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

OFFICE OF THE MEEK-EYED TARANTULA

We have, it appears, said something, casually, in our kind-hearted way, that the sensitive Slimtown Harmonica has taken to heart, and feels badly over, so we will try, as far as possible, to place ourself in a correct position. We spoke of the Harmonica in connection with another subject which we took the liberty to write upon, and did so simply with the idea of using the Harmonica as a simile. We find, however, that we were wrong. The Harmonica is not a simile. On the contrary, it is a parabola. It is a base, inferior isosceles, and its editor is nothing but a cosmopolitan hypothenuse; and if he wants to take it up, we may be found at our office at any time between the hours of A. m. and p. m. We were wrong in speaking of the Harmonica as a comparison or a simile but we want it distinctly understood that we know what the Harmonica and its editor are, and we are not afraid to say so, either. They are pre-Adamite, vicarious isotherms, and we think that it is time the people of the west were apprized of that fact too..

BANKRUPT SALE OF LITERARY GEMS

OFFICE OF THE MORMON BAZOO

Little boys who are required by their teacher to write compositions at school can save a great deal of unnecessary worry and anxiety by calling on the editor of this paper, and glancing over the holiday stock of second-hand poems and essays. Debating clubs and juvenile lyceums supplied at a large reduction. The following are a few selections, with price:

"Old Age," a poem written in red ink, price ten cents. "The Dog," blank verse, written on foolscap with a hard pencil, five cents. "Who will love me all the while?" a tale, price three cents per pound. "Hold me in your clean white arms," song and dance, by the author of "Beautiful Snow," price very reasonable; it must be sold. "She ain't no longer mine, nor I ain't hern," or the sad story of two sundered hearts; spruce gum and licorice taken in exchange for this piece. "God: his attributes and peculiarities," will be sold at a cent and a half per pound, or traded for a tin dipper for the office. Give us a call before purchasing elsewhere.

The stock on hand must be disposed of, in order to give place to the new stock of odes and sonnets on Spring, and contributions on "the violet" and the "skipful lamb."

THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE

Marriage is, to a man, at once the happiest and saddest event of his life. He quits all the companions and associations of his youth, and becomes the chief attraction of a new home.

Every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is to be changed, and yet he flees with joy to the untrodden paths before him. Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit down on him. Little do women realize that all a man needs under the broad cerulean dome of heaven is love – and board and clothes. Love is his life. If some woman or other don't love him, and love him like a hired man, he pines away and eventually climbs the golden stair. Man is born with strong yearnings for the unyearnablc, and he does not care so much for wealth as he does for some one who will love him under all circumstances and in all conditions.

If women would spend their evenings at home with their husbands, they would see a marked change in the brightness of their homes. Too many sad-eyed men are wearing away their lives at home alone. Would that I had a pen of fire to write in letters of living light the ignominy and contumely and – some more things like that, the names of which have escaped my memory – that are to-day being visited upon my sex.

Remember that your husband has the most delicate sensibilities, and keenly feels your coldness and neglect. The former may be remedied by toasting the feet over a brisk fire before going to bed, but the latter can only be remedied by a total reform on your part. Think what you promised his parents when you sued for his hand. Think how his friends, and several girls to whom he had at different times been engaged, came to you with tears in their eyes and besought you not to be unkind to him. Do these things ever occur to you as you throw him over the card table and mop the floor with his remains? Do you ever feel the twinges of remorse after you have put an octagonal head on him for not wiping the dishes drier? Think what a luxurious home you took him from, and how his mother used to polish his boots and take care of him, and then consider what drudgery you subject him to now. Think what pain it must cause him when you growl and swear at him. Perhaps when you went away to your work you did not leave him wood and coal and water; does he ever murmur or repine at your neglect?

Ah, if wives knew the wealth of warm and true affection locked up in the bosoms of their husbands, and would draw it out, instead of allowing the hired girl to get all the benefit, what a change there would be in this earth of ours. But they never do until the companion of their joys and sorrows has winged his way to the ever-green shore and takes charge of the heavenly orchestra, and then for about two weeks you will see a violently red proboscis glimmering and sparkling under a costly black veil, after which the good qualities of the deceased will be preserved in alcohol, to be thrown up to No. 2 in the bright days to come.

Then, in conclusion, wives in Israel and other railroad towns, love your husbands while it is yet day. Give him your confidence. If your active corn manifests a wish to leave the reservation, go to your husband with it. Lean on him. He will be your solid muldoon. He will get an old wood rasp and make that corn look sick. He is only waiting for your confidence and your trust. Tell him your business affairs and he will help you out. He will, no doubt, offer to go without help in the house in order to economize, and he will think of numberless other little ways to save money. Do as we have told you and you will never regret it. Your lives will then be one great combination of rare and beautiful dissolving views. You will journey down the pathway of your earthly existence with the easy poetical glide of the fat man who steps on the treacherous orange peel. Your last days will be surrounded with a halo of love, and as your eyes get dim with age and one by one your teeth drop out, you can say with pride that you have never, never gone back on your solid pard.

A UTE PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION

The presidential conventions of last summer, and their attendant excitement, personal bitterness, and political sharpness, have called to my mind an occurrence in the history of a nation, of whose politics and whose statesmanship the civilized world knows but little.

Much has been said pro and con relative to the Indian character in general, and recently, of the Ute nation in particular, but those who knew the least have been most willing to shed information right and left, and to beam down upon the great reading world with the effulgence of the average cultivated lunatic.

I do not intend at this time to enlarge upon the question of western intolerance and eastern hero worship, as applied to the Indian nation, but simply to remark in my own gentle, soothing style, that those who know the Indian best, have the least respect and veneration for him.

