Let us take this home to ourselves, and ask ourselves today if we are

doing the square thing by the only husband we have. Are we loving him as

we should, or are we turning this task over to the hired girl?

Intemperance, too, is a fruitful cause of connubial unhappiness.

Young man, beware of a wife who loves the flowing bowl. I once knew

a beautiful young lady, talented and with good business ability. The

entire circle of her acquaintance admired and respected her, but alas!

one evening at a banquet her companion, with a heavenly smile, asked

her to drink wine. Gradually the taste grew upon her, and although she

married, she could not support her husband, and he gradually pined away

and died brokenhearted. He used to sit up nights for her to come home,

and he caught the inflammatory rheumatism and swelled up and died. It

was a terrible thing. I tell you we cannot be too careful. You take a

handsome young man like the author of these lines and his power for good

or evil is untold. I sometimes wish that I had not been constructed with

so much dazzling beauty to the square inch, and I am almost tempted to

go and disfigure myself some way. If I were to ask a fair gazelle on New

Year's day to come and join me in a social glass and then throw one

of those melting 2 by 8 glances of mine on her, I know for a moral

certainty that before night she would be in the calaboose. But I shall

guard against that. Nothing of that kind shall ever be laid at my door.

I promised my aged parents when I left the old homestead that I would

never set 'em up for anyone.

SOME OVERLAND TOURISTS.

|The varied classes of tourists passing over the Union Pacific Railroad,

representing as they do all classes of humanity, seem to call for a

brief notice from the nimble pen of a great man.

During my short but eventful life I have given a large portion of my

time to studying human nature. Studying human nature and rustling for

grub, as the Psalmist has it, have occupied my time ever since I arrived

at man's estate.

There is one style of tourist which I am more particularly devoted to,

perhaps, than any other. It is the young man who is in search of health

for his invalid mustache. Only last week I saw one of these gentle

youths who was going to try sea air and California fruit to see if he

couldn't rescue his consumptive mustache from the jaws of death.

When he got off here and took the poor thing out to where it could look

about and see the green plains and snow-capped mountains, I felt sorry

for him. It is hard for one to be a successful tourist with a pale

invalid along with him night and day, and I could imagine how that

young man would have to get up nights when his mustache got restless and

needed fresh air or wanted to take its tonic.

It was certainly the most gentle, retiring, modest mustache I ever saw.

It didn't seem to care for anything only to be loved.

Every little while the youth would reach up to where it was and feel

around nervously to see if it had climbed the golden stairs or was still

on deck.

It was not a heavy mustache at all. It was about as voluptuous as a

buffalo gnat's eye-brow.

I never saw a mustache before that brought the scalding tears to my eyes

like that one. I thought how lonely the young man would be when it had

glided up the flume and left him in this cold, uncharitable world with

nothing to love and cling to but an earnest and unhappy boil on the back

of his neck that wouldn't come to a focus.

Sometimes I go down to the train to see some fair young girl who is on

the overland trip. But I am not always gratified.

A short time ago I went over, feeling as though I would like to see a

fair young creature full of life and joy and with the light of a joyous

future shining in her lustrous eyes.

It didn't seem to be her train. It was the day that a woman was on

board with a Russia iron alapaca dress and white eyes. She was from

Winnipewankiegingersuappetymagoggery, Maine.

She had a little sore-eyed boy with cream-colored hair and freckles on

his face as large as a veal cutlet.

The boy would occasionally walk along the platform with his fore finger

rammed into his mouth and hooked around his wisdom tooth. He would walk

along looking up into the sky, and running into everybody and falling

over the baggage truck till his mother got quite irritated, and I told

the boy that the future looked dark for him unless he braced up and

stopped pulverizing people's corns.

Bye and bye the boy ran into a blind man and knocked the wind out of

him, so that all he could do for ten minutes was to stand there and gasp

for breath as though he wanted to breathe in the vast realms of space.

Then his mother extended a long, bony hand with a large silver ferule on

the biggest finger, and she laid hold of that lemon-colored kid of her's

and gathered in as much of his ear as her hand would hold. She churned

him up pretty good, and it didn't seem to be very much exertion for her

either. Every little while he would make an aerial flight and back

he would come, his boots banging against the car with a

loud report. Finally the woman with the white eye, from

Winnipewankiegingersuappetymagoggery, Me., consolidated her efforts for

one grand flourish, but while in mid-air the boy's ear unscrewed and he

lit out through the firmament, falling in a shapeless mass on the other

side of the second-class car, where his gentle mother found him and

gathered him up in her gingham apron.

There are lots of these little queer and amusing circumstances taking

place here almost every day, and I have often thought that if some

one with a taste for the ridiculous would turn his attention in that

direction he would make an interesting sketch of them.

During the month of June we had a heavy snow storm, and it pleased the

average tourist very much to be able to snow ball in mid-summer, so that

he could tell his friends about it when he got home.

One intellectual Hercules, with a head about as large as a gum drop and

a linen hat like the dome of the Mormon Temple, thought it would be a

frisky little thing to throw some snow in the face of a sensible man

engaged in conversation on the hotel pavement. The sensible man mopped

the snow out of his face and went on with his conversation till the

train was ready to start and the mental giant had forgotten all about

it.

Then the large man walked up to the watery-eyed youth with a big lunch

basket full of snow and proceeded to stow it away around the features of

the youthful snide with the skim-milk optic. He used what he could get

near by, trying to fill his ears full, but couldn't get snow enough.

Then he took what he had left and worked it down inside the voluptuous

shirt collar of the bilious young man from the Normal school.

I enjoyed it first-rate because I can not bear to see a feminine tourist

like this young man, wearing men's clothes and trying to play himself

for a man. When a man wants to be a merry laughing girl and can't, and

he stands trembling on the dividing line between manhood and womanhood

and hesitating which way to fall, I often wish that I had a foot like

Brigham Young's tombstone with a swing to it like a pile driver and

I would like to kick the young man with the old gold hat band and the

polka dotted necktie so far into the realms of space that when he fell

people would think he was a red-headed meteor looking for a soft place

to fall into.

CATCHING MOUNTAIN TROUT AT AN ELEVATION OF 8000 FEET.

|A few days ago, in company with Dr. Hayford, I went over to Dale Creek

on a brief extempore trouting expedition. Dale Creek is a beautiful

and romantic stream running through a rugged canon and crossed by the

beautiful iron bridge of the Union Pacific Railroad.

[9241]

We went up Dale Creek at this season of the year is not very much of a

torrent, and on the day we went over there all the trout had gone down

to the mouth of the stream to get a drink.

Every little while the Doctor would put on his glasses and hunt for the

creek while I caught grasshoppers and looked at the scenery. I did not

catch any trout myself, but the Doctor drove one into a prairie-dog hole

and killed him. I am frantically fond of field sports although I am

not always successful in securing game. I love to wander through the

fragrant grass and wild flowers, listening to the song of the bobolink

as he sways to and fro on some slender weed; but it delays me a good

deal to stop every little while and cut on No. 4 and returned on No. 3.

TROUT FISHING.

|My fly hooks out of my clothes. I throw a fly very grace, fully, but

when it catches under my shoulder-blades, and I try to lift myself up in

that manner, my companions laugh at me and make me mad.

Dr. Hayford, who had command of the expedition, told me that we would

have an hour and three quarters to fish and then we would have to go

back and catch the train. Therefore we hurried a good deal, and I had

to leave a decrepit trout that I had found in a dead pine tree and was

almost sure of. We gathered a bouquet of wild roses and ferns and cut

worms and went back to the bridge to wait for No. 3. We sat there for

an hour or two on a voluptuous triangular fragment of granite, telling

large three-ply falsehoods about catching fish and shooting elephants in

Michigan. Then we waited two or three more long weary hours, and still

the train didn't come.

After a while it occurred to me that I had been made the victim of the

man who had spent the most of his life telling the public about the

pleasant weather of Wyoming. He enjoyed my misery and cheered me up by

saying that perhaps our train had gone, and we would have to wait for

the emigrant-train. We ate what lunch we had left, told a few more lies,

and suffered on.

At last the thunder of the train in the distance was borne down to

us, and we rose with a sigh of relief, gathered up our bouquets and

decomposed trout, and prepared to board the car. But it was a work train

and didn't stop.

Then I went away by myself and tried to control my fiendish temper. I

thought of the doctor's interesting family at home, and how they would

mourn if I were to throw him over Dale Creek bridge, and pulverize him

on the rocks below. So my better nature conquered and I went back to

wait a few more weeks.

The next train that came along was a freight train, and it made better

time going past us than at any other point on the road.

Toward evening the regular passenger train came along. I found out which

coach the doctor was going to ride in, and I got into another one. I

look my poor withered little bouquet and looked at it. All the flowers

were dead and so were the bugs that were in it. It was a ghostly ruin

that had cost me $9.25. An idea struck me, and I gave the bouquet to the

train boy to sell. I told him what the entire array of ghastliness had

cost me, and asked him to get what he could out of it.

He took the collection and sold it out to the passengers, realizing,

$21.35. Passengers bought them and sent them home as flowers collected

at Dale Creek bridge in the Rocky mountains. Then a kind hearted

gentleman on the train, who saw how sad I looked, and how ragged

my clothes were, where I had cut fish-hooks out of them, took up a

collection for me.

Hereafter when a man asks me to join a fishing excursion to the

mountains, I hope that I shall have the moral courage and strength of

character to refuse.

HOME-MADE INDIAN RELICS.

|Sherman, on the Union Pacific Railroad, is the loftiest by a

considerable majority of any point on the road. This fact has occasioned

some little notoriety for Sherman, and on the strength of it a small

reservoir of Western curiosities has been established there.

I went over to the curiosity ranche while the train was taking breath,

to see what I could see and buy it if the price were not too high.

There were a great many Western curiosities from various parts of the

country, and I got deeply interested in them.

I love to find some old relic of ancient times or some antique weapon of

warfare peculiar to the noble Aztecs. I can ponder over them by the hour

and enjoy it first-rate.

Among the living wonders I noticed a bale of Indian arrows. These arrows

are beautiful to look upon, and are remarkably well preserved. They are

as good as new. I asked, simply as a matter of form, if they were Indian

arrows. The man said they were. Then I asked who made them, and he got

mad and wouldn't speak to me.

I do not think I am unreasonable to want to know who makes my Indian

arrows, am I?

I am willing to pay a fair price for the genuine Connecticut made arrow

with cane shaft, and warranted cast steel point, but the Indian arrow

made at Omaha is not durable.

This curiosity man would make more money and command a larger trade if

he were not so quick-tempered.

He had also some Western cactus as a curiosity for the tenderfoot who

had never fooled with a cactus much.

It was the clear thing, however. I sat down on one to test its

genuineness. It stood the test better than I did. When you have doubts

about a cactus and don't know whether it is a genuine cactus or a young

watermelon with its hair banged, you can test it by sitting down on it.

It may surprise you at first, but it tickles the cactus almost to death.

For a high-priced house plant and gentle meek-eyed exotic that don't

care much for affection, the Rocky Mountain cactus takes the cake.

It is very easy to live, and don't require much fondling. It will enjoy

life better if you will get mad at it about once a week and pull it up

by the roots, and kick it around the yard. Water it carefully every

four years; if you water it oftener than that, it will be surprised, and

gradually pine away and die.

Another item I must not forget in giving directions for the

cultivation of this rare tropical plant: get some one to sit down on it

occasionally--if you don't feel equal to it yourself. There's nothing

that makes a cactus thrive and flourish so much as to have a victim with

linen pants on, sit down on it and then get up impulsively like. If a

cactus can have these little attentions bestowed upon it, it will

live to a good old age, and insinuate itself through the pantaloons of

generations yet unborn. Plant in a gravelly, coarse soil, and kick it

every time you think of it.

Returning to our subject, however, I think the Indian is a trifle

uncertain and at times tricky by nature. Of course I do not wish to

say anything that would have a tendency to injure the reputation of the

Indian, for in all candor I will say that he means well.

I do not wish to have what I may say published as coming from me,

because the Indian has always used me well, perhaps because I never

allow myself to stray into his jurisdiction, but he has little, hateful,

mean ways which I despise. Some think that if he were to have more

chance to learn, more normal schools and base-ball clubs and upright

pianos, he would have more ambition to do right and get ahead, but I

almost doubt it.

I am very humane myself, but I am more apt to be harsh in my measures

with the Indian than most Eastern people of culture are. Perhaps this is

because I have seen people who had been shot full of large size bullet

holes by the red man. This makes a difference, and I may be prejudiced.

When the average philanthropist has seen a family lying scattered around

promiscuous and shot so full of holes that even the coarsest kind of

food is of no use, he begins to ask in his mind whether a more severe

method of treatment would not be beneficial to the Indian.

I want to look this matter calmly in the face, and ask whether night

shirts and civilization and suspenders will make good citizens out of

these unfettered children of the forest or not? Is it the opinion of the

gentle reader that a nation of flea-bitten, smoke-tanned beggars will

come forward and submit to the ennobling influences of Christianity and

duck vests and horse-shoe scarf pins and quarterly meetings and gauze

underwear? Methinks not.

Nature constructed the noble red man with certain little mental, moral

and physical eccentricities, and these eccentricities can be better worn

away and remodeled on the evergreen shore.

Poor, weak, fallible man cannot successfully grapple with the task of

working over an entire nation of human beings and changing the whole

trend, so to speak, of a nation's mental and moral nature.

Let us not, therefore, usurp the prerogative or attempt to perform the

Herculean task which a wise Creator has laid out for Himself.

The policy of Divine administration, if I mistake not, is to improve the

Indian and reform him in a future state in a large corral where the worm

dieth not. This of course is only my private opinion, and I am offering

it now in packages containing six each, securely boxed and sent free to

any address on receipt of $1. I would sell it cheaper were it not for

the excessive freight and the recent rise in white paper.

Supposing then the above to be the correct theory, what can poor erring

man do to forward the good work? Evidently he can do nothing unless it

be to change the state of the red man from a discouraging and annoying

mortality to a bright and shining immortality.

I would suggest that this be done so far as possible by those who can

spare the time and ammunition to do so. I will give to such all the

encouragement and moral support I can. I would assist in the good work,

but I am most too busy now planting my raspberry jam and setting out my

early Swedish dried apple pie plant.

THE PREVIOUS REPORTER.

|Fluke MaGilder, an old Washington reporter, who afterward was well

known among Western newspaper men, was one of the most tireless and

persistent news-gatherers I ever knew. He used to tell with considerable

apparent pleasure how he didn't obtain the points on a prominent

military court martial which was held at Cheyenne in 1876. It happened

on this wise:

When it was known for a dead certainty that the court-martial had

closed, and that the result was sealed up in an envelope in the

possession of General Pope, who roomed at the Inter-Ocean, Fluke got

up an infernal lie to tell the General, and thus got him away from his

room. He induced a little negro boy, by promising him an old pair of

pants, to go up and deliver a note to General Pope, saying that

General Merritt was out at Fort Russell, and that he wanted to see him

immediately. After the General had gone Fluke crawled into the transom

of his room, and began to ransack things. It turned out, however, that

the documents were safe in the General's overcoat pocket, and MaGilder

was baffled. He searched all the drawers in the room, looked under the

bed, rummaged the pockets of all the extra clothes in the room, and the

more he searched the madder he got, and when at last it dawned upon him

that he was foiled, his wrath knew no bounds. He filled his pockets with

the General's cigars, drank the General's wine, and wiped his nose on

the General's best clean handkerchiefs. He spit tobacco juice in the

General's slippers, wiped his feet on the pillow shams, dressed the

coal-stove up in the General's night shirt, and spread a few spare

hairpins which he had in his pockets, under the General's pillow. He was

pretty mad. He took the spittoon and stood it on the center-table, with

a tooth brush sticking in the middle, and wound up by trying on the

General's underclothes and tearing the ruffles off. It is so well

established that Fluke had a great deal of _embonpoint_, that it is

unnecessary to say he had a good deal of trouble to get into General

Pope's apparel, as the General is a slim man. However, as MaGilder stood

in the position of a boy who is just on the point of going in swimming,

and had the last garment drawn over his head, so that he could not see

very well, General Pope slipped in with a large snow-shovel, which he

applied with great vigor. When they offered Fluke a chair at a party

after that he would murmur, "No, thank you, I prefer to stand up. I've

been sitting down all day and wish a change." But everybody knew that he

hadn't sat down for over a week.

THE PEACE COMMISSION.

EVIDENCE OF JOHNSON BEFORE THE COURT.

Los Pinos, Col., Nov. 17.

|Chief Johnson was again called on the stand this morning, and

administered the following oath to himself in a solemn and awe-inspiring

manner:

"By the Great Horn Spoons of the pale-face, and the Great Round Faced

Moon, round as the shield of my fathers; by the Great High Muck-a-Muck

of the Ute nation; by the Beard of the Prophet, and the Continental

Congress, I dassent tell a lie!"

When Johnson had repeated this solemn oath--at the same time making

the grand hailing sign of the secret order known as the Thousand and

One--there was not a dry eye in the house.

Question by General Adams.--What is your name and occupation, and where

do you reside?

Answer--My name is Johnson, just plain Johnson. The rest has been torn

off. I am by occupation a farmer. I am a horny-handed son of toil, and

don't you forget it. I reside in Greeley, Colorado.

Question--Did you, or did you not hear of a massacre at White River

agency, during the fall, and if so, to what extent?

Objected to by defendant's counsel because it is irrelevant, immaterial,

unconstitutional, imitation, and incongruous.

Most of the forenoon was spent in arguing the point before the court,

when it was allowed to go in, whereupon the defendant's counsel asked to

have the exception noted on the court's moments.

Answer--I did not hear of the massacre, until last evening, when I

happened to pick up a copy of the Evanston _Age_ and read it. It was a

very sad affair, I should think.

Question--Were you, or were you not, present at the massacres?

Objected to by defendant's counsel on the ground that the witness is not

bound to answer a question which would criminate himself.

Objection sustained, and question withdrawn by the prosecution.

Question--Where were you on the night that this massacre is said to have

occurred?

Answer--What massacre?

Question--The one at White River?

Answer--I was attending a series of protracted meetings at Greeley, in

this State.

Question--Were Douglass, Colorow and other Ute chiefs with you at that

meeting in Greeley?

Answer--They were.

Court adjourned for dinner.

