ii Mil Hi :!!!!! jijUH^B II iwiiiii ^ iHii ! Mil I . - , lii j -II - ;j! 'I i i! aaiiii iliiiiliffiil USHiniiHtiili THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES CHARLES H, KERN, Bill Nye's Sparks. BY EDGAR WILSON NYE. (BILL NYE.) Copyright, i&ji, hy E. W. NYE. Copyright, 1896, by F. TENNYSON NEELY. Copyright, TJOI, by HURST & COMPANY. CONTENTS PAGB Blographyof Edgar "Wilson Nye Til Eequestlng a Remittance 6 An Oratorical Organette 14 Veritas 20 The Drug Business in Kansas 36 The Perils of Identification 81 AFather's Letter 40 The Aztec at Home 46 In the South 62 In the Park 67 Liberty Enlightening the World 66 Nye Sees the Capitol 70 He Sees the Navy 77 More about Washington 90 A Great Benefactor 95 Coupon Letter of Introduction 89 How to Teach Journalism 104 Nye's Garden 114 Written to the Boy 118 Answers to Correspondents 128 The Farmer and the Tariff 128 A Conventional Speech 136 A Plea for One In Adversity 143 EhubarbPle 147 A Country Fire 161 Big Steve 167 Speech of Eed Shirt 161 Lo, the Poor Shinnecock 167 Webster and His Great Book. 17* 731203 JMograpbical* Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big- hearted and genial. Those who knew him lot sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend. He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Pisca- taquis County, Maine. Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, where they hoped to be able to live under conditions lets severe. After receiving a meager schooling, he entered a lawyer's office where most of his work consisted in sweeping the office and running er rands. In his idle moments the lawyer's library was at his service. Of this crude and desultory reading he afterward wrote: " I could read the same passage today that I did yesterday and it would seem as fresh at the second reading as it did at the first. On the following day I could read it again and it would seem as new and mysterious as it did on the preceding day." At the age of twenty-five, he was teaching a dis trict school in Polk County, Wisconsin, at thirty vH Tili BIOGRAPHICAL. dollars a month. In 1877 he was justice of the peace in Laramie. Of that experience he wrote: "It was really pathetic to see the poor little miserable booth where I sat and waited with numb fingers for business. But I did not see the pathos which clung to every cobweb and darkened the rattling casement. Possibly I did not know enough. I forgot to say the office was not a salaried one, but iolely dependent upon fees. So while I was called Judge Nye and frequently mentioned in the papers with consideration, I was out of coal half the time, and once could not mail my letters for three weeks because I did not have the necessary postage." He wrote some letters to the Cheyenne Sun and aoon made such a reputation for himself that he was able to obtain a position on the Laramie Senti nel. Of this experience he wrote: "The salary was small, but the latitude was great, and I was permitted to write anything that I thought would please the people, whether it was news or not. By and by I had won every heart by my patient poverty and my delightful parsimony with regards to facts. With a hectic imagination and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper I scarcely cared through the livelong day whether school kpt or not." BIOGRAPHICAL. IK Of the proprietor of the Sentinel he wrote: " I don't know whether he got into the peniten tiary or the Greenback party. At any rate he was the wickedest man in Wyoming. Still, he was warm-hearted and generous to a fault. He was more generous to a fault than to anything else more especially his own faults. He gave me twelve dollars a week to edit the paper local, telegraph, selections, religious, sporting, political, fashions, and obituary. He said twelve dollars was too much, but if I would jerk the press occasionally and take care of his children he would try to stand it. You can't mix politics and measles. I saw that I would have to draw the line at measles. So one day I drew my princely salary and quit, hav ing acquired a style of fearless and independent journalism which I still retain. I can write up things that never occurred with a masterly and graphic hand. Then, if they occur, I am grateful; if not, I bow to the inevitable and smother my chagrin." In the midst of a wrangle in politics he was appointed postmaster of his town and his letter of acceptance, addressed to the Postmaster-General at Washington, was the first of his writings to at tract national attention. He said that, in his opinion, his being selected x BIOGRAPHICAL. for the office was a triumph of eternal right over rror and wrong. " It is one of the epochs, I may ay, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection," he wrote. " I don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom." Shortly after he became postmaster he started the Boomerang. The first office of the paper was over a livery stable and Nye put up a sign in-l Btructing callers to " twist the tail of the gray| mule and take the elevator." He at once became famous and was soon brought I to New York, at a salary that seemed fabulous to \ him. His place among the humorists of the world j was thenceforth assured. He died February 22, 1896, at his home in North Carolina, surrounded by his family. James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, was for many years a close personal friend of the dead humorist. When informed of Nye's death, he said: " Especially favored, as for years I have been, with close personal acquaintance and association with Mr. Nye, his going away fills me with selfish ness of grief that finds a mute rebuke in my every memory of him. He was unselfish wholly, and I am broken-hearted, recalling the always patient BIOGRAPHICAL. xi strength and gentleness of this true man, the un- \ failing hope and cheer and faith of his child-heart, his noble and heroic life, and pure devotion to his ' home his deep affections, constant dreams, plans and realizations. I cannot doubt but that somehow, somewhere, he continues cheerily on in the un broken exercise of these same capacities." Mr. Riley recently wrote the following sonnet: O William, In thy blithe companionship What liberty is mine what sweet release From clamourous strife, and yet, what boisterous peaoe! Hoi ho! It is thy fancy's finger tip That dints the dimple now, and kinks the Up That scarce may sing in all this glad increase Of merriment ! So, pray thee, do not cease To cheer me thus, for underneath the quip Of thy droll sorcery the wrangling fret Of all distress is still. No syllable Of sorrow vexeth me, no tear drops wet My teeming lids, save those that leap to tll Thee thou'st a guest that overweepeth yet Only because thou jokest overwell. BILL NYE'S SPARKS. [Personal.] WASHINGTON, D. 0. \ Along toward morning, 1887. \ CASHIER WORLD OFFICE, New York. mY DEAR SIE : You will doubtless be surprised to hear from me so soon, as 1 did not promise when I left New York that I would write you at all while here. But now I take pen in hand to say that the Senate and House of Representatives are having a good deal of fun with me, and hope you are enjoying the same great blessing. You will wonder at first why I send in my expense account before I send in anything for the paper, but I will explain that to you when I get back. At first I thought I would not bother with the expense account till I got to your offiw, but I can now see that it is going to worry me to get tb ere unless I hear from you favorably by return mail. When I came here I fell into the mad whirl of society, and attracted a good deal of attention by my cultivated ways and Jeffersonian method of sleeping with a different member of Congress every night. I have not written anything for publication yet, but I am getting material together that will make people throughout our broad land open their eyes in astonishment. I shall deal fairly and openly with these great national questions, and frankly hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may, as I heard a man say to-day on the floor of the house the Willard House, I mean. But I believe in handling great political matters without gloves, as you will remember, if you have watched my course as justice of the peace and litterateur. Candor is my leading characteristic, and if you will pardon me for saying so in the first letter you ever received from me I believe there is nothing about my whole character which seems to challenge my admiration for myself any more than that. Congressmen and their wives are daily land ing at the great national Castle Garden and look ing wildly around for the place where they are BILL NYE'S SPARKS. told they will get their mileage. OB every hand all is hurry and excitement. Bills are being introduced, acquaintances renewed, and punch bowl* are beginning to wear a preoccupied ate. I have been mingling with society ever since I came here, and that is one reason I have writ ten very little for publication, and did not send what I did write. Yesterday afternoon my money gave out at 3:20, and since that my mind has been clearer and society has made fewer demands on me. At first I thought I would obtain employment at the Treasury Department as exchange editor in the greenback room. Then I remembered that I would get very faint before I could go through a competitive examination, and, in the mean time, I might lose social caste by wearing my person on the outside of my clothes. So I have resolved to write you a chatty'letter about Wash ington, assuring you that I am well, and asking you kindly to consider the enclosed tabulated bill of expenses, as I need the money to buy Christmas presents and get home with. Poker is one of the curses of national legisla tion. I have several times heard prominent foreigners say, in their own language thtnfe REQUESTING A EEMITTANCE. 9 ing, no doubt, that I could not understand them that the members of the American Congress did not betray any emotion on their counte nances. One foreigner from Liverpool, who thought I could not understand his language, said that our congressmen had a way of looking as though they did not know very much. When he afterwards played poker with those same men he saw that the look was acquired. One man told me that his vacant look had been as good M $50,000 to him, whether he stood pat or drew to an ostensible flush while realty holding four bultets. 80 far I have not been over to the Capitol, preferring to have Congress kind of percolate into my room, two or three at a time ; but unless you can honor the inclosed way-bill I shall be forced to go over to the House to-morrow and write something for the paper. Since I hare been writing this I have been led to Inquire whether it would be advisable for me to remain here through the entire session or not. It wffl be unusually long, lasting perhaps clear into July, and I find that the stenographers M a genera! thing get a pretty accurate and spioey aeecrant of the proceedings, much more so than I can, and as you will see by inclosed statement 10 it is going to cost more to teep me here than I figured on. My idea was that board and lodgings woald be the main items of expense, but I struck a low-priced place, -where, by clubbing together with some plain gentlemen from a distance who have been waiting here three years for political recognition, and who do not feel like surround- big themselves with a hotel, we get a plain room with six beds in it. The room overlooks the District of Columbia, and the first man in has the choice of beds, with the privilege of inviting friends to a limited number. We lunch plainly in the lower part of the building in a standing position without restraint or finger- bowls. So board is not the principal item of expense, though of course I do not wish to put up at a place where I will be a disgrace to the paper. I wish that you would, when you send my check, write me frankly whether you think I had better remain here during the entire season or not. I like the place first rate, but my duties keep me up nights to a late hour, and I cannot sleep during the day, because my roommates annoy me by doing their washing and ironing over an oil stove. REQUESTING A REMITTANCX. It I know by what several friends have said to me that Congress would like to have me stay here all winter, but I want to do what is best for the paper. I saw Mr. Cleveland briefly last evening at hig home, but he was surrounded by a crowd of fawning sycophants, so I did not get a chance to speak to him as I would like to, and don't know as he would have advanced the amount to me anyway. He is very firm and stubborn, I judged, and would yield very little indeed, especially to Yours truly, BILL NYB. The following bill looks large In the aggregate, but when you come to examine each Item by itself there is really nothing startling about it, and when you remember that I have been here pow four days and that this is the first bill I have sent in to the office during that time, I know you will not consider it out of the way, especially as you are interested In seeing me make a good paper of the World, no matter what the expense is. We are having good open winter weather and stock is looking well so far. I fear you will regard the item for embalming as exorbitant, and i\ is so, but I was compelled IS BILL NYE'S SPARKS. to pay that price, as the man had to be shipped a long distance, and I did not want to shock his friends too much when he met them at the depot. T<> rent of dress suit for the purpose of seeing lite la Washington in the interest of the paper ti 50 - v 'o charges for dispersing turtle soup from lap of tame 160 To gettiajf for collar put on orercoat, in Interest of paper. 