Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems

One hot day in July while I sat in my office killing flies with an elastic band and wondering if my mines would ever be quoted in the market, a middle-aged man came in and, spitting calmly into the porcelain cuspidore, began to tell me about his service as a soldier, and how he was wounded, and wished to secure a pension.

He said that several attorneys had already tried to procure one for him, but had failed to do so, giving up in despair. I examined the wound, which consisted of a large hole in the skull, caused by a gun-shot wound. He was almost entirely prevented by this wound from obtaining a livelihood, because he was liable at any moment to fall insensible to the ground, as the result of exercise or work. I told him that I would snatch a few moments from my arduous duties and proceed to do as he requested me.

Then I began a very brisk correspondence with the Interior Department. I would write to the Commissioner of Pensions in my vivacious but firm manner and he would send me back a humorous little circular showing me that I had been too hasty and premature. I never got mad or forgot myself but began a little farther back in the history of the world, and gradually led up to the war of the rebellion.

In reply the Commissioner would write back to me that my chronological table was at fault and I would cheerfully correct the error and proceed.

At this time, however, my client became a little despondent, several years having elapsed since we began our task. So to my other labors I had to add that of cheering up the applicant.

Time dragged its slow length along. Months succeeded months and the years sped on.

The Interior Department never forgot me. Every little while I would get a printed circular boiling over with mirth and filled with the most delightful conundrums relative to the late unpleasantness. These conundrums I would have my client answer and swear to every time, although I could see that he was failing mentally and physically. He would come into my office almost every day, and silently raise his right hand and with uncovered head stand there in a reverent attitude for me to swear him to something. Sometimes I had nothing for him to swear to, and then I would make him take the oath of allegiance and send him away. I wanted to keep him loyal if I could, whether he got his pension or not.

The last work had been nearly completed, and the claim had been turned over to the Surgeon-General's office, when the applicant yielded to the crumbling effect of relentless time, and took to his bed.

It was a sad moment for me. I could not keep back the silent tears when I saw the old man lying there so still and so helpless, and remembered how rosy, and strong, and happy he looked years and years ago, when he first asked me to apply for his pension.

I wrote the Department that if the claims could be passed upon soon, I would keep my client up on stimulants a short time, but that he was failing fast. Then I went to the bedside of the old man, and watched him tenderly.

When he saw me come into his room, although he could not talk any more, he would feebly raise his right hand, and I would swear him to support the Constitution of the United States, and then he would be easier. It seemed to me like a ghastly joke for the old man to swear he would support the Constitution of the United States, when he couldn't begin to support his own constitution; but I never mentioned it to him.

At last the blow fell. The Surgeon-General wrote me that owing to the lack of clerical aid in that office, and a failure of Congress to make any appropriation for that purpose, he was behind hand, and could not possibly reach the claim referred to before the close of the following year.

Then the old man passed into the great untried realm of the hereafter. But he was prepared.

With the aid of the government, I had given him an idea of Eternity and its vastness, which could not fail to be of priceless benefit to him.

After the government had used this pension money as long as it needed it, and was, so to speak, once more on its feet, the money was sent, and the old man's great-grand-children got it, and purchased a lawn-mower, a Mexican hairless dog, and some other necessaries of life with it.

I am now out of the pension business. It is a good thing, for I find that I am too impatient to attend to it. I am too anxious for tangible results in the near future. My desire to accomplish anything speedily is too violent and too previous.

GINGERBREAD POEMS AND COLD PICKLED FACTS

In an old number of Harper's Magazine, will be found a little poem upon the subject of Joseph, the chief of the Nez Perces. There is a kind of mellow and subdued heroic light cast over the final defeat of this great North American horse thief, which is in perfectly pleasing harniony with the New England idea of the noble unlettered relic of a defunct race. This soft-voiced poet, who probably knows about as much of the true occidental pig-stealer, as the latter does about the Electoral College, starts out this little brass-mounted epic in the following elegant style of prevarication:

From the northern desolation,Comes the cry of exultation,It has ended – he has yielded, and the stubborn fight won.Let the nation in its glory,Bow with shame before the storyOf the hero it has ruined, and the evil it has done.

It is too true that here in the wild West people haven't the advantages that are accorded to the East, and in our uncouth ignorance, and meager facilities for obtaining information, we are, no doubt, too prone to ascribe to the hostile inebriate of the plains a character which does not compare very favorably with the boss hero in the poem hereto attached, and marked "Exhibit A." But the people on the frontier should not set themselves up to judge what they know nothing of. Why should frontiersmen, without colleges, without observatories, without telescopes, or logarithms, or protoplasms, or spectroscopes, or heliotropes, how should they, I ask, who can lay no claim to anything but that they are poor, unsophisticated, grasshopper sufferers; with nothing to refer to but the naked facts – the ruins of their desolated homes, and the ghastly, mutilated corpses of their wives and children – try to compete with the venerable philosophers who live where the Patent Office reports are made, and within the shadow of the building in which the Illustrated Police Gazette and other such reliable authorities have their birth, and in which are illustrated with graphic skill, the Indian raids of the border, using the same old cut which is taken from the "Death of Captain Cook," to illustrate every Indian outbreak from Nebraska to Oregon.

Is it nothing forsooth for a nomadic race of buffalo slayers and maple sugar makers and cranberry pickers to rise from the dust and learn to love the wise institutions of a free government? To lay aside the old hickory bow of the original red man and take up the improved breech-loader? To take kindly to mixed drinks and Sabbath school picnics and temperance lectures and base-ball matches? To live contentedly about the agencies, playing poker for the whiskies during the cold and cruel winter? Then when the glad song of the robin awakes the echoes in spring, and the air is filled with a thousand nameless odors, among which may be detected the balmy breath of the government sock, to hie him away to the valleys with his fishing rod and flies (and other curious insects), or to spend the glorious days of midsummer at the camp-meeting or the horse-race? We can never know how his poor heart must burn to kick off his box-toed boots and throw aside his dress coat and suspenders, and gallop over the green hills and kick up his heels and whoop and yell, and tear out the tongues of a few white women and be sociable.

They are indeed the nation's wards, a little frisky and playful at times, to be sure, but we must overlook that. There can be no reason nor justice in forbidding these freeborn descendants of these mighty races the inalienable right to lock up their front doors at the agency and put the key in their pockets, and light out, if they wish to, across the country, spreading gory desolation along their trail, eating the farmers' hard earned store, pillaging his home, murdering his household, burning his crops, riding their war horses over his watermelon vines, eating his winter preserves, scalping the hired man and wearing away the farmer's red-flannel undershirt wrong side to, and wrong side up if they want to. And if any ignorant upstart of the frontier, who feels a little sore over the loss of his family, undertakes to defraud these wild, free sons of the forest of any or all of their rights, let the lop-eared, slab-sided, knock-kneed, crosseyed, spavined, lantern-jawed, sway-backed, mangy, flannelmouthed poet of the educated and refined East write poetry about him till he is glad to apologize.

ORIGIN OF BEAUTIFUL SNOW,

The following letter is from Captain Jack relative to the expedition under his charge, sent out for the purpose of bringing in the murdering group of Utes, against whom the government seems to maintain a feeling, it not of enmity, at least of coolness, and perhaps unfriendliness.

The Indian is not generally supposed to be a humorist, or inclined to be facetious; but the letter below would seem to indicate that there is, at the least, a kind of grim, rough, uncouth attempt on his part to make a paragrapher of himself.

I am not at liberty to give my reasons to the public for the publication of this letter; nor even the manner of securing it. Those to whom my word has been passed relative to a strict secrecy on my part in the above connection, shall not be betrayed. Friends who know me are aware that my word is as good as my bond, and even better than my promissory note.

On the Wing, February 1, 1880.

Dear Sir: – I have a little leisure in which to write of our journey, and will dictate this letter to an amanuensis. [Amanuensis is a Ute word; but you will understand it in this connection. It does not mean anything wrong.]

We find much snow through the mountains, which impedes our progress very materially. We crossed a canyon yesterday where there was a good deal. I should think there might be 1,500 feet in depth of it. It filled the canyon up full, and bulged up ten or fifteen feet above the sides. I composed a short poem about it. I knew that it was wrong to do so; but almost every one else has composed a poem on the beautiful snow, then why should I, although I have not taken out my naturalization papers, be denied the sweet solace of song? I said:

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 content,Resting 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.Then rest, O snow,Where thou hast settledDown, secure in consciousPurity. Avoid so far asPossible the capital ofA republic, and theBlessing of yours trulyWill settle down uponYou like – like – aHired man.

There are, no doubt, some little irregularities about this poem, but I scratched it off one night in camp when my chilblains were hurting me and itching so that I had to write a poem or swear a good deal.

We have not seen anything as yet to shoot at.

That is, of course, I refer to what we came here for. I shot at what I thought to be Douglas the other day, but it turned out to be an old Indian who was out skirmishing around after cotton-tails for his dinner. I snuffed his light out, however. By this time he is chasing cotton-tails in a better, brighter sphere, where the wicked cease from troubling and life is one prolonged Fourth of July. Occasionally we see a squaw and shoot her just for practice. I am getting so I'm pretty good on a wheel and fire.

Douglas ought to be easy to indentify, however, at a great distance, for his features are peculiar. He has a large nose. It is like a premium summer squash, only larger. I don't think I ever saw such a wealth of nose as his. Napoleon used to say that a large nose is indicative of strong character. According to this rule, Douglas must have a character stronger than an eight-mule team.

We start out early to-morrow and hope to bag something, but cannot tell how we will make it. I will report as soon as I get to where there is a telegraph. I do not allow any reporters along with me. A great many of them wanted to go along with me for the excitement. I told them, however, that I could furnish the press with such reports as I saw fit to furnish, and I did not want to take a young man away from the haunts of civilization and waltz him around among the hills of Colorado, for it isn't so much of a success as an editorial picnic after all. I often wish that I could run down to dinner as I did at Washington and eat all I need. I also yearn for the hot Scotch and the spiced rum of the pale-face, and the Scotch plaid lemon pie, and the indestructible blanc-mange, and the buckwheat cakes like door-mats that I got at Washington.

But I must attend to the business of the Great Father, and prepare the remains which he requires for his grand Indian funeral. Till then, adieu. Jack.

UTE ELOQUENCE

(SPEECH OF OLD MAN COLOROW AT AN OLD SETTLER'S REUNION IN NORTH PARK, COLORADO.)

The following short oration, delivered by Colorow in the North Park, I send in as a sort of companion-piece to the letter written by Jack, and given in this work. Few people actually know the true spirit of Greek and Roman oratory that still lingers about the remnants of this people, now nearly driven from the face of the earth. I have never seen this speech in print, and I give it so that the youth of the nineteenth century may commit it to memory, and declaim it on the regular public school speech day.

"Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: – Warriors, we are but a little band of American citizens, encircled by a horde of pale-faced usurpers.

"Where years agone, in primeval forests, the swift foot of the young Indian followed the deer through shimmering light beneath the broad boughs of the spreading tree, the white man, in his light summer suit, with his pale-faced squaw, is playing croquet; and we stand idly by and allow it.

"Where erst the hum of the arrow, as it sped to its mark, was heard upon the summer air; and the panting hunter in bosky dell, quenched his parched lips at the bubbling spring, the white man has erected a huge wigwam, and enclosed the spring, and people from the land of the rising sun come to gain their health, and the vigor of their youth. Men come to this place and limp around in the haunts of the red man with crutches, and cork legs, and liver pads.

"Things are not precisely as they formerly were. They have changed. There seems to be a new administration. We are not apparently in the ascendancy to any great extent.

"Above the hallowed graves of our ancestors the buck-wheater hoes the cross-eyed potato, and mashes the immortal soul out of the speckled sqursh-bug. The sacred dust of our forefathers is nourishing the roots of the Siberian crab apple tree, and the early Scandinavian turnip.

"Our sun is set. Our race is run. We had better select a small hole in the earth into which we may crawl and then draw it in after us, and tuck it carefully about us.

"These mountains are ours. These plains are ours. Ours through all time to come. We need them in our business. The wail of departed spirits is on the winds that blow over this wide free land. The tears of departed heroes of our people fall in the rain drops, for their land is given away. To-day I look upon the sad wreck of a great people, and I ask you to go with me, and with our united hearts' blood win back the fair domain. Let two or three able-bodied warriors follow me and hold my coat while I mash' the white-livered snipe off the lowlands beyond recognition.

"Let us steal in upon the frontier while the regular-army has gone to his dinner and get a few Caucasians for breakfast.

"Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire." [Applause.]

THE AGED INDIAN'S LAMENT

[copyrighted: all rights reserved.]

Warriors, I am an aged hemlock. The mountain-winds sigh among my withered limbs. A few more suns and I shall fall amid the solemn hush of the forest, and my place will be vacant. I shall tread the walks of the happy hunting grounds, and sing glad hallelujahs where the worm dieth not and the fire-water is not quenched.

"Once I was the pride of my tribe and the swift-foot of the prairie. I stood with my brethren like the towering oak, and my prowess was known throughout my nation. Now I bow to the wintry blast and hump myself with a vigorous and unanimous hump. My eagle-eye is dimmed. The fleetness of my limbs is gone. The vigor of my youth is past. I do not shout now to my warriors, for the cliffs and rocks refuse to answer back my cry, and it sinks away like the sad moan of the low-grade refractory mule.

"When my brethren go forth to shoot the swift-footed ranchman as he gambols on the hill-sides, I cower above the camp-fire and rub mutton-tallow on my favorite chilblain through the still watches of the night.

"Warriors, I yearn for immortality. The White Father has said that over yonder the life is one of uninterrupted editorial excursions. No inflammatory rheumatism can ever enter there.

"I want to be a copper-colored angel and out-fly the boss angel of the entire outfit. I want to see Pocahontas and other great men who have clomb the golden stair. I want something to eat, so as to surprise my stomach. I want a long period of rest and soul-destroying inactivity.

"Warriors, my sun is set. I have lost my grip. My features are sharpened by age, and one by one my white teeth have resigned till but two are left, and they do not seem to mash by an overwhelming majority. I cannot masticate buffalo tripe or even relish my tarantula on toast as I once could.

"My twilight is fading into evening, and the day is gone. I hear the crickets chirp in the dead grass and I know that the night is at hand. Far away upon the gentle winds I hear the soft cooing of the Colorado tom-cat, and the thump of the stove lid as it misses the cat and strikes with a hollow, mournful sound against the corral. A few more moons and you will meet, but you will miss me. There will be one vacant chair.

"The veal-cutlet and the watermelon of the pale-face hold out no inducements to me. The circus and the icecream festival will miss me, for I shall be far away in the ether-blue, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. I shall be revelling in more eternal rest than I know what to do with.

"Farewell, my warriors. Make my humble grave low in the valley where the wild columbine and the Rocky Mountain flea can clamber over my last resting place, and carve upon the slab above my head the name of Minneconjo-presipitatenuxqonicatahskunkahcoquipahhahamazanpah kahconkaska. The-cross-eyed-caterpillar-who-walks-on-his-hind-legs-and howls-like-the-pale-face-pappoose-who-adver-tises-to-hold-down-the blonde-bumble-bee."

HOW A MINING STAMPEDE BREAKS OUT

Dear reader, shall I give you a few symptoms of the mining epidemic in Mountain towns? All right. I will anyhow!

Symptom 1. – A long-haired man is seen pounding up a piece of quartz about the size of a man's hand.

Symptom 2. – Two men meander up to him and ask him where he got it.

Symptom 3. – The long-haired man looks down into the mortar, and lies gently to the inquiring minds who linger near.

Symptom 4. – More men come around. The long-haired man gets a gold-pan and doubles himself up over the ditch and begins to pan.

Symptom 5. – Two hundred more men come out of saloons and other mercantile establishments and join the throng.

Symptom 6. – The long-haired man gets down to black sand, and shows several colors about the size of a blue-jay's ear.

Symptom 7 times. – Several solitary horsemen start out, with some pack-mules, and blank location notices, and valley tan. The plot deepens. The telegraph gets red-hot. Men who have been impecunious, for lo, these many years, come around to pay some old bills. Poor men buy spotted dogs and gold-headed canes. Stingy men get reckless, and buy the first box of strawberries without asking the price.

I have caught the epidemic myself.

I am getting reckless. Instead of turning my last summer lavender pants hind side before, and removing the ham sandwich lithograph on the front breadths, I have purchased a new pair.

I never experienced such a wild, glad feeling of perfect abandon.

I go to church and chip in for the heathen, perfectly regardless of expense. If Zion languishes, I come forward and throw in the small currency with a lavish hand.

Banks, offices, hotels, saloons and private residences show specimens of quartz carrying free gold and carbonates, hard, soft, and medium soft, with iron protoxide of nitrogen, rhombohedral glucose indications of valedictory and free milling oxide of anti-fat in abundance.

Nellis, who lives near the Mill Creek carbonate claims, came in to town the other day to get an injunction against the miners, so that he could injunct them from prospecting in his cellar, and staking his pie-plant bed.

When he goes out after dark to drive the cow out of his turnip patch, he falls over a stake every little while, with a notice tacked on it, which sets forth that the undersigned, viz., Johnny Comelately, Joe Newbegin, Shoo Fly Smith, and Union Forever Dandelion claim 1,500 feet in length, by 600 feet in width for mineral purposes on this claim, to be known as "The Gal with the skim-milk Eye," together with all dips, spurs, angles or variations, gold, silver, or other precious metals therein contained.

Mr. Nellis says he is glad to see a "boom," and at first he did all he could to make it pleasant for prospectors; but lately he thinks that their sociability has become too earnest and too simultaneous.

I told him that the only way I could see to avoid losing his grip, and having his string-beans dug up prematurely, was to stake the entire ranche as a placer claim, buy him a Gatling gun that would shoot the large size of buckshot, and then trust in the mysterious movements of an overruling Providence.

I do not know whether he took my advice or not; but I am looking anxiously along the Mill-Creek road every day, for a six mule team loaded with disorganized remains, and driven by a man who looks as though he had glutted his vengeance, and had two or three gluts left over on his hands.

THE GREAT ROCKY MOUNTAIN REUNION OF YALLER DOGS

Secretary Spates, the silver-tongued orator and gilt-edged mouth organ of Wyoming, acting general superintendent and governor extraordinary of Wyoming, expressed a wish the other day for a dog. He had a light yellow cane, and wanted a dog to match. He said that he wanted something to love. If he could wake up in the stillness of the night and hear his faithful dog fighting fleas, and licking his chops, and coughing, he (the secretary) would feel as though he was loved, at least? by one. Some friends thought it would be a pleasant thing to surprise Mr. Spates with a dog. So they procured a duplicate key to his room and organized themselves into a dog vigilance committee. There were several yellow dogs around Cheyenne that were not in use, and their owners consented to part with them and try to control their grief while they worried along from day to day without them. These dogs were collected and placed in the secretary's room.