General Adams remarked to a reporter that he was getting down to

business now, and that he had no doubt that in a few months he would

convict all these Utes of falsehood in the first degree.

After dinner, court was called, with Johnson at the bat and Douglass on

deck; General Adams, short stop; Ouray, center field.

Question--You say that you were not present at the White River massacre;

were you ever engaged in any massacre?

Objected to, but objection afterward withdrawn.

Answer--No.

Question--Never?

Answer--Never.

Question--What! Never?

Answer--Well, dam seldom.

(Great applause and cries of "ugh!")

Question--Did you, or did you not, know a man named N. C. Meeker?

Answer--Yes.

Question--Go on and state if you know where you met him and at what

time.

Answer--I met him in Greeley, Colorado, two or three years ago. After

that I heard that he got an appointment as Indian Agent somewhere out

west.

Question--Did you ever hear anything of him after that?

Answer--Nothing whatever.

Question--Did the account of the White River massacre that you read in

the _Age_ mention the death of Mr. Meeker?

Answer--No. Is he dead?

General Adams--Yes, he is dead.

At that the witness gave a wild whoop of pain and anguish, fell forward

into the arms of General Adams, and is unconscious as we go to press.

We do not wish to censure General Adams. No doubt he is conducting this

investigation to the best of his ability; but he ought to break such

news as this as gently to the Indian as possible.

SOME ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

|Lock Malone, Beaver, Utah, writes as follows:

"I am now making some important scientific experiments with Limberger

cheese as a motor, but have no data whereby to work. So new and unusual

is the motor to science, that I am unable to get anything relative to

its history.

"1. When was Limberger cheese first discovered, and by whom?

"2. What did he do it for anyway?

"3. To what do you attribute the bad odor in which Limberger cheese is

held by scientists?

"4. Looking from what may be termed a purely utilitarian standpoint, and

not allowing ourselves to be influenced by incongruous incandescence,

should you say in all respects that virtually in view of the

heterogeneous mobility of attended animalculate it might had or couldn't

possibly was?"

ANSWER.

1. Limberger cheese was first discovered by Galileo, floating through

space, during his studies relative to the heavenly bodies.

This was about 1609.

The body had, however, been floating through space for many millions of

years previous to that, as Galileo remarks in his diary that he

wasn't proud of it at all for it was evidently in a very poor state of

preservation.

Galileo caught some of it and tamed it, but the scientific minds of that

age had not yet made the attempt to utilize it as a motor.

The discovery was purely accidental. At about the time referred to,

Galileo had constructed his powerful telescope which would bring the

moon down so that the valleys and hills of that body were plainly

visible. One day the telescope brought down a fragment of Limberger

cheese that was floating through space. It magnified the cheese to such

an extent that Galileo could smell it distinctly.

This was the true cause of Galileo's abandonment of the Copernican

theory and eventually of astronomy.

3. The last answer really disposes of your third question.

4. Grappling with the abstruse and alarmingly previous usufruct embodied

in the omnipresent, and constantly emanating and noticeably refractory

diagnosis, herein set forth, and still wandering on through the ever

changing yet constantly invariable and fluctuating, yet undeviating

perihelion of the heavenly bodies, with unprejudiced mind and unbiased

judgment.

Arriving at the conclusion that perhaps in some cases it might not, or

yet again it might or might not, and still it might.

Numerous Husband, writes from Jehosephat Valley as follows:

"I am twenty-seven and am going on twenty-eight years of age. A few

years ago I joined on to the Mormon Church, and with my usual enthusiasm

begun to get married.

"I have been getting married with more or less recklessness ever cents.

When times was dull and I was out of employment, I Would go and get

married.

"The ofishal count shows that I am an easy and graceful marryer.

"I now find that I am hopelessly involved financially. I had intended

this summer to build a collosle villa for my multitoodinous wife; but it

will cost me more than I can now command.

"Besides that the surkass is now on the weigh, and I am called upon to

secure voluptuous woven wire mattress stuffed opera reserved seats, for

my household aggregation of living wonders.

"I am willing to take all I can pay for if she will sit on a hard blue

seat with me, and let her feet dangle down; but I cannot abide by the

excessive tariff for preserved seats.

"I love the high moral tone of the sho, and dearly love the grand

display of arenick tallent, but I cannot croll under the canvuss with my

domestic carryvan, without attracting attention.

"When I was a boy and had not yet entered with my wild impetuous nacher

in 2 the mattrymoniall biziness, I used to carry water to the elephant,

and thus see the World's Congress of Rair and Beautyful Zoologickal

Wonders, but I cood not do that now.

"By the time I got the Jordan carried up to the elephant, to pay my

admittance, the sho would be over and gone, and I would be more or less

left.

"I thereupon ask in all kandor for your valyable advise on these

points?"

ANSWER.

The case before us is one which would evoke sympathy from the stoniest

heart. It is also one which requires a close scrutiny and cool,

deliberate investigation.

You probably at first married a wife whom you considered a treasure, and

at once set yourself about amassing wealth of this kind until you find

that you are carrying over on your inventory year after year, a large

stock of undesirable wives which you are unable to dispose of.

You probably thought when you first married, that there were only two

or three unmarried young ladies in the broad and beautiful universe who

were worthy of you.

This was a fatal error, and one very common to the bran new bridegroom.

The census will show that there are several, if not more, desirable

young ladies who are still on deck.

I am sorry that you have placed yourself in the position you have, and

so far as possible will assist you; but these suggestions which I might

offer, could only be partially successful.

Could you earlier in the season have given your wives say a dozen

able-bodied hens apiece, with instructions that they were to be

stimulated to the utmost by their respective owners, the egg-crop might

have assisted very materially in purchasing circus tickets with the

consequent concert tickets and vermilion lemonade.

There are other suggestions that might be made but it is too late now

to make them. I can only offer one more balm to your deeply wounded

and disappointed heart. You might by economy and frugality, secure an

available point on the route with your mass meeting of household gods

and goddesses, where you could sit on the fence and see the elephant

meander by.

Yours, enveloped in a large wad of dense gloom.

THE CROW INDIAN AND HIS CAWS.

|Early in the week five Crow chiefs passed through here on their way to

Washington.

I went down to see them. They were as fine looking children of the

forest as I ever saw. They wore buckskin pants with overskirt of same.

The hair was worn Princesse, held in place with Frazer's axle grease and

large mother of clamshell brooch. Down the back it was braided like a

horse's tail on a muddy day, only the hair was coarser.

When an Indian wants to crimp his hair he has to run it through a

rolling mill first, to make it malleable. Then the blacksmith of the

tribe rolls it up over the ordinary freight car coupling pin, and on the

following morning it hangs in graceful Saratoga waves down the back of

the untutored savage.

I said to the interpreter who seemed to act as their trainer, "No doubt

these Crows are going to Washington to try and interest Hayes in their

Caws."

He gave a low, gurgling laugh.

"No," said he with a merry twinkle of the eye, as he laid his lip half

way across a plug of government tobacco, "as spring approaches they

have decided to go to Washington and ransack the Indian Bureau for their

gauzy Schurz."

I caught hold of a car seat and rippled till the coach was filled with

my merry, girlish laughter.

These Indians wear high expressive cheek-bones, and most of them have

strabismus in their feet. They had their paint on. It makes them look

like a chromo of Powhattan mashing the eternal soul out of John Smith

with a Bologna sausage.

One of these chiefs, named Raw-Dog-with-a-Bunion-on the-Heel, I think,

chief of the Wall-eyed Skunk Eaters, looked so guileless and kind that

I approached him and said that no doubt the war-path in the land of

the setting sun was overgrown with grass, and in his mountain home very

likely the beams of peace! lit up the faces of his tribe.

He did not seem to catch my meaning.

I asked him if his delegation was going to Washington uninstructed.

In reply he made a short remark something like that which the shortstop

of a match game makes when a hot ball takes him unexpectedly between the

gastric and the liver pad.

Somehow live Indians do not look so picturesque as the steel engraving

does. The smell is not the same, either. Steel engravings of Indians do

not show the decalcomania outline of a frying-pan on the buckskin pants

where the noble red man made a misstep one morning and sat down on his

breakfast.

A dead Indian is a pleasing picture. The look of pain and anxiety is

gone, and rest, sweet rest--more than he really needs--has come at last.

His hands are folded peacefully and his mouth is open, like the end of

a sawmill. His trials are o'er. His swift foot is making pigeon-toed

tracks in the shifting sands of eternity.

The picture of a wild free Indian chasing the buffalo may suit some,

but I like still life in art. I like the picture of a broad-shouldered,

well-formed brave as he lies with his nerveless hand across a large hole

in the pit of his stomach.

There is something so sweetly sad about it. There is such a nameless

feeling of repose and security on the part of the spectator.

Some have such sensitive natures that they cannot look at the remains of

an Indian who has been run over by two sections of freight, but I can.

Somehow I do not feel that nervous distrust when I look at the red man

with his osophagus wrapped around his head and tied in a double bow

knot, that I do when he is full of the vigor of health.

When a train of cars has jammed his thigh-bone through his diaphragm and

flattened his head out like a soup plate, I feel then that I can trust

him. I feel that he may be relied upon. I consider him in the character

of ghastly remains as a success. He seems at last so in earnest and as

though he could be trusted.

