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

Angora cloth may be fashionable, but the odor of the Angora goat is losing favor. A herd of these goats crossed the Sierra Nevadas during the autumn, and as soon as they got over the range, we knew it at Laramie just as well as we knew of the earthquake shock on the 7th instant.

The Angora goat is very quiet in other respects; but as a fragrant shrub, he certainly demands attention. A little band of Angora goats has been quartered in Laramie City lately, and though they have been well behaved, they have made them have opened the casement to let in the glorious air of heaven. In letting in the glorious air of heaven, we have in several instances let in a good deal of the mohair industry and some seductive fragrance.

There is a glowing prospect that within the next year a bone fertilizer mill, a soap emporium and a glue factory will have been started here; and now, with the Angora goat looming up in the distance with his molasses-candy horns, his erect, but tremulous and undecided tail piercing the atmosphere, and the seductive odor peculiar to this fowl, we feel that life in Wyoming will not, after all, be a hollow mockery. Heretofore we have been compelled to worry along with polygamy and the odor of the alkali flat; but times are changing now, and we will one day have all the wonderful and complicated smells of Chicago at our door. Then will the desert indeed blossom as the rose, and the mountain lion and "Billy the Kid" will lie down together.

MANIA FOR MARKING CLOTHES

THE most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel to a Boomekang man, "was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon river. He was also reserved and taciturn among the miners, and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew.

"I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed.

"He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three shots through the valise.

"After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days, they thought the most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then send the brain to New York in a baking powder can.

"So they hung him one night to the bough of a sighing mountain pine.

"The autopsy was, of course, crude; but they sawed open his head and scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to New York. By some mistake or other it got mixed up with some sample specimens of ore from 'The Brindle Tom Cat' discovery, and was sent to the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner, as was intended.

"The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved letter to the boys, saying that he was an old man anyway, and he wished they would consider his gray hairs and not try to palm off their old groceries on him. He might have made errors in his assays, perhaps – all men were more or less liable to mistakes – but he flattered himself that he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can of decomposed lobster salad, even if it was in a baking-powder can. He hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense any more, but use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old and began to totter down toward the silent tomb.

"This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty, whether he was O. K. in the upper story, or not."

REGARDING THE NOSE

THE annals of surgery contain many cases where the nose has been cut or torn off, and being replaced has grown fast again, recovering its jeopardized functions. One of the earliest, 1680, is related by the surgeon (Fioraventi) who happened to be near by when a man's nose, having been cut off, had fallen in the sand. He remarks that he took it up, washed it, replaced it, and that it grew together.

Still, this is a little bit hazardous, and in warm weather the nose might refuse to catch on. It would be mortifying in the extreme to have the nose drop off in a dish of ice-cream at a large banquet. Not only would it be disagreeable to the owner of the nose, but to those who sat near him.

He adds the address of the owner of the repaired nose, and requests any doubter to go and examine for himself. Régnault, in the Gazette Salutaire, 1714, tells of a patient whose nose was bitten off by a smuggler. The owner of the nose wrapped it in a bit of cloth and sought Régnault, who, "although the part was cold, reset it, and it became attached."

This is another instance where, by being sufficiently previous, the nose was secured and handed down to future generations. Yet, as we said before, it is a little bit risky, and a nose of that character cannot be relied upon at all times. After a nose has once seceded it cannot be expected to still adhere to the old constitution with such loyalty as prior to that change.

Although these cases call for more credulity than most of us have to spare, yet later cases, published in trustworthy journals, would seem to corroborate this. In the Clinical Annals and Medical Gazette, of Heidelberg, 1830, there are sixteen similar cases cited by the surgeon (Dr. Hofacker) who was appointed by the senate to attend the duels of the students.

It seems that during these duels it is not uncommon for a student to slice off the nose of his adversary, and lay it on the table until the duel is over. After that the surgeon puts it on with mucilage and it never misses a meal, but keeps right on growing.

The wax nose is attractive, but in a warm room it is apt to get excited and wander down into the mustache, or it may stray away under the collar, and when the proprietor goes to wipe this feature he does not wipe anything but space. A gold nose that opens on one side and is engraved, with hunter case and key wind, is attractive, especially on a bright day. The coin-silver nose is very well in its way, but rather commonplace unless designed to match the tea service and the knives and forks. In that case, good taste is repaid by admiration and pleasure on the part of the guest.

The papier-maché nose is durable and less liable to become cold and disagreeable. It is also lighter and not liable to season crack.

