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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MUSE

CRITICISM ON THE WORKS OF THE SWEET SINGER OF MICHIGAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was a little infant,
And I lay in mother's arms,
Then I felt the gentle pressure
Of a loving mother's arms.

"Go to sleep my little baby,
Go to sleep," mamma would say;
"O, will not my little baby
Go to sleep for ma to-day?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which I have added in my poor weak way —

She could not her sorrows bear,
For she was a dumpling rare;
She has clum the golden stair,
Sweet Carrie Monroe.

'Twas indeed a day of gloom
When we gathered in her room,
While she cantered up the flume,
Sweet Carrie Monroe.

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