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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and
+Yarns), by Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)
+
+Author: Bill Nye
+        James Whitcomb Riley
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2009 [EBook #30131]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NYE AND RILEY'S WIT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration]
+
+   NYE AND RILEY'S
+
+   Wit and Humor
+
+   (Poems and Yarns)
+
+
+   BY
+
+   JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY & BILL NYE
+
+
+   Illustrated
+
+   BY BARON DE GRIMM, E. ZIMMERMAN,
+   WALT McDOUGALL, AND OTHERS
+
+
+   THOMPSON & THOMAS,
+   CHICAGO.
+
+
+   COPYRIGHT 1900,
+   BY
+   THOMPSON & THOMAS.
+
+
+   COPYRIGHT 1905,
+   BY
+   THOMPSON & THOMAS.
+
+
+
+
+Biographical
+
+Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who
+knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend.
+
+He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine.
+Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin,
+where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After
+receiving a meager schooling, he entered a lawyer's office, where most
+of his work consisted in sweeping the office and running errands. In his
+idle moments the lawyer's library was at his service. Of this crude and
+desultory reading he afterward wrote:
+
+"I could read the same passage to-day that I did yesterday and it would
+seem as fresh at the second reading as it did at the first. On the
+following day I could read it again and it would seem as new and
+mysterious as it did on the preceding day."
+
+At the age of twenty-five, he was teaching a district school in Polk
+County, Wisconsin, at thirty dollars a month. In 1877 he was justice of
+the peace in Laramie. Of that experience he wrote:
+
+"It was really pathetic to see the poor little miserable booth where I
+sat and waited with numb fingers for business. But I did not see the
+pathos which clung to every cobweb and darkened the rattling casement.
+Possibly I did not know enough. I forgot to say the office was not a
+salaried one, but solely dependent upon fees. So while I was called
+Judge Nye and frequently mentioned in the papers with consideration, I
+was out of coal half the time, and once could not mail my letters for
+three weeks because I did not have the necessary postage."
+
+He wrote some letters to the Cheyenne _Sun_, and soon made such a
+reputation for himself that he was able to obtain a position on the
+Laramie _Sentinel_. Of this experience he wrote:
+
+"The salary was small, but the latitude was great, and I was permitted
+to write anything that I thought would please the people, whether it was
+news or not. By and by I had won every heart by my patient poverty and
+my delightful parsimony with regard to facts. With a hectic imagination
+and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper I scarcely
+cared through the livelong day whether school kept or not."
+
+Of the proprietor of the _Sentinel_ he wrote:
+
+"I don't know whether he got into the penitentiary or the Greenback
+party. At any rate, he was the wickedest man in Wyoming. Still, he was
+warmhearted and generous to a fault. He was more generous to a fault
+than to anything else--more especially his own faults. He gave me twelve
+dollars a week to edit the paper--local, telegraph, selections,
+religious, sporting, political, fashions, and obituary. He said twelve
+dollars was too much, but if I would jerk the press occasionally and
+take care of his children he would try to stand it. You can't mix
+politics and measles. I saw that I would have to draw the line at
+measles. So one day I drew my princely salary and quit, having acquired
+a style of fearless and independent journalism which I still retain. I
+can write up things that never occurred with a masterly and graphic
+hand. Then, if they occur, I am grateful; if not, I bow to the
+inevitable and smother my chagrin."
+
+In the midst of a wrangle in politics he was appointed Postmaster of his
+town and his letter of acceptance, addressed to the Postmaster-General
+at Washington, was the first of his writings to attract national
+attention.
+
+He said that in his opinion, his being selected for the office was a
+triumph of eternal right over error and wrong. "It is one of the epochs,
+I may say, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and
+perfection," he wrote. "I don't know when I have noticed any stride in
+the affairs of State which has so thoroughly impressed me with its
+wisdom."
+
+Shortly after he became postmaster he started the _Boomerang_. The first
+office of the paper was over a livery stable, and Nye put up a sign
+instructing callers to "twist the tail of the gray mule and take the
+elevator."
+
+He at once became famous, and was soon brought to New York, at a salary
+that seemed fabulous to him. His place among the humorists of the world
+was thenceforth assured.
+
+He died February 22, 1896, at his home in North Carolina, surrounded by
+his family.
+
+James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, was for many years a close
+personal friend of the dead humorist. When informed of Nye's death, he
+said:
+
+"Especially favored, as for years I have been, with close personal
+acquaintance and association with Mr. Nye, his going away fills me with
+selfishness of grief that finds a mute rebuke in my every memory of
+him. He was unselfish wholly, and I am broken-hearted, recalling the
+always patient strength and gentleness of this true man, the unfailing
+hope and cheer and faith of his child-heart, his noble and heroic life,
+and pure devotion to his home, his deep affections, constant dreams,
+plans, and realizations. I cannot doubt but that somehow, somewhere, he
+continues cheerily on in the unspoken exercise of these same
+capacities."
+
+Mr. Riley recently wrote the following sonnet:
+
+     O William, in thy blithe companionship
+       What liberty is mine--what sweet release
+       From clamorous strife, and yet what boisterous peace!
+     Ho! ho! It is thy fancy's finger-tip
+     That dints the dimple now, and kinks the lip
+       That scarce may sing in all this glad increase
+       Of merriment! So, pray thee, do not cease
+     To cheer me thus, for underneath the quip
+     Of thy droll sorcery the wrangling fret
+       Of all distress is still. No syllable
+     Of sorrow vexeth me, no tear drops wet
+       My teeming lids, save those that leap to tell
+     Thee thou'st a guest that overweepeth yet
+       Only because thou jokest overwell.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Why it was done.]
+
+
+What this country needs, aside from a new Indian policy and a style of
+poison for children which will be liable to kill rats if they eat it by
+accident, is a Railway Guide which will be just as good two years ago as
+it was next spring--a Railway Guide, if you please, which shall not be
+cursed by a plethora of facts, or poisoned with information--a Railway
+Guide that shall be rich with doubts and lighted up with miserable
+apprehensions. In other Railway Guides, pleasing fancy, poesy and
+literary beauty, have been throttled at the very threshold of success,
+by a wild incontinence of facts, figures, asterisks and references to
+meal stations. For this reason a guide has been built at our own shops
+and on a new plan. It is the literary _piece de resistance_ of the age
+in which we live. It will not permit information to creep in and mar the
+reader's enjoyment of the scenery. It contains no railroad map which is
+grossly inaccurate. It has no time-table in it which has outlived its
+uselessness. It does not prohibit passengers from riding on the
+platform while the cars are in motion. It permits every one to do just
+as he pleases and rather encourages him in taking that course.
+
+The authors of this book have suffered intensely from the inordinate use
+of other guides, having been compelled several times to rise at 3
+o'clock a. m., in order to catch a car which did not go and which would
+not have stopped at the station if it had gone.
+
+They have decided, therefore, to issue a guide which will be good for
+one to read after one has missed one's train by reason of one's faith in
+other guides which we may have in one's luggage.
+
+Let it be understood, then, that we are wholly irresponsible, and we
+are glad of it. We do not care who knows it. We will not even hold
+ourselves responsible for the pictures in this book, or the hard-boiled
+eggs sold at points marked as meal stations in time tables. We have gone
+into this thing wholly unpledged, and the man who gets up before he is
+awake, in order to catch any East bound, or West bound, North bound,
+South bound, or hide-bound train, named in this book, does himself a
+great wrong without in any way advancing our own interests.
+
+The authors of this book have made railroad travel a close study. They
+have discovered that there has been no provision made for the man who
+erroneously gets into a car which is side-tracked and swept out and
+scrubbed by people who take in cars to scrub and laundry. He is one of
+the men we are striving at this moment to reach with our little volume.
+We have each of us been that man. We are yet.
+
+He ought to have something to read that will distract his attention.
+This book is designed for him. Also for people who would like to travel
+but cannot get away from home. Of course, people who do travel will find
+nothing objectionable in the book, but our plan is to issue a book worth
+about $9, charging only fifty cents for it, and then see to it that no
+time-tables or maps which will never return after they have been pulled
+out once, shall creep in among its pages.
+
+It is the design of the authors to issue this guide annually unless
+prohibited by law, and to be the pioneers establishing a book which
+shall be designed solely for the use of anybody who desires to subscribe
+for it.
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+     JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
+
+P. S.--The authors desire to express their thanks to Mr. Riley for the
+poetry and to Mr. Nye for the prose which have been used in this
+book.
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration: Contents]
+
+   August--Riley                                                      32
+
+   Anecdotes of Jay Gould--Nye                                        23
+
+   A Black Hills Episode--Riley                                      132
+
+   A Blasted Snore--Nye                                              190
+
+   A Brave Refrain--Riley                                            188
+
+   A Character--Riley                                                142
+
+   A Dose't of Blues--Riley                                          220
+
+   A Fall Creek View of the Earthquake--Riley                         30
+
+   A Hint of Spring--Riley                                           168
+
+   A Letter of Acceptance--Nye                                        56
+
+   A Treat Ode--Riley                                                170
+
+   Craqueodoom--Riley                                                 81
+
+   Curly Locks--Riley                                                118
+
+   Ezra House--Riley                                                 161
+
+   From Delphi to Camden--Riley                                       75
+
+   Good-bye or Howdy-do--Riley                                       195
+
+   Healthy, but Out of the Race--Nye                                 101
+
+   Her Tired Hands--Nye                                              152
+
+   His Crazy Bone--Riley                                              89
+
+   His Christmas Sled--Riley                                         150
+
+   His First Womern--Riley                                            41
+
+   How to Hunt the Fox--Nye                                           46
+
+   In a Box--Riley                                                   214
+
+   In the Afternoon--Riley                                            65
+
+   Julius Caesar in Town--Nye                                          34
+
+   Lines on Hearing a Cow Bawl--Riley                                107
+
+   Lines on Turning Over a Pass--Nye                                 120
+
+   Me and Mary--Riley                                                109
+
+   McFeeters' Fourth--Riley                                          211
+
+   My Bachelor Chum--Riley                                           178
+
+   Mr Silberberg--Riley                                               96
+
+   Niagara Falls from the Nye Side--Nye                              111
+
+   Never Talk Back--Riley                                             20
+
+   Oh, Wilhelmina, Come Back--Nye                                    165
+
+   Our Wife--Nye                                                     172
+
+   Prying Open the Future--Nye                                        90
+
+   Says He--Riley                                                    204
+
+   Seeking to Be Identified--Nye                                     228
+
+   Seeking to Set the Public Right--Nye                              216
+
+   Spirits at Home--Riley                                             99
+
+   Society Gurgs from Sandy Mush--Nye                                197
+
+   Sutter's Claim--Riley                                             226
+
+   This Man Jones--Riley                                              43
+
+   That Night--Riley                                                 124
+
+   The Boy Friend--Riley                                              54
+
+   The Chemist of the Carolinas--Nye                                  82
+
+   The Diary of Darius T Skinner--Nye                                144
+
+   The Grammatical Boy--Nye                                           77
+
+   The Gruesome Ballad of Mr Squincher--Riley                         21
+
+   The Man in the Moon--Riley                                        148
+
+   The Philanthropical Jay--Nye                                      180
+
+   The Truth about Methuselah--Nye                                   126
+
+   The Tar-heel Cow--Nye                                             137
+
+   The Rise and Fall of William Johnson--Nye                          66
+
+   The Rossville Lecture Course--Riley                               134
+
+   Wanted, a Fox--Nye                                                222
+
+   Where He First Met His Parents--Nye                                17
+
+   Where the Roads are Engaged in Forking--Nye                       206
+
+   While Cigarettes to Ashes Turn--Riley                             201
+
+   Why It Was Done--Nye & Riley                                       11
+
+
+
+
+Where He First Met His Parents
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Last week I visited my birthplace in the State of Maine. I waited thirty
+years for the public to visit it, and as there didn't seem to be much of
+a rush this spring, I thought I would go and visit it myself. I was
+telling a friend the other day that the public did not seem to manifest
+the interest in my birthplace that I thought it ought to, and he said I
+ought not to mind that. "Just wait," said he, "till the people of the
+United States have an opportunity to visit your tomb, and you will be
+surprised to see how they will run excursion trains up there to
+Moosehead lake, or wherever you plant yourself. It will be a perfect
+picnic. Your hold on the American people, William, is wonderful, but
+your death would seem to assure it, and kind of crystallize the
+affection now existing, but still in a nebulous and gummy state."
+
+A man ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I
+were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that
+particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what
+memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first
+met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaintance sprang up which
+has ripened in later years into mutual respect and esteem. It was there
+that what might be termed a casual meeting took place, that has, under
+the alchemy of resist-less years, turned to golden links, forming a
+pleasant but powerful bond of union between my parents and myself. For
+that reason, I hope that I may be spared to my parents for many years to
+come.
+
+Many memories now cluster about that old home, as I have said. There is,
+also, other bric-a-brac which has accumulated since I was born there. I
+took a small stone from the front yard as a kind of memento of the
+occasion and the place. I do not think it has been detected yet. There
+was another stone in the yard, so it may be weeks before any one finds
+out that I took one of them.
+
+How humble the home, and yet what a lesson it should teach the boys of
+America! Here, amid the barren and inhospitable waste of rocks and cold,
+the last place in the world that a great man would naturally select to
+be born in, began the life of one who, by his own unaided effort, in
+after years rose to the proud height of postmaster at Laramie City, Wy.
+T., and with an estimate of the future that seemed almost prophetic,
+resigned before he could be characterized as an offensive partisan.
+
+Here on the banks of the raging Piscataquis, where winter lingers in
+the lap of spring till it occasions a good deal of talk, there began a
+career which has been the wonder and admiration of every vigilance
+committee west of the turbulent Missouri.
+
+There on that spot, with no inheritance but a predisposition to baldness
+and a bitter hatred of rum; with no personal property but a misfit
+suspender and a stone-bruise, began a life history which has never
+ceased to be a warning to people who have sold goods on credit.
+
+It should teach the youth of our great broad land what glorious
+possibilities may lie concealed in the rough and tough bosom of the
+reluctant present. It shows how steady perseverance and a good appetite
+will always win in the end. It teaches us that wealth is not
+indispensable, and that if we live as we should, draw out of politics at
+the proper time, and die a few days before the public absolutely demand
+it, the matter of our birthplace will not be considered.
+
+Still, my birthplace is all right as a birthplace. It was a good, quiet
+place in which to be born. All the old neighbors said that Shirley was a
+very quiet place up to the time I was born there, and when I took my
+parents by the hand and gently led them away in the spring of '53,
+saying, "Parents, this is no place for us," it again became quiet.
+
+It is the only birthplace I have, however, and I hope that all the
+readers of this sketch will feel perfectly free to go there any time and
+visit it and carry their dinner as I did. Extravagant cordiality and
+overflowing hospitality have always kept my birthplace back.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Never Talk Back.]
+
+
+     Never talk back! sich things is ripperhensible;
+       feller only "corks" hisse'f that jaws a man that's hot;
+     In a quarrel, of you'll only keep your mouth shet and act sensible,
+       The man that does the talkin'll git worsted every shot!
+
+     Never talk back to a feller that's abusin' you--
+       Jest let him carry on, and rip, and cuss and swear;
+     And when he finds his lyin' and his dammin's jest amusin' you,
+       You've gut him clean kaflummixed, and you want to hold him there!
+
+     Never talk back, and wake up the whole community,
+       And call a man a liar, over law, or Politics,--
+     You can lift and land him furder and with gracefuller impunity
+       With one good jolt of silence than a half a dozen kicks!
+
+
+
+
+The Gruesome Ballad of Mr. Squincher
+
+
+     "Ki-yi!" said Mr. Squincher,
+       As in contemplative pose,
+     He stood before the looking-glass
+       And burnished up his nose,
+     And brushed the dandruff from a span-
+       Spick-splinter suit of clothes,--
+     "Why, bless you, Mr. Squincher,
+       You're as handsome as a rose!"
+
+     [Illustration]
+
+     "There are some," continued Squincher,
+       As he raised upon his toes
+     To catch his full reflection,
+       And the fascinating bows
+     That graced his legs,--"I reckon
+       There are some folks never knows
+     How beautiful is human legs
+       In pantaloons like those!"
+
+     "But ah!" sighed Mr. Squincher,
+       As a ghastly phantom 'rose
+     And leered above his shoulder
+       Like the deadliest of foes,--
+     With fleshless arms and fingers,
+       And a skull, with glistening rows
+     Of teeth that crunched and gritted,--
+       "It's my tailor, I suppose!"
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+     They found him in the morning--
+       So the mystic legend goes--
+     With the placid face still smiling
+       In its statuesque repose;--
+     With a lily in his left hand,
+       And in his right a rose,
+     With their fragrance curling upward
+       Through a nimbus 'round his nose.
+
+
+
+
+Anecdotes of Jay Gould
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Facial Neuralgia is what is keeping Jay Gould back this summer and
+preventing him from making as much money as he would otherwise. With
+good health and his present methods of doing business Mr. Gould could in
+a few years be beyond the reach of want, but he is up so much nights
+with his face that he has to keep one gas-jet burning all the time.
+Besides he has cabled once to Dr. Brown-Sequard for a neuralgia pill
+that he thought would relieve the intense pain, and found after he had
+paid for the cablegram that every druggist in New York kept the
+Brown-Sequard pill in stock. But when a man is ill he does not care for
+expense, especially when he controls an Atlantic cable or two.
+
+This neuralgia pill is about the size of a two-year-old colt and pure
+white. I have been compelled to take several of them myself while
+suffering from facial neuralgia; for neuralgia does not spare the good,
+the true or the beautiful. She comes along and nips the poor yeoman as
+well as the millionaire who sits in the lap of luxury. Millionaires who
+flatter themselves that they can evade neuralgia by going and sitting in
+the lap of luxury make a great mistake.
+
+"And do you find that this large porcelain pill relieves you at all, Mr.
+Gould?" I asked him during one of these attacks, as he sat in his studio
+with his face tied up in hot bran.
+
+"No, it does me no good whatever," said the man who likes to take a lame
+railroad and put it on its feet by issuing more bonds. "It contains a
+little morphine, which dulls the pain but there's nothing in the pill to
+cure the cause. My neuralgia comes from indigestion. My appetite is four
+sizes too large for a man of my height, and every little while I
+overeat. I then get dangerously ill and stocks become greatly depressed
+in consequence. I am now in a position where, if I had a constitution
+that would stand the strain, I could get well off in a few years, but I
+am not strong enough. Every little change in the weather affects me. I
+see a red-headed girl on the street and immediately afterwards I see one
+of these big white pills."
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Gould," I asked him with some solicitude, as I bent
+forward and inhaled the rich fragrance of the carnation in his
+button-hole, "that you have not taken cold in some way?"
+
+"Possibly I have," he said, as he shrank back in a petulant way, I
+thought. "Last week I got my feet a little damp while playing the hose
+on some of my stocks, but I hardly think that was what caused the
+trouble. I am apt to overeat, as I said. I am especially fond of fruit,
+too. When I was a boy I had no trouble, because I always divided my
+fruit with another boy, of whom I was very fond. I would always divide
+my fruit in two equal parts, keeping one of these and eating the other
+myself. Many and many a time when this boy and I went out together and
+only had one wormy apple between us, I have divided it and given him the
+worm.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"As a boy, I was taught to believe that half is always better than the
+hole."
+
+"And are you not afraid that this neuralgia after it has picnicked
+around among your features may fly to your vitals?"
+
+"Possibly so," said Mr. Gould, snapping the hunting case of his
+massive silver watch with a loud report, "but I am guarding against this
+by keeping my pocketbook wrapped up all the time in an old red flannel
+shirt."
+
+Here Mr. Gould arose and went out of the room for a long time, and I
+could hear him pacing up and down outside, stopping now and then to peer
+through the keyhole to see if I had gone away. But in each instance he
+was gratified to find that I had not. Lest any one should imagine that I
+took advantage of his absence to peruse his private correspondence, I
+will say here that I did not do so, as his desk was securely locked.
+
+Mr. Gould's habits are simple and he does not hold his cane by the
+middle when he walks. He wears plain clothes and his shirts and collars
+are both made of the same shade. He says he feels sorry for any one who
+has to wear a pink shirt with a blue collar. Some day he hopes to endow
+a home for young men who cannot afford to buy a shirt and a collar at
+the same store.
+
+He owes much of his neuralgia to a lack of exercise. Mr. Gould never
+takes any exercise at all. His reason for this is that he sees no
+prospect for exercise to advance in value. He says he is willing to take
+anything else but exercise.
+
+Up to within a very few years Jay Gould has always slept well at night,
+owing to regular hours for rising and retiring and his careful
+abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. Lately neuralgia has kept him awake
+a good deal at night, but prior to that he used to sleep as sweetly and
+peacefully as a weasel.
+
+The story circulated some years ago to the effect that a professional
+burglar broke into Mr. Gould's room in the middle of the night and
+before he could call the police was robbed of his tools, is not true.
+People who have no higher aim in life than the peddling about of such
+improbable yarns would do well to ascertain the truth of these reports
+before giving them circulation.
+
+The story that Mr. Gould once killed a steer and presented his hoofs to
+the poor with the remark that it would help to keep sole and body
+together, also turned out to have no foundation whatever in fact, but
+was set afloat by an English wag who was passionately fond of a bit of
+pleasantry, don't you know.
+
+Thus it is that a man who has acquired a competence by means of honest
+toil becomes the target for the barbed shaft of contumely.
+
+Mr. Gould is said to be a good conversationalist, though he prefers to
+close his eyes and listen to others. Nothing pleases him better than to
+lure a man on and draw him out and encourage him to turn his mind wrong
+side out and empty it. He then richly repays this confidence by saying
+that if it doesn't rain any more we will have a long dry time. The man
+then goes away inflated with the idea that he has a pointer from Mr.
+Gould which will materially affect values. A great many men are playing
+croquet at the poor-house this summer who owe their prosperity to tips
+given them by Mr. Gould.
+
+As a fair sample of the way a story about a great man grows and becomes
+distorted at the same time, one incident will be sufficient. Some years
+ago, it is said, Mr. Gould bought a general admission ticket to hear
+Sarah Bernhardt as Camille. Several gentlemen who were sitting near
+where he stood asked him why he did not take a seat. Instead of
+answering directly that he could not get one he replied that he did not
+care for a seat, as he wanted to be near the door when the building
+fell. Shortly after this he had more seats than he could use. I give
+this story simply to illustrate how such a thing may be distorted, for
+upon investigation it was found to have occurred at a Patti concert, and
+not at a Bernhardt exhibition at all.
+
+Mr. Gould's career, with its attendant success, should teach us two
+things, at least. One is, that it always pays to do a kind act, for a
+great deal of his large fortune has been amassed by assisting men like
+Mr. Field, when they were in a tight place, and taking their depressed
+stock off their hands while in a shrunken condition. He believes also
+that the merciful man is merciful to his stock.
+
+He says he owes much of his success in life to economy and neuralgia. He
+also loves to relieve distress on Wall street, and is so passionately
+fond of this as he grows older that he has been known to distress other
+stock men just for the pleasant thrill it gave him to relieve them.
+
+Jay Gould is also a living illustration of what a young man may do with
+nothing but his bare hands in America. John L. Sullivan and Gould are
+both that way. Mr. Gould and Col. Sullivan could go into Siberia
+to-morrow--little as they are known there--and with a small Gordon
+press, a quire of bond paper and a pair of three-pennyweight gloves they
+would soon own Siberia, with a right of way across the rest of Europe
+and a first mortgage on the Russian throne. As fast as Col. Sullivan
+knocked out a dynasty Jay could come in and administer on the estate.
+This would be a powerful combination. It would afford us an opportunity
+also to get some of those Russian hay-fever names and chilblains by red
+message. Mr. Gould would get a good deal of money out of the transaction
+and Sullivan would get ozone.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Fall Crick View of the Earthquake]
+
+
+     I kin hump my back and take the rain,
+       And I don't keer how she pours,
+     I kin keep kindo' ca'm in a thunder storm,
+       No matter how loud she roars;
+     I haint much skeered o' the lightnin',
+       Ner I haint sich awful shakes
+     Afeared o' _cyclones_--but I don't want none
+       O' yer dad-burned old _earth_-quakes!
+
+     As long as my legs keeps stiddy,
+       And long as my head keeps plum,
+     And the buildin' stays in the front lot,
+       I still kin whistle, _some_!
+     But about the time the old clock
+       Flops off'n the mantel-shelf,
+     And the bureau skoots fer the kitchen,
+       I'm a-goin' to skoot, myself!
+
+     Plague-take! ef you keep me stabled
+       While any earthquakes is around!--
+     I'm jist like the stock,--I'll beller,
+       And break fer the open ground!
+     And I 'low you'd be as nervous,
+       And in jist about my fix,
+     When yer whole farm slides from inunder you,
+       And on'y the mor'gage sticks!
+
+     Now cars haint a-goin' to kill you
+       Ef you don't drive 'crost the track;
+     Crediters never'll jerk you up
+       Ef you go and pay 'em back;
+     You kin stand all moral and mundane storms
+       Ef you'll on'y jist behave--
+     But a' EARTHQUAKE:--well, ef it wanted you
+       It 'ud husk you out o' yer grave!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: August]
+
+
+     O mellow month and merry month,
+       Let me make love to you,
+     And follow you around the world
+       As knights their ladies do.
+     I thought your sisters beautiful,
+       Both May and April, too,
+     But April she had rainy eyes,
+       And May had eyes of blue.
+
+     And June--I liked the singing
+       Of her lips, and liked her smile--
+     But all her songs were promises
+       Of something, _after while_;
+     And July's face--the lights and shade
+       That may not long beguile,
+     With alternations o'er the wheat
+       The dreamer at the stile.
+
+     But you!--ah, you are tropical,
+       Your beauty is so rare:
+     Your eyes are clearer, deeper eyes
+       Than any, anywhere;
+     Mysterious, imperious,
+       Deliriously fair,
+     O listless Andalusian maid,
+       With bangles in your hair!
+
+
+
+
+Julius Caesar in Town
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The play of "Julius Caesar," which has been at the Academy of Music this
+week, has made a great hit. Messrs. Booth and Barrett very wisely
+decided that if it succeeded here it would do well anywhere. If the
+people of New York like a play and say so, it is almost sure to go
+elsewhere. Judging by this test the play of "Julius Caesar" has a glowing
+future ahead of it. It was written by Gentlemen Shakespeare, Bacon and
+Donnelly, who collaborated together on it. Shakespeare did the lines and
+plot, Bacon furnished the cipher and Donnelly called attention to it
+through the papers.
+
+The scene of "Julius Caesar" is laid in Rome just before the railroad was
+completed to that place. In order to understand the play itself we must
+glance briefly at the leading characters which are introduced and upon
+whom its success largely depends.
+
+Julius Caesar first attracted attention through the Roman papers by
+calling the attention of the medical faculty to the now justly
+celebrated Caesarian operation. Taking advantage of the advertisement
+thus attained, he soon rose to prominence and flourished considerably
+from 100 to 44 B. C., when a committee of representative citizens and
+property-owners of Rome called upon him and on behalf of the people
+begged leave to assassinate him as a mark of esteem. He was stabbed
+twenty-three times between Pompey's Pillar and eleven o'clock, many of
+which were mortal. This account of the assassination is taken from a
+local paper and is graphic, succinct and lacks the sensational elements
+so common and so lamentable in our own time. Caesar was the implacable
+foe of the aristocracy and refused to wear a plug hat up to the day of
+his death. Sulla once said, before Caesar had made much of a showing,
+that some day this young man would be the ruin of the aristocracy, and
+twenty years afterwards when Caesar sacked, assassinated and holocausted
+a whole theological seminary for saying "eyether" and "nyether," the old
+settlers recalled what Sulla had said.
+
+Caesar continued to eat pie with a knife and in many other ways to endear
+himself to the masses until 68 B. C., when he ran for Quaestor. Afterward
+he was AEdile, during the term of which office he sought to introduce a
+number of new games and to extend the limit on some of the older ones.
+From this to the Senate was but a step. In the Senate he was known as a
+good Speaker, but ambitious, and liable to turn up during a close vote
+when his enemies thought he was at home doing his chores. This made him
+at times odious to those who opposed him, and when he defended Cataline
+and offered to go on his bond, Caesar came near being condemned to death
+himself.
+
+In 62 B. C. he went to Spain as Propraetor, intending to write a book
+about the Spanish people and their customs as soon as he got back, but
+he was so busy on his return that he did not have time to do so.
+
+Caesar was a powerful man with the people, and while in the Senate worked
+hard for his constituents, while other Senators were having their
+photographs taken. He went into the army when the war broke out, and
+after killing a great many people against whom he certainly could not
+have had anything personal, he returned, headed by the Rome Silver
+Cornet Band and leading a procession over two miles in length. It was at
+this time that he was tendered a crown just as he was passing the City
+Hall, but thrice he refused it. After each refusal the people applauded
+and encored him till he had to refuse it again. It is at about this time
+the play opens. Caesar has just arrived on a speckled courser and
+dismounted outside the town. He comes in at the head of a procession
+with the understanding that the crown is to be offered him just as he
+crosses over to the Court-House.
+
+Here Cassius and Brutus meet, and Cassius tries to make a Mugwump of
+Brutus, so that they can organize a new movement. Mr. Edwin Booth takes
+the character of Brutus and Mr. Lawrence Barrett takes that of Cassius.
+I would not want to take the character of Cassius myself, even if I had
+run short of character and needed some very much indeed, but Mr.
+Barrett takes it and does first-rate. Mr. Booth also plays Brutus so
+that old settlers here say it seems almost like having Brutus here among
+us again.
+
+Brutus was a Roman republican with strong tariff tendencies. He was a
+good extemporaneous after-dinner speaker and a warm personal friend of
+Caesar, though differing from him politically. In assassinating Caesar,
+Brutus used to say afterwards he did not feel the slightest personal
+animosity, but did it entirely for the good of the party. That is one
+thing I like about politics--you can cut out a man's vitals and hang
+them on the Christmas tree and drag the fair name of his wife or mother
+around through the sewers for six weeks before election, and so long as
+it is done for the good of the party it is all right.
+
+So when Brutus is authorized by the caucus to assassinate Caesar he feels
+that, like being President of the United States, it is a disagreeable
+job; but if the good of the party seems really to demand it he will do
+it, though he wishes it distinctly understood that personally he hasn't
+got a thing against Caesar.
+
+In act 4 Brutus sits up late reading a story by E. P. Roe, and just as
+he is in the most exciting part of it the ghost of the assassinated
+Caesar appears and states that it will meet him with hard gloves at
+Philippi. Brutus looks bored and says that he is not in condition, but
+the ghost leaves it that way and Brutus looks still more bored till the
+ghost goes out through a white oak door without opening it.
+
+At Philippi, Brutus sees that there is no hope of police interference,
+and so before time is called he inserts his sword into his being and
+dies while the polite American audience puts on its overcoat and goes
+out, looking over its shoulder to see that Brutus does not take
+advantage of this moment, while the people are going away, to
+resuscitate himself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The play is thoroughly enjoyable all the way through, especially Caesar's
+funeral. The idea of introducing a funeral and engaging Mark Antony to
+deliver the eulogy, with the understanding that he was to have his
+traveling expenses paid and the privilege of selling the sermon to a
+syndicate, shows genius on the part of the joint authors. All the way
+through the play is good, but sad. There is no divertisement or tank in
+it, but the funeral more than makes up for all that.
+
+Where Portia begs Brutus, before the assassination, to tell her all and
+let her in on the ground floor, and asks what the matter is, and he
+claims that it is malaria, and she still insists and asks, "Dwell I but
+in the suburbs of your good pleasure?" and he states, "You are my true
+and honorable wife, as dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my
+sad heart," I forgot myself and wept my new plug hat two-thirds full. It
+is as good as anything there is in Josh Whitcomb's play.
+
+Booth and Barrett have the making of good actors in them. I met both of
+these gentlemen in Wyoming some years ago. We met by accident. They were
+going to California and I was coming back. By some oversight we had both
+selected the same track, and we were thrown together. I do not know
+whether they will recall my face or not. I was riding on the sleeper
+truck at the time of the accident. I always take a sleeper and always
+did. I rode on the truck because I didn't want to ride inside the car
+and have to associate with a wealthy porter who looked down upon me. I
+am the man who was found down the creek the next day gathering wild
+ferns and murmuring, "Where am I?"
+
+The play of "Julius Caesar" is one which brings out the meanness and
+magnetism of Cassius, and emphasizes the mistaken patriotism of Brutus.
+It is full of pathos, duplicity, assassination, treachery, erroneous
+loyalty, suicide, hypocrisy, and all the intrigue, jealousy, cowardice
+and deviltry which characterized the politics of fifty years B. C., but
+which now, thanks to the enlightenment and refinement which twenty
+centuries have brought, are known no more forever. Let us not forget,
+as we enter upon the year 1888, that it is a Presidential year, and that
+all acrimony will be buried under the dew and the daisies, and that no
+matter how high party spirit may run, there will be no personal
+enmity.
+
+
+
+
+His First Womern
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     I buried my first womern
+       In the spring; and in the fall
+     I was married to my second,
+       And haint settled yit at all?--
+     Fer I'm allus thinkin'--thinkin'
+       Of the first one's peaceful ways,
+     A-bilin' soap and singin'
+       Of the Lord's amazin' grace.
+
+     And I'm thinkin' of her, constant,
+       Dyin' carpet-chain and stuff,
+     And a-makin' up rag-carpets,
+       When the floor was good enough!
+     And I mind her he'p a-feedin'
+       And I recollect her now
+     A-drappin' corn, and keepin'
+       Clos't behind me and the plow!
+
+     And I'm allus thinkin' of her
+       Reddin' up around the house;
+     Er cookin' fer the farm-hands;
+       Er a-drivin' up the cows.--
+     And there she lays out yender
+       By the lower medder-fence,
+     Where the cows was barely grazin',
+       And they're usin' ever sence.
+
+     And when I look acrost there--
+       Say its when the clover's ripe,
+     And I'm settin', in the evenin',
+       On the porch here, with my pipe,
+     And the _other'n_ hollers "Henry!"--
+       W'y, they ain't no sadder thing
+     Than to think of my first womern
+       And her funeral last spring
+         Was a year ago.
+
+
+
+
+This Man Jones
+
+
+     This man Jones was what you'd call
+     A feller 'at had no sand at all:
+     Kindo consumpted, and undersize,
+     And saller-complected, with big sad eyes,
+     And a kind-of-a-sort-of-a-hang-dog style,
+     And a sneakin' kind-of-a-half-way smile
+     That kindo give him away to us
+     As a preacher, maybe, or sumpin' wuss.
+
+     Didn't take with the gang--well, no--
+     But still we managed to _use_ him, though,--
+     Coddin' the gilley along the rout'
+     And drivin' the stakes that he pulled out;--
+     For I was one of the bosses then
+     And of course stood in with the canvas-men--
+     And the way we put up jobs, you know,
+     On this man Jones jes' beat the show!
+
+     Used to rattle him scandalous,
+     And keep the feller a-dodgin' us,
+     And a-shyin' round jes' skeered to death,
+     And a-feered to whimper above his breath;
+     Give him a cussin', and then a kick,
+     And then a kind-of-a back-hand lick--
+     Jes' for the fun of seein' him climb
+     Around with a head on half the time.
+
+     But what was the curioust thing to me,
+     Was along o' the party--let me see,--
+     Who was our "Lion Queen" last year?--
+     Mamzelle Zanty, er De La Pierre?--
+     Well, no matter!--a stunnin' in mash,
+     With a red-ripe lip, and a long eye-lash,
+     And a figger sich as the angels owns--
+     And one too many for this man Jones:
+
+     He'd always wake in the afternoon
+     As the band waltzed in on "the lion tune,"
+     And there, from the time that she'd go in,
+     Till she'd back out of the cage agin,
+     He'd stand, shaky and limber-kneed--
+     'Specially when she come to "feed
+     The beast raw meat with her naked hand"--
+     And all that business, you understand.
+
+     And it _was_ resky in that den--
+     For I think she juggled three cubs then,
+     And a big "green" lion 'at used to smash
+     Collar-bones for old Frank Nash;
+     And I reckon now she haint forgot
+     The afternoon old "Nero" sot
+     His paws on her:--but as for me,
+     It's a sort-of-a-mixed-up mystery.
+
+     Kindo' remember an awful roar,
+     And see her back for the bolted door--
+     See the cage rock--heerd her call
+     "God have mercy!" and that was all--
+     For ther haint no livin' man can tell
+     What it's like when a thousand yell
+     In female tones, and a thousand more
+     Howl in bass till their throats is sore!
+
+     But the keeper said as they dragged her out,
+     They heerd some feller laugh and shout:
+     "Save her! Quick! I've got the cuss!"
+     ... And yit she waked and smiled on us!
+     And we daren't _flinch_--for the doctor said,
+     Seein' as this man Jones was dead,
+     Better to jes' not let her know
+     Nothin' o' that for a week or so.
+
+
+
+
+How to Hunt the Fox
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The joyous season for hunting is again upon us, and with the gentle fall
+of the autumn leaf and the sough of the scented breezes about the
+gnarled and naked limbs of the wailing trees--the huntsman comes with
+his hark and his halloo and hurrah, boys, the swift rush of the chase,
+the thrilling scamper 'cross country, the mad dash through the Long
+Islander's pumpkin patch--also the mad dash, dash, dash of the farmer,
+the low moan of the disabled and frozen-toed hen as the whooping
+horsemen run her down; the wild shriek of the children, the low
+melancholy wail of the frightened shoat as he flees away to the straw
+pile, the quick yet muffled plunk of the frozen tomato and the dull
+scrunch of the seed cucumber.
+
+The huntsman now takes the flannels off his fox, rubs his stiffened
+limbs with gargling oil, ties a bunch of firecrackers to his tail and
+runs him around the barn a few times to see if he is in good order.
+
+The foxhound is a cross of the bloodhound, the grayhound, the bulldog
+and the chump. When you step on his tail he is said to be in full cry.
+The foxhound obtains from his ancestors on the bloodhound side of the
+house his keen scent, which enables him while in full cry 'cross country
+to pause and hunt for chipmunks. He also obtains from the bloodhound
+branch of his family a wild yearning to star in an "Uncle Tom" company,
+and watch little Eva meander up the flume at two dollars per week. From
+the grayhound he gets his most miraculous speed, which enables him to
+attain a rate of velocity so great that he is unable to halt during the
+excitement of the chase, frequently running so far during the day that
+it takes him a week to get back, when, of course, all interest has died
+out. From the bulldog the foxhound obtains his great tenacity of
+purpose, his deep-seated convictions, his quick perceptions, his love of
+home and his clinging nature. From the chump the foxhound gets his high
+intellectuality and that mental power which enables him to distinguish
+almost at a glance the salient points of difference between a
+two-year-old steer and a two-dollar bill.
+
+The foxhound is about two feet in height, and 120 of them would be
+considered an ample number for a quiet little fox hunt. Some hunters
+think this number inadequate, but unless the fox be unusually skittish
+and crawl under the barn, 120 foxhounds ought to be enough. The trouble
+generally is that hunters make too much noise, thus scaring the fox so
+that he tries to get away from them. This necessitates hard riding and
+great activity on the part of the whippers-in. Frightening a fox almost
+always results in sending him out of the road and compelling horsemen to
+stop in order to take down a panel of fence every little while that they
+may follow the animal, and before you can get the fence put up again the
+owner is on the ground, and after you have made change with him and
+mounted again the fox may be nine miles away. Try by all means to keep
+your fox in the road!
+
+It makes a great difference what kind of fox you use, however. I once
+had a fox on my Pumpkin Butte estates that lasted me three years, and I
+never knew him to shy or turn out of the road for anything but a loaded
+team. He was the best fox for hunting purposes that I ever had. Every
+spring I would sprinkle him with Scotch snuff and put him away in the
+bureau till fall. He would then come out bright and chipper. He was
+always ready to enter into the chase with all the chic and embonpoint of
+a regular Kenosha, and nothing pleased him better than to be about eight
+miles in advance of my thoroughbred pack in full cry, scampering 'cross
+country, while stretching back a few miles behind the dogs followed a
+pale young man and his financier, each riding a horse that had sat down
+too hard on its tail some time and driven it into his system about six
+joints.
+
+Some hunters, who are madly and passionately devoted to the sport, leap
+their horses over fences, moats, donjon keeps, hedges and currant bushes
+with utter sang froid and the wild, unfettered toot ongsomble of a brass
+band. It is one of the most spirited and touchful of sights to see a
+young fox-hunter going home through the gloaming with a full cry in
+one hand and his pancreas in the other.
+
+Some like to be in at the death, as it is called, and it is certainly a
+laudable ambition. To see 120 dogs hold out against a ferocious fox
+weighing nine pounds; to watch the brave little band of dogs and
+whippers-in and horses with sawed-off tails, making up in heroism what
+they lack in numbers, succeeding at last in ridding the country of the
+ferocious brute which has long been the acknowledged foe of the human
+race, is indeed a fine sight.
+
+We are too apt to regard fox-hunting merely as a relaxation, a source of
+pleasure, and the result of a desire to do the way people do in the
+novels which we steal from English authors: but this is not all. To
+successfully hunt a fox, to jump fences 'cross country like an unruly
+steer, is no child's play. To ride all day on a very hot and restless
+saddle, trying to lope while your horse is trotting, giving your friends
+a good view of the country between yourself and your horse, then leaping
+stone walls, breaking your collar-bone in four places, pulling out one
+eye and leaving it hanging on a plum tree, or going home at night with
+your transverse colon wrapped around the pommel of your saddle and your
+liver in an old newspaper, requires the greatest courage.
+
+Too much stress cannot be placed upon the costume worn while
+fox-hunting, and in fact, that is, after all, the life and soul of the
+chase. For ladies, nothing looks better than a close-fitting jacket,
+sewed together with thread of the same shade and a skirt. Neat-fitting
+cavalry boots and a plug hat complete the costume. Then, with a hue in
+one hand and a cry in the other, she is prepared to mount. Lead the
+horse up to a stone wall or a freight car and spring lightly into the
+saddle with a glad cry. A freight car is the best thing from which to
+mount a horse, but it is too unwieldy and frequently delays the chase.
+For this reason, too, much luggage should not be carried on a fox-hunt.
+Some gentlemen carry a change of canes, neatly concealed in a shawl
+strap, but even this may be dispensed with.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+For gentlemen, a dark, four-button cutaway coat, with neat,
+loose-fitting, white panties, will generally scare a fox into
+convulsions, so that he may be easily killed with a club. A
+short-waisted plug hat may be worn also, in order to distinguish the
+hunter from the whipper-in, who wears a baseball cap. The only
+fox-hunting I have ever done was on board an impetuous, tough-bitted,
+fore-and-aft horse that had emotional insanity. I was dressed in a
+swallow-tail coat, waistcoat of Scotch plaid Turkish toweling, and a
+pair of close-fitting breeches of etiquette tucked into my boot-tops.
+As I was away from home at the time and could not reach my own steed I
+was obliged to mount a spirited steed with high, intellectual hips, one
+white eye and a big red nostril that you could set a Shanghai hen in.
+This horse, as soon as the pack broke into full cry, climbed over a
+fence that had wrought-iron briers on it, lit in a corn field, stabbed
+his hind leg through a sere and yellow pumpkin, which he wore the rest
+of the day, with seven yards of pumpkin vine streaming out behind, and
+away we dashed 'cross country. I remained mounted not because I enjoyed
+it, for I did not, but because I dreaded to dismount. I hated to get off
+in pieces. If I can't get off a horse's back as a whole, I would rather
+adhere to the horse. I will adhere that I did so.
+
+We did not see the fox, but we saw almost everything else. I remember,
+among other things, of riding through a hothouse, and how I enjoyed it.
+A morning scamper through a conservatory when the syringas and Jonquils
+and Jack roses lie cuddled up together in their little beds, is a thing
+to remember and look back to and pay for. To stand knee-deep in glass
+and gladiolas, to smell the mashed and mussed up mignonette and the last
+fragrant sigh of the scrunched heliotrope beneath the hoof of your
+horse, while far away the deep-mouthed baying of the hoarse hounds,
+hotly hugging the reeking trail of the aniseseed bag, calls on the
+gorgeously caparisoned hills to give back their merry music or fork it
+over to other answering hills, is joy to the huntsman's heart.
+
+On, on I rode with my unconfined locks streaming behind me in the autumn
+wind. On and still on I sped, the big, bright pumpkin slipping up and
+down the gambrel of my spirited horse at every jump. On and ever on we
+went, shedding terror and pumpkin seeds along our glittering track till
+my proud steed ran his leg in a gopher hole and fell over one of those
+machines that they put on a high-headed steer to keep him from jumping
+fences. As the horse fell, the necklace of this hickory poke flew up and
+adjusted itself around my throat. In an instant my steed was on his feet
+again, and gayly we went forward while the prong of this barbarous
+appliance, ever and anon plowed into a brand new culvert or rooted up a
+clover field. Every time it ran into an orchard or a cemetery it would
+jar my neck and knock me silly. But I could see with joy that it reduced
+the speed of my horse. At last as the sun went down, reluctantly, it
+seemed to me, for he knew that he would never see such riding again, my
+ill-spent horse fell with a hollow moan, curled up, gave a spasmodic
+quiver with his little, nerveless, sawed-off tail and died.
+
+The other huntsmen succeeded in treeing the anise-seed bag at sundown,
+in time to catch the 6 o'clock train home.
+
+Fox-hunting is one of the most thrilling pastimes of which I know, and
+for young men whose parents have amassed large sums of money in the
+intellectual pursuit of hides and tallow, the meet, the chase, the
+scamper, the full cry, the cover, the stellated fracture, the yelp of
+the pack, the yip, the yell of triumph, the confusion, the whoop, the
+holla, the hallos, the hurrah, the abrasion, the snort of the hunter,
+the concussion, the sward, the open, the earth stopper, the strangulated
+hernia, the glad cry of the hound as he brings home the quivering seat
+of the peasant's pantaloons, the yelp of joy as he lays at his
+master's feet, the strawberry mark of the rustic, all, all are
+exhilarating to the sons of our American nobility.
+
+Fox-hunting combines the danger and the wild, tumultuous joy of the
+skating-rink, the toboggan slide, the mush-and-milk sociable and the
+straw ride.
+
+With a good horse, an air cushion, a reliable earth-stopper and an
+anise-seed bag, a man must indeed be thoroughly blase who cannot enjoy a
+scamper across country, over the Pennsylvania wold, the New Jersey mere,
+the Connecticut moor, the Indiana glade, the Missouri brake, the
+Michigan mead, the American tarn, the fen, the gulch, the buffalo
+wallow, the cranberry marsh, the glen, the draw, the canyon, the ravine,
+the forks, the bottom or the settlement.
+
+For the young American nobleman whose ducal father made his money by
+inventing a fluent pill, or who gained his great wealth through
+relieving humanity by means of a lung pad, a liver pad, a kidney pad or
+a foot pad, fox-hunting is first rate.
+
+
+
+
+The Boy Friend
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     Clarence, my boy-friend, hale and strong,
+       O, he is as jolly as he is young;
+     And all of the laughs of the lyre belong
+       To the boy all unsung:
+
+     So I want to sing something in his behalf--
+       To clang some chords, of the good it is
+     To know he is near, and to have the laugh
+       Of that wholesome voice of his.
+
+     I want to tell him in gentler ways
+       Than prose may do, that the arms of rhyme,
+     Warm and tender with tuneful praise,
+       Are about him all the time.
+
+     I want him to know that the quietest nights
+       We have passed together are yet with me
+     Roistering over the old delights
+       That were born of his company.
+
+     I want him to know how my soul esteems
+       The fairy stories of Andersen,
+     And the glad translations of all the themes
+       Of the hearts of boyish men.
+
+     Want him to know that my fancy flows,
+       With the lilt of a dear old-fashioned tune,
+     Through "Lewis Carroll's" poemly prose,
+       And the tale of "The Bold Dragoon."
+
+     O, this is the Prince that I would sing--
+       Would drape and garnish in velvet line
+     Since courtlier far than any king
+       Is this brave boy-friend of mine!
+
+
+
+
+A Letter of Acceptance
+
+
+The secretary of the Ashfield Farmer's Club, of Ashfield, Mass., Mr. E.
+D. Church, informs me by United States mail that upon receipt of my
+favorable reply I will become an honorary member of that Club, along
+with George William Curtis, Prof. Norton, Prof. Stanley Hall, of
+Harvard, and other wet-browed toilers in the catnip-infested domain of
+Agriculture.
+
+I take this method of thanking the Ashfield Farmers' Club, through its
+secretary, for the honor thus all so unworthily bestowed, and joyfully
+accept the honorary membership, with the understanding, however, that
+during the County Fair the solemn duty of delivering the annual address
+from the judges' stand, in tones that will not only ring along down the
+corridors of time, but go thundering three times around a half-mile
+track and be heard above the rhythmic plunk of the hired man who is
+trying to ascertain, by means of a large mawl and a thumping machine,
+how hard he can strike, shall fall upon Mr. Curtis or other honorary
+members of the club. I have a voice that does very well to express
+endearment, or other subdued emotions, but it is not effective at a
+County Fair. Spectators see the wonderful play of my features, but they
+only hear the low refrain of the haughty Clydesdale steed, who has a
+neighsal voice and wears his tail in a Grecian coil. I received $150
+once for addressing a race-track one mile in length on "The Use and
+Abuse of Ensilage as a Narcotic." I made the gestures, but the
+sentiments were those of the four-ton Percheron charger, Little
+Medicine, dam Eloquent.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I spoke under a low shed and rather adverse circumstances. In talking
+with the committee afterwards, as I wrapped up my gestures and put them
+back in the shawl strap, I said that I felt almost ashamed to receive
+such a price for the sentiments of others, but they said that was all
+right. No one expected to hear an Agricultural Address. They claimed
+that it was most generally purely spectacular, and so they regarded my
+speech as a great success. I used the same gestures afterwards in
+speaking of "The Great Falling Off among Bare-Back Riders in the
+Circuses of the Present Day."
+
+I would also like to be excused from any duties as a judge of
+curly-faced stock or as an umpire of ornamental needlework. After a
+person has had a fountain pen kicked endwise through his chest by the
+animal to which he has awarded the prize, and later on has his features
+worked up into a giblet pie by the owner of the animal to whom he did
+not award the prize, he does not ask for public recognition at the hands
+of his fellow-citizens. It is the same in the matter of ornamental
+needlework and gaudy quilts, which goad a man to drink and death. While
+I am proud to belong to a farmers' club and "change works" with a
+hearty, whole-souled ploughman like George William Curtis, I hope that
+at all County Fairs or other intellectual hand-to-hand contests between
+outdoor orators and other domestic animals, I may be excused, and that
+when judges of inflamed slumber robes and restless tidies, which roll up
+and fall over the floor or adhere to the backs of innocent people; or
+stiff, hard Doric pillor-shams which do not in any way enhance the joys
+of sleep; or beautiful, pale-blue satin pincushions which it would be
+wicked to put a pin in and which will therefore ever and forevermore
+mock the man who really wants a pin, just as a beautiful match-safe
+stands idly through the long vigils of the night, year after year, only
+to laugh at the man who staggers towards it and falls up against it and
+finds it empty; or like the glorious inkstand which is so pretty and so
+fragile that it stands around with its hands in its pockets acquiring
+dust and dead flies for centuries, so that when you are in a hurry you
+stick your pen into a small chamber of horrors--I say when the judges
+are selected for this department I would rather have my name omitted
+from the panel, as I have formed or expressed an opinion and have
+reasonable doubts and conscientious scruples which it would require
+testimony to remove, and I am not qualified anyway, and I have been
+already placed in jeopardy once, and that is enough.