When the Indian has been mixed up so that the closest scrutiny cannot

determine where the head adjourns and the thorax begins, the scene is so

suggestive of unruffled quiet and calm and gentle childlike faith that

doubt and distrust and timidity and apprehension flee away.

THE NUPTIALS OP DANGEROUS DAVIS.

|On the morning on which Adam Forepaugh entered the city of Laramie, and

with a grand array of hump-backed dromedaries, club-footed elephants,

and an uncalled-for amount of pride, and pomp, and circumstance,

captured the town, Dangerous Davis, clad in buckskin and glass beads,

and ornamented with one of Smith & Wesson's brass-mounted, self-cocking,

Black Hills bustles, entered his honor's office, and walking up to the

counter where the Judge deals out justice to the vagabond tenderfoot,

and bankrupt non resident, as well as to the law-defying Laramite,

called for $5.00 worth of matrimony.

On his arm leaned the fair form of the one who had ensnared the heart of

the frontiersman, and who had evidently gobbled up the manly affections

of Dangerous Davis. She was resplendent in new clothes, and a pair of

Indian moccasins, and when she glided up to the centre of the room, the

casual observer might have been deceived into the belief that she was

moving through the radiant atmosphere like an $11.00 Peri, if it had

not been for the gentle patter of her moccasin as it fell upon the floor

with the sylph-like footfall of the prize elephant as he moves around

the ring to the dreamy strains of "Old Zip Coon." A large "filled" ring

gleamed and sparkled on her brown hand, and vied in splendor with a

large seed-wart on her front finger. The ends of her nails were draped

in the deepest mourning, and as she leaned her head against the off

shoulder of Dangerous Davis, the ranche butter from her tawny locks made

a deep and lasting impression on his buckskin bosom.

At this auspicious moment His Honor entered the room, with a green

covered German almanac for 1852 and a copy of Robinson Crusoe under his

arm, and as he saw the young thing who was about to unite herself to the

bold, bad man from Bitter Creek, he burst into tears, while Judge Blair,

who had adjourned the District Court in order to witness the ceremony,

sat down behind the stove and sobbed like a child. At this moment

William Crout, who has been married under all kinds of circumstances and

in eleven different languages, entered the room and inspired confidence

in the weeping throng.

Dangerous Davis changed his quid of tobacco from one side of his amber

mouth to the other, spat on his hands, and asked to see the Judge's

matrimonial price list. The Judge showed him some different styles, out

of which Dangerous Davis selected the kind he wanted.

By this time about one hundred and thirteen men, who had been waiting

around the court room during the past week in order to be drawn as

jurymen, had crowded in to witness the ceremony.

After all the preliminaries had been gone through with, the Judge

commenced reading the marriage service out of a copy of the Clown's

Comic Song Book. When he asked if anyone present had any objections to

the proceedings, Price, from force of habit, rose and said, "I object;"

but Dangerous Davis caressed his brass-mounted Grecian bend, and Price

withdrew the objection. Everybody admitted Price's good judgment, under

the circumstances, in withdrawing the objection.

After the usual ceremony, the Judge put the bridegroom through some

little initiations, instructed him in the grand hailing signs, grips,

passwords and signals, swore him to support the Constitution of the

United States, pronounced the benediction on the newly-wedded pair, and

the ceremony closed with an extemporaneous speech by Judge Brown and

profound silence and thoughtfulness on the part of Brockway, as he

reflected upon the dangers which constantly surround us.

Dangerous Davis mounted his broncho, and tying his new wife on behind

him on the saddle with an old shawl strap, plunged his spurs into the

panting sides of his calico colored steed, and in a few moments was

flying over the green plains, while the mountain breeze caught up the

oleaginous saffron-hued tresses of the bride and in wild glee mingled

them with the broncho's sorrel tail, and tossed them to the four winds

of heaven.

THE HOLIDAY HOG.

|Dear reader, did you ever go along past the market these cold December

mornings and study the expression of the frozen holiday hog as he

stands at the door with his mouth propped open by a chip, and the last

hardened outlines of a diabolical smile lingering about the whole face?

Did it ever occur to you that he has ways like Charles Francis Adams?

And yet he was not always thus--a cold, hard, immovable pork statue.

Once he was the pride of some Nebraska home. He was petted and caressed

no doubt, and had more demoralized melon rinds, and cold potatoes,

and dish water than he actually needed. But think of it, gentle,

kind-hearted reader; he has been torn from those he loved, and butchered

to make a Caucasian holiday; snatched from the home of his youth, and

frozen into a double and twisted post mortem examination. Perhaps, dear

reader, you have never had to stand as a model for the picture of the

man in the front of the almanac, who looks like the victim of a buzz

saw, with the various members of the Zodiac family floating around him.

If you have not, and we will take your word for it, you cannot fully

realize the feelings of the Nebraska hog on a December day, without a

stitch of clothes to his back.

SOME CENSUS CONUNDRUMS.

```It was in the prime of summer time,

```An evening calm and cool--=

|When the census enumerator came to the sanctity of my home, and opened

a valise which contained a large duodecimo volume, and about nine

gallons of brand new interrogation points.

He opened his note book, which was about the size of the White River

Reservation, and proceeded to get acquainted. I thought at first that he

had come from Chicago to interview me about the Presidential convention,

and get my views. This was not the case, however.

I think he is going to write my biography and sell it at $2.00 each.

I gave him all the information I could, and telegraphed to my old

Sabbath School Superintendent at home for more.

Among other little evidences of his morbid curiosity, I will give the

following:

When were you born, and looking calmly back at this important epoch in

your life, do you regret that you took the step?

If yes, state to what extent and under what circumstances?

Do you remember George Washington, and if so to what amount?

What is your fighting weight?

Who struck Billy Patterson?

Did you ever have membranous croup, and what did you do for it?

Do you keep hens, or do you lavish your profanity on those of your

neighbors?

Have any of your ancestors ever been troubled with ingrowing nails, or

blind staggers?

What is your opinion of rats?

Are you a victim to rum or other alcoholic stimulants, and if so, at

what hour do you usually succumb to the potent enemy?

Would you have any scruples in asking the enumerator to join you in

wrestling with man's destroyer at that hour?

Do you eat onions?

Which side do you lie on while sleeping?

Which side do you lie on during a political campaign?

What is the chief end of man?

Are you single, and if so what is your excuse? Who will care for mother

now?

THE GENTLE POWER OF A WOMAN'S INFLUENCE.

|Cummins City is still a crude metropolis. Society has not yet arrived

at the white vest and lawn sociable period there. There is nothing to

hamper any one or throw a tiresome restraint around him. You walk up and

down the streets of the camp without feeling that the vigilant eye of

the policeman is upon you, and when you register at the leading hotel

the proprietor don't ask how much baggage you have, or insist upon it

that your valise ought to be blown up with a quill to give it a robust

appearance.

Speaking of this hotel, however, brings to my mind a little incident

which really belongs in here. There are two ladies at this place, the

only ones in the city limits, if my memory serves me. One of these

ladies owns a lot of poles or house logs which were, at the time

of which I speak, on the dump, as it were, ready to be used in the

construction of a new cabin.

It seems that some of the prospectors of the corporation, without

the fear of God or the Common Council of Cummins City, had been

appropriating these logs from time to time until out of a good, fair

assortment there remained only a dejected little pile of "culls." The

owner had watched with great annoyance the gradual disappearance of

her property from day to day, and it made her lose faith in the final

redemption of all mankind. She became cynical and misanthropical, lost

her interest in the future, and became low spirited and unhappy.

One day, however, after this thing had proceeded about far enough she

went to her trunk, and taking out the large size of navy revolver, the

kind that plows up the vitals so successfully and sends so many Western

men to their long home. Then she went out to where a group of men had

scattered themselves out around camp to smoke.

She wasn't a large woman at all, but these men respected her. Though

they were only rough miners there in the wilderness they recognized that

she was a woman, and they recognized it almost at a glance, too. There

she was alone among a wild group of men in the mountains, far from the

protecting arm of the law and the softening influences of metropolitan

life, and yet the common feeling of gallantry implanted in the masculine

breast was there.

She indicated with a motion of her revolver that she desired to call the

meeting to order. There seemed to be a general anxiety on the part of

every man present to come to order just as soon as circumstances would

permit. Then she made a short speech relative to the matter of house

logs, and suggested that unless a certain number of those articles, now

invisible to the naked eye, were placed at a certain point, or a certain

amount of kopecks placed on file with the chairman of the meeting within

a specified time, that perdition would be popping on Main Street in

about two and one-half ticks of the chronometer.

There didn't seem to be any desire on the part of the meeting to

amend the motion or lay it on the table. Although it was arbitrary and

imperative, and although an opportunity was given for a free expression

of opinion, there didn't seem to be any desire to take advantage of it.

A committee of three was appointed to carry out the suggestions of the

chair, and in about half an hour, the house logs and kopecks having

been placed on deposit at the places designated, the meeting broke up,

subject to the call of the chairman.

It was not a very long session, but it was very harmonious--very

harmonious and very orderly. There was no calling for the previous

question or rising to a point of order. The pale-faced men who composed

the convention did not look to the casual observers as though they had

come there to raise points for debate over parliamentary practice. They

kept their eye on the speaker's desk and didn't interrupt each other or

struggle to see who would get the floor.

