Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

PUGILIST OR STATESMAN

Thousands of our own boys, who to-day are spearing frogs, or bathing in the rivers of their native land and parading on the shingly beach with no clothes on to speak of, are left to chose between such a career of usefulness and greatness of brow, and the humdrum life of a bilious student and pale, sad congressman. Will you rise to the proud pinnacle of fame as a pugilist, boys, or will you plug along as a sorrowing, overworked statesman? Now, in the spring-time of your lives, choose between the two, and abide the consequences.

CHESTNUT-BURR NYE AS A CRITIC AND NYE AS A POET.

POETIC CHESTNUTS

The Poet of the Greeley Eye – The Dying Cowboy and the Preacher – A Mournful Stanza – Poems by Nye – Apostrophe to an Orphan Mule – Ode to Spring – The Picnic Snoozeds Lament – Ode to the Cucumber – Apostrophe to Oscar Wilde – An Adjustable Campaign Song – The Beautiful Snow.

A new and dazzling literary star has risen above the horizon, and is just about to shoot athwart the starry vault of poesy. How wisely are all things ordered, and how promptly does the new star begin to beam, upon the decline of the old.

Hardly had the sweet singer of Michigan commenced to wane and to flicker, when, rising above the western hills, the glad light of the rising star is seen, and adown the canyons and gulches of the Rocky mountains comes the melodious cadences of the poet of the Greeley Eye.

Couched in the rough terms of the West, robed in the untutored language of the Michael Angelo slang of the miner and the cowboy, the poet at first twitters a little on a bough far up the canyon, gradually waking the echoes, until the song is taken up and handed back by every rock and crag along the rugged ramparts of the mighty mountain barrier.

Listen to the opening stanza of "The Dying Cowboy and the Preacher:"

So, old gospel shark, they tell me I must die;That the wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut,Well, I will "pass in my checks" without a whimper or a cry,And die as I have lived – "a hard nut."

This is no time-worn simile, no hackneyed illustration or bald-headed decrepit comparison, but a new, fresh illustration that appeals to the Western character, and lifts the very soul out of the kinks, as it were.

Wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut.

Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How melodious and yet how real. None but the true poet would have thought to compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.

In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel, the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.

Now and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then a calm falls upon the scene. Anon, the driver bangs the mule that is ostensibly pulling his daylights out, but who is, in fact, humping up like an angle worm, without nulling a pound.

Then the poet comes to the close of the cowboy's career in this style:

"Do I repent?

"No – of nothing present or past;

"So skip, old preach, on gospel pap I won't be fed;

"My breath comes hard; I – am going – but – I – am game to the – last."

And reckless of the future, as the present, the cowboy was dead.

If we could write poetry like that, do you think we would plod along the dreary pathway of the journalist? Do you suppose that if we had the heaven-born gift of song to such a degree, that we could take hold of the hearts of millions and warble two or three little ditties like that, or write an elegy before breakfast, or construct an ionic, anapestic twitter like the foregoing, that we would carry in our own coal, and trim our own lamps, and wear a shirt two weeks at a time?

No, sir. We would hie us away to Europe or Salt Lake, and let our hair grow long, and we would write some obituary truck that would make people disgusted with life, and they would sigh for death that they might leave their insurance and their obituaries to their survivors.

POEMS BY BILL NYE

APOSTROPHE TO AN ORPHAN MULE.=

Oh! lonely, gentle, unobtrusive mule!Thou standest idly 'gainst the azure sky,And sweetly, sadly singeth like a hired man.Who taught thee thus to warbleIn the noontide heat and wrestle withThy deep, corroding grief and joyless woe?Who taught thy simple heartIts pent-up, wildly-warring wasteOf wanton woe to carol forth uponThe silent air?I chide thee not, because thySong is fraught with grief-embitteredMonotony and joyless minor chordsOf wild, imported melody, for thouArt restless, woe begirt andCompassed round about with gloom,Thou timid, trusting, orphan mule!Few joys, indeed, are thine,Thou thrice-bestricken, madlyMournful, melancholy mule.And he alone who strewsThy pathway with his cold remainsCan give thee recompenseOf lemoncholy woe.He who hath sought to steerThy limber, yielding tailFernist thy crupper-bandHath given thee joy, and he alone.'Tis true, he may have shotAthwart the Zodiac, and, lookingO'er the outer walls uponThe New Jerusalem,Have uttered vain regrets.Thou reekest not. O orphan mule,For it hath given thee joy, andBound about thy bursting heart,And held thy tottering reasonTo its throne.Sing on, O mule, and warbleIn the twilight gray,Unchidden by th heartless throng.Sing of thy parents on thy father's side.Yearn for the days now past and gone;For he who pens these halting,Limping lines to theeDoth bid thee yearn, and yearn, and yearn.

ODE TO SPRING.

FANTASIA FOR THE BASS DRUM; ADAPTED FROM THE GERMAN BY WILLIAM VON NYE.=

In the days of laughing spring time,Comes the mild-eyed sorrel cow,With bald-headed patches on her,Poor and lousy, I allow;And she waddles through your gardenO'er the radish-beds, I trow. Then the red-nosed, wild-eyed orphan,With his cyclopædiee,Hies him to the rural districtsWith more or less alacrity.And he showeth up its meritsTo the bright eternitee. How the bumble-bee doth bumbleBumbling in the fragrant air,Bumbling with his little bumbler,Till he climbs the golden stair.Then the angels will provide himWith another bumbilaire.

THE PICNIC SNOOZER'S LAMENT

Gently lay aside the picnic,For its usefulness is o'er,And the winter style of miseryStands and knocks upon your door. Lariat the lonely oyster,Drifting on some foreign shore;Zion needs him in her business —She can use him o'er and o'er. Bring along the lonely oyster,With the winter style of gloom,And the supper for the pastor,With its victims for the tomb. Cast the pudding for the pastor,With its double iron door;It will gather in the pastorFor the bright and shining shore. Put away the little picnicTill the coming of the spring;Useless now the swaying hammockAnd the idle picnic swing. Put away the pickled spiderAnd the cold pressed picnic fly,And the decorated trousersWith their wealth of custard pie.

ODE TO THE CUCUMBER.=

O, a cucumber grew by the deep rolling sea,And it tumbled about in reckless gleeTill the summer waned and the grass turned brown.And the farmer plucked it and took it to town. Wrinkled and warty and bilious and blue,It lay in the market the autumn through;Till a woman with freckles on her cheekLed in her husband, so mild and meek. He purchased the fruit, at her request,And hid it forever under his vest,For it doubled him up like a kangaroo,And now he sleeps 'neath the violets blue.

APOSTROPHE ADDRESSED TO O. WILDE.=

Soft eyed seraphic kussWith limber legs and lily on the side,We greet you from the rawAnd uncouth West. The cowboy yearns to yank theeTo his brawny breast and squeezeThy palpitating gizzardThrough thy vest. Come to the mountain fastness,Oscar, with thy low neck shirtAnd high neck pants;Fly to the coyote's home,Thou son of Albion,James Crow bard and champion aestheteFrom o'er the summer sea. Sit on the fuzzy cactus, king of poesy,And song,Ride the fierce broncho o'er the dusty plain,And le' the zephyr sigh among thy buttery locks.Welcome thou genius of dyspeptic song,Thou bilious lunatic from far-off lands.Come to the home of genius,By the snowy hills.And wrestle with the alcoholic inspirationOf our cordial home.We yearnTo put the bloom upon thy alabaster nose,And plant the jim-jamsIn thy clustering hair.Hail, mighty snoozer from across the main!We greet theeWith our free, untutored ways and wildPeculiar style of deadly beverage.Come to the broad, free West and mingleWith our high-toned mob. Come to the glorious OccidentAnd dally with the pack-mule's whisk-broom tail;Study his odd yet soft demeanor,And peculiar mien. Tickle his gambrel with a sunflower budAnd scoot across the blue horizonTo the tooness of the sweet and succulent beyond. We'll gladlyGather up thy shattered remnantsWith a broom and ship thee to thy beauteous home.Forget us not,Thou bilious pelican from o'er the sea. Thou blue-nosed clamWith pimply, bulging brow, butCome and we will welcome theeWith ancient omelet and fragrant sausageOf forgotten years.

ADJUSTABLE CAMPAIGN SONG.=

(Air —Rally Round the Flag, Boys.) Oh, we'll gather from the hillsides,We'll gather from the glen,Shouting the battle cry of…And we'll round up our voters.Our brave and trusty men,Shouting the battle cry of… Chorus Oh, our candidate forever,Te doodle daddy a,Down with old…Turn a foodie diddy a,And we'll whoop de dooden do,Fal de adden adden a,And don't you never forget it. Ob, we'll meet the craven foeOn the fall election day,Shouting the battle cry of…And we'll try to let him knowThat we're going to have our way,Shouting the battle cry of… Chorus Oh, our candidate forever, etc.Oh, we're the people's friends,As all can plainly see,Shouting the battle cry of…And we'll whoop de dooden doo,With our big majority,And don't you never forget it. Chorus Oh. our candidate forever, etc.

THE BEAUTIFUL SNOW.=

O drifted whiteness coveringThe fair face of nature.Pure as the sigh of a blessed spiritOn the eternal shores, youGlitter in the summer sunConsiderable. My mortalKen seems weak andHelpless in the midst ofYour dazzling splendor,And I would hide myDiminished head likeSerf unclothed in presenceOf his mighty King.You lie engulphedWithin the cold embraceOf rocky walls and giantCliffs. You spread outYour white mantle andEnwrap the whole broadUniverse, and a portionOf York State.You seem contentResting in silent whitenessOn the frozen breast ofThe cold, dead earth. YouThink apparently thatYou are middling white;But once I was in theSame condition. I wasPure as the beautiful snow,But I fell. It was aRight smart fall, too.It churned me up aGood deal and nearlyKnocked the supremeDuplex from its intellectualThrone. It occurred inWashington, D. C.But thouSnow, lying so spotlessOn the frozen earth, asI remarked before, thouHast indeed a soft,Soft thing. Thou comestDown like the silentMovements of a specter,And thy fall upon theEarth is like the treadOf those who walk theShores of immortality.You lie around allWinter drawing yourAnnuities till spring,And then the softBreath from the south withTouch seductive bids youGo, and you light outWith more or less alacrity. A BUSHEL OF SMALLER CHESTNUTS

THE TRUE TALE OF WILLIAM TELL

William Tell ran a hay ranche near Bergelen, about 580 years ago. Tell had lived in the mountains all his life, and shot chamois and chipmunks with a cross-gun, till he was a bad man to stir up.

At that time Switzerland was run principally by a lot of carpet-baggers from Austria, and Tell got down on them about the year 1307. It seems that Tell wanted the government contract to furnish hay, at $45 a ton, for the Year 1306, and Gessler, who was controlling the patronage of Switzerland, let the contract to an Austrian who had a big lot of condemned hay, farther up the gulch.

One day Gessler put his plug hat up on a telegraph pole, and issued order 236, regular series, to the effect that every snoozer who passed down the toll road should bow to it.

Gessler happened to be in behind the brush when Tell Went by, and he noticed that Bill said "Shoot the hat," and didn't salute it; so he told his men to gather Mr. Tell in, and put him in the refrigerator.

Gessler told him that if he Would shoot a crab-apple from the head of his only son at 200 yards, with a cross-gun, he would give him his liberty.

Tell consented, and knocked the apple higher than Gilroy's kite. Old Gessler, however, noticed another arrow sticking in William's girdle, and he asked what kind of a flowery break that was.

Tell told him that if he had killed the kid instead of busting the apple, he intended to drill a hole through the stomach of Mr. Gessler. This made Gessler mad again, and he took Tell on a picnic up the river, in irons.

Tell jumped off when he got a good chance, and cut across a bend in the river, and when the picnic party came down, he shot Gessler deader than a mackeral.

This opened the ball for freedom, and weakened the Austrian government so much that in the following November they elected Tell to fill the long term, and a half-breed for the short term.

After that, Tell was recognized by the ruling power, and he could get most any contract that he wanted to. He got the service on the stage line up into the Alps increased to a daily, and had the contracts in the name of his son Albert.

The appropriation was increased $150,000 per year, and he had a good thing.

Tell lived many years after this, and was loved by the Swiss people because he had freed their land.

Whenever he felt lonesome, he would take his crossgun and go out and kill a tyrant. He had tyrant on toast most every day till Switzerland was free, and the peasants blessed him as their deliverer.

When Tell got to be an old man he would go out into the mountains and apostrophize them in these memorable words:

"Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again. I hold to you the hands I held to you on previous occasions, to show you they are free. The tyrant's crust is busted, so to speak. His race is run, and he himself hath scooted up the flume. Sic semper McGinnis, terra Anna, nux vomica, Schweitzer lease, Timbuctoo, erysipelas, e pluribus unum, sciataca, multum in parvo, vox populi, vox snockomonthegob."

WHY WE WEEP

In justice to ourself we desire to state that the Cheyenne Sun has villified us and placed us in a false position before the public. It has stated that while at Rock Creek station, in the early part of the week, we were taken for a peanutter, and otherwise ill-treated at the railroad eating corral and omelette emporium, and that in consequence of such treatment we shed great, scalding tears as large as watermelons. This is not true. We did shed the tears as above set forth, but not because of ill-treatment on the part of the eating-house proprietor.

It was the presence of death that broke our heart and opened the fountains of our great deep, so to speak, when we poured the glucose syrup on our pancakes, the stiff and cold remains of a large beetle and two cunning little twin cockroaches fell out into our plate, and lay there hushed in an eternal repose.

Death to us is all powerful. The King of Terrors is to us the mighty sovereign before whom we must all bow, from the mighty emperor down to the meanest slave, from the railroad superintendent, riding in his special car, down to the humblest humorist, all alike must some day curl up and die. This saddens us at all times, but more peculiarly so when Death, with his relentless lawn-mower, has gathered in the young anu innocent. This was the case where two little twin cockroaches, whose lives had been unspotted, and whose years had been unclouded by wrong and selfishness were called upon to meet death together. In the stillness of the night, when others slept, these affectionate little twins crept into the glucose syrup and died.

We hope no one will misrepresent this matter. We did weep, and we are not ashamed to own it. We sat there and sobbed until the tablecloth was wet for four feet, and the venerable ham was floating around in tears. It was not for ourself, however, that we wept. No unkindness on the part of an eating house ever provoked such a tornado of woe. We just weep when we see death and are brought in close contact with it. And we were not the only one that shed tears. Dickinson and Warren wept, strong men as they were. Even the butter wept. Strong as it was it could not control its emotions.

We don't very often answer a newspaper attack, but when we are accused of weeping till people have to take off their boots and wring out their socks, we want the public to know what it is for.

ETIQUETTE FOR THE YOUNG

Young children who have to wait till older people have eaten all there is in the house, should not open the dining-room door during the meal and ask the host if he is going to eat all day. It makes the company feel ill at ease, and lays up wrath in the parents' heart.

Children should not appear displeased with the regular courses at dinner, and then fill up on pie. Eat the less expensive food first, and then organize a picnic in the preserves afterward.

Do not close out the last of your soup by taking the plate in your mouth and pouring the liquid down your childish neck. You might spill it on your bosom, and it enlarges and distorts the mouth unnecessarily.

When asked what part of the fowl you prefer, do not say you will take the part that goes over the fence last. This remark is very humorous, but the rising generation ought to originate some new table jokes that will be worthy of the age in which we live.

Children should early learn the use of the fork, and how to handle it. This knowledge can be acquired by allowing them to pry up the carpet tacks with this instrument, and other little exercises, such as the parent mind may suggest.

The child should be taught at once not to wave his bread around over the table, while in conversation, or to fill his mouth full of potatoes, and then converse in a rich tone of voice with someone out in the yard. He might get his dinner down his trochea and cause his parents great anxiety.

In picking up a plate or saucer filled with soup or with moist food, the child should be taught not to parboil his thumb in the contents of the dish, and to avoid swallowing soup bones or other indigestible debris.

Toothpicks are generally the last course, and children should not be permitted to pick their teeth and kick the table through the other exercises. While grace is being said at table, children should know that it is a breach of good breeding to smouge fruit cake, just because their parents' heads are bowed down, and their attention for the moment turned in another direction. Children ought not to be permitted to find fault with the dinner, or fool with the cat while they are eating. Boys should, before going to the table, empty all the frogs and grasshoppers out of their pockets, or those insects might crawl out during the festivities, and jump into the gravy.

If a fly wades into your jelly up to his gambrels, do not mash him with your spoon before all the guests, as death is at all times depressing to those who are at dinner, and retards digestion. Take the fly out carefully, with what naturally adheres to his person, and wipe him on the table cloth. It will demonstrate your perfect command of yourself, and afford much amusement for the company. Do not stand up in your chair and try to spear a roll with your fork. It is not good manners to do so, and you might slip and bust your crust, by so doing. Say "thank you," and "much obliged," and "beg pardon," wherever you can work in these remarks, as it throws people off their guard, and gives you an opportunity to get in your work on the pastry and other bric-a-brac near you at the time.

SWEET SAINT VALENTINE

It is the evening of St. Valentine's Day, and I am thinking of the long ago. St. Valentine's Day is nothing now but a blessed memory. Another landmark has been left behind in our onward march toward the great hereafter. We come upon the earth, battle a little while with its joys and its griefs, and then we pass away to give place to other actors on the mighty stage.

Only a few short years ago what an era St. Valentine's Day was to me. How I still get valentines, but they are different and they effect me differently. They are not of so high an order of merit artistically, and the poetry is more impudent and less on the turtle-dove order.

Some may be neglected on St. Valentine's Day, but I am not. I never go away by myself and get mad because I have been overlooked. I generally get valentines enough to paper a large hall. I file them away carefully and sell them back to the dealer for next year. Then the following St. Valentine's Day I love to look at the familiar features of those I have received in the years agone.

One of these blessed valentines I have learned to love as I do my life. I received it first in 1870. It represents a newspaper reporter with a nose on him like the woman's suffrage movement. It is a large, enthusiastic nose of a bright bay color with bias folds of the same, shirred with dregs of wine. How well I know that nose. The reporter is represented in tight green pants and orange coat. The vest is scarlet and the necktie is maroon, shot with old gold.

The picture represents the young journalist as a little bit disposed to be brainy. The intellect is large and abnormally prominent. It hangs out over the deep-set eyes like the minority juror on the average panel.

I cannot help contrasting this dazzling five-cent valentine with the delicate little poem in pale blue and Torchon lace which I received in the days of yore from the red-headed girl with the wart on her thumb. Ah! how little of genuine pleasure have fame and fortune to offer us compared with that of sitting behind the same school desk with the Bismarck blonde of the school and with her alternately masticating the same hunk of spruce gum.

I sometimes chew gum nowadays to see if it will bring back the old pleasant sensations, but it don't. The teacher is not watching me now. There is too little restraint, and the companion, too, who then assisted in operating the gum business, and used to spit on her slate with such elegance and abandon, and wipe it thoughtfully off with her apron, she too is gone. One summer day when the little birds were pouring forth their lay, and the little lambs were frisking on the green sward, and yanking their tails athwart the ambient air, she lit out for the great untried West with a grasshopper sufferer. The fluff and bloom of existence for her too is gone. She bangs eternal punishment out of thirteen consecutive children near Ogallalla, Neb., and wears out her sweet girlish nature working up her husband's underclothes into a rag carpet. It seems tough, but such is life.

CARRYING REVOLVERS

The righteous war against the carrying of pistols is still going bravely on all over the country, and the mayors of the larger cities are making it red hot for every one who violates the law.

This is right. No man ever carried one that he did not intend to kill some one with it. If he does not intend to kill some one, why does he carry a deadly weapon? The result is that very often a man who, if he had gone unarmed as he ought to, would have been a respected citizen, becomes a caged murderer with a weeping, widowed wife and worse than orphaned children at home.

We used to feel at times as though here in this western country we were having a pretty lonesome time of it, never having killed anybody, and we began to think that in order to command respect we would have to start a private cemetery, so one time when we had a good opportunity we drew our pop on a man and shot at him.

He often writes to us now and tells us how healthy he is. Before we shot at him he used to have trouble with his digestion, and every spring he was so bilious that he didn't care whether he lived or not. How he weighs 200 and looks forward to a long and useful life.

Still the revolver is not always a health promoter. It is more deadly as a general rule for the owner than any one else. Half at least of the distressing accidents that occur as a result of carrying a pistol, are distressing mainly to the man who carries the weapon.