+
+Mr. Church writes that the club has taken up, discussed and settled all
+points of importance bearing upon Agriculture, from the tariff up to the
+question of whether or not turpentine poured in a cow's ear ameliorates
+the pangs of hollow horn. He desires suggestions and questions for
+discussion. That shows the club to be thoroughly alive. It will soon be
+Spring, and we cannot then discuss these matters. New responsibilities
+will be added day by day in the way of stock, and we will have to think
+of names for them. Would it not be well before the time comes for active
+farm work to think out a long list of names before the little strangers
+arrive? Nothing serves to lower us in the estimation of our
+fellow-farmers or the world more than the frequent altercations between
+owners and their hired help over what name they shall give a weary,
+wobbly calf who has just entered the great arena of life, full of hopes
+and aspirations, perhaps, but otherwise absolutely empty. Let us
+consider this before Spring fairly opens, so that we may be prepared for
+anything of this kind.
+
+One more point may properly come before the club at its next meeting,
+and I mention it here because I may be so busy at Washington looking
+after our other interests that I cannot get to the club meeting. I refer
+to the evident change in climate here from year to year, and its effect
+upon seeds purchased of florists and seedsmen generally.
+
+Twenty years ago you could plant a seed according to directions and it
+would produce a plant which seemed to resemble in a general way the
+picture on the outside of the package. Now, under the fluctuating
+influences of irresponsible isotherms, phlegmatic Springs, rare June
+weather and overdone weather in August, I find it almost impossible to
+produce a plant or vegetable which in any way resembles its portrait. Is
+it my fault or the fault of the climate? I wish the club would take hold
+of this at its next regular meeting. I first noticed the change in the
+summer of '72, I think. I purchased a small package of early Scotch
+plaid curled kale with a beautiful picture on the outside. It was as
+good a picture of Scotch kale as I ever saw. I could imagine how gay and
+light-hearted it was the day when it went up to the studio and had its
+picture taken for this purpose. A short editorial paragraph under the
+picture stated that I should plant in quick, rich soil, in rows four
+inches apart, to a depth of one inch, cover lightly and then roll. I did
+so. No farmer of my years enjoys rolling better than I do.
+
+In a few weeks the kale came up but turned out to be a canard. I then
+waited two weeks more and other forms of vegetation made their
+appearance. None of them were kale. A small delegation of bugs which
+deal mostly with kale came into the garden one day, looked at the
+picture on the discarded paper, then examined what had crawled out
+through the ground and went away. I began to fear then that climatic
+influences had been at work on the seeds, but I had not fully given up
+all hope.
+
+At first the plants seemed to waver and hesitate over whether they had
+better be wild parsnips or Lima beans. Then I concluded that they had
+decided to be foliage plants or rhubarb. But they did not try to live up
+to their portraits. Pretty soon I discovered that they had no bugs which
+seemed to go with them, and then I knew they were weeds. Things that are
+good to eat always have bugs and worms on them, while tansy and
+castor-oil go through life unmolested.
+
+I ordered a new style of gladiola eight years ago of a man who had his
+portrait in the bow of his seed catalogue. If he succeeds no better in
+resembling his portrait than his gladiolas did in resembling theirs, he
+must be a human onion whose presence may easily be detected at a great
+distance.
+
+Last year I planted the seeds of a watermelon which I bought of a New
+York seedsman who writes war articles winters and sells garden seeds in
+the Spring. The portrait of this watermelon would tempt most any man to
+climb a nine-rail fence in the dead of night and forget all else in
+order to drown his better nature and his nose in its cool bosom. People
+came for miles to look at the picture of this melon and went away with a
+pleasant taste in their mouths.
+
+The plants were a little sluggish, though I planted in hills far apart
+each way in a rich warm loam enriched by everything that could make a
+sincere watermelon get up and hump itself. The melons were to be very
+large indeed, with a center like a rose. According to the picture, these
+melons generally grew so large and plenty that most everybody had to put
+side-boards on the garden fence to keep them from falling over into
+other farms and annoying people who had all the melons they needed. I
+fought squash bugs, cut worms, Hessian flies, chinch bugs, curculio,
+mange, pip, drought, dropsy, caterpillars and contumely till the latter
+part of August, when a friend from India came to visit me. I decided to
+cut a watermelon in honor of his arrival. When the proper moment had
+arrived and the dinner had progressed till the point of fruit, the
+tropical depths of my garden gave up their season's wealth in the shape
+of a low-browed citron about as large and succulent as a hot ball.
+
+I have had other similar experiences, and I think we ought to do
+something about it if we can. I have planted the seed of the morning
+glory and the moon flower and dreamed at night that my home looked like
+a florist's advertisement, but when leafy June came a bunch of Norway
+oats and a hill of corn were trying to climb the strings nailed up for
+the use of my non-resident vines. I have planted with song and laughter
+the seeds of the ostensible pansy and carnation, only in tears to reap
+the bachelor's button and the glistening foliage of the sorghum plant.
+I have planted in faith and a deep, warm soil, with pleasing hope in my
+heart and a dark-red picture on the outside of the package, only to
+harvest the low, vulgar jimson weed and the night-blooming bull thistle.
+
+Does the mean temperature or the average rainfall have anything to do
+with it? If statistics are working these changes they ought to be
+stopped. For my own part, however, I am led to believe that our seedsmen
+put so much money into their catalogues that they do not have anything
+left to use in the purchase of seeds. Good religion and very fair
+cookies may be produced without the aid of caraway seed, but you cannot
+gather nice, fresh train figs of thistles or expect much of a seedsman
+whose plants make no effort whatever to resemble their pictures.
+
+Hoping that you will examine into this matter, and that the club will
+always hereafter look carefully in this column for its farm information,
+I remain, in a sitting posture, yours truly.
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+[Illustration: "YOU IN THE HAMMOCK; AND I, NEAR BY."]
+
+
+
+
+In the Afternoon
+
+
+     You in the hammock; and I, near by,
+       Was trying to read, and to swing you, too;
+     And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye,
+       And the shade of the maples so cool and blue,
+       That often I looked from the book to you
+     To say as much, with a sigh.
+
+     You in the hammock. The book we'd brought
+       From the parlor--to read in the open air,--
+     Something of love and of Launcelot
+       And Guinevere, I believe, was there--
+       But the afternoon, it was far more fair
+     Than the poem was, I thought.
+
+     You in the hammock; and on and on
+       I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff--
+     But with always a half of my vision gone
+       Over the top of the page--enough
+       To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff
+     Of your hair and your odorous lawn.
+
+     You in the hammock--And that was a year--
+       Fully a year ago, I guess!--
+     And what do we care for their Guinevere
+       And her Launcelot and their lordliness!--
+       You in the hammock still, and--Yes--
+     Kiss me again, my dear!
+
+
+
+
+The Rise and Fall of William Johnson
+
+(A CHRISTMAS STORY)
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It has always been one of my pet notions that on Christmas day we ought
+not to remember those only who may be related to us and those who are
+prosperous, but, that we should, while remembering them, forget not the
+unfortunate who are dead to all the world but themselves and who suffer
+in prison walls, not alone for their own crimes, perhaps, but for the
+crimes of their parents and their grandparents before them. Few of the
+prosperous and happy pause to-day to think of the convict whose days are
+all alike and whose nights are filled with bitterness.
+
+At the risk of being dull and prosy, I am going to tell a story that is
+not especially humorous or pathetic, but merely true. Every Christmas I
+try to tell a true story. I do not want the day to go by without some
+sort of recognition by which to distinguish it from other days, and so I
+celebrate it in that way.
+
+This is the story of William Johnson, a Swede, who went to Wyoming
+Territory, perhaps fifteen years ago, to seek his fortune among
+strangers, and who, without even a knowledge of the English language,
+began in his patient way to work at whatever his hands found to do. He
+was a plain, long-legged man, with downcast eyes and nose.
+
+There was some surprise expressed all around when he was charged one day
+by Jake Feinn with feloniously taking, stealing, carrying away and
+driving away one team of horses, the property of the affiant, and of the
+value of $200 contrary to the statutes in such case made and provided,
+and against the peace and dignity of the Territory of Wyoming.
+
+Everybody laughed at the idea of Jake Feinn owning a team worth $200,
+and, as he was also a chronic litigator, it was generally conceded that
+Johnson would be discharged. But his misfortunes seemed to swoop down on
+him from the very first moment. At the preliminary examination Johnson
+acted like a man who was dazed. He couldn't talk or understand English
+very well. He failed to get a lawyer. He pleaded guilty, not knowing
+what it meant, and was permitted to take it back. He had no witnesses,
+and the Court was in something of a hurry as it had to prepare a speech
+that afternoon to be delivered in the evening on the "Beauties of
+Eternal Justice," and so it was adjudged that in default of $500 bail
+the said William Johnson be committed to the County Jail of Albany
+County in said Territory, there to await the action of the Grand Jury
+for the succeeding term of the District Court for the Second Judicial
+District of Wyoming.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Meekly and silently William Johnson left the warm and stimulating Indian
+summer air of October to enter the dark and undesirable den of a felon.
+Patiently he accepted the heart-breaking destiny which seemed really to
+belong to some one else. He put in his days studying an English primer
+all the forenoon and doing housework around the jail kitchen in the
+afternoon.
+
+He was a very tall man and a very awkward man, with large, intellectual
+joints and a sad face. When he got so that he could read a little I went
+in to hear him one day. He stood up like an exaggerated schoolboy, and
+while he bored holes in the page of his primer with a long and corneous
+forefinger he read that little poem:
+
+     Pray tell me, bird, what you can see
+     Up in the top of that tall tree?
+     Have you no fear that some rude boy
+     May come and mar your peace and joy?
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Oh, no, my child, I fear no harm,
+     While with my song I thus can charm.
+     My mate is here, my youngsters, too,
+     And here we sit and sing to you.
+
+Finally, the regular term of the District Court opened. Men who had come
+for a long distance to vaunt their ignorance and other qualifications as
+jurors could be seen on the streets. Here and there you could see the
+familiar faces of those who had served as jurors for years and yet had
+never lost a case. Wealthy delinquents began to subpoena large
+detachments of witnesses at the expense of the county, and the poor
+petty larceny people in the jail began to wonder why their witnesses
+didn't show up. Slowly the wheels of Justice began to revolve. Ever and
+anon could be heard the strident notes which came from the room where
+the counsel for the defense was filing his objections, while now and
+then the ear was startled with the low quash of the indictment.
+
+Finally the case of the Territory against William Johnson was called.
+
+"Mr. Johnson," asked Judge Blair, "have you counsel?"
+
+The defendant said he had not.
+
+"Are you able to employ counsel?"
+
+He evidently wasn't able to employ counsel twenty minutes, even if it
+could be had at a dollar a day.
+
+"Do you wish to have the Court appoint counsel for you?"
+
+He saw no other way, so he said yes.
+
+Where criminals are too poor to employ counsel the Court selects a poor
+but honest young lawyer, who practices on the defendant. I was appointed
+that way myself once to defend a man who swears he will kill me as soon
+as he gets out of the penitentiary.
+
+William Johnson was peculiarly unfortunate in the election of his
+counsel. The man who was appointed to defend him was a very much
+overestimated young man who started the movement himself. He was
+courageous, however, and perfectly willing to wade in where angels would
+naturally hang back. His brain would not have soiled the finest fabric,
+but his egotism had a biceps muscle on it like a loaf of Vienna bread.
+He was the kind of young man who loves to go and see the drama and
+explain it along about five minutes in advance of the company in a loud,
+trenchant voice.
+
+He defended William Johnson. Thus in the prime of life, hardly
+understanding a word of the trial, stunned, helpless, alone, the latter
+began upon his term of five years in the penitentiary. His patient,
+gentle face impressed me as it did others, and his very helplessness
+thus became his greatest help.
+
+It is not egotism which prompts me to tell here of what followed. It was
+but natural that I should go to Judge Blair, who, besides being the most
+popular Judge in the West, had, as I knew, a kind heart. He agreed with
+me that Johnson's side of the case had not been properly presented and
+that the jury had grave doubts about the horses having been worth enough
+to constitute a felony even if Johnson had unlawfully taken them. Other
+lawyers said that at the worst it was a civil offense, or trover, or
+trespass, or wilful negligence, or embezzlement, or conversion, but that
+the remedy was by civil process. One lawyer said it was an outrage, and
+Charlie Bramel said that if Johnson would put up $50 he would agree to
+jerk him out of the jug on a writ of habeas corpus before dinner.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Seeing how the sentiment ran, I resolved to start a petition for
+Johnson's pardon. I got the signatures of the Court, the court
+officers, the jury and the leading men of business in the country. Just
+as I was about to take it to Gov. Thayer, there was an incident at the
+penitentiary. William Johnson had won the hearts of the Warden and the
+guards to that extent that he was sent out one afternoon to assist one
+of the guards in overseeing the labor of a squad working in a stone
+quarry near by. Taking advantage of a time when the guard was a few
+hundred feet away, the other convicts knocked Johnson down and tried to
+get away. He got up, however, and interested them till the guard got to
+him and the escape was prevented. Johnson waited till all was secure
+again, and then fainted from loss of blood occasioned by a scalp wound
+over which he had a long fight afterward with erysipelas.
+
+This was all lucky for me, and when I presented the petition to the
+Governor I had a strong case, made more so by the heroic action of a man
+who had been unjustly condemned.
+
+There is but little more to tell. The Governor intimated that he would
+take favorable action upon the petition, but he wanted time. My great
+anxiety, as I told him, was to get the pardon in time so that Johnson
+could spend his Christmas in freedom. I had seen him frequently, and he
+was pale and thin to emaciation. He could not live long if he remained
+where he was. I spoke earnestly of his good character since his
+incarceration, and the Governor promised prompt action. But he was
+called away in December and I feared that he might, in the rush and
+pressure of other business, forget the case of Johnson till after the
+holidays. So I telegraphed him and made his life a burden to him till
+the afternoon of the 24th, when the 4:50 train brought the pardon. In my
+poor, weak way I have been in the habit for some years of making
+Christmas presents, but nothing that could be bought with money ever
+made me a happier donor or donee than the simple act of giving to
+William Johnson four years of freedom which he did not look for.
+
+I went away to spend my own Christmas, but not till I had given Johnson
+a few dollars to help him get another start, and had made him promise to
+write me how he got along. And so that to me was a memorable and a
+joyous Christmas, for I had made myself happy by making others happy.
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+P. S.--Perhaps I ought not to close this account so abruptly as I have
+done, for the reader will naturally ask whether Johnson ever wrote me,
+as he said he would. I only received one letter from him, and that I
+found when I got back, a few days after Christmas. It was quite
+characteristic, and read as follows:
+
+     "Laramy the twenty-fitt dec.
+
+     FRENT NIE.
+
+"When you get this Letter i will Be in A nuther tearritory whare the
+weekid seize from trubbling & the weery air at Reast excoose my Poor
+writing i refer above to the tearritory of Utaw where i will begin Life
+A new & all will be fergott.
+
+"I hop god wil Reward you In Caise i Shood not Be Abel to Do so.
+
+"You have Bin a good frent off me and so I am shure you will enjoy to
+heer of my success i hope the slooth hounds of Justiss will not try to
+folly me for it will be worse than Useles as i have a damsite better
+team than i had Before.
+
+"It is the Sheariff's team wich i have got & his name is denis, tel the
+Governor to Parden me if i have seeamed Rude i shall go to some new
+Plais whare i will not be Looked upon with Suchpishion wishing you a
+mary Crissmus hapy new year and April Fool i will Close from your tru
+Frent
+
+     "BILL JOHNSON."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+From Delphi to Camden
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+       I.
+
+     From Delphi to Camden--little Hoosier towns,--
+     But here were classic meadows, blooming dales and downs
+     And here were grassy pastures, dewy as the leas
+     Trampled over by the trains of royal pageantries.
+     And here the winding highway loitered through the shade
+     Of the hazel-covert, where, in ambuscade,
+     Loomed the larch and linden, and the green-wood tree
+     Under which bold Robin Hood loud hallooed to me!
+
+     Here the stir and riot of the busy day,
+     Dwindled to the quiet of the breath of May;
+     Gurgling brooks, and ridges lily-marged, and spanned
+     By the rustic bridges found in Wonderland!
+
+       II.
+
+     From Delphi to Camden--from Camden back again!--
+     And now the night was on us, and the lightning and the rain;
+     And still the way was wondrous with the flash of hill and plain,--
+     The stars like printed asterisks--the moon a murky stain!
+
+     And I thought of tragic idyl, and of flight and hot pursuit,
+     And the jingle of the bridle, and cuirass, and spur on boot,
+     As our horses's hooves struck showers from the flinty bowlders set
+     In freshet ways with writhing reed and drowning violet.
+
+     And we passed beleaguered castles, with their battlements a-frown;
+     Where a tree fell in the forest was a turret toppled down;
+     While my master and commander--the brave knight I galloped with
+     On this reckless road to ruin or to fame, was--Dr. Smith!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Grammatical Boy]
+
+
+Sometimes a sad homesick feeling comes over me when I compare the
+prevailing style of anecdote and school literature with the old McGuffey
+brand, so well known thirty years ago. To-day our juvenile literature,
+it seems to me, is so transparent, so easy to understand that I am not
+surprised to learn that the rising generation shows signs of
+lawlessness.
+
+Boys to-day do not use the respectful language and large, luxuriant
+words that they did when Mr. McGuffey used to stand around and report
+their conversations for his justly celebrated school reader. It is
+disagreeable to think of, but it is none the less true, and for one I
+think we should face the facts.
+
+I ask the careful student of school literature to compare the following
+selection, which I have written myself with great care, and arranged
+with special reference to the matter of choice and difficult words, with
+the flippant and commonplace terms used in the average school book of
+to-day.
+
+One day as George Pillgarlic was going to his tasks, and while passing
+through the wood, he spied a tall man approaching in an opposite
+direction along the highway.
+
+"Ah!" thought George, in a low, mellow tone of voice, "whom have we
+here?"
+
+"Good morning, my fine fellow," exclaimed the stranger, pleasantly. "Do
+you reside in this locality?"
+
+"Indeed I do," retorted George, cheerily, doffing his cap. "In yonder
+cottage, near the glen, my widowed mother and her thirteen children
+dwell with me."
+
+"And is your father dead?" exclaimed the man, with a rising inflection.
+
+"Extremely so," murmured the lad, "and, oh, sir, that is why my poor
+mother is a widow."
+
+"And how did your papa die?" asked the man, as he thoughtfully stood on
+the other foot awhile.
+
+"Alas! sir," said George, as a large hot tear stole down his pale cheek,
+and fell with a loud report on the warty surface of his bare foot, "he
+was lost at sea in a bitter gale. The good ship foundered two years ago
+last Christmastide, and father was foundered at the same time. No one
+knew of the loss of the ship and that the crew was drowned until the
+next spring, and it was then too late."
+
+"And what is your age, my fine fellow?" quoth the stranger.
+
+"If I live till next October," said the boy, in a declamatory tone of
+voice suitable for a Second Reader. "I will be seven years of age."
+
+"And who provides for your mother and her large family of children?"
+queried the man.
+
+"Indeed, I do, sir," replied George, in a shrill tone. "I toil, oh, so
+hard, sir, for we are very, very poor, and since my elder sister, Ann,
+was married and brought her husband home to live with us, I have to toil
+more assiduously than heretofore."
+
+"And by what means do you obtain a livelihood?" exclaimed the man, in
+slowly measured and grammatical words.
+
+"By digging wells, kind sir," replied George, picking up a tired ant as
+he spoke and stroking it on the back. "I have a good education, and so I
+am able to dig wells as well as a man. I do this day-times and take in
+washing at night. In this way I am enabled barely to maintain our family
+in a precarious manner; but, oh, sir, should my other sisters marry, I
+fear that some of my brothers-in-law would have to suffer."
+
+"And do you not fear the deadly fire-damp?" asked the stranger in an
+earnest tone.
+
+"Not by a damp sight," answered George, with a low gurgling laugh, for
+he was a great wag.
+
+"You are indeed a brave lad," exclaimed the stranger, as he repressed a
+smile. "And do you not at times become very weary and wish for other
+ways of passing your time?"
+
+"Indeed, I do, sir," said the lad. "I would fain run and romp and be gay
+like other boys, but I must engage in constant manual exercise, or we
+will have no bread to eat, and I have not seen a pie since papa perished
+in the moist and moaning sea."
+
+"And what if I were to tell you that your papa did not perish at sea,
+but was saved from a humid grave?" asked the stranger in pleasing tones.
+
+"Ah, sir," exclaimed George, in a genteel manner, again doffing his cap,
+"I am too polite to tell you what I would say, and beside, sir, you are
+much larger than I am."
+
+"But, my brave lad," said the man in low musical tones, "do you not know
+me, Georgie? Oh, George!"
+
+"I must say," replied George, "that you have the advantage of me. Whilst
+I may have met you before, I cannot at this moment place you, sir."
+
+"My son! oh, my son!" murmured the man, at the same time taking a large
+strawberry mark out of his valise and showing it to the lad. "Do you not
+recognize your parent on your father's side? When our good ship went to
+the bottom, all perished save me. I swam several miles through the
+billows, and at last utterly exhausted, gave up all hope of life.
+Suddenly I stepped on something hard. It was the United States.
+
+"And now, my brave boy," exclaimed the man with great glee, "see what I
+have brought for you." It was but the work of a moment to unclasp from a
+shawl-strap which he held in his hand and present to George's astonished
+gaze a large 40-cent water-melon, which until now had been concealed by
+the shawl-strap.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Craqueodoom.]
+
+
+     The Crankadox leaned o'er the edge of the moon
+       And wistfully gazed on the sea
+     Where the Gryxabodill madly whistled a tune
+       To the air of Ti-fol-de-ding-dee.
+     The quavering shriek of the Fliupthecreek
+       Was fitfully wafted afar
+     To the Queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek
+       With the pulverized rays of a star.
+
+     The Gool closed his ear on the voice of the Grig,
+       And his heart it grew heavy as lead
+     As he marked the Baldekin adjusting his wig
+       On the opposite side of his head;
+     And the air it grew chill as the Gryxabodill
+       Raised his dank, dripping fins to the skies,
+     To plead with the Plunk for the use of her bill
+       To pick the tears out of his eyes.
+
+     The ghost of the Zhack flitted by in a trance;
+       And the Squidjum hid under a tub
+     As he heard the loud hooves of the Hooken advance
+       With a rub-a-dub-dub-a-dub dub!
+     And the Crankadox cried as he laid down and died,
+       "My fate there is none to bewail!"
+     While the Queen of the Wunks drifted over the tide
+       With a long piece of crape to her tail.
+
+
+
+
+The Chemist of the Carolinas
+
+
+Asheville, N. C., Dec. 13--Last week I went out into the mountains for
+the purpose of securing a holly tree with red berries on it for
+Yuletide. I had noticed in all my pictures of Christmas festivities in
+England that the holly, with cranberries on it, constituted the
+background of Yuletide. A Yuletide in England without a holly bough and
+a little mistletoe in it wouldn't be worth half price. Here these
+vegetables grow in great confusion, owing to the equable climate, and so
+the holly tree is within the reach of all.
+
+I resolved to secure one personally, so I sped away into the mountains
+where, in less than the time it takes to tell it, I had succeeded in
+finding a holly tree and losing myself. It is a very solemn sensation to
+feel that you are lost, and that before you can be found something is
+liable to happen to the universe.
+
+I wandered aimlessly about for half an hour, hoping that I would be
+missed in society and some one sent in search of me. I was just about to
+give up in despair and sink down on a bed of moss with the idea of
+shuffling off six or seven feet of mortal coil when, a few rods away, I
+saw a blue smoke issuing from the side of the mountain and rising toward
+the sky. I went rapidly towards it and found it to be a plain dugout
+with a dirt floor. I entered and cast myself upon a rude nail keg,
+allowing my feet to remain suspended at the lower end of my legs, an
+attitude which I frequently affect when fatigued.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The place was not occupied at the time I entered, though there was a
+fire and things looked as though the owner had not been long absent. It
+seemed to be a kind of laboratory, for I could see here and there the
+earmarks of the chemist. I feared at first that it was a bomb factory,
+but as I could not see any of these implements in a perfected state I
+decided that it was safe and waited for the owner to arrive.
+
+After a time I heard a low guttural footstep approaching up the hill. I
+went to the door and exclaimed to the proprietor as he came, "Merry
+Christmas, Colonel."
+
+"Merry Christmas be d----d!" said he in the same bantering tone. "What
+in three dashes, two hyphens and an astonisher do you want here, you
+double-dashed and double-blanketed blank to dash and return!!"
+
+The wording here is my own, but it gives an idea of the way the
+conversation was drifting. You can see by his manner that literary
+people are not alone in being surly, irritable and unreasonable.
+
+So I humored him and spoke kindly to him and smoothed down his ruffled
+plumage with my gay badinage, for he wore a shawl and you can never tell
+whether a man wearing a shawl is armed or not. I give herewith a view of
+this chemist as he appeared on the morning I met him.
