Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

I never owned one until a tramp cat came to our house one day during the present autumn, and tearfully asked to be loved. He didn't have anything in his make-up that was calculated to win anybody's love, but he seemed contented with a little affection, – one ear was gone, and his tail was bald for six inches at the end, and he was otherwise well calculated to win confidence and sympathy. Though we could not be madly in love with him, we decided to be friends, and give him a chance to win the general respect.

Everything would have turned out all right if the bobtail waif had not been a little given to investigation. He wanted to know more about the great world in which he lived, so he began by inspecting my house. He got into the store-room closet, and found a place where the carpenter had not completed his job. This is a feature of the Laramie artisan's style. He leaves little places in unobserved corners generally, so that he can come back some day and finish it at an additional cost of fifty dollars. This cat observed that he could enter at this point and go all over the imposing structure between the flooring and the ceiling. He proceeded to do so.

We will now suppose that a period of two days has passed. The wide halls and spacious facades of the Nye mansion are still. The lights in the banquet-hall are extinguished, and the ice-cream freezer is hushed to rest in the wood-shed. A soft and tearful yowl, deepened into a regular ring-tail-peeler, splits the solemn night in twain. Nobody seemed to know where it came from. I rose softly and went to where the sound had seemed to well up from. It was not there.

I stood on a piece of cracker in the dining-room a moment, waiting for it to come again. This time it came from the boudoir of our French artist in soup-bone symphonies and pie – Mademoiselle Bridget O'Dooley. I went there and opened the door softly, so as to let the cat out without disturbing the giant mind that had worn itself out during the day in the kitchen, bestowing a dry shampoo to the china.

Then I changed my mind and came out. Several articles of vertu, beside Bridget, followed me with some degree of vigor.

The next time the tramp cat yowled he seemed to be in the recesses of the bath-room. I went down stairs and investigated. In doing so I drove my superior toe into my foot, out of sight, with a door that I encountered. My wife joined me in the search. She could not do much, but she aided me a thousand times by her counsel. If it had not been for her mature advice I might have lost much of the invigorating exercise of that memorable night.

Toward morning we discovered that the cat was between the floor of the children's play-room and the ceiling of the dining-room. We tried till daylight to persuade the cat to come out and get acquainted, but he would not.

At last we decided that the quickest way to get the poor little thing out was to let him die in there, and then we could tear up that portion of the house and get him out. While he lived we couldn't keep him still long enough to tear a hole in the house and get at him.

It was a little unpleasant for a day or two waiting for death to come to his relief, for he seemed to die hard, but at last the unearthly midnight yowl was still. The plaintive little voice ceased to vibrate on the still and pulseless air. Later, we found, however, that he was not dead. In a lucid interval he had discovered the hole in the store-room where he entered, and, as we found afterward a gallon of coal-oil spilled in a barrel of cut-loaf sugar, we concluded that he had escaped by that route.

That was the only time that I ever kept a cat, and I didn't do it then because I was suffering for something to fondle. I've got a good deal of surplus affection, I know, but I don't have to spread it out over a stump-tail orphan cat.

CHESTNUT-BURR XXXI – THE GREAT ORATION OF SPARTACUS

It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus returning with victorious eagles, had aroused the populace with the sports of the amphitheater, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. A large number of people from the rural districts had been in town to watch the conflict in the arena, and to listen with awe and veneration to the infirm and decrepit ring jokes.

The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters of the Tiber with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier moved on his homeward way, the sidewalk occasionally flying up and hitting him in the back.

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 unrelenting boot-jack struck the high board fence in the back yard, just missing the Roman Tom cat in its mad flight, and then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the Roman snore would steal in upon the deathly silence, and then die away like the sough of a summer breeze. In the green-room of the amphitheater a little band of gladiators were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hang upon their brows, and the large knobs on their classic profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them.

There was an embarassing silence of about five minutes, when Spartacus, borrowing a chew of tobacco from Aurelius, stepped forth and thus addressed them:

"Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet has never lowered his arm. I do not say this to brag, however, but simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.

"If there be one among you who can say that ever in public fight or private brawl my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth and say it, and I will spread him around over the arena till the coroner will have to gather him up with blotting paper. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and I will construct upon their physiogomy such cupolas, and royal cornices, and Corinthian capitols, and entablatures, that their own mothers would pass them by in the broad light of high noon, unrecognized.

"And yet I was not always thus – a hired butcher – the savage chief of still more savage men.

"My ancestors came from old Sparta, the county seat of Marcus Aurelius county, and settled among the vine-clad hills and cotton groves of Syrsilla. My early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which I sported. Aside from the gentle patter of the maternal slipper on my overalls, everything moved along with me like the silent oleaginous flow of the ordinary goose grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We stole the Roman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Roman dog, and life was one continuous hallelujah.

"When at noon I led the sheep beneath the shade and played the Sweet Bye-and-Bye on my shepherd's flute, there was another Spartan youth, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of our indestructible sandwiches.

"One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral and we were all seated beneath the persimmon tree that shaded our humble cottage, my grand-sire, an old man, was telling of Marathon, and Leuctra, and George Francis Train, and Dr. Mary Walker and other great men, and how a little band of Spartans, under Sitting Bull, had withstood the entire regular army. I did not then know what war was, but my cheek burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the reservation and go on the warpath. 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 Romans landed on our coasts. They pillaged the whole country, burned the agency buildings, demolished the ranch, rode off the stock, tore down the smoke-house, and rode their war horses over the cucumber vines.

