the gift of the people from watermelon

stealer extraordinary up to most supreme bartender of the nation, and

he has never betrayed a trust. I therefore do myself the great honor to

place his name in nomination." [Cheers and bass drum solo.]

No more names were placed in nomination, and shortly afterward the

convention had declared its preference for Ouray as its candidate.

He was called upon at his room by a committee and serenaded at the

Jack-Rabbit House by a large band with torchlight procession.

On being called out, Ouray made a very short speech, as follows:

"Warriors and Fellow-Citizens of Indian Descent: I thank you for the

honor you have conferred upon me to-day, and promise, if elected, to do

all that I have agreed to do, besides what I may hereafter agree to do.

I hope you will excuse me from making a long speech as I am very much

worn out with my labors in securing this unexpected nomination. I also

have an engagement to speak before the Young Men's Christian Association

to-morrow, and also to address the Pocahontas Lodge of Good Templars the

day following.

"I am very much overcome with surprise, this nomination having come

entirely unsought, and compelled thus to receive a nomination forced

upon me, together with the mental strain and constant worry necessary on

my part to bring about this gratifying result, you will not be surprised

that I thus abruptly close my remarks and bid you good-night."

This speech was greeted with round after round of applause, after which

Douglas was called for by his friends. He did not meet with any great

degree of success, for when he undertook to inhale a full breath and

start his speech the friends of the regular nominee would present him

with some antique eggs of the vintage of '49, and Douglas had to adjourn

and rinse his mouth out with government whiskey. This occasioned delay

and annoyance.

The delegates tripped the light fantastic till toward morning and then

retired. In the afternoon they all arose with a light, maroon taste in

their mouths, told the gentlemanly proprietor of the Jack-Rabbit House

to charge their respective bills to the government, mounted their

horses, and the most harmonious convention known to the world had become

a matter of history.

THE CLUB-FOOTED LOVER OF PIUTE PASS.

A TALE OF LOVE AND COLD PIZEN.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

|Many years ago, when Wyoming was new and infested with the bear, the

bunko-steerer, the buffalo and the bold, bad man, a little circumstance

occurred there which is worthy of notice; and as it has never appeared

in the newspapers, I give it as near as my memory will serve me in the

narrative.

When Wyoming was a wilderness, and before the civilizing influence of

the legislature and Pattee's lottery had toned down the rough outlines

of the young commonwealth, there lived over on Horse Creek a ranchman

whom we will call Henry Ward Beecher, as a kind of _nom de corral_ as it

were.

Henry Ward Beecher was a bachelor, and lived by himself. He did not know

the loving influences and gentle yearnfulness of woman's society.

His life was a howling wilderness, a wide waste of loneliness and

wretchedness, because he was unmated.

Henry Ward Beecher did not know the pleasure of rising in the night and

tangling his feet up in a corset lying on the floor, or of brushing his

bald head in the morning with a hair brush so full of long, silky hairs

that they would wind around his nose and tickle his bald head till he

would wish he was dead. He was alone amid the solitude of the mountains,

with no companion but a low grade, refractory mule and a flea-bitten,

ecru-colored, mongrel dog, with one eye knocked out.

Henry thought, as year succeeded year, that he would make a change, and

throw more joy into his humble life m some way or another, but he was

making money, and kept busy all the time, so that he neglected it.

Finally one day in spring there came to the Ranche de Henry Ward Beecher

a man from Ohio, named Obejoyful Jenkins. He had come west hoping to get

a situation as president of a bank on the strength of being an Ohio man;

but most all the banks seemed to have all the presidents they needed,

so that Obejoyful concluded to compromise the matter, and herd sheep at

twenty-five dollars per month and board. He struck Henry Ward Beecher

and made a trade with him.

CHAPTER THE TWICE.

|The two men soon became quite friendly, owing to their isolated

condition, and told each other all their family secrets. Henry told

Obejoyful how his grandfather was hung; and Obejoyful told Henry how

he loved a girl in Ohio, named Oleander McTodd, and how he was going to

send for her, and marry her as soon as he could raise the scads to bring

her west.

Time flew on, and at last Obejoyful had saved up the collateral

necessary to send for his soul's idol. He wrote to her, enclosing a post

office money order for the amount necessary to pay emigrant fare to the

railroad terminus, and also to buy _lignum vito_ cookies, and fire-proof

pie, at the lunch counters along the road.

About the day on which Oleander McTodd would naturally arrive at the

ranche, Obejoyful was sent up on Stinking Water to round up a bunch of

sheep that had escaped, and bring them back to the fold.

Then Henry Ward Beecher shaved' himself, put warm tallow on his boots,

swept out the cabin for the first time in nineteen years, and waited for

events to shape themselves.

CHAPTER THREE TIMES.

|The orb of day rode slowly adown the crimson west. The snow-clad

mountains stood leaning against the purple sky. They had done so on

several occasions before. A woman, on an ambling palfrey of the cayuse

denomination, rode down the mountain path to the cabin, and alighted.

Henry Ward Beecher came to the door with some hesitation and no

suspenders.

"Is't Obejoyful, me truant love, an inmate of this rural retreat, said a

young, sweet voice, that sounded like the melody of a shingle mill.

"Nay, by my halidome he is't not. Gentle lady, on yester morn I did give

him the grand bounce, and now he hath joined a hold-up outfit on the

overland stage route. It pains me to tell to you this sad, sad news, for

I wot ye art the damsel who erst was mashed on Obejoyful; but I cannot

tell a lie; he is unworthy of you, and a cross-eyed, spavined snipe of

the desert, and don't you forget it."

Then Oleander lifted up her voice to an elevation of about 14,000 feet

above the level of the sea, and she wape with an exceeding great weep.

CHAPTER FOUR TIMES.

|Henry Ward Beeeher let her weep till her surcharged orbs had ceased to

give down, and then he brought out some valley tan that he had in the

house for medicinal purposes and comforted her.

Then they got acquainted.

They sat in the gloaming, and Henry Ward Beecher turned the gas partly

off, and held the hand of Oleander, and told her that Obejoyful had been

a humorist on an Ohio paper, and otherwise destroyed the prospects of

the absent lover in the eyes of Miss McTodd.

They looked into each other's eyes and knew that they were solid pards

from that moment. Shortly afterward they rode away to the nearest

justice of the peace, about 223 miles off, and were married.

Then they went home.

Obejoyful was there. He was also heeled; but H. W. B. got the drop on

him. Then Obejoyful seemed filled with disgust, and he seemed oppressed

and filled with nameless forebodings. He seemed to lose faith in

mankind, also to some extent in womankind. He seemed to think that love

wasn't exactly what it was represented to him by the agent. It didn't

seem to be full weight, and there wasn't a prize in each and every

package, as he had been led to suppose.