+
+It will be noticed that he was a man about medium height with clear-cut
+features and hair and retreating brisket. His hair was dark and hung in
+great waves which seemed to have caught the sunlight and retained it
+together with a great many other atmospheric phenomena. He wore a straw
+hat, such as I once saw Horace Greeley catch grasshoppers in, on the
+banks of the Kinnickinnick, just before he caught a small trout.
+
+I spent some time with him watching him as he made his various
+experiments. Finally, he showed me a new beverage that he had been
+engaged in perfecting. It was inclosed in a dark brown stone receptacle
+and was held in place by a common corn-cob stopper. I took some of it
+in order to show that I confided in him. I do not remember anything else
+distinctly. The fumes of this drink went at once to my brain, where it
+had what might be termed a complete walkover.
+
+I now have no hesitation in saying that the fluid must have been
+alcoholic in its nature, for when I regained my consciousness I was
+extremely elsewhere. I found myself on a road which seemed to lead in
+two opposite directions, and my mind was very much confused.
+
+I hardly know how I got home, but I finally did get there, accompanied
+by a strong leaning towards Prohibition. A few days ago I received the
+following letter:
+
+Sir:--I at first thought when I saw you at my laboratory the other day
+that you was a low, inquisitive cuss and so I spoke to you in harsh
+tones and reproached you and upbraided you by calling you everything I
+could lay my tongue to, but since then I have concluded that you didn't
+know any better.
+
+You said to me that you found my place by seeing the smoke coming out of
+the chimbley; that has given me an idea that you might know something
+about what's called a smoke consumer of which I have heard. I am doing a
+fair business, but I am a good deal pestered, as you might say, by
+people who come in on me when I do not want to mingle in society. A man
+in the chemist business cannot succeed if he is all the time
+interrupted by Tom, Dick and Harry coming in on him when he is in the
+middle of an experiment.
+
+I am engaged in making a remedy for which there is a great demand, but
+its manufacture is regarded with suspicion by United States officials
+who want to be considered zealous. Rather than be drawn into any
+difficulty with these people, I have always courted retirement and
+avoided the busy haunts of men. Still some strolling idiot or other will
+occasionally see the smoke from my little home and drop in on me.
+
+Could you find out about this smoke consumer and see what the price
+would be and let me known as soon as possible?
+
+If you could do so I can be of great service to you. Leave the letter
+under the big stone where you found yourself the other day when you came
+out of your trance. I call it a trance because this letter might fall
+into the hands of your family. If you will find out about this smoke
+consumer and leave the information where I have told you you will find
+on the following day a large jug of mountain dew in the same place that
+will make your hair grow and give a roseate hue to your otherwise gloomy
+life.
+
+Do not try to come here again. It might compromise me. A man in your
+position may not have anything to risk, but with me it is different. My
+unsullied reputation is all I have to bequeath to my children. If you
+come often there will not be enough left to go around, as I have a large
+family.
+
+If you hear of anybody that wants to trade a good double-barrel shotgun
+for a small portable worm and retort that is too small for my business,
+I can give him a good trade on it if he will let you know. This is a
+good machine for experimental purposes, and being no larger than a
+Babcock fire-extinguisher it can be readily conveyed to a place of
+safety at a very rapid rate.
+
+You might say to your friends that we shall try in the future as we have
+in the past to keep up the standard of our goods, so as to merit a
+continued patronage.
+
+Citizens of the United States, or those who have declared their
+intention to become such, will always be welcome at our works, provided
+they are not office-holders in any capacity. We have no use for those
+who are in any way connected with the public teat.
+
+     Dictated letter.
+
+     I. B. MOONSHINE.
+
+I hope that any one will feel perfectly free to address me in relation
+to anything referred to in the above letter. All communications
+containing remittances will be regarded as strictly confidential.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+His Crazy-Bone
+
+
+     The man that struck his crazy-bone,
+       All suddenly jerked up one foot
+       And hopped three vivid hops, and put
+         His elbow straight before him--then
+     Flashed white as pallid Parian stone,
+       And clinched his eyes, and hopped again.
+
+     He spake no word--he made no moan--
+       He muttered no invective--but
+       Just gripped his eyelids tighter shut,
+         And as the world whizzed past him then,
+     He only knew his crazy-bone
+       Was stricken--so--he hopped again.
+
+
+
+
+Prying Open the Future
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Ring the bell and the door will open," is the remark made by a small
+label over a bell-handle in Third avenue, near Eighteenth street, where
+Mme. La Foy reads the past, present and future at so much per read.
+Love, marriage, divorce, illness, speculation and sickness are there
+handled with the utmost impunity by "Mme. La Foy, the famous scientific
+astrologist," who has monkeyed with the planets for twenty years, and if
+she wanted any information has "read it in the stars."
+
+I rang the bell the other day to see if the door would open. It did so
+after considerable delay, and a pimply boy in knee pants showed me
+upstairs into the waiting-room. After a while I was removed to the
+consultation-room, where Mme. La Foy, seated behind a small oil-cloth
+covered table, rakes up old personalities and pries into the future at
+cut rates.
+
+Skirmishing about among the planets for twenty years involves a great
+deal of fatigue and exposure, to say nothing of the night work, and so
+Mme. La Foy has the air of one who has put in a very busy life. She is
+as familiar with planets though as you or I might be with our own
+family, and calls them by their first names. She would know Jupiter,
+Venus, Saturn, Adonis or any of the other fixed stars the darkest night
+that ever blew.
+
+"Mme. La Foy De Graw," said I, bowing with the easy grace of a gentleman
+of the old school, "would you mind peering into the future for me about
+a half dollar's worth, not necessarily for publication, et cetera."
+
+"Certainly not. What would you like to know?"
+
+"Why, I want to know all I can for the money," I said in a bantering
+tone. "Of course I do not wish to know what I already know. It is what I
+do not know that I desire to know. Tell me what I do not know, Madame. I
+will detain you but a moment."
+
+She gave me back my large, round half dollar and told me that she was
+already weary. She asked me to excuse her. She was willing to unveil the
+future to me in her poor, weak way, but she could not guarantee to let a
+large flood of light into the darkened basement of a benighted mind for
+half a dollar.
+
+"You can tell me what year and on what day of the month you were born,"
+said Mme. La Foy, "and I will outline your life to you. I generally
+require a lock of the hair, but in your case we will dispense with it."
+
+I told her when I was born and the circumstances as well as I could
+recall them.
+
+"This brings you under Venus, Mercury and Mars. These three planets were
+in conjunction at the time of your birth. You were born when the sign
+was wrong and you have had more or less trouble ever since. Had you been
+born when the sign was in the head or the heart, instead of the feet,
+you would not have spread out over the ground so much.
+
+"Your health is very good, as is the health of those generally who are
+born under the same auspices that you were. People who are born under
+the reign of the crab are apt to be cancerous. You, however, have great
+lung power and wonderful gastric possibilities. Yet, at times, you would
+be easily upset. A strong cyclone that would unroof a court-house or tip
+over a through train would also upset you, in spite of your broad, firm
+feet if the wind got behind one of your ears.
+
+"You will be married early, and you will be very happy, though your wife
+will not enjoy herself very much. Your wife will be much happier during
+her second marriage.
+
+"You will prosper better in business matters without forming any
+partnerships. Do not go into partnership with a small, dark man who has
+neuralgia and a fine yacht. He has abundant means, but he will go
+through you like an electric shock.
+
+"Tuesdays and Saturdays will be your most fortunate days on which to
+borrow money of men with light hair. Mondays and Thursdays will be your
+best days for approaching dark men.
+
+"Look out for a low-set man accompanied by an office cat, both of whom
+are engaged in the newspaper business. He is crafty and bald-headed on
+his father's side. He prints the only paper that contains the full text
+of his speeches at testimonials and dinners given to other people. Do
+not loan him money on any account.
+
+"You would succeed as well a musician or an inventor, but you would not
+do well as a poet. You have all the keen sensibility and strong passion
+of a poet, but you haven't the hair. Do not try poesy.
+
+"In the future I see you very prosperous. You are on the lecture
+platform speaking. Large crowds of people are jostling each other at the
+box-office and trying to get their money back.
+
+"Then I see you riding behind a flexible horse that must have cost a
+large sum of money. You are smoking a cigar that has never been in use
+before. Then Venus bisects the orbit of Mars and I see you going home
+with your head tied up in the lap robe, you and your spirited horse in
+the same ambulance."
+
+"But do you see anything for me in the future, Mme. La Foy?" I asked,
+taking my feet off the table, the better to watch her features,
+"anything that would seem to indicate political preferment, a reward for
+past services to my country, as it were?"
+
+"No, not clearly. But wait a moment. Your horoscope begins to get a
+little more intelligent. I see you at the door of the Senate Chamber.
+You are counting over your money and looking sadly at a schedule of
+prices. Then you turn sorrowfully away and decide to buy a seat in the
+House instead. Many years after I see you in the Senate. You are there
+day after day attending to your duties. You are there early, before any
+one else, and I see you pacing back and forth, up and down the aisles,
+sweeping out the Senate Chamber and dusting off the seats and
+rejuvenating the cuspidors."
+
+"Does this horoscope which you are using this season give you any idea
+as to whether money matters will be scarce with me next week or
+otherwise, and if so what I had better do about it?"
+
+"Towards the last of the week you will experience considerable monetary
+prostration, but just as you have become despondent, at the very tail
+end of the week, the horizon will clear up and a slight, dark gentleman,
+with wide trousers, who is a total stranger to you, will loan you quite
+a sum of money, with the understanding that it is to be repaid on
+Monday."
+
+"Then you would not advise me to go to Coney Island until the week after
+next?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Would it be etiquette in dancing a quadrille to swing a young person of
+the opposite sex twice round at a select party when you are but slightly
+acquainted, but feel quite confident that her partner is unarmed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does your horoscope tell a person what to do with raspberry jelly that
+will not jell?"
+
+"No, not at the present prices."
+
+"So you predict an early marriage, with threatening weather and strong
+prevailing easterly winds along the Gulf States?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And is there no way that this early marriage may be evaded?"
+
+"No, not unless you put it off till later in life."
+
+"Thank you," I said, rising and looking out the window over a broad
+sweep of undulating alley and wind-swept roofing, "and now, how much are
+you out on this?"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"What's the damage?"
+
+"Oh, one dollar."
+
+"But don't you advertise to read the past, present and future for fifty
+cents?"
+
+"Well, that is where a person has had other information before in his
+life and has some knowledge to begin with; but where I fill up a vacant
+mind entirely and store it with facts of all kinds and stock it up so
+that it can do business for itself, I charge a dollar. I cannot
+thoroughly refit and refurnish a mental tenement from the ground up for
+fifty cents."
+
+I do not think we have as good "Astrologists" now as we used to have.
+Astrologists cannot crawl under the tent and pry into the future as they
+could three or four thousand years ago.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Silberberg
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     I like me yet dot leedle chile
+       Vich climb my lap up in to-day,
+       Unt took my cheap cigair avay,
+     Unt laugh and kiss me purty whvile,--
+       Possescially I like dose mout'
+         Vich taste his moder's like--unt so,
+     Off my cigair it gone glean out
+       --Yust let it go!
+
+     Vat I caire den for anyding?
+       Der paper schlip out fon my hand,
+       And all my odvairtizement stand,
+     Mitout new changements boddering;
+       I only dink--I have me dis
+         Von leedle boy to pet unt love
+       Unt play me vit, unt hug unt kiss--
+         Unt dot's enough!
+
+     Der plans unt pairposes I vear
+       Out in der vorld all fades avay;
+       Unt vit der beeznid of der day
+     I got me den no time to spare;
+       Der caires of trade vas caires no more--
+         Dem cash accounds dey dodge me by,
+       Unt vit my chile I roll der floor,
+         Unt laugh unt gry!
+
+     Ah! frient! dem childens is der ones
+       Dot got some happy times--you bet!--
+       Dot's vy ven I been grooved up yet
+     I vish I vould been leedle vonce!
+       Unt ven dot leetle roozter tries
+         Dem baby-tricks I used to do,
+       My mout it vater, unt my eyes
+         Dey vater too!
+
+     Unt all der summertime unt spring
+       Of childhood it come back to me,
+       So dot it vas a dream I see
+     Ven I yust look at anyding,
+       Unt ven dot leedle boy run by,
+         I dink "dot's me," fon hour to hour
+       Schtill chasing yet dose butterfly
+         Fon flower to flower!
+
+     Oxpose I vas lots money vairt,
+       Mit blenty schtone-front schtore to rent
+       Unt mor'gages at twelf per-cent,
+     Unt diamonds in my ruffled shairt,--
+       I make a'signment of all dot,
+         Unt tairn it over mit a schmile,
+       Obber you please--but don'd forgot
+         I keep dot chile!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Spirits at Home
+
+
+(THE FAMILY)
+
+     There was Father, and Mother, and Emmy, and Jane
+       And Lou, and Ellen, and John and me--
+     And father was killed in the war, and Lou
+     She died of consumption, and John did too,
+       And Emmy she went with the pleurisy.
+
+(THE SPIRITS)
+
+     Father believed in 'em all his life--
+       But Mother, at first, she'd shake her head--
+     Till after the battle of Champion Hill,
+     When many a flag in the winder-sill
+       Had crape mixed in with the white and red!
+
+     I used to doubt 'em myself till then--
+       But me and Mother was satisfied
+     When Ellen she set, and Father came
+     And rapped "God bless you!" and Mother's name,
+       And "The flag's up here!"   And we just all cried!
+
+     Used to come often after that,
+       And talk to us--just as he used to do,
+     Pleasantest kind! And once, for John,
+     He said he was "lonesome but wouldn't let on--
+       Fear Mother would worry, and Emmy and Lou."
+
+     But Lou was the bravest girl on earth--
+       For all she never was hale and strong
+     She'd have her fun! With her voice clean lost
+     She'd laugh and joke us that when she crossed
+       To father, _we'd_ all come taggin' along.
+
+     Died--just that way! And the raps was thick
+       _That_ night, as they often since occur,
+     Extry loud. And when Lou got back
+     She said it was Father and her--and "whack!"
+       She tuck the table--and we knowed _her_!
+
+     John and Emmy, in five years more,
+       Both had went.--And it seemed like fate!--
+     For the old home it burnt down,--but Jane
+     And me and Ellen we built again
+       The new house, here, on the old estate.
+
+     And a happier family I don't know
+       Of anywheres--unless its _them_--
+     Father, with all his love for Lou,
+     And her there with him, and healthy, too,
+       And laughin', with John and little Em.
+
+     And, first we moved in the new house here,
+       They all dropped in for a long pow-wow.
+     "We like your buildin', of course," Lou said,--
+     "But wouldn't swop with you to save your head--
+       For _we_ live in the ghost of the old house, now!"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Healthy but out of the Race.]
+
+
+In an interview which I have just had with myself, I have positively
+stated, and now repeat, that at neither the St. Louis nor Chicago
+Convention will my name be presented as a candidate.
+
+But my health is bully.
+
+We are upon the threshold of a most bitter and acrimonious fight. Great
+wisdom and foresight are needed at this hour, and the true patriot will
+forget himself and his own interests in his great yearning for the good
+of his common country and the success of his party. What we need at this
+time is a leader whose name will not be presented at the convention but
+whose health is good.
+
+No one has a fuller or better conception of the great duties of the hour
+than I. How clearly to my mind are the duties of the American citizen
+outlined to-day! I have never seen with clearer, keener vision the
+great needs of my country, and my pores have never been more open. Four
+years ago I was in some doubt relative to certain important questions
+which now are clearly and satisfactorily settled in my mind. I hesitated
+then where now I am fully established, and my tongue was coated in the
+morning when I arose, whereas now I bound lightly from bed, kick out a
+window, climb to the roof by means of the fire-escape and there rehearse
+speeches which I will make this fall in case it should be discovered at
+either of the conventions that my name alone can heal the rupture in the
+party and prevent its works from falling out.
+
+I think my voice is better also that it was either four, eight, twelve
+or sixteen years ago, and it does not tire me so much to think of things
+to say from the tail-gate of a train as it did when I first began to
+refrain from presenting my name to conventions.
+
+According to my notion, our candidate should be a plain man, a magnetic
+but hairless patriot, who should be suddenly thought of by a majority of
+the convention and nominated by acclamation. He should not be a
+hide-bound politician, but on the contrary he should be greatly
+startled, while down cellar sprouting potatoes, to learn that he has
+been nominated. That's the kind of man who always surprises everybody
+with his sagacity when an emergency arises.
+
+In going down my cellar stairs the committee will do well to avoid
+stepping on a large and venomous dog who sleeps on the top stair. Or I
+will tie him in the barn if I can be informed when I am liable to be
+startled.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I have always thought that the neatest method of calling a man to
+public life was the one adopted some years since in the case of
+Cincinnatus. He was one day breaking a pair of nervous red steers in the
+north field. It was a hot day in July, and he was trying to summer
+fallow a piece of ground where the jimson weeds grew seven feet high.
+The plough would not scour, and the steers had turned the yoke twice on
+him. Cincinnatus had hung his toga on a tamarac pole to strike a furrow
+by, and hadn't succeeded in getting the plough in more than twice in
+going across. Dressing as he did in the Roman costume of 458 B. C., the
+blackberry vines had scratched his massive legs till they were a sight
+to behold. He had scourged Old Bright and twisted the tail of Bolly till
+he was sick at heart. All through the long afternoon, wearing a hot,
+rusty helmet with rabbit-skin ear tabs he had toiled on, when suddenly a
+majority of the Roman voters climbed over the fence and asked him to
+become dictator in place of Spurious Melius.
+
+Putting on his toga and buckling an old hame strap around his loins he
+said: "Gentlemen, if you will wait till I go to the house and get some
+vaseline on my limbs I will do your dictating for you as low as you have
+ever had it done." He then left his team standing in the furrow while he
+served his country in an official capacity for a little over twenty-nine
+years, after which he went back and resumed his farming.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Though 2,300 years have since passed away and historians have been
+busy with that epoch ever since, no one has yet discovered the methods
+by which Cincinnatus organized and executed this, the most successful
+"People's Movement" of which we are informed.
+
+The great trouble with the modern boom is that it is too precocious. It
+knows more before it gets its clothes on than the nurse, the physician
+and its parents. It then dies before the sap starts in the maple
+forests.
+
+My object in writing this letter is largely to tone down and keep in
+check any popular movement in my behalf until the weather in more
+settled. A season-cracked boom is a thing I despise.
+
+I inclose my picture, however, which shows that I am so healthy that it
+keeps me awake nights. I go about the house singing all the time and
+playing pranks on my grandparents. My eye dances with ill-concealed
+merriment, and my conversation is just as sparkling as it can be.
+
+I believe that during this campaign we should lay aside politics so far
+as possible and unite on an unknown, homely, but sparkling man. Let us
+lay aside all race prejudices and old party feeling and elect a magnetic
+chump who does not look so very well, but who feels first rate.
+
+Towards the middle of June I shall go away to an obscure place where I
+cannot be reached. My mail will be forwarded to me by a gentleman who
+knows how I feel in relation to the wants and needs of the country.
+
+To those who have prospered during the past twenty years let me say they
+owe it to the perpetuation of the principles and institutions towards
+the establishment and maintenance of which I have given the best
+energies of my life. To those who have been unfortunate let me say
+frankly that they owe it to themselves.
+
+I have never had less malaria or despondency in my system that I have
+this spring. My cheeks have a delicate bloom on them like a russet
+apple, and my step is light and elastic. In the morning I arise from my
+couch and, touching a concealed spring, it becomes an upright piano. I
+then bathe in a low divan which contains a jointed tank. I then sing
+until interfered with by property owners and tax-payers who reside near
+by. After a light breakfast of calf's liver and custard pie I go into
+the reception-room and wait for people to come and feel my pulse. In the
+afternoon I lie down on a lounge for two or three hours, wondering in
+what way I can endear myself to the laboring man. I then dine heartily
+at my club. In the evening I go to see the amateurs play "Pygmalion and
+Galatea." As I remain till the play is over, any one can see that I am a
+very robust man. After I get home I write two or three thousand words in
+my diary. I then insert myself into the bosom of my piano and sleep,
+having first removed my clothes and ironed my trousers for future
+reference.
+
+In closing, let me urge one and all to renewed effort. The prospects for
+a speedy and unqualified victory at the polls were never more roseate.
+Let us select a man upon whom we can all unite, a man who has no venom
+in him, a man who has successfully defied and trampled on the infamous
+Interstate Commerce act, a man who, though in the full flush and pride
+and bloom and fluff of life's meridian, still disdains to present his
+name to the convention.
+
+
+
+
+Lines
+
+ON HEARING A COW BAWL, IN A DEEP FIT OF DEJECTION, ON THE EVENING OF
+JULY 3, A. D. 18--
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     Portentous sound! mysteriously vast
+       And awful in the grandeur of refrain
+     That lifts the listener's hair, as it swells past,
+       And pours in turbid currents down the lane.
+
+     The small boy at the woodpile, in a dream
+       Slow trails the meat-rind o'er the listless saw;
+     The chickens roosting o'er him on the beam
+       Uplifted their drowsy heads with cootered awe.
+
+     The "Gung-oigh" of the pump is strangely stilled;
+       The smoke-house door bangs once emphatic'ly,
+     Then bangs no more, but leaves the silence filled
+       With one lorn plaint's despotic minstrelsy.
+
+     Yet I would join thy sorrowing madrigal,
+       Most melancholy cow, and sing of thee
+     Full-hearted through my tears, for, after all
+       'Tis very kine of you to sing for me.
+
+
+
+
+Me and Mary
+
+
+     All my feelin's, in the spring
+       Gits so blame contrary
+     I can't think of anything
+       Only me and Mary!
+     "Me and Mary!" all the time,
+     "Me and Mary!" like a rhyme
+     Keeps a-dinging on till I'm
+         Sick o' "Me and Mary!"
+
+     "Me and Mary! Ef us two
+       Only was together--
+     Playin' like we used to do
+       In the Aprile weather!"
+     All the night and all the day
+     I keep wishin' thataway
+     Till I'm gittin' old and gray
+       Jist on "Me and Mary!"
+
+     Muddy yit along the pike
+       Sense the winter's freezin'
+     And the orchard's backard-like
+       Bloomin' out this season;
+     Only heerd one bluebird yit--
+     Nary robin er tomtit;
+     What's the how and why of it?
+       S'pect its "Me and Mary!"
+
+     Me and Mary liked the birds--
+       That is, Mary sorto'
+     Liked them first, and afterwerds
+       W'y I thought I orto.
+     And them birds--ef Mary stood
+     Right here with me as she should--
+     They'd be singin', them birds would
+       All fer me and Mary!
+
+     Birds er not, I'm hopin' some
+       I kin git to plowin':
+     Ef the sun'll only come,
+       And the Lord allowin',
+     Guess to-morry I'll turn in
+     And git down to work agin:
+     This here loaferin' won't win;
+       Not fer me and Mary!
+
+     Fer a man that loves, like me,
+       And's afeard to name it,
+     Till some other feller, he
+       Gits the girl--dad-shame-it!
+     Wet er dry, er clouds er sun--
+     Winter gone, er jist begun--
+     Out-door work few me er none.
+       No more "Me and Mary!"
+
+
+
+
+Niagara Falls from the Nye Side
+
+
+                                     ON BOARD THE BOUNDING TRAIN,}
+                       LONGITUDE 600 MILES WEST OF A GIVEN POINT.}
+
+I visited Walton, N. Y., last week, a beautiful town in the flank of the
+Catskills, at the head of the Delaware. It was there in that quiet and
+picturesque valley that the great philanthropist and ameliator, Jay
+Gould, first attracted attention. He has a number of relatives there who
+note with pleasure the fact that Mr. Gould is not frittering away his
+means during his lifetime.
+
+In the office of Mr. Nish, of Walton, there is a map of the county made
+by Jay Gould while in the surveying business, and several years before
+he became a monarch of all he surveyed.
+
+Mr. Gould also laid out the town of Walton. Since that he has laid out
+other towns, but in a different way. He also plotted other towns.
+Plotted to lay them out, I mean.
+
+In Franklin there is an old wheelbarrow which Mr. Gould used on his
+early surveying trips. In this he carried his surveying instruments, his
+night shirt and manicure set. Connected with the wheel there is an
+arrangement by which, at night, the young surveyor could tell at a
+glance, with the aid of a piece of red chalk and a barn door, just how
+far he had traveled during the day.
+
+This instrument was no doubt the father of the pedometer and the
+cyclorama, just as the boy is frequently father to the man. It was also
+no doubt the _avant courier_ of the Dutch clock now used on freight
+cabooses, which not only shows how far the car has traveled, but also
+the rate of speed for each mile, the average rainfall and whether the
+conductor has eaten onions during the day.
+
+This instrument has worked quite a change in railroading since my
+time. Years ago I can remember when I used to ride in a caboose and
+enjoy myself, and before good fortune had made me the target of the
+alert and swift-flying whisk-broom of the palace car, it was my chief
+joy to catch a freight over the hill from Cheyenne, on the Mountain
+division. We were not due anywhere until the following day, and so at
+the top of the mountain we would cut off the caboose and let the train
+go on. We would then go into the glorious hills and gather sage-hens and
+cotton-tails. In the summer we would put in the afternoon catching trout
+in Dale Creek or gathering maiden-hair ferns in the bosky dells. Bosky
+dells were more plenty there at that time than they are now.
+
+It was a delightful sensation to know that we could loll about in the
+glorious weather, secure a small string of stark, varnished trout with
+chapped backs, hanging aimlessly by one gill to a gory willow stringer,
+and then beat our train home by two hours by letting off the brakes and
+riding twenty miles in fifteen minutes.
+
+But Mr. Gould saw that we were enjoying ourselves, and so he sat up
+nights to oppress us. The result is that the freight conductor has very
+little more fun now than Mr. Gould himself. All the enjoyment that the
+conductor of "Second Seven" has now is to pull up his train where it
+will keep the passengers of No. 5 going west from getting a view of the
+town. He can also, if he be on a night run, get under the window of a
+sleeping-car at about 1:35 a. m., and make a few desultory remarks about
+the delinquency of "Third Six" and the lassitude of Skinny Bates who is
+supposed to brake ahead on No. 11 going west. That is all the fun he has
+now.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I saw Niagara Falls on Thursday for the first time. The sight is one
+long to be remembered. I did not go to the falls, but viewed them from
+the car window in all their might, majesty, power and dominion forever.
+N. B.--Dominion of Canada.
+
+Niagara Falls plunges from a huge elevation by reason of its inability
+to remain on the sharp edge of a precipice several feet higher than the
+point to which the falls are now falling. This causes a noise to make
+its appearance, and a thick mist, composed of minute particles of
+wetness, rises to its full height and comes down again afterwards. Words
+are inadequate to show here, even with the aid of a large, powerful new
+press, the grandeur, what you may call the vertigo, of Niagara.
+Everybody from all over the world goes to see and listen to the remarks
+of this great fall. How convenient and pleasant it is to be a cataract
+like that and have people come in great crowds to see and hear you! How
+much better that is than to be a lecturer, for instance, and have to
+follow people to their homes in order to attract their attention!
+
+Many people in the United States and Canada who were once as pure as the
+beautiful snow, have fallen, but they did not attract the attention that
+the fall of Niagara does.
+
+For the benefit of those who may never have been able to witness Niagara
+Falls in winter I give here a rough sketch of the magnificent spectacle
+as I saw it from the American side. From the Canadian side the aspect of
+the falls is different, and the names on the cars are not the same, but
+the effect on one of a sensitive nature is one of intense awe. I know
+that I cannot put so much of this awe into a hurried sketch as I would
+like to. In a crude drawing, made while the train was in motion, and at
+a time when the customs officer was showing the other passengers what I
+had in my valise, of course I could not make a picture with much
+sublimity in it, but I tried to make it as true to nature as I could.
+
+The officer said that I had nothing in my luggage that was liable to
+duty, but stated that I would need heavier underwear in Canada than the
+samples I had with me.
+
+Toronto is a stirring city of 150,000 people, who are justly proud of
+her great prosperity. I only regretted that I could not stay there a
+long time.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I met a man in Cleveland, O., whose name was Macdonald. He was at the
+Weddell House, and talked freely with me about our country, asking me a
+great many questions about myself and where I lived and how I was
+prospering. While we were talking at one time he saw something in the
+paper which interested him and called him away. After he had gone I
+noticed the paragraph he had been reading, and saw that it spoke of a
+man named Macdonald who had recently arrived in town from New York, and
+who was introducing a new line of green goods.
+
+I have often wondered what there is about my general appearance which
+seemed to draw about me a cluster of green-goods men wherever I go. Is
+it the odor of new-mown hay, or the frank, open way in which I seem to
+measure the height of the loftiest buildings with my eye as I penetrate
+the busy haunts of men and throng the crowded marts of trade? Or do
+strangers suspect me of being a man of means?
+
+In Cleveland I was rather indisposed, owing to the fact that I had been
+sitting up until 2 or 3 o'clock a. m. for several nights in order to
+miss early trains. I went to a physician, who said I was suffering from
+some new and attractive disease, which he could cope with in a day or
+two. I told him to cope. He prescribed a large 42-calibre capsule which
+he said contained medical properties. It might have contained theatrical
+properties and still had room left for a baby grand piano. I do not know
+why the capsule should be so popular. I would rather swallow a porcelain
+egg or a live turtle. Doctors claim that it is to prevent the bad taste
+of the medicines, but I have never yet participated in any medicine
+which was more disagreeable than the gluey shell of an adult capsule,
+which looks like an overgrown bott and tastes like a rancid nightmare.
+
+I doubt the good taste of any one who will turn up his nose at
+castor-oil or quinine and yet meekly swallow a chrysalis with varnish on
+the outside.
+
+Everywhere I go I find people who seem pleased with the manner in which
+I have succeeded in resembling the graphic pictures made to represent me
+in _The World_. I can truly say that I am not a vain man, but it is
+certainly pleasing and gratifying to be greeted by a glance of
+recognition and a yell of genuine delight from total strangers. Many
+have seemed to suppose that the massive and undraped head shown in these
+pictures was the result of artistic license or indolence and a general
+desire to evade the task of making hair. For such people the thrill of
+joy they feel when they discover that they have not been deceived is
+marked and genuine.
+
+These pictures also stimulate the press of the country to try it
+themselves and to add other horrors which do not in any way interfere
+with the likeness, but at the same time encourage me to travel mostly by
+night.
+
+
+
+
+"Curly Locks!"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     "_Curly Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
+     Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine--
+     But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
+     And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream._"
+
+     Curly Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
+     The throb of my heart is in every line,
+     And the pulse of a passion, as airy and glad
+     In its musical beat as the little Prince had!
+
+     Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine!--
+     O, I'll dapple thy hands with these kisses of mine
+     Till the pink of the nail of each finger shall be
+     As a little pet blush in full blossom for me.
+
+     But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
+     And thou shalt have fabric as fair as a dream,--
+     The red of my veins, and the white of my love,
+     And the gold of my joy for the braiding thereof.
+
+     And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream
+     From a service of silver, with jewels agleam,--
+     At thy feet will I bide, at thy beck will I rise,
+     And twinkle my soul in the night of thine eyes!
+
+     "_Curly Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
+     Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine;
+     But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
+     And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream._"
+
+
+
+
+Lines on Turning Over a Pass
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Some newspaper men claim that they feel a great deal freer if they pay
+their fare.
+
+That is true, no doubt; but too much freedom does not agree with me. It
+makes me lawless. I sometimes think that a little wholesome restriction
+is the best thing in the world for me. That is the reason I never murmur
+at the conditions on the back of an annual pass. Of course they restrict
+me from bringing suit against the road in case of death, but I don't
+mind that. In case of my death it is my intention to lay aside the cares
+and details of business and try to secure a change of scene and
+complete rest. People who think that after my demise I shall have
+nothing better to do than hang around the musty, tobacco-spattered
+corridors of a court-room and wait for a verdict of damages against a
+courteous railroad company do not thoroughly understand my true nature.
+
+But the interstate-commerce bill does not shut out the employe! Acting
+upon this slight suggestion of hope, I wrote, a short time ago, to Mr.
+St. John, the genial and whole-souled general passenger agent of the
+Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, as follows:
+
+                                  ASHEVILLE, N. C., Feb. 10, 1887.
+
+   E. St. John, G. P. A., C., R. I. & P. R'y, Chicago.
+
+Dear Sir:--Do you not desire an employe on your charming road? I do not
+know what it is to be an employe, for I was never in that condition, but
+I pant to be one now.
+
+Of course I am ignorant of the duties of an employe, but I have always
+been a warm friend of your road and rejoiced in its success. How are
+your folks?
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     COL. BILL NYE.
+
+Day before yesterday I received the following note from General St.
+John, printed on a purple typewriter:
+
+     CHICAGO, Feb. 13, 1887.
+
+     Col. Bill Nye, Asheville, N. C.
+
+Sir:--My folks are quite well.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     E. ST. JOHN.
+
+I also wrote to Gen. A. V. H. Carpenter, of the Milwaukee road, at the
+same time, for we had corresponded some back and forth in the happy
+past. I wrote in about the following terms:
+
+     ASHEVILLE, N. C., Feb. 10, 1887.
+
+     A. V. H. Carpenter, G. P. A. C., M. & St. P. R'y,
+     Milwaukee, Wis.
+
+Dear Sir:--How are you fixed for employes this spring?
+
+I feel like doing something of that kind and could give you some good
+endorsements from prominent people both at home and abroad.
+
+What does an employe have to do?
+
+If I can help your justly celebrated road any here in the South do not
+hesitate about mentioning it.
+
+I am still quite lame in my left leg, which was broken in the cyclone,
+and cannot walk without great pain.
+
+     Yours with kindest regards,
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+I have just received the following reply from Mr. Carpenter:
+
+     MILWAUKEE, Wis., Feb. 14, 1887.
+
+     Bill Nye, Esq., Asheville, N. C.
+
+Dear Sir:--You are too late. As I write this letter, there is a string
+of men extending from my office door clear down to the Soldiers' Home.
+All of them want to be employes. This crowd embraces the Senate and
+House of Representatives of the Wisconsin Legislature, State officials,
+judges, journalists, jurors, justices of the peace, orphans, overseers
+of highways, fish commissioners, pugilists, widows of pugilists,
+unidentified orphans of pugilists, etc., etc., and they are all just
+about as well qualified to be employes as you are.
+
+I suppose you would poultice a hot box with pounded ice, and so would
+they.
+
+I am sorry to hear about your lame leg. The surgeon of our road says
+perhaps you do not use it enough.
+
+Yours for the thorough enforcement of law,
+
+     A. V. H. CARPENTER. Per G.
+
+Not having written to Mr. Hughitt of the Northwestern road for a long
+time, and fearing that he might think I had grown cold toward him, I
+wrote the following note on the 9th:
+
+     ASHEVILLE, N. C., Feb. 9, 1887.
+
+     Marvin Hughitt, Second Vice-President and General
+     Manager Chicago & Northwestern Railway,
+     Chicago, Ill.
+
+Dear Sir:--
+
+Excuse me for not writing before. I did not wish to write you until I
+could do so in a bright and cheery manner, and for some weeks I have
+been the hot-bed of twenty-one Early Rose boils. It was extremely
+humorous without being funny. My enemies gloated over me in ghoulish
+glee.
+
+I see by a recent statement in the press that your road has greatly
+increased in business. Do you feel the need of an employe? Any light
+employment that will be honorable without involving too much
+perspiration would be acceptable.
+
+I am traveling about a good deal these days, and if I can do you any
+good as an agent or in referring to your smooth road-bed and the
+magnificent scenery along your line, I would be glad to regard that in
+the light of employment. Everywhere I go I hear your road very highly
+spoken of.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+I shall write to some more roads in a few weeks. It seems to me there
+ought to be work for a man who is able and willing to be an employe.
+
+
+
+
+That Night
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     You and I, and that night, with its perfume and glory!--
+       The scent of the locusts--the light of the moon;
+     And the violin weaving the waltzers a story,
+       Enmeshing their feet in the weft of the tune,
+           Till their shadows uncertain,
+           Reeled round on the curtain,
+     While under the trellis we drank in the June.
+
+     Soaked through with the midnight, the cedars were sleeping.
+       Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright
+     Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart leaping
+       Forever, forever burst, full with delight;
+         And its lisp on my spirit
+         Fell faint as that near it
+     Whose love like a lily bloomed out in the night.
+
+     O your glove was an odorous sachet of blisses!
+       The breath of your fan was a breeze from Cathay!
+     And the rose at your throat was a nest of spi'led kisses!--
+       And the music!--in fancy I hear it to-day,
+         As I sit here, confessing
+         Our secret, and blessing
+     My rival who found us, and waltzed you away.
+
+
+
+
+The Truth about Methuselah
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We first met Methuselah in the capacity of a son. At the age of
+sixty-five Enoch arose one night and telephoned his family physician to
+come over and assist him in meeting Methuselah.
+
+Day at last dawned on Enoch's happy home, and its first red rays lit up
+the still redder surface of the little stranger. For three hundred years
+Enoch and Methuselah jogged along together in the capacity of father and
+son. Then Enoch was suddenly cut down. It was at this time that little
+Methuselah first realized what it was to be an orphan. He could not at
+first realize that his father was dead. He could not understand why
+Enoch, with no inherited disease, should be shuffled off at the age of
+three hundred and sixty-five years. But the doctor said to Methuselah:
+"My son, you are indeed fatherless. I have done all I could, but it is
+useless. I have told Enoch many a time that if he went in swimming
+before the ice went out of the creek it would finally down him, but he
+thought he knew better than I did. He was a headstrong man, Enoch was.
+He sneered at me and alluded to me as a fresh young gosling, because he
+was three hundred years older than I was. He has received the reward of
+the willful, and verily the doom of the smart Aleck is his."
+
+Methuselah now cast about him for some occupation which would take up
+his attention and assuage his wild, passionate grief over the loss of
+his father. He entered into the walks of men and learned their ways. It
+was at this time that he learned the pernicious habit of using tobacco.
+We cannot wonder at it when we remember that he was now fatherless. He
+was at the mercy of the coarse, rough world. Possibly he learned the use
+of tobacco when he went away to attend business college after the death
+of his father. Be that as it may, the noxious weed certainly hastened
+his death, for six hundred years after this we find him a corpse!
+
+Death is ever a surprise, even at the end of a long illness and after a
+ripe old age. To those who are near it seems abrupt; so to his
+grandchildren, some of whom survived him, his children having died of
+old age, the death of Methuselah came like a thunderbolt from a clear
+sky.
+
+Methuselah succeeded in cording up more of a record, such as it was,
+than any other man of whom history informs us. Time, the tomb-builder
+and amateur mower, came and leaned over the front yard and looked at
+Methuselah, and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his scythe, and
+went away whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for
+nearly ten centuries, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the
+general wreck of men and nations.
+
+Even as the young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow
+spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and passeth by on the other
+side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-glass and his overworked
+hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high
+sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin of hair around the base
+of it, mowed all around Methuselah and then passed on.
+
+Methuselah decorated the graves of those who perished in a dozen
+different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over nine hundred years
+of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting places and offer
+his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage
+his grandchildren to go. Then Methuselah would sit around Noah's front
+steps, and smoke and criticise the conduct of the war, also the conduct
+of the enemy.
+
+It is said of Methuselah that he never was the same man after his son
+Lamech died. He was greatly attached to Lamech, and, when he woke up one
+night to find his son purple in the face with membraneous croup, he
+could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy
+who had just rounded the glorious morn of his 777th year had never
+occurred to him. But death loves a shining mark, and he garnered little
+Lammie and left Methuselah to mourn for a couple of centuries.
+
+Methuselah finally got so that he couldn't sleep any later than 4
+o'clock in the morning, and he didn't see how any one else could. The
+older he got, and the less valuable his time became, the earlier he
+would rise, so that he could get an early start. As the centuries filed
+slowly by, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle
+into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large
+slick-headed cane and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and
+extricate himself from his clothes again and retire, he rose earlier and
+earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks
+sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that
+sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But
+one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the
+whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his
+red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah
+passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience and a
+long clean record.
+
+We can almost fancy how the physicians, who had disagreed about his case
+all the way through, came and insisted on a post-mortem examination to
+prove which was right and what was really the matter with him. We can
+imagine how people went by shaking their heads and regretting that
+Methuselah should have tampered with tobacco when he knew that it
+affected his heart.
+
+But he is gone. He lived to see his own promissory notes rise, flourish,
+acquire interest, pine away at last and finally outlaw. He acquired a
+large farm in the very heart of the county-seat, and refused to move or
+to plot, and called it Methuselah's addition. He came out in spring
+regularly for nine hundred years after he got too old to work out his
+poll-tax on the road, and put in his time telling the rising generation
+how to make a good road. Meantime other old people, who were almost one
+hundred years of age, moved away and went West where they would attract
+attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting
+old around where Methuselah was, and being ordered about and scolded and
+kept in the background by him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+So when at last he died, people sighed and said: "Well, it was better
+for him to die before he got childish. It was best that he should die
+at a time when he knew it all. We can't help thinking what an
+acquisition Methuselah will be on the evergreen shore when he gets
+there, with all his ripe experience and his habits of early rising."
+
+And the next morning after the funeral Methuselah's family did not get
+out of bed till nearly 9 o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+A Black Hills Episode
+
+
+     A little, warty, dried-up sort
+     O' lookin' chap 'at hadn't ort
+     A ben a-usin' round no bar,
+     With gents like us a-drinkin' thar!
+
+     And that idee occurred to me
+     The livin' minit 'at I see
+     The little cuss elbowin' in
+     To humor his besettin' sin.
+
+     There 're nothin' small in me at all,
+     But when I heer the rooster call
+     For shugar and a spoon, I says:
+     "Jest got in from the States, I guess."
+
+     He never 'peared as if he heerd,
+     But stood thar, wipin' uv his beard,
+     And smilin' to hisself as if
+     I'd been a-givin' him a stiff.
+
+     And I-says-I, a edgin' by
+     The bantam, and a-gazin' high
+     Above his plug--says I: "I knowed
+     A little feller onc't 'at blowed
+     Around like you, and tuck his drinks
+     With shugar in--and _his_ folks thinks
+     He's dead now--'cause we boxed and sent
+     The scraps back to the Settlement!"
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+     The boys tells me, 'at got to see
+     His _modus operandum_, he
+     Jest 'peared to come onjointed-like
+     Afore he ever struck a strike!
+
+     And I'll admit, the way he fit
+     Wuz dazzlin'--what I see uv hit;
+     And squarin' things up fair and fine,
+     Says I: "A little 'shug' in mine!"
+
+
+
+
+The Rossville Lecture Course
+
+ROSSVILLE, Mich., March, '87.
+
+
+     Folks up here at Rossville got up a lectur'-course;
+     All the leadin' citizens they wus out in force;
+     Met and talked at Williamses, and 'greed to meet agin,
+     And helt another corkus when the next reports wuz in;
+     Met agin at Samuelses; and met agin at Moore's,
+     And Johnts he put the shutters up and jest barred the doors!--
+     And yit, I'll jest be dagg-don'd! ef didn't take a week
+     'Fore we'd settled where to write to git a man to speak!
+
+     Found out where the Bureau wus, and then and there agreed
+     To strike while the iron's hot, and foller up the lead.
+     Simp was secatary; so he tuck his pen in hand,
+     And ast what they'd tax us for the one on "Holy Land"--
+     "One of Colonel J. De-Koombs Abelust and Best
+     Lecturs," the circ'lar stated, "Give East er West!"
+     Wanted fifty dollars, and his kyar-fare to and from,
+     And Simp was hence instructed fer to write him not to come.
+     Then we talked and jawed around another week er so,
+     And writ the Bureau 'bout the town a-bein' sort o' slow
+     And fogey-like, and pore as dirt, and lackin' enterprise,
+     And ignornter'n any other 'cordin' to its size:
+     Till finally the Bureau said they'd send a cheaper man
+     Fer forty dollars, who would give "A Talk about Japan"--
+     "A regular Japanee hiss'f," the pamphlet claimed; and so,
+     Nobody knowed his languige, and of course we let him go!
+
+     Kindo' then let up a spell--but rallied onc't ag'in,
+     And writ to price a feller on what's called the "violin"--
+     A Swede, er Pole, er somepin--but no matter what he wus,
+     Doc Sifers said he'd heerd him, and he wusn't wuth a kuss!
+     And then we ast fer _Swingses_ terms; and _Cook_, and Ingersoll--
+     And blame! ef forty dollars looked like anything at all!
+     And then _Burdette_, we tried fer him; and Bob he writ to say
+     He wus busy writin' ortographts, and couldn't git away.
+
+     At last--along in Aprile--we signed to take this-here
+     Bill Nye of Californy, 'at was posted to appear
+     "The Humorestest Funny Man 'at Ever Jammed a Hall!"
+     So we made big preparations, and swep' out the church and all!
+     And night he wus to lectur', and the neighbors all was there,
+     And strangers packed along the aisles 'at come from ever'where,
+     Committee got a telegrapht the preacher read, 'at run--
+     "Got off at Rossville, Indiany, stead of Michigun."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Tar-heel Cow
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ASHEVILLE, N. C., December 9.--There is no place in the United States,
+so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I
+may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life,
+than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum
+and the anonymous distiller have their homes.
+
+Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of
+butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular
+farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she
+contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies,
+it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.
+
+The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes
+and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the
+sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her
+black retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose into the blue grass from
+ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her
+overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the
+life of a Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated
+from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the
+cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is
+obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic
+details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor
+of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.
+
+The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something,
+when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to
+market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru
+colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in
+the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an
+object of the greatest interest.
+
+Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as
+has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have
+seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it
+is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the
+burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners
+eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully
+to salt the mines.
+
+The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine
+oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull
+some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.
+
+Here the jackass at times becomes a co-worker with the cow in hauling
+tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further
+in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press
+alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the
+butter industry.
+
+The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single
+by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman,
+who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he
+adds a small pair of ear-bobbs during the holidays.
+
+The cow is attached to each shaft and a small single-tree, or
+swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a
+breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her
+escort.
+
+I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than that of a new milch
+cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a
+steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak
+manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson Democratic wagon loaded
+with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign
+to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of
+business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly
+can feel very little interest.
+
+Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for
+smoking purposes. It is the highest-price tobacco produced in this
+country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of
+what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco
+while growing.
+
+He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all
+about the tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any
+new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this
+country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant
+things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about
+me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by
+furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but
+which may be of incalculable value to the press.
+
+As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches
+deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did
+not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing
+their thoughtlessness to-day.
+
+A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the
+climate. When they have remained here for one winter, however, they
+decide to leave it where it is.
+
+It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I
+did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.
+
+Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a
+good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to these columns, I shall
+watch for it with great interest.
+
+     Yours as here 2 4,
+
+     BILL NYE.
+
+P. S.--I should have said, relative to the cow of this State, that if
+the owners would work their butter more and their cows less they would
+confer a great boon on the consumer of both.
+
+     B. N.
+
+
+
+
+A Character
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     I.
+
+     Swallowed up in gulfs of tho't--
+     Eye-glass fixed--on--who knows what?
+     We but know he sees us not.
+
+     Chance upon him, here and there--
+     Base-ball park--Industrial Fair--
+     Broadway--Long Branch--anywhere!
+
+     Even at the races,--yet
+     With his eye-glass tranced and set
+     On some dream-land minaret.
+
+     At the beach, the where, perchance--
+     Tenderest of eyes may glance
+     On the fitness of his pants.
+
+     Vain! all admiration--vain!
+     His mouth, o'er and o'er again
+     Absently absorbs his cane.
+
+     Vain, as well, all tribute paid
+     To his morning coat, inlaid
+     With crossbars of every shade.
+
+     He is oblivious, tho
+     We played checkers to and fro
+     On his back--he would not know.
+
+
+     II.
+
+     So removed--illustrious--
+     Peace! kiss hands, and leave him thus
+     He hath never need of us!
+
+     Come away! Enough! Let be!
+     Purest praise, to such as he,
+     Were as basest obloquy.
+
+     Vex no more that mind of his,
+     We, to him, are but as phizz
+     Unto pop that knows it is.
+
+     Haply, even as we prate
+     Of him HERE--in astral state--
+     Or jackastral--he, elate,
+
+     Brouses 'round, with sportive hops
+     In far fields of sphery crops,
+     Nibbling stars like clover-tops.
+
+     He, occult and psychic, may
+     Now be solving why to-day
+     Is not midnight.--But away!
+
+     Cease vain queries! Let us go!
+     Leave him all unfathomed.--Lo,
+     He can hear his whiskers grow.
+
+
+
+
+The Diary of Darius T. Skinner
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, New York, Dec. 31, 188-.--It hardly seems possible
+that I am here in New York, putting up at a hotel where it costs me $5
+or $6 a day just simply to exist. I came here from my far away-home
+entirely alone. I have no business here, but I simply desired to rub up
+against greatness for awhile. I need polish, and I am smart enough to
+know it.
+
+"I write this entry in my diary to explain who I am and to help identify
+myself in case I should come home to my room intoxicated some night and
+blow out the gas.
+
+"The reason I am here is that last summer while whacking bulls, which is
+really my business, I grub-staked Alonzo McReddy and forgot about it
+till I got back and the boys told me that Lon had struck a First
+National bank in the shape of the Sarah Waters claim. He was then very
+low with mountain fever and so nobody felt like jumping the claim.
+Saturday afternoon Alonzo passed away and left me the Sarah Waters.
+That's the only sad thing about the whole business now. I am raised from
+bull-whacking to affluence, but Alonzo is not here. How we would take in
+the town together if he'd lived, for the Sarah Waters was enough to make
+us both well fixed.
+
+"I can imagine Lon's look of surprise and pride as he looks over the
+outer battlements of the New Jerusalem and watches me paint the town.
+Little did Lon think when I pulled out across the flat with my whiskers
+full of alkali dust and my cuticle full of raw agency whisky, that
+inside of a year I would be a nabob, wearing biled shirts every single
+day of my life, and clothes made specially for me.
+
+"Life is full of sudden turns, and no one knows here in America where
+he'll be in two weeks from now. I may be back there associating with
+greasers again as of yore and skinning the same bulls that I have
+heretofore skun.
+
+"Last evening I went to see 'The Mikado,' a kind of singing theater and
+Chinese walk-around. It is what I would call no good. It is acted out by
+different people who claim they are Chinamen, I reckon. They teeter
+around on the stage and sing in the English language, but their clothes
+are peculiar. A homely man, who played that he was the lord high
+executioner and chairman of the vigilance committee, wore a pair of
+wide, bandana pants, which came off during the first act. He was cool
+and collected, though, and so caught them before it was everlastingly
+too late. He held them on by one hand while he sang the rest of his
+piece, and when he left the stage the audience heartlessly whooped for
+him to come back.
+
+"'The Mikado' is not funny or instructive as a general thing, but last
+night it was accidently facetious. It has too much singing and not
+enough vocal music about it. There is also an overplus of conversation
+through the thing that seems like talking at a mark for $2 a week. It
+may be owing to my simple ways, but 'The Mikado' is too rich for my
+blood.