It is wonderful this inherent strength of weakness, as I might say,

which enables a woman amid a throng of reckless men to command their

respect and obedience sometimes where main strength and awkwardness would

not avail.

THE NATIVE INBORN SHIFTLESSNESS OF THE PRAIRIE DOGS.

|I had read in my Fourth Reader about prairie dogs, and I thought,

according to Washington Irving, that they knew more than a Congressman.

He says a great deal about the sagacity and general mental acumen of the

prairie dog, but I don't just exactly somehow seem to see where it comes

in.

If it be an indication of shrewdness and forethought to establish a

village nine hundred miles from a railroad, wood, water and grub, and

live on alkali and moss agates and wander down the vista of time without

a square meal, then the prairie dog is beyond the barest possibility of

doubt, keen and shrewd to a wonderful degree. But if instinct or animal

sagacity be reckoned according to the number and amount of creature

comforts afforded within a given space, I have a cow in my mind that

will double discount all the chuckle-headed, cactus eating prairie dogs

west of the Missouri.

I do not wish to say anything relative to Mr. Irving's opinion of the

prairie dog which would not be perfectly respectful, for I learn with

great sorrow that Mr. Irving is dead, but I do think that there is

hardly an animal in the entire arcana of nature that will not beat the

prairie dog two to one as a provider for his family or himself.

I have an old hen at my home here who certainly approximates very

closely to my ideal of an irreclaimable fool that has grown childish

with old age, and outside of the Democratic party perhaps she is

entitled to distinction. But even she has lucid intervals, and she

hasn't yet fallen to where she would willingly take up a home under the

desert land act like a prairie dog.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

|The following answers to correspondents contain a great deal of useful

information, and I publish them in order to avoid the constant annoyance

of writing the same in substance to so many inquiring friends.

"Sweet Sixteen" writes from "Hold-up Hollow."

I am betrothed to a noble youth from Rice Lake, Minnesota, but he seems

too have soured on his betroth.

"At first he seemed to love me according to Gunter, but he has grown

cold. About the first of the round-up he went away, and I soon afterward

heard that he was affianced to another.

"I understand that he says I am not of noble lineage enough for him. It

is true. I may not be a thorough-bred, but I have a pure, loving nature,

which is now running to waste. The name of my beloved is De Courtney Van

D'Edbeete. He comes from the first families, and O, I love him so!

"Can you tell me what to do?

"Sweet Sixteen."

Answer.--Yes, I can tell you what to do. I have been there some, too. If

you will only do as I tell you, you are safe.

You must win him back. I think you can easily do so.

Select a base-ball club of about the weight you can handle easily, and

then go to him and win him back.

You are too prone to give up easily. Do not be discouraged.

All will yet be well.

He may think now that you are not of noble blood but you can make him

change his mind. Go to him with the love light in your eye and put a

triangular head on him with your base-ball club, and tell him that he

does not understand the cravings of your nature. Drive him into the

ground and sit down on him, and then tell him that you are nothing but a

poor, friendless girl, and need some one to cling to. Then you can cling

to him. All depends upon how successful you are as a clinger.

I see at a glance that De Courtney needs to be flattened out a few

times. Do not kill him, but bring him so near to the New Jerusalem that

he can see the dome of the court house, and he will gradually come back

to you and love you, and your life will be one long golden dream of

never-fading joy, and De Courtney will wring out the colored clothes for

you and help you do the washing, and he will stay at home evenings and

take care of the children while you go to prayer meeting, and he will

not murmur when you work off an inexpensive meal of cold rice and

fricasseed codfish on him.

If he gets to feeling independent, and puts on the old air of defiance,

you can diet him on cold mush and mackerel till he will not feel

so robust, and then you can reason with him again, and while he

is recovering you can take your baseball club and your noble

self-sacrificing love, and win him back some more.

"Lalla Rookh" writes from Waukegan, Illinois, as follows to wit:

"My classmates and I have had quite a serious discussion recently, on

several questions of table etiquette, and we have finally agreed to

leave the matter with you.

"First--If one is asked to say grace at the table, and does not wish to

do so, or is not familiar with the forms, what should he do?

"Second--If one has anything in his mouth, or gets any foreign substance

like a piece of bone or a seed in his mouth, how should he remove it,

and what is the proper thing to do with it?

"Third--Would you kindly add a few general rules of table etiquette,

which would be useful to the many admirers of your classic style?"

Answer--It would be hazardous for a gentleman unaccustomed to asking

grace at the table to attempt it, unless he be a naturally fluent

extemporeaneous speaker.

It is more difficult for one unacquainted with it, than to address

a Sabbath school, or write a letter accepting the nomination for

President.

It is, therefore, preferable to say in a few terse remarks that you are

profoundly grateful for the high compliment, but that your health will

not admit of its acceptance.

Second--Care should be used while at table not to get large foreign

substances like hair-pins, soup-bones, or clothespins into the mouth

with food, as it naturally requires some little _sang froid_ and tact to

remove them. One accustomed to the mysteries of parlor-magic may slide

the articles into his sleeve while coughing, and thence into the coat

pocket of his host, thus easily getting himself out of an unpleasant

situation, and at the same time producing roars of laughter at the

expense of the host.

If, however, you are not familiar with sleight of hand, you may take in

a full breath, and expel the object across the room under the whatnot,

where it will not be discovered until you have gone away.

I will add a few general rules for table etiquette, which I have learned

by actual experience to be of untold benefit to the active society man.

First--It is proper to take the last of anything on the plate if it

comes to you, instead of declining it. It is supposed that there is more

in the house, or if not, the host may go down town and get some. Do not,

therefore, decline anything because it is the last on the dish, unless

it looks as though it wouldn't suit you.

Second--If by mistake you get your spoon in the gravy so far that the

handle is more or less sticky, do not get ill-tempered or show your

displeasure, but draw it through your mouth two or three times, laughing

a merry laugh all the time. Do not attempt to polish it off with your

handkerchief. It might spoil your handkerchief.

Third--In drinking wine at table do not hang your eyes out on your

cheek, or drink too fast and get it up your nose.

Do not drain your glass perfectly dry and then try to draw in what

atmosphere there is in the room. This is not only vulgar, but it tends

to cast large chunks of three-cornered gloom over the guests.

When you have drained your glass, do not bang it violently on the table

and ask your host "how much he is out." This gives too much of the

air of wild, unfettered freedom, and the unrestrained hilarity of the

free-lunch.

Fourth--When you get anything in your mouth that is too hot, do not

get mad and swear, because the other guests will only laugh at you, but

remove the morsel calmly and tell the waiter to put it on ice a little

while for you.

Fifth--When your coffee is out and you desire more, do not pound on

your cup with your spoon, but be gentle and ladylike in your demeanor,

telling some fresh little anecdote to please the guests, looking

yearningly toward the coffee urn all the while.

Sixth--If you have to leave the table as soon as you are through, do

not jump up suddenly and upset the table, but make an original and spicy

remark about "having to eat and run like a beggar," and this will create

such a hearty laugh over your sally of wit that you can slip out, select

the best hat in the hall, and be half way home before the company can

restrain its mirth.

There are some more good rules that I have on hand, not only relative to

the table, but the ball-room, the parlor, the croquet lawn, the train,

the church, and, in fact, almost everywhere that the society man might

be placed. These I will give the public from time to time, as the

growing demand seems to dictate.

THE SECRET OF GARFIELD'S ELECTION.

Headquarters in the Field,}

September 19, 1880.}

|As I start for Chicago to-morrow I take this opportunity to write.

The trip so far has been one continuous ovation. I have been swinging

round the circle, leaving the flag and the constitution with the people,

and living out of a valise--and my friends--till I begin to yearn for

home. It has been my fortune to run into several Garfield meetings

during the time that I have been here, and to make short but telling

speeches for the Republican candidates. As one of the local papers very

truthfully said:

"Mr. Nye certainly reaches the very core of the subject matter in his

admirable campaign speeches this fall. His commanding appearance and

wild, peculiar beauty win the attention of the audience even before he

says one word, and when speaking his air of candor and searching truth

secures the earnest and prayerful consideration of those before him. He

seems to supply a want long felt, and in case of Garfield's election

we have no hesitation in saying that it will be due largely to the

scorching truths and heaven-born genius of this remarkable man."

It is a novel sensation indeed, after five years of silent suffering in

Wyoming, disfranchised and helpless, to mingle in the campaign and give

free utterance to the blood-curdling truths that have for years been

bottled up in these brain. Perhaps the people here do not deserve it,

but they need purification through suffering.

I have one Garfield speech that I have used here a number of times

with telling effect, and which I shall turn over to the State Central

Committee when I go West.

By taking out the front breadths, turning the overskirt and revising the

peroration, it will wear till November easily. I would insert it in this

letter only for the fact that it seems rather tame in print, owing to

the absence of gestures.

In my public speaking most everyone who is near me seems to be forcibly

struck with my gestures. Hear what the press says. The Minneapolis

_Tribune_, speaking of my wonderful effort, concludes as follows:

"Perhaps the most potent weapon of this campaign is the soothing,

poetical style of gesture owned and operated by William Nye. In his

speech last evening before the Young Men's Republican club, those who

were on the fence were harassed with soul-destroying doubts as to which

was most to be feared, the success of an unprincipled Democracy or the

frolicsome gestures of the speaker. The general feeling at the close of

the speech seemed to be that Minneapolis had never listened to a speech

so rich with wild, impetuous and death-dealing gesticulations before."

