Baled Hay. A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's «Leaves o' Grass»

IS DUELING MURDER?

SOMEBODY wants to know whether dueling is murder, and we reply in clarion tones that it depends largely on how fatal it is. Dueling with monogram note paper, at a distance of 1,200 yards, is not murder.

HEAP GONE

ANOTHER land-mark of Laramie has gone. Another wreck has been strewn upon the sands of time. Another gay bark has gone to pieces upon the cruel rocks, and above the broken spars and jib-boom, and foretop gallant royal mainbrace, and spanker-boom euchre deck, the cold, damp tide is moaning.

We refer to L. W. Shroeder, who recently left this place incog., also in debt, largely, to various people of this gay and festive metropolis.

Laramie has been the home, at various times, of some of the most classical dead-beats of modern times; but Shroeder was the noblest, the most grand and colossal of dead-beats that has ever visited our shores. Born with unusual abilities in this direction, he early learned how to enlarge and improve upon the talents thus bestowed upon him, and here in Laramie, he soon won a place at the front as a man who purchased everything and paid for nothing. He had a way of approaching the grocer and the merchant that was well calculated to deceive, and he did, in several instances, make representations, which we now learn, were false.

He was, by profession, a carpenter and joiner, having learned the art while cutting cordwood on the Missouri bottoms, near Omaha, for the Collins Brothers. Here he rapidly won his way to the front rank, by erecting some of the most commanding architectural ruins of which modern wood assassination can boast. He would take a hatchet and a buck-saw and carve out his fortune anywhere in the world, and it wouldn't cost him a cent. He filled this whole trans-Missouri country with his fame, and his promissory notes, and then skinned out and left us here to mourn.

Good-bye, Shroeder. Wherever you go, we will remember you and hope that you may succeed in piling up a monument of indebtedness as you did here. You were industrious and untiring in your efforts to become a great financial wreck, and success has crowned your efforts. We will not grudge you the glory that coagulates about your massive brow.

THE EDITORIAL LAMP

THERE is something unique about an editor's lamp that, enables most anyone to select it from a large number of other lamps. It is sui generis and extremely original. The large metropolitan papers use gas in the editorial rooms, and make up for the loss of the kerosene lamp by furnishing their offices with some other article of furniture that is equally attractive.

The Boomerang lamp, especially during the election, has had its intensity wonderfully softened and toned down through various causes. You can take most any other lamp and trim the wick so that it will burn squarely and not smoke; but the editorial lamp is peculiar in this respect. The wick gets so it will burn straight when you find that it does not burn the oil. Then you get it filled and put in a new wick. Experimenting with this you get your fingers perfumed with coal oil, and spill some in your lap. Then you turn it up so you can see, and as you get a flow of thought you look up to find that you have smutted up your chimney, and you murmur something that you are glad no one is near to hear. When our life-record is made up and handed down to posterity, if a generous people will kindly overlook the remarks we have made over our lamp, and also the little extemporaneous statements made at picnics, we will do as much for the public and make this thing as near even as possible.

DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY

A DEAD fisherman was taken to the San Francisco morgue the other day, with nothing by which to identify him but his fish fine. There may be features of difference between fish lines, but as a rule there is a long, tame sweep of monotony about them which confuses the authorities in tracing a man's antecedents.

THE MAROON SAUSAGE

THE maroon sausage will be in favor this winter, as was the case last season in our best circles. It will be caught up at the end and tied in a plain knot with strings of the same.

TESTIMONIALS OF REGARD

FRIDAY was a large day in the office of this paper. A delegation, consisting of Ed. Walsh and J. J. Clarke, train dispatchers of this division of the Union Pacific road, waited on the editor hereof with two tokens of their esteem. One, consisting of a bird that had been taxidermed at Wyoming station by the agent, Mr. Gulliher, the great corn-canner of the west, aided by another man who has, up to this date, evaded the authorities. As soon as he is captured, his name will be given to the public. The bird is mainly constructed on the duck plan, with web feet and spike tail. The material gave out, however, and the artist was obliged to complete the bird by putting an eagle's head on him. This gives the winged king of birds a low, squatty and plebian cast of countenance, and bothers the naturalist in determining its class and in diagnosing the case. With the piercing, keen eye of the eagle, and the huge Roman nose peculiar to that bird, coupled with the pose of the duck, we have a magnificent combination in the way of an ornithological specimen. Science would be tickled to death to wrestle with this feathered anomaly.

The eagle looks as though he would like to soar first-rate if it were not for circumstances over which he has no control, while the other portions of his person would suggest that he would be glad to paddle around an hour or two in the yielding-mud. We have placed this singular circumstance where he can look down upon us in a reproachful way, while we write abstruse articles upon the contiguity of the hence.

The same committee also presented a bottle of what purported to be ginger ale. It was wrapped up in a newspaper, and the cork was held in place by a piece of copper wire. As we do not drink anything whatever now, we presented it to the composing room, and told the boys to sail in and have a grand debauch.

Generosity is always rewarded, sooner or later. The office boy took it into the composing room and partially opened it. Then it opened itself, with a loud report that shook the dome of The Boomerang office, and pied a long article on yellow fever in Texas. Almost immediately after it opened itself, it escaped into space. At least it filled the space box of one of the cases full.

There was only about a spoonful left in the bottle, and no one felt as though he wanted to rob the rest, so it stands there yet. If Mr. Gulliher could put up his goods in such shape as to avoid this high degree of effervescence, he would succeed; but in canning corn and bottling beer, he has so far put too much vigor into the goods, and when you open them, they escape almost immediately.

