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

The most obtuse observer could see that the companion of this man was not his wife, for she was gentle toward him, and looked lovingly in his eyes. Every one in the car laid aside all other business and watched the performance.

Then I whispered to my friend and said, "That is not the wife of that man. I can tell by the way they look into the depths of each other's eyes and ignore the other passengers. I'll bet ten dollars he has seven children and a wife at home right now. Isn't it scandalous?"

"You can't always tell that way," said my friend. "I've seen people who had been married twenty years who were just as loving and spooney as that."

He was biting a little, so I kept at him till he put up the ten dollars and agreed to leave it with the man himself. It was taking an advantage of my friend, of course, but he had played a miserable joke on me only a few days before; so I covered the $10, and walking up to the man I slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hullo, George. How do you think you feel?"

He looked around surprised and amazed, as I knew he would be, but he wouldn't let on that he knew me. So I slapped him on the shoulder again, and gurgled a low musical laugh that welled up from the merry depths of my joyous nature, and filled the car full of glad and child-like melody.

My friend came forward and said, "Mr. Van Horn, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Nye, of Wyoming, who lives in a wild country, where every one goes up to every one else and says, hello, George or Jim, no matter whether he is acquainted or not. You musn't pay any attention to it at all; he don't mean anything by it. It is his way."

It was Mr. Van Horn, who had lived in Illinois for thirty-five years and had been married ten years to the lady who sat with him. That evening my friend and I went to Hooley's to see Robson and Crane, in the "Comedy of Errors." The play is supposed to be funny. Several people laughed at the performance at various stages, but I did not, for just as I would get to feeling comfortable the man who sat next to me, and who claimed to be a friend of mine, would lean over, and say:

"Hullo, George; how do you think you feel?" Then he would burst forth into the coarsest and most vulgar laughter. How few people there are in the world who seem to thoroughly understand the eternal fitness of things, and how many there are who laugh gaily on in the presence of those who suffer in silence, and with superhuman strength stifle their corroding woe.

HE REWARDED HER

A noble, generous-hearted man in Cheyenne lost a wallet on Saturday, at the Key City House, and an honest chambermaid found it in his room. The warm heart of the man swelled with gratitude, and seemed to reach out after all mankind, that he might in some way assist them with the $250 which was lost, and was found again. So he fell on the neck of the chambermaid, and while his tears took the starch out of her linen collar, he put his hand in his pocket and found her a counterfeit twenty-five cent scrip. "Take this," he said, between his sobs, "virtue is its own reward. Do not use it unwisely, but put it into Laramie County bonds, where thieves cannot corrupt, nor moths break through and gnaw the corners off."

THE MODERN PARLOR STOVE

In view of the new and apparently complex improvements in heating stoves, and the difficulty of readily operating them successfully, a word or two as to their correct management may not be out of place at this time.

Some time since, having worn out my old stove and thrown it aside, I purchased a new one called the "Fearfully and Wonderfully Maid." It had been highly spoken of by a friend, so I set it up in the parlor, turned on steam, threw the throttle wide open, and waited to see how it would operate. At the first stroke of the piston I saw that something was wrong with the reversible turbine wheel, and I heard a kind of grating sound, no doubt caused by the rubbing of the north-east trunnion on the face plate of the ratchet-slide. Being utterly ignorant of the workings of the stove, I attempted to remedy this trouble without first reversing the boomerang, and in a few moments the gas accumulated so rapidly that the cross-head gave way, and the right ventricle of the buffer-beam was blown higher than Gilroy's kite, carrying with it the saddle-plate, bull-wheel and monkey-wrench. Of course it was very careless to overlook what the merest school-boy ought to know, for not only were all these parts of the stove a total wreck, but the crank-arbor, walking-beam and throat-latch were twisted out of shape, and so mixed up with the feed-cam, tumbling-rod, thumb-screw, dial-plate and colic indicator, that I was obliged to send for a practical engineer at an expense of $150, with board and travelling expenses, to come and fix it up.

Now, there is nothing more simple than the operation of one of these stoves, with the most ordinary common sense. At first, before starting your fire, see that the oblique diaphragm and eccentric shaft are in their true position; then step to the rear of the stove and reverse the guide plate, say three quarters of an inch, force the stretcher bar forward and loosen the gang-plank. After this start your fire, throw open the lemon-squeezer and right oblique hydraulic, see that the tape-worm pinion and Aurora Borealis are well oiled, bring the rotary pitman forward until it corresponds with the maintop mizzen, let go the smoke stack, horizontal duodenum, thorough brace and breech-pin, and as the stove begins to get under way you can slide forward the camera; see that the ramrod is in its place, unscrew the cerebellum, allow the water guage to run up to about 750 in the shade, keep your eye on the usufruct, and the stove cannot fail to give satisfaction. The Fearfully and Wonderully Maid may not be a cheap or durable stove, but for simplicity and beauty of execution, she seems to excel and lay over, and everlastingly get away with all other stoves, by a very large majority.

REMARKS TO ORIGINATORS

It is the wild delight which comes with the glad moment of discovery, and the feeling that he is treading on unexplored ground, that thrills the genius, whether he be a writer, a speaker, an inventor of electric light, or the man who firsts gets the idea for a new style of suspender.

Think how Carl Schurz must have broken forth into a grand piano voluntary, when he knew for a dead moral certainty that he had struck a new lead in the Indian policy. It was the sweet feeling of newness, such as we feel when for the first time we put on a new, rough flannel undershirt, and it occupies our attention all the time and brings us to the scratch.

Think how the 2571 originators of "Beautiful Snow" must have felt when they woke up in the night and composed seventeen or eighteen stanzas of it with the mercury at 43 degrees below par.

Think how Franklin must have felt when he invented electricity and knew that he had at last found something that could be used in sending cipher dispatches over the country.

Think how Hayes must have danced the highland fling around the executive mansion when the first idea of civil service reform dashed like a sheet of lightning through his brain.

These are only a few isolated illustrations of the unalloyed joy of discovery. They go to show, however, that the true genius and the true originator – whether he be simply the first man to work the vein of an idea, or the inventor of a patent safety-pin – is the man who makes the world better. He is the boss. He is the man to whom we look for delightful surprises and pleasant items of the world's progress. Then do not be discouraged, ye who linger along the worn-out ruts where others have travelled. Brace up and press onward. Perhaps you may invent a new style of spelling, or something unique in the line of profanity. Do not lose hope. Hope on, hope ever. Give your attention to the matter of improving the average Indian editorial. Or if you cannot do even this, go into your laboratory and work nights till you invent a deadly poison that will knock the immortal soul out of the average bedbug, or produce a frightful mortality among cockroaches, or book agents, or some other annoying insect. Invent a directory, or a glittering falsehood, or a napkin-ring, or a dog-collar, or a cork screw. Do something, no matter how small, for the advancement of civilization.

QUEER

An exchange says that the people of that locality were considerably excited the other day over a three-cornered dog fight that occurred there. This is not surprising. Had it been simply a combat between oblong or rectangular dogs, or even a short but common-place fight between rhombohedral or octagonal dogs it would not have attracted any attention, but an engagement between triangular dogs is something that calls forth our wonder and surprise.

SIC SEMPER GLORIA HOUSEPLANT

Evidently it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Although this severe weather froze up the water barrel and doubles the coal bill, I am filled with a great large feeling of gratitude and pleasure this evening, for the last pale house plant, which for two or three weeks has been sighing for immortality, last night about midnight, got all the immortality it wanted, and this morning no doubt it is blooming in the new Jerusalem. I am glad it will bloom somewhere. It never got up steam enough to bloom here.