False noses are made of papier-maché, leather, gold, silver and wax. These last are fitted to spectacles or springs, and are difficult to distinguish from a true nose.

Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel and wore a golden one, which he attached to his face with cement, which he always carried about.

This was a good scheme, as it found him always prepared for accidents. He could, at any moment, repair to a dressing room, or even slide into an alley where he could avoid the prying gaze of the vulgar world, and glue his nose on. Of course he ran the risk of getting it on crooked and a little out of line with his other features, but this would naturally only attract attention and fix the minds of those with whom he might be called upon to converse. A man with his nose glued on wrong side up, could hold the attention of an audience for hours, when any other man would seem tedious and uninteresting.

SOMETHING TOO MUCH OF THIS

THE Pawnee Republican, of the 13th, innocently and impertinently, remarks: "Fred Nye, father of Bill Aye, the humorist, is the editor of the Omaha Republican, viceDatus Brooks, gone to Europe." —Omaha Herald.

Will the press of the country please provide us with a few more parents? Old Jim Nye and several other valuable fathers of ours having already clomb the golden elevator, we now feel like a comparative orphan. The time was when we could hold a reunion of our parents and have a pretty big time, but it's a mighty lonely thing to stand on the shores of time and see your parents whittled down to three or four young men no bigger than Fred Aye, of the Republican.

COLOR BLINDNESS

THE Paper World says there's no use talking, the newspaper men of the press are to-day becoming more and more "color blind." In other words, they have lost that subtle flavor of description for which the public yearns. They have missed that wonderful spice and aroma of narration which is the life of all newspaper work.

We do not take this to ourself at all, but we desire before we say one word, to make a few remarks. The Boomerang has been charged with erring on the other side and coloring things a little too high. Sir Garnet Wolseley, in a private letter to us during the late Egyptian assault and battery, stated that if we erred at all it was on the highly colored side.

There is an excuse for lack of spice and all that sort of thing in the newspaper world. The men who write for our dailies, as a rule, have to write about two miles per day, and they ought not to be kicked if it is not as interesting as "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or "Leaves o' Grass."

We have done some 900 miles of writing ourself during our short, sharp and decisive career, and we know what we are talking about. Those things we wrote at a time when we were spreading our graceful characters over ten acres of paper per day, were not thrilling. They did not catch the public eye, but were just naturally consigned to oblivion's bottomless maw.

Read that last sentence twice; it will do you no harm.

The public, it seems to us, has created a false standard of merit for the newspaper. People take a big daily and pay $10 per year for it because it is the biggest paper in the world, and then don't read a quarter of it. They are doing a smart thing, no doubt, but it is killing the feverish young men with throbbing brains, who are doing the work. Would you consider that a large pair of shoes or a large wife should be sought for just because you can get more material for the same price? Not much, Mary Ann!

Excellence is what we seek, not bulk. Write better things and less of them, and you will do better, and the public will be pleased to see the change.

Should anyone who reads these words be suffering from an insatiable hunger for a paper that aims at elegance of diction, high-toned logic and pink cambric sentiment, at a moderate price, he will do well to call at this office and look over our goods. Samples sent free on application, to any part of the United States or Europe. We refer to Herbert Spencer, the Laramie National Bank, and the postmaster of this city, as to our reputation for truth and veracity.

A LITTLE PREVIOUS

SPEAKING of elections and returns, brings back to our memory the time when it was pretty close in a certain congressional district in Wisconsin, where W. T. Price is now putting up a job on the Democrats.

In those days returns didn't come in by telegraph, but on horseback and on foot, and it was annoying to wait for figures by which to determine the result. At Hudson the politicians had made a pretty close estimate, but were waiting, one evening after election, at a saloon on Buckeye street, for something definite from Eau Claire county. The session was very dull, and to cheer up the little Spartan hand some one suggested that old Judge Wetherby ought to "set 'em up." Judge Wetherby was a staunch old Democrat and had rigidly treated himself for twenty years, and just as rigidly refused to treat anybody else. The result was that he had secured a vigorous bloom on his own nose, but had never put the glass to his neighbor's lips. He intimated on this occasion, however, that if he could get encouraging news from Eau Claire for the Democrats, he would turn loose. The party waited until midnight, and had just decided to go home, when a travel-worn horseman rode up to the door. He was very reticent, and as he was a stranger, no one seemed to want to open up a conversation with him, till at last Judge Wetherby, who couldn't keep the great question of politics out of his mind, asked him what part of the country he had come from. "Just got in from Eau Claire county," was the reply.