000 to amount loaned a gentleman who hod lived la Washing-ton a long: time and could make me a octal pet (I will return same to you In case he pays it before I come back) , , 6 80 fo lodgings two nights at 25 cents M 31 r meals at 15 cents 90 Pen and ink M Postage on this letter 9 Brouohial troches, in interest of paper 20 Carfare 80 Laundry work done in interest of paper 80 (ferriage hire In fretting' from humble home at a senator to my own voluptuous lodgings S 00 To expenses of embalming a man who came to ne and wanted me to use my influence in changing pottoy of the paper 160 00 To floe paid for assault and battery In and upon a gwitinnan who said he wanted my Influence, but really was already under other influence, and who stopped on my stomach twice without offering to apologize B 00 Paid Jeoitor of Jail next morning 1 00 Paid tor bve&ktog the window of my mil M IS Patfl damage for writing humorous poetry on -watt of cell so that it could not be erased 2 09 Total $388 13 I will probably remain here until I hear from you favorably. I hare met sereral members of Congress for whom I have voted at various times off and on, but they were cold and haughty In their intercourse with me. I have be&n ic vited to sit on the floor of the House until I get some other place to stay, but I hate to ride a free horse to death. *> V. Oratorical $team Or$ar;r;ett$ for I^ailu/ay I AM now preparing for general use and de sire to call the attention of numerous readers to what I have nominated the Campaigner's Companion, for use during or preceding a hot political campaign. Eureka is a very tame ey pression for this unique little contrivance, ap it is good for any speaker and on behalf of any party, I care not of what political belief the orator may be. It is intended for immediate use, like a box of dry plates on an amateur pho tographic tour, only that it is more on the prin ciple of the Organette, with from 500 to 5,000 tunes packed with it ready for use. It is intended to be worked easily on the rear platform of a special car, and absolutely prevents repetition or the wrong application of local gags. Every political speaker of any importance has suffered more or less from what may be called the misplaced gag, such as localizing the grave of a well-known member of Congress in the ORATORICAL O&UANETTE. U wrong cottnty or swelling up -with pardonable pride over large soap works in a rival town fifty miles away from the one where they really are, All these things weaken the political possibilities of great men and bring contumely upon the party they represent. My idea is to arrange a sort of Organette on the rear platform of the car, to be operated by Steam conducted from the engine by means of pipes, the contrivance to be entirely out of sight, under a neat little spread made of the American flag. Behind this an eminent man may stand with his hand socked into the breast of his frock coat nearly up to the elbow, and while his bosom swells with pardonable pride the engineer turns on steam. Previously the private secretary has inserted a speech prepared on punched paper, furnished by me and bearing on that special town and showing a degree of familiarity with that neighborhood which would win the entire adult population. Behind this machine the eminent speaker weaves to and fro, simply making the gestures and shutting off the steam with his foot when ever there is a manifest desire on the part of the audience to applaud. I am having over five hundred good one-night A BILL NY&S SPARKS, towns prepared in this way and, if it would not take up too much of your space, I would like to fire here one speech, illustrating my idea and showing the plan in brief, though with each machine I furnish a little book called "Every Man his Own Demosthenes." This book tells exactly how to work the Campaigner's Compan ion and makes it almost a pleasure to aspire to office. I have choen as an illustration a speech that I have had prepared f or Asheville, N. C., but all the others are equally applicable and apropos. <$ST See that all bearings are well oiled before you start, especially political bearings. See that the crank Is just 'jffht enough, without being: too tight, and ateo that the 'ounials do not get hot. ) Fellow-Citizens of Asheville and Buncombe Cownt ty and Brother Tarheels from Away Back : If I were a faithful Mohammedan and be lieved that I could never enter heaven but once, I would look npon Buncombe County and de- spair ever afterwards. (Four minutes for ap plause to die away.) Asheville is 2,389 feet above tide-water. She is the hotbed of the in valid and the home of the physical wreck who cannot live elsewhere, but who comes here and lives till he gets plum sick of it. Your mountain and your fried chicken bear strength and OEATOTtlCAL OBGANETTE. It AeaMng in their wings. (Hold valve open twe minutes and a half to give laughter full scope.) Your altitude and your butter are both high, and the man who cannot get all the fresh air he wants on your mountains will do well to rent one of your cottages and allow the wind to meander through his whiskers. Asheville is a beautiful spot, where a peri could put in a highly enjoy able summer, picknicking along the Swananea through the day and conversing with Plum Levy at his blood-curdling barber shop in the gloaming. Nothing can possibly be thrillinger than to hear Plum tell of the hair-breadth es capes his customers have had in his cozy little shop. The annual rainfall here is 40.2 inches, while smoking tobacco and horned cattle both do well. Ten miles away stretches Alexander's. You are only thirty-five miles from Buck Forest. Pisgah Mountain is only twenty miles from here and Tahkeeastee Farm is only a mile away, with its name extending on beyond as far as the eye can reach. The French Broad Kiver bathes your feet on the right and the sun-kissed Swan- anoa, with its beautiful borders of rhododen drons, sloshes up against you on the other side. Mount Mitchell, with an altitude of 6,711 feet 18 and an annual rain-fall of 58.8 inches, is but twenty miles distant, while Lower Hominy is near, and Hell's Half Acre, Sandy Mush and Blue Kuin are within your grasp. The sun never lit up a cuter little town than Asheville. Nature just seemed to wear herself out on Buncombe County and then she took what she had left over to make the rest of the country. Your air is full of vigor. Your farms get up and hump themselves in the middle or on one side, so that youhave to wear a pair of telegraph- pole climbers when you dig your potatoes. Here you will see the japonica, the jonquil and the jaundice growing side by side in the spring, and at the cheese-foundry you can hear the skipper calling to his mate. Here is the home of General Tom Clingman, who first originated the idea of using tobacco ex ternally for burns, scalds, ringworm, spavin, pneumonia, Bright's disease, poll evil, pip, gar get, heartburn, earache and financial stringency Here Eandolph & Hunt can do your job printing for you, and the Citizen and the Adva/nce will give you the news. You are on a good line of railroad and I like your air very much, aside from the air just played by your home band. Certainly you have ORATORICAL OEGANETTE. 19 here the makings of a great city. You hare pure air enough here for a city four times jt>ttf present size, and although I have seen most nil the Switzerlands of America, I think that tbis is in every way preferable. People who are in search of a Switzerland of America that can be relied upon will do well to try your town. And now, having touched upon everything of national importance that I can think of, I will close by telling you a little anecdote which will, perhaps, illustrate my position better than I could do it in any other way. (Here I insert a humorous anecdote which has no special bearing on the political situation and during the en suing laughter the train pulls out.) mY NAME is Yeritas. I write for the papers. I am quite an old man and have written my kindly words of advice to the press for many years. I am the friend of the public and the guiding star of the American newspaper. I point out the proper course for a newly-elected member of Congress and show the thoughtless editor the wants of the people. I write on the subject of political economy ; also on both sides of the paper. Sometimes I write on both sides of the question. When I do so I write over the name of Tax-Payer, but my real name is Veritas. I am the man who first suggested the culvert at the Jim street crossing, so that the water would run off toward the pound after a rain. With my ready pen ready, and trenchant also, as I may say I have, in my poor, weak way, suggested a great many things which might otherwise have remained for many years unsug- gested. 21 I am tne man who annually calls for a cele bration of the Fourth of July in our little towm, and asks for some young elocutionist to be se lected by the committee, whose duty it shall be to read the Declaration of Independence in a shrill voice to those who yearn to be thrillel through and through with patriotism. Did I not speak through the columns of th press in clarion tones for a proper observance of our nation's great natal day in large gothio ex tended caps, the nation's starry banner would remain furled and the greased pig would con tinue to crouch in his lair. With the aid of my genial co-workers Tax-Payer, Old Settler, Old Subscriber, Constant Reader, TJ. L. See, Fair Play, and Mr. Pro Bono Publico, I have made the world a far more desirable place in which to live than it would otherwise have been. My co-laborer, Mr. Tax-Payer, is an old con tributor to the paper, but he is not really a tax payer. He uses this signature in order to con ceal his identity, just as I use the name Yerlta*. We have a great deal of fun over this at oar regular annual reunions, where we talk about all our affairs. Old Settler is a young tenderfoot who came here last spring and tried to obtain a livelihood 82 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. by sailing an indestructible lamp-ehkaaey. He did well for several weeks by going to the differ ent residences and throwing one of his glass chimneys on the floor with considerable force to show that it would not break. He did a good business till one day he made a mistake. In- ttead of getting hold of his exhibition chimney, he picked out one of the stock and busted it be yond recognition. Since that he has been writ ing articles in violet ink relative to old times and publishing them over the signature of Old Settler. Old Subscriber is a friend of mine who reads his paper at the hotels while waiting for a gra tuitous drink. Fair Play is a retired monte man, and Pro Bono Publico is our genial and urbane undertaker. I am a very prolific writer, but all my worfc is not printed. A venal and corrupt press at times hesitates about giving currency to such fearless, earnest truths as I make nse of. I am also the man who says brave things in the columns of the papers when the editor him self does not dare to say them because he is afraid he will be killed. But what recks Veri- tas the bold and free ? Does