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

It is no more than right that Sterling P. Rounds should know this. How it will gall his proud heart to know how his beautiful books, and his chatty and spicy Congressional Record are treated by a jeering, heartless throng! Do you suppose that I would perspire over doubtful copy night after night, and then tread a job printing press all the next day printing books at which the bloodless, soulless public sneered, and the broad-browed talent of a cruel generation spit upon? Not exactly.

I have a moderate amount of patience and self-control, but I am free to say right here before the world, that if I had been in Mr. Rounds' place, and had at great cost erected a scientific work upon "The Rise and Fall of Botts in America," and a flippant nation of scoffers had utilized that volume to press autumn leaves and scraggly ferns in, I would rise in my proud might and mash the forms with a mallet, I would jerk the lever of the Washington press into the middle of the effulgent hence. I would kick over my case, wipe the roller on the frescoed walls, and feed my statistics, to the hungry flames.

No publisher has ever been treated more shabbily; no compositor has, in the history of literature, been more rudely disregarded and derided.

Think of this, dear reader, when you look carelessly over the brief but wonderful career of the hop-louse, or with apparent ennui dawdle through the treatise on colic among silk-worms, and facial neuralgia among fowls.

This will not only please Mr. Rounds, the young and struggling compositor, but it will gratify and encourage all the friends of American progress and the lovers of learning throughout our whole land.

A REPRODUCTIVE COMET

AN exchange remarks: "The present comet in the eastern sky, which can be distinctly seen by everyone at early morning, is certainly the most remarkable one of the modern comets. Professor Lewis Swift, director of the Warner observatory, Rochester, New York, states that the comet grazed the sun so closely as to cause great disturbance, so much so, that it has divided into no less than eight separate parts, all of which can be distinctly seen by a good telescope. There is only one other instance on record, where a comet has divided, that one being Biella's comet of 1846, which separated into two parts. Applications have been made to Mr. H. H. Warner, by parties who have noticed these cometary offshoots, claiming the $200 prize for each one of them. Whether the great comet will continue to produce a brood of smaller comets remains to be seen."

It is certainly to be hoped that it will not. If the comet is going to multiply and replenish the earth, the average inhabitant had better proceed in the direction of the tall timber.

It excites and rattles us a good deal now to look out for what comets we have on hand; but that is mild, compared with what we will experience if the heavens are to be filled every spring with new laid comets, and comets that haven't got their eyes open yet. Our astronomers are able to figure on the old parent comets, and they know when to look for them, too; but if twins are to burst upon our vision occasionally, and little bob-tail orphan comets are to float around through space, we will have to kind of get up and seek out another solar system, where we will be safe from this comet foundling asylum.

Instead of the calm sky of night, flooded with the glorious effulgence of the silvery moon, surrounded by the twinkling stars, the coming sky will be one grand Fourth of July exhibit of fireworks, with a thousand little disobedient comets coming from the four corners of heaven in search of the milky way.

Possibly science may be wrong. We have known science to make bad little breaks of that kind, and when it advertised a particular show to come off, it was delayed by a wreck on the main track, or something of that kind, so that people were disappointed. Let us hope that this is the case now, and that the comets now loafing around through space with their coat tails on fire will not become parents. It would be scandalous.

A LITTLE VAGUE

A TALL, pleasant-looking gentleman, with quick, restless eyes, and the air of a man who had been in a newspaper office before, dropped into The Boomerang science department yesterday, and asked the pale, scholarly blossom, who sat writing an epic on the alarming prevalence of pip and its future as a national evil, if he could be permitted to read the Deseret News.

The scientist said certainly, and after a long and weary tussle got the Mormon placque out of the ruins.

"I used to be foreman on the Deseret News," said the gentleman with the penetrating eye; "I worked on the News two years, and had a case on the Tribune. I've been foreman of thirty-seven papers during my life, but my most unfortunate experience was on the Deseret News. I wanted the paper just now to see if they were still running an ad. that I had some trouble with when I was there.

"It was a contract we had with Dr. Balshazzer to advertise his Blue Eyed Forget-me Not Perfume, Dr. Balshazzer's Red Tar Worm Buster, and Dr. Balshazzer's Baled Brain Food and Tolurockandryeandcodliveroil. The Blue Eyed Forget-me Not Perfume was to go solid in long primer, following pure reading matter eod in daily and eowtf weekly. The Red Tar Worm Buster was to go in nonpareil leaded, 192I.T.thFth98weow3mo, and repeat; and the Baled Brain Food and Tolurock-andryecodliveroil was a six-inch electrotype to go in on third page, following pure original humorous matter, with six full head lines d&weod oct9tf, set in reading type similar to copy; these to be inserted between pure religious news, with no other advertising within four miles of the electro, or the reading notices.

