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

Throwing a heterogeneous mass of dogs together in that way, and all of them total strangers to each other, in the natural course of things creates something of a disturbance, and that was the result in this case. When the secretary arrived, the dogs were holding a session with closed doors. The presiding officer had lost control, and a surging crowd of yellow dogs had the floor. Only one dog was excepted. He was struggling with all his strength against the most collossal attack of colic that ever convulsed a pale, yellow dog. Just as he would get to feeling kind of comfortable, a spasm would catch him on the starboard quarter and his back would hump itself like a 1,000-legged worm, and with such force as to thump the floor with the stumpy tail of the demoralized dog and jar the bric-a-brac on the brackets and what-nots of the Secretary of Wyoming Territory.

Just then the secretary arrived. He was whistling a trill or two from the "Turkish Patrol," when he got within earshot of the convention. Several people met him and asked him what was going on up in his room. The secretary blushed and said he guessed there was nothing out of character, and wondered if someone was putting up a Conkling story on him, to kill a Spates boom.

When he got to the door and went in, thirty-seven dogs ran between his legs? and went out the door with a good deal of intensity. More of them would have run between the secretary's legs, but they couldn't all make it.

Mr. Spates was mad. He felt hurt and grieved. The dogs had jumped on the bed and torn the pillow shams into minute bandages, and wiped their feet on the coverlid. They had licked the blacking off his boots, and eaten his toilet soap. One of them had tried on the secretary's dressing gown; but it was not large enough, and he had taken it off in a good deal of a hurry.

Long after it was supposed that the last dog had gone out, yellow dogs, of different degrees of yellowishness, and moving in irregular orbits, would be thrown from the secretary's room with great force. Some of them were killed, while others were painfully injured. It is said that there are fewer yellow dogs in Cheyenne now than there used to be, and those that are there are more subdued, and reserved, and taciturn, and skinned on the back, than they used to be; while the secretary has a far-away look in his eye, like a man who has trusted humanity once too often, and been everlastingly and unanimously left.

WHAT WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE HAS DONE FOR WYOMING

SOME TESTIMONIALS, AND ONE THING AND ANOTHER

The managing editor of a Boston paper, is getting material together relative to the practical workings of Woman's Suffrage, and as Wyoming is at present working a scheme of that kind, he wants an answer to the following questions:

1. – Has it been of real benefit to the Territory?

2. – If so, what has it accomplished?

3. – How does it affect education, morals, courts, &c.?

4. – What proportion of the women vote?

ANSWERS

1. – Yes, it has indeed been of real benefit to the Territory in many ways.

Until woman's suffrage came among us, life was a drag – a monotonous sameness, and simultaneous continuousness. Now it is not that way. Woman comes forward with her ballot, and puts new life into the flagging energies of the great political circles. She purifies the political atmosphere, and comes to the polls with her suffrage done up in a little wad, and rammed down into her glove, and redeems the country.

2. – It has accomplished more than the great outside world wots of. Philosophers and statesmen may think that they wot; but they don't. Not a wot.

To others outside of Wyoming, woman's suffrage is a mellow dream; but here it is a continuous, mellow, yielding reality. We know what we are talking about. We are acquainted with a lady who came here with the light of immortality shining in her eye, and the music of the spheres was singing in her ears. She was apparently on her last limbs, if we may be allowed that expression. But woman's suffrage came to her with healing on its wings, and the rose of health again bloomed on her cheek, and her appetite came back like the famine in Ireland. Now she wrestles with the cast-iron majolica ware of the kitchen during the day, and in the evening works a cross-eyed elephant on a burlaps tidy, and talks about the remonetization of the currency.

Without attempting to answer the last two questions in a short article like this, we will simply give a few certificates and testimonials of those who have tried it:

Prairie-Dog Ranche, Jan. 3, 1880.

"Dear Sir: I take great pleasure in bearing testimony to the efficacy of woman's suffrage. It is indeed a boon to thousands. I was troubled in the east beyond measure with an ingrowing nail on the most extensive toe. It caused me great pain and annoyance. I was compelled to do my work wearing an old gum overshoe of my husband's. Since using woman's suffrage only a few months, my toe is entirely well, and I now wear my husband's fine boots with perfect ease. As a remedy for ingrowing nails I can safely recommend the woman's suffrage.

"Sassafras Oleson."

Miner's Delight, Jan 23, 1880.

"Deer Sur: Two year ago mi waife fell down into a nold sellar and droav her varyloid through the Sarah bellum. I thot she was a Gonner. I woz then livin' in the sou west potion of Injeanