Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

A few weeks ago a plain man came to me and asked me my name. Refreshing my memory by looking at the mark on my linen, I told him promptly who I was. He said he had resided in New York for a long time and felt the hour had now arrived for politics in this city to be purified. Would I assist him in this great work? If so, would I appoint a trysting place where we could meet and tryst? I suggested the holy hush and quiet of lower Broadway or the New York end of the East River bridge at 6 o'clock; but he said no, we might be discovered. So we agreed to meet at my house. There he told me that his idea was to run me for the State Senate this fall, not because he had any political axe to grind, but because he wanted to see old methods wiped out and the will of the people find true and unfettered expression.

"And, sir," I asked, "what party do you represent?"

"I represent those who wish for purity, those who sigh for the results of unbought suffrages, these who despise old methods and yearn to hear the unsmothered voice of the people."

"Then you are Mr. Vox Populi himself, perhaps?"

"No, my name is Kargill, and I am in dead earnest. I represent the party of purity in New York."

"And why did you not bring the party with you? Then you and I and my wife and this party you speak of could have had a game of whist together," said I with an air of inimitable drollery.

But he seemed to be shocked by my trifling manner, and again asked me to be his standard-bearer. Finally I said reluctantly that I would do so, for I have always said that I would never shrink from my duty in case I should become the victim of political preferment.

In Wyoming I had several times accepted the portfolio of justice of the peace, and so I knew what it was to be called forth by the wild and clamorous appeals of my constituents and asked to stand up for principle, to buckle on the armor of true patriotism and with drawn sword and overdrawn salary to battle for the right.

In running for office in Wyoming our greatest expense and annoyance arose from the immense distances we had to travel in order to go over one county. Many a day I have traveled during an exciting canvass from daylight till dark without meeting a voter. But here was a Senatorial district not larger than a joint school district, and I thought that the expense of making a canvass would be comparatively small.

That was where I made a mistake. On the day after Mr. Lucifer Kargill had entered my home and with honeyed words made me believe that New York had been, figuratively speaking, sitting back on her haunches for fifty years waiting for me to come along and be a standard-bearer, a man came to my house who said he had heard that I was looking toward the Senate, and that he had come to see me as the representative of Irving Hall. I said that I did not care a continental for Irving Hall, so far as my own campaign was concerned, as I intended to do all my speaking in the school-houses.

He said that I did not understand him. What he wanted to know was, what percentage of my gross earnings at Albany would go into the Irving Hall sinking fund, provided that organization indorsed me? I said that I was going into this campaign to purify politics, and that I would do what was right toward Irving Hall, in order to be placed in a position where I could get in my work as a purifier.

We then had a long talk upon what he called the needs of the hour. He said that I would make a good candidate, as I had no past. I was unknown and safe. Besides, he could see that I had the elements of success, for I had never expressed any opinion about anything, and had never antagonized any of the different wings of the party by saying anything that people had paid any attention to. He said also that he learned I had belonged to all the different parties, and so would be familiar with the methods of each. He then asked me to sign a pledge and after I had done so he shook hands with me and went away.

The next day I was waited upon by the treasurers of eleven chowder clubs, the financial secretary of the Shanty Sharpshooters and Goat Hill Volunteers. A man also came to obtain means for burying a dead friend. I afterward saw him doing so to some extent. He was burying his friend beneath the solemn shadow of a heavy mahogany-colored mustache, of which he was the sole proprieter.

I was waited upon by delegations from Tammany, the County Democracy and the Jeffersonian Simplicity Chub. Everybody seemed to have dropped his own business in order to wait upon me, I became pledged to every one on condition that I should be elected. It makes me shudder now to think what I may have signed. I paid forty odd dollars for the privilege of voting for a beautiful child, and thus lost all influence with every other parent in the contest. I voted for the most popular young lady and heard afterward that she regarded me only as a friend. I had a biography and portrait of myself printed in an obscure paper that claimed a large circulation, and the first time the forms went into the press a loose screw fell out on the machinery, caught in the forehead of my portrait and peeled back the scalp so that it dropped over the eye like a prayer rag hanging out of the window.

I had paid a boy three dollars to scatter these papers among the neighbors, but I met him as he came out of the office and made it five dollars if he would put them in the bosom of the moaning tide.

I give below a rough draft of expenses, not including; some of the items referred to above:

Yesterday I tried to find the red-nosed man who first asked me to go into the standard-bearer business, in order to withdraw my name, but I could not find him in the directory. I therefore take this means of saying, as I said to my assignee last evening, that if a public office be a public bust, I might just as well bust now and have it over.

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