"At the same time we were running old Monkeywrench's Kidney Scraper on the same kind of a contract. The business manager did not remember this when we took the contract, so that as soon as we began to run the two there was a collision between the Tolurockandryeandcodliver-oil and the Kidney Scraper right off. I spoke to the business manager about it, and he was puzzled. He didn't exactly know what it was best to do under the circumstances, and he hated to lose old Balshazzer's whole trade, for he wouldn't run any of his ads unless he would take them all according to his contract.

"We tried to get him to let us run the BlueEyed Forget-me Not Perfume, lapr9d&wly deod&wly 10:2t-eowtf; the Bed Tar Worm Buster, dol3 4t da22tf aprlo-ly dol3tf, and the Brain Food and Tolurockandryecodliveroil mchl8*ly jun4dtf&dangl8@gft>*&Sylds30tf&rsvpeod$, but he wouldn't do it.

"I displayed his ad. top of column adjoining humorous column with three line readers and astonishers without advertising marks or signs according to copy and instructions to foreman, all omissions or errors to be subject to fine and imprisonment. They were to go pdq $eoy*Octp&s* and they were to be double leaded and headed with italic caps. Still I said it had been some time since I saw the contract and I had been suffering with brain fever six months in jail and possibly my memory might be defective. I would go over it again and see if I was right.

"The electrophones were to be blown in the bottle and the readers were to be set in lower case slugs with guarantee of good faith and Rough on Rats would not die in the house. Use Pinkham's Sozodont for itching, freckles, bunions and croup. It saved my life. My good woman, why are you bilious with em quads in solid minion. Eureka Jumbo Baking Powder will not crack or fade in any climate sent on three months trial in leaded brevier quoins and all wool column rules warranted to cure rheumatism and army worms or money refunded. To be adjoining selected miscellany or fancy brass dashes marked eodsyld&w*!*? – " At this moment a dark browed man came in and told us that the young man was his charge and on his way to Mount Pleasant asylum for the insane and that we would have to excuse the intrusion. After subscribing for the paper and asking us if we had heard from Ohio, he went.

The scientist said afterward that he found it difficult to follow the young man in some of his statements and that he was just going to ask him to go over that again and say it slower, when the Mount Pleasant man came in and interrupted the flow of conversation.

SAD DESTRUCTION

THERE came very near being a holocaust in this office on Monday. An absent-minded candidate for the legislature lit his cigar and gently threw the match in the waste basket. Shortly after that we felt a grateful warmth stealing up our back and melting the rubber in our suspenders. The fire was promptly put under control by our editorial fire department, but the basket is no longer fit to hold a large word.

THE IMMEDIATE REVOLTER

WYOMING has recently been a great sufferer, mainly through the carrying of revolvers in the caboose of the overalls. There is no more need of carrying a revolver in Wyoming than there is of carrying an upright piano in the coat tail pocket. Those who carry revolvers generally die by the revolver, and he who agitates the six-shooter, by the six-shooter shall his blood be shed. When a man carries a gun he does so because he has said or done something for which he expects to be attacked, so it is safe to say that when a man goes about our peaceful streets, loaded, he has been doing some, little trick or other, and has in advance prepared himself for a Smith-&-Wesson matinee. The other class of men who suffer from the revolver comprises the white-livered and effeminate parties who ought to be arrested for wearing men's clothes, and who never shoot anybody except by accident. Fortunately they sometimes shoot themselves, and then the fool-killer puts his coat on and rests half an hour. We have been writing these things and obituaries alternately for several years, and yet there is no falling off in the mortality. For every man who is righteously slain, there are about a million law-abiding men, women and children murdered. Eternity's parquette is filled with people who got there by the self-cocking revolver route.

A man works twenty years to become known as a scholar, a newspaper man and a gentleman, while the illiterate murderer springs into immediate notoriety in a day, and the widow of his victim cannot even get her life insurance. These things are what make people misanthropic and tenacious of their belief in a hell.

If revolvers could not be sold for less than $500 a piece, with a guarantee on the part of the vendee, signed by good sureties, that he would support the widows and orphans, you would see more longevity lying around loose, and western cemeteries would cease to roll up such mighty majorities.

THE SECRET OF HEALTH

HEALTH journals are now asserting, that to maintain a sound constitution you should lie only on the right side. The health journals may mean well enough; but what are you going to do if you are editing a Democratic paper?

HOUSEHOLD RECIPES

TO remove oils, varnishes, resins, tar, oyster soup, currant jelly, and other selections from the bill of fare, use benzine, soap and chloroform cautiously with whitewash brush and garden hose. Then hang on wood pile to remove the pungent effluvia of the benzine.

To clean ceilings that have been smoked by kerosene lamps, or the fragrance from fried salt pork, remove the ceiling, wash thoroughly with borax, turpentine and rain water, then hang on the clothes line to dry. Afterward pulverize and spread over the pie plant bed for spring wear.