The Stillwater _Lumberman_ says:

"The speech last evening was noticeable for its grandeur of conception

and the picturesque grace of its calisthentics. The speaker seemed to

be largely made up of massive brow and limbs. When he rose and with easy

grace unrolled his speech and untangled his legs, a general smile seemed

to ripple the faces of the immense audience, but when he took a drink

of water and began to make his new style of gesture, the mirthful

manifestations gave place to a horrible apprehension of danger. Toward

the close of the speech when Mr. Nye got warmed up to his work, and

seemed to be lost in a wilderness of dissolving limbs, the police

interfered and prevented the sacrifice of human life."

The Clear Lake _News_ of the 17th says:

"One of the distinguishing features of the meeting held here on

Wednesday evening, under the management of the Temple of Honor, was a

short speech on temperance by Bill Nye, of Wyoming.

"His work in the line of temperance seems to have been mainly that of

furnishing the horrible examples, so that young men might avoid the

demon of rum.

"After the speaker got well under way and began to emphasize his

language with some gestures that he has imported at great expense for

his own use, the congregation seemed at a loss whether it would be best

as a matter of safety to flee from intemperance or the death-dealing

gestures of the speaker.

"Mr. Nye to-day gave bonds in the sum of $500 to keep the peace, shipped

his gestures to Chicago, and will leave on the first south-bound train."

PERILS OF THE BUTTERNUT PICKER.

|Speaking of trains reminds me that I have been scooting around the

country lately on mixed and accommodation trains.

They are a good style of conveyance in some respects. For instance, if a

man has a car-load of wheat that he wants to run into St. Paul with and

sell, he can have it attached to the mixed train, and then he can get

into the coach and go along with it, and attend to it personally. But

where a man's time is worth $9 a moment, as mine is, it is annoying.

At first I couldn't get accustomed to it. I couldn't overcome my inertia

when the car started or stopped, and it kept me worn out all the time

apologizing to a corpulent old lady in the third seat from me. Had I

been given a little time to select a lady whose lap I would prefer to

sit down in, there were a dozen perhaps in the car more desirable than

this old lady, but in the hurry and agitation I always seemed to select

her.

Finally the conductor said that kind of business had gone far enough,

and he tied me into my seat with a shawl-strap.

The train was very long, and when it got under full head-, way it was

almost impossible to stop it at the various stations. We either stopped

out in the country prematurely or passed the station at the rate of nine

miles a minute, and then repented and came back. I was struck with the

similarity of the first five or six towns on the line and spoke of it to

a friend who accompanied me.

It seemed to me that Clarksville, Mapleton, Eldorado Junction, Pine

Grove and Brookville had been planned by the same architect, but

my friend only laughed and showed me that we had been switched and

side-tracked for two or three hours at the first-named place.

We stopped in the woods once and I went out after butternuts.

It was a lovely autumn day, and after the thick nutritious air of the

car, it was paradise to get out into the forest, where the fresh, sweet

odor of the falling leaves was everywhere, and the hush of nature's

annual funeral checked the thoughtless word and noisy laughter of the

invader.

I wandered on, thinking of the brevity and comparative unimportance of

our human life. How short the race we run, and how unsatisfactory our

achievements at last. How like the leaves of the forest we spring forth

in the early summer of our existence, nod pleasantly to our fellows a

few brief mornings, and then die.

Thoughtlessly and aimlessly I had wandered on until I came to a large

butternut, which I climbed with the old and almost forgotten enthusiasm

of boyhood. At the top I tried some of my old and difficult tricks, and

just as the train moved silently away I was going through the difficult

and dangerous act of hanging to the upper limb of a butternut tree

by the seat of the pants, and waiting patiently for the bough or the

cassimere to yield and let the artist down into the arena by force of

gravitation.

Dear reader, did you ever go through this thrilling experience? Did

you ever feel the utter insecurity and maddening uncertainty which it

yields? If not, then these lines are not to you?

Gently the tree swayed to and fro with the motion of the autumn breeze.

Sadly the pines were sighing like lost souls, and the dead leaves fell

softly to the ground, like the footfalls of departed spirits. I began

to wish that I could fall softly to the ground like the footfalls of

departed spirits, too.

I began to get bored and unhappy after awhile. My feet and hands hung

in a cluster, and the position seemed strained and unnatural. I began to

yearn for society, and the comforts of a home. I mentally calculated the

distance I would have to fall, and wondered which of my bones I would

shatter the most, and what the doctor's bill would be.

All at once I heard what seemed like a sound of smothered laughter.

It was no doubt nothing but a sound which my fevered imagination had

conjured up, aided by the torrent of blood that rushed to my head and

thumped so loudly in my ears, but it maddened me, and I summoned all

my strength in the mighty struggle to free myself. Finally, there was a

short, sharp crash, and I felt myself rapidly descending through space.

I fancied that I was an acrobat, and had fallen from the center pole

that holds up the sky. I thought I lay in the dust and sawdust of the

ring in a shapeless mass; and over all, and above all, there was the

maddening sensation that my wardrobe was not complete. In my tortured

imagination I could hear demoniac laughter, and occasional words of

derision. They became more pronounced and distinct at last, and I

fancied I heard one of these grinning imps saying:

"How peaceful he looks, and how young and fair. See how carelessly he

has inserted his nose in the moist earth. He must have suffered a good

deal through life, and yet his face is calm and happy in its expression.

His general appearance is that of perfect rest, and the glad fruition of

every hope.

"Let us go up into the tree and get the rest of his remains, and send

them all home together."

This last speaker reminded me of the conductor, and the similarity

struck me even in my trance. Slowly I opened my eyes. It was he. I

almost wished that the fall had killed me. I did not fall from the tree

to be humorous, but if I had I should have considered it the crowning

triumph of an eventful career.

Most everyone from the train was there, and several from the nearest

towns along the line. I bowed my thanks in silence, and backed over

to the car. I got aboard and sat down. I found that I attracted less

attention when I was sitting down, and I never cared so little for

public notice in my life as I did that day.

It seems that the train had gone away some distance, but when it got

by itself it remembered that I was not on board, and the peanut boy

remembered seeing me get off at this point. So, as the train was already

two weeks and four days behind, the conductor decided to go back.

He says now that he does not regret it. He says that the life of a

conductor at the best has but few bright spots in it, and the oases

along the desert which he treads are widely separated, but he told me

with tears in his eyes that Providence had made me the humble instrument

for great good, and he felt grateful to me.

When he breaks out into a glad ripple of childish laughter now without

any apparent cause, he takes a piece of checked cassimere out of his

pocket and explains how he got it, and tells the whole story to his

friends, so there are a great many people along that line of travel who

know me by reputation although they have never seen me.

A WORD OR TWO ABOUT THE SWALLOW.

|Lately I have made some valuable discoveries relative to ornithology,

and I will give some of them to the public, for I love to shed

information right and left, like a Normal school.

When the soft south wind began to kiss our cheeks, and the horse-radish

and North Park prospector began to start, the swift-winged swallows drew

near to my picturesque home on East Fifth street, and I hoped with a

great, anxious, throbbing hope, that they would build beneath the Gothic

eaves of my $200 ranche.

I would take my guitar at the sunset hour, and sit at my door in a

camp-chair, with the fading glory of the dying day bathing me in a flood

of golden light, and touching up my chubby form, and I would warble,

"When Sparrows Build," an old solo in J, which seems to fit my voice,

and the swallows would flit around me on tireless wing, and squeak, and

sling mud over me till the cows came home.

This thing had gone on for several days, and the little mud houses under

the eaves were pretty near ready, and in the meantime the spring bed bug

had come with his fragrant breath, and turpentine, and quicksilver, and

lime, and aquafortis, and giant-powder, and a feather, has made my home

a howling wilderness, that smelled like a city drug store.

But it didn't kill the bugs. It pleased them. They called a meeting and

tendered me a vote of thanks for the kind attentions with which they had

been received. They ate all these diabolical drugs, not only on regular

days, but right along through Lent.

I got mad and resolved to insure the house and burn it down. One evening

I felt sad and worn, and was trying to solace myself by trilling a

few snatches from Mendelssohn's "Wail," written in the key of G for a

baritone voice. A neighbor came along and stopped to lean over the gate,

and drink in the flood of melody which I was spilling out on the evening

air. When I got through and stopped to tune my guitar anew, and scratch

a warm place on my arm, he asked if I were not afraid that those

swallows would bring bed bugs to the house.

I had heard that before, but I thought it was a campaign lie. I acted

on the suggestion, however, and taking a long pole from behind the door,

where I keep it for pictorial Bible men, I knocked down a 'dobe cottage,

and proceeded to examine it.

It was level full of imported Merino and Cotswold and Southdown and

Early Rose and Duchess of Oldenburg and twenty-ounce Pippins and

Seek-no-further bed bugs. There were bed bugs in modest gray ulsters and

bed bugs in dregs of wine and old gold, bed bugs in ashes of roses and

beg bugs in elephants' breath, bed bugs with their night clothes on and

in morning wrappers, bed bugs that were just going on the night shift,

and bed bugs that had been at work all day and were just going to bed.

I killed all I could and then drove the rest into a pan of coal oil.