At some other time I may say something relative to the Indian's home life, and attempt to show that while he appears in his public career to great advantage, both as a general and as a statesman, he is prone, like other great men, to little domestic irregularities. At this time, however, I intend simply to give some particulars of the great convention of 1875, which have never been brought to the eye of the reading public.

In the autumn of the above year at that delightful season when

The maple turns to crimson,
And the sassafras to gold.

When the soft and mellow light of the declining year sheds a subdued splendor of misty, dreamy languor over the snow-clad mountains and wooded canyons of Colorado, when the deep green of the mountain pine is darkly outlined against the pale gold of the poplar, and the cottonwood, and the willow, the chairman of the Republican central committee of the Ute nation, issued a call for a mammoth convention, to be held at Hot Sulphur Springs, for the purpose of nominating a candidate for head chief, to succeed Ula, whose term of office had expired by reason of his having violated the provisions of his first general order, in which he had pronounced himself as a champion of civil service reform.

The day for the grand convention had arrived, and Hot Sulphur Springs had become, all at once, a lively, bustling city. From every point of the compass came the wild shouts of the gathering delegates, with their credentials in one pocket, and their patriotism in pint bottles in the other.

The convention was called to order, and effected a permanent organization by electing Shavano as permanent chairman.

Shavano rose with stalely gravity, bowed to the assembled convention, and walked to the platform, escorted by his trainer. He gracefully removed a quid of partially masticated government plug tobacco, and laying it carefully on the speaker's desk, said:

"Warriors of the Ute Nation, and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are gathered once more amid the solemn silence of the mountains, and under the dying leaves of the forest, to nominate a candidate to serve as executive of the Ute nation.

"Ula, the medicine man for this moon, who had hoped to be here, and who had his impromptu speech written for this occasion, will not be able to attend. I had hoped to see him here that he might act as secretary, but last evening he was shot by request.

"It seems that he had diagnosed the case of Prairie Dog, the son of Coyote, and had pronounced it to be membranous croup; but the coroner's inquest developed the fact that Prairie Dog had climbed the golden stair, the victim to a can of concentrated lye.

"A mighty nation, whose numbers are as the sands of the sea, can afford to let its medicine men fool around with its people and experiment with them till they meander up the flume, but the Ute nation is not large. It is a mere handful. We have only enough for a quorum, and we can not use any of them for scientific experiments. That is why Ula is on the evergreen shore instead of acting as our secretary to-day. At the request of the sorrowing friends of Prairie Dog, the medicine man's license was revoked, and Ula was fixed up for an extempore shot-pouch; so another person will have to act as your secretary.

"Warriors, I do not wish to trespass on your time. You have selected me as your chairman, and I thank you for the honor.

"We are now a small and powerless nation. Our war-cry is answered by the hilarious laughter of our foes. Once we were great. Our hunting grounds were without limit and our villages were as the leaves of the forest.

"To-day the white man plants his Swedish turnips above the graves of our ancestors. We are the orphan children of a great people and our sun is set.

"Once we were wealthy and powerful. Now we are poor and weak, and our wives cannot keep a hired girl.

"Why do the wails of our people echo among the canyons and desolated villages?

"Why are we left to mourn the loss of our wild horses and why are our own hillsides dotted with the locations and prospect holes of the pale face?

"Who is at fault that the graves of our fathers are staked as the 'Gilt Edge,' or the 'Bullion Lode,' or the 'Lucky Sal,' or the 'Calamity Jane,' or the 'Cross-Eyed Hannah with a Cork Limb?'

"I charge these woes of our people upon the puerile policy and fire-water reign of a democratic administration over the nation. [Deafening cheers.]

"Warriors and gentlemen of the convention: I have only one more word to say. I ask that the rotten fabric of the Ula, Bourbon, dyed-in-the-wool administration be overturned, that peace and prosperity may once more smile upon us.

"In conclusion I would ask the further pleasure of the convention." [Uproarious applause; the audience joining in "Old John Brown he had a little Injun."]

A committee on credentials was then selected, consisting of five members, of which Buffalo Tripe was chairman.

An adjournment to the following day at 10 A. m. was next taken by the convention.

The delegates were formally invited by the proprietor of the Jack Rabbit house to attend a little social walk-around and select scalp-dance on the following evening.

At the appointed hour the convention was called to order by the chair, and a report from the committee on credentials was called for.

Buffalo Tripe, on behalf of the committee, submitted the report that the delegates present were all entitled to seats, except that Dead Man's canyon had a double delegation.

The report of the committee on credentials was accepted, and the committee discharged. The chair then selected a new committee to examine the two delegations from Dead Man's canon, and instructed it to report adversely on the drunkest one.

This was regarded as a victory for the friends of Ouray, the favorite son from Stray Horse Gulch.

Nominations then being in order, the Silver-Tongued Cactus Plant from Middle Park arose majestically and said:

"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention: Our people have called us to do their work around the council fire and name for them a chief. [Loud cheers.] They look to us to-day for the assurance of their future prosperity.

"We stand in the moccasins of mighty men to-day with our tribes. Let us not betray their confidence. Let us be able to return to our squaws and pappooses with the smile of the Great Father upon us. [Applause.] It is a solemn moment for our whole nation, and the silence of a mighty forest amid the gathering storm is upon us. Mr. Chairman, I have the pleasure of nominating for our executive, Ouray, the man who never told a lie." [Thunders of applause and wild demonstrations throughout the entire wigwam.]

After the excitement had died away Hohne-pah-Snocke-monthegob, which in the Ute tongue means the man-with-the-patent-liver-pad, arose, and, laying aside a chew of tobacco about the size of an early rose potato, said: