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

A special clown will be devoted to the members of the press.

A guide will have charge of visiting journalists to show them the curiosities, and see that they do not forget and carry anything away.

Members of the press will be allowed to sit on the top seats and let their feet hang down.

Do not fool with the animals.

PRESS COMMENTS

The Owltown Bunghole says: "No living man has ever heretofore dared to perform all he advertised. Bill Nye certainly has secured the most wonderful and costly galaxy of arenic talent, and the most perfect and oriental conglomeration of grand, gloomy and peculiar zoological specimens from the four corners of the globe. The editor and his nineteen children, with his wife and hired girl, were passed in yesterday by the handsome and gentlemanly, modest and lady-like proprietor of Bill Nye's ownest own and simultaneous world-renowned hippodrome and menagerie."

A CARD

A report has been set in circulation, probably by some unprincipled rival showmen, to the effect that I will not exhibit with my entire show at Granite Canon, but that the main show will be divided, the famous Trakene Stallion, Boomerang, going to Greeley; the Royal Mexican Plug Billy English, going to Whiskey Flat; the Mammoth Reptilian Angleworm going to Last Chance; the famous Trick Mule, Winfield Scott Hancock, going to Tie City, while the balance of the show would appear at Granite Canon.

I pronounce this and all similar reports the most flagrant, lying canards, as I shall not only appear at Granite Canon with my entire aggregation of my own and only jam-up-and-scrumptuous show and North American Boss and Supreme Oriental and Collossal Menagerie, but at all points where I have advertised to appear. I make no show, but I can buy and sell every show on the road before breakfast, and don't you forget it.

I travel on my own special train, and regular passenger and express trains are held while I have the right of way with my elegant drawing-room and palace cars for the animals, and colossal silver chariots for the men.

I exhibit also under my acres and acres of canvas, and two-bits will admit you to all parts of the show.

Special trains will run to and from Granite Canon on the day of the show at regular rates.

Simultaneously yours,

Bill Nye.

LETTER FROM PARIS

Paris, May 30th, 1878

I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken in the United States, for I am tired of-the infernal lingo of this God-forsaken country, and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and on some other subject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it any more.

Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends to step into a big drug-store on the Rue de La Sitting Bull, to get a glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians. He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said:

uZe vooly voo a la boomerang?"

I patted the soda fountain and said:

"No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I will take about two fingers of bug-juice in mine to sweeten my breath."

But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no doubt, and got him a job in a drug store. So I said:

"Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and if you will put a little tangle-foot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will pick up a pound weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with spirituous frumenti, old rye, benzine – bay rum – anything! Parley voo, e pluri-bus unam, sic semper go braugh! Do you understand that?"

But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives on.

Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400.

I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to; partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and telescope the duodenum into the æsophagus. I used to stand that way and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green cold waves and the wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it all day.

I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am trying to arrange it so as to go home by land. I think I can make up for the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and turned it over to the Atlantic ocean for inspection, than I have eaten since I came here.

PREHISTORIC CROCKERY

During my rambles through the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky mountains recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although worn down somewhat and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope and the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time very large and high.

This, I was told, had, no doubt, been the burial place of some ancient tribe or race of men, the cemetery, perhaps, of a nation now unknown.

Here in the heart of a new world, where men who had known the region for fifteen or twenty years, are now called "old timers," where "new discoveries" had been made within my own recollection, we found the sepulchre of a nation that was old when the Pilgrims landed on the shores of Columbia.

I am something of an antiquarian with all my numerous charms, and I resolved to excavate at this spot and learn the hidden secrets of those people who lived when our earth was young.

I started to dig into the vast sarcophagus. The ground was very hard. The more I worked the more I felt that I was desecrating the burial place of a mighty race of men, now powerless to defend themselves against the vandal hands that sought to mar their eternal slumber.

I resolved to continue my researches according to the

Vicarious plan. I secured the services of a hardened, soulless hireling, who did not wot of the solemn surroundings, and who could dig faster than I could. He proceeded with the excavation business, while I sought a shady dell where I could weep alone.

It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself —

The knights are dust,Their swords are rust;Their souls are withThe saints, we trust.

Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet, made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States mining laws.

I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process between a piece of micaceous slate and a fragment of deodorized, copper-stained manganese.

But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the woodticks.

Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe and which we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is the same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

It has been in one form and another through the ever shifting ages all along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the spring trade.

All we see or hear or feel, is old. Truth itself is old. Old and falling into disuse, too. Outside of what I am using in my business, perhaps, not over two or three bales are now on the market.

Here in the primeval solitude, undisturbed by the foot of man, I had found the crumbling remnants of those who once walked the earth in their might and vaunted their strength among the powers of their world.

No doubt they had experienced the first wild thrill of all powerful love, and thought that it was a new thing. They had known, with mingled pain and pleasure, when they struggled feebly against the omnipotent sway of consuming passion, that they were mashed, and they flattered themselves that they were the first in all the illimititable range of relentless years who had been fortunate enough to get hold of the genuine thing. All others had been base imitations.

Here, perhaps, on this very spot, the Aztec youth with a bright eyed maiden on his arm had pledged life-long fidelity to her shrine, and in the midnight silence had stolen away from her with a pang of vigorous regret, followed by the sobs of his soul's idol and the demoralizing, leaden rain of buckshot, with the compliments and best wishes of the old man.

While I was meditating upon these things a glad shout from the scene of operations attracted my attention. I rose and went to the scene of excavation, and found, to my unspeakable astonishment and pleasure, that the man had unearthed a large Queen Anne tear jug, with Etruscan work upon the exterior. It was simply one of the old-fashioned single-barrelled tear jugs, made for a one-eyed man to cry into. The vessel was about eighteen inches in height by five or six inches in diameter, and similar to the cut above.

The graceful yet perhaps severe pottery of the Aztecs convinces me that they were fully abreast of the present century in their knowledge of the arts and sciences.

Space will not admit of an extended description of this ancient tear cooler, but I am still continuing the antiquarian researches – vicariously, of course, – and will give this subject more attention during the summer.

SUGGESTION'S FOR A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

A number of friends having personally asked me to express an opinion upon the matter of an established school of journalism, as spoken of by ex-May or Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Connecticut, and many more through the West who are strangers to me personally, having written me to give my views upon the subject, I have consented in so far that I will undertake a simple synopsis of what the course should embrace.

I most heartily indorse the movement, if it may be called such at this early stage. Knowing a little of the intricacies of this branch of the profession, I am going to state fully my belief as to its importance, and the necessity for a thorough training upon it. We meet almost everywhere newspaper men who are totally unfitted for the high office of public educators through the all-powerful press. The woods is full of them. We know that not one out of a thousand of those who are to-day classed as journalists is fit for that position.

I know that to be the case, because people tell me so.

I cannot call to mind to-day, in all my wide journalistic acquaintance, a solitary man who has not been pronounced an ass by one or more of my fellow-men. This is indeed terrible state of affairs.

In many instances these harsh criticisms are made by those who do not know, without submitting themselves to a tremendous mental strain, the difference between a "lower case" q and the old Calvinistic doctrine of unanimous damnation, but that makes no difference; the true journalist should strive to please the masses. He should make his whole life a study of human nature and an earnest effort to serve the great reading world collectively and individually.

This requires a man, of course, with similar characteristics and the same general information possessed by the Almighty but who would be willing to work at a much more moderate salary.

The reader will instantly see how difficult it is to obtain this class of men. Outside of the mental giant who writes these lines and two or three others, perhaps —

But never mind. I leave a grateful world to say that, while I map out a plan for the ambitious young journalist who might be entering upon the broad arena of newspaperdom, and preparing himself at a regularly established school for that purpose.

Let the first two years be devoted to meditation and prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent profanity which in a few years he may experience when he finds in his boss editorial that God is spelled with a little g, and the peroration of the article has been taken out and carefully locked up between a death notice and the announcement of the birth of a cross-eyed infant.

The ensuing five years should be spent in becoming familiar with the surprising and mirth-provoking orthography of the English language.

Then would follow three years devoted to practice with dumb bells, sand bags and slung shots, in order to become an athlete. I have found in my own journalistic history more cause for regret over my neglect of this branch than any other. I am a pretty good runner, but aside from that I regret to say that as an athlete I am not a dazzling success.

The above course of intermediate training would fit the student to enter upon the regular curriculum.

Then set aside ten years for learning the typographical art perfectly, so that when visitors wish to look at the composing room, and ask the editor to explain the use of the "hell box," he will not have to blush and tell a gauzy lie about its being a composing stick. Let the young journalist study the mysteries of type setting, distributing, press work, gallies, italic, shooting sticks, type lice and other mechanical implements of the printer's department.

Five years should be spent in learning to properly read and correct proof, as well as how to mark it on the margin like a Chinese map of the Gunnison country.

At least fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of American politics and the whole civil service. This time could be extended five years with great profit to the careful student who wishes, of course, to know thoroughly the names and records of all public men, together with the relative political strength of each party.

He should then take a medical course and learn how to bind up contusions, apply arnica, court plaster or bandages, plug up bullet holes and prospect through the human system for buck shot. The reason of this course which should embrace five years of close study, is apparent to the thinking mind.

Ten years should then be devoted to the study of law. No thorough metropolitan editor wants to enter upon his profession without knowing the difference between a writ of mandamus and other styles of profanity. He should thoroughly understand the entire system of American jurisprudence, and be as familiar with the more recent decisions of the courts as New York people are with the semi-annual letter of Governor Seymour declining the Presidency.

The student will by this time begin to see what is required of him and will enter with greater zeal upon his adopted profession.

He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years. He can then write a telling editorial on the great question of What We Shall Do To Be Saved without mixing up Calvin and Tom Paine with Judas Iscariot and Ben Butler.

The closing ten years of the regular course might be profitably used in learning a practical knowledge of cutting cord wood, baking beans, making shirts, lecturing, turning double handsprings, preaching the gospel, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour in hot weather, learning the art of scissors grinding, punctuation, capitalization, prosody, plain sewing, music, dancing, sculping, etiquette, how to win the affections of the opposite sex, the ten commandments, every man his own teacher on the violin, croquet, rules of the prize ring, parlor magic, civil engineering, decorative art, calsomining, bicycling, base ball, hydraulics, botany, poker, calisthenics, high-low jack, international law, faro, rhetoric, fifteen-ball pool, drawing and painting, mule skinning, vocal music, horsemanship, plastering, bull whacking, etc., etc., etc.

At the age of 95 the student will have lost that wild, reckless and impulsive style so common among younger and less experienced journalists. He will emerge from the school with a light heart and a knowledge-box loaded up to the muzzle with the most useful information.

The hey day and springtime of life will, of course, be past, but the graduate will have nothing to worry him any more, except the horrible question which is ever rising up before the journalist, as to whether he shall put his money into government four per cents or purchase real estate in some growing town.

THE FRAGRANT MORMON

On Tuesday morning I went down to the depot to see a large train of ten cars loaded with imported Mormons. I am not very familiar with the workings of the Church of Latter-day Saints, but I went down to see the 350 proselytes on their way to their adopted home. I went simply out of curiosity. Now my curiosity is satisfied. I haven't got to look at a Mormon train again, and it fills my heart with a nameless joy about the size of an elephant's lip, to think that I haven't got to do this any more. All through the bright years of promise yet to come I need not ever go out of my way to look at these chosen people.

When I was a boy I had two terrible obstacles to overcome, and I have dreaded them all my life until very recently. One was to eat a chunk of Limberger cheese, and the other was to look at a Mormon emigrant train.

After I visited the train I thought I might as well go and tackle the Limberger cheese, and be out of my misery. I did so, and the cheese actually tasted like a California pear, and smelled like the atter of roses. It seemed to take the taste of the Mormons out of my mouth.

I sometimes look at a carload of Montana cattle, or Western sheep, and they seem to be a good deal travel-worn and out of repair, but they are pure as the beautiful snow in comparison to what I saw Tuesday morning.

Along the Union Pacific track, on either side, the green grass and mountain flowers looked up into the glad sunlight, took one good smell and died. Cattle were driven off the range, and the corpses of overland tramps were strewn along the wake of this train, like the sands of the sea.

Deacon Bullard, Joe Arthur, Timber Line Jones and myself went over together. Deacon Bullard thought that the party was from Poland and went through the train inquiring for a man named Orlando Standemoff. I claimed that they were Scandinavians, and I followed him through the cars asking for a man named Twoquart Kettleson and Numerousotherson. Neither of us were successful.

One of these Mormons was overtaken near Point of Rocks, with an irresistable desire to change his socks (no poetry intended) and before the brakeman could lariat him and kill him, he had done so.