When one undertook to get out of the pan I shot him. This conflict

lasted several days. I neglected my other business and omitted morning

prayers until there was a great calm and the swift-winged swallows

homeward flew. When these feathered songsters come around my humble cot

another spring they will meet with a cold, unwelcome reception. I shall

not even ask them to take off their things.

I have formed the idea somehow from watching the eccentric nervous

flight of the swallow, that when he makes one of those swift flank

movements with the speed of chain lightning he must be acting from the

impulse of a large, earnest, triangular bed bug of the boarding house

variety. I may be wrong, but I have given this matter a good deal of

attention, and whether this theory be correct or not I do not care. It

is good enough for me.

LAUGHING SAM.

|During the past week I have experienced the pleasure of an acquaintance

with Laughing Sam, a character well known throughout the West. Samuel

Thompson was introduced to me on Tuesday last, and, although he has a

look of subdued pain and half concealed anguish, I soon found that he

was capable of exhibiting the most wild and ungovernable mirth.

[Illustration: 9280]

Laughing Sam is employed by Surveyor Downey, and the latter has often

told me how he wished that I could employ Sam by the month to laugh at

what I might write, so that I could be encouraged.

After the formalities of an introduction were over, we began to tell

anecdotes in order to get Sam into a cheerful frame of mind. When

one would get tired and lay off for a rest, some other one would come

forward to the bat and tell some more humorous tales. But Sam had

evidently heard all these anecdotes, and looked disgusted and fatigued

and bored.

Downey whispered to me that it wouldn't do; we must have something

entirely different, and that I had better fix up one of those

custom-made lies of mine, such as we used to tell at the boarding house

in '75.

I did so with some hesitation, but Sam kindly gave me his attention and

cheered me with an occasional pleased grunt. Then I threw my whole soul

into it. I put in all the pathos of which I am capable at certain parts,

and then where it was grand and terrific I got up and sawed the air,

and where it was ludicrous I enlarged upon it till Sam's eye began to

glisten.

By-and-by the fountains of the great deep opened, and Sam lay on the

floor a quivering mass. Sometimes we thought he was dead, but then one

leg would fly through the air and he would give a wild whoop of pain.

Then, in a lucid moment, he would try to get up, but he would fall back

again, and his lips would spasmodically relax and contract, and the air

would be filled with a wild mixture of yells and whoops and gurgles and

contortions.

It was not what was said that made him laugh, but it was because his

time had come to indulge in a little mirth. I tried the same story

afterward on an ordinary laughter, and when I got through he was bathed

in tears. So it wasn't the story.

When Laughing Sam looks at his watch and sees that a large amount of

mirthfulness is due he calmly puts away anything that may be near him

of a fragile nature and proceeds to laugh in a way that shakes the stars

loose in the firmament and disarranges the entire planetary world.

This fall he has an engagement to laugh for Eli Perkins during the

lecture season. Eli is to give him half the proceeds of the lectures and

Sam has got to laugh whether he feels like it or not.

THE CALAMITY JANE CONSOLIDATED.

|I have one claim--at least myself and two or three other capitalists

have--which has shown itself to be very rich, but it is not for sale. We

are sinking on it now. We set a force of men at work on it two weeks

ago consisting of genial cuss from Bitter Creek. He dug a few hours in a

vertical direction, when overworked nature yielded and he went to sleep.

I discharged the entire gang. Shortly after that at a great expense we

secured a day shift by the name of O'Toole. He is Greek I think.

He is still at work, though he found it very difficult to use the long

handle shovel at first. He insisted on pouring the dirt down the back

of his neck and then climbing out of the shaft with it and undressing

himself with a gentle repose of manner which indicated that he had

perfect command of himself and knew that his time was going right on all

the same.

Still there are drawbacks about this style of mining. The work does not

progress as rapidly as the present rush and hurry and turmoil of the

American people seem to demand.

Two weeks ago the perilous undertaking of sinking this shaft to a depth

of ten feet in a perpendicular direction was begun, and although we have

shipped several mule loads of the choicest grub, consisting of bacon

in large packages done up in corn-colored overshirts and XXX Nebraska

flour, yet the top of Mr. O'Tool's head is visible to the naked eye from

a considerable distance as he stands in the shaft.

Occasionally the Count De O'Toole fancies that he has been bitten by a

tarantula, and the stockholders of the Calamity Jane Consolidated have

to ship a large lunch basket with a willow cover to it and a cork in the

top in order to counteract the poison that is rankling in his system.

THE NOCTURNAL COW.

|With the opening up of my spring movements in the agricultural line

comes the cow.

Laramie has about seven cows that annoy me a good deal. They work me up

so that I lose my equanimity. I have mentioned this matter before, but

this spring the trouble seems to have assumed some new features. The

prevailing cow for this season seems to be a seal-brown cow with a stub

tail, which is arranged as a night-key. She wears it banged.

[Illustration: 8283]

The other day I had just planted my celluloid radishes and irrigated my

turnips and sown my hunting-case summer squashes, and this cow went by

trying to convey the impression that she was out for a walk.

That night the blow fell. The queen of night was high in the blue vault

of heaven amid the twinkling stars. All nature was hushed to repose.

The people of Laramie were in their beds. So were my hunting-case

summer squashes. I heard a stealthy step near the conservatory where my

celluloid radishes and pickled beets are growing, and I arose.

It was a lovely sight. At the head of the procession there was a

seal-brown cow with a tail like the handle on a pump, and standing at an

angle of forty-five degrees.

That was the cow.

Following at a rapid gait was a bewitching picture of alabaster limbs

and Gothic joints and Wamsutta muslin night robe.

That was me.

The queen of night withdrew behind a cloud.

The vision seemed to break her all up.

Bye-and-bye there was a crash, and the seal-brown cow went home carrying

the garden gate with her as a kind of keepsake. She had a plenty

of garden gates at home in her collection, but she had none of that

particular pattern. So she wore it home around her neck.

The writer of these lines then carefully brushed the sand off his feet

with a pillow sham and retired to rest.

When the bright May morn was ushered in upon the busy world the radish

and squash bed had melted into chaos and there only remained some sticks

of stove wood and the tracks of a cow, interspersed with the dainty

little footprints of some Peri or other who evidently stepped about four

yards at a lick, and could wear a number nine shoe if necessary.

Yesterday morning it was very cold, and when I went out to feed my royal

self-acting hen, I found this same cow wedged into the hen coop. O,

blessed opportunity! O, thrice blessed and long-sought revenge!

Now I had her where she could not back out, and I secured a large picket

from the fence, and took my coat off, and breathed in a full breath. I

did not want to kill her, I simply wanted to make her wish that she had

died of membranous croup when she was young.

While I was spitting on my hands she seemed to catch my idea, but she

saw how hopeless was her position. I brought down the picket with the

condensed strength and eagerness and wrath of two long, suffering years.

It struck the corner of the hen-house. There was a deafening crash and

then all was still, save the low, rippling laugh of the cow, as she

stood in the alley and encouraged me while I nailed up the hen-house

again.

Looking back over my whole life, it seems to me that it is strewn with

nothing but the rugged ruins of my busted anticipations.

THE RELENTLESS GARDEN HOSE.

|It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the

garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form and I do not know

what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and

the other peering into the middle of next week and wearing one of those

large floppy sun bonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose

and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the

Mountains of Hepsidam.

Water won't hurt anyone of course if care is used not to forget and

drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty about

facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross eyed woman

that unnerves me and paralyzes me.

Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected where

leaden rain and iron hail are thickest, as I would be in my own office

writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I hate to be

drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dry land and have my dying gaze

rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a narrow-gauge mule

into convulsions and make him hate himself to death.

A WAIL.

_To the Editor of the Bass Drum_:

I appeal to the charity of more favored sisters of the east, who live in

an atmosphere of music to throw a crumb of comfort to one who lives

in the wilderness and has, in the past ten years, heard positively no

music.

I want a list of contralto songs for the voice, compass two octaves G,

in bass clef to G, above the line, treble. I should also like a list

of piano solos, third or fourth grade, the Trauemerei order of music

preferred. I will make any compensation desired, and forever bless my

friends in need. No Name.

It is pretty sad to suffer along for ten years and not hear any music.

It must seem dull and quiet, especially to one who has lived in an

atmosphere of music. Ten years with no one at hand to churn up the

atmosphere occasionally with something extending "from G in bass clef to

G above the line treble" is a long while. But here in the "wilderness"

we have to squeeze along the best way we can. We can't go and hear

Ole Bull every two weeks here. Sitting Bull is about as near as we can

approximate to the Bull family. It is pretty tough, and there is no

denying it.

Speaking about crumbs of comfort, however, if "No Name" will drop around

to the _Bass Drum_ office, say about 12:30 to-morrow, we will attend to

the crumb business. We do not, as a general rule, warble much, but if

she will come around at that hour we will trill two or three little

olios for "one who lives in the wilderness, and has in the past ten

years heard positively no music." If we had known that she was starving

along that way without five cents' worth of music to lay her jaw to, we

would have hunted her up and given her a blast or two. There's nothing

mean about us. We may be rough and perhaps impulsive at times, but we

will never hush our merry lay so long as anybody is suffering. Always

come right to us when hungry for music.

THE GREAT, HORRID MAN RECEIVETH NEW YEAR CALLS.

In my Boudoir, Dec. 20, 1879.

|New Year's Day will be Leap Year, and the ladies want to make calls.

The masculine man will, therefore, have to receive. Some of us will club

together at private houses and receive, while others will "hire a hall"

and sling a great deal of agony, no doubt. I shall be at home to some

extent. I shall wear my organdy, looped up with demi-overskirt of

the same, and three-ply lambrequins of Swiss, with corded edges and

button-holes of elephant's breath cut plain. My panier is down at the

machine shop now and will be done in a few days. I shall be assisted by

Superintendent Dickinson and First Assistant Postmaster General Spalding

of the Laramie post-office department, and the grand difficulty will no

doubt occur at the residence of the latter.

Mr. Dickinson will wear a lavender _moire antique_ with all wool

underclothes. The costume will be draped on the side with bevel pinions,

and looped back with English button-holes, and cut low in the neck.

Mr. Spalding will wear a cream-colored walking suit with train No. 4. He

will also wear buttons with buttonholes to match. Sleeves cut Princesse,

with polished elbows of same. Boots plain with cranberry sauce. Brocaded

silk overskirt, with lemon sauce. Fifty-three button kids, fastening to

the suspenders, open back, with Italian dressing.

I give these notes to the reporter in advance, because women are so

apt to get these things all mixed up. After we have spent so much time

constructing an elaborate wardrobe, we do not wish the journals of the

Territory to come out the next day, and make each one of us appear like

"a perfect dud." Our table will also look the nicest of any in town.

We have designed it ourselves. We have arranged the hose so that we can

play it on the dishes after we have used them, and save splashing around

in hot water between meals. We intend to feed the first three or four

delegations without doing any work on the dishes. After that we will of

course have to turn on the hose. Visitors will be made to feel perfectly

at home. Callers will be required not to spit on the floor. Parties

making calls will not be allowed to throw peanut shells in the

card-receiver, or leave their muddy articles on the piano. Callers

will please remain seated while the frigid sustenance is circulated.

No standing callers allowed. Standing collars are going out of style

anyhow.

JUST THE THING.

Office of The Twilight Bumble Bee.

We have just received a copy of the Nebraska _Staats Zeitung-Tribune_ a

nice little eight page German paper, published at Grand Island,

Nebraska. We have not read it all through yet, but it is a mighty good

paper. We do not understand much German. We are a little rusty. "Zwei

glass lager" is about all the German we know, and that isn't very pure.

But this paper we like. There is a tone about it that seems to indicate

a lofty conception of true journalism. A noble ambition to cope with

vice and the prevailing errors of the day, and to conquer ignorance and

wrong. As we said before, there are a great many things in the paper

which we fail to quite "catch on" to, owing to our ignorance of the

German language, but there is a picture of a cook stove on the eighth

page that is first-rate. It is in the English language. There is also

a picture of a wind mill, in fractured English, on the same page. It is

very correct in its sentiment, and we endorse it.

In conclusion we will say that from what we have seen of this paper, we

are prepared to say that it meets a want long felt. It is pure in tone,

noble in politics, fearless in its attack upon the popular shortcomings

of the day, and well deserving of the hearty approval of the public.

THANKS.

|M. E. Post, M. C., of Cheyenne, will please accept our thanks for an

indestructible pumpkin pie, presented on the 9th inst. It is the most

durable pie that we ever wrestled with. Probably it was not picked early

enough and got too ripe. It is the first genuine cane-bottomed pie, with

patent dust damper and nickle-plated movement that we have tasted since

we came west. He says it was raised on the Laramie plains. If this be

true, we have opened up before us another resource of which we may be

justly proud. We have valuable marble quarries, but marble may be

cracked and broken. We also have mountains of iron and leads of valuable

quartz, but all these must yield to the superior strength of man. This

style of pie, however, will defy the power of mortal ingenuity, and

withstand the effacing finger of time. Men may come and men may go but

this pie will last forever. We make bold to say that when Gabriel sounds

the proclamation that time is no more, this blasted pie will stand up

without a blush and say: "Here, Gabriel, is where you get your nice,

fresh pie, and don't you forget it, either."

AN ANTI-MORMON TOWN.

|A Mormon missionary turned himself loose in Rawlins the other night and

attempted to proselyte the good people into getting another invoice of

wives to assist in taking off the chill of the approaching winter; but

there was a feeling in the audience that the man who represented the

church of the Latter Day Saints was a little off in addressing them,

so they went to a dealer in old and rare antiquities and purchased some

eggs that had a smell which is peculiar to eggs that have yielded to the

infirmities of age.

The Rawlins people raised the windows on the sides of the building and

broke eleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these

eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the

year when so many hens were not feeling well; they broke them against

the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful

little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets overleven and

one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had

been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many

hens were not feeling well; they broke them against the brass collar

button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and

rivulets and squiblets and driblets over his white lawn tie and boiled

shirt.

Rawlins is not strictly a Mormon town, and the lecturer who took some

clothes through in a valise the other day bound for Evanston, where he

could get them washed, was arrested by a New York detective who was sure

he had at last caught the man who had Stewart's body.

A CHRISTMAS RIDE IN JULY.

|I've just returned from a long ride to the Soda Lakes.

The ride reminded me of a tour I took in July from Laramie over to

Cheyenne, two years, ago. We had experienced the pleasure of riding over

the mountain, on the Union Pacific train, and had held our breath while

crossing Dale Creek bridge, and viewed with wonder the broken billows of

granite, lying here and there at the tip-top of the mighty divide. But

some one had said that it was nothing compared with the mirth-provoking

trip by carriage across the mountains, over a fine wagon road to

Cheyenne.

In the morning I nearly melted riding up the sandy canyon, and took off

my coat and gliding pleasantly along-alternately sang one or two low

throbs of melody, and alternately swore about the extreme heat.

When we got nearly to the top, I thought it didn't look well for a man

to whom the American people look for so much in the future, to be riding

along the public highway without his coat, so I put it on. At the top

of the mountain I put on a linen duster and gloves. Shortly after that

I put on my overshoes and a sealskin cap. Later, I put on my buffalo

overcoat, and got out and ran behind the carriage to keep warm.

When I got to Cheyenne, the Doctor looked me over and said that he could

save my feet because they had so much vitality, and were in such a good

state of preservation; but my ears--my pride and glory--the ears that I

had defended through the newspapers for years, and had stood up for when

all about was dark--they had to go.

That is, part of them had to go, and there was enough left to hear

with; but the ornamental scallops and box plaiting, and frills, the

wainscoating, and royal Corinthian entablatures had to go.

EXAMINING THE BRAND ON A FROZEN STEER.

|A stock owner went out the other day over the divide to see how his

cattle were standing the rigorous weather, and found a large, fine steer

in his last long sleep. The stockman had to roll him over to see the

brand, and he has regretted his curiosity ever since. He told me

that the brand looked to him like a Roman candle making about 2,000

revolutions per moment, and with 187 more prismatic colors than he

thought were in existence. Sometimes a steer is not dead but in a cold,

sleepy stupor which precedes death, and when stirred up a little and

irritated because he cannot die without turning over and showing

his brand, he musters his remaining strength and kicks the

inquisitive-stockman so high that he can see and recognize the features

of departed friends. That was the way it happened on this occasion. The

stockman fell in the branches of a pine tree on Jack Creek, not dead but

very thoughtful. He said he was near enough to hear the rush of wings,

and was just going to register and engage a room in the New Jerusalem

when he returned to consciousness.

ONION PEELIN'S.

|The Chinese agriculturalist does his hair up in a French twist because

he don't want to have his cue cumber the ground.

Almost every day there is a new liver pad or lung pad or kidney pad,

but in its way nothing has succeeded in giving instant relief like the

Leadville foot pad.

A man can scratch his back against a hat rack or a whatnot for a year or

two, and attribute it to buckwheat cakes, but after he has gone on this

way for about seven years, the public and his friends begin to lose

faith in him.

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

durable and portable pie opener that will successfully reach the true

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

the hired girl casts in her kitchen foundry.

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

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

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

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

It is not the disheartening sense of failure alone which makes a man

swear in the stilly night, nor yet the fact that he has slapped his

alabaster limb harder than he needed to, but it is the trifling and

heartless way in which the mosquito kisses his hand to the audience, and

soars away humming a Tyrolean lay.

Putting up stovepipe is easy enough, if you only go at it right. In the

morning, breakfast on some light, nutritious diet, and drink too cups of

hot coffee. After which put on a suit of old clothes--or new ones if you

can get them on time--put on an old pair of buckskin gloves, and when

every thing is ripe for the fatal blow, go and get a good hardware man

who understands his business. If this rule be strictly adhered to, the

gorgeous eighteen-karat-stem-winding profanity of the present day may be

very largely diminished, and the world made better.

It is strange that the human heart is so easily influenced by the change

of seasons, and although spring succeeds winter, and summer follows upon

the heels of spring, just as it did centuries ago, yet the transition

from one to the other is ever new and pleasing, and the bosom is

gladdened with the cheering assurance of spring, or the promise of the

coming summer time, with its wealth of golden days, its cucumbers and

vinegar, its green corn, its string beans, its baseball, its mammoth

circus, its fragrant flowers, and its soda water flavored with syrup

from a long-necked, wicker-covered bottle, just as it was in the days of

Pharoah, and Hannibal, and Andrew Jackson.