He then presented a bill to Henry Ward Beecher for $49.53, freight

charges on Oleander McTodd; but H. W. B. swore with a great,

blood-curdling, three-cornered oath that he would not pay it.

That night Obejoyful Jenkins procured some poison, and stole away to a

quiet place, and wrote a note to tell his friends, when they found

his body, why he had taken his own life. Then he commended his soul

to Providence, poured out a glass of whisky, thought he would try it

without the poison first. The draught revived him. He changed his mind

and put the poison in Henry Ward Beecher's whisky, stole H. W. B.'s

narrow-gauge mule Boomerang, and lit out for the North Park.

This is a true story. If the gentle reader has doubts about it I will

produce the mule Boomerang, which is now in my possession and in a good

state of preservation.

Hereafter, in order to save time and annoyance to my readers, true

stories over my signature will be marked with a star, thus, *.

THE AUTOMATIC LIAR

|Laramie City, August 23.--He came in gently but firmly, and felt in his

pocket for something.

Finally he found what looked a little like an egg-beater and some like a

new kind of speed indicator.

"I want to show you," he said kindly, "an office-dial to hang on your

door, so that when you are away your clients will know where you are,

and when you will return. For instance, by turning the thumb-screw, the

dial will show:

"At court,

"At dinner,

"At supper,

"At bank,

"At post-office, etc., etc., etc., with the time you will return. There

are sixty-four combinations which cover all cases of this kind necessary

for the man of business, and it is no doubt the greatest achievement of

mechanical ingenuity. Price, $ 1.50."

"No," said Mr. Biteoffmorethanhecouldchaw, "there are twenty-seven

reasons why it would not be advisable for me to purchase your automatic

bulletin. Firstly, I have but one client, and he can not read. He would

only come and look at the indicator and kick it all to pieces and swear

and go away. Secondly, your machine is incomplete, anyway. The inventor

has signally failed to meet the popular want. It would only be an

aggravation to the average attorney.

"I can think of a hundred things that ought to be added to a truthful

indicator. Supposing that I have gone to the circus, or to a meeting of

the vestry, or suppose I am drunk, or at a reunion of the Y. M. C. A.,

or out to eat a clove with a member of the bar, or at a camp meeting, or

putting up the clothes-line at home? Or, going still further, suppose

I am wringing out the clothes, or setting bread, or taking a bath, or

wrestling with the delirium tremens, or toning down a rebellious corn,

or putting Paris green on my squash bugs, or inspecting microscopically

the homoeopathic fragment of ice that the kind-hearted ice man has

prescribed for me?

"Or, going still further into detail, supposing that I am dead and

cannot state with any degree of accuracy where I am or when I shall

return, do you suppose that I would herald a glittering $1.50 lie to

the world by saying that I was at the barber shop and would be back at

10:30?

"Do you think I would pay $1.50 for a machine to vicariously proclaim to

the broad universe that I was at the bank, when I have no business with

the bank?

"Do you suppose that I would advertise that I was at the post office

when I was at the beer garden, or assert that I was at the court house,

when, as a matter of fact, I was at that moment having a preparation of

lemon-peel and other chemicals arranged for myself and another invalid

in a cool retreat down town?

"No, sir! I spurn you and your cast-iron prevaricator, I promised my

dying mother, who afterwards recovered, that I would never lie by

machinery.

"If I cannot lie enough to keep up with the growing demand, I

will resign like a man, and not call to my aid a cheap Jim Crow,

hand-me-down-liar, costing $1.50 only.

"Always do right, and then you will never be put to shame.

"If you wish, you can leave the hall door ajar as you go out the main

entrance."

Exeunt advance agent at upper left hand entrance, orchestra playing

something soft and yielding.

SOME POSTOFFICE FIENDS.

|The official count shows that only two and one-half per cent, of those

who go to the postoffice transact their business and then go away. The

other ninety-seven and one-half per cent, do various things to cheer

up the postmaster and make him earn his money and wish that he had died

when he was teething. They also make it exceedingly interesting for the

other two and one-half per cent. When I go to the postoffice there is

always one man who meets me at the door and pours out a large rippling

laugh into my face, flavored with old beer and the fragrances of a royal

Havana cabbage-leaf cigar that he is sucking. If he cannot be present

himself he is vicariously on deck.

He asks me if my circus was a financial success, and how my custard pie

plants are doing, and then fills the sultry air with another gurgling

laugh preserved in alcohol.

I like to smell a hearty laugh laden with second-hand whisky. It revives

me and intoxicates me. Still I am trying not to become a helpless slave

to the appetite for strong drink in this form. There are other forms of

intemperance that are more seductive than this one.

There is also a boy who never had any mail, and whose relatives never

had any mail, and they couldn't read it if they did, and if some one

read it to them they couldn't answer it. He is always there, too.

When he sees me he hails me with a glad smile of recognition, and comes

up to me and stands on my toes and is just as sociable and artless and

trusting and alive with childish glee and incurable cussedness as he can

be. He stirs me up with his elbows, and crawls through between my legs

until the mail is open, and then he wedges himself in front of my box so

that I can't get the key into it.

Some day when the janitor sweeps out the postoffice he will find a short

suspender and a lock of brindle hair and a handful of large freckles,

and he will wonder what it means.

It will be what I am going to leave of that boy for the coroner to

operate on.

Then there are two boys who come to the box delivery to settle the

difficulties that arise during the day. They fight long and hard, but

a permanent peace is never declared. It is only temporary, and the next

day the old feud is ripe again, and they fight it all over once more.

There is also an amusing party who cheerfully stands up against

the boxes and reads his letters, and laughs when he finds something

facetious, or swears when the letter don't suit him. He also announces

to the bystanders who each letter is from, and seems to think the great

throbbing world is standing with bated breath quivering with anxiety to

know whether his sister in Arkansas has successfully acquired triplets

this year or only twins.

This, however, is an error, for the great, throbbing world, with

characteristic selfishness, don't care a brass-mounted continental

one way or the other. One day this man got a letter with a mourning

envelope, and I heaved a sigh of relief, for, thought I, he will now

go away and be alone with his great grief. But he did not. He stood up

manfully and controlled his emotions through it all; and when he got

through he broke into the old silvery laugh.

It seems that his brother in Oregon had run out of yellow envelopes, and

had filled the one with the black border unusually full of convulsive

mirth.

What a world of bitter disappointment this is anyhow!

Then there is the woman who playfully stands at the general delivery

window, and gleefully sticks her fangs out into the subsequent week, and

skittishly chides the clerk because he doesn't get her a letter, and he

good naturedly tells her as he has done daily for seven years, that he

will write her one to-morrow.

Then she reluctantly goes home to get rested so that she can come again

and stand there the next day.

Then comes the literary cuss, who takes a weekly paper from Vermont with

a patent inside to it. He reads it with the purest unselfishness to me,

and points out the fresh, new-laid jokes that one always finds in the

enterprising paper with the patent digestion.

He also explains the jokes to me, so that I need not grope along through

life in hopeless ignorance of what is going on all about me.

There is a woman, too, who comes to the window and lavishly buys a

three-cent stamp, and runs out her tongue, and hangs it over the stamp

clerk's shoulder, and lays the stamp back against the glottis and

moistens it, and has to run her skinny finger down her turkey gobbler

neck to rescue it, and then she pastes it on the upper left-hand corner

of the envelope, and asks the clerk to be sure and see that it goes. She

then thoughtfully tells him who it is to go to, and gives a short

biography of the sendee.

There can be no doubt that some women are more capable of doing certain

kinds of business than men are. All classes of business requiring

careful and minute explanations and concise and exhaustive directions

can be better attended to by this class of women.

They enter joyfully upon the task of shedding collateral information in

a way that would appall a man, and when they confide in you, you know

that they are not keeping anything back. You almost wish sometimes that

they would keep back a little of it and not rob themselvss.

Still, perhaps it is better that this class of women is not trusted with

any great amount of business, for life is so brief, so evanescent, and

so transitory.

It is but a step from the cradle to the grave anyway, and if a man

stands on one leg an hour, and then on the other an hour, listening to

extensive information every time he sells a stamp, he will die with his

ambitions unfruitioned.

AGRICULTURE AT AN ALTITUDE OF 7500 FEET.

|I herewith acknowledge the receipt of two bags of cane-seed from the

Agricultural Department.

Mr. Le Duc is always thinking of me and evidently knew that I was

yearning for some cane-seed. It will grow luxuriantly here on the spinal

column of the American continent where winter lingers in the lap of

spring till after the Fourth of July.

William says that this breed of sugar-cane "originated in Minnesota, and

is claimed to have been the result of accidental hybridization."

I shall not allow anything of this kind myself if I can by the most

tireless watchfulness avoid it. Accidental hybridization is what is

demoralizing the sugar-cane of the whole country.

I shall plant this seed in drills two feet apart, mulching with rich

top-dressing of retired gum boots and dead cats. I will then wait till

the plant has germinated and appears above the surface, when I shall

remove the boots and dead cats and rub the plants with a Turkish towel

to promote a healthy circulation.

Then next fall while others who have sneered at me and called me a

horny-handed buckwheater from the rural districts, are running up heavy

bills for groceries, I will go out into my molasses orchard and pick

a milk pan full of granulated sugar from my trees, or shell out

enough maple sugar for breakfast at a slight cost and with the blessed

consciousness that I did it all myself.

William is going to send me some more seeds that he thinks will do well

in this tropical climate. If he could send me something that would

be more hardy, like the early Swedish lemon-squeezer, or the mammoth

custard-pie plant, or the Northern Spy cucumber tree, my reports to the

department would be more cheerful than they are, but where plants have

to wear their heavy California underclothes all through August they get

discouraged and prefer to bloom in the sweet fields of Eden.

Last year I tried the hot-bed process, but it was not a signal success.

This summer I shall use the hot-bed as an ice cream freezer. It wanted

to act in that capacity last summer, but I had a freezer that did very

well, so I foolishly used the hot-bed to assist the plants, although I

know of several days in midsummer when my cabbage-plants had to get out

of that hot-bed and run up and down the garden walk to keep their feet

from freezing.

THE GENTLE YOUTH FROM LEADVILLE.

|In addition to the other attractions about the depot, the old museum

of curiosities from the Rocky Mountains has been re-opened. I like to

go down and listen to the remarks of the overland passenger relative to

these articles. There are two stuffed coyotes chained to the door, one

on each side, and it amuses me to see a solicitous parent nearly yank

his little son to pieces for going so near these ferocious animals. The

coyotes look very life-like, and show their teeth a good deal, but it

breaks a man all up when he finds that their digestive apparatus has

been replaced with sawdust and plaster of Paris.

After a coyote gets to padding himself out with baled hay and cotton so

as to look plump, he loses his elasticity of spirits, and we cease to

respect him. Sometimes a tourist asks if these coyotes are prairie dogs.

A few days ago a man from Michigan, who has been here two weeks and

wears a large buckskin patch where it will do the most good, and who

is very bitter in his remarks about "tenderfeet," was standing at the

depot, when a young man, evidently from a theological seminary, came

along from the train whistling, "What a friend we have in Jesus." He

walked up to the Michigan man, who began to look fierce, and timidly

asked if he would tell him all about the coyote.

[Illustration: 9210]

The Michigan man, who never had seen a live coyote in his life,

volunteered to tell him some of the finest decorated lies, with Venetian

blinds and other trimmings to them, while the young man stood there in

open-mouthed wonder, with daylight visible between his legs as high as

the fifth rib. I never saw such a picture of rapt attention in my life.

As he became more interested, the Michigan man warmed up to his work and

lied to this guileless youth till the perspiration rolled down his face.

As the train started out, the delegate to the Young Men's Christian

Association asked the Michigan man for his address. "I want the address

of some good earnest liar," he said, "one who can lie by the day, or by

the job, and endure the strain. I want a man to enter the field for the

championship of America. Any communication you may wish to make will

reach me at Leadville, Colorado. I have been in the Rocky Mountains ever

since I was three years old, and have lived for weeks with no other diet

but coyote on toast and raw Michigan man." He waved his hand at the M.

man, and said: "If I don't see you again, hello!" and he was gone.

How many such little episodes we experience on our journey to the tomb!

A SNIDE JOURNALIST.

|Recent occurrences here have seemed to absolutely demand that something

be said relative to newspaper-men.

During my residence here I have been brought face to face with more

fraud journalists than ever before, and I am forced to lift up my voice

against it. I have met the ordinary-tramp who is pleased and happy if he

be allowed to eat cold-grub and sleep beneath the twinkling stars,

but the newspaper-tramp is meaner, more self assumed and has brighter

prospects for perdition than all the rest. He stands out ahead of the

rank and file of tramps as a kind of Major-General tramp, fearless and

self reliant.

He feels the nobility of the profession of journalism, and indeed it

is a calling of which its followers may well be proud, but the snide

representative of the press is too proud. He puts on too many frills.

Perhaps I am too easily picked up in this manner, but I cannot help

sympathizing with deserving newspaper men who lack many of the comforts

of life. I have been there. I know what it is to battle with a cold

world and wrestle with hunger. But now in the midst of prosperity, my

heart goes out for these vagrants in such a way that just as I begin to

get affluent, I find some subject for my charity, and I have to begin

over again.

On Monday last a young man with a hopeful light in his eye, alighted

from the eastern-bound train, and going into the Thornburg House,

registered his name, at least we will play that it was his name, for no

one else has since called in to claim it.

We will call him Brown as a matter of convenience. His front name, as

I afterward learned, was Ward. I might say that, in putting this report

together, another Ward has been heard from, but I leave that for the

docile reader to do as he or she may see fit.

Mr. Brown then proceeded to get acquainted with the people of Laramie

and be sociable. He was not so reticent as some prominent newspaper men

are, but seemed to be the rollicking, jovial kind. He said that he

was the travelling correspondent of the Salt Lake _Tribune_ and also

represented the Louisville _Courier-Journal_.

I wondered at the time what in the name of all that was handsome, the

_Courier-Journal_ wanted to pay a man and send him to the front for,

with Laramie City as his objective point. Bye-and-bye he crossed my path

and made himself known. Said he knew me by reputation, and then I began

to get alarmed. I was afraid he was a detective. But he wasn't. I drew

him out on the subject of Harry Watterson. He knew blank. Knew him well.

Had slept with him. He and Hank had been drunk together several times.

Then I felt proud. He was an intimate friend of a great man, and sitting

there talking with an unsophisticated youth like me just as naturally as

life. It sounds like a book. I asked him up to my office, and made him

sit in my best chair--the one with the four good legs--while I took

the foundered one. I told him to make himself perfectly free with the

luxuriant furniture of the office, and invited him to spit on the floor

whenever it came handy. I told him that I knew great men didn't want to

feel hampered while chewing tobacco, and that I wanted my guests to feel

at ease.

He then took his knife, cut off a piece of tobacco, about the size of

a paper weight, threw it back till it struck the gable-end of his mouth

with a hollow thud, and proceeded to unroll the most gorgeous panorama

of falsehoods that I ever listened to. Casually, while putting the

fresco work on my floor, he took out a letter from Watterson, and showed

it to me. Watterson writes about the same kind of a copper-plate hand

that I do.

I wanted to take the letter and make a plaster cast of it, but Mr. Brown

said Hank wouldn't like it. The letter went on in a free and easy way to

joke Brown about looking too often on the maddening bowl, and then asked

him to be a correspondent for the C. J.

The next day I came down town thinking about how easy it was for any

one, by a straightforward, honest course, to rise in the world, and get

acquainted with prominent men. Bye and bye I met the Sheriff. He asked

me if I didn't want to go up to the jail and take a last look at my

journalistic friend. I went up. Brown lay there in an easy position on

an old blanket, in one of the cells.

The surroundings seemed to be in perfect harmony with the general

appearance of Mr. Brown. He had taken off the large satin arrangement

which served partly as a necktie, and partly to throw the public off

its guard in relation to his shirt. The shirt was there, slightly

disfigured, but still in the ring. It was the same shirt that he had

started out in life with. He had outgrown it, and it looked feeble, but

it was evidently determined to stay by Mr. Brown.

I looked at him and then broke into tears. Large $2.00 sobs convulsed

my frame. I told him that he had basely imposed upon me, and led me to

believe that he was a Republican, and now he had removed the mask as it

were, and I could see that he was a Democrat. With these stone walls and

iron grates, and that soiled shirt, I could no longer doubt.

I left him, resolving that hereafter I would not be betrayed by

appearances. He will drift away into the mighty, surging mass of

humanity, and we shall forget it. Perhaps, when the Governor of Maine

holds a mass meeting and re-union at Augusta, he will be there. But he

will drop out of my horizon like the memory of a red-headed girl, and

I shall go on my way until some other newspaper man with a letter from

Whitelaw Reid, or George Washington, or Noah, or some other prominent

man, comes along, and then I shall, no doubt, open up to his view the

same untold wealth of confidence and generous trust.

Those who are looking anxiously every mail for a copy of the Louisville

_Courier-Journal_ or the Salt Lake _Tribune_, containing a long letter

about their town, will be disappointed. They will never come. Through

the long visita of years and down through the mellow softened atmosphere

of the Sweet Bye and Bye I hear the low, sad refrain, and it is

refraining, "Never More." Instead of the merry prattle of Mr. Brown amid

the loud echo of his expectorations as they fall with a startling crash

upon the marble floor of my office, I only hear the rattle of the cast

iron "come-alongs" and the tearful "Never More."

HE WAS BLIND.

|While engaged the other day in writing a little ode to the liver pad,

I heard a slight noise, and on looking toward the door I saw a boy with

his hat in his hand standing on one leg and thoughtfully scratching it

with the superior toe of the other foot.

I asked the freckled youth what I could do for him, and he said that

there was a man at the foot of the stairs who wished to see me. I asked

him then why in the name of a great republic and a free people he didn't

see me. Then I told the boy that there was no admission fee; that it was

the regular afternoon matinee, and it was a free show.

The frank and manly little feilow then came forward and told me that the

man was blind.

It was not intended as a joke. It was a horrible reality, and pretty

soon a man into whose sightless orbs the cheerful light of day had not

entered for many years came up the stairs and into the office.

I said: "Ah, sir, I see that you are a poor, blind man. You cannot see

the green grass and waving trees. While others see the pleasant fields

and lovely landscape you wander on year after year in the hopeless

gloom. Poor man. Do you not at times yearn for immortality and pine to

be among the angels where the light of a glorious eternity will enter

upon your sightless vision like a beautiful dream?"

This was a little sentiment that I had committed to memory, being an

extract from the _Youth's Companion_.

He wiped away three or four scalding tears with his sleeve and said that

he did. He was getting means, he said, to enable him to go to New York,

where he was going to have his eyes taken out and refilled. He also

intended to have the cornea filed down and a new crystal put in.

I asked him how much he thought it would cost. He said he thought it

could be arranged so that $1,000 would pay the bill. At first I started

to draw a check for that amount, and then I thought I would try him with

a dollar first.

He took the dollar and walked sadly away.

It always makes me feel bad when I see a fellow creature who is doomed

with uncertain steps and sightless eyes to tread his weary way through

life, and I cannot be happy when I know that such misery is abroad in

the land. I thought how much I had to be thankful for, how fortunate I

had been to have all my senses and my bright and beautiful intellect,

that I wouldn't take $400 for.

