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

BANKRUPT SALE OF A CIRCUS

As I write these lines my heart is filled with bitterness and woe. There is a feeling of deep disappointment this morning that has cast my soul down into the very depths of sadness. Some years ago the legislature of Wyoming conceived the stupendous idea that the circus instead of being man's best friend and assistant in his onward march through life, was after all a snare and a delusion.

This august body then passed a law that fixed the licenses of circuses showing in Wyoming Territory at $250, which was of course an embargo on the show business that, as I might say, laid it out colder than a wedge so far as Wyoming Territory was concerned.

The history of that law is a history of repeated injury and usurpation. Our people were bowed down to the earth with the iron heel of an unjust legislature and forced to drag out the weary years without the pleasures which come to other States and other Territories.

In the midst of this overhanging gloom, there were two men who were not afraid of the all powerful legislature, but boldly lifted up their voices and denounced with clarion tone and dauntless eye the great wrong that had been done to our people.

One of these men was a tall, fine-looking man, with piercing eye and noble mein. He stood out at the front in this unequal war and with his silvery hair streaming in the mountain zephyrs, he told the legislature that a justly indignant people would claim at the hands of her law-makers a full and ample retribution for the tyrannical act.

Judge Blair, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, whether at the social gathering or the quarterly meeting, never lost an opportunity to condemn the unrighteous act or to labor for its abolishment. He fearlessly adjourned court time after time in order that the jury might go to Denver or Salt Lake to attend the circus, and embodied in one of his opinions on the bench the everlasting truth that "the usurpation of the people's prerogatives by the lawmakers of any State or Territory, in so far as to deprive them of a divine right inherent in their very natures, and compelling them to undergo a slavish isolation from the Mammoth Aggregation of Living Wonder? and Colossal Galaxy of Arenic Talent, was unjust in its conception and criminal in its enforcement." See Boggs vs. Boggs, 981. The other dauntless antagonist of the tyrannical law was a young man with pale seldom hair, and a broad open brow that bulged out into space like a sore thumb. He was slender in form like a parallel of longitude, with a nose on him that looked like a thing of life. This young man was myself.

Together we talked in season and out of season, laboring with the law-makers with an energy worthy of a better cause.

We met with scorn and rebuffs on every hand, and the cold, hard world laughed at us, and unfeelingly jeered at our ceaseless attempts. But we labored on till last winter, the welcome telegram was flashed over the wires that the despotic measure was no more.

Then there was a general joy all over the Territory. Judge Blair sang in that impassioned way of his, which makes a confirmed invalid reconciled to death, and I danced.

When I dance there is a wild originality about the gyrations that startles those who are timid, and causes the average, unprotected ballroom-belle to climb up on the platform with the orchestra, where she will be safe.

Bye-and-bye the young man with the step-ladder and the large oil paintings, and the long-handled paste brush came to town, and put some magnificent decalcomania pictures on the bill-boards and fences; and Judge Blair and I patted each other on the back; and laughed seven or eight silvery laughs.

But in the midst of our unfettered glee a telegram came from Denver that the circus that had billed our town had been attached by the sheriffs. It seems that the elephant had broken into a warehouse in Denver and had eaten 160 bales of hay, worth $100 each in the Leadville market. The owner of the hay then attached the show in order to secure pay for the hay.

This necessitated a long delay and finally a sale of the circus. Everything went, the big elephant and the baby elephant, the band chariot with a cross-eyed hyena painted on it, the steam calliope that couldn't play anything but "Silver Threads Among the Gold," the sacred jackass from North Park, the red-nosed babboon from New Jersey, the sore-eyed prairie dog from Jack Creek, the sway-backed grizzly bear from York State, and the second-hand clown from Dubuque, all had to go.

Then they opened a package of petrified jokes and antique conundrums that had been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii. It seemed almost like sacrilege, but the ruthless auctioneer tore these prehistoric jokes from the sarcophagus and knocked them down to the gaping throng for whatever they would bring.

The show was valued at $2,000,000 on the large illustrated catalogues and bright-hued posters, but after the costs of attachment and sale had been paid there was only $231 left.

Oh! what a sacrifice. How little there is in this brief transitory life of ours that is abiding. How few of our bright hopes are ever realized. How many glad promises are held out to us for the roseate future that never reach fruition.

GREELEY VERSUS VALLEY TAN

I stopped over one day at Greeley on my return. Greeley is the town after which Horace Greeley was named. It is enclosed by a fence and embraces a large tract of very fine agricultural land.

The editor of the Tribune had just received a brand new power press. I asked him to come out and take something. He did not seem to grasp my meaning exactly.