The head of the house thought he heard the rustle of wings in the still hours of night, and arising in all the voluptuous sweep of his night robe, and with the clear white beams of the winter moon lighting up the angles and gothic architecture of his picturesque proportions, he stepped to the bedside of the sickly little thing to ask if there was anything he could do, any last words that the little plant would like to have preserved, or anything of the kind, but it was too late. John Frost had been there, and touched the little thing with his icy finger, and all was still. The agricultural editor breathed a sigh of relief and went back to rest, neglecting to awaken the other members of the house, because he did not want a scene.

Any one desiring a medium sized flower-pot as good as new, can obtain one at this office very reasonably.

HOW TO TELL

For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which says "ty4-fritu, 3dp&wly, hcolnrm, br-jn7, 35tfwly, &df-codtf," or something of that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor may or may not endorse the sentiments therein enunciated.

BIOGRAPHY OF COLOROW

Brigadier-General Wm. H. Colorow was born on the frontier in July, 1824, of poor but honest parents. Early in 1843, he obtained the appointment to West Point through the influence of his Congressmen. While at West Point he was the leader of the Young Men's Christian Association, and now, if the army officers knew the grips, passwords and signals of the Association, and would use them, much good might be accomplished in bringing the General to terms, as he still respects the organization. But most of the army officers are a little rusty in the secret work of the Y. M. C. A.

Lieutenant Colorow, after graduating at the head of his class, came west to engage in the scalp trade, in which he has been very successful. "Colorow's Great Oriental Hair Raiser and Scalp Agitator" is known and respected all over the civilized world.

He has also held the position of Master of Transportation on the air line route from Colorado to Kingdom Come. His promotion has been rapid and his career has been filled with wonderful incidents.

General Colorow is not above the medium height. He wears his hair straight, and parted in the middle – a habit he contracted while at West Point. He sometimes parts the white man's hair in the middle also. He does it with his little hatchet. He is rather inclined to the brunette order of architecture, with Gothic nose, Eastlake jaws, and ears of the Queen Anne style. His hair is turning gray and his face is burned and specked with powder, caused by an explosion which came near terminating an eventful career.

Brigadier-General Colorow owns considerable stock in some of the best North Park mines. Occasionally, he goes out to the Park to see how these mines are panning out. Then the miners, out of respect for his feelings, leave the mines and come into town to see what is the latest news from the front. Some of the miners have neglected to come in at times when the General was visiting the mines. They are there yet. I have a mine out there but I am getting along first-rate without it, and I have been thinking that when the General celebrates his silver wedding, I will send up this mine to his residence, wrapped up in a clean napkin, with his monogram worked on it.

DIARY OF A SAUCY YOUNG THING

It may be wrong to publish the contents of a diary, but the following notes in a new diary found yesterday, are too good to lose:

Jan. 1, 1877. To-day is New Year's day. Last night was Sunday night. I remember it distinctly. George and I watched the old year out and the new year in. George is awful kind-hearted. He has quit using tobacco on my account. He hasn't taken a chew this year.

Jan. 3. I didn't get time to write anything yesterday.

Jan. 4. This is Thursday. Day after to-morrow will be Saturday, and the next day will be Sunday.

Jan. 8. George was here last evening. I found some tobacco in his overcoat. Can he be deceiving me? O what false hearts men have! We had popcorn last evening. George and I ate a milk-pan full. He says popcorn seems to supply a want long felt. I don't know where he heard that.

Jan. 9. Another long week before the blessed rest and quiet of the Sabbath. I met George yesterday near the postoffice, and he didn't laugh as he once laughed. I wonder what makes him so sad. Maybe it's going without tobacco, or perhaps it's a boil. O what a world of woe!

Jan. 10. George is trying to raise a moustache. It looks like a Norwegian's eyebrow. It is genuine camel's hair. George's mother treats him unkindly, because he has pearl powder on his coat sleeves Monday morning. Four more days and the peace and quiet of the Sabbath will be here. I am a great admirer of Sunday.

Jan. 11. To-day is Thursday. O pshaw, I can't keep a diary.

KILLING OFF THE JAMES' BOYS

Now that a terrible mortality has again broken out among the James' boys, it is but justice to a family who have received so many gratuitous obituary notices, to say that the James' boys are still alive and enjoying a reasonable amount of health and strength.

Although the papers are generally agreed upon the statement that they are more or less dead, yet in a few days the telegraph will announce their death again. They are dying on every hand. Hardly a summer zephyr stirs the waving grass that it does not bear upon its wings the dying groan of the James' boys. Every blast of winter howls the requiem of a James' boy. James' boys have died in Texas and in Minnesota, in New England and on the Pacific coast. They have been yielding up the ghost whenever they had a leisure moment. They would rob a bank or a printing office, or some other place where wealth is known to be stored, and then they would die. When business was very active one of the brothers would stay at home and attend to work while the other would go and lay down his life.

Whenever the yellow fever let up a little the Grim Destroyer would go for a James' boy, and send him to his long home.

The men who have personally and individually killed the James' boys from time to time, contemplate holding a grand mass meeting and forming a new national party. This will no doubt be the governing party next year.

Let us institute a reform. Let us ignore the death of every plug who claims to be a James' boy, unless he identifies himself. Let us examine the matter and see if the trade mark is on every wrapper or blown in the bottle, before we fill the air with woe and bust the broad canopy of heaven wide open with our lamentations over the untimely death of the James' boys. If we succeed in standing them off while they live we can afford to control our grief and silently battle with our emotions when they are still in death, until we know we are snorting and bellowing over the correct corpse.

A RELIC

The Hutchinson family gave a concert last evening at the Methodist church, according to advertisement, and were greeted with a fair house. The entertainment did not awaken very loud applause, nor very much of it. The songs were not new. Many of them I had almost forgotten, but they were trotted out last evening and driven around the track in pretty fair time.

The fresh little quartette entitled, "Tommy, don't Go," was brought forward during the entertainment. I could see that this song has failed very much since I last met it. Its teeth are falling out, and it is getting very bald-headed. It will probably make two or three more grand farewell concerts and then it will be found dead in its bed some morning before breakfast.

"Silver Threads Among the Gold" was omitted from the programme.

The old melodeon that I remember was rickety and out of repair when I was a prattling infant, was on the stage last evening. It is about the size of a mouth organ, but the tone is not as clear. It is getting wheezy, and a short breath shows that it is beginning to feel the infirmities of age. The pumping arrangement makes more noise than the music, and something is the matter with the exhaust pipe. But when the old man opened the throttle and gave her sand, she would make a good deal of racket for such a little thing. After the concert was over, Mr. Hutchinson rolled up the melodeon in his pocket handkerchief and took it home.

Take the entertainment up one side and down the other, I was not much tickled with it. For those who like to drift back into the musty centuries gone by, and shake hands with the skeletons of forgotten ages, it is all right; but the time has come when a troupe cannot travel upon anything but true merit, and the public require that those who ask for money shall give some kind of an equivalent.

SOME REASONS WHY I CAN'T BE AN INDIAN AGENT

I see by the Western press that my name has been suggested to the Secretary of the Interior as a suitable one for the appointment of Indian Agent at the Uncompahgre Agency to succeed Berry; and, while I must express my grateful acknowledgment for the apparent faith and childlike confidence reposed in me by the people of Colorado, I must gently but firmly decline the proffered distinction.

In the first place, my other duties will not admit of it. My time is very much occupied at present in my journalistic work, and should there be a falling off in my chaste and picturesque contributions to the press, the great surging world of literature would be surprised and grieved.

Again, I could not entirely lay aside this class of work anyway, even were I to accept the position, and as I cannot write without being wrapped in the most opaque gloom and perfect calm I would be annoyed, I know, by the war-whoops of the savage when he got to playing croquet in the front yard, and whenever he got to shooting at me through the window while I was composing a poem, I am perfectly positive that I would get restless and the divine afflatus would cease to give down.

The true poet loves seclusion and soothing rest. That is the secret of his even numbers and smooth cadences. Look at Dryden, and Walt Whitman, and Milton, and Burns, and the Sweet Singer of Michigan. What could any of them have done with the house full of children of the forest who were hankering for a fresh pail of gore for lunch?

Further than this, I have not that gentle magnetic power over the untutored savage that some have. I am agitated all the time by a nervous dread that if I go near him I may lose my self-command and kill him. I would lose my temper some day when I felt irritable, I'm afraid, and shoot into a drove of them and mangle them horribly if they refused to dig the potatoes, or got rebellious and wouldn't do the fall plowing.

Then I would have to hunt up a suitable military post 200 or 300 miles away and stay there till the popular feeling in the tribe had cooled down a little.

Then, again, the Utes would invite me to attend the regular social hops during the winter, and I wouldn't know what to do, for it would be bad policy to refuse, and yet I don't know the first figure of the war-dance. I dance like a club-footed camel, anyway, and when I got mixed up in the scalp-dance the floor-manager would get mad at me probably, and chop some large irregular notches in me with a broad-ax.

Then their costumes are so low-necked and so exceedingly dress, and everything is so all-fired decolette, whatever that is. I would probably insist on wearing a liver-pad on a chilblain, and they wouldn't dance with me all the evening, and I would be a wall-flower, and they would call me a perfect dud, and would laugh at the way my liver-pad was cut, and I would go home and cry myself to sleep over the whole miserable affair.

So that perhaps it would be just as well to plug along as I am and not get ambitious. The life of the ostensible humorist may not be so fraught with untrammeled nature and sylvan retreats, and wild, picturesque canons, and bosky dells, and things of that kind, but it is cheering and comforting to put your hand on the top of your head and feel that it is still on deck, and, although wealth may not come pouring in upon you in such an irresistible torrent as you may desire, you know that if you can get enough to eat from day to day, and dodge the Vigilance Committee and the celluloid pie, you are comparatively safe.

Besides all this, I am afraid I am not in proper spiritual shape to go among the Indians., Suppose that on some softened, mellow, autumnal day they were all clustered about me with the bacon grease and war paint on every childlike countenance, and while I stood there in the midst of all the autumn splendor with the woods clothed in all the gorgeous apparel of the deceased year, telling them of the beauties of industry, and peace, and the glad unfettered life of the buckwheat promoter, or while I read a passage of Scripture to them and was explaining it, and they were looking up into my face with their great fawnlike eyes, all at once one of them should playfully shoot my wife – all the wife I had, too – or my hired girl! The chances are about even that I would throw down the Bible and fly into an ungovernable rage and swear, and be just as harsh, and rude, and unreasonable as I could be. Then, after I had hammered the immortal soul out of the entire tribe, and my wrath had spent itself, I would probably bitterly regret it all.

O it's of no use. I can't accept the position. I've been in the habit of swearing at the spring poet and the "constant reader" too long, and I know just as well as any one how it unfits me for every walk of life that requires meekness and gentle Christian forbearance.

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 oysterDrifting 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.

BILLIOUS NYE AND BOOMERANG IN THE GOLD MINES

Whenever the cares of life weigh too heavily upon me, and the ennui which comes to those who have more wealth than they know what to do with settles down upon me, and I get weary of civilization, I like to load up my narrow-gauge mule Boomerang and take a trip into the mountains. I call my mule Boomerang because I never know where he is going to strike. He is a perpetual surprise to me in this respect. A protracted acquaintance with him, however, has taught me to stand in front of him when I address him, for the recoil of Boomerang is very disastrous. Boomerang is very much below the medium height, with a sad, faraway look in his eye. He has an expression of woe and disappointment and gloom, because life has been to him a series of blasted hopes and shattered ambitions.