Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

I took the liberty of extending to Her Majesty the freedom of the city, and asked her to visit our pressrooms and see us squat our burning thoughts into a quarter of a million copies of the paper, and all for two cents.

I also asked her to come up any time and read our Hawaii exchanges, for I know how lonely anybody can be in a great city sometimes, and how one yearns for a glimpse of his country paper.

The Queen is well paid while she reigns; and even while away as she is now, with her scepter standing idly in the umbrella rack at home, and a large pink mosquito net thrown over the throne, her pay is still going on night and dav.

The above is substantially all that I said during the interview, though the Queen said something as I came out of the room, escorted by the janitor, which I did not quite catch.

I did say, however, just before leaving the room, that I regretted sincerely the unfortunate time of the year at which Her Majesty had decided to visit us, it being rather between hay and grass, as it were, for as there was no r in the month it was a little too late for missionaries and a little too early for watermelons.

It was-only an instant later that I joined the janitor at the foot of the stairs.

This evening the Queen will visit the Casino and see Mr. Wilson try for the three hundred and eighty-second time to restrain the flowing leg of his green plush pantaloons.

A WORD OF EXPLANATION

For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which lays "tylfritu3dp" or something of that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor may or may not indorse the sentiments therein enunciated.

CHESTNUT-BURR – THE HUMORIST INTERVIEWS HIS GRACE THE DUKE IN THE IMPROVED STYLE

Newport, Sept. 8.

I have just terminated a pleasant call upon the Duke of Marbro at his lodgings. I write his name Marbro because that is the way we pronounce it here at Newport. In the language of my ostensibly colored friend, Mr. Rankin, the amateur pronouncer would call it Marl-bor-ough, with three grunts, while in fact Marbro, the correct pronunciation of the name, is executed with but one grunt.

I found the Duke seated on a low ottoman, clad in a loosely fitting costume of pajamas. It was so loose and negligé that it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if his mother made it for him out of his father's old pajamas; but I suddenly remembered that I was in Newport, and not in Tombstone, Arizona, and I restrained myself.

The Duke is suffering from a slight cold, which he contracted for during the early part of the week. It resulted from his ignorance of our changeable and freckle-minded climate. On Tuesday he took a long stroll, and while several miles from his lodgings and wearing his light summer cane, he was overtaken by a severe and sudden change in the temperature. The Marbros are not a strong race, and I am told that one of the Duke's second cousins died of pneumonia from exposing himself to the severity of a Christmas-day frolic clad in an autumn cane.

The Duke rose languidly as I entered, and, taking a reef in his pajamas clothes, looked at me in an inquiring way which betokened that, though of lineage high, he was not entirely at his ease in my presence.

"Duke," said I, standing my umbrella up in the corner to show my childlike confidence in him, "how's your conduct?"

In five minutes afterwards I would have given worlds if I could have recalled my rash words. I did not mean anything more than to utter a piece of pleasantry, for I am passionately fond of pleasantry even in society; but Marbro seemed to take it to heart and to feel distressed. He made a low, guttural sound, but his reply seemed to die away in the mansard roof of his mouth. He stammered out something which sounded like the wail of a damned soul. At least it struck me to be like that, although my lot has not been cast among that class of souls since I got out of politics, and I may have forgotten their style of wail.

To hide his embarrassment, Marbro "rosined" his eye and put a large glass paper weight in it. He then regarded me with some amazement through this piece of brick-a-brac, while I poured out a grown person's dose of Rectified Ruin which stood on the escritoire and drank it with a keen relish, which showed that I trusted him implicitly. Everything I did was done to make Marbro forget himself and feel at his ease.

I told him I had known the Marbros in Maine ever since I was a boy; that we didn't feel above them then, and it would be a poor time to begin now at my time of life to look down on people just because I now wrote pieces for the paper, many of which were afterwards printed. We always thought that the Marbros, or Marlboroughs, of Maine, got their name from burrowing in the marl along the Piscataquis, I said.

Thus I chatted on with him for an hour or two without seeming to chirk him up at all. "Duke," said I at last, "I know what the matter must be with you – you are socially ostracized. I knew it as soon as I came into the room. You cannot disguise it from me. You are suffering from social ostracism, and it is breaking you down. The social demands made by America upon an imported social wreck do not give said wreck time to eat his meals and obtain a necessary amount of rest. I suppose there is nowhere in the world a climate that is so trying on a person suffering from social ostracism as that of my native land. In other climes they give a social outcast rest, but here he gets absolutely no rest whatever."