To remove starch and roughness from flatirons, hold the iron on a large grindstone for twenty minutes or so, then wipe off carefully with a rag. To make this effective, the grindstone should be in motion while the iron is applied. Should the iron still stick to the goods when in use, spit on it.

To soften water for household purposes, put in an ounce of quicklime in a certain quantity of water. If it is not sufficient, use less water or more quicklime. Should the immediate lime continue to remain deliberate, lay the water down on a stone and pound it with a base ball club.

To give relief to a burn, apply the white of an egg. The yolk of the egg may be eaten or placed on the shirt bosom, according to the taste of the person. If the burn should occur on a lady, she may omit the last instruction.

To wash black silk stockings, prepare a tub of lather, composed of tepid rain water and white soap, with a little ammonia. Then stand in the tub till dinner is ready. Roll in a cloth to dry. Do not wring, but press the water out. This will necessitate the removal of the stockings.

If your hands are badly chapped, wet them in warm water, rub them all over with Indian meal, then put on a coat of glycerine and keep them in your pockets for ten days. If you have no pockets convenient, insert them in the pocket of a friend.

An excellent liniment for toothache or neuralgia, is made of sassafras, oil of organum and a half ounce of tincture of capsicum, with half a pint of alcohol. Soak nine yards of red flannel in this mixture, wrap it around the head and then insert the head in a haystack till death comes to your relief.

To remove scars or scratches from the limbs of a piano, bathe the limb in a solution of tepid water and tincture of sweet oil. Then apply a strip of court plaster, and put the piano out on the lawn for the children to play horse with.

Woolen goods may be nicely washed if you put half an ox gall into two gallons of tepid water. It might be well to put the goods in the water also. If the mixture is not strong enough, put in another ox gall. Should this fail to do the work, put in the entire ox, reserving the tail for soup. The ox gall is comparatively useless for soup, and should not be preserved as an article of diet.

WHAT IS LITERATURE?

A SQUASH-NOSED scientist from away up the creek, asks, "What is literature!" Cast your eye over these logic-imbued columns, you sun-dried savant from the remote precincts. Drink at the never-failing Boomerang springs of forgotten lore, you dropsical wart of a false and erroneous civilization. Read our "Address to the Duke of Stinking Water," or the "Ode to the Busted Snoot of a Shattered Venus DeMilo," if you want to fill up your thirsty soul with high-priced literature. Don't go around hungering for literary pie while your eyes are closed and your capacious ears are filled with bales of hay.

THE PREVIOUS HOTEL

DOWN at Nathrop, Colorado, there is a large, new, and fine hotel, where no guest ever ate or slept. It stands there near the South Park track like the ghost of some nice, clean country inn. The reader will naturally ask if the house is haunted, that no one stops at the very attractive hotel in a country where good hotels are rare. No, it is not that. It in not haunted so much as it would like to be. Though it is a fine hotel, there is no town nearer it than Buena Vista, and no one is going to do business at Buena Yista and go up to Nathrop on a hand-car for his meals.

It is a case where a smart aleck of a man built a hotel, and asked his fellow citizens to come and form a town around him and make him rich. Mr. Nathrop was rather an impulsive man, and one day he said something that reflected on another impulsive man, and when people came and looked for Nathrop, they found that his body was tangled up in the sage brush, and his soul was marching on.

The hotel was just completed, and the ladders, and the handsome lime barrels, and hods, and old nail kegs, and fragments of laths, and pieces of bricks, and scaffolds, and all those things that go to make life desirable, are still there adorning the hotel and the front yard; but there is no handsome man with a waxed mustache inside at the desk, shaking his head sadly when he is asked for a room, and looking at you with that high-born pity and contempt for your pleading, that the hotel clerk – heir apparent to the universe – always keeps for those who go to him with humility.

There is no Senegambian, with a whisk broom, waiting to brush your clothes off your back, and leave you arrayed in a birth-mark and the earache, at twenty-five cents per brush. There is no young, fair masher, strutting up and down the piazza, trying to look brainy and capable of a thought. It is only a hollow mockery, for the chamber-maid with the large slop-pail does not come at daylight to pound on your door, and try to get in and fix up your room, and wake you up, and frighten you to death with her shocking chaos of wart-environed and freckle-frescoed beauty.

There the new hotel will, no doubt, stand for ages, while a little way off, in his quiet grave, the proprietor, laid to rest in an old linen handkerchief, is sleeping away the years till he shall be awakened by the last grand reveille. There's no use talking, it's tough.

ANECDOTE OF SPOTTED TAIL

THE popularity of the above-named chieftain dates from a very trifling little incident, as did that of many other men who are now great.