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

Two weeks ago the perilous undertaking of sinking this shaft to a depth of ten feet in a perpendicular direction was begun, and although we have shipped several mule loads of the choicest grub, consisting of bacon in large packages done up in corn-colored overshirts and XXX Nebraska flour, yet the top of Mr. O'Tool's head is visible to the naked eye from a considerable distance as he stands in the shaft.

Occasionally the Count De O'Toole fancies that he has been bitten by a tarantula, and the stockholders of the Calamity Jane Consolidated have to ship a large lunch basket with a willow cover to it and a cork in the top in order to counteract the poison that is rankling in his system.

THE NOCTURNAL COW

With the opening up of my spring movements in the agricultural line comes the cow.

Laramie has about seven cows that annoy me a good deal. They work me up so that I lose my equanimity. I have mentioned this matter before, but this spring the trouble seems to have assumed some new features. The prevailing cow for this season seems to be a seal-brown cow with a stub tail, which is arranged as a night-key. She wears it banged.

The other day I had just planted my celluloid radishes and irrigated my turnips and sown my hunting-case summer squashes, and this cow went by trying to convey the impression that she was out for a walk.

That night the blow fell. The queen of night was high in the blue vault of heaven amid the twinkling stars. All nature was hushed to repose. The people of Laramie were in their beds. So were my hunting-case summer squashes. I heard a stealthy step near the conservatory where my celluloid radishes and pickled beets are growing, and I arose.

It was a lovely sight. At the head of the procession there was a seal-brown cow with a tail like the handle on a pump, and standing at an angle of forty-five degrees.

That was the cow.

Following at a rapid gait was a bewitching picture of alabaster limbs and Gothic joints and Wamsutta muslin night robe.

That was me.

The queen of night withdrew behind a cloud.

The vision seemed to break her all up.

Bye-and-bye there was a crash, and the seal-brown cow went home carrying the garden gate with her as a kind of keepsake. She had a plenty of garden gates at home in her collection, but she had none of that particular pattern. So she wore it home around her neck.

The writer of these lines then carefully brushed the sand off his feet with a pillow sham and retired to rest.

When the bright May morn was ushered in upon the busy world the radish and squash bed had melted into chaos and there only remained some sticks of stove wood and the tracks of a cow, interspersed with the dainty little footprints of some Peri or other who evidently stepped about four yards at a lick, and could wear a number nine shoe if necessary.

Yesterday morning it was very cold, and when I went out to feed my royal self-acting hen, I found this same cow wedged into the hen coop. O, blessed opportunity! O, thrice blessed and long-sought revenge!

Now I had her where she could not back out, and I secured a large picket from the fence, and took my coat off, and breathed in a full breath. I did not want to kill her, I simply wanted to make her wish that she had died of membranous croup when she was young.

While I was spitting on my hands she seemed to catch my idea, but she saw how hopeless was her position. I brought down the picket with the condensed strength and eagerness and wrath of two long, suffering years. It struck the corner of the hen-house. There was a deafening crash and then all was still, save the low, rippling laugh of the cow, as she stood in the alley and encouraged me while I nailed up the hen-house again.

Looking back over my whole life, it seems to me that it is strewn with nothing but the rugged ruins of my busted anticipations.

THE RELENTLESS GARDEN HOSE

It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form and I do not know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week and wearing one of those large floppy sun bonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the Mountains of Hepsidam.

Water won't hurt anyone of course if care is used not to forget and drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty about facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross eyed woman that unnerves me and paralyzes me.

Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected where leaden rain and iron hail are thickest, as I would be in my own office writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I hate to be drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dry land and have my dying gaze rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a narrow-gauge mule into convulsions and make him hate himself to death.

A WAIL

To the Editor of the Bass Drum:

I appeal to the charity of more favored sisters of the east, who live in an atmosphere of music to throw a crumb of comfort to one who lives in the wilderness and has, in the past ten years, heard positively no music.

I want a list of contralto songs for the voice, compass two octaves G, in bass clef to G, above the line, treble. I should also like a list of piano solos, third or fourth grade, the Trauemerei order of music preferred. I will make any compensation desired, and forever bless my friends in need. No Name.

It is pretty sad to suffer along for ten years and not hear any music. It must seem dull and quiet, especially to one who has lived in an atmosphere of music. Ten years with no one at hand to churn up the atmosphere occasionally with something extending "from G in bass clef to G above the line treble" is a long while. But here in the "wilderness" we have to squeeze along the best way we can. We can't go and hear Ole Bull every two weeks here. Sitting Bull is about as near as we can approximate to the Bull family. It is pretty tough, and there is no denying it.

Speaking about crumbs of comfort, however, if "No Name" will drop around to the Bass Drum office, say about 12:30 to-morrow, we will attend to the crumb business. We do not, as a general rule, warble much, but if she will come around at that hour we will trill two or three little olios for "one who lives in the wilderness, and has in the past ten years heard positively no music." If we had known that she was starving along that way without five cents' worth of music to lay her jaw to, we would have hunted her up and given her a blast or two. There's nothing mean about us. We may be rough and perhaps impulsive at times, but we will never hush our merry lay so long as anybody is suffering. Always come right to us when hungry for music.

