Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

"There I was in the impenetrable gloom of a closet, with the trusting companion of my home life flattening out my stomach till I could feel my watch chain against my spinal column. She then unscrewed my cork leg in a mechanical kind of a way and locked it up in the bureau drawer, putting the key in her pocket.

"After that she fastened the closet door on the outside, and told the party that I would be unable, owing to the inclemency of the weather, to take part in the exercises at Sabille canyon.

"All through that long, long, weary day, I stood around on one leg and looked out of the window, thinking what a potent spell is exerted over the wooden-legged man by an able-bodied wife.

"It is a question, sir, which is of vital interest to us all. Must the one-legged minority continue thus to subserve the interests of the two-legged majority? I ask you, as the representative of the all civilizing, all leveling, all powerful and all jewhillikin press, how long the cork-limbed, taxation-without-representation masses must limp around the house and sew carpet rags, writhing in the death-like grip of a two-legged oligarchy?"

He did not wait for an answer. He simply gathered up a few of our freshest exchanges and stole softly down the stairs.

We decline to make any comment one way or the other, because we do not know that the country is ripe for the discussion of this question, but it deserves cold, calm, candid thought on the part of all thinking men, to say the least.

THE TRUE POET LOVES SECLUSION

The true poet loves seclusion and soothing rest. That is the secret of his even numbers and smooth cadences. Look at Dryden, and Walt Whitman, and Milton, and Burns, and the Sweet Singer of Michigan. What could any of them have done with the house full of children of the forest who were hankering for a fresh pail of gore for lunch?

A PIE OPENER

A handsome competence is in store for the man who will invent a neat, durable and portable pie opener that will successfully reach the true inwardness of the average, box-toed, Bessemer steel, gooseberry pie which the hired girl casts in her kitchen foundry.

CHESTNUT-BURR XLI – REVELATION IN UTAH

An esteemed and extremely connubial contemporary, says in a recent editorial: "The Latter Day Saints will rejoice to learn that the vacancies which have existed in the quorums ol the twelve apostles and the first seven presidents of seventies are now filled. During the conference recently held, Elder Abram II. Cannon was unanimously chosen to be one of the first seven presidents of seventies, and he was ordained to that office on Monday, October 9. Subsequently! the Lord, by revelation through His servant, President John Taylor, designated by name Brothers George Teasdale and Heber J. Grant, to be ordained to the apostleship, and Brother Seymour B. Young to fill the remaining vacancy in the presidency of the seventies. These brethren were ordained on Monday, October 16, the two apostles, under the hands of the first presidency and twelve, and the other under the hands of the twelve and the presidency of the seventies."

Now, that's a convenient system of politics and civil service. When there is a vacancy, the president, John Taylor, goes into his closet and has a revelation, which settles it all right. If the man appointed vicariously by the Lord is not in every way satisfactory, he may be discharged by the same process. Instead, therefore, of being required to rally a large force of his friends to aid him in getting an appointment, the aspirant arranges solely with the party who runs the revelation business. It will be seen at a glance, therefore, that the man who can get the job of revelating in Zion, has it pretty much his own way. We would not care who made the laws of Utah if we could do its revelating at so much per revelate.

Think of the power it gives a man in a community of blind believers. Imagine, if you please, the glorious possibilities in store for the man who can successfully reveal the word of the Lord in an easy, extemporaneous manner on five minutes' notice.

This prerogative does not confine itself to politics alone. The Impromptu revelator of the Jordan has revelations when he wants to evade the payment of a bill. He gets a divine order also if he desires to marry a beautiful maid or seal the new school ma'am to himself. He has a leverage which he can bring to bear upon the people of his diocese at all times, even more potent than the press, and it does not possess the drawbacks that a newspaper does. You can run an aggressive paper if you want to in this country, and up to the time of the funeral you have a pretty active and enjoyable time, but after the grave has been filled up with the clods of the valley and your widow has drawn her insurance, you naturally ask, "What is the advantage to be gained by this fearless style of journalism?"

Still, even the inspired racket has its drawbacks. Last year a little incident occurred in a Mormon family down in southern Utah, which weighed about nine pounds, and when the ex officio husband, who had been absent two years, returned, he acted kind of wild and surprised, somehow, and as he went through the daily round of his work he could be seen counting his fingers back and forth and looking at the almanac, and adding up little amounts on the side of the barn with a piece of red chalk.

Finally, one of the inspired mob of that part of the vineyard thought it was about time to get a revelation and go down there, so he did so. He sailed up to the de facto husband and quasi parent and solemnly straight ened up some little irregularities as to dates, but the revelation was received with disdain, and the revelator was sent home in an old ore sack and buried in a peach basket.

Sometimes there is, even in Utah, a manifestation of such irreverence and open hostility to the church that it makes us shudder.

THE MODEL SLEEPING-CAR

One of these days they will invent a sleeper with a quart of pure air for each person, instead of only a mouthful. If there could be more pure air, and less mahogany corners on which to bump the system, and the porter received a regular salary instead of mobbing the train with a whisk broom, and garroting the passengers for $1 each, life would be more desirable.

CHESTNUT-BURR XLII – THE TONGUE-DESTROYING FRENCH LANGUAGE

I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken in the United States, for I am tired of the infernal lingo of this God-forsaken country and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and on some other subject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it any more.

Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends to step into a big drug store on the Rue de la Sitting Bull, to get a glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians. He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said:

"Ze vooly voo a la boomerang?"

I patted the soda fountain and said:

"No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I will take about two fingers of bug juice in mine to sweeten my breath."

But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no doubt, and got him a job in a drug store. So I said:

"Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and if you will put a little tangle-foot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will pick up a pound weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with spirituous frumenti, old rye, benzine – bay rum – anything! Parley voo, e pluribus unum, sic semper go braugh! Do you understand that?"

But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives on.

Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400.

I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to; partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and telescope the duodenum into the æsophagus. I used to stand that way and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green, cold waves and the wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it all day.

I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am trying to arrange it so as to go home by land. I think I can make up for the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and turned it over to the Atlantic ocean for inspection, than I have eaten since I came here.

CARVING SCHOOLS

They are agitating the matter of instituting carving schools, in the East, so that the rising generation will be able to pass down through the corridors of time without its lap full of dressing and its bosom laden with gravy and remorse. The students at this school will wear barbed-wire masks while practicing. These masks will be similar to those worn by German students, who slice each other up while obtaining an education.

CHESTNUT-BURR XLIV – ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

Up in Polk county, Wis., not long ago, a man who had lost eight children by diphtheria, while the ninth hovered between life and death with the same disease, went to the health officer of the town and asked aid to prevent the spread of the terrible scourge. The health officer was cool and collected. He did not get excited over the anguish of the father whose last child was at the moment hovering upon the outskirts of immortality. He calmly investigated the matter, and never for a moment lost sight of the fact that he was a town officer and a professed Christian.

"You ask aid, I understand," said he, "to prevent the spread of the disease, and also that the town shall assist you in procuring new and necessary clothing, to replace that which you have been compelled to burn in order to stop the further inroads of diphtheria. Am I right?"

The poor man answered affirmatively.

"May I ask if your boys who died were Christian boys, and whether they improved their gospel opportunities and attended the Sabbath school, or whether they were profane and given over to Sabbath-breaking?"

The bereft father said that his boys had never made a profession of Christianity; that they were hardly old enough to do so, and that they might have missed some gospel opportunities owing to the fact that they were poor, and hadn't clothes fit to wear to Sabbath school. Possibly, too, they had met with wicked companions, and had been taught to swear; he could not say but they might have sworn, although he thought they would have turned out to be good boys had they lived.

"I am sorry that the case is so bad," said the health officer. "I am led to believe that God has seen fit to visit you with affliction in order to express His divine disapproval of profanity, and I cannot help you. It ill becomes us poor, weak worms of the dust to meddle with the just judgments of God. Whether as an individual or as a quasi corporation, it is well to allow the Almighty to work out His great plan of salvation, and to avoid all carnal interference with the works of God."

The old man went back to his desolated home and to the bedside of his only living child. I met him yesterday and he told me all about it.

"I am not a professor of religion," said he, "but I tell you, Mr. Nye, I can't believe that this board of health has used me right. Somehow I ain't worried about my little fellers that is gone. They was little fellers, anyway, and they wasn't posted on the plan of salvation, but they was always kind and they always minded me and their mother. If God is using diphtheria agin perfanity this season they didn't know it. They was too young to know about it and I was too poor to take the papers, so I didn't know it nuther, i just thought that Christ was partial to kids like mine, just the same as He used to be 2,000 years ago when the country was new. I admit that my little shavers never went to Sabbath school much, and I wasn't scholar enough to throw much light onto God's system of retribution, but I told 'em to behave themselves, and they did, and we had a good deal of fun together – me and the boys – and they was so bright, and square, and cute that I didn't see how they could fall under divine wrath, and I don't believe they did.

"I could tell you lots of smart little things that they used to do, Mr. nye, but they wa'n't mean and cussed. They was just frolicky and gay sometimes because they felt good. I don't believe God had it in for'em bekuz they was like other boys, do you? Fer if I thought so it would kind o' harden me and the old lady and make us sour on all creation.

"Mind you, I don't kick because I'm left alone here in the woods, and the sun don't seem to shine, and the birds seems a little backward about singin' this spring, and the house is so quiet, and she is still all the time and cries in the night when she thinks I am asleep. All that is tough, Mr. Nye – tough as old Harry, too – but it's so, and I ain't murmurin', but when the board of health says to me that the Ruler of the Universe is makin' a tower of northern Wisconsin, mowin' down little boys with sore throat because they say 'gosh,' I can't believe it.

"I know that people who ain't familiar with the facts will shake their heads and say that I am a child of wrath, but I can't help it. All I can do is to go up there under the trees where them little graves is, and think how all-fired pleasant to me them little, short lives was, and how every one of them little fellers was when he come, poor as I was, and how I rastled with poor crops and pine stumps to buy cloze for'em, and didn't care a cent for style as long as they was well. That's the kind of heretic I am, and if God is like a father that settles it. he wouldn't wipe out my family just to establish discipline, I don't believe. The plan of creation must be on a bigger scale than that, it seems to me, or else it's more or less a fizzle.

"That board of health is better read than I am. It takes the papers and can add up figures, and do lots of things that I can't do; but when them fellers tell me that they represent the town of Balsam Lake and the Kingdom of Heaven, my morbid curiosity is aroused, and I want to see the stiffykits of election."

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE REVOLVER DIFFICULTY

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 FEMALE ARTISTE