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

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 bumble —Bumbling in the fragrant air,Bumbling with his little bumbler,Till he climbs the golden stair.Then the angels will provide himWith another bumbilaire.

THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Now, there was a certain man who had two sons.

And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me."

And he divided unto him his living, and the younger son purchased himself an oil cloth grip-sack and gat him out of that country.

And it came to pass that he journeyed even unto Buckskin and the land that lieth over against Leadville.

And when he was come nigh unto the gates of the city, he heard music and dancing.

And he gat him into that place, and when he arose and went his way, a hireling at the gates smote upon him with a slung-shot of great potency, and the younger son wist not how it was.

Now in the second watch of the night he arose and he was alone, and the pieces of gold and silver were gone.

And it was so.

And he arose and sat down and rent his clothes and threw ashes and dust upon himself.

And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country, and he sent him down into a prospect shaft for to dig.

And he had never before dug.

Wherefore, when he spat upon his hands and lay hold of the long-handled shovel wherewith they are wont to shovel, he struck his elbow upon the wall of the shaft wherein he stood, and he poured the earth and the broken rocks over against the back of his neck.

And he waxed exceeding wroth.

And he tried even yet again, and behold! the handle or the shovel became tangled between his legs, and he filled his ear nigh unto full of decomposed slate and the porphyry which is in that region round about.

And he wist not why it was so.

Now, after many days the shovelers with their shovels, and the pickers with their picks, and the blasters with their blasts, and the hoisters with their hoists, banded themselves together and each said to his fellow:

Go to! Let us strike. And they stroke.

And they that strake were as the sands of the sea for multitude, and they were terrible as an army with banners.

And they blew upon the ram's horn and the cornet, and sacbut, and the alto horn, and the flute and the bass drum.

Now, it came to pass that the younger son joined not with them which did strike, neither went he out to his work, nor on the highway, least at any time they that did strike should fall upon him and flatten him out, and send him even unto his home packed in ice, which is after the fashion of that people.

And he began to be in want.

And he went and joined himself unto a citizen of that country; and he sent him into the lunch room to feed tourists.

And he would fain have filled himself up with the adamantine cookies and the indestructible pie and vulcanized sandwiches which the tourists did eat.

And no man gave unto him.

And when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants hath my father on the farm with bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger.

And he resigned his position in the lunch business and arose and went unto his father.

But when he was yet a great way off he telegraphed to his father to kill the old cow and make merry, for behold! he had struck it rich, and the old man paid for the telegram.

Now the elder son was in the north field plowing with a pair of balky mules, and when he came and drew nigh to the house he heard music and dancing.

And he couldn't seem to wot why these things were thus.

And he took the hired girl by the ear and led her away, and asked her, Whence cometh this unseemly hilarity?

And she smote him with the palm of her hand and said: "This thy brother hath come, that was dead and is alive again," and they began to have a high old time.

And the elder son kicked even as the government mule kicketh, and he was hot under the collar, and he gathered up an armful of profanity and flung it in among the guests, and gat him up and girded his loins and lit out.

And he gat him to one learned in the law, and he replevied the entire ranch whereon they were, together with all and singular the hereditaments, right, title, franchise, estate, both in law and in equity, together with all dips, spurs, angles, crooks, variations, leads, veins of gold or silver ore, mill-sites, damsites, flumes, and each and every of them firmly by these presents.

And it was so.

THE INDIAN AND THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL

William Henry Kersikes, D.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dear Sir: – Your esteemed favor of the 25th instant, is at hand, asking me to throw some light upon a few Indian conundrums propounded by you.

I thank you most heartily for the unfaltering trust in me expressed by your letter. One of my most serious difficulties through life has been a growing tendency on the part of mankind, to refuse to trust me as I deserved. It has placed me in an extremely awkward position several times. But your letter is trust and reliance and childish faith personified.

You have done wisely in writing to me for my views on this important national question, and I give them to you cheerfully and even hilariously. If they were all the views I had it would be the same. I would squeeze along without any rather than refuse you.

First I agree with you in your ideas relative to the cause of failure on the part of the Peace Commission. It was not calculated to soothe the ruffled spirits of the hostiles and produce in their breasts a feeling of rest and friendship and repose, but it was more in the nature of an arrogant demand for those who had in an unguarded moment snuffed out the light of the White river agent and the employes. This was not right or even courteous on the part of the Commission.

You seem to understand the wants and needs of the Indian more fully than any man with whom I am acquainted. By your letter I see at a glance that you are the man to deal with them. You shall be agent at White river hereafter. I will use my influence for your appointment. If you think I have no influence with the administration you are exceedingly off.

The emoluments of the office are not large, but what you lack in money will be made up to you in attention. You will get tons and tons of Indian affection. For every dollar that you would receive from the government you would get eleven dollars and fifty cents' worth of childlike trust and clinging affection. You could also write religious articles for the Western press, and blow in a good many scads that way. By working that scheme judiciously I have amassed quite a little fortune myself. Your leisure time could be filled up by organizing Temples of Honor, Subordinate Granges, etc.; or you could get in an evening now and then playing a social game of draw poker with your charge. They are all, you will find, more interested in "draw" than they are in the Trinity. You can also hoe potatoes and do good. If time still hung heavy on your hands you could devote it to constructing a sheet-iron roof for your scalp. When the Utes came in from the warpath, foot sore and weary, you could go about from lodge to lodge and nurse them and read the Scriptures to them and drive away the blue-tail fly and other domestic insects, and lull the suffering savage to rest with "Coronation" and other soothing melodies. But I must pass on to your next question.

Second– There have been several methods proposed for civilizing the wandering tribes of the House of Stand-up-and-eat-a-raw-dog, but few of them, I fear, will meet with your approval. My own plan is called the Minnesota plan. It was an experiment used on the Sioux nation at one time in its history, and consisted in placing the Indians upon a large elevated platform, and so arranging a fragment of lariat that in case the platform gave way, the lariat would support the performer by the neck.

The Indian is generally stolid and indifferent to pain, but you give him a fall of seven and a half feet, allowing him to catch by his neck, and it is fun to see him try to kick a large piece out of the firmament.

The Indian when called on to make the opening speech at a country fair does not make any demonstrations, but place him on one of these sleight-of-hand scaffolds, and let the bottom drop out, and he makes some of the most powerful and expressive gestures.

'Third– I am not prepared to answer fully your third question, as I haven't the statistics where I can lay my hand on them. I think, however, that the denominations are about equally divided among the Indians. Colorow is a Presbyterian, Ouray is a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, while Jack is a close communion Baptist. Few of them are regular attendants upon divine worship. At some of the Ute churches, I am told, very frequently there are not enough present for a quorum, especially during the busy season when they are gathering the fall crops of scalps.

Fourth– As to the time which would be required to bring the entire outfit into the fold, I am a little unsettled as to the correct estimate. It might take some time. The roads might be blockaded, you know, or something of that kind; or some old buck might stampede and take up a good deal of time. At least, I would not advise you to hold your breath while listening for their glad hallelujahs to the throne. They might miss the connections in some way, and you would get very purple around the gills.

However, do not get discouraged. Keep up your lick. Write on and speak on for this oppressed people. They deserve it. They have brought it on themselves. Get some more dough-faced idiots to unite with you in writing up the Indian question. It will be a good thing. Write to the Indians themselves personally. Of course it will be a horrible death for them to die, but they have richly merited it. Do not write to me again, however. I am not strong anyway, and I need rest. If you could, therefore, direct your remarks to the Utes themselves, and keep it up during the cold weather while they are hungry and weak, you will probably use up nearly all of them. If you will do so, I will see that the people of the West club together and give you a nice gold-headed cane.

THE MUSE

CRITICISM ON THE WORKS OF THE SWEET SINGER OF MICHIGAN

Through the courtesy of a popular young lady of Chicago, who recognizes struggling genius at all times, I have been permitted to carefully read and enjoy the lays of the sweet singer of Michigan; and I ask the reader to come with me a few moments into the great field of literature, while we flit from flower to flower on the wings of the Muse.

There are few, indeed, of us who do not love the heaven-born music of true poesy. Hardened, indeed, must he be whose soul is dead to the glad song of the true poet, and we can but pity the gross, brutal nature which refuses to throb and burn with spiritual fire lighted with coals from the altar of the gods.

I speak only for myself when I say that seven or eight twangs of the lyre stir my impressible nature so that I rise above the cares and woes of this earthly life, and I paw the ground and yearn for the unyearnable, and howl.

Julia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan, was born some time previous to the opening of this chapter, of poor but honest parents, and although she couldn't have custard pie and frosted cake every day she, was middling chipper, as appears by a little poem in the collection, entitled, "The Author's Early Life," in which she says:

My heart was gay and happy:This was ever in my mind,There is better days a coming,And I hope some day to findMyself capable of composing.It was my heart's delightTo compose on a sentimental subjectIf it came in my mind just right

This would show that the Muse was getting in its work, as I might say, even while yet Julia was a little nut-brown maid trudging along to school with bare feet that looked like the back of a warty toad. In my visions I see her now standing in front of the teacher's desk, soaking the first three joints of her thumb in her rosebud mouth, and trying to work her off toe into a knot-hole in the floor, while outside, the turtle-dove and the masculine Michigan mule softly coo to their mates.