THE GREAT, HORRID MAN RECEIVETH NEW YEAR CALLS

In my Boudoir, Dec. 20, 1879.

New Year's Day will be Leap Year, and the ladies want to make calls.

The masculine man will, therefore, have to receive. Some of us will club together at private houses and receive, while others will "hire a hall" and sling a great deal of agony, no doubt. I shall be at home to some extent. I shall wear my organdy, looped up with demi-overskirt of the same, and three-ply lambrequins of Swiss, with corded edges and button-holes of elephant's breath cut plain. My panier is down at the machine shop now and will be done in a few days. I shall be assisted by Superintendent Dickinson and First Assistant Postmaster General Spalding of the Laramie post-office department, and the grand difficulty will no doubt occur at the residence of the latter.

Mr. Dickinson will wear a lavender moire antique with all wool underclothes. The costume will be draped on the side with bevel pinions, and looped back with English button-holes, and cut low in the neck.

Mr. Spalding will wear a cream-colored walking suit with train No. 4. He will also wear buttons with buttonholes to match. Sleeves cut Princesse, with polished elbows of same. Boots plain with cranberry sauce. Brocaded silk overskirt, with lemon sauce. Fifty-three button kids, fastening to the suspenders, open back, with Italian dressing.

I give these notes to the reporter in advance, because women are so apt to get these things all mixed up. After we have spent so much time constructing an elaborate wardrobe, we do not wish the journals of the Territory to come out the next day, and make each one of us appear like "a perfect dud." Our table will also look the nicest of any in town. We have designed it ourselves. We have arranged the hose so that we can play it on the dishes after we have used them, and save splashing around in hot water between meals. We intend to feed the first three or four delegations without doing any work on the dishes. After that we will of course have to turn on the hose. Visitors will be made to feel perfectly at home. Callers will be required not to spit on the floor. Parties making calls will not be allowed to throw peanut shells in the card-receiver, or leave their muddy articles on the piano. Callers will please remain seated while the frigid sustenance is circulated. No standing callers allowed. Standing collars are going out of style anyhow.

JUST THE THING

Office of The Twilight Bumble Bee.

We have just received a copy of the Nebraska Staats Zeitung-Tribune a nice little eight page German paper, published at Grand Island, Nebraska. We have not read it all through yet, but it is a mighty good paper. We do not understand much German. We are a little rusty. "Zwei glass lager" is about all the German we know, and that isn't very pure.

But this paper we like. There is a tone about it that seems to indicate a lofty conception of true journalism. A noble ambition to cope with vice and the prevailing errors of the day, and to conquer ignorance and wrong. As we said before, there are a great many things in the paper which we fail to quite "catch on" to, owing to our ignorance of the German language, but there is a picture of a cook stove on the eighth page that is first-rate. It is in the English language. There is also a picture of a wind mill, in fractured English, on the same page. It is very correct in its sentiment, and we endorse it.

In conclusion we will say that from what we have seen of this paper, we are prepared to say that it meets a want long felt. It is pure in tone, noble in politics, fearless in its attack upon the popular shortcomings of the day, and well deserving of the hearty approval of the public.

THANKS

M. E. Post, M. C., of Cheyenne, will please accept our thanks for an indestructible pumpkin pie, presented on the 9th inst. It is the most durable pie that we ever wrestled with. Probably it was not picked early enough and got too ripe. It is the first genuine cane-bottomed pie, with patent dust damper and nickle-plated movement that we have tasted since we came west. He says it was raised on the Laramie plains. If this be true, we have opened up before us another resource of which we may be justly proud. We have valuable marble quarries, but marble may be cracked and broken. We also have mountains of iron and leads of valuable quartz, but all these must yield to the superior strength of man. This style of pie, however, will defy the power of mortal ingenuity, and withstand the effacing finger of time. Men may come and men may go but this pie will last forever. We make bold to say that when Gabriel sounds the proclamation that time is no more, this blasted pie will stand up without a blush and say: "Here, Gabriel, is where you get your nice, fresh pie, and don't you forget it, either."

AN ANTI-MORMON TOWN

A Mormon missionary turned himself loose in Rawlins the other night and attempted to proselyte the good people into getting another invoice of wives to assist in taking off the chill of the approaching winter; but there was a feeling in the audience that the man who represented the church of the Latter Day Saints was a little off in addressing them, so they went to a dealer in old and rare antiquities and purchased some eggs that had a smell which is peculiar to eggs that have yielded to the infirmities of age.

The Rawlins people raised the windows on the sides of the building and broke eleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many hens were not feeling well; they broke them against the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets overleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many hens were not feeling well; they broke them against the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets over his white lawn tie and boiled shirt.

Rawlins is not strictly a Mormon town, and the lecturer who took some clothes through in a valise the other day bound for Evanston, where he could get them washed, was arrested by a New York detective who was sure he had at last caught the man who had Stewart's body.

A CHRISTMAS RIDE IN JULY

I've just returned from a long ride to the Soda Lakes.