Afterward I wandered about the town thinking how much dryer the air is in Greeley than in Denver. The throat rapidly becomes parched, and yet the inducements for the visitor to step in at various places and chew a clove or two are very rare indeed. I thought what a dull, melancholy day the Fourth of July must be in Greeley, and how tame and dull life must be to those who experience a uniform size of head from year to year. The blessed novelty of rising in the morning with a dark brown taste in the mouth and the cheerful feeling that your head is so large that you can't possibly get it out through your bed-room door, are sensations that do not enter here.

All the water not used at Greeley for irrigating purposes is worked up into a light, nutritious drink for the people.

THE ETERNAL FITNESS OF THINGS

An exchange comes out with an article giving the former residence and occupation of those who are immediately connected with the Indian management. It will be seen that they are, almost without an exception, from the Atlantic coast, where they have had about the same opportunity to become acquainted with the duties pertaining to their appointment as Lucifer has had for the past two thousand years to form a warm personal acquaintance with the prophet Isaiah.

With all due respect to the worthy descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, and not wishing to cast a slur upon the ability or the integrity of the dwellers along the rock-bound coast of New England, I will say in the mildest manner possible that these men are no more fit to manage hostile Indians than Perdition is naturally fitted for a powder house.

A man may successfully cope with the wild and fierce codfish in his native jungle, or beard the salt water clam in his den, and still signally fail as an Indian agent. The codfish is not treacherous. He may be bold, blood-thirsty and terrible, but he will never go back on a treaty. Who ever heard of a codfish going back on his word? Who ever heard of a codfish leaving the Reservation and spreading desolation over the land? No one. The expression on the face of a codfish shows that he is perfectly open and above board.

We might say the same of the clam. Of course if driven to the wall, as it were, he will fight; but we have yet to find a single instance in the annals of history where the clam – unless grossly insulted and openly put upon, ever made an open outbreak.

This is why we claim that clam culture and Indian management are not analogous. They are not simultaneous nor co-extensive. They are not identical nor homogeneous.

I feel that in treating this subject in my candid and truthful way, perhaps the Administration will feel hurt and grieved; but if so I can't help it. The great reading public seems to look to me, as much as to say: "What are your views on this great subject which is agitating the public mind?" I can't evade it, and even if President Hayes were an own brother, instead of being a warm, personal friend and admirer, I would certainly speak right out as I have spoken out, and tell the whole broad Republic of Columbia that to successfully steer a hostile tribe of nervous, refractory and irritable Indian bummers past the rocks and shoals of war is one thing, and to drive a salt water clam up a hickory tree and kill him with a club, is entirely another thing.

THEY UNANIMOUSLY AROSE AND HUNG HIM

I was talking the other day with a Laramie City man about Leadville, he said:

"In addition to the fact of Laramie money being now invested there, we have sent many good citizens there to build up homes and swell the boom of the young city. We also sent several there of whom we are not proud. We still hold them in loving remembrance. Sometimes we go through the motions of getting judgments against these men, and making transcripts with big seals on them, and sending to Leadville to be placed on the execution docket of Lake county.

"We also sent Edward Frodsham to Leadville. We intimated to him that life was very brief and that if he wanted to gather a little stake to leave his family perhaps he could do so faster in Leadville than anywhere else. So he went. He is there now. He at once won the notice of the public there and soon became the recipient of the most flattering attentions. A little band of American citizens one evening took him out on the plaza, or something of that kind, and hung him last fall.

"The maple turned to crimson and the sassafras to gold, and when the morning woke the song of the bunko-steerer and the robin, Mr. Frodsham was on his branch all right, but he couldn't seem to get in his work as a songster. There seemed to be a stricture in the glottis, and the diaphragm wouldn't buzz. The gorgeous dyes of the autumn sunrise seemed strangely at variance with the gen d'arm blue of Mr. Frodsham's countenance.

"His death calls to mind one sunny day in the midsummer of '78. It was one of those days when there is a lull in the struggle for existence, and the dreamy silence and hush of nature seem to be concurred in by a committee of the whole.

"It was one of those days when, in the language of the average magazine poet —

"But soon from out the silence, bursting upon the quiet air, came the sharp report of a pistol. Then another and another in rapid succession. People who were going to trade in that locality suddenly thought of other places of business where the same articles could be obtained cheaper. Men who were not afraid of danger in any form, went away because they didn't want to be called as witnesses on the inquest.

"The shooting went on for some time. It sounded like the battle'of the Wilderness. After a while it ceased. A large party of men went out to gather up the dead and arrange for a grand funeral. But the remains were not so dead as they ought to be. There were bullet holes to be sure, penetrating various parts of the combatants, but the funeral had to be postponed. The sidewalks were plowed up, signs were riddled and windows shattered, but Edward Frodsham got off with a bullet hole through the side. The doctor pronounced it a very close call, but not necessarily fatal. It was a terrible disappointment to every one. As a shooting match it was a depressing failure, and as a double funeral it was not deserving of mention.

"The city council told Frodsham that if he couldn't shoot better than that he might select some young growing town outside of Wyoming and grow up with it. He did so. He favored Colorado with his stirring, energetic presence.

"His grave grows green to-day on the sunny hill-side 'neath the bending willow, and the soft, sweet breath that is sighing through the pines and stirring the delicate ferns beside the glassy depth of the mountain stream, is singing his requiem. [Perhaps, however, I am rushing the season for Leadville a little; if so the last refrain after the word 'presence,' may be wrapped up in warm flannels and stored away till July.]"

RHETORIC VS. WOODTICK

It is impossible at present to say anything about what the future of this district may bring forth. Every lead shows up beautifully, and so much so, in fact, that claim owners are working first one and then another in order to hold them under the new law, which requires an amount of work to be done on the lead within sixty days which is generally only required within one year. This new regulation, which is the act of the district of course, may not stand any very severe test, but at present the miners are respecting it.

It is severe on me, however, and virtually leaves me out. What I need is a law that will not ride over and overthrow and freeze out the poor man. This law is passed in the interest of capital and in direct violation of the rights and privileges of the great surging mass of horny-handed workingmen like Brick Pomeroy and myself.

I havn't the time to particularize or describe the different mines visited, and if I were to do so the chances are that I wouldn't cover myself or the district with glory.

It is true that I know a foot wall from a windlass, with one hand tied behind me, but if I were buying a mine I would be about as apt to purchase a deposit of sulphurets of expectations, showing traces of free milling telluride of disappointment, as anything else.

The camp has about 300 miners and prospectors now within the city limits. All up and down the picturesque valley of the swift-flowing river the low cabin and white tent dot the green sward, and far above the everlasting hills rear their heads on high, torn by the Titanic power of giant heat in the days of the long ago.

I said this to Professor Paige, the scientific correspondent of the Inter-Ocean, who accompanied me. I thought that perhaps it would tickle him to know that I could reel off a sentence like that, but it didn't affect him in that way. On the contrary, he seemed to think that the heat must have affected me in some way.

We climbed Jehu mountain on the evening that we arrived in camp. We thought it would be the proper thing to do, so we dug our toe-nails into the prehistoric granite and the micacious what's-his-name and climbed to the top.

For a few minutes we didn't mind it much and got along first-rate, trying to make each believe that climbing mountains was our regular business.

I began to tell the Professor a little harmless lie about how I had travelled among the Alps, but I didn't finish it. Somehow I felt like breathing in what atmosphere was not in actual use, but I didn't have any place to put it.

The air at Jehu Mountain is good enough what there is of it, but it is too rare. If a man could let out the back straps of his vest and breathe in the unoccupied atmosphere lying between the Laramie river and the Zodiac it would be all right, but he can't do it. His intentions are good, but his skin isn't elastic enough to hold the diluted fluid.

We climbed up to where we could see the silvery moon rising like a pale schoolma'am and looking sadly across the dark valley asleep in night's embrace. I thought it was time to say something.

"Professor," said I, as my brow lighted up like a torchlight procession, and my voice broke upon the hush and solitude of evening like the tremulous notes of the buzz saw, "do you not think that far away amid the unknown worlds which drift through space and along whose track the drifting systems of planets wheel and circle through countless ages, while man, clothed in a little brief authority, cuts such fantastic tricks Before high heaven as makes the angels weep, regarding himself as the center of the solar system, planning to frustrate the immutable laws of nature, violating the prime and co-ordinate common law of universes, going behind the returns, as it were, trying to peer behind the veil, as I might say, prognosticating the unprognosticatable, evading the axioms and by-laws which not only regulate worlds and their creation, but link the phantasmagoria of diagonal animalculæ and cast broadcast the oleaginous incongruity of prehistoric usufruct?"

The Professor didn't say anything. He didn't seem to have followed me. Somewhere the thread had been broken, and the glowing truths couched in such language as would light up the pages of history and astronomy, were lost upon the silent air.

The Professor seemed sad and anxious and preoccupied. There was a look of apprehension and doubt and distrust in his eye, and he moved about uneasily. I asked him if there were any last words that I could carry to his friends, and ii there were any little acts of humanity and friendship which I could perform to render his last moments more pleasant.

He said there were.

Then he told me that a wood-tick was slowly but surely boring a hole into his spinal column, near where the off scapula forms a junction with the nigh one, and asked me to help bring him to justice.

