Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) 2 – Riley · Verses Across
Literature · Humor
Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) 2B. Moonshine
18
Literature · Humor
Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) 2
B. Moonshine
RileyEnglish
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.
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
"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
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!
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!"
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.
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.
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--
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.
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.
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!"
"_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
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
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
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.
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."
The Tar-heel Cow
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.
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.