I then drifted into society chat in a graceful and naïve way which, with others, has never failed to melt the stoniest heart. I told him that I had understood, since I came to Newport, that the demands of society here were so unrelenting that they had kept Mr. and Mrs. Mayonnaise dressing all the time.

A long pause ensued here, during which I could hear Marbro's reason tottering on its throne. After waiting three-quarters of an hour, by my watch, and failing to see that my remark had shed even a ray of sunshine, where erstwhile all was gloom and chaos, I gave him my address and told him that if, in the future, he ever derived any beneficial effects from the above joke, I would be glad to have him communicate with me. And even if I were to die before he could truly say that he had been benefited by this joke and grapple with its keen, incisive nub, my grandchildren would be tickled almost to death to know that he had taken it to pieces and put it together again and found out how it was built and laugh at its ingenious mechanism.

I conversed with the Duke some time about the way his visit to Newport had depressed the price of real estate, and offered him the freedom of New York, hoping that he could depress the price of real estate there so that I could buy some.

"But," said I, assuming an air of perfect repose, as I flung myself on a low couch in such a way as to give a faint view of my new red socks, "you will find it different in New York. Social ostracism there will not materially affect the price of real estate in the neighborhood of the postoffice. In fact, Marbro," said I, regarding him earnestly for a moment through the bottom of a cut-glass tumbler, "there is not enough English social ostracism in New York to supply the demand. Come to our young and thriving town, a town that is rich in resources and liabilities; a town that threatens to rival Omaha as a railroad center; a town where a B. and O. deal has been a common occurrence every day for over a year; a town where you can ride on the elevated trains and get yourself pinched in the iron gate by the guard or go down to Wall street and get pinched by the directors; a town where a man like Henry S. Ives can buy about seven million dollars' worth of stuff that he can't pay for, while a poor man who goes into a general store to buy a pair of ear muffs is followed up by a private detective for fear he may run his finger into the molasses barrel and then lick it syruptitiously. Come on, Duke," said I, growing more talkative as the fumes of his fifty-two dollar liquor rose to my surprised and delighted brains; "come on to New York and mix up with us, and get on to our ways."

"See Fulton market by midnight, bite off a piece of atmosphere from Castle Garden, and come with me to see Guiteau's head in the museum. Guiteau was the last of a long line of assassins. He prophesied that everyone connected with his trial would come to a bad end. Quite a number of those connected with this celebrated trial are already dead, and more especially Mr. Guiteau himself, whose skeleton is in the Smithsonian Institution, his viscera in the Potomac, and his head in a jar of alcohol. If you will come to New York, Marbro, you will have a good time, and the rose geraniums will come back to your pallid and durable cheek.

"If you will give us a whirl, Duke," said I, selecting an umbrella from the decorated crock in the hall and coming back to where he still sat, "you will be pleased and gratified with us; and if you can spare time to come over and see me personally I would try to be as cordial and chatty as you have been with me. No man ever entertained me as you have, or sat and examined me through the bottom of an old microscope for two hours, to be forgotten again by me. Marbro, if you will come to New York, we will go and visit anybody's tomb that you may designate."

I then let myself out of the house with an adjustable pass-key and hastened away. Shortly after I got back to my own lodgings, sometimes called a room, a lackey from the Duke, wearing a livery-colored lively, handed me a note from Marbro, in which he said he hoped that in case I used this interview for publication I would be careful to give his exact language.

In my poor, weak way, I think I have done so.

THE CHINESE COMPOSITOR

The Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do, but must walk from one case to another constantly, as the characters needed cover such a large number, that they cannot be put into anything like the space used in the English newspaper office. In setting up an ordinary piece of manuscript, the Chinese printer will waltz up and down the room for a few moments, and then go down stairs for a line of lower case. Then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story after some caps, and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of astonishers. The successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very intelligent, but he must be a good pedestrian.

THE TRUE AMERICAN

The true American would rather work himself into luxury or the lunatic asylum than to hang like a great wart upon the face of nature.

CHESTNUT-BURR – XII "THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT."

The following speech of Sitting Bull has been specially translated and reported by our Indian editor, who is also wholesale and retail dealer in deceased languages, and general agent for home-made Sioux rhetoric and smoke-tanned Indian eloquence. New laid Indian laments with bead trimmings. Compiler of novel and desirable styles of war dances. Indian eloquence furnished to debating clubs and publishers of school readers:

"Warriors and war-scarred veterans of the frontier; Once more the warpath is overgrown with bunch grass, and the tomahawk slumbers in the wigwam of the red man. Grim-visaged war has given place to the piping times of peace. The cold and cruel winter is upon lus. It has been upon us for some time.

"The wail of departed spirits is on the night wind, and the wail of the man with the chilblain answers back from the warrior's wigwam.

"Children of the forest, we are few. Where once the shrill war-whoop of the chieftain collected our tribe like the leaves of the forest, I might now yell till the cows come home without bringing out a quorum.

"We are fading away before the march of the paleface, and sinking into oblivion like the snowflake on the bosom of the Stinking Water.

"Warriors, I am the last of a mighty race. We were a race of chieftains. Alas! we will soon begone. The Bull family will soon pass from the face of the earth. Ole is gone, and John is failing, and I don't feel very well myself. We are the victims of the paleface, and our lands are taken away.

"A few more suns, and the civilization, and valley tan, and hand made sour mash, and horse liniment of the paleface will have done their deadly work.

"Our squaws and pappooses are scattered to the four winds of heaven; and we are left desolate.

"Where is The-Daughter-of-the-Tempest? Where is The-Wall-Eyed-Maiden-With-the-Peeled-Nose?

"Where is Victoria Regina Dei Gracia Sitting Bull? Where is Knock-Kneed Chemiloon? Where are Sway-Back Sue and Meek-Eyed Government Socks?

"They have sunk beneath the fire-waters of the goggle-eyed Caucasian. They have succumbed to the delirum triangles, and when I call them they come not. They do not hear my voice. Their moans are heard upon the still night air, and they cry for revenge. Look at the sad remnant of the family of Sitting Bull, your chief. One sore-eyed squaw is left alone. Her face is furrowed o'er with the famine of many winters, and her nose is only the ruin of its former greatness. Her moccasins are worn out, and the soldier pants she wears are too long for her. She is drunk also. She is not as drunk as she can get, but she is hopeful and persevering. She has also learned to lie like the white man. She is now an easy, extemporaneous liar. When we gather around the campfire and enact our untutored lies in the gloaming, Lucretia Borgia Skowhegan Sitting Bull, with the inspiration of six fingers of agency coffin varnish, proceeds to tell the prize prevarication, and then the house adjourns, and nothing can be heard but the muffled tread of the agency corn beef, going out to get some fresh air. Lucretia Borgia is also becoming slovenly. It is evening, and yet she has not donned her evening dress. Her back hair is unkempt, and her front hair is unbung. Pretty soon I will take a tomahawk and bang it for her. She seems despondent and hopeless. As she leans against the trunk of a mighty oak and scratches her back, you can see that her thoughts are far away. Her other suspender is gone, but she don't care a cold, smooth clam. She is thinking of her childhood days by the banks of Minnehaha.

"Warriors, we stand in the moccasins of a mighty nation. We represent the starving remnant of the once powerful Sioux. Our pirogue stands idly on the shore. I don't know what a pirogue is, but it stands idly on the shore.

"When the spring flowers bloom again, and the grass is green upon the plains, we will once more go upon the warpath. We will avenge the wrongs of our nation. I have not fully glutted my vengeance. I have seven or eight more gluts on hand, and we will shout our war-cry once more, and mutilate some more Anglo-Saxons. We will silence the avenging cries of our people. We will spatter the green grass and gray greasewood with the gore of the paleface, and feed the white-livered emigrant to the coyote. We will spread death and desolation everywhere, and fill the air with gum overshoes and remains. Let us yield up our lives clearly while we mash the paleface beyond recognition, and shoot his hired man so full of holes that he will look like a suspension bridge.

"Warriors, there is our hunting ground. The buffalo, the antelope, the sage hen and the jackass rabbit are ours. Ours to enjoy, ours to perpetuate, ours to transmit. The Great Spirit created these animals for the red man, and not for the bilious tourists, between whose legs the chestnut sunlight penetrates clear up to his collar bone."

"Then we will ride down on the regular army, when he is thinking of something else, and we will scare him into convulsions, and our medicine men will attend to the convulsions while we sample the supplies.

"Then we will take some cold sliced Indian agent and some bay rum, and go on a picnic.

"Warriors, farewell. Be virtuous and you will be happy; but you will be lonesome, sometimes. Think of what I have said to you about the council fire, and govern yourselves accordingly, We will not murmur at the celluloid cracker and cast iron codfish ball, but in the spring we will have veal cutlets for breakfast, and peace commissioner on toast for dinner. The squaw of Sitting Bull shall have a new plug hat, and if the weather is severe, she shall have two of them.