We should learn from this that heaven-born genius, with the music of poetic language and aflame with an inspiration almost miraculous, sometimes makes less impression upon the listener than a little insect no larger than a grain of mustard seed.

THE MODEL WIFE

Dr. Westwood lectured here on Wednesday evening on the Model Husband. He wanted me to sit upon the stage as the horrible example, but I declined. He was quite pointed in his remarks all the way through, and seemed to have me in his mind when he described the model husband, although of course he used a fictitious name. The lecture was a good one, and very well liked by the husbands who had to sit and take it for an hour and a half. Let the gentle male reader imagine himself sitting for that length of time with his own wife on one side of him and another man's wife on the other side of him, and when the speaker makes a point on the old man to get alternate jabs in the side from the delighted ladies.

I shall lecture here during the winter on the subject of the "Model Wife." I will then get even. I will tell how the young man with bright hopes, and thinking only of the great, consuming love he has for his new spouse, is torn away from the hallowed ties of home and the sunny influences of young companions, and buried in the poverty-stricken cottage of a woman who cannot begin to support him in the style in which he has been accustomed.

It is high time that this course of disgraceful misrepresentation on the part of young women should be exposed. I once knew a young man with the most gentle and trustful nature. He had never known care or sorrow. But an adventuress with winsome smile and loving voice crossed his path and allowed him to think that she could maintain a husband like other women, and in his blind adoration for her he bade good-bye to his home and its joys and madly walked out with her into the great, untried future. She told him that he should never know the cruel sting of poverty, and other romantic trash, and look at him to-day. He is a broken-hearted man. His wife does not take him into society; does not keep him clothed as other men are clothed, and grudgingly gives him the little pittance from week to week which she earns by washing.

Is it strange that his pillow is wet with tears, and in his agony he cries out upon the still air of night, "Oh, mother, why did I leave thy kindly protection and overshadowing love and marry a total stranger?"

Then the woman who has sworn to protect and love and cherish him kicks him in the pit of the stomach and harshly tells him to "dry up."

I sometimes think that if mothers knew to what sorrow and gross and shameless treatment their sons were to submit all through their lives, they would put them out of their misery with a base-ball club. Some mothers do try this but they postpone it too long and the sons get too large and more difficult to kill than when their skulls are young and tender.

I have alwavs maintained that a kind word and a caress will do more for the great yearning nature of the husband than harshness and severity. The tuue wife may reprove her husband when he spills coal all over the Brussels carpet and then steps on it and grinds it in, but how much better even that is than to kick him under the bed and then sit down on him and gouge out his eyes with a pinking iron.

I know that men are too often misunderstood. They may be rough on the exterior but they can love Oh, so earnestly, so warmly, so truly, so deeply, so intensely, so yearningly, so fondly and so universally!

Always kiss your husband good-bye when you go down town to your work. It may be the last time. I once knew a wife who went down town to price a new dolman, and because she was vexed about something she did not kiss her husband but slammed the door and left him. When she returned he was a corpse!

While peeling the potatoes for dinner with the carving knife, he had stepped on a clothes pin, which threw him forward over the baby carriage, the knife entering at the northeast corner of the gizzard and sticking out beneath the shoulder blade about two feet into space. What a scene for the now repentant wife. There, in the full vigor of his manhood, lay all that was mortal of her companion – dead as a mackerel!!!

Let us take this home to ourselves, and ask ourselves today if we are doing the square thing by the only husband we have. Are we loving him as we should, or are we turning this task over to the hired girl?

Intemperance, too, is a fruitful cause of connubial unhappiness. Young man, beware of a wife who loves the flowing bowl. I once knew a beautiful young lady, talented and with good business ability. The entire circle of her acquaintance admired and respected her, but alas! one evening at a banquet her companion, with a heavenly smile, asked her to drink wine. Gradually the taste grew upon her, and although she married, she could not support her husband, and he gradually pined away and died brokenhearted. He used to sit up nights for her to come home, and he caught the inflammatory rheumatism and swelled up and died. It was a terrible thing. I tell you we cannot be too careful. You take a handsome young man like the author of these lines and his power for good or evil is untold. I sometimes wish that I had not been constructed with so much dazzling beauty to the square inch, and I am almost tempted to go and disfigure myself some way. If I were to ask a fair gazelle on New Year's day to come and join me in a social glass and then throw one of those melting 2 by 8 glances of mine on her, I know for a moral certainty that before night she would be in the calaboose. But I shall guard against that. Nothing of that kind shall ever be laid at my door. I promised my aged parents when I left the old homestead that I would never set 'em up for anyone.