+
+"We live well here at the Fifth Avenue. The man that owns the place puts
+two silver forks and a clean tablecloth on my table every day, and the
+young fellows that pass the grub around are so well dressed that it
+seems sassy and presumptions for me to bother them by asking them to
+bring me stuff when I'd just as soon go and get it myself and nothing
+else in the world to do.
+
+"I told the waiter at my table yesterday that when he got time I wished
+he would come up to my room and we could have a game of old sledge. He
+is a nice young man, and puts himself out a good deal to make me
+comfortable.
+
+"I found something yesterday at the table that bothered me. It was a new
+kind of a silver dingus, with two handles to it, for getting a lump of
+sugar into your tea. I saw right away that it was for that, but when I
+took the two handles in my hand like a nut cracker and tried to scoop up
+a lump of sugar with it I felt embarrassed. Several people who were
+total strangers to me smiled.
+
+"After dinner the waiter brought me a little pink-glass bowl of lemonade
+and a clean wipe to dry my mouth with, I reckon, after I drank the
+lemonade. I do not pine for lemonade much, anyhow, but this was
+specially poor. It was just plain water, with a lemon rind and no sugar
+into it.
+
+"One rural rooster from Pittsburg showed his contempt for the blamed
+stuff by washing his hands in it. I may be rough and uncouth in my
+style, but I hope I will never lower myself like that in company."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE MAN IN THE MOON]
+
+
+     O, The Man in the Moon has a crick in his back;
+       Whee!
+         Whimm!
+           Ain't you sorry for him?
+     And a mole on his nose that is purple and black;
+     And his eyes are so weak that they water and run
+     If he dares to dream even he looks at the sun,--
+     So he just dreams of stars, as the doctors advise--
+       My!
+         Eyes!
+           But isn't he wise--
+       To just dream of stars, as the doctors advise?
+
+     And The Man in the Moon has a boil on his ear--
+       Whee!
+         Whing!
+           What a singular thing!
+     I know; but these facts are authentic, my dear,--
+
+     There's a boil on his ear, and a corn on his chin--
+     He calls it a dimple,--but dimples stick in--
+     Yet it might be a dimple turned over, you know;
+       Whang!
+         Ho!
+           Why, certainly so!--
+       It might be a dimple turned over, you know!
+
+     And The Man in the Moon has a rheumatic knee--
+       Gee!
+         Whizz!
+           What a pity that is!
+     And his toes have worked round where his heels ought to be.--
+     So whenever he wants to go North he goes South,
+     And comes back with porridge-crumbs all round his mouth,
+     And he brushes them off with a Japanese fan,
+       Whing!
+         Whann!
+           What a marvelous man!
+       What a very remarkably marvelous man!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: His Christmas Sled.]
+
+
+     I watch him, with his Christmas sled;
+       He hitches on behind
+     A passing sleigh, with glad hooray,
+       And whistles down the wind;
+     He hears the horses champ their bits,
+       And bells that jingle-jingle--
+     You Woolly Cap! you Scarlet Mitts!
+       You miniature "Kriss Kringle!"
+
+     I almost catch your secret joy--
+       Your chucklings of delight,
+     The while you whizz where glory is
+       Eternally in sight!
+     With you I catch my breath, as swift
+       Your jaunty sled goes gliding
+     O'er glassy track and shallow drift,
+       As I behind were riding!
+
+     He winks at twinklings of the frost.
+       And on his airy race,
+     Its tingles beat to redder heat
+       The rapture of his face:--
+     The colder, keener is the air,
+       The less he cares a feather.
+     But, there! he's gone! and I gaze on
+       The wintriest of weather!
+
+     Ah, boy! still speeding o'er the track
+       Where none returns again,
+     To Sigh for you, or cry for you,
+       Or die for you were vain.--
+     And so, speed on! the while I pray
+       All nipping frosts forsake you--
+     Ride still ahead of grief, but may
+       All glad things overtake you!
+
+
+
+
+Her Tired Hands
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On board a western train the other day I held in my bosom for over
+seventy-five miles the elbow of a large man whose name I do not know. He
+was not a railroad hog or I would have resented it. He was built wide
+and he couldn't help it, so I forgave him.
+
+He had a large, gentle, kindly eye, and when he desired to spit, he went
+to the car door, opened it and decorated the entire outside of the
+train, forgetting that our speed would help to give scope to his
+remarks.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Naturally as he sat there by my side, holding on tightly to his ticket
+and evidently afraid that the conductor would forget to come and get it,
+I began to figure out in my mind what might be his business. He had
+pounded one thumb so that the nail was black where the blood had settled
+under it. This might happen to a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith or
+most anyone else. So it didn't help me out much, though it looked to me
+as though it might have been done by trying to drive a fence-nail
+through a leather hinge with the back of an axe, and nobody but a farmer
+would try to do that. Following up the clue, I discovered that he had
+milked on his boots and then I knew I was right. The man who milks
+before daylight, in a dark barn, when the thermometer is down to 28
+degrees below and who hits his boot and misses the pail, by reason of
+the cold and the uncertain light and the prudishness of the cow, is a
+marked man. He cannot conceal the fact that he is a farmer unless he
+removes that badge. So I started out on that theory and remarked that
+this would pass for a pretty hard winter on stock.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The thought was not original with me, for I have heard it expressed by
+others either in this country or Europe. He said it would.
+
+"My cattle has gone through a whole mowful o' hay sence October and
+eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it
+hed last year, and with their new _pro_-cess griss mills they jerk all
+the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior
+and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to buy brand."
+
+"Well, why do you run so much to stock? Why don't you try diversified
+farming, and rotation of crops?"
+
+"Well, probably you got that idee in the papers. A man that earns big
+wages writing Farm Hints for agricultural papers can make more money
+with a soft lead pencil and two or three season-cracked idees like
+that'n I can carrying of 'em out on the farm. We used to have a feller
+in the drugstore in our town that wrote such good pieces for the _Rural
+Vermonter_ and made up such a good condition powder out of his own head,
+that two years ago we asked him to write a nessay for the annual meeting
+of the Buckwheat Trust, and to use his own judgment about choice of
+subject. And what do you s'pose he had selected for a nessay that took
+the whole forenoon to read?"
+
+"What subject, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Give it up!"
+
+"Well, he'd wrote out that whole blamed intellectual wad on the subject
+of 'The Inhumanity of Dehorning Hydraulic Rams.' How's that?"
+
+"That's pretty fair."
+
+"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regards to some things. Every
+feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it,
+even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the
+United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if
+his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference
+between a new milch cow and a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these
+embroidered night-shirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago.
+Been a toilet soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a
+farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder
+in the front yard and a southern aspect. The farm was no good. You
+couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits
+a passle of slim-tailed, yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle
+cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream
+over and tried to sell it at the new creamatory while the funeral and
+hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read
+my paper and don't get left like that."
+
+"What are the prospects for farmers in your State?"
+
+"Well, they are pore. Never was so pore, in fact, sence I've ben there.
+Folks wonder why boys leaves the farm. My boys left so as to get
+protected, they said, and so they went into a clothing-store, one of
+'em, and one went into hardward and one is talking protection in the
+Legislature this winter. They said that farmin' was gittin' to be like
+fishin' and huntin', well enough for a man that has means and leisure,
+but they couldn't make a livin at it, they said. Another boy is in a
+drug store, and the man that hires him says he is a royal feller."
+
+"Kind of a castor royal feller," I said, with a shriek of laughter.
+
+He waited until I had laughed all I wanted to and then he said:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I've always hollered for high terriff in order to hyst the public debt,
+but now that we've got the national debt coopered I wish they'd take a
+little hack at mine. I've put in fifty years farmin'. I never drank
+licker in any form. I've worked from ten to eighteen hours a day, been
+economical in cloze and never went to a show more'n a dozen times in my
+life, raised a family and learned upward of two hundred calves to drink
+out of a tin pail without blowing all their vittles up my sleeve. My
+wife worked alongside o' me sewin' new seats on the boys' pants,
+skimmin' milk and even helpin' me load hay. For forty years we toiled
+along to-gether and hardly got time to look into each others' faces or
+dared to stop and get acquainted with each other. Then her health
+failed. Ketched cold in the spring house, prob'ly skimmin' milk and
+washin' pans and scaldin' pails and spankin' butter. Any how, she took
+in a long breath one day while the doctor and me was watchin' her, and
+she says to me, 'Henry,' says she, 'I've got a chance to rest,' and she
+put one tired, wore-out hand on top of the other tired, wore-out hand,
+and I knew she'd gone where they don't work all day and do chores all
+night.
+
+"I took time to kiss her then. I'd been too busy for a good while
+previous to that, and then I called in the boys. After the funeral it
+was too much for them to stay around and eat the kind of cookin' we had
+to put up with, and nobody spoke up around the house as we used to. The
+boys quit whistlin' around the barn and talked kind of low by themselves
+about going to town and gettin' a job.
+
+"They're all gone now and the snow is four feet deep on mother's grave
+up there in the old berryin' ground."
+
+Then both of us looked out of the car window quite a long while without
+saying anything.
+
+"I don't blame the boys for going into something else long's other
+things paysbetter; but I say--and I say what I know--that the man who
+holds the prosperity of this country in his hands, the man that actually
+makes money for other people to spend, the man that eats three good,
+simple, square meals a day and goes to bed at nine o'clock, so that
+future generations with good blood and cool brains can go from his farm
+to the Senate and Congress and the While House--he is the man that gets
+left at last to run his farm, with nobody to help him but a hired man
+and a high protective terriff. The farms in our State is mortgaged for
+over seven hundred million dollars. Ten of our Western States--I see by
+the papers--has got about three billion and a half mortgages on their
+farms, and that don't count the chattel mortgages filed with the town
+clerks on farm machinery, stock, waggins, and even crops, by gosh! that
+ain't two inches high under the snow. That's what the prospects is for
+farmers now. The Government is rich, but the men that made it, the men
+that fought perarie fires and perarie wolves and Injuns and potato-bugs
+and blizzards, and has paid the war debt and pensions and everything
+else and hollered for the Union and the Republican party and free
+schools and high terriff and anything else that they was told to, is
+left high and dry this cold winter with a mortgage of seven billions and
+a half on the farms they have earned and saved a thousand times over."
+
+"Yes; but look at the glory of sending from the farm the future
+President, the future Senator and the future member of Congress."
+
+"That looks well on paper, but what does it really amount to? Soon as a
+farmer boy gits in a place like that he forgets the soil that produced
+him and holds his head as high as a holly-hock. He bellers for
+protection to everybody but the farmer, and while he sails round in a
+highty-tighty room with a fire in it night and day, his father on the
+farm has to kindle his own fire in the morning with elm slivvers, and he
+has to wear his own son's lawn-tennis suit next to him or freeze to
+death, and he has to milk in an old gray shawl that has held that member
+of Congress when he was a baby, by gorry! and the old lady has to
+sojourn through the winter in the flannel that was wore at the riggatter
+before he went to Congress.
+
+"So I say, and I think that Congress agrees with me. Damn a farmer,
+anyhow!"
+
+He then went away.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Ezra House
+
+
+     Come listen, good people, while a story I do tell,
+     Of the sad fate of one which I knew so passing well;
+     He enlisted at McCordsville, to battle in the south,
+     And protect his country's union; his name was Ezra House.
+
+     He was a young school-teacher, and educated high
+     In regards to Ray's arithmetic, and also Alegbra.
+     He give good satisfaction, but at his country's call
+     He dropped his position, his Alegbra and all.
+
+     "It's Oh, I'm going to leave you, kind scholars," he said--
+     For he wrote a composition the last day and read;
+     And it brought many tears in the eyes of the school,
+     To say nothing of his sweet-heart he was going to leave so soon.
+
+     "I have many recollections to take with me away,
+     Of the merry transpirations in the school-room so gay;
+     And of all that's past and gone I will never regret
+     I went to serve my country at the first of the outset!"
+
+     He was a good penman, and the lines that he wrote
+     On that sad occasion was too fine for me to quote,--
+     For I was there and heard it, and I ever will recall
+     It brought the happy tears to the eyes of us all.
+
+       [Illustration]
+
+     And when he left, his sweetheart she fainted away,
+     And said she could never forget the sad day
+     When her lover so noble, and gallant and gay,
+     Said "Fare you well, my true love!" and went marching away.
+
+     He hadn't gone for more than two months
+     When the sad news come--"he was in a skirmish once,
+     And a cruel rebel ball had wounded him full sore
+     In the region of the chin, through the canteen he wore."
+
+     But his health recruited up, and his wounds they got well;
+     But while he was in battle at Bull Run or Malvern Hill,
+     The news come again, so sorrowful to hear--
+     "A sliver from a bombshell cut off his right ear."
+
+     But he stuck to the boys, and it's often he would write,
+     That "he wasn't afraid for his country to fight."
+     But oh, had he returned on a furlough, I believe
+     He would not, to-day, have such cause to grieve.
+
+     For in another battle--the name I never heard--
+     He was guarding the wagons when an accident occurred,--
+     A comrade, who was under the influence of drink,
+     Shot him with a musket through the right cheek, I think.
+
+     But his dear life was spared, but it hadn't been for long
+     Till a cruel rebel colonel came riding along,
+     And struck him with his sword, as many do suppose,
+     For his cap-rim was cut off, and also his nose.
+
+     But Providence, who watches o'er the noble and the brave,
+     Snatched him once more from the jaws of the grave;
+     And just a little while before the close of the war,
+     He sent his picture home to his girl away so far.
+
+     And she fell into decline, and she wrote in reply,
+     "She had seen his face again and was ready to die";
+     And she wanted him to promise, when she was in her tomb,
+     He would only visit that by the light of the moon.
+
+     But he never returned at the close of the war,
+     And the boys that got back said he hadn't the heart;
+     But he got a position in a powder-mill, and said
+     He hoped to meet the doom that his country denied.
+
+
+
+
+"Oh, Wilhelmina, Come Back!"
+
+
+     PERSONAL--Will the young woman who edited the gravy department and
+     corrected proof at our pie foundry for two days and then jumped the
+     game on the evening that we were to have our clergyman to dine with
+     us, please come back, or write to 32 Park Row, saying where she
+     left the crackers and cheese?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Come back, Wilhelmina, and be our little sunbeam once more. Come back
+and cluster around our hearthstone at so much per cluster.
+
+If you think best we will quit having company at the house, especially
+people who do not belong to your set.
+
+We will also strive, oh, so hard, to make it pleasanter for you in every
+way. If we had known four or five years ago that children were
+offensive to you, it would have been different. But it is too late now.
+All we can do is to shut them up in a barn and feed them through a
+knot-hole. If they shriek loud enough to give pain to your throbbing
+brow, let no one know and we will overcome any false sentiment we may
+feel towards them and send them to the Tombs.
+
+Since you went away we can see how wicked and selfish we were and how
+little we considered your comfort. We miss your glad smile, also your
+Tennessee marble cake and your slat pie. We have learned a valuable
+lesson since you went away, and it is that the blame should not have
+rested on one alone. It should have been divided equally, leaving me to
+bear half of it and my wife the other half.
+
+Where we erred was in dividing up the blame on the basis of tenderloin
+steak or peach cobbler, compelling you to bear half of it yourself. That
+will not work, Wilhelmina. Blame and preserves do not divide on the same
+basis. We are now in favor of what may be called a sliding scale. We
+think you will like this better.
+
+We also made a grave mistake in the matter of nights out. While young, I
+formed the wicked and pernicious habit of having nights out myself. I
+panted for the night air and would go a long distance and stay out a
+long time to get enough of it for a mess and then bring it home in a
+paper bag, but I can see now that it is time for me to remain indoors
+and give young people like yourself a chance, Wilhelmina.
+
+So, if I can do anything evenings while you are out that will assist
+you, such as stoning raisins or neighboring windows, command me. I am no
+cook, of course, but I can peel apples or grind coffee or hold your
+head for you when you need sympathy. I could also soon learn to do the
+plain cooking, I think, and friends who come to see us after this have
+agreed to bring their dinners.
+
+There is no reason why harmony should not be restored among us and the
+old sunlight come back to our roof tree.
+
+Another thing I wish to write before I close this humiliating personal.
+I wish to take back any harsh and bitter words about your singing. I
+said that you sang like a shingle-mill, but I was mad when I said it,
+and I wronged you. I was maddened by hunger and you told me that mush
+and milk was the proper thing for a brain worker, and you refused to
+give me any dope on my dumpling. Goaded to madness by this I said that
+you sang like a shingle-mill, but it was not my better, higher nature
+that spoke. It was my grosser and more gastric nature that asserted
+itself, and I now desire to take it back. You do not sing like a
+shingle-mill; at least so much as to mislead a practiced ear.
+
+Your voice has more volume, and when your upper register is closed, is
+mellower than any shingle-mill I ever heard.
+
+Come back, Wilhelmina. We need you every hour.
+
+After you went away we tried to set the bread as we had seen you do it,
+but it was not a success. The next day it come off the nest with a
+litter of small, sallow rolls which would easily resist the action of
+acids.
+
+If you cannot come back will you please write and tell me how you are
+getting along and how you contrive to insert air-holes into home-made
+bread?
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A HINT of SPRING.]
+
+
+     'Twas but a hint of Spring--for still
+     The atmosphere was sharp and chill--
+     Save where the genial sunshine smote
+     The shoulders of my overcoat,
+     And o'er the snow beneath my feet
+     Laid spectral fences down the street.
+
+     My shadow even seemed to be
+     Elate with some new buoyancy,
+     And bowed and bobbed in my advance
+     With trippingest extravagance,
+     And when a bird sang out somewhere,
+     It seemed to wheel with me, and stare.
+
+     Above I heard a rasping stir--
+     And on the roof the carpenter
+     Was perched, and prodding rusty leaves
+     From out the choked and dripping eaves--
+     And some one, hammering about,
+     Was taking all the windows out.
+
+     Old scraps of shingles fell before
+     The noisy mansion's open door;
+     And wrangling children raked the yard,
+     And labored much, and laughed as hard
+     And fired the burning trash I smelt
+     And sniffed again--so good I felt!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A Treat Ode]
+
+
+     "Scurious-like," said the treetoad,
+     "I've twittered fer rain all day;
+       And I got up soon,
+       And hollered till noon--
+     But the sun hit blazed away,
+       Till I jest clumb down in a crawfish-hole
+       Weary at heart, and sick at soul!
+
+     "Dozed away fer an hour,
+     And I tackled the thing agin;
+       And I sung, and sung,
+       Till I knowed my lung
+     Was jest about to give in;
+       And then, thinks I, ef it don't rain now,
+       There're nothin' in singin' anyhow.
+
+     "Once in a while some farmer
+     Would come a driven' past
+       And he'd hear my cry,
+       And stop and sigh--
+     Till I jest laid back, at last,
+       And I hollered rain till I thought my throat
+       Would bust wide open at ever' note!
+
+     "But I _fetched_ her!--O I _fetched_ her!--
+     'Cause a little while ago,
+       As I kindo' set
+       With one eye shet,
+     And a-singin' soft and low,
+       A voice drapped down on my fevered brain
+       Sayin',--'Ef you'll jest hush I'll rain!'"
+
+
+
+
+"Our Wife"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The story opens in 1877, when, on an April morning, the yellow-haired
+"devil" arrived at the office of the Jack Creek _Pizenweed_, at 7
+o'clock, and found the editor in. It was so unusual to find the editor
+in at that hour that the boy whistled in a low contralto voice, and
+passed on into the "news room," leaving the gentlemanly, genial and
+urbane editor of the _Pizenweed_ as he had found him, sitting in his
+foundered chair, with his head immersed in a pile of exchanges on the
+table and his venerable Smith & Wesson near by, acting as a
+paper-weight. The gentlemanly, genial and urbane editor of the
+_Pizenweed_ presented the appearance of a man engaged in sleeping off a
+long and aggravated case of drunk. His hat was on the back of his head,
+and his features were entirely obscured by the loose papers in which
+they nestled.
+
+Later on, Elijah P. Beckwith, the foreman, came in, and found the
+following copy on the hook, marked "Leaded Editorial," and divided it up
+into "takes" for the yellow-haired devil and himself:
+
+"In another column of this issue will be found, among the legal notices,
+the first publication of a summons in an action for divorce, in which
+our wife is plaintiff and we are made defendant. While generally
+deprecating the practice of bringing private matters into public through
+the medium of the press, we feel justified in this instance, inasmuch as
+the summons sets forth, as a cause of action, that we are, and have
+been, for the space of ten years, a confirmed drunkard without hope of
+recovery, and totally unwilling to provide for and maintain our said
+wife.
+
+"That we have been given to drink, we do not, at this time, undertake to
+deny or in any way controvert, but that we cannot quit at any time, we
+do most earnestly contend.
+
+"In 1867, on the 4th day of July, we married our wife. It was a joyful
+day, and earth had never looked to us so fair or so desirable as a
+summer resort as it did that day. The flowers bloomed, the air was fresh
+and exhilarating, the little birds and the hens poured forth their
+respective lays. It was a day long to be remembered, and it seemed as
+though we had never seen Nature get up and hump herself to be so
+attractive as she did on that special morning--the morning of all
+mornings--the morning on which we married our wife.
+
+"Little did we then dream that after ten years of varying fortune we
+would to-day give utterance to this editorial, or that the steam
+power-press of the _Pizenweed_ would squat this legal notice for
+divorce, _a vinculo et thoro_, into the virgin page of our paper. But
+such is the case. Our wife has abandoned us to our fate, and has seen
+fit to publish the notice in what we believe to be the spiciest paper
+published west of the Missouri River. It was not necessary that the
+notice should be published. We were ready at any time to admit service,
+provided that plaintiff would serve it while we were sober. We cannot
+agree to remain sober after ten o'clock a. m. in order to give people a
+chance to serve notices on us. But in this case plaintiff knew the value
+of advertising, and she selected a paper that goes to the better classes
+all over the Union. When our wife does anything she does it right.
+
+"For ten years our wife and we have trudged along together. It has been
+a record of errors and failures on our part; a record of heroic devotion
+and forbearance on the part of our wife. It is over now, and with
+nothing to remember that is not soaked full of bitterness and wrapped up
+in red flannel remorse, we go forth to-day and herald our shame by
+publishing to the world the fact, that as husband, we are a depressing
+failure, while as a red-eyed and a rum-soaked ruin and all-around
+drunkard, we are a tropical triumph. We print this without egotism, and
+we point to it absolutely without vain glory.
+
+"Ah, why were we made the custodian of this fatal gift, while others
+were denied? It was about the only talent we had, but we have not
+wrapped it up in a napkin. Sometimes we have put a cold, wet towel on
+it, but we have never hidden it under a bushel. We have put it out at
+three per cent a month, and it has grown to be a thirst that is worth
+coming all the way from Omaha to see. We do not gloat over it. We do not
+say all this to the disparagement of other bright, young drinkers, who
+came here at the same time, and who had equal advantages with us. We do
+not wish to speak lightly of those whose prospects for filling a
+drunkard's grave were at one time even brighter than ours. We have
+simply sought to hold our position here in the grandest galaxy of
+extemporaneous inebriates in the wild and woolly West. We do not wish to
+vaunt our own prowess, but we say, without fear of successful
+contradiction, that we have done what we could.
+
+"On the fourth page of this number will be found, among other
+announcements, the advertisement of our wife, who is about to open up
+the old laundry at the corner of Third and Cottonwood streets, in the
+Briggs building. We hope that our citizens will accord her a generous
+patronage, not so much on her husband's account, but because she is a
+deserving woman, and a good laundress. We wish that we could as safely
+recommend every advertiser who patronizes these columns as we can our
+wife.
+
+"Unkind critics will make cold and unfeeling remarks because our wife
+has decided to take in washing, and they will look down on her, no
+doubt, but she will not mind it, for it will be a pleasing relaxation to
+wash, after the ten years of torch-light procession and Mardi Gras
+frolic she has had with us. It is tiresome, of course, to chase a pillow
+case up and down the wash-board all day, but it is easier and
+pleasanter than it is to run a one-horse Inebriate Home for ten years
+on credit.
+
+"Those who have read the _Pizenweed_ for the past three years will
+remember that it has not been regarded as an outspoken temperance organ.
+We have never claimed that for it. We have simply claimed that, so far
+as we are personally concerned, we could take liquor or we could let it
+alone. That has always been our theory. We still make that claim. Others
+have said the same thing, but were unable to do as they advertised. We
+have been taking it right along, between meals for ten years. We now
+propose, and so state in the prospectus, that we will let it alone. We
+leave the public to judge whether or not we can do what we claim."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+After the foreman had set up the above editorial, he went in to speak to
+the editor, but he was still slumbering. He shook him mildly, but he did
+not wake. Then Elijah took him by the collar and lifted him up so that
+he could see the editor's face.
+
+It was a pale, still face, firm in its new resolution to forever "let it
+alone." On the temple and under the heavy sweep of brown hair there was
+a powder-burned spot and the cruel affidavit of the "Smith & Wesson"
+that our wife had obtained her decree.
+
+The editor of the _Pizenweed_ had demonstrated at he could drink or he
+could let it alone.
+
+
+
+
+My Bachelor Chum
+
+
+     O a corpulent man is my bachelor chum,
+       With a neck apoplectic and thick,
+     And an abdomen on him as big as a drum,
+       And a fist big enough for the stick;
+     With a walk that for grace is clear out of the case,
+       And a wobble uncertain--as though
+     His little bow-legs had forgotten the pace
+       That in youth used to favor him so.
+
+     He is forty, at least; and the top of his head
+       Is a bald and a glittering thing;
+     And his nose and his two chubby cheeks are as red
+       As three rival roses in spring.
+     His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in
+       And his laugh is so breezy and bright
+     That it ripples his features and dimples his chin
+       With a billowy look of delight.