Then I wandered out to a saloon on A street to get a cigar. The blind

man was there. He had just poured out about six fingers of Jamaica rum

and was setting them up for the boys. I thought I would stand in with

the arrangement, so I leaned up against the bar in very classic style

and took two cigars at twenty-five cents apiece.

When he came to pay for the goods he shoved out the dollar I gave him,

which I recognized, because it was a pewter dollar, and a very inferior

pewter dollar at that.

The bartender kicked like a roan cow, and while the excitement was

at its height I stole away to where I could be alone with my surging

thoughts.

The blind man is still in town, but he is not succeeding very well.

Unfortunately he has told several large openfaced lies and the feeling

of pity for him has petered out, if I may be allowed that expression.

When he is sober he is going to have his eyes operated on at New

York, and when he is drunk he is going to have them attended to in

San Francisco. This gives the general appearance of insincerity to

his remarks, and the merciless public yearns for him to pack his night

shirt, like the Arabs and silently steal away.

THOUGHTS OF THE MELLOW PREVIOUSLY.

|It is the evening of St. Valentine's Day, and I am thinking of the long

ago. St. Valentine's Day is nothing now but a blessed memory. Another

landmark has been left behind in our onward march toward the great

hereafter. We come upon the earth, battle a little while with its joy?

and its griefs, and then we pass away to give place to other actors on

the mighty stage.

Only a few short years ago what an era St. Valentine's Day was to me.

[Illustration: 8217]

Now I still get valentines, but they are different and they affect me

differently.

They are not of so high an order of merit artistically, and the poetry

is more impudent and less on the turtle-dove order.

Some may be neglected on St. Valentine's Day, but I am not. I never go

away by myself and get mad because I have been overlooked. I generally

get valentines enough to paper a large hall.

I file them away carefully and sell them back to the dealer for next

year. Then the following St. Valentine's Day I love to look at the

familiar features of those I have received in the years agone.

One of these blessed valentines I have learned to love as I do my life.

I received it first in 1870. It represents a newspaper reporter with

a nose on him like the woman's suffrage movement. It is a large,

enthusiastic nose of a bright bay color, with bias folds of the same,

shirred with dregs of wine. How well I know that nose. The reporter is

represented in tight green pants and orange coat. The vest is scarlet

and the necktie is maroon, shot with old gold.

The picture represents the young journalist as a little bit disposed to

be brainy. The intellect is large and abnormally prominent. It hangs out

over the deep-set eyes like the minority juror on the average panel.

I can not help contrasting this dazzling five-cent valentine with the

delicate little poem in pale blue and Torchon lace which I received in

the days of yore from the redheaded girl with the wart on her thumb.

With little of genuine pleasure have fame and fortune to offer us

compared with that of sitting behind the same school desk with the

Bismarck blonde of the school and with her alternately masticating the

same hunk of spruce gum!

I sometimes chew gum nowadays to see if it will bring back the old

pleasant sensations, but it don't. The teacher is not watching me now.

There is too little restraint, and the companion too who then assisted

in operating the gum business, and used to spit on her slate with such

elegance and abandon, and wipe it thoughtfully off with her apron, she

too is gone. One summer day when the little birds were pouring forth

their lay, and the little lambs were frisking on the green sward, and

yanking their tails athwart the ambient air, she lit out for the

great untried West with a grasshopper sufferer. The fluff and bloom

of existence for her too is gone. She bangs eternal punishment out of

thirteen consecutive children near Ogallalla, Nebraska, and wears out

her sweet girlish nature working up her husband's underclothes into a

rag carpet. It seems tough, but such is life.

MY TOMBSTONE MINE.

Camp on Alder Gulch, June 18, 1880.

|The general feeling of expectation and suspense which is the natural

result of recent mineral discoveries near to any mining town, is still

prevalent. If possible it is on the increase, and all the prevailing

indications of profound mystery are visible everywhere. There is a

general air of knowing something that other people do not. Almost every

man is hugging to his bosom a ponderous secret which is slowly crushing

him, while all his fellow men are trying to hold down the same secret.

Occasionally a man comes to me, takes my ear and wrapping it around his

arm two or three times so that I can't get away, he tells me that he

knows where there is the richest thing in America. Only he and his wife

and another man and his wife know where this wonderful wealth is to be

found.

He asks me to come into it so that capital will then be interested. I

agree to it and on the way to the camp I overtake the able-bodied men of

Wyoming, all of whom are trying in their poor, weak way to keep the same

secret.

Such is life.

Sometimes I think that perhaps I had better give up mining. I do not

seem to get the hang of the thing, somehow. All the claims I get hold of

are rich in nothing but assessments, while less deserving men catch on

to the bonanzas.

Once I located a vein which showed what I called good indications of a

permanent vein, staked it out under the United States law and went to

work on it. I paid out $11 for sharpening picks alone, in going down ten

feet to hold it. It was mighty hard quartz, but the lead grew wider and

better defined all the time till I got down ten feet and had an assay.

The assayer said that I had struck a marble quarry, but it was very

inferior marble after all. Besides I found afterward that it was owned

by Jay Gould and some other tender feet from New York.

Then I relocated the claim and called it The Marble-Top Cemetery Lode,

and went away. Probably if I had gone down on it, the ore would have

shown free milling tombstones and Power's Greek slaves and all that kind

of business, but I felt kind of depressed all the time while I was at

work on it. There was a kind of "Hark from the tombs a doleful sound,"

air about the whole mine.

Cummins City still booms. Building lots have gone up to $100 each. This

for a place where a few weeks ago the song of the coyote was heard

in the land, and where the valley of the river, and bald sides of the

rugged mountains were unscarred, is a good showing.

The magical power of a mineral excitement to transform the bleak prairie

and the rocky canyon into a thriving village at once, is something to

command our admiration and wonder.

Two months ago, I might say, the little village of Cummins City was

nothing but a little caucus of prairie dogs, and a ward meeting of

woodticks.

Now look at it. Opera houses, orphan asylums, hurdy-gurdies, churches,

barber shops, ice-cream saloons, dog-fights, musical _soirees_, spruce

gum, bowling-allies, salvation, and three card monte. Everything in fact

that the heart of man could yearn after.

As you drive up Euclid Avenue, you smell the tropical fragrance of

frying bacon, and hear the recorder of the district murmuring with a

profane murmur because his bread won't raise. Here and there along the

river bank, like a lot of pic-nickers, the guileless miners are panning

pounded quartz, or submitting their socks to the old process for freeing

them from decomposed quartzite, and nonargentiferous clayite. Flying

from the dome of the opera house is a red flannel shirt, while a pair

of corpulent drawers of the same ruddy complexion, is gathering all the

clear, bracing atmosphere of that locality.

As a picturesque tower on the roof of the Grand Central, the architect

has erected a minaret or donjon keep, which is made to represent a salt

barrel. So true to life is this new and unique design, that sometimes

the cattle which roam up and down Euclid Avenue, climb up on the mansard

roof of the Grand Central, and lick the salt off the donjon keep, and

fall over the battlements into the moated culverin, or stick their feet

through the roof and rattle the pay gravel into the custard pie and

cottage pudding.

Bill Root, the stage driver, went out there during the early days of the

camp, and with more or less red liquor stowed away among his vitals.

William is quite sociable and entertaining, even under ordinary

circumstances, but when he has thawed out his digestion with fire-water,

he talks a good deal. He is sociable to that extent that the bystander

is steeped in profound silence while William proceeds to unfold his

spring stock of information. On the following morning William awoke with

a seal brown taste in his mouth, and wrapped in speechless misery. There

was no cardinal liquor in the camp, (a condition of affairs which does

not now exist,) so that William was silent. On the amputating table of

the leading veterinary surgeon of Cummins City was found a tongue that

had just been removed. It was really cut from the mouth of a horse that

had nearly severed it himself, by drawing a lariat through it: but

the story soon gained currency that an indignant camp had risen in its

might, and visited its vengeance on William Root for turning loose his

conversational powers on the previous day.

Great excitement was manifested throughout the camp, as William had not

uttered a word as yet. Toward noon, however, a party of hardened miners,

carrying a willow-covered lunch basket with a cork in the top,

arrived in camp, and shortly after that it was ascertained that the

conversational powers of Mr. Root still remained unimpaired.

The chaplain of the camp set a day for fasting and prayer, and the red

flannel shirt on the dome of the opera house was hung at half-mast in

token of the universal sorrow and distress.

This is a true story, which accounts for the awkward manner in which I

have told it.

BANKRUPT SALE OF A CIRCUS.

|As I write these lines my heart is filled with bitterness and woe.

There is a feeling of deep disappointment this morning that has cast

my soul down into the very depths of sadness. Some years ago the

legislature of Wyoming conceived the stupendous idea that the circus

instead of being man's best friend and assistant in his onward march

through life, was after all a snare and a delusion.

This august body then passed a law that fixed the licenses of circuses

showing in Wyoming Territory at $250, which was of course an embargo on

the show business that, as I might say, laid it out colder than a wedge

so far as Wyoming Territory was concerned.

The history of that law is a history of repeated injury and usurpation.

Our people were bowed down to the earth with the iron heel of an unjust

legislature and forced to drag out the weary years without the pleasures

which come to other States and other Territories.

In the midst of this overhanging gloom, there were two men who were

not afraid of the all powerful legislature, but boldly lifted up their

voices and denounced with clarion tone and dauntless eye the great wrong

that had been done to our people.

One of these men was a tall, fine-looking man, with piercing eye and

noble mein. He stood out at the front in this unequal war and with his

silvery hair streaming in the mountain zephyrs, he told the legislature

that a justly indignant people would claim at the hands of her

law-makers a full and ample retribution for the tyrannical act.

Judge Blair, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming,

whether at the social gathering or the quarterly meeting, never lost

an opportunity to condemn the unrighteous act or to labor for its

abolishment. He fearlessly adjourned court time after time in order

that the jury might go to Denver or Salt Lake to attend the circus, and

embodied in one of his opinions on the bench the everlasting truth that

"the usurpation of the people's prerogatives by the lawmakers of any

State or Territory, in so far as to deprive them of a divine right

inherent in their very natures, and compelling them to undergo a slavish

isolation from the Mammoth Aggregation of Living Wonder? and Colossal

Galaxy of Arenic Talent, was unjust in its conception and criminal

in its enforcement." See Boggs vs. Boggs, 981. The other dauntless

antagonist of the tyrannical law was a young man with pale seldom hair,

and a broad open brow that bulged out into space like a sore thumb. He

was slender in form like a parallel of longitude, with a nose on him

that looked like a thing of life. This young man was myself.

Together we talked in season and out of season, laboring with the

law-makers with an energy worthy of a better cause.

We met with scorn and rebuffs on every hand, and the cold, hard world

laughed at us, and unfeelingly jeered at our ceaseless attempts. But we

labored on till last winter, the welcome telegram was flashed over the

wires that the despotic measure was no more.

Then there was a general joy all over the Territory. Judge Blair sang in

that impassioned way of his, which makes a confirmed invalid reconciled

to death, and I danced.

When I dance there is a wild originality about the gyrations that

startles those who are timid, and causes the average, unprotected

ballroom-belle to climb up on the platform with the orchestra, where she

will be safe.

Bye-and-bye the young man with the step-ladder and the large oil

paintings, and the long-handled paste brush came to town, and put some

magnificent decalcomania pictures on the bill-boards and fences; and

Judge Blair and I patted each other on the back; and laughed seven or

eight silvery laughs.

But in the midst of our unfettered glee a telegram came from Denver that

the circus that had billed our town had been attached by the sheriffs.

It seems that the elephant had broken into a warehouse in Denver and

had eaten 160 bales of hay, worth $100 each in the Leadville market. The

owner of the hay then attached the show in order to secure pay for the

hay.

This necessitated a long delay and finally a sale of the circus.

Everything went, the big elephant and the baby elephant, the band

chariot with a cross-eyed hyena painted on it, the steam calliope that

couldn't play anything but "Silver Threads Among the Gold," the sacred

jackass from North Park, the red-nosed babboon from New Jersey, the

sore-eyed prairie dog from Jack Creek, the sway-backed grizzly bear from

York State, and the second-hand clown from Dubuque, all had to go.

Then they opened a package of petrified jokes and antique conundrums

that had been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii. It seemed almost like

sacrilege, but the ruthless auctioneer tore these prehistoric jokes from

the sarcophagus and knocked them down to the gaping throng for whatever

they would bring.

The show was valued at $2,000,000 on the large illustrated catalogues

and bright-hued posters, but after the costs of attachment and sale had

been paid there was only $231 left.

Oh! what a sacrifice. How little there is in this brief transitory life

of ours that is abiding. How few of our bright hopes are ever realized.

How many glad promises are held out to us for the roseate future that

never reach fruition.

GREELEY VERSUS VALLEY TAN.

|I stopped over one day at Greeley on my return. Greeley is the town

after which Horace Greeley was named. It is enclosed by a fence and

embraces a large tract of very fine agricultural land.

The editor of the _Tribune_ had just received a brand new power press.

I asked him to come out and take something. He did not seem to grasp my

meaning exactly.