"To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet-clasps and looked upon him, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on his face that I had known when in adventurous boyhood we bathed in the glassy lake by our Spartan home and he had tied my shirt into 1,752 dangerous and difficult knots.

"He knew me, smiled some more, said 'Ta, ta,' and ascended the golden stair. I begged of the Prætor that I might be allowed to bear away the body and have it packed in ice and shipped to his friends near Syrsilla, but he couldn't see it.

"Ay, upon my bended knees, amidst the dust and blood of the arena, I begged this poor boon, and the Prætor answered: 'Let the carrion rot. There are no noble men but Romans and Ohio men. Let the show go on. Bring in the bobtail lion from Abyssinia.' And the assembled maids and matrons and the rabble shouted in derision and told me to 'brace up' and 'have some style about my clothes' and 'to give it to us easy,' with other Roman flings which I do not now call to mind.

"And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs.

"To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome, and reserved seats are being sold at the corner of Third and Corse streets for our moral and instructive performance while I am speaking to you.

"Ye stand here like giants as ye are, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis with a sealskin cap will pat your red brawn and bet his sesterces upon your blood.

"O Rome! Rome! Thou hast been indeed a tender nurse to me. Thou hast given to that gentle, timid shepherd lad who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart like the adamantine lemon pie of the railroad lunch-room. Thou hast taught him to drive his sword-through plated mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the palpitating gizzard of his foe, and to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion even as the smooth-cheeked Roman Senator looks into the laughing eyes of the girls in the treasury department.

"And he shall pay thee back till thy rushing Tiber is red as frothing wine; and in its deepest ooze thy lifeblood lies curdled. You doubtless hear the gentle murmur of my bazoo.

"Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don't you forget it; and he will fling your vertebræ about his cage like the star pitcher of a champion 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. Strike down the warden and the turnkey, overpower the police, and cut for the tall timber. We will break through the city gate, capture the war-horse of the drunken Roman, flee away to the lava beds, and there do bloody work, as did our sires at old Thermopylae, scalp the western-bound emigrant, and make the hen-roosts around Capua look sick.

"O, comrades! warriors! gladiators!!

"If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, and by the still waters, and be buried according to Gunter, instead of having our shin bones polished off by Numidian lions, amid the groans and hisses of a snide Roman populace."

CHESTNUT-BURR – WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE IN WYOMING

The managing editor of a Boston paper is getting material together relative to the practical workings of Woman's suffrage, and as Wyoming is at present working a scheme of that kind, he wants an answer to the following questions:

1. – Has it been of real benefit to the territory?

2. – If so, what has it accomplished?

3. – how does it affect education, morals, courts, etc.?

4. – What proportion of the women vote?

Answers.

1. – Yes, it has indeed been of real benefit to the territory in many ways. Until woman's suffrage came among us, life was a drag – a monotonous sameness, and simultaneous continuousness. How it is not that way. Woman comes forward with her ballot, and puts new life into the flagging energies of the great political circles. She purifies the political atmosphere, and comes to the polls with her suffrage done up in a little wad, and rammed down into her glove, and redeems the country.

2. – It has accomplished more than the great outside world wots of. Philosophers and statesmen may think that they wot; but they don't. Not a wot.

To others outside of Wyoming, woman's suffrage is a mellow dream; but here it is a continuous, mellow, yielding reality. We know what we are talking about. We are acquainted with a lady who came here with the light of immortality shining in her eye, and the music of the spheres was singing in her ears. She was apparently on her last limbs, if we may be allowed that expression. But woman's suffrage came to her with healing on its wings, and the rose of health again bloomed on her cheek, and her appetite came back like the famine in Ireland. Now she wrestles with the cast-iron majolica ware of the kitchen during the day, and in the evening works a cross-eyed elephant on a burlap tidy, and talks about the remonetization of the currency.

Without attempting to answer the last two questions in a short article like this, we will simply give a few certificates and testimonials of those who have tried it:

Prairie-Dog Ranche, Jan. 3, 1888.

"Dear Sir: I take great pleasure in bearing testimony to the efficacy of woman's suffrage. It is indeed a boon to thousands. I was troubled in the East beyond measure with an ingrowing nail on the most extensive toe. It caused me great pain and annoyance. I was compelled to do my work wearing an old gum overshoe of my husband's. Since using woman's suffrage only a few months, my toe is entirely well, and I now wear my husband's fine boots with perfect ease. As a remedy for ingrowing nails I can safely recommend the woman's suffrage.

"Sassafras Oleson."

Miner's Delight, Jan. 23, 1888.

"Deer Sur: Two year ago mi waife fell down into a nold sellar and droav her varyloid through the Sarah helium. I thot she was a Gonner. I woz then livin' in the sou west potion of Injeanny. I moved to where i now am leaving sevral onsettled accounts where i lived. Bat i wood do almost anything to recover mi waifs helth. She tried Woman's Suffrins and can now lick me with I hand tied behind hur back, everything to the free yuse of the femail ballot. So good bi at Present Union Forever McGilligin."

Rawhide, Feb. 2, 1888.