"How did Eau Claire county go?" was the Judge's next question. "O, I don't pay no attention to politics, but they told me it went 453 majority for the Democrats."

Thereupon the judge threw his hat in the air and for the first and last time in his life, treated the entire crowd of Republicans and Democrats alike. It was very late when he went home, also very late when he got down town the next day.

When he did come down he was surprised to find a Republican brass band out, and the news all over the city that the Republican candidate had been elected by several hundred majority. In the afternoon he learned that Hod Taylor, now clergyman to Marseilles, had hired a tramp to ride into the Buckeye saloon the previous evening and report as stated, in order to bring about a good state of feeling on the Judge's part. Judge Wetherby, since that time, is regarded as the most skeptical Democrat in that congressional district, and even if he were to be assured over and over again that his party was victorious, he would still doubt. It is such things as these that go a long way toward encouraging a feeling of distrust between the parties, and causes politicians to be looked upon with great mistrust..

Although Mr. Taylor is now in France attending to the affairs of his government, and trying to become familiar with the French language, he often pauses in his work as the memory of this little incident comes over his mind, and a hot tear falls on the report he is making out to send on to the Secretary of State at Washington. Can it be that his hard heart is at last touched with remorse?

IS DUELING MURDER?

SOMEBODY wants to know whether dueling is murder, and we reply in clarion tones that it depends largely on how fatal it is. Dueling with monogram note paper, at a distance of 1,200 yards, is not murder.

HEAP GONE

ANOTHER land-mark of Laramie has gone. Another wreck has been strewn upon the sands of time. Another gay bark has gone to pieces upon the cruel rocks, and above the broken spars and jib-boom, and foretop gallant royal mainbrace, and spanker-boom euchre deck, the cold, damp tide is moaning.

We refer to L. W. Shroeder, who recently left this place incog., also in debt, largely, to various people of this gay and festive metropolis.

Laramie has been the home, at various times, of some of the most classical dead-beats of modern times; but Shroeder was the noblest, the most grand and colossal of dead-beats that has ever visited our shores. Born with unusual abilities in this direction, he early learned how to enlarge and improve upon the talents thus bestowed upon him, and here in Laramie, he soon won a place at the front as a man who purchased everything and paid for nothing. He had a way of approaching the grocer and the merchant that was well calculated to deceive, and he did, in several instances, make representations, which we now learn, were false.

He was, by profession, a carpenter and joiner, having learned the art while cutting cordwood on the Missouri bottoms, near Omaha, for the Collins Brothers. Here he rapidly won his way to the front rank, by erecting some of the most commanding architectural ruins of which modern wood assassination can boast. He would take a hatchet and a buck-saw and carve out his fortune anywhere in the world, and it wouldn't cost him a cent. He filled this whole trans-Missouri country with his fame, and his promissory notes, and then skinned out and left us here to mourn.

Good-bye, Shroeder. Wherever you go, we will remember you and hope that you may succeed in piling up a monument of indebtedness as you did here. You were industrious and untiring in your efforts to become a great financial wreck, and success has crowned your efforts. We will not grudge you the glory that coagulates about your massive brow.

THE EDITORIAL LAMP

THERE is something unique about an editor's lamp that, enables most anyone to select it from a large number of other lamps. It is sui generis and extremely original. The large metropolitan papers use gas in the editorial rooms, and make up for the loss of the kerosene lamp by furnishing their offices with some other article of furniture that is equally attractive.

The Boomerang lamp, especially during the election, has had its intensity wonderfully softened and toned down through various causes. You can take most any other lamp and trim the wick so that it will burn squarely and not smoke; but the editorial lamp is peculiar in this respect. The wick gets so it will burn straight when you find that it does not burn the oil. Then you get it filled and put in a new wick. Experimenting with this you get your fingers perfumed with coal oil, and spill some in your lap. Then you turn it up so you can see, and as you get a flow of thought you look up to find that you have smutted up your chimney, and you murmur something that you are glad no one is near to hear. When our life-record is made up and handed down to posterity, if a generous people will kindly overlook the remarks we have made over our lamp, and also the little extemporaneous statements made at picnics, we will do as much for the public and make this thing as near even as possible.

DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY

A DEAD fisherman was taken to the San Francisco morgue the other day, with nothing by which to identify him but his fish fine. There may be features of difference between fish lines, but as a rule there is a long, tame sweep of monotony about them which confuses the authorities in tracing a man's antecedents.