While we are grateful for the kind and thoughtful spirit shown, we regret that we were unable to test the merits of the beverage without collecting it from the sky, where it now is.

It looks to us as though some day Mr. Gulliher, while engaged in canning and bottling some of his gaseous goods, would be lifted over into the middle of the holidays, and we warn him against being too reckless, or he will certainly meander through the atmosphere sometime, and the place that knew him once will know him no more forever.

About two o'clock the following special was received:

[Special to the Boomerang.]

"[D. H. acct. charity.]

"Wyoming, October 27.

"Dear Bill Nye:

"We made the run from Laramie to Wyoming in one hour. Gulliher says, do not open that bottle; it might go off. He sent you the wrong bottle by mistake. It is a preparation for annihilating tramps, and produces instant dissolution. We, after careful inquiry and rigid investigation, find that the bird is filled with dynamite, nitroglycerine, etc. – in fact is an 'infernal machine,' and is set to go off at 3:30 this P.M."

THE CHINESE COMPOSITOR

THE Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do, but must walk from one case to another constantly, as the characters needed cover such a large number, that they cannot be put into anything like the space used in the English newspaper office. In setting up an ordinary piece of manuscript, the Chinese printer will waltz up and down the room for a few moments, and then go down stairs for a line of lower case. Then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story after some caps, and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of astonishers.

The successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very intelligent, but he must be a good pedestrian. He may work and walk around over the building all day to set up a stick full, and then half the people in this county couldn't read it, after all.

"Clarke, Potter and Walsh."

SNOWED UNDER

W E have met the enemy, and we are his'n.

We have made our remarks, and we are now ready to listen to the gentleman from New York. We could have dug out, perhaps, and explained about New York, but when almost every state in the Union rose up and made certain statements yesterday, we found that the job of explaining this matter thoroughly, would be wearisome and require a great deal of time.

We do not blame the Democracy for this. We are a little surprised, however, and grieved. It will interfere with our wardrobe this winter. With an overcoat on Wyoming, a plug hat on Iowa, a pair of pantaloons on Pennsylvania, and boots on the general result, it looks now as though we would probably go through the winter wrapped in a bed-quilt, and profound meditation.

We intended to publish an extra this morning, but the news was of such a character, that we thought we would get along without it. What was the use of publishing an extra with a Republican majority only in Red Buttes.

The cause of this great Democratic freshet in New York yesterday – but why go into details, we all have an idea why it was so. The number of votes would seem to indicate that there was a tendency toward Democracy throughout the State.

Now, in Pennsylvania, if you will look over the returns carefully – but why should we take up your valuable time offering an explanation of a political matter of the past.

Under the circumstances some would go and yield to the soothing influences of the maddening bowl, but we do not advise that. It would only furnish temporary relief, and the recoil would be unpleasant.

We resume our arduous duties with a feeling of extreme ennui, and with that sense of surprise and astonishment that a man does who has had a large brick block fall on him when he was not expecting it. Although we feel a little lonely to-day – having met but a few Republicans on the street, who were obliged to come out and do their marketing – we still hope for the future.

The grand old Republican party —

But that's what we said last week. It sounds hollow now and meaningless, somehow, because our voice is a little hoarse, and we are snowed under so deep that it is difficult for us to enunciate.

Now about those bets. If the parties to whom we owe bets – and we owe most everybody – will just agree to take the stakes, and not go into details; not stop to ask us about the state of our mind, and talk about how it was done, we don't care. We don't wish to have this thing explained at all. We are not of an inquiring turn of mind. Just plain facts are good enough for us, without any harrowing details. In the meantime we are going to work to earn some more money to bet on the next election. Judge Folger, and others, come over and see us when you have time, and we will talk this matter over. Mr. B. Butler, we wish we had your longevity. With a robust constitution, we find that most any man can wear out cruel fate and get there at last. We do not feel so angry as we do grieved and surprised. We are pained to see the American people thus betray our confidence, and throw a large wardrobe into the hands of the relentless foe.

ROUGH ON OSCAR

SOMEBODY shook a log-cabin bed-quilt at Oscar Wilde, when he was in this country, and it knocked him so crazy for two days, that a man had to lead him around town by a bed-cord to prevent him from butting his head against a lump of oat-meal mush, and scattering his brains all over the Union.

THE POSTAL CARD

NO one denies that the postal card is a great thing, and yet it makes most people mad to get one This is because we naturally feel sensitive about having our correspondence open to the eye of the postmaster and postal clerk. Yet they do not read them. Postal employés hate a postal card as cordially as anyone else. If they were banished and had nothing to read but a package of postal cards, or a foreign book of statistics, they would read the statistics. This wild hunger for postal cards on the part of postmasters is all a myth. When the writer don't care who sees his message, that knocks the curiosity out of those who handle those messages. A man who would read a postal card without being compelled to by some stringent statute, must be a little deranged. When you receive one, you say, "Here's a message of so little importance that the writer didn't care who saw it. I don't care much for it, myself." Then you look it over and lay it away and forget it. Do you think that the postmaster is going to wear out his young life in devouring literature that the sendee don't feel proud of when he receives it? Hay, nay.

During our official experience we have been placed where we could have read postal cards time and again, and no one but the All-seeing Eye would have detected it; but we have controlled ourself and closed our eyes to the written message, refusing to take advantage of the confidence reposed in us by our government, and those who thus trusted us with their secrets. All over our great land every moment of the day or night these little cards are being silently scattered, breathing loving words inscribed with a hard lead pencil, and shedding information upon sundered hearts, and they are as safe as though they had never been breathed.