+
+     He is fond of declaring he "don't care a straw"--
+       That "the ills of a bachelor's life
+     Are blisses compared with a mother-in-law,
+       And a boarding-school miss for a wife!"
+     So he smokes, and he drinks, and he jokes and he winks,
+       And he dines, and he wines all alone,
+     With a thumb ever ready to snap as he thinks
+       Of the comforts he never has known.
+
+     But up in his den--(Ah, my bachelor chum!)
+       I have sat with him there in the gloom,
+     When the laugh of his lips died away to become
+       But a phantom of mirth in the room!
+     And to look on him there you would love him, for all
+       His ridiculous ways, and be dumb
+     As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall
+       On the tears of my bachelor chum.
+
+
+
+
+The Philanthropical Jay
+
+
+It had been ten long years since I last met Jay Gould until I called
+upon him yesterday to renew the acquaintance and discuss the happy past.
+Ten years of patient toil and earnest endeavor on my part, ten years of
+philanthropy on his, have been filed away in the grim and greedy
+heretofore. Both of us have changed in that time, though Jay has changed
+more than I have. Perhaps that is because he has been thrown more in
+contact with change than I have.
+
+Still, I had changed a good deal in those years, for when I called at
+Irvington yesterday Mr. Gould did not remember me. Neither did the
+watchful but overestimated dog in the front yard. Mr. Gould lives in
+comfort, in a cheery home, surrounded by hired help and a barbed-wire
+fence.
+
+By wearing ready-made clothes, instead of having his clothing made
+especially for himself, he has been enabled to amass a good many
+millions of dollars with which he is enabled to buy things.
+
+Carefully concealing the fact that I had any business relations with the
+press, I gave my card to the person who does chores for Mr. Gould, and,
+apologizing for not having dropped in before, I took a seat in the spare
+room to wait for the great railroad magnate.
+
+Mr. Gould entered the room with a low, stealthy tread, and looked me
+over in a cursory way and yet with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+"I believe that I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before,
+sir," said the great railroad swallower and amateur Philanthropist with
+a tinge of railroad irony.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Yes, sir, we met some ten years ago," said I, lightly running my
+fingers over the keys of the piano in order to show him that I was
+accustomed to the sight of a piano. "I was then working in the rolling
+mill at Laramie City, Wyo., and you came to visit the mill, which was
+then operated by the Union Pacific Railroad Company. You do not remember
+me because I have purchased a different pair of trousers since I saw
+you, and the cane which I wear this season changes my whole appearance
+also. I remember you, however, very much."
+
+"Well, if we grant all that, Mr. Nye, will you excuse me for asking you
+to what I am indebted for this call?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Well, Mr. Gould," said I, rising to my full height and putting my soft
+hat on the brow of the Venus de Milo, after which I seated myself
+opposite him in a _degage_ Western way, "you are indebted to _me_ for
+this call. That's what you're indebted to. But we will let that pass.
+We are not here to talk about indebtedness, Jay. If you are busy you
+needn't return this call till next winter. But I am here just to
+converse in a quiet way, as between man and man; to talk over the past,
+to ask you how your conduct is and to inquire if I can do you any good
+in any way whatever. This is no time to speak pieces and ask in a
+grammatical way, 'To what you are indebted for this call.' My main
+object in coming up here was to take you by the hand and ask you how
+your memory is this spring? Judging from what I could hear, I was led to
+believe that it was a little inclined to be sluggish and atrophied days
+and to keep you awake nights. Is that so, Jay?"
+
+"No, sir; that is not so."
+
+"Very well, then I have been misled by the reports in the papers, and I
+am glad it is all a mistake. Now one thing more before I go. Did it ever
+occur to you that while you and your family are all out in your yacht
+together some day, a sudden squall, a quick lurch of the lee scuppers, a
+tremulous movement of the main brace, a shudder of the spring boom might
+occur and all be over?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I have often thought of it, and of course such a thing might
+happen at any time; but you forget that while we are out on the broad
+and boundless ocean we enjoy ourselves. We are free. People with morbid
+curiosity cannot come and call on us. We cannot get the daily
+newspapers, and we do not have to meet low, vulgar people who pay their
+debts and perspire."
+
+"Of course, that is one view to take of it; but that is only a selfish
+view. Supposing that you have made no provision for the future in case
+of accident, would it not be well for you to name some one outside of
+your own family to take up this great burden which is now weighing you
+down--this money which you say yourself has made a slave of you--and
+look out for it? Have you ever considered this matter seriously and
+settled upon a good man who would be willing to water your stock for
+you, and so conduct your affairs that nobody would get any benefit from
+your vast accumulations, and in every way carry out the policy which you
+have inaugurated?
+
+"If you have not thoroughly considered this matter I wish that you would
+do so at an early date. I have in my mind's eye just such a man as you
+need. His shoulders are well fitted for a burden of this kind, and he
+would pick it up cheerfully any time you see fit to lay it down. I will
+give you his address."
+
+"Thank you," said Mr. Gould, as the thermometer in the next room
+suddenly froze up and burst with a loud report. "And now, if you will
+excuse me from offsetting my time, which is worth $500 a minute, against
+yours, which I judge to be worth about $1 per week, I will bid you good
+morning."
+
+He then held the door open for me, and shortly after that I came away.
+There were three reasons why I did not remain, but the principal reason
+was that I did not think he wanted me to do so.
+
+And so I came away and left him. There was little else that I could say
+after that.
+
+It is not the first time that a Western man has been treated with
+consideration in his own section, only to be frowned upon and frozen
+when he meets the same man in New York.
+
+Mr. Gould is below the medium height, and is likely to remain so through
+life. His countenance wears a crafty expression, and yet he allowed
+himself to be April-fooled by a genial little party of gentlemen from
+Boston, who salted the Central Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad by
+holding back all the freight for two weeks in order to have it on the
+road while Jay was examining the property.
+
+Jay Gould would attract very little attention here on the streets, but
+he would certainly be looked upon with suspicion in Paradise. A man who
+would fail to remember that he had $7,000,000 that belonged to the Erie
+road, but who does not forget to remember whenever he paid his own hotel
+bills at Washington, is the kind of man who would pull up and pawn the
+pavements of Paradise within thirty days after he got there.
+
+After looking over the above statement carefully, I feel called upon, in
+justice to myself, to state that Dr. Burchard did not assist me in
+constructing the last sentence.
+
+For those boys who wish to emulate the example of Jay Gould, the example
+of Jay Gould is a good example for them to emulate.
+
+If any little boy in New York on this beautiful Sabbath morning desires
+to jeopardize his immortal soul in order to be beyond the reach of want,
+and ride gayly over the sunlit billows where the cruel fangs of the
+Excise law cannot reach him, let him cultivate a lop-sided memory, swap
+friends for funds and wise counsel for crooked consols.
+
+If I had thought of all this as I came down the front steps at Irvington
+the other day, I would have said it to Mr. Gould; but I did not think of
+it until I got home. A man's best thoughts frequently come to him too
+late for publication.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But the name of Jay Gould will not go down to future generations linked
+with those of Howard and Wilberforce. It will not go very far anyway. In
+this age of millionaires, a millionaire more or less does not count very
+much, and only the good millionaires who baptize and beautify their
+wealth in the eternal sunlight of unselfishness will have any claim on
+immortality.
+
+In this period of progress and high-grade civilization, when Satan takes
+humanity up to the top of a high mountain and shows his railroads and
+his kerosene oil and his distilleries and his coffers filled with pure
+leaf lard, and says: "All this will I give for a seat in the Senate," a
+common millionaire with no originality of design does not excite any
+more curiosity on Broadway than a young man who is led about by a little
+ecru dog.
+
+I do not wish to crush capital with labor, or to further intensify the
+feeling which already exists between the two, for I am a land-holder and
+taxpayer myself, but I say that the man who never mixes up with the
+common people unless he is summoned to explain something and shake the
+moths out of his memory will some day, when the grass grows green over
+his own grave, find himself confronted by the same kind of a memory on
+the part of mankind.
+
+I do not say all this because I was treated in an off-hand manner by Mr.
+Gould, but because I think it ought to be said.
+
+As I said before, Jay Gould is considerably below the medium height, and
+I am not going to take it back.
+
+He is a man who will some day sit out on the corner of a new-laid planet
+with his little pink railroad maps on his knees and ask, "Where am I?"
+and the echoes from every musty corner of miasmatic oblivion will take
+up the question and refer it to the judiciary committee; but it will
+curl up and die like the minority report against a big railroad land
+grant.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "A Brave Refrain."]
+
+
+     When snow is here, and the trees look weird,
+       And the knuckled twigs are gloved with frost;
+     When the breath congeals in the drover's beard,
+       And the old pathway to the barn is lost:
+
+     When the rooster's crow is sad to hear,
+       And the stamp of the stabled horse is vain,
+     And the tone of the cow-bell grieves the ear--
+       O then is the time for a brave refrain!
+
+     When the gears hang stiff on the harness-peg,
+       And the tallow gleams in frozen streaks:
+     And the old hen stands on a lonesome leg,
+       And the pump sounds hoarse and the handle squeaks;
+     When the woodpile lies in a shrouded heap,
+       And the frost is scratched from the window-pane,
+     And anxious eyes from the inside peep--
+       O then is the time for a brave refrain!
+
+     When the ax-helve warms at the chimney-jamb!
+       And hob-nailed boots on the hearth below,
+     And the house cat curls in a slumber calm,
+       And the eight-day clock ticks loud and slow;
+     When the harsh broom-handle jabs the ceil
+       'Neath the kitchen-loft, and the drowsy brain
+     Sniffs the breath of the morning meal--
+       O then is the time for a brave refrain!
+
+
+     'ENVOI.
+
+     When the skillet seethes, and a blubbering hot
+     Tilts the lid of the coffee-pot,
+     And the scent of the buckwheat cake grows plain--
+     O then is the time for a brave refrain!
+
+
+
+
+A Blasted Snore
+
+
+Sleep, under favorable circumstances, is a great boon. Sleep, if natural
+and undisturbed, is surely as useful as any other scientific discovery.
+Sleep, whether administered at home or abroad, under the soporific
+influences of an under-paid preacher or the unyielding wooden cellar
+door that is used as a blanket in the sleeping car, is a harmless
+dissipation and a cheerful relaxation.
+
+Let me study a man for the first hour after he has wakened and I will
+judge him more correctly than I would to watch him all winter in the
+Legislature. We think we are pretty well acquainted with our friends,
+but we are not thoroughly conversant with their peculiarities until we
+have seen them wake up in the morning.
+
+I have often looked at the men I meet and thought what a shock it must
+be to the wives of some of them to wake up and see their husbands before
+they have had time to prepare, and while their minds are still chaotic.
+
+The first glimpse of a large, fat man, whose brain has drooped down
+behind his ears, and whose wheezy breath wanders around through the
+catacombs of his head and then emerges from his nostrils with a shrill
+snort like the yelp of the damned, must be a charming picture for the
+eye of a delicate and beautiful second wife: one who loves to look on
+green meadows and glorious landscapes; one who has always wakened with
+a song and a ripple of laughter that fell on her father's heart like
+shower of sunshine in the somber green of the valley.
+
+It is a pet theory of mine that to be pleasantly wakened is half the
+battle for the day. If we could be wakened by the refrain of a joyous
+song, instead of having our front teeth knocked out by one of those
+patent pillow-sham holders that sit up on their hind feet at the head of
+the bed, until we dream that we are just about to enter Paradise and
+have just passed our competitive examination, and which then swoop down
+and mash us across the bridge of the nose, there would be less insanity
+in our land and death would be regarded more in the light of a calamity.
+
+When you waken a child do it in a pleasant way. Do not take him by the
+ear and pull him out of bed. It is disagreeable for the child, and
+injures the general _tout ensemble_ of the ear. Where children go to
+sleep with tears on their cheeks and are wakened by the yowl of
+dyspeptic parents, they have a pretty good excuse for crime in after
+years. If I sat on the bench in such cases I would mitigate the
+sentence.
+
+It is a genuine pleasure for me to wake up a good-natured child in a
+good-natured way. Surely it is better from those dimpled lids to chase
+the sleep with a caress than to knock out slumber with a harsh word and
+a bed slat.
+
+No one should be suddenly wakened from a sound sleep. A sudden awaking
+reverses the magnetic currents, and makes the hair pull, to borrow an
+expression from Dante. The awaking should be natural, gradual, and
+deliberate.
+
+A sad thing occurred last summer on an Omaha train. It was a very warm
+day, and in the smoking car a fat man, with a magenta fringe of whiskers
+over his Adam's apple, and a light, ecru lambrequin of real camel's hair
+around the suburbs of his head, might have been discovered.
+
+He could have opened his mouth wider, perhaps, but not without injuring
+the mainspring of his neck and turning his epiglottis out of doors.
+
+He was asleep.
+
+He was not only slumbering, but he was putting the earnestness and
+passionate devotion of his whole being into it. His shiny, oilcloth
+grip, with the roguish tip of a discarded collar just peeping out at the
+side, was up in the iron wall-pocket of the car. He also had, in the
+seat with him, a market basket full of misfit lunch and a two-bushel bag
+containing extra apparel. On the floor he had a crock of butter with a
+copy of the Punkville _Palladium_ and _Stock Grower's Guardian_ over the
+top.
+
+He slumbered on in a rambling sort of way, snoring all the time in
+monosyllables, except when he erroneously swallowed his tonsils, and
+then he would struggle awhile and get black in the face, while the
+passengers vainly hoped that he had strangled.
+
+While he was thus slumbering, with all the eloquence and enthusiasm of a
+man in the full meridian of life, the train stopped with a lurch, and
+the brakeman touched his shoulder.
+
+"Here's your town," he said. "We only stop a minute. You'll have to
+hustle."
+
+The man, who had been far away, wrestling with Morpheus, had removed his
+hat, coat, and boots, and when he awoke his feet absolutely refused to
+go back into the same quarters.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+At first he looked around reproachfully at the people in the car. Then
+he reached up and got his oilcloth grip from the bracket. The bag was
+tied together with a string, and as he took it down the string untied.
+Then we all discovered that this man had been on the road for a long
+time, with no object, apparently, except to evade laundries. All kinds
+of articles fell out in the aisle. I remember seeing a chest-protector
+and a linen coat, a slab of seal-brown gingerbread and a pair of stoga
+boots, a hairbrush and a bologna sausage, a plug of tobacco and a porous
+plaster.
+
+He gathered up what he could in both arms, made two trips to the door
+and threw out all he could, tried again to put his number eleven feet
+into his number nine boots, gave it up, and socked himself out of the
+car as it began to move, while the brakeman bombarded him through the
+window for two miles with personal property, groceries, dry-goods, boots
+and shoes, gents' furnishing goods, hardward, notions, _bric-a-brac_,
+red herrings, clothing, doughnuts, vinegar bitters, and facetious
+remarks.
+
+Then he picked up the retired snorer's railroad check from the seat, and
+I heard him say: "Why, dog on it, that wasn't his town after all."
+
+
+
+
+Good-bye er Howdy-do
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     Say good-bye er howdy-do--
+     What's the odds betwixt the two?
+     Comin'--goin'--every day
+     Best friends first to go away--
+     Grasp of hands you druther hold
+     Than their weight in solid gold,
+     Slips their grip while greetin' you.--
+     Say good-bye er howdy-do?
+
+     Howdy-do, and then, good-bye--
+     Mixes jest like laugh and cry;
+     Deaths and births, and worst and best
+     Tangled their contrariest;
+     Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell
+     Skeerin' up some funeral knell.--
+     Here's my song, and there's your sigh:
+     Howdy-do, and then, good-bye!
+
+     Say good-bye er howdy-do--
+     Jest the same to me and you;
+     'Taint worth while to make no fuss,
+     'Cause the job's put up on us!
+     Some one's runnin' this concern
+     That's got nothin' else to learn--
+     If he's willin', we'll pull through.
+     Say good-bye or howdy-do!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SOCIETY GURGS From SANDY MUSH]
+
+
+The following constitute the items of great interest occurring on the
+East Side among the colored people of Blue Ruin:
+
+Montmorency Tousley of Pizen Ivy avenue cut his foot badly last week
+while chopping wood for a party on Willow street. He has been warned
+time and again not to chop wood when the sign was not right, but he
+would not listen to his friends. He not only cut off enough of his foot
+to weigh three or four pounds, but completely gutted the coffee sack in
+which his foot was done up at the time. It will be some time before he
+can radiate around among the boys on Pizen avenue again.
+
+Plum Beasley's house caught on fire last Tuesday night. He reckons it
+was caused by a defective flue, for the fire caught in the north wing.
+This is one of Plum's bon mots, however. He tries to make light of it,
+but the wood he has been using all winter was white birch, and when he
+got a big dose of hickory at the same place last week it was so dark
+that he didn't notice the difference, and before he knew it he had a
+bigger fire than he had allowed. In the midst of a pleasant flow of
+conversation gas collected in the wood and caused an explosion which
+threw a passel of live coals on the bed. The house was soon a solid mass
+of flame. Mr. Beasley is still short two children.
+
+Mr. Granulation Hicks, of Boston, Mass., who has won deserved
+distinction in advancing the interests of Sir George Pullman, of
+Chicago, is here visiting his parents, who reside on Upper Hominy. We
+are glad to see Mr. Hicks and hope he may live long to visit Blue Ruin
+and propitiate up and down our streets.
+
+Miss Roseola Cardiman has just been the recipient of a beautiful pair of
+chaste ear-bobs from her brother, who is a night watchman in a jewelry
+store run by a man named Tiffany in New York. Roseola claims that
+Tiffany makes a right smart of her brother, and sets a heap by him.
+
+Whooping cough and horse distemper are again making fearful havoc among
+the better classes at the foot of Pizen Ivy avenue.
+
+We are pained to learn that the free reading room, established over
+Amalgamation Brown's store, has been closed up by the police. Blue Ruin
+has clamored for a free temperance reading room and brain retort for ten
+years, and now a ruction between two of our best known citizens, over
+the relative merits of a natural pair and a doctored flush, has called
+down the vengeance of the authorities, and shut up what was a credit to
+the place and a quiet resort, where young men could come night after
+night and kind of complicate themselves at. There are two or three men
+in this place that will bully or bust everything they can get into, and
+they have perforated more outrages on Blue Ruin than we are entitled to
+put up with.
+
+There was a successful doings at the creek last Sabbath, during which
+baptism was administered to four grown people and a dude from Sandy
+Mush. The pastor thinks it will take first-rate, though it is still too
+soon to tell.
+
+Surrender Adams got a letter last Friday from his son Gladstone, who
+filed on a homestead near Porcupine, Dak., two years ago. He says they
+have had another of those unprecedented winters there for which Dakota
+is so justly celebrated. He thinks this one has been even more so that
+any of the others. He wishes he was back here at Blue Ruin, where a man
+can go out doors for half an hour without getting ostracized by the
+elements. He says they brag a good deal on their ozone there, but he
+allows that it can be overdone. He states that when the ozone in Dakota
+is feeling pretty well and humping itself and curling up sheet-iron
+roofs and blowing trains of the track, a man has to tie a clothes-line
+to himself, with the other end fastened to the door knob, before it is
+safe to visit his own hen-house. He says that his nearest neighbor is
+seventeen miles away, and a man might as well buy his own chickens as to
+fool his money away on seventeen miles of clothes-line.
+
+It is a first-rate letter, and the old man wonders who Gladstone got to
+write it for him.
+
+The valuable ecru dog of our distinguished townsman, Mr. Piedmont
+Babbit, was seriously impaired last Saturday morning by an east-bound
+freight.
+
+He will not wrinkle up his nose at another freight train.
+
+George Wellington, of Hickory, was in town the front end of the week. He
+has accepted a position in the livery, feed and sale stable at Sandy
+Mush. Call again, George.
+
+Gabriel Brant met with a sad mishap a few days since while crossing the
+French Broad river, by which he lost his leg.
+
+Any one who may find an extra leg below where the accident occurred will
+confer a favor on Mr. Brant by returning same to No. 06-1/2 Pneumonia
+street. It may be readily identified by any one, as it is made of an old
+pickhandle and weighs four pounds.
+
+J. Quincy Burns has written a war article for the Century Magazine,
+regarding a battle where he was at. In this article he aims to describe
+the sensations of a man who is ignorant of physical fear and yet yearns
+to have the matter submitted to arbitration. He gives a thorough expose
+of his efforts in trying to find a suitable board of arbitration as soon
+as he saw that the enemy felt hostile and eager for the fray.
+
+The forthcoming number of the Century will be eagerly snapped up by Mr.
+Burns' friends who are familiar with his pleasing and graphic style of
+writing. He describes with wonderful power the sense of utter exhaustion
+which came over him and the feeling of bitter disappointment when he
+realized that he was too far away to participate in the battle and too
+fatigued to make a further search for suitable arbitrators.
+
+
+
+
+While Cigarettes to Ashes Turn
+
+
+     I.
+
+     "He smokes--and that's enough," says Ma--
+     "And cigarettes, at that!" says Pa.
+
+     "He must not call again," says she--
+     "He _shall_ not call again!" says he.
+
+     They both glare at me as before--
+     Then quit the room and bang the door,--
+
+     While I, their willful daughter, say,
+     "I guess I'll love him, anyway!"
+
+
+     II.
+
+     At twilight, in his room, alone,
+     His careless feet inertly thrown
+
+     Across a chair, my fancy can
+     But worship this most worthless man!
+
+     I dream what joy it is to set
+     His slow lips round a cigarette,
+
+     With idle-humored whiff and puff--
+     Ah! this is innocent enough!
+
+     To mark the slender fingers raise
+     The waxen match's dainty blaze,
+
+     Whose chastened light an instant glows
+     On drooping lids and arching nose,
+
+     Then, in the sudden gloom, instead,
+     A tiny ember, dim and red,
+
+     Blooms languidly to ripeness, then
+     Fades slowly, and grows ripe again.
+
+[Illustration: "HE SMOKES--AND THAT'S ENOUGH," SAYS MA--]
+
+     III.
+
+     I lean back, in my own boudoir--
+     The door is fast, the sash ajar;
+
+     And in the dark, I smiling stare
+     At one window over there,
+
+     Where some one, smoking, pinks the gloom,
+     The darling darkness of his room!
+
+     I push my shutters wider yet,
+     And lo! I light a cigarette;
+
+     And gleam for gleam, and glow for glow,
+     Each pulse of light a word we know,
+
+     We talk of love that still will burn
+     While cigarettes to ashes turn.
+
+
+
+
+Says He
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     "Whatever the weather may be," says he--
+       "Whatever the weather may be--
+     Its plaze, if ye will, an' I'll say me say--
+     Supposin' to-day was the winterest day,
+     Wud the weather be changing because ye cried,
+     Or the snow be grass were ye crucified?
+     The best is to make your own summer," says he,
+     "Whatever the weather may be," says he--
+       "Whatever the weather may be!"
+
+     "Whatever the weather may be," says he--
+       "Whatever the weather may be,
+     Its the songs ye sing, an' the smiles ye wear
+     That's a-makin' the sunshine everywhere;
+     An' the world of gloom is a world of glee,
+     Wid the bird in the bush, an' the bud in the tree,
+     Whatever the weather may be," says he--
+       "Whatever the weather may be!"
+
+     "Whatever the weather may be," says he--
+       "Whatever the weather may be,
+     Ye can bring the spring, wid its green an' gold,
+     An' the grass in the grove where the snow lies cold,
+     An' ye'll warm your back, wid a smiling face,
+     As ye sit at your heart like an owld fireplace,
+     Whatever the weather may be," says he,
+       "Whatever the weather may be!"
+
+
+
+
+Where the Roads Are Engaged in Forking
+
+
+I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork. I will
+call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel because the hotel at a railroad junction
+is generally called the Fifth Avenue, or the Gem City House, or the
+Palace Hotel. I stopped at an inn some years since called the Palace,
+and I can truly say that if it had ever been a palace it was very much
+run down when I visited it.
+
+Just as the fond parent of a white-eyed, two-legged freak of nature
+loves to name his mentally-diluted son Napoleon, and for the same reason
+that a prominent horse owner in Illinois last year socked my name on a
+tall, buckskin-colored colt that did not resemble me, intellectually or
+physically, a colt that did not know enough to go around a barbed-wire
+fence, but sought to shift himself through it into an untimely grave, so
+this man has named his sway-backed wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
+
+It is different from the Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place
+there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said
+before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact that is the leading
+industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a
+healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat
+speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been
+no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business, there has been
+no falling off at all and these roads are forking as much to-day as they
+did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the
+first glad moment are still here to witness the operation.
+
+Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three
+people have to remain over as we did all night. It is at such a time
+that the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large
+codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt,
+is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible
+position of floor manager of the codfish ball.
+
+A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it
+through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs
+to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than
+they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks
+loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the
+rooms. All is bustle about the house.
+
+Especially the chambermaid.
+
+We were put in the guests' chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made
+up of pains and counterpanes.
+
+This last remark conveys to the reader the presence of a light, joyous
+feeling which is wholly assumed on my part.
+
+The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off
+in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was
+in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to
+sleep here and who moaned through the night and who died while waiting
+for the dawn.
+
+I have no doubt in the world but there is quite a good-sized delegation
+from this hotel, of guests who hesitated about committing suicide,
+because they feared to tread the red-hot sidewalks of perdition, but who
+became desperate at last and resolved to take their chances, and they
+have never had any cause to regret it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We washed our hands on doorknob soap, wiped them on a slippery elm
+court-plaster, that had made quite a reputation for itself under the
+nom-de-plume of "Towel," tried to warm ourselves at a pocket inkstand
+stove, that gave out heat like a dark lantern and had a deformed elbow
+at the back of it.