THE MAROON SAUSAGE

THE maroon sausage will be in favor this winter, as was the case last season in our best circles. It will be caught up at the end and tied in a plain knot with strings of the same.

TESTIMONIALS OF REGARD

FRIDAY was a large day in the office of this paper. A delegation, consisting of Ed. Walsh and J. J. Clarke, train dispatchers of this division of the Union Pacific road, waited on the editor hereof with two tokens of their esteem. One, consisting of a bird that had been taxidermed at Wyoming station by the agent, Mr. Gulliher, the great corn-canner of the west, aided by another man who has, up to this date, evaded the authorities. As soon as he is captured, his name will be given to the public. The bird is mainly constructed on the duck plan, with web feet and spike tail. The material gave out, however, and the artist was obliged to complete the bird by putting an eagle's head on him. This gives the winged king of birds a low, squatty and plebian cast of countenance, and bothers the naturalist in determining its class and in diagnosing the case. With the piercing, keen eye of the eagle, and the huge Roman nose peculiar to that bird, coupled with the pose of the duck, we have a magnificent combination in the way of an ornithological specimen. Science would be tickled to death to wrestle with this feathered anomaly.

The eagle looks as though he would like to soar first-rate if it were not for circumstances over which he has no control, while the other portions of his person would suggest that he would be glad to paddle around an hour or two in the yielding-mud. We have placed this singular circumstance where he can look down upon us in a reproachful way, while we write abstruse articles upon the contiguity of the hence.

The same committee also presented a bottle of what purported to be ginger ale. It was wrapped up in a newspaper, and the cork was held in place by a piece of copper wire. As we do not drink anything whatever now, we presented it to the composing room, and told the boys to sail in and have a grand debauch.

Generosity is always rewarded, sooner or later. The office boy took it into the composing room and partially opened it. Then it opened itself, with a loud report that shook the dome of The Boomerang office, and pied a long article on yellow fever in Texas. Almost immediately after it opened itself, it escaped into space. At least it filled the space box of one of the cases full.

There was only about a spoonful left in the bottle, and no one felt as though he wanted to rob the rest, so it stands there yet. If Mr. Gulliher could put up his goods in such shape as to avoid this high degree of effervescence, he would succeed; but in canning corn and bottling beer, he has so far put too much vigor into the goods, and when you open them, they escape almost immediately.

While we are grateful for the kind and thoughtful spirit shown, we regret that we were unable to test the merits of the beverage without collecting it from the sky, where it now is.

It looks to us as though some day Mr. Gulliher, while engaged in canning and bottling some of his gaseous goods, would be lifted over into the middle of the holidays, and we warn him against being too reckless, or he will certainly meander through the atmosphere sometime, and the place that knew him once will know him no more forever.

About two o'clock the following special was received:

[Special to the Boomerang.]

"[D. H. acct. charity.]

"Wyoming, October 27.

"Dear Bill Nye:

"We made the run from Laramie to Wyoming in one hour. Gulliher says, do not open that bottle; it might go off. He sent you the wrong bottle by mistake. It is a preparation for annihilating tramps, and produces instant dissolution. We, after careful inquiry and rigid investigation, find that the bird is filled with dynamite, nitroglycerine, etc. – in fact is an 'infernal machine,' and is set to go off at 3:30 this P.M."

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. He may work and walk around over the building all day to set up a stick full, and then half the people in this county couldn't read it, after all.

"Clarke, Potter and Walsh."

SNOWED UNDER

W E have met the enemy, and we are his'n.

We have made our remarks, and we are now ready to listen to the gentleman from New York. We could have dug out, perhaps, and explained about New York, but when almost every state in the Union rose up and made certain statements yesterday, we found that the job of explaining this matter thoroughly, would be wearisome and require a great deal of time.

We do not blame the Democracy for this. We are a little surprised, however, and grieved. It will interfere with our wardrobe this winter. With an overcoat on Wyoming, a plug hat on Iowa, a pair of pantaloons on Pennsylvania, and boots on the general result, it looks now as though we would probably go through the winter wrapped in a bed-quilt, and profound meditation.

We intended to publish an extra this morning, but the news was of such a character, that we thought we would get along without it. What was the use of publishing an extra with a Republican majority only in Red Buttes.

The cause of this great Democratic freshet in New York yesterday – but why go into details, we all have an idea why it was so. The number of votes would seem to indicate that there was a tendency toward Democracy throughout the State.

Now, in Pennsylvania, if you will look over the returns carefully – but why should we take up your valuable time offering an explanation of a political matter of the past.