A portrait of the author appears on the cover of the little volume. It is a very striking face. There are lines of care about the mouth – that is, part way around the mouth. They did not reach all the way around because they didn't have time. Lines of care are willing to do anything that is reasonable, but they can't reach around the North Park without getting fatigued. These lines of care and pain look to the student of physiognomy as though the author had lost a good deal of sleep trying to compose obituary poems. The brow is slightly drawn, too, as though her corns might be hurting her. Julia wears her hair plain, like Alfred Tennyson and Sitting Bull. It hangs down her back in perfect abandon and wild profusion, shedding bear's oil ever the collar of her delaine dress, regardless of expense.

I can not illustrate or describe the early vision of dimpled loveliness, which Julia presented in her childhood, better than by giving a little gem from "My Infant Days:"

When I was a little infant,And I lay in mother's arms,Then I felt the gentle pressureOf a loving mother's arms."Go to sleep my little baby,Go to sleep," mamma would say;"O, will not my little babyGo to sleep for ma to-day?"

When I read this little thing the other day it broke me alf up. It took me back to my childhood days when I lay in my little trundle bed, and was wakeful, and had a raging thirst, insomuch that I used to want a drink of water every fifteen seconds. Mamma didn't ask if I would "go to sleep for ma, to-day." She used to turn the bed-clothes back over the footboard, so that she could have plenty of sea room, and then she would take an old sewing-machine belt, and it would sigh through the agitated air for a few moments pretty plenty, till the writer of these lines would conclude to sob himself to sleep, and anon through the night he would dream that he had backed up against the Hill Smeltingg works. That's the kind of "Go to sleep for ma to-day," that comes up vividly to my mind.

But I must give another stanza or two from Julia's collection – as showing how this gifted writer can with a word dispel the chilling temperature of December, and run the thermometer up to 100 degrees in the shade. I will quote from the death of "Little Henry:"

It was on the eleventh of December,On a cold and windy day,Just at the close of evening,When the sunlight fades away,Little Henry he was dying,In his little crib he lay,With the soft winds around him sighing,From early morn till close of day.

One of Julia's poems opens out in such a cheerful, pleasant way, that I wish I could give it all, but space forbids. She tunes her lyre so that it will mash all right, and then says:

Come all kind friends, both far and near,O, come, and see what you can hear.

Then she proceeds to slaughter some one. In looking over her poems one is struck with the terrible mortality which they show. Julia is worse than a Gatling gun. I have counted twenty-one killed and nine wounded, in the small volume which she has given to the public. In giving the circumstances which attended the death of one of her subjects, and the economical principles of the deceased, she says:

And he was sick and very bad,Poor boy, he thought, no doubt,If he came home in a smoking carHis money would hold out.He started to come back alone,He came one-third the way.One evening, in the car alone,His spirit fled away.

That's the way Julia kills off a young man just as we get interested in him. You just begin to like one of her heroes or heroines and Julia proceeds to lay said hero or heroine out colder than a wedge. A sad, sad thing, which goes to the tune of Belle Mahone, starts out as follows:

"Once there lived a lady fair,With black eyes and curly hair;She has left this world of care,Sweet Carrie Monroe,"

To which I have added in my poor weak way —

She could not her sorrows bear,For she was a dumpling rare;She has clum the golden stair,Sweet Carrie Monroe.'Twas indeed a day of gloomWhen we gathered in her room,While she cantered up the flume,Sweet Carrie Monroe.

I will give but one more example of Julia's exquisite word painting, and then after a word or two relative to her style generally I will close.

After speaking tearfully of her life as a child, she says:

My childhood days have passed and gone,And it fills my heart with pain,To think that youth will never moreReturn to me again.And now, kind friends, what I have wroteI hope you will pass o'er,And not criticize, as some have done,Hitherto herebefore.

I know that it ill becomes me to assume the prerogative of criticizing a poet's style or even to suggest any improvements, but sometimes an outsider may be able to stand off as it were and see little defects in a masterpiece which the author can not see.

My idea would be to take these poems and remove the crown sheet, then put in new running gear, upset and bush the pitman, kalsomine the boiler plate, drill new holes in the eccentric, rim out the gas pipe, raise the posterior eccentric to a level with the gang plank, slide the ash pan forward of the monkey wrench, securing it by draw bars to the topgallant mizzen. Then, throwing open the condenser and allowing the cerebellum to rest firmly against the vicarious whippety-whop, fair time may be made on a gentle grade.

If I were to suggest anything further it would be that Julia have entire change of air and surroundings. Michigan is too healthy for an ambitious obituary poet. She naturally has too much time on her hands. Let her go into the yellow fever districts next summer, where she can work in two or three of her cheerful little funeral odes every morning before breakfast. That's the place for her. It may kill her, but if it should we will trust in Providence to raise up some inspired idiot to take her place. We will struggle along anyway with George Francis Train and Denis Kearney and Dr. Mary Walker, even if Julia joins the glad throng of poets who let their hair grow long and kick up their heels in the green fields of Eden.

One more suggestion which will, I know, be accepted as coming from one who never says anything but in the kindest spirit. I think that Julia takes advantage of her poetic license. A poetic license, as I understand it, simply allows the poet to jump the 15 over the 14 in order to bring in the proper rhyme, but it does not allow the writer to usurp the management of the entire system of worlds, and introduce dog-days and ice-cream between Christmas and New Year. It does not in any way allow the contractor of prize funeral puffs to sandwich a tropical evening with the scent of orange blossom and mignonette, in between two December days in Michigan, that would freeze the lightning rods off the houses, and when the owners of cast iron dogs have to bring them in, and stand them behind the parlor stove.

Julia can't fool me much on a Michigan winter. When the seductive breath from the north comes soughing across Lake Superior, redolent with the blossom rock of the copper mines, and dead cranberry vines, and slippery elm bark, the poet or poetess who could maliciously crawl into a buffalo overcoat, and write a dirge that worked in "sighing soft winds," just for the benefit of one whose spirit is in a land where house plants never freeze, should have no poetic license. I would be in favor of having such license revoked, or raising the price so high that none but good, reliable, square toed poets could practice. I would suggest $500 per year for poets driving one horse, and dealing in native poems on death, spring, beautiful snow, etc., etc.; $1,000 per year for two horse, platform spring poets, retailers of imported poems; and $1,500 per year for poets who do a general business in manufactured Havana poems, or native wrappers with Havana fillers.

We have too many poets in our glorious republic who ought to be peeling the epidermis off a bull train; and too many poetesses who would succeed better boiling soap-grease, or spiking a 6 x 8 patch on the quarter-deck of a faithful husband's overalls.

I do not refer entirely to Julia in the last few lines, for Julia is not deserving of such criticism. She was never intended to do the drudgery of housework. She is too frail. She couldn't cook, because her cake would be sad, and her soft, wavy hair, like the mane of a Cayuse plug, would get in the cod-fish balls, and cling to the butter.

No, Julia, you don't look like a woman whose career as a housewife would be a success. From the mournful look in your limpid eye, I would say that your lignum-vitæ bread, and celluloid custard pie, and indestructible waffles, and fireproof pancakes, and burglar-proof chicken pie, would give you away. Your mind would be far away in the poet's realm, and you would put shoe blacking in the blanc mange, and silver gloss starch in the tea, and cod liver oil in the sponge cake. So, Julia, you may continue right along as you are doing. It don't do much harm, and no doubt it does you a heap of good.

SHOEING A BRONCO

Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco.

Whenever I get low spirited and feel that a critical public don't appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown & Poole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better prepared to fight the battle of life.

They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco, to the ends of which – the sinches, I mean – are attached ropes, four in number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped under his body and attached to the ropes.

Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession.

The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a good deal and switches his tail, while the ropes continue to work in the pulleys and the man at the capstan spits on his hands and rolls up on the wheel.

After a while the bronco hangs from the ceiling like a discouraged dish rag, and after trying for two or three hundred times unsuccessfully to kick a hole in the starry firmament, he yields and hangs at half mast while the blacksmith shoes him.

Yesterday I felt as though I must see something cheerful, and so I went over to watch a bronco getting his shoes on for the round-up. I was fortunate. They led up a quiet, gentlemanly appearing plug with all the weary, despondent air of a disappointed bronco who has had aspirations for being a circus horse, and has "got left." When they put the sinches around him he sighed as though his heart would break, and his great, soulful eyes were wet with tears. One man said it was a shame to put a gentle pony into a sling like that in order to shoe him, and the general feeling seemed to be that a great wrong was being perpetrated.

Gradually the ropes tightened on him and his abdomen began to disappear. He rose till he looked like a dead dog that had been fished out of the river with a grappling iron. Then he gave a grunt that shook the walls of the firmament, and he reached out about five yards till his hind feet felt of a Greaser's eye, and with an athletic movement he jumped through the sling and lit on the blacksmith's forge with his head about three feet up the chimney. He proceeded then to do some extra ground and lofty tumbling and kicking. A large anvil was held up for him to kick till he tired himself out, and then the blacksmith put a fire and burglar proof safe over his head and shod him.

The bronco is full of spirit, and, although docile under ordinary circumstances, he will at times get enthusiastic and do things which he afterwards, in his sober moments, bitterly regrets.