he flinch or quail ! Not a flinch ; not a quail. TSEITAB. * Boldly he flings aside his base fears, and with bitter vituperation he assails those he dislikes, and attacks with resounding blows his own personal enemies, fearlessly signing his name, Yeritas, to the article, so that those who yearn to kill him may know just who he is. What would the world do without Yeritas ? In the h^nds of a horde of journalists who hare nothing to do but attend to their business, left with no anonymous friend to whom they can fly when momentous occasions arise, when the sound adviee and better judgment of an outside friend is needed, their condition would indeed be a pitiable one. But he will nerer desert us. He is ever at hand, prompt to say, over his nom de plume, what he might hesitate to say over his own name, for fear that he might go home with a battle of Gettysburg under each eye and a nose like a volcanic eruption. He cheerfully attacks everything and everybody, and then goes away till the fight, the funeral, and the libel suit are over. Then he returns and assails the grim monster "Wrong. He proposes improve ments, and the following week a bitter reply comes from Tax-Payer. Pro Bono Publico, the retired three-card-monteist, says : '* Let us have the proposed improvement, regardless of cost." M BILL NYE'S SPARKS. Then the cynical U. L. See (who is really the janitor at the blind asylum) grumbles about useless expense, and finally draws out from the teeming brain of Constant Reader a long, flabby essay, written on red-ruled leaves, cut out of an old meat-market ledger, written economically on both sides with light blue ink made of bluing and oold tea. This essay introduces, ujder the most trying circumstances, such crude yet origi nal literary gems as : Wad some power the glftl* gie us, etc. He also says : The wee sma' hours ayant the twal. And farther on : Breathes there a man with soul so deau. Who never to himself hath said, etc. His essay is not so much the vehicle of thought as it is the accommodation train for fragments of his old school declamations to ride on. But to Yeritas we owe much. I say this be cause I know what I am talking about, for am I not old Veritas himself ? Haven't I been writ ing things for the papers ever since papers were published ? A.m I not the man who for years hag been a stranger to fear ? Have I not again and again called the congressman, the capital ist, the clergyman, the voter and the philanthro pist everything I could lay my tongue to, and VEEITAS. 86 then fought mosquitoes in the deep reoease* of the swamp while the editor remained at th office and took the credit for writing what I had given him for nothing ? Has not many a papr built up a name and a libel suit upon what I have written, and yet I am almost unknown ? When people ask, Who is Veritas ? and wher does he live ? no one seems to know. He is up seven flights of stairs, in a hot room that smell* of old clothes and neglected thoughts. Far from the " madding crowd," as Constant Beader has so truly said, I sit alone, with no personal prop erty but an overworked costume, a strong lor for truth, and a shawl-strap full of suggestions to the overestimated man who edits the paper. So I battle on, with only the meager and flea- bitten reward of seeing my name in print ' 4 anon," as Constant Beader would say. All I have to fork over to posterity is my good name, I beg leave to sign here. Vi Drug bu$ii^5$ 117 K ai ?S a 5* HUDSON, Wig. mR. BILL NTB. DEAR SIB: I hope you will pardoz me for addressing you on a matter of pure busi ness, but I have heard that you are not averse to going out of your way to do a favor now and then to those who ar siaoere and appreciative. I hare learned from a friend that you have been around all aver the west, and so I have taken the liberty of writing you to ask what you think would be the chances of success for a young man jf .he were to go to Kansas to enter the drug business. I am a practical young druggist 33 years of age, and have some raoney a few hundred dollars with which to go .ito business. Would you advise Kansas or Colorado as a good part of the west for that business ? I have also written some for the press, but with little sucoeas. I inclose you a few slips cut from the papers in which these articles originally appeared. I send stamp for reply and hope you will answer me, even though your time may be taken up pretty well by other matters. Be- apeetfully yours. ADOLPH JAYNES, Lock-Box 604. HUDSON, Wis., Oct. 1. MB. ADOLPH JAYNES, Lock-box 604. DEAR SIR : Your favor of late date is at had, and I take pleasure in writing this dictated letter to you, using the columns of the Chicago DAILY NEWS as a delicate way of teaching you. I will take the liberty of replying to your last question first, if you pardon me, and I say that you would do better, no doubt at once, in a financial way, to go on with your drug business than to monkey with literature. In the first place, your style of composition is like the present style of dress among men. It is absolutely correct, and therefore it is abso lutely like that of nine men out of every ten we meet. Your style of writing has a mustache on it, wears a three-button cutaway of some Scotch mixture, carries a cane, and wears a straight, stand-up collar and scarf. It is so correct and so exactly in conformity with the prevailing style of composition, and your thoughts are ex pressed so thoroughly like other people 's methods of dressing up their sentences and sand-paper ing the soul out of what they say, that I honestly think you would succeed better by trying to subsist upon the quick sales and small profits which the drug trade insures. 28 BILL NY&S SPARKS. Now, let ns consider the question of location . Seriously, you ought to look over the groua.4 yourself, but as you have asked me to give you my best judgment on the question of preference as between Kansas and Colorado I will say with out hesitation that, if you mean by the drug business the sale of sure-enough drugs, medi cines, paints, oils, glass, putty, toilet articles, and prescriptions carefully compounded, I would not go to Kansas at this time. If you would like to go to a flourishing country and put out a big basswood mortar in front of your shop in order to sell the tincture of damna tion throughout bleeding Kansas, now is your golden opportunity. Now is the accepted time. If it is the great, big, burning desire of your heart to go into a town of 2,000 people and opea the thirteenth drug store in order that you may stand behind a tall black-walnut prescription case day in and day out, with a graduate in one hand and a Babcock fire-extinguisher in the other, filling orders for whisky made of stump- water and the juice of future punishment, you will do well to go to Kansas. It is a temperance state, and no saloons are allowed there. All is quiet and orderly, and the drug business is a great suooeM. DE UG B US1NES8 IN KANSAS. S You can run a dummy drug store there frith two dozen dreary old glass bottles on the shelve*, punctuated by the hand of time and the Kansas fly of the period, and with a prohibitory law at your back and a tall, red barrel in the backroom filled with a mixture that will burn great holes into nature's heart and make the cemetery blossom as the rose, and in a few years you can sell enough of this justly celebrated preparation for household, scientific, and experimental pur poses only to fill your flabby pockets with wealth and paint the pure air of Kansas a bright and inflammatory red. If you sincerely and earnestly yearn for a field where you may go forth and garner an honest harvest from the legitimate effort of an upright soda fountain and free and open sale of slippery elm in its unadulterated condition, I would go to some state where I would not have to enter into competition with a style of phar macy that has the unholy instincts and am bitions of a blind pig. I would not go into the field where red-eyed ruin simply waited for a prescription blank, not necessarily for publi cation, but simply as a guaranty of good faith, in order that it may bound forth from behind the prescription case and populate the poor- houses and the paupers' nettle-grown addition to the silent city of the dead. The great question of how best to down the demon rum is before the American people, and it will not be put aside until it is settled ; but while this is being attended to, Mr. Jaynes, I would start a drug store farther away from the center of conflict and go on joyously, sacrificing expensive tinctures, compounds, and sirups at bed-rock prices. Go on, Mr. Jaynes, dealing out to the yearn ing, panting public, drugs, paints, oils, glass putty, varnish, patent medicines, and prescrip tions carefully compounded, with none to molest or make afraid, but shun, oh shun the wild-eyed pharmacopoeia that contains naught but the festering fluid so popular in Kansas, a compound that holds crime in solution and ruin in bulk, that shrivels up a man's gastric economy, and sears great ragged holes into his immortal soul. Take this advice home to your heart and you will ever command the hearty co-operation of "yours for health," as the late Lydia E. Pink- ham so succinctly said. CtyS perils of Identification CHICAGO, Feb. 20, 1888. FINANCIAL circles here have been a good deal interested in the discovery of a cipher which has been recently adopted by a de positor and which began to attract the attention at first of a gentleman employed in the Clearing- House. He was telling me about it and show ing me the vouchers or duplicates of them. It was several months ago that he first noticed on the back of a check passing through the Clearing-House the following cipher, -written in a symmetrical Gothic hand : DEAR SIK : Herewith find payment for last month's but ter. It was hardly up to the average. Why do you blonde your butter ? Your butter last month tried to assume an effeminate air, which certainly was not consistent with Its vigor. Is it not possible that this butter is the brother to what we had the month previous, and that It was ex changed for its sister by mistake? We have generally liked your butter very much, but we will have to dealelser where if you are going to encourage it in wearing a full beard. Yours truly, W. ta BILL NYE'S SPARKS. Moneyed men all over Chicago and financial eryptogrammers came to read the curious thing and to try and work out its bearing on trade. Everybody took a look at it, and went away de feated. Even the men who were engaged in try ing to figure out the identity of the Snell mur derer took a day off and tried their Waterbury thinkers on this problem. In the midst of it all another check passed through the Clearing- House with this cipher, in the same hand : SIB : Your bill for the past month Is too much. You for get the eggs returned at the end of second week, for which you were to give me credit. The cook broke one of them by mistake, and then threw up the portfolio of pie- founder in our once joyous home. I will not dock you for loss of cook, but I cannot allow you for the eggs. How you succeed in dodging quarantine with eggs like that is a mystery to yours truly, W. Great excitement followed the discovery of this indorsement on a check for $32.87. Every body who knew anything about ciphering was called in to consider it. A young man from a high school near here, who made a specialty of mathematics and pimples, and who could readily tell how long a shadow a nine pound groundhog would cast at 2 o'clock and 37 minutes P.M., on groundhog day, if sunny, at the town of Fungus, Dak., provided latitude and longitude and an THE PERILS OF IDENTIFICA TI02T. 88 irregular mass of red chalk be given to him, secured to jerk a few logarithms in the interests of trade. He came and tried it for a few days, covered the interior of the Exposition Building with figures and then went away. The Pinkerton detectives laid aside their lit erary work on the great train book, entitled " The Jerk-water Bank Robbery and Other Choice Crimes," by the author of " How I Traced a Lame Man Through Michigan, and Other Felonies." They grappled with the ciph er, and several of them leaned up against some thing and thought for a long time, but they could make neither head nor tail to it. Ignatius Donnelly took a powerful dose of kumiss, and under its maddening influence sought to solve the great problem which threatened to engulf the nation's surplus. All was in vain. Cowed and defeated, the able conservators of coin, who require a man to be identified before he can draw on his overshoes at sight, had to acknowl edge if this thing continued it threatened the destruction of the entire national fabric. About this time I was calling at the First Na tional Bank of Chicago, the greatest bank, if I am not mistaken, in America. I saw the bonds securing its issue of national currency the other 84 day in Washington, and I am quite sure the cus todian told me it was the greatest of any bank in the Union. Anyway, it was sufficient, so that I felt like doing my banking business there when ever it became handy to do so. I asked for a certificate of deposit for $2,000, and had the money to pay for it, but I had to be identified. " Why," I said to the receiving tel ler, " surely you don't require a man to be identi fied when he deposits money, do you ? " " Yes, that's the idea." "Well, isn't that a new twist on the crippled industries of this country?" " No ; that's our rule. Hurry up, please, and don't keep men waiting who have money and know how to do business." "Well, I don't want to obstruct business, of course, but suppose, for instance, I get myself identified by a man I know and a man you know and a man who can leave his business and come here for the delirious joy of identifying me, and you admit that I am the man I claim to be, cor responding as to description, age, sex, etc., with the man I advertise myself to be, how would it be about your ability to identify yourself as the man you claim to be ? I go all over Chicago, visiting all the large pork-packing houses in TRE PERILS OF IDENTIFICATION. 