+
+The chambermaid is very versatile, and waits on the table while not
+engaged in agitating the overworked mattresses and puny pillows
+up-stairs. In this way she imparts the odor of fried pork to the
+pillow-cases and kerosene to the pie.
+
+She has a wild, nervous and apprehensive look in her eye, as though she
+feared that some herculean guest might seize her in his great strong
+arms and bear her away to a justice of the peace and marry her. She
+certainly cannot fully realize how thoroughly secure she is from such a
+calamity. She is just as safe as she was forty years ago, when she
+promised her aged mother that she would never elope with any one.
+
+Still, she is sociable at times and converses freely with me at table,
+as she leans over my shoulder, pensively brushing the crumbs into my lap
+with a general utility towel, which accompanies her in her various
+rambles through the house, and she asks what we would rather have--"tea
+or eggs?"
+
+This afternoon we will pay our bill, in accordance with a life-long
+custom of ours, and go away to permeate the busy haunts of men. It will
+be sad to tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel at this place;
+still, there is no great loss without some small gain, and at our next
+hotel we may not have to chop our own wood and bring it up stairs when
+we want to rest. The landlord of a hotel who goes away to a political
+meeting and leaves his guests to chop their own wood, and then charges
+them full price for the rent of a boisterous and tempest-tossed bed,
+will never endear himself to those with whom he is thrown in contact.
+
+We leave at 2:30 this afternoon, hoping that the two railroads may
+continue to fork here just the same as though we had remained.
+
+
+
+
+McFeeters' Fourth
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     It was needless to say 'twas a glorious day,
+     And to boast of it all in that spread-eagle way
+     That our forefathers had since the hour of the birth
+     Of this most patriotic republic on earth!
+     But 'twas justice, of course, to admit that the sight
+     Of the old Stars-and-Stripes was a thing of delight
+     In the eyes of a fellow, however he tried
+     To look on the day with a dignified pride
+     That meant not to brook any turbulent glee,
+     Or riotous flourish of loud jubilee!
+
+     So argued McFeeters, all grim and severe,
+     Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear,
+     Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish
+     Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish
+     That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end
+     Of the stick to forever and ever ascend;
+     Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn
+     And its horrible havoc had ever been born!
+     Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring aghast,
+     That this Fourth of July were as dead as the last!
+
+     So, yesterday morning, McFeeters arose,
+     With a fire in his eyes, and a cold in his nose,
+     And a gutteral voice in appropriate key
+     With a temper as gruff as a temper could be.
+     He growled at the servant he met on the stair,
+     Because he was whistling a national air,
+     And he growled at the maid on the balcony, who
+     Stood enrapt with the tune of "The Red, White and Blue"
+     That a band was discoursing like mad in the street,
+     With drumsticks that banged, and with cymbals that beat.
+
+     And he growled at his wife, as she buttoned his vest,
+     And applausively pinned a rosette on his breast
+     Of the national colors, and lured from his purse
+     Some change for the boys--for firecrackers--or worse:
+     And she pointed with pride to a soldier in blue
+     In a frame on the wall, and the colors there, too;
+     And he felt, as he looked on the features, the glow
+     The painter found there twenty long years ago,
+     And a passionate thrill in his breast, as he felt
+     Instinctively round for the sword in his belt.
+
+     What was it that hung like a mist o'er the room?--
+     The tumult without--and the music--the boom
+     Of the canon--the blare of the bugle and fife?--
+     No matter!--McFeeters was kissing his wife,
+     And laughing and crying and waving his hat
+     Like a genuine soldier, and crazy, at that!
+     --But it's needless to say 'twas a glorious day,
+     And to boast of it all in that spread-eagle way
+     That our forefathers have since the hour of birth
+     Of this most patriotic republic on earth!
+
+
+
+
+In a Box
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     I saw them last night in a box at the play--
+       Old age and young youth side by side--
+     You might know by the glasses that pointed that way
+       That they were--a groom and a bride;
+     And you might have known, too, by the face of the groom,
+       And the tilt of his head, and the grim
+     Little smile of his lip, he was proud to presume
+       That we men were all envying him.
+
+     Well, she was superb--an Elaine in the face,
+       A Godiva in figure and mien,
+     With the arm and the wrist of a Parian "Grace,"
+       And the high-lifted brow of a queen;
+     But I thought, in the splendor of wealth and of pride,
+       And in all her young beauty might prize,
+     I should hardly be glad if she sat by my side
+       With that far-away look in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+Seeking to Set the Public Right
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I would like to make an explanation at this time which concerns me, of
+course, more than any one else, and yet it ought to be made in the
+interests of general justice, also. I refer to a recent article
+published in a Western paper and handsomely illustrated, in which, among
+others, I find the foregoing picture of my residence:
+
+The description which accompanies the cut, among other things, goes on
+to state as follows: "The structure is elaborate, massive and beautiful.
+It consists of three stories, basement and attic, and covers a large
+area on the ground. It contains an elevator, electric bells,
+steam-heating arrangements, baths, hot and cold, in every room, electric
+lights, laundry, fire-escapes, etc. The grounds consist of at least five
+acres, overlooking the river for several miles up and down, with fine
+boating and a private fish-pond of two acres in extent, containing
+every known variety of game fish. The grounds are finely laid out in
+handsome drives and walks, and when finished the establishment will be
+one of the most complete and beautiful in the Northwest."
+
+No one realizes more fully than I the great power of the press for good
+or evil. Rightly used the newspaper can make or unmake men, and wrongly
+used it can be even more sinister. I might say, knowing this as I do, I
+want to be placed right before the people. The above is not a correct
+illustration or description of my house, for several reasons. In the
+first place, it is larger and more robust in appearance, and in the
+second place it has not the same _tout ensemble_ as my residence. My
+house is less obtrusive and less arrogant in its demeanor than the
+foregoing, and it has no elevator in it.
+
+My house is not the kind that seems to crave an elevator. An elevator in
+my house would lose money. There is no popular clamor for one, and if I
+were to put one in I would have to abolish the dining-room. It would
+also interfere with the parlor.
+
+I have learned recently that the correspondent who came here to write up
+this matter visited the town while I was in the South, and as he could
+not find me he was at the mercy of strangers. A young man who lives here
+and who is just in the heyday of life, gleefully consented to show the
+correspondent my new residence not yet completed. So they went over and
+examined the new Oliver Wendell Holmes Hospital, which will be completed
+in June and which is, of course, a handsome structure, but quite
+different from my house in many particulars.
+
+For instance, my residence is of a different school of architecture,
+being rather on the Scandinavian order, while the foregoing has a
+tendency toward the Ironic. The hospital belongs to a very recent
+school, as I may say, while my residence, in its architectural methods
+and conception, goes back to the time of the mound builders, a time when
+a Gothic hole in the ground was considered the _magnum bonum_ and the
+scrumptuous thing in art. If the reader will go around behind the above
+building and notice it carefully on the east side, he will not discover
+a dried coonskin nailed to the rear breadths of the wood-shed. That
+alone ought to convince an observing man that the house is not mine. The
+coonskin regardant will always be found emblazoned on my arms, together
+with a blue Goddess of Liberty and my name in green India ink.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Above I give a rough sketch of my house. Of course I have idealized it
+somewhat, but only in order to catch the eye of the keenly observant
+reader. The front part of the house runs back to the time of Polypus the
+First, while the L, which does not show in the drawing, runs back as far
+as the cistern.
+
+In closing, let me say that I am not finding fault with any one because
+the above error has crept into the public prints, for it is really a
+pardonable error, after all. Neither do I wish to be considered as
+striving to eliminate my name from the columns of the press, for no one
+could be more tickled than I am over a friendly notice of my arrival in
+town or a timely reference to my courteous bearing and youthful
+appearance, but I want to see the Oliver Wendell Holmes Hospital
+succeed, and so I come out in this way over my own signature and admit
+that the building does not belong to me and that, so far as I am
+concerned, the man who files a lien on it will simply fritter away his
+time.
+
+
+
+
+A Dose't of Blues
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+     I' got no patience with blues at all!
+       And I ust to kindo' talk
+     Aginst 'em, and claim, 'tel along last fall,
+       They was none in the fambly stock;
+     But a nephew of mine, from Eelinoy,
+       That visited us last year,
+     He kindo' convinct me different
+       While he was a-stayin' here.
+     Frum ever'-which-way that blues is frum,
+       They'd tackle him ever' ways;
+     They'd come to him in the night, and come
+       On Sundys, and rainy days;
+     They'd tackle him in corn-plantin' time,
+       And in harvest, an airly fall,
+     But a dose't of blues in the wintertime
+       He 'lowed was the worst of all!
+     Said all diseases that ever he had--
+       The mumps, er the rheumatiz--
+     Er ever-other-day aigger's bad
+       Purt' nigh as anything is!--
+     Er a cyarbuncle, say, on the back of his neck,
+       Er a fellon on his thumb,--
+     But you keep the blues away frum him,
+       And all o' the rest could come!
+     And he'd moan, "they's narry a leaf below!
+       Ner a spear o' grass in sight!
+     And the whole wood-pile's clean under snow!
+       And the days is dark as night!
+     And you can't go out--ner you can't stay in--
+       Lay down--stand up--ner set!"
+     And a case o' reguller tyfoid blues
+       Would double him jest clean shet!
+
+     I writ his parents a postal-kyard
+       He could stay 'tel spring-time come;
+     And Aprile first, as I rickollect,
+       Was the day we shipped him home.
+     Most o' his relatives, sence then,
+       Has either give up, er quit,
+     Er jest died off, but I understand
+       _He's_ the same old color yit!
+
+
+
+
+Wanted, a Fox
+
+
+                                           SLIPPERY ELMHURST,}
+                                STATEN ISLAND, July 18, 1888.}
+
+  TO THE EDITOR:
+
+Dear Sir: Could you inform a constant reader of your valuable paper
+where he would be most likely to obtain a good, durable, wild fox which
+could be used for hunting purposes on my premises? I desire a fox that
+is a good roadster, and yet not too bloodthirsty. If I could secure one
+that would not bite, it would tickle me most to death.
+
+You know, perhaps, that I am of English origin. Some of the best and
+bluest blood of the oldest and most decrepit families in England flows
+in my veins. There is no better blood extant. We love the exhilarating
+sports of our ancestors, and nothing thrills us through and through like
+the free chase 'cross country behind the fleeing fox. Joyously we gallop
+over the sward behind the yelping pack, as we clearly scent high, low,
+jack and the game.
+
+My ancestors are haughty English people from Piscataquis county, Maine.
+For centuries, our rich, warm, red blood has been mellowed by the
+elderberry wine and huckleberry juice of Moosehead lake; but now and
+then it will assert itself and mantle in the broad and indestructible
+cheek of our race. Ever and anon in our family you will notice the
+slender triangular chest, the broad and haughty sweep of abdomen, and
+the high, intellectual expanse of pelvic bone, which denotes the true
+Englishman; proud, high-spirited, soaked full of calm disdain, wearing
+checked pantaloons, and a soft, flabby tourist's hat that has a bow at
+both ends, so that a man cannot get too drunk to put it on his head
+wrong.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I know that here is democratic America, where every man has to earn his
+living or marry rich, people will scorn my high-born love of the
+fox-chase, and speak in a slighting manner of my wild, wild yearn for
+the rush and scamper of the hunt. By Jove, but it is joy indeed to
+gallop over the sward and the cover, and the open land, the meet and the
+cucumber vines of the Plebian farmer, to run over the wife of the
+peasant and tramp her low, coarse children into the rich mould, to
+"sick" the hounds upon the rude rustic as he paris greens his potatoes,
+to pry open the jaws of the pack and return to the open-eyed peasant
+the quivering seat of his pantaloons, returning it to him not because it
+is lacking in its merit, but because it is not available.
+
+Ah, how the pulses thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold,
+anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated
+fracture of the dura mater through which the gas is gently escaping.
+
+Let others rave over the dreamy waltz and the false joys of the skating
+rink, but give me the maddening yelp of the pack in full cry as it
+chases the speckled two-year-old of the low-born rustic across the open
+and into the pond.
+
+Let others sing of the zephyrs that fan the white sails of their
+swift-flying yacht, but give me a wild gallop at the tail of my
+high-priced hounds and six weeks at the hospital with a fractured rib
+and I am proud and happy. All our family are that way. We do not care
+for industry for itself alone. We are too proud ever to become slaves to
+habits of industry. We can labor or we can let it alone.
+
+This shows our superiority as a race. We have been that way for hundreds
+of years. We could work in order to be sociable, but we would not allow
+it to sap the foundations of our whole being.
+
+I write, therefore, to learn, if possible, where I can get a good red or
+gray fox that will come home nights. I had a fox last season for hunting
+purposes, but he did not give satisfaction. He was constantly getting
+into the pound. I do not want an animal of that kind. I want one that I
+shall always know where I can put my hand upon him when I want to hunt.
+
+Nothing can be more annoying than to be compelled to go to the pound
+and redeem a fox, when a party is mounted and waiting to hunt him.
+
+I do not care so much for the gait of a fox, whether he lopes, trots or
+paces, so that his feet are sound and his wind good. I bought a
+light-red fox two years ago that had given perfect satisfaction the
+previous year, but when we got ready to hunt him he went lame in the off
+hind foot and crawled under a hen house back of my estate, where he
+remained till the hunt was over.
+
+What I want is a young, flealess fox of the dark red or iron-gray
+variety, that I can depend upon as a good roadster; one that will come
+and eat out of my hand and yearn to be loved.
+
+I would like also a tall, red horse with a sawed-off tail; one that can
+jump a barbed wire fence without mussing it up with fragments of his
+rider. Any one who may have such a horse or pipless fox will do well to
+communicate with me in person or by letter, enclosing references. I may
+be found during the summer months on my estate, spread out under a tree,
+engaged in thought.
+
+     E. FITZWILLIAM NYE.
+
+     Slipperyelmhurst, Staten Island, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SUTTERS CLAIM]
+
+
+IMITATED.
+
+     Say! _you_ feller! _You_--
+       With that spade and the pick!--
+     What do you 'pose to do
+       On this side o' the crick?
+     Goin' to tackle this claim? Well, I reckon
+       You'll let up agin purty quick!
+     No bluff, understand,--
+       But the same has been tried,
+     And the claim never panned--
+       Or the fellers has lied,--
+     For they tell of a dozen that tried it,
+       And quit it most onsatisfied.
+
+     The luck's dead agin it!--
+       The first man I see
+     That stuck a pick in it
+       Proved _that_ thing to me,--
+     For he sorto took down, and got homesick,
+       And went back whar he'd orto be!
+
+     Then others they worked it
+       Some--more or less,
+     But finally shirked it,
+       In grades of distress,--
+     With an eye out--a jaw or skull busted,
+       Or some sort o' seriousness.
+
+     The _last_ one was plucky--
+       He wasn't afeerd,
+     And bragged he was "lucky,"
+       And said that "he'd heerd
+     A heep of bluff-talk," and swore awkard
+       He'd work any claim that he keered!
+
+     Don't you strike nary lick
+       With that pick till I'm through;
+     This-here feller talked slick
+       And as peart-like as you!
+     And he says: "I'll abide here
+       As long as I please!"
+     But he didn't.... He died here--
+       And I'm his disease!
+
+
+
+
+Seeking to Be Identified
+
+
+CHICAGO, Feb. 20, 1888.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Financial circles here have been a good deal interested in the discovery
+of a cipher which was recently adopted by a depositor and which began to
+attract the attention at first of a gentleman employed in the
+Clearing-House. He was telling me about it and showing me the vouchers
+or duplicates of them.
+
+It was several months ago that he first noticed on the back of a check
+passing through the Clearing-House the following cipher, written in a
+symmetrical, Gothic hand:
+
+     DEAR SIR:--Herewith find payment for last month's butter. It was
+     hardly up to the average. Why do you blonde your butter? Your
+     butter last month tried to assume an effeminate air, which
+     certainly was not consistent with its great vigor. Is it not
+     possible that this butter is the brother to what we had the month
+     previous, and that it was exchanged for its sister by mistake? We
+     have generally liked your butter very much, but we will have to
+     deal elsewhere if you are going to encourage it in wearing a full
+     beard.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     W.
+
+Moneyed men all over Chicago and financial cryptogrammers came to read
+the curious thing and to try and work out its bearing on trade.
+Everybody took a look at it and went away defeated. Even the men who
+were engaged in trying to figure out the identity of the Snell murderer,
+took a day off and tried their Waterbury thinkers on this problem. In
+the midst of it all another check passed through the Clearing-House with
+this cipher, in the same hand:
+
+     SIR:--Your bill for the past month is too much. You forget the eggs
+     returned at the end of second week, for which you were to give me
+     credit. The cook broke one of them by mistake, and then threw up
+     the portfolio of pie-founder in our once joyous home. I will not
+     dock you for loss of cook, but I cannot allow you for the eggs. How
+     you succeed in dodging quarantine with eggs like that is a mystery
+     to yours truly,
+
+     W.
+
+Great excitement followed the discovery of this indorsement on a check
+for $32.87. Everybody who knew anything about ciphering was called in to
+consider it. A young man from a high school near here, who made a
+specialty of mathematics and pimples, and who could readily tell how
+long a shadow a nine-pound ground-hog would cast at 2 o'clock and 37
+minutes p. m., on ground-hog day, if sunny, at the town of Fungus, Dak.,
+provided latitude and longitude and an irregular mass of red chalk be
+given to him, was secured to jerk a few logarithms in the interests of
+trade. He came and tried it for a few days, covered the interior of the
+Exposition Building with figures and then went away.
+
+The Pinkerton detectives laid aside their literary work on the great
+train book, entitled "The Jerkwater Bank Robbery and other Choice
+Crimes," by the author of "How I Traced a Lame Man through Michigan and
+other Felonies." They grappled with the cipher, and several of them
+leaned up against something and thought for a long time, but they could
+make neither head nor tail to it. Ignatius Donnelly took a powerful dose
+of kumiss, and under its maddening influence sought to solve the great
+problem which threatened to engulf the national surplus. All was in
+vain. Cowed and defeated, the able conservators of coin, who require a
+man to be identified before he can draw on his overshoes at sight, had
+to acknowledge if this thing continued it threatened the destruction of
+the entire national fabric.
+
+About this time I was calling at the First National Bank of Chicago, the
+greatest bank, if I am not mistaken, in America. I saw the bonds
+securing its issue of national currency the other day in Washington, and
+I am quite sure the custodian told me it was the greatest of any bank in
+the Union. Anyway, it was sufficient, so that I felt like doing my
+banking business there whenever it became handy to do so.
+
+I asked for a certificate of deposit for $2,000, and had the money to
+pay for it, but I had to be identified. "Why," I said to the receiving
+teller, "surely you don't require a man to be identified when he
+deposits money, do you?"
+
+"Yes, that's the idea."
+
+"Well, isn't that a new twist on the crippled industries of this
+country?"
+
+"No; that's our rule. Hurry up, please, and don't keep men waiting who
+have money and know how to do business."
+
+"Well, I don't want to obstruct business, of course, but suppose, for
+instance, I get myself identified by a man I know and a man you know,
+and a man who can leave his business and come here for the delirious joy
+of identifying me, and you admit that I am the man I claim to be,
+corresponding as to description, age, sex, etc., with the man I
+advertise myself to be, how would it be about your ability to identify
+yourself as the man you claim to be? I go all over Chicago, visiting all
+the large pork-packing houses in search of a man I know, and who is
+intimate with literary people like me, and finally we will say I find
+one who knows me and who knows you, and whom you know, and who can leave
+his leaf lard long enough to come here and identify me all right. Can
+you identify yourself in such a way that when I put in my $2,000 you
+will not loan it upon insufficient security as they did in Cincinnati
+the other day, as soon as I go out of town?"
+
+"Oh, we don't care especially whether you trade here or not, so that you
+hurry up and let other people have a chance. Where you make a mistake is
+in trying to rehearse a piece here instead of going out to Lincoln Park
+or somewhere in a quiet part of the city. Our rules are that a man who
+makes a deposit here must be identified."
+
+"All right. Do you know Queen Victoria?"
+
+"No, sir; I do not."
+
+"Well, then, there is no use in disturbing her. Do you know any of the
+other crowned heads?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well, then, do you know President Cleveland, or any of the Cabinet, or
+the Senate or members of the House?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's it, you see. I move in one set and you in another. What
+respectable people do you know?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I'll have to ask you to stand aside, I guess, and give that string of
+people a chance. You have no right to take up my time in this way. The
+rules of the bank are inflexible. We must know who you are, even before
+we accept your deposit."
+
+I then drew from my pocket a copy of the Sunday World, which contained a
+voluptuous picture of myself. Removing my hat and making a court salaam
+by letting out four additional joints in my lithe and versatile limbs, I
+asked if any further identification would be necessary.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Hastily closing the door to the vault and jerking the combination, he
+said that would be satisfactory. I was then permitted to deposit in the
+bank.
+
+I do not know why I should always be regarded with suspicion wherever I
+go. I do not present the appearance of a man who is steeped in crime,
+and yet when I put my trivial little two-gallon valise on the seat of a
+depot-waiting-room a big man with a red moustache comes to me and hisses
+through his clinched teeth: "Take yer baggage off the seat!!" It is so
+everywhere. I apologize for disturbing a ticket agent long enough to
+sell me a ticket, and he tries to jump through a little brass wicket and
+throttle me. Other men come in and say: "Give me a ticket for Bandoline,
+O., and be dam sudden about it, too," and they get their ticket and go
+aboard the car and get the best seat, while I am begging for the
+opportunity to buy a seat at full rates and then ride in the wood-box. I
+believe that common courtesy and decency in America need protection. Go
+into an hotel or a hotel, whichever suits the eyether and nyether
+readers of these lines, and the commercial man who travels for a big
+sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek
+and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a
+slippery-elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a disconnected bell, a
+view of the laundry, a tin roof and $4 a day.
+
+But I digress. I was speaking of the bank check cipher. At the First
+National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorsements. It
+read as follows:
+
+     DEAR SIR:--This will be your pay for chickens and other fowls
+     received up to the first of the present month. Time is working
+     wondrous changes in your chickens. They are not such chickens as we
+     used to get of you before the war. They may be the same chickens,
+     but oh! how changed by the lapse of time! How much more
+     indestructible! How they have learned since then to defy the
+     encroaching tooth of remorseless ages, or any other man! Why do you
+     not have them tender like your squashes? I found a blue poker chip
+     in your butter this week. What shall I credit myself for it? If you
+     would try to work your butter more and your customers less it would
+     be highly appreciated, especially by, yours truly,
+
+     W.
+
+
+
+Looking at the signature on the check itself, I found it to be that of
+Mrs. James Wexford, of this city. Knowing Mr. Wexford, a wealthy and
+influential publisher here, I asked him to-day if he knew anything about
+this matter. He said that all he knew about it was that his wife had a
+separate bank account, and had asked him several months ago what was the
+use of all the blank space on the back of a check, and why it couldn't
+be used for correspondence with the remittee. Mr. Wexford said he'd bet
+$500 that his wife had been using her checks that way, for he said he
+never knew of a woman who could possibly pay postage on a note,
+remittance or anything else unless every particle of the surface had
+been written over in a wild, delirious, three-story hand. Later on I
+found that he was right about it. His wife had been sassing the grocer
+and the butter-man on the back of her checks. Thus ended the great bank
+mystery.
+
+I will close this letter with a little incident, the story of which may
+not be so startling, but it is true. It is a story of child faith.
+Johnny Quinlan, of Evanston, has the most wonderful confidence in the
+efficacy of prayer, but he thinks that prayer does not succeed unless it
+is accompanied with considerable physical strength. He believes that
+adult prayer is a good thing, but doubts the efficacy of juvenile
+prayer.
+
+He has wanted a Jersey cow for a good while and tried prayer, but it
+didn't seem to get to the central office. Last week he went to a
+neighbor who is a Christian and believer in the efficacy of prayer, also
+the owner of a Jersey cow.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Do you believe that prayer will bring me a yaller Jersey cow?" said
+Johnny.
+
+"Why, yes, of course. Prayer will remove mountains. It will do
+anything."
+
+"Well, then, suppose you give me the cow you've got and pray for another
+one."
+
+[Illustration: END]
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD CIDER MILL.
+
+
+     If I could be a boy again
+     For fifteen minutes, or even ten,
+     I'd make a bee-line for that old mill,
+     Hidden by tangled vines down by the rill,
+     Where the apples were piled in heaps all 'round,
+     Red, streaked and yellow all over the ground;
+     And the old sleepy horse goes round and round
+     And turns the wheels while the apples are ground.
+
+     Straight for that old cider mill I'd start,
+     With light bare feet and lighter heart,
+     A smiling face, a big straw hat,
+     Hum made breeches and all o' that.
+     And when I got there I would just take a peep,
+     To see if old cider mill John was asleep,
+     And if he was I'd go snooking round
+     'Till a great big round rye straw I'd found;
+     I'd straddle a barrel and quick begin
+     To fill with cider right up to my chin.
+
+     As old as I am, I can shut my eyes
+     And see the yellow-jackets, bees and flies
+     A-swarming 'round the juicy cheese,
+     And bung-holes; drinking as much as they please
+     I can see the clear sweet cider flow
+     From the press above to the tub below,
+     And a-steaming up into my old nose
+     Comes the smell that only a cider mill knows.
+
+     You may talk about your fine old Crow,
+     Your champagne, sherry, and so and so,
+     But of all the drinks of press or still,
+     Give me the juice of that old cider mill,
+     A small boy's energy and suction power
+     For just ten minutes or quarter of an hour,
+     And the happiest boy you ever saw
+     You'd find at the end of that rye straw,
+     And I'll forego forevermore
+     All liquors known on this earthly shore.
+
+     --_Anonymous_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems
+and Yarns), by Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley
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