The Union Pacific will abandon this part of the road now and leave this point several miles away rather than spend two millions of dollars for disinfectants.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE OPERA

Most every one thinks that I don't know much about music and the opera, but this is not the case. I am very enthusiastic over this class of entertainment, and I will take the liberty to trespass upon the time and patience of my readers for a few moments while I speak briefly but graphically on this subject. A few evenings ago I had the pleasure of listening to the rendition of the "Bohemian Girl" by Emma Abbott and her troupe at the Grand Opera House. I was a little late, but the manager had saved me a pleasant seat where I could alternately look at the stage and out through the skylight into the clear autumn sky.

The plot of the play seems to be that "Arline," a nice little chunk of a girl, is stolen by a band of gypsies, owned and operated by "Devilshoof," who looks some like "Othello" and some like Sitting Bull. "Arline" grows up among the gypsies and falls in love with "Thaddeus." "Thaddeus" was played by Brignoli. Brignoli was named after a thoroughbred horse.

"Arline" falls asleep in the gypsy camp and dreams a large majolica dream, which she tells to "Thaddeus." She says that she dreamed that she dwelt in marble halls and kept a girl and had a pretty fly time generally, but after all she said it tickled her more to know that "Thaddeus" loved her still the same, and she kept saying this to him in G, and up on the upper register, and down on the second added line below, and crescendo and diminuendo and deuodessimo, forward and back and swing opposite lady to place, till I would have given 1,000 shares paid-up non-assessable stock in the Boomerang if I could have been "Thad."

Brignoli, however, did not enter into the spirit of the thing. He made me mad, and if it hadn't been for Em. I would have put on my hat and gone home. He looked like the man who first discovered and introduced Buck beer into the country. She would come and put her sunny head up against his cardigan jacket and put one white arm on each shoulder and sing like a bobolink, and tell him how all-fired glad she was that he was still solid. I couldn't help thinking how small a salary I would be willing to play "Thaddeus" for, but he stood there like a basswood man with Tobias movement, and stuck his arms out like a sore toe, and told her in F that he felt greatly honored by her attention, and hoped some day to be able to retaliate, or words to that effect.

I don't want any trouble with Brignoli, of course, but I am confident I can lick him with one hand tied behind me, and although I seek no quarrel with him, he knows my post office address, and I can mop the North American continent with his remains, and don't you forget it.

After awhile the "Gypsy Queen," who is jealous of "Arline," puts up a job on her to get her arrested, and she is brought up before her father, who is a Justice of the Peace for that precinct, and he gives her $25 and trimmings, or thirty days in the Bastile. By and by, however, he catches sight of her arm, and recognizes her by a large red Goddess of Liberty tattooed on it, and he remits the fine and charges up the costs to the county.

Her father wants her to marry a newspaper man and live in affluence, but "Arline" still hankers for "Thad.," and turns her back on the oriental magnificence of life with a journalist. But "Thaddeus" is poor. All he seems to have is what he can gather from the community after office hours, and the chickens begin to roost high and he is despondent apparently. Just as "Arline" is going to marry the newspaper man, according to the wishes of her pa, "Thaddeus" sails in with an appointment as Notary Public, bearing the Governor's big seal upon it, and "Arline" pitches into the old man and plays it pretty fine on him till he relents and she marries "Thaddeus," and they go to housekeeping over on the West Side, and he makes a bushel of money as Notary Public, and everybody sings, and the band plays, and she is his'n, and he is her'n.

There is a good deal of singing in this opera. Most everybody sings. I like good singing myself.

Emma Abbott certainly warbles first-rate, and her lovemaking takes me back to the halcyon days when I cared more for the forbidding future of my moustache, and less for meal-time than I do now. But Brignoli is no singer according to my aesthetic taste. He sings like a man who hasn't taken out his second papers yet, and his stomach is too large. It gets in the way and "Arline" has to go around it and lean up on his flank when she wants to put her head on his breast.

A SUNNY LITTLE INCIDENT

Thursday evening, in company with a friend, I rode up into the city on the Rock Island train and was agreeably surprised by seeing a Rocky Mountain man, a few seats ahead, sitting with a lady who seemed to be very much in love with him, and he was trying the best he knew to out-gush her. Now the gentleman's wife was at home in Wyoming in blissful ignorance of all this business while he was ostensibly buying his fall and winter stock of goods in Chicago.