35 search of a man I know, and who is intimate with literary people like me, and finally we will say, I find one who knows me and who knows you, and whom you know, and who can leave his leaf lard long enough to come here and identify me all right. Can you identify yourself in such a way that when I put in my $2,000 you will not loan it upon insufficient security, as they did in Cincinnati the other day, as soon as I go out of town ? " " Oh, we don't care especially whether you trade here or not, so that you hurry up and let other people have a chance. Where you make a mistake is in trying to rehearse a piece here instead of going out to Lincoln Park or some where in a quiet part of the city. Our rules are that a man who makes a deposit here must be identified." "All right. Do you know Queen Victoria ? " " No sir; I do not." ""Well, then, there is no use in disturbing her. Bo you know any other of the crowned heads?" " No sir." "Well, then, do you know President Cleveland, or any of the Cabinet, or the Senate or members of the House ? " " No." 36 BILL NYE'S SPARKS.' "That's it, you see. I move in one set and you in another. "What respectable people do you know V " " I'll have to ask you to stand aside, I guess, and give that string of people a chance. You have no right to take up my time in this way. The rules of the bank are inflexible. We must know who you are, even before we accept your deposit." I then drew from my pocket a copy of the Sun day World which contained a voluptuous pictnre of myself. Bemoving my hat and making a court salaam by letting out four additional joints in my lithe and versatile limbs, I asked if any further identification would be necessary. Hastily closing the door to the vault and jerk ing the combination, he said that would be satis factory. I was then permitted to deposit in the bank. I do not know why I should always be regarded with suspicion wherever I go. I do not present the appearance of a man who is steeped in crime, and yet when I put my trivial, little, two-gallon valise on the seat of a depot waiting-room a big man with a red mustache comes to me and hisses through his clenched teeth : " Take yer baggage off the seat ! " It is so everywhere. I apologize TEE PERILS OF IDENTIFICATION. 8T for disturbing a ticket agent long enough to sell me a ticket, and he tries to jump through a little braes wicket and throttle me. Other men come in and say: "Give me a ticket for Bandoline, O., and be dam sudden about it, too," and they get their ticket and go aboard the car and get the beet seat, while I am begging for the opportunity to buy a seat at full rates and then ride in the wood box. I believe that common courtesy and de cency in America needs protection. Go into an hotel or a hotel, whichever suits the eyether and nyether reader of these lines, and the commer cial man who travels for a big sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a slippery- elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a discon nected bell, a view of the laundry, a tin roof and $4 a day. But I digress. I was speaking of the bank cheek cipher. At the First National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorse ments. It read as follows : DEAR SLR: This will be your pay for chickens and other fowls received up to the first of the present month. Time is working wondrous changes in your chickens. They sue no* such chiokeus as we used to get of you before the war. Tby may lx~ *iie same chickens, but oh I how changed tejr 38 SILL NY&S SPARKS. the lapse of time ! How much more Indestructible I HOT* they have learned since then to defy the encroaching tooth of remorseless ages, or any other man I Why do you not have them tender like your squashes I I found a blue poker chip in your butter this week. What shall I credit myself for it? If you would try to work your butter more and your customers less it would be highly appreciated, especially by, yours truly, W. Looking at the signature on the check itself ,1 found it to be that of Mrs. James Wexford, of this city. Knowing Mr. Wexford, a wealthy and influential publisher here, I asked him to day if he knew anything about this matter. He said that all he knew about it was that his wife had a separate bank account, and had asked him several months ago what was the use of all the blank space on the back of a check, and why it couldn't be used for correspondence with the remittee. Mr. Wexford said he'd bet $600 that his wife had been using her checks that way, for he said he never knew of a woman who could possibly pay postage on a note, remittance or anything else unless every particle of the surface had been written over in a wild, delirious, three- story hand. Later on I found that he was right about it. His wife had been sassing the grocer and the butter-man on the back of her checks. Thus ended the great bank mystery. THE PERILS OF IDENTIFICATION, 8ft I will close this letter with a little incident^ the story of which may not be so startling, but it is true. It is a story of child faith. Johnny Quin-lan, of Evanston, has the most wonderful confidence in the efficacy of prayer, but he thinks that prayer does not succeed unless it is accom panied with considerable physical strength. He Sieves that adult prayer is a good thing, but doubts the efficacy of juvenile prayer. He has wanted a Jersey cow for a good while, and tried prayer, but it didn't seem to get to the central office. Last year he went to a neighbor who is a Christian and believer in the efficacy of prayer, also the owner of a Jersey cow. "Do you believe that prayer will bring me a yaller Jersey cow ? " said Johnny. " Why, yes, of course. Prayer will remove mountains ; it will do anything. "Well, then, suppose you give me the cow you've got and pray for another one." Cetter. mT DEAR SON" : We got your last lette* some three days ago. It found us all moderately well though not very frisky. Your letters now days are getting quite pretty as regards penmanship. You are certainly go ing to develop into a fine penman your mother thinks. She says that if you improve as fast in your writing next year as you have last, you will soon be writing for the papers. In my mind's eye I can see you there in your room practicing for a long time on a spiral spring which you make with your pen. I believe you call it the whole arm movement. I think you got the idea from me. You remember I used to have a whole arm movement that I introduced into our family along in the summer of '69. You was at that time trying to learn to swim. Once or twice the neighbors brought you home with your lungs full of river water and your ara full of coarse sand. We pumped you dry erral times, but it did not wean you from the JL FATHER'S LETTER. 41 river, so I introduced the whole arm mo'V ement one day and used it from that on in what you would call our curric kulum. It worked well. Your letters are now very attractive from a scientific standpoint. The letters all have pret ty little curly tails on them, and though you do not always spell according to Gunter, the capi tal letters are as pretty as a picture. I never saw such a round O as you make when you hang your tongue out and begin to swing yourself. Your mother says that your great-uncle on her side was a good writer too. He could draw off a turtle dove without taking his pen from the paper, and most everybody would know as soon as they looked at it that it was a turtle dove or some such bird as that. He could also draw a deer with coil spring horns on him, and a barbed wire fence to it, and a scolloped tail, and it looked as much like a deer as anything else you could think of. He was a fine penman and wrote a good deal for the papers. Your mother has got a lot of his pieces in the house yet, which the paperi sent back because they were busy and crowded full of other stuff. I read some of these letters, and any one can see that it was a great sacrifice ior the editors to send the pieces back, 42 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. had got used to it and conquered their ovm per sonal feelings, and sent them back because they were too good for the plain, untutored reader. One editor said that he did not want to print the enclosed pieces because he thought it would be a pity to place such pretty writing in the soiled hands of the practical printer. He said that the manuscript looked so pretty just as it was, that he hadn't the heart to send it into the composing room. So the day may not be far fiway, Henry, when you can write for the press, your mother thinks. I don't care so much about it myself, but she has her heart set on it. Your mother thinks that you are a great man, though I have not detected any symptoms of it yet. She has got that last pen scroll work here of yours in the bible, where she can look at it every day. Its the picture of a hen setting in a nest of cur ly-cues made with red ink, over a woven wire mattress of dewdads in blue ink, and some tall grass in violet ink. Your mother says that this fowl is also a turtle dove, but I think she is wrong. She says the world has always got a warm $laoe for one who can make such a beautiful picture without taking his pen off the paper. Perhaps she is right. 7 hope that you will not A FATHERS LETTEE. 4$ take me for an example, for I am no writer at all. My parents couldn't give me any advan tages when I was young. When I ought to have been learning how to make a red ink bird of paradise swooping down on a violet ink butter fly with green horns, I was frittering away my time trying to keep my misguided parents out of the poor-house. I tell you, Henry, there was mighty little fluff and bloom and funny business in my young life. While you are acquiring the rudiments of Long Dennis and polo and penmanship, and storing your mind with useful knowledge with which to parlize your poor parents when you come home, do not forget, Henry, that your old sway- back father never had those opportunities for soaking his system full of useful knowledge which you now enjoy. When I was your age, I was helping to jerk the smutty logs off of a new farm with a pair of red and restless steers, in the interest of your grandfather. But, I do not repine. I just simply call your attention to your priviledges. Could you have a Summer in the heart of the primeval forest, thrown in contact with a pair of high-strung steers and a large number of black flies of the most malignant type, "snaking" half -burnt logs 44 BILL NY&S SPARKS. across yourself and fighting flies from early dawn till set of sun, you would be willing, nay tickled, to go back to your monotonous round of base ball and Suffolk jackets and pest-house cigarettes. We rather expected you home some time ago, but you said you needed sea air and change of scene, so you will not be home very likely till the latter part of the month. We will be glad bo see you any time, Henry, and we will try to make it as pleasant as we can for you. Your mother got me to fill the big straw-tick for your bed again, so that you would have a nice tall place to sleep, and so that you could live high, as the feller said. I tried on the old velocipede pants you sent Aome last week. They are too short for me with the style of legs I am using this Summer. Your bathing pants are also too short for me, so I gave them to a poor woman here who is trying to ameliorate the condition of her sex. I send you our love and $9 in money. We will *ell the other calf as soon as it is ripe. Chintz bugs are rather more robust than last year, and the mortgage on our place looks as if it might /nature prematurely. We had a lecture on phre- no*ogy at the school-house Tuesday night, during A FATHER S LETTER. 46 which four of our this spring's roan turkies wandered so far away from home that they lost their bearings and never came back again. So good -by for this time. Your father, BILL at IT HAS been my good fortune within the past ten years to "witness a number of the re maining landmarks left to indicate the trail of the original inhabitant of this country. It has been a pleasure, and yet a kind of sad plea sure, to examine the crumbling ruins of what was once regarded, no doubt, as the very tri umph of aboriginal taste and mechanical in genuity. I can take but a cursory glance at these ear marks of a forgotten age, for a short treatise like this cannot embrace minute details, of course. "We are told by the historian that there were riginally two distinct classes of Indians occupy ing the territory now embraced by the United States, viz., the Tillage Indians or horticultural Indians, and the extremely rural Indians or non- horticultural variety. The village Indians or horticulturalists sub- TEE AZTEC AT HOME. # sisted upon fruits and grain, ground in a crude way, while the non-horticulturalists lived oa wild game, berries, acorns and pilgrims. Of the latter class few traces remain, except ing rude arrow heads and coarse stone weapons. These articles show very little skill as a rule, the only indication of brains that I ever dis covered being on a large stone hammer or Mo hawk swatter, and they were not the brains of the man who made it either. The village Indians, however, were architects from away up the gulch. They constructed a number of architectural works of great beauty, several of which I have visited. They were once, no doubt, regarded as very desirable residences, but now, alas, they have fallen into innocuous desuetude at least that is what it looked like to me, and the odor reminded me of innocuous desuetude in a bad state of preservation. In New Mexico, over 300 years ago, there were built a number of pereblos or villages which still stand up, in a measure, though some of them are in a recumbent position. These pereblos or villages are formed of three or four buildings constructed in the retrousse style of architecture, and made of adobe bricks. These * BILL NYE'S SPARKS. bricks are generally of a beautiful, soft, black and tan color, and at a distance look like the firs* loaf of bread baked by a young lady who has been reared in luxury but whose father has been suddenly called away to Canada. The adobe brick is said to be so indigestible, in fact, that I am confident the day is not far distant when it will be found on every hotel bill of fare in our broad sin-cursed land. One of these dwellings was generally about 200 feet long, with no stairways in the in terior, but movable ladders on the outside instead. This manner of reaching the upper floor had its advantages, and yet it was not al ways convenient. One feature in its favor was the isolation which a man could pull around himself by going in at the second-story window and pulling the ladder up after him, as there was uo entranoe to the house on the ground floor. If a man really courted retirement, and wanted to write a humorous lecture or a $2 homily, he could insert himself through the second-story window, pull in the staircase and go to work. Then no one could disturb him without bribing a hook and ladder company to come along and let him in. Bo* the great drawback was the annoyance THE AZTEC AT HOME. 49 iiiddent to ascending these ladders at a fete hour in the night, while under the influence of Aztec rum, a very seductive yet violently intox icating beverage, containing about eight parts cheer to ninety-two parts inebriate. These residences were hardly gothic in atyle, being extremely rectangular, with a tendency toward the more modern dry-goods box. It is believed by abler men than I am, men who could believe more in two minutes than I could believe in a lifetime if I had nothing else to do, that those houses contained about thirty-eight apartments on the first floor and nineteen on the second. These apartments were separated by some kind of cheap and transitory partition, which could not stand the climatic changes, and so has gone to decay ; but these Indians wer* determined to have their rooms separated in some way, for they were very polite and deco rous to a fault. No Aztec gentleman would emerge from his room until he had completed his toilet, if it cost him his position. I once heard of an Aztec who lived away down in old Mexico somewhere several centuries ago and who was the pink of politeness. He wore full-dress winter and summer, the whole year round, and studied a large work on etiquette 60 BILL NY&S SPARKS. every evening. At night he would undress himself by unhooking the german-silver ring from his nose and hanging it on the back of a chair. One night a young man from the capital, named Ozone, or something like that, a relative of the Montezumas, came over to stay a week or two with this Aztec dude. As a good joke he slipped in and nipped the nose-ring of his friend just to see if he would so far violate the proprie ties as to appear at breakfast time without it. Morning came and the dude awoke to find the bright rays of a Mexican sun streaming in through his casement. He rose, and, bathing himself in a gourd, he looked on the back of the chair for his clothing, but it was not there. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. He called for assistance, but no one came. He called again and again, louder and still more loud, but help came not. He went to the case ment and looked out upon the plaza. The plaza did not turn away. A Mexican plaza is not easi ly dashed. He called till he was hoarse, but all was still in the house. Hollow echoes alone came back to him to mock him. At night, when the rest of the household re- THE AZTEC AT HOME. 51 turned from a protracted picnic in the distant hills, young Ozone ascended the ladder which he carried with him in a shawl-strap, and entering the room of the Aztec dude gave him the nose ring with a hearty laugh, but, alas I he was greeted with the wild, piercing shriek of a ma niac robbed of his clothing ; the man had suffered such mental tortures during the long, long day, that when night came, reason tottered on her throne. It is said that he never regained his faculties, but would always greet his visitors with a wild forty-cent shriek and bury his face in his hands. His friends tried to get him into society again, but he could not be prevailed upon to go. He seemed to be afraid that he would be shocked in some way, or that some one might take advantage of him and read an immoral poem to him. 19 JIN SHEVILLE, N. C., December 9. There is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous distiller have their homes. Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of butter, but in her lei sure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies, it casts a gloom over the community in which he has resided. The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her black, re trousse and perspiration-dotted nose in to the lY THE SOUTH. 58 grass from ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the life of the Tar-heel cow is one of in tense activity. Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. "With the cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is obliged to ostra cize herself from society, and enter into the pro saic details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength. The butter she turns out rapidly until it be gins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of the greatest in terest. Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, yiz., male and female. Much as has been aaid of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to hare seen the above statement in print before, <* BILL NYE'S SPARKS. and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In >he Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled to successfully salt the mines. The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous. Here the jackass at times becomes a co worker with the cow in hauling tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no fur ther in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press alone and contrib utes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the butter industry. The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman, who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he adds a small pair of ear-bods during the holidays. The cow is attached to each shaft and a small 3ingletree, or swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a breeching, in IN THE SOUTH. E in expectation of shooting that jack rabbit, whe, 1 put in the grave. Wheat is selling at about 60 cents; corn, 40 to 60 cents; fat hogs, grofs, 41 to 41 ; fat steers, 4i ; butcher's stock, 2 cents." It is hard to ay just exactly wherein this is faulty, but something is the matter with it. I would like to get an expression of oninion from HOW TO TEACH JOURNALISM. 107 those who take an interest in such things, as to whether the fault is in orthoepy, orthography, anatomy, obituary or price current, or whether it consists in writing several features too closely in the same paragraph. It would also be a good idea to establish a chair for advertisers in some practical college, in order that they might run in for a few hours and learn how to write an advertisement so *hat it would express in the most direct way what they desired to state. Here is an advertisement, for instance, which is given exactly as written and punctuated : MRS. DR. EPWABDS, THS CREAT WESTSRH CLAIErOYJLWT, Has arrived, and will remain only a short time. Gall * once at HOTEL WINDSOR, 119, 121 and 123 East State street, Boom 19, third floor. Please take elevator. The greatest and most natural born, and highly o*t#- brated, and well-known all over the country, Clairvoyant, now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Paoiflo coast. Seventh Daughter of the Seventh Daughter ; born with veil and second sight; every mystery revealed; If one you love Is true or false; removes trouble; settles lovers' quar rels; causes a speedy marriage with one you love; valu able Information to gentlemen on all business transac tions; bow to make profitable Investments for epeedy riches; lucky numbers; Egyptian talisman for the un cures mysterious and chronic disease*. All who 108 are sick or In trouble from any cause are Invited to oaH I have always claimed that clairvoyance could be made a success if we could find some one who was sufficiently natural born to grapple with it. Now, Mrs. Edwards seems to know what is re quired. She was born utterly without affecta tion. When she was born she just seemed to say to those who happened to be present at the time, "Fellow citizens, you will hare to take me just as you find me. I cannot dissemble or ap pear to be otherwise than what I am. I am the most natural born and highly celebrated all over the country clairvoyant now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Pacific coast." She then let off a whoop that ripped open the sable robes of night, after which she took a light lunch and retired to her dressing-room. Ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., if I am not mistaken, suggested a school of journalism at least twelve years ago, but it did not meet with immediate and practical in dorsement. Now Cornell comes forward and seems to be in earnest, and I am glad of it. The letters received from day to day by editors, and written to them by men engaged in other pur- sttits, practically admit and prove that there is HOW TO TEACH JOURNALISM. 