Baled Hay. A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's «Leaves o' Grass»

YOUNG man, do not stand lounging on the threshold of the glorious future, while the coming years are big with possibilities, but take off your coat and spit on your hands and win the wealth which the world will yield you. You may not be able to write a beautiful poem, and die of starvation; but you can go to work humbly as a porter and buy a whisk broom, and wear people's clothes out with it, and in five years you can go to Europe in your own special car. As the strawberry said to the box, "there is always room at the top."

INACCURATE

ONCE more has Laramie been, slandered and traduced. Once more our free and peculiar style has been spoken lightly of and our pride trailed in the dust.

Last week the Police Gazette, an illustrated family journal of great merit, appeared with a half page steel engraving, executed by one of the old masters, representing two Laramie girls on horseback yanking a fly drummer along the street at a gallop, because he tried to make a mash on them and they did not yearn for his love.

There are two or three little errors in the illustration, to which we desire to call the attention of the eastern reader of Michael Angelo masterpieces that appear in the Police Gazette. First, the saloon or hurdy-gurdy shown in the left foreground is not the exact representation of any building in Laramie, and the dobe pig pens and A tents of which the town seems to be composed, are not true to nature.

Again, the streets do not look like the streets of Laramie. They look more like the public thoroughfares of Tie City or Jerusalem. Then the girls do not look like Laramie girls, and we are acquainted with all the girls in town, and consider ourself a judge of those matters. The girls in this illustration look too much as though they had mingled a great deal with the people of the world. They do not have that shy, frightened and pure look that they ought to have. They appear to be that kind of girls that one finds in the crowded metropolis under the gas light, yearning to get acquainted with some one.

There are several features of the illustration which we detect as erroneous, and among the rest we might mention, casually, that the incident illustrated never occurred here at all. Aside from these little irregularities above named, the picture is no doubt a correct one. We realize fully that times get dull even in New York sometimes, and it is necessary, occasionally, to draw on the imagination, but the Gazette artist ought to pick up some hard town like Cheyenne, and let us alone awhile.

THE WESTERN "CHAP."

FEW know how voraciously we go for anything in the fashion line. Many of our exchanges are fashion magazines, and nothing is read with such avidity as these highly pictorial aggregations of literature. If there are going to be any changes in the male wardrobe this winter, it behooves us to know what they are. We intend to do so. It is our high prerogative and glorious privilege to live in a land of information. If we do not provide ourself with a few, it is our own fault. Man has spanned the ocean with an electric cable, and runs his street cars with another cable that puts people out of their misery as quick as a giant-powder caramel in a man's chest-protector, under certain circumstances. Science has done almost everything for us, except to pay our debts without leaning toward repudiation. We are making rapid strides in the line of progression. That is, the scientists are. Every little while you can hear a scientist burst a basting thread off his overalls, while making a stride.

It is equally true that we are marching rapidly along in the line of fashion. Change, unceasing change, is the war cry, and he who undertakes to go through the winter with the stage costumes of the previous winter, will find, as Voltaire once said, that it is a cold day.

We look with great concern upon the rapid changes which a few weeks have made. The full voluptuous swell and broad cincha of the chaparajo have given place to the tight pantaletts with feathers on them, conveying the idea that they cannot be removed until death, or an earthquake shall occur..

"Chaps," as they are vulgarly called, deserve more than a passing notice. They are made of leather with fronts of dog-skin with the hair on. The inside breadths are of calf or sheep-skin, made plain, but trimmed down the side seam with buckskin bugles and oil-tanned bric-a-brac of the time of Michael Angelo Kelley. On the front are plain pockets used for holding the ball programme and the "pop." The pop is a little design in nickel and steel, which is often used as an inhaler. It clears out the head, and leaves the nasal passages and phrenological chart out on the sidewalk, where pure air is abundant. "Chaps" are rather attractive while the wearer is on horseback, or walking toward you, but when he chasses and "all waltz to places," you discern that the seat of the garment has been postponed sine die. This, at first, induces a pang in the breast of the beholder. Later, however, you become accustomed to the barren and perhaps even stern demeanor of the wearer. You gradually gain control of yourself and master your raging desire to rush up and pin the garment together. The dance goes on. The elite take an adult's dose of ice-cream and other refreshments; the leader of the mad waltz glides down the hall with his mediæval "chaps," swishing along as he sails; the violin gives a last shriek; the superior fiddle rips the robe of night wide open, with a parting bzzzzt; the mad frolic is over, and $5 have gone into the dim and unfrequented freight depot of the frog-pond-environed past.

AN INCIDENT OF THE CAMPAIGN

COLONEL THOMAS JUNIUS DAYTON entered the democratic headquarters on Second street, a few nights ago, having been largely engaged, previously, in talking over the political situation, with sugar in it. The first person he saw on entering, was an individual in the back part of the room, writing.

Colonel Dayton ordered him out.

The man would not go, maintaining that he had a right to meet together in democratic headquarters as often as he desired. The Colonel still insisted that he was an outsider and could have nothing in common with the patriotic band of bourbons whose stamping ground he had thus entered.

Finally the excitement became so great that a man was called in to umpire the game and sponge off the hostiles, but before blood was shed a peacemaker asked Colonel Dayton what the matter was with him.

"This man is a Democrat. I've known him for years. What's the reason you don't want him in here?"

"That's all right," said the Colonel, with his eyes starting from their sockets with indignation, "you people can be easily fooled. I cannot. I know him to be a spy in our camp. I have smelled his breath and find he is not up in the Ohio degree. I have also discovered him to be able to read and write. He cannot answer a single democratic test. He is a bogus bourbon, and my sentiments are that he should be gently but firmly fired. If the band will play something in D that is kind of tremulous, I will take off my coat and throw the gentleman over into a vacant lot. I think I know a Democrat when I see him. Perhaps you do not. He cannot respond to a single grand hailing sign. He hasn't the cancelled internal revenue stamp on his nose, and his breath lacks that spicy election odor which we know so well. Away with him! Fling his palpitating remains over the drawbridge and walk on him. Spread him out on the ramparts and jam him into the culverin. Those are my sentiments. We want no electroplate Democrats here. This is the stronghold of the highly aesthetic and excessively bon-ton, Andrew Jackson peeler, and if justice cannot be done to this usurper by the party, I shall have to go out and get an infirm hoe handle and administer about $9 worth of rebuke myself."

He went out after the hoe handle, and while absent, the stranger said he didn't want to be the cause of any ill feeling, or to stand in the way of the prosperity of his party, so he would not remain. He put on his hat and stole out into the night, a quiet martyr to the blind rage of Colonel Dayton, and has not since been seen.

WHY DO THEY DO IT?

BEN HILL, died, after suffering intolerable anguish from a tobacco cancer, caused by excessive smoking. The consumers of the western-made cigar are now and then getting a nice little dose of leprosy from the Chinese constructed cigars of San Francisco, and yet people go right on inviting the most horrible diseases known to science, by smoking, and smoking to excess. Why do they do it? It is one of those deep, dark mysteries that nothing but death can unravel. We cannot fathom it, that's certain. (Give us a light, please.)

TWO STYLES

ONE of the peculiarities of correspondence is witnessed at this office every day, to which we desire to call the attention of our growing girls and boys, who ought to know that there is a long way and a short way of saying things on paper; a right way and a wrong way to express thoughts on a postal card, just as there is in conversation. We all admire the business man who is terse and to the point, and we dislike the man who hangs on to the door knob as though life was a never-ending summer dream, and refuses to say good-bye. It's so with correspondence. In touching upon the letters received at this office, we refer to a car load received at this office during the past year, relating to sample copies. Still they are a good specimen of the different styles of doing the same thing.

For instance, here is a line which tells the story in brief, without wearing out your eyes and days by ponderous phrases and useless verbiage. "Useless verbiage and frothy surplusage" is a synonym which we discovered in '75, while excavating for the purpose of laying the foundations of our imposing residence up the gulch. Persons using the same will please fork over ten per cent of the gross receipts:

"Bangor, Maine, 11-10-82.

"Find 10c for which send sample copy Boomerang to above address. Yours, etc.,

"Thomas Billings."

Some would have said "please" find inclosed ten cents. That is not absolutely necessary. If you put ten cents in the letter that covers all seeming lack of politeness and it's all right. If, however, you are out of a job, and have nothing else to do but to write for sample copies of papers, and wait for the department at Washington to allow you a pension, you might say, "Please find inclosed," etc., otherwise the ten cents will make it all right.

Here's another style, which evinces a peculiarity we do not admire. It bespeaks the man who thinks that life and its associations are given us in order to wear out the time, waiting patiently meanwhile for Gabriel to render his little overture.

It occurs to us that life is real, life is earnest, and so forth. We cannot sit here in the gathering gloom and read four pages of a letter, which only expresses what ought to have been expressed in four lines. We feel that we are here to do the greatest good to the greatest-number, and we dislike the correspondent who hangs on to the literary door knob, so to speak, and absorbs our time, which is worth $5.35 per hour.

Here we go —

"New Centreville, Wis., Nov. 8, 1882.

"Mr. William Nye, esq., Laramie City, Wyoming:

"Dear Sir: – I have often saw in our home papers little pieces cut out of your paper The Larmy Boomerang, yet I have never saw the paper itself. I hardly pick up a paper, from the Fireside. Friend to the Christian at Work, that I do not see something or a nother from your faseshus pen and credited to The Boomerang. I have asked our bookstore for a copy of the paper, and he said go to grass, there wasn't no such perioddickle in existence. He is a liar; but I did not tell him so because I am just recovering from a case of that kind now, which swelled both eyes shet and placed me under the doctor's care.

"It was the result of a campaign lie, and at this moment I do not remember whether it was the other man or me which told it. Things got confused and I am not clear on the matter now.

"I send ten cents in postage stamps, hoping you will favor me with a speciment copy of The Boomerang and I may suscribe. I send postage stamps because they are more convenient to me, and I suppose that you can use them all right as you must have a good deal of writing to do. I intend to read the paper thorrow and give my folks the benefit also. I love to read humerrus pieces to my children and my wife and hear their gurgly laugh well up like a bobollink's. I now take an estern paper which is gloomy in its tendencies, and I call it the Morg. It looks at the dark side of life and costs $3 a year and postage.

"So send the speciment if you please and I will probbly suscribe for The Boomerang, as I have saw a good many extrax from it in our papers here and I have not as yet saw your paper."

GOSHALLHEMLOCK SALVE

THE bullwacking, mule-skinning proprieter of a life-giving salve wants us to advertise for him, and to state that, with his Goshallhemlock salve he "can cure all chronicle diseases whatever."

"We would do it if we could, sweet being; but owing to the fullness of the paper and the foreman, we must turn you cruelly away.

"Yours truly,

"James Letson."

THE STAGE BALD-HEAD

MOST everyone, who was not born blind, knows that the stage bald-head is a delusion and a snare. The only all-wool, yard-wide bald-head we remember on the American stage, is that of Dunstan Kirke as worn by the veteran Couldock.

Effie Ellsler wears her own hair and so does Couldock, but Couldock wears his the most. It is the most worn anyhow.

What we started out to say, is, that the stage bald-head and the average stage whiskers make us weary with life. The stage bald-head is generally made of the internal economy of a cow, dried so that it shines, and cut to fit the head as tightly as a potatoe sack would naturally fit a billiard cue. It is generally about four shades whiter than the red face of the wearer, or vice versa. We do not know which is the worst violation of eternal fitness, the red-faced man who wears a deathly white bald-head, or the pale young actor who wears a florid roof on his intellect. Sometimes in starring through the country and playing ten or fifteen hundred engagements, a bald-head gets soiled. We notice that when a show gets to Laramie the chances are that the bald-head of the leading old man is so soiled that he really needs a sheep-dip shampoo. Another feature of this accessory of the stage is its singular failure to fit. It is either a little short at both ends, or it hangs over the skull in large festoons, and wens and warts, in such a way as to make the audience believe that the wearer has dropsy of the brain.

You can never get a stage bald-head near enough like nature to fool the average house-fly. A fly knows in two moments whether it is the genuine, or only a base imitation, and the bald-head of the theatre fills him with nausea and disgust. Nature, at all times hard to imitate, preserves her bald head as she does her sunny skies and deep blue seas, far beyond the reach of the weak, fallible, human imitator. Baldness is like fame, it cannot be purchased. It must be acquired. Some men may be born bald, some may acquire baldness, and others may have baldness thrust upon them, but they generally acquire it.

"The stage beard is also rather dizzy, as a rule. It looks as much like a beard that grew there, as a cow's tail would if tied to the bronze dog on the front porch. When you tie a heavy black beard on a young actor, whose whole soul would be churned up if he smoked a full-fledged cigar, he looks about as savage as a bowl of mush and milk struck with a club."

FATHERLY WORDS