Afterward I wandered about the town thinking how much dryer the air is

in Greeley than in Denver. The throat rapidly becomes parched, and yet

the inducements for the visitor to step in at various places and chew a

clove or two are very rare indeed. I thought what a dull, melancholy day

the Fourth of July must be in Greeley, and how tame and dull life must

be to those who experience a uniform size of head from year to year. The

blessed novelty of rising in the morning with a dark brown taste in the

mouth and the cheerful feeling that your head is so large that you can't

possibly get it out through your bed-room door, are sensations that do

not enter here.

All the water not used at Greeley for irrigating purposes is worked up

into a light, nutritious drink for the people.

THE ETERNAL FITNESS OF THINGS.

|An exchange comes out with an article giving the former residence

and occupation of those who are immediately connected with the Indian

management. It will be seen that they are, almost without an exception,

from the Atlantic coast, where they have had about the same opportunity

to become acquainted with the duties pertaining to their appointment as

Lucifer has had for the past two thousand years to form a warm personal

acquaintance with the prophet Isaiah.

With all due respect to the worthy descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers,

and not wishing to cast a slur upon the ability or the integrity of the

dwellers along the rock-bound coast of New England, I will say in the

mildest manner possible that these men are no more fit to manage hostile

Indians than Perdition is naturally fitted for a powder house.

A man may successfully cope with the wild and fierce codfish in his

native jungle, or beard the salt water clam in his den, and still

signally fail as an Indian agent. The codfish is not treacherous. He

may be bold, blood-thirsty and terrible, but he will never go back on

a treaty. Who ever heard of a codfish going back on his word? Who ever

heard of a codfish leaving the Reservation and spreading desolation over

the land? No one. The expression on the face of a codfish shows that he

is perfectly open and above board.

We might say the same of the clam. Of course if driven to the wall, as

it were, he will fight; but we have yet to find a single instance in the

annals of history where the clam--unless grossly insulted and openly put

upon, ever made an open outbreak.

This is why we claim that clam culture and Indian management are not

analogous. They are not simultaneous nor co-extensive. They are not

identical nor homogeneous.

I feel that in treating this subject in my candid and truthful way,

perhaps the Administration will feel hurt and grieved; but if so I can't

help it. The great reading public seems to look to me, as much as to

say: "What are your views on this great subject which is agitating the

public mind?" I can't evade it, and even if President Hayes were an own

brother, instead of being a warm, personal friend and admirer, I would

certainly speak right out as I have spoken out, and tell the whole

broad Republic of Columbia that to successfully steer a hostile tribe

of nervous, refractory and irritable Indian bummers past the rocks and

shoals of war is one thing, and to drive a salt water clam up a hickory

tree and kill him with a club, is entirely another thing.

THEY UNANIMOUSLY AROSE AND HUNG HIM.

|I was talking the other day with a Laramie City man about Leadville, he

said:

"In addition to the fact of Laramie money being now invested there, we

have sent many good citizens there to build up homes and swell the boom

of the young city. We also sent several there of whom we are not proud.

We still hold them in loving remembrance. Sometimes we go through the

motions of getting judgments against these men, and making transcripts

with big seals on them, and sending to Leadville to be placed on the

execution docket of Lake county.

"We also sent Edward Frodsham to Leadville. We intimated to him that

life was very brief and that if he wanted to gather a little stake

to leave his family perhaps he could do so faster in Leadville than

anywhere else. So he went. He is there now. He at once won the notice

of the public there and soon became the recipient of the most flattering

attentions. A little band of American citizens one evening took him out

on the plaza, or something of that kind, and hung him last fall.

"The maple turned to crimson and the sassafras to gold, and when the

morning woke the song of the bunko-steerer and the robin, Mr. Frodsham

was on his branch all right, but he couldn't seem to get in his work

as a songster. There seemed to be a stricture in the glottis, and the

diaphragm wouldn't buzz. The gorgeous dyes of the autumn sunrise

seemed strangely at variance with the gen d'arm blue of Mr. Frodsham's

countenance.

"His death calls to mind one sunny day in the midsummer of '78. It was

one of those days when there is a lull in the struggle for existence,

and the dreamy silence and hush of nature seem to be concurred in by a

committee of the whole.

"It was one of those days when, in the language of the average magazine

poet--=

```The flowers bloomed, the air was mild,

````The little birds poured forth their lay,

```And everything in nature smiled.=

"But soon from out the silence, bursting upon the quiet air, came the

sharp report of a pistol. Then another and another in rapid succession.

People who were going to trade in that locality suddenly thought of

other places of business where the same articles could be obtained

cheaper. Men who were not afraid of danger in any form, went away

because they didn't want to be called as witnesses on the inquest.

"The shooting went on for some time. It sounded like the battle'of the

Wilderness. After a while it ceased. A large party of men went out to

gather up the dead and arrange for a grand funeral. But the remains were

not so dead as they ought to be. There were bullet holes to be sure,

penetrating various parts of the combatants, but the funeral had to be

postponed. The sidewalks were plowed up, signs were riddled and windows

shattered, but Edward Frodsham got off with a bullet hole through the

side. The doctor pronounced it a very close call, but not necessarily

fatal. It was a terrible disappointment to every one. As a shooting

match it was a depressing failure, and as a double funeral it was not

deserving of mention.

"The city council told Frodsham that if he couldn't shoot better than

that he might select some young growing town outside of Wyoming and grow

up with it. He did so. He favored Colorado with his stirring, energetic

presence.

"His grave grows green to-day on the sunny hill-side 'neath the bending

willow, and the soft, sweet breath that is sighing through the pines

and stirring the delicate ferns beside the glassy depth of the mountain

stream, is singing his requiem. [Perhaps, however, I am rushing the

season for Leadville a little; if so the last refrain after the word

'presence,' may be wrapped up in warm flannels and stored away till

July.]"

RHETORIC VS. WOODTICK.

Camp on the New Jerusalem Mine, June 15.

|It is impossible at present to say anything about what the future of

this district may bring forth. Every lead shows up beautifully, and

so much so, in fact, that claim owners are working first one and then

another in order to hold them under the new law, which requires an

amount of work to be done on the lead within sixty days which is

generally only required within one year. This new regulation, which is

the act of the district of course, may not stand any very severe test,

but at present the miners are respecting it.

It is severe on me, however, and virtually leaves me out. What I need is

a law that will not ride over and overthrow and freeze out the poor man.

This law is passed in the interest of capital and in direct violation

of the rights and privileges of the great surging mass of horny-handed

workingmen like Brick Pomeroy and myself.

I havn't the time to particularize or describe the different mines

visited, and if I were to do so the chances are that I wouldn't cover

myself or the district with glory.

It is true that I know a foot wall from a windlass, with one hand

tied behind me, but if I were buying a mine I would be about as apt to

purchase a deposit of sulphurets of expectations, showing traces of free

milling telluride of disappointment, as anything else.

The camp has about 300 miners and prospectors now within the city

limits. All up and down the picturesque valley of the swift-flowing

river the low cabin and white tent dot the green sward, and far above

the everlasting hills rear their heads on high, torn by the Titanic

power of giant heat in the days of the long ago.

I said this to Professor Paige, the scientific correspondent of the

_Inter-Ocean_, who accompanied me. I thought that perhaps it would

tickle him to know that I could reel off a sentence like that, but it

didn't affect him in that way. On the contrary, he seemed to think that

the heat must have affected me in some way.

We climbed Jehu mountain on the evening that we arrived in camp. We

thought it would be the proper thing to do, so we dug our toe-nails into

the prehistoric granite and the micacious what's-his-name and climbed to

the top.

For a few minutes we didn't mind it much and got along first-rate,

trying to make each believe that climbing mountains was our regular

business.

I began to tell the Professor a little harmless lie about how I had

travelled among the Alps, but I didn't finish it. Somehow I felt like

breathing in what atmosphere was not in actual use, but I didn't have

any place to put it.

The air at Jehu Mountain is good enough what there is of it, but it is

too rare. If a man could let out the back straps of his vest and breathe

in the unoccupied atmosphere lying between the Laramie river and the

Zodiac it would be all right, but he can't do it. His intentions are

good, but his skin isn't elastic enough to hold the diluted fluid.

We climbed up to where we could see the silvery moon rising like a pale

schoolma'am and looking sadly across the dark valley asleep in night's

embrace. I thought it was time to say something.

"Professor," said I, as my brow lighted up like a torchlight procession,

and my voice broke upon the hush and solitude of evening like the

tremulous notes of the buzz saw, "do you not think that far away amid

the unknown worlds which drift through space and along whose track the

drifting systems of planets wheel and circle through countless ages,

while man, clothed in a little brief authority, cuts such fantastic

tricks Before high heaven as makes the angels weep, regarding himself as

the center of the solar system, planning to frustrate the immutable laws

of nature, violating the prime and co-ordinate common law of universes,

going behind the returns, as it were, trying to peer behind the veil, as

I might say, prognosticating the unprognosticatable, evading the axioms

and by-laws which not only regulate worlds and their creation, but link

the phantasmagoria of diagonal animalculæ and cast broadcast the

oleaginous incongruity of prehistoric usufruct?"

The Professor didn't say anything. He didn't seem to have followed me.

Somewhere the thread had been broken, and the glowing truths couched in

such language as would light up the pages of history and astronomy, were

lost upon the silent air.

The Professor seemed sad and anxious and preoccupied. There was a look

of apprehension and doubt and distrust in his eye, and he moved about

uneasily. I asked him if there were any last words that I could carry

to his friends, and ii there were any little acts of humanity and

friendship which I could perform to render his last moments more

pleasant.

He said there were.

*****

Then he told me that a wood-tick was slowly but surely boring a hole

into his spinal column, near where the off scapula forms a junction with

the nigh one, and asked me to help bring him to justice.

We should learn from this that heaven-born genius, with the music

of poetic language and aflame with an inspiration almost miraculous,

sometimes makes less impression upon the listener than a little insect

no larger than a grain of mustard seed.

THE MODEL WIFE.

|Dr. Westwood lectured here on Wednesday evening on the Model Husband.

He wanted me to sit upon the stage as the horrible example, but I

declined. He was quite pointed in his remarks all the way through,

and seemed to have me in his mind when he described the model husband,

although of course he used a fictitious name. The lecture was a good

one, and very well liked by the husbands who had to sit and take it for

an hour and a half. Let the gentle male reader imagine himself sitting

for that length of time with his own wife on one side of him and another

man's wife on the other side of him, and when the speaker makes a point

on the old man to get alternate jabs in the side from the delighted

ladies.

I shall lecture here during the winter on the subject of the "Model

Wife." I will then get even. I will tell how the young man with bright

hopes, and thinking only of the great, consuming love he has for his

new spouse, is torn away from the hallowed ties of home and the sunny

influences of young companions, and buried in the poverty-stricken

cottage of a woman who cannot begin to support him in the style in which

he has been accustomed.

It is high time that this course of disgraceful misrepresentation on the

part of young women should be exposed. I once knew a young man with the

most gentle and trustful nature. He had never known care or sorrow. But

an adventuress with winsome smile and loving voice crossed his path and

allowed him to think that she could maintain a husband like other women,

and in his blind adoration for her he bade good-bye to his home and its

joys and madly walked out with her into the great, untried future. She

told him that he should never know the cruel sting of poverty, and other

romantic trash, and look at him to-day. He is a broken-hearted man. His

wife does not take him into society; does not keep him clothed as other

men are clothed, and grudgingly gives him the little pittance from week

to week which she earns by washing.

Is it strange that his pillow is wet with tears, and in his agony he

cries out upon the still air of night, "Oh, mother, why did I leave thy

kindly protection and overshadowing love and marry a total stranger?"

Then the woman who has sworn to protect and love and cherish him kicks

him in the pit of the stomach and harshly tells him to "dry up."

I sometimes think that if mothers knew to what sorrow and gross and

shameless treatment their sons were to submit all through their lives,

they would put them out of their misery with a base-ball club. Some

mothers do try this but they postpone it too long and the sons get too

large and more difficult to kill than when their skulls are young and

tender.

I have alwavs maintained that a kind word and a caress will do more for

the great yearning nature of the husband than harshness and severity.

The tuue wife may reprove her husband when he spills coal all over the

Brussels carpet and then steps on it and grinds it in, but how much

better even that is than to kick him under the bed and then sit down on

him and gouge out his eyes with a pinking iron.

I know that men are too often misunderstood. They may be rough on the

exterior but they can love Oh, so earnestly, so warmly, so truly, so

deeply, so intensely, so yearningly, so fondly and so universally!

Always kiss your husband good-bye when you go down town to your work. It

may be the last time. I once knew a wife who went down town to price a

new dolman, and because she was vexed about something she did not kiss

her husband but slammed the door and left him. When she returned he was

a corpse!

* * * * *

While peeling the potatoes for dinner with the carving knife, he

had stepped on a clothes pin, which threw him forward over the baby

carriage, the knife entering at the northeast corner of the gizzard and

sticking out beneath the shoulder blade about two feet into space. What

a scene for the now repentant wife. There, in the full vigor of his

manhood, lay all that was mortal of her companion--dead as a mackerel!!!