109 not now in existence an editor who knows enough to carry liver to a bear. That is the reason why every means should be used to pull this profession out of the mire of dense ignorance and place it upon the high, dry soil which leads to genius and consanguinity. The above paragraph I quote from a treatise on journalism which I wrote just before I knew anything about it. The life of the journalist is a hard one, and, although it is not so trying as the life of the newspaper man, it is full of trials and perplexi ties. If newspaper men and journalists did not stand by each other I do not know what joy they would have. Kindness for each other, gentle ness and generosity, even in their rivalry, char acterize the conduct of a large number of them. I shall never forget my first opportunity to do a kind act for a fellow newspaper man, nor with what pleasure I availed myself of it, though he was my rival, especially in the publication of large and spirited equestrian handbills and post ers. He also printed a rival paper and assailed me most bitterly from time to time. His name waa Lorenzo Dow Pease, and we had carried on an acrimonious warfare for two years. He had said that I was a reformed Prohibitionist and *> SILL OTE'S SPARKS. that I had left a neglected wife in every State In the Union. I had stated that he would give better satisfaction if he would wear his braina breaded. Then he had said something elae that was personal and it had gone on so for some time. We devoted fifteen minutes each day to the management of our respective papers, and the oalanoe of the day to doing eeeh other up in a way to pleaae our subscribers. One evening Lorenzo Dow Peaae came into my office and said he wanted to eee me peron- ally. I eaid that would suit me exactly and that if he had asked to see me in any other way I did not know how I oould have arranged it. He eaid he meant that he would like to eee me by myself. I therefore dieoharfed the foroe, tamed ont the dog and we had the office to ourselves. I could see that he was in trouble, for every lit tle while he would brush away a tear in an under handed kind of way and swallow a large, imag inary mass of something. I asked Lorenzo why he felt so depressed, and he said : "William, I have came here for a favor." He always said "I have came," for he was a self-made man and hadn't done a very good job either. "I have came here for a favor. I wrote a reply to your venomous attack of t^-rtay and I expected to HOW TO TEACH JOURNALISM. Ill publish it to-morrow in my paper, but, to tell you the truth, -we are out of paper. At least, we have a few bundles at the freight office, but they have taken to sending it C. O. D., and I haven't the means just at hand to take it out. Now, as a brother in the great and glorious or der of journalism, would it be too much for you to loan me a couple of bundles of paper to do me till I get my pay for some equestrian bill* struck off Friday and just as good as the wheat?" "How long would a couple of bundles last you?" I asked as I looked out at the window and wondered if he would reveal his circulation. "Five issues and a little over," he said, filling his pipe from a small box on the desk. "But you could cut off your exchanges and then it would last longer," I remarked. "Yes, but only for one additional issue. I am rery anxious to appear to-morrow, because my subscribers will be looking for a reply to what you said about me this morning. You stated that I was 'a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect,' and while I did not come here to get you to retract, I would like it as a favor if you would loan me enough white paper to set myself straight before my subscribers." "Well, why don't you go and tell them about It? It wouldn't take long," I said in a jocund way, slapping Lorenzo on the back. But he did not laugh. I then told him that we only had paper enough to last us till our next bill came, and so I could not possibly loan any, but that if he would write a caustic reply to my editorial I would print it for him. He caught me in his arms and then for a moment his head was pil lowed on my breast. Then he sat down and wrote the following card : Editor of the Boomerang: Will you allow me through your columns to state that in your issue of yesterday you did me a !great injustice by re ferring to me as a journalistic bacteria looking for some thing to infect; also, as a lop-eared germ of contagion, and warning people to vaccinate in order to prevent my spread? I denounce the whole article as a malicious falsehood, and state that if you will only give me a chance I will fight you on sight. All I aakisthat you will wait till I can overtake you, and I am able and willing to knock great chunks off the universe with you. I do not ask any favors of an editor who misleads his subscribers and intentionally misunderstand! his correspondents; a man who advises an anxious inquirer who wants to know "how to get a cheap baby buggy" to leave the child at a cheap hotel; a man who assumes to wear brains, but who really thinks with a fungus growth; a man the bleak and barren exterior of whose head to only equalled by its bald and echoing interior. LORENZO Dow PBASB. I looked it over, and as there didn't seem to be anything personal in it, I told him I would HOW TO TEACE. JOUENALISM. 113 print it for him with pleasure. He then asked that I would, as a further favor, refrain from putting any advertising marks on it and that I would make it follow pure reading matter, which I did. I leaded the card and printed it with a simple word of introduction, in which I said that I took pleasure in printing it, inasmuch as Mr. Pease could not get his paper out of the ex press office for a few days. It was a kindness tc him and did not hurt my paper in the end. There are many reasons why the establish ment of a department of journalism at Cornell will be a good move, and I believe that while it will not take the place of actual experience, it will serve to shorten the apprenticeship of a young newspaper man and the fatigue of start ing the amateur in journalism will be divided between the managing editor and the tutor. It will also give the aspiring sons of wealthy parents a chance to toy with journalism without interfering with those who are actually engaged tnit (Jard^g. I ALWAYS enjoy a vegetable garden - t and through the winter I look forward to the spring days when I will take my cob pipe and hoe and go joyously afield. I like to toy with the moist earth and the common squash bug of the work-a-day world. It is a pleasure also to irrigate the garden, watering the sauer kraut plant and the timid tomato vine as though they were children asking for a drink. I am never happier than when I am engaged in irrigating my tropical garden or climbing my neighbor with a hoe when he shuts off my water supply by sticking an old pair of pantaloons in tke canal that leads to my squash conservatory. One day a man shut off my irrigation that way and dammed the water up to such a degree that I shut off his air supply, and I was about to say dammed him up also. We had quite a scuffle. Up to that time we had never ex changed a harsh word. That morning I noticed that my early climbing horse-radish and my 4warf army worms were looking a little av JHZS GABDEN. UA revoir, and I wondered what was the mat ter. I had been absent several days and was grieved to notice that my garden had a kind of blase air, as though it needed rest and change of scene. The Poland China egg-plant looked up sadly at me and seemed to say : " Pardner, don't you think it's a long time between drinks ? " The watermelon seemed to have a dark brown taste in its mouth, and there was an air of gloom all over the garden. At that moment I discovered my next-door neighbor at the ditch on the corner. He was singing softly to himself : O, yea, I'll meet you ; I'll meet you when the sun goes down. He was also jamming an old pair of Bem- brandt pants into the canal, where they would shut off my supply. He stood with his back to wards me, and just as he said he would "meet me when the sun went down," I smote him across the back of the neck with my hoe handle, and before he could recover from the first dumb surprise and wonder, I pulled the dripping pan taloons out of the ditch and tied them in a true- lover's knot around his neck. He began to look black in the face, and his struggles soon ceased 116 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. altogether. At that moment his wife came out and shrieked two pure womanly shrieks, and hissed in my ear : " You have killed me husband I " I said, possibly I had. If so, would she please send in the bill and I would adjust it at an early day. I said this in a bantering tone of voice, and raising my hat to her in that polished way of mine, started to go, when something fell with a thud on the greensward I It was the author of these lines. I did not know till two days afterward that my neighbor's wife wore a moire antique rolling-pin under her apron that morning. I did not suspect it till it was too late. The affair was kind of hushed up on account of the respectability of the parties- By the time I had recovered the garden seemed to melt away into thin air. My neigh bor had it all his own way, and while his proud hollyhocks and Johnny-jump-ups reared their heads to drink the mountain water at the twilight hour, my little, low-necked, summer squashes curled up and died. Most every year yet I made a garden. I pay a man $3 to plow it. Then I pay $7.50 for garden seeds and in July I hire the same man at HIS GAEDEN. IT, $3 to summer-fallow the whole thing while I go and buy my vegetables of a Chinaman named Wun Lung. I've done this now for eight year&, and I owe my robust health and rich olive cone/ plexion to the fact that I've got a garden and do just as little in it as possible. Parties desiring a dozen or more of my Shang hai egg-plants to set under an ordinary domestic hen can procure the same by writing to me and enclosing lock of hair and $10. U/ritt no doubt > William, that I am happy, but I cannot say that I am. I will tell you my little reminiscence if you don't mind, and you can judge for yourself." These were the words of Big Steve, as we Bat together one evening, watching the dealer alide the cards out of his little tin photograph album, while the crowd bought chips of the banker and corded them up on the green table. "You look on me as a great mauto inaugurate a funeral, and wish that you had a miscellaneous cemetery yourself to look back on ; but greatness always has its drawbacks. We cannot be great unless we pay the price. What we call genius is after all only industry and perseverance. "When my father undertook to clean me out, in our own St. Lawrence County home, I filled his coat-tails full of bird-shot and fled. Father afterwards said that he could have overlooked it so far as the coat was concerned, but he didn't want It shot to pieces while he had it on. 158 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. "Then I went to Kansas City and shot a ad ored man. That was a good many years ago, and you oonld kill a colored man then as you can a Chinaman now, with impunity, or any other weapon you can get your hands onto. Still the colored man had friends and I had to go further "West. I went to Nevada then, and lived under a cloud and a nom de plume, as you fellers say. "I really didn't want to thin out the population of Nevada, but I had to protect myself. They ay that after a feller has killed his man, he has a thirst for blood and can't stop, but that ain't BO. You *justifiable-homicide' a man and get clear, and then you have to look out for friends of the late lamented. You see them everywhere. If your stomach gets out of order you see the air full of vengeance, and you drink too much and that don't help it. Then you kill a man on suspicion that he is hollering you up, and after that you shoot in an extemporaneous way, that makes life in your neighborhood a lit tle uncertain. "That's the way it was with me. I've got where I don't sleep good any more, and the fun of life has kiad of pinched out, as we say in the mines. It's a big thing to run a school-meeting or an election, but it hardly pays me for the free BIG STEVE. ISft ipeetaetuar show I see when I 'm trying to sleep. Tou know if you've ever killed a man" "No, I never killed one right out," I said apd ogetically. "I shot one once, but he gained eventy-five pounds in less than six months." "Well, if you ever had, you'd notice that h always says or does something that you can re member him by. He either says, *Oh, I am shot'I or *You've killed me'! or something like that, in a reproachful way, that you can wake up in the night and hear most any time. If you kill him dead, and he don't say a word, he will fall hard on the ground, with a groan that will never stop. I can shut my eyes and hear one now. After you've done it, you always wish they'd showed a little more fight. You could forgive 'em if they'd cuss you, and holler, and have some style about 'em, but they won't. They just reel, and fall, and groan. Do you know I can't eat a meal unless my back is agin' the wall. I asked Wild Bill once how he could stand it to turn his back on the crowd and eat a big dinner. He said he generally got drunk just before dinner, and that helped him out. "So you see, William, that if a man is a great scholar, he is generally dyspeptic ; if he's a big preacher, they tie a scandal to hia coat-tail, and i80 BILL NY&S SPARKS. 12 lie's an eminent murderer, he has Insomnia and loss of appetite. I almost wish sometimes that I had remained in obscurity. Its a big thing to be a public man, with your name in the papers and everybody afraid to collect a bill of you, for fear you '11 let the glad sunlight into their thorax; but when you can't eat nor sleep, and you're liable to wake up with your bosom full of buck shot, or your neck pulled out like a turkey-gob bler's, and your tongue hanging out of your mouth in a ludicrous manner, and your over shoes failing to touch the ground by about ten feet, you begin to look back on your childhood and wish you could again be put there, sleepy and sintatt, hungry and happy." of Ffcd $I?irt, of ty? Sioux JT HAD been a day of triumph at Erastina. Buffalo Bill, returning from Marlborougfa House, had amused the populace with the sports of an amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. A mighty multitude of people from Perth Amboy and New York had been present to watch the attack on the Dead wood coach and view with bated breath the conflict in the arena. The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the bleaching boards and the lights in the palace of the cow boy band were extinguished. The moon pierc ing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters about Constable Hook with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman sol dier, wearing an umbrella belonging to Inare Kiralfy, wabbled slowly homeward, th proud possessor of a iarge rectangular " jag." MS BILL NY&S SPARKS. No sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring wave as it told its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach, or the lower sob of some gentleman who had just sought to bed down a brand-new bucking bronco from Ogallalla and decided to escape violently through the roof of the tent ; then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the smoke-tan ned Cheyenne snore would steal in upon the silence and then die away like the sough of summer breeze. In the green-room of the am phitheatre a little band of warriors had assem bled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their classic pro files indicated that it had been a busy day with them. The night wynd blew chill and the war rior had added to his moss-agate ear-bobs a heavy coat of maroon-colored roof paint. There was an embarrassing silence of a little spell and then Eed Shirt, fighting chief of the Sioux Nation borrowed a chew of tobacco from Aurelius Poor Doe, stepped forth and thus ad dressed them : FELLOW-CITIZENS AND GENTLEMEN OF THE WILD WEST : Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for two long years has SPEECH OF RED 8BIBT. 161 met in the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Nebraska could fur nish, and yet has never lowered his arm. If there be one among you can say that ever at grub dance or scalp german or on th war-path my action did belie my tongue let bin* stand forth and say it and I will send him home with his daylights done up in the morning paper. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands let them come on and I will bore holes in the arena with them and utilize them in fixing up a sickening spectacle. And yet I was not al way thus, a hired butcher^ attacking a Deadwood coach, both afternoon and evening, the savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from Illinois. They dwelt there in the vine-clad hills and citron groves of the Sangamon at a time when the country was overrun with Indians. Instead of paying to see Indians, my ancestors would walk a longdis tance over a poor road in order to get a shot at a white man. In Dakota my early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which I babbled, and my boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We bathed in the oiled waters of the upper Missouri and ate the luscious prickly pear in the land of the Dakotahs, I did not then know what war was , but when Sitting Bull told me of Marathon and Leuctra and Bull Bun, and how at a fortified railroad pass Imre Kiralfy had withstood the whole Boman army, my cheek burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the reservation and go upon the war path. But my mother kissed my throbbing temples and bade me go soak my head and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the entire regular army and wife landed on our coasts. They tore down our tepee, stampeded our stock, stole our grease paints and played a mean trick on our dog. To-day in the arena I killed a man in the Black Hills coach, and when I undid his cinch, behold I he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on his face that I had noted when I met him on my trip abroad. He knew me, smiled faintly, made a few false motions and died. I begged that I might bear away the body to my tepee and express it to his country seat, near Limerick, and upon my bended knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged this pool favor, and a Roman praetor from St. 8PJSJSGH OF ZED 8HIST. Jft answered : " Let the carrion rot. T here are no noble men bnt Eomans and bananna men. Let the show go on. Give us our money's worth. Bring out the bobtail lion from Abyssinia and the bucking bronco from Dead Man's Ranch.'* And the assembled maids and matrons and th rabble shouted in derision and told me to brace up, and bade Johnnie git his gun, git his gun, git his gun, and other vile flings which I do not now recall. And so must you, fellow warriors, and so must I, die like dogs. Ye stand here like giants (K. Y. Giants) as ye are, but to-morrow the fangs of the infuriated buffalo may sink into your quivering flesh. To-night ye stand here In the full flush of health and conscious rectitude, but to-morrow some crank may shoot you from the Dead wood coach. Hark 1 Hear ye yon buffalo roaring in her den ? 'Tis three days since she tasted flesh, but to-morrow she will have warrior on toast, and don't you forget it. And she will fling your yertebne about her cage like the costly Etruscan pitcher of a League nine. If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me. We will beat down th guard, overpower the ticket-chopper and cut for 188 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. the tall timber. "We will go through Ellum Park, Port Bichmond, Tower Hill, West Brigh ton, Sailors' Snug Harbor and New Brighton like a colored revival through a watermelon patch, beat down the walls of the Circus Maxi- mus, tear the mosquito bars from the windows of Nero's palace, capture the Eoman ballet and light out for Europe. O comrades I warriors I ! gladiators 1 1 1 If we be men, let us die like men, beneath th blue sky, don't you know, and by the still waters, according to Gunter, in the presence of the nobility, rather than be stepped on by a spoiled bronco, surrounded by low tradesmen from New fork. Co, tJ?? poor $l?i can be nothing more pathetic than to watch the decay of a race, even though it be a scrub race. To watch the decay of the Indian race, has been with me, for many years ? a passion, and the mof e the Indian has decayed the more reckless I have been in studying his ways. The Indian race for over two hundred years has been a race against Time, and I need hardly add that Time is away ahead as I pen these lines. I dislike to speak of myself so much, but I have been identified with the Indians more or less for fifteen years. In 1876 1 was detailed by a San Francisco paper to attend the Custer mas sacre and write it up, but not knowing where the massacre was to be held I missed my way and wandered for days in an opposite direction. When I afterwards heard how successful the massacre was, ,and fully realized what I hud missed, my mortification knew no bounds, but I might have been even more so if I had been 166 successful. We never know what is best for . But the Indian is on the wane, whatever that is. He is disappearing from the face of the earth, and we find no better illustration of this sad fact than the gradual fading away of the Shinnecock Indians near the extremity of Long Island. In company with The World artist, who is paid a large salary to hold me up to ridicule in these columns, I went out the other day to Southampton and visited the surviving mem bers of this great tribe. Neither of us knows the meaning of fear. If we had been ordered by the United States Government to wipe out the whole Shinnecock tribe we would have taken a damp towel and done it. The Shinnecock tribe now consists of James Bunn and another man. But they are neither of them pure-blooded Shinnecock Indians. One- Legged Dave, an old whaler, who, as the gifted reader has no doubt already guessed, has but one leg, having lost the other in going over a reef many years ago, is a pure-blooded Indian* but not a pure-blooded Shinnecock. Most of these Indians are now mixed up with the negro race by marriage and are not considered warlike. IO. THE POOE SSINNSOOCK. 169 The Shinnecocks "have not t>een rasn enougn to break out since they bad the measles some years ago, but we will let that pass. There ure now about 150 Shinnecocks on th reservation, the most of whom are negroes. They live together in peace and hominy, trying most of the time to ascertain what the wild waves are saying in regard to flsh. There is an air of gentle, all-pervading peso* which hangs over the Shinnecock hills and that had its effect even upon my tumultuous and aggressive nature, wooing me to repose. I could rest there all this summer and then, after a good night's sleep, I could go right at it again in the morning. Kest at Southampton does not seem to fatigue one as it does elsewhere. The Shinnecock Indian has united his own repose of manner with the calm and haughtj distrust of industry peculiar to the negro, and the result is something that approaches nearer to the idea of eternal rest than anything I have ever seen. The air seems to be saturated with it and the moonlight is soaked full of calm. It would be a good place in which to wander through the gloaming and pour a gallon or so of low, passionate yearnimr into the ear of a loved one. 170 As a friend of mine, who is the teacher of modern languages and calisthenics in an educa tional institution, once said, "the air seems filled with that delicious dolce farina for "which those regions is noted for." I use his language because I do not know now how I could add to it in any way. We visited Mr. James Bunn at his home on Huckleberry avenue, saw the City Hall and Cus tom House and obtained a front view of it, secured a picture of the residence of the Street Commissioner and then I talked with Mr. Bunn while the artist got a marine view of his face. Mr. Bunn was for forty years a whaler, but had abandoned the habit now, as there is so little demand among the restaurants for whales, and also because there are fewer whales. I ascer tained from him that the whale at this season of the year does not readily rise to the fly, but bites the harpoon greedily during the middle of the day. Mr. Bunn also gave us a great deal of other Information, among other things informing us of the fact that the white men had been up to their old tricks and were trying to steal portions of the reservation that had not been nailed down. He did not say whether it was the same LO, THE POOR SHINNECOCK. 171 man who is trying to steal the old Southampton graveyard or not. James is about seventy-five years old and his father once lived in a wigwam on the Shimn- coek Hills. Mr. Bunn saya that the country has changed very much in the past 250 years and that I would hardly know the place if I could have seen it at first. During that time he says two other houses have been built and he has reshingled the L of his barn with hay. He told us the thrilling story of the Spanish Sylph and how she was wrecked many years ago on the coast near his house, and how the Span ish dollars burst out of her gaping side and fell with a low, mellow plunk into the raging main. Now and then the sea has given up one of these "sand-dollars" as the years went by, and not over two years ago one was found along the shore near by. What I blame the Shinnecock Indiana for is their fatal yearning to subsist solely on this precarious income. But with the decline of the whaling industry, due somewhat to the great popularity of natural and acquired gas as a lubricant, together with the cheap methods of picking up electricity and preserving it for illuminating purposes, and ftlao to the fact that whales are more skittish thftu m they used to be, the Shinnecock whaler Is lft high and dry. It is, indeed, a pathetic picture. Here om tfce stem and rock-bound coast, where their ances tors greeted Columbus and other excursionist* as they landed on the new dock and at once had their pictures taken in a group for the illustra tion on the greenbacks, now the surviving relic of a brave people, with bowed heads and frosting locks, are waiting a few days only for the long, dark night of merciful oblivion. So he walks in the night-time, all through the long fly time, he walks by the sorrowful sea, and he yearns to wake never, but lie there forever in the arms of the sheltering sea, to lie in the lap of the sea. At least that is my idea of the way the 8&in- necock feels about it. The Indian race, wherever we find it, gives us a wonderful illustration of the great, inherent power of rum as a human leveler. The Indian has, perhaps, greater powers of endurance than the white man, and enters into the great *n- equal fight with rum almost hilariously, but he loses his presence of mind and forgets to can a cab at the proper moment. This is a matter that has never been fully understood even by LO, THE POOS 8HINNECOQK. I7i ihe pale face, and of course the Indian is a per fect child in the great conflict with rum. The result ia that the Indian is passing away under our very eyes, and the time will soon come when the Indian agent will have to seek some other healthful, outdoor exercise. So the consumptive Shinnecock, the author of "Shinny on Your Own Ground and Other Games," is soon to live only in the flea-bitten records of a great nation. Once he wrote pieces for the boys to speak in school, and contributed largely to McGuffy's and Sander's periodicals, but now you never hear of an Indian who is a good extemporaneous public speaker, or who can write for sour apples. He no longer makes the statement that he is an aged hemlock, that his limbs are withered and his trunk attached by the constable. He has ceased to tell through the columns of the Fifth Header how swift he used to be as a war rior and that the war-path is now overgrown with grass. He very seldom writes anything for the papers except over the signature of Veritas, and the able young stenographer who used to report his speeches at the council fire seems to have moved away. Two hundred and fifty years ago the Shinne- 174 BILL NYE'S SPARKS. eeck Hills were covered by a dense forest, but in that brief period, as if by magic, two and one- half acres of that ground have been cleared, which is an average of an entire acre for every hundred years. When we stop to consider that very little of this work was done by the women and that the men have to attend to the cleaning of the whales in order to prepare them for the table, and also write their contributions for the school-books and sign treaties with the White Father at Washington, we are forced to admit that had the Indian's life been spared for a few thousand years more he would have been alive at the end of that time. So they wander on together, waiting for the final summons. Waiting for the pip or measles, and their cough is dry and hacking as they cough along together towards the large and wide here after. They have lived so near Manhattan, where refinement is so plenty, where the joy they jerk from barley every other day but Sunday gives the town a reddish color, that the Shinnecock is dying, dying with his cowhide boots on, dying with his hectic flush on, while the church bells chime in Brooklyn and New Yorkers go to Jersey, go to get their fire-water, go to get their LO, THE POOR SHINNECOCK. 175 red-eyed bug-juice, go to get their cooking whiskey. Far away at Minnehaha, in the land of the Dakota, where the cyclone feels BO kinky, rising on its active hind-feet, with its tail up o'er the dash-board, blowing babies through the grind stone without injuring the babies, where the cyclone and the whopper journey on in joy to gether there refinement and f rumenti, with the new and automatic maladies and choice diseases that belong to the Caucasian, gather in the festive red man, take him to the reservation, rob him while his little life lasts, rob him till he turns his toes up, rob him till he kicks the bucket. And the Shinnecock is fading, he who greeted Chris. Columbus when he landed, tired and sea sick, with a breath of peace and onions ; he who welcomed other strangers, with their notions of refinement and their knowledge of the Scriptures and their fondness for Gambrinus they have compassed his damnation and the Shinnecock la busted. Hi$ (jn?at nOAH Webster probably had the best com mand of language of any author ot our time. Those who have read his great work entitled Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, or How One Word Led to Another, will agree with me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express himself. He was a brainy man and a good speller. We were speaking of Mr. Webster on the way up here this afternoon, and a gentleman from Ashland told me of his death. Those of you who have read Mr. Webster's works will be pained to learn of this. One by one our eminent men are passing away. Mr. Webster has passed away, Napoleon Bonaparte is no more, and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away. This has been a severe winter on Sitting Bull, and I have to guard against the night air a good deal my- Mlf. It would ill become me at this late date to criticise Mr. Webster's work, a work that is now WEBSTER AZ J HIS GllEA T BOOK, 177 I may say in nearly every office, horne, school room and counting-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr. Webster lived he would have been equally fair In his criticism of my books. I hate to compare my books with Mr. "Web ster's, because it looks egotistical in me ; but although Noah's book is larger than mine and has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at the table, it does not hold the inter est of the reader all the way through. He has tried to introduce too many characters into his book at the expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour, perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your interest till midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer went down to 47 below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster didn't seem to care wheth er he married the girl or not. Therein consists the great difference between [Noah and myself. He don't keep up the Inter est. A friend of mine at Sing Sing who secured one of my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He said he seemed chained to the spot, and if you can't believe a 178 convict who is entirely out of politics, who in the name of George Washington can you believe ? Mr. Webster was certainly a most brilliant writer, but a little inclined, perhaps, to be wrong. I have discovered in some of his later books 118,000 words no two of which are alike. This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's won derful word-painting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome. Noah wasn't much of a thriller. I am free to confess that when I read this book, of which I had heard so much, I was bitterly disappointed. It is a larger book than mine and costs more, and has more pictures in it than mine, but is it a work that will make a man lead a different life ? What does he say of the tariff ? What does he say of the roller skat ing rink ? He is silent. He is full of cold, hard words and dry definitions, but what does he say of the Mormons and female suffrage, and how to cure the pip ? Nothing. He evades every thing, just as a man does when he writes a let ter accepting the nomination for President. As I said before, however, it is a good book to pickup for a few moments or to read on the W2&&STER AND HIS GREAT OOK. 179 train. I could never think of taking a long r. r. journey without Mr. Webster's tale in my pock et. I would just as quick think of traveling without my bottle of cough medicine as to start out without Mr. "Webster's book. Mr. Webster's Speller was a work of less pre tensions, perhaps, but it had an immense sale. Eight years ago 40,000,000 of these books had been sold, afad yet it had the same grave defect. It was disconnected, cold, prosy and dull. I read it for years, and at last became a very close student of Mr. Webster's style. Still I never found but one thing in the book for which there was such a stampede, which was even ordinarily in teresting, and that was a perfect gem. It was so thrilling In detail and so different from Mr. Webster's general style that I have often won dered who he got to write it for him. Perhaps it was the author of the BREAD WINKERS. It related to the discovery of a boy in the crotch of an old apple tree by an elderly gentleman, and the feeling of bitterness and animosity that sprang up between the two, and how the old man told the boy at first that he had better come down out of that tree, because he was afraid the limb would break with him and let him fall. Then, as the boy still remained, he 180 told him that those were not eating-apples, that they were Just common cooking-apples, and that there were worms in them. But the boy said he didn't mind a little thing like that. So then the old gentleman got irritated and called the dog and threw turf at the boy, and at last saluted him with pieces of turf and decayed cabbages ; and after he had gone away the old man pried the bulldog's jaws open and found a mouthful of pantaloons and a freckle. I do not tell this, of course, in Mr. Webster's language but I give the main points as they recur now to my mind. Though I have been a close student of Mr. Webster for years and examined his style closely, I am free to say that his ideas about writing a book are not the same as mine. Of course it is a great temptation for a young au thor to write a book that will have a large sale, but that should not be all. We should hare a higher object than that, and strive to interesl those who read our books. It should not be jerky and scattering in its statements. I do not wish to do an injustice to a great man who I learn is now no more, a man who has done so much for the world and who could spell the longest word without hesitation, but I WEBSTER AND HIS GREAT BOOK. 181 speak of these things just as I would expect others to criticise my work. If one aspire to monkey with the literati of our day we must expect to be criticised. I have been criticised myself. When I was in public life as a justice of the peace in the Kocky Mountains a man came in one day and criticised me so that I did not get over it for two weeks. I might add, though I dislike to speak of it now, that Mr. Webster was at one time a mem ber of the Legislature of Massachusetts. I be lieve that was the only time he ever stepped aside from the straight and narrow way. A good many people do not know this, but it is true. It only shows how a good man may at one time in his life go wrong. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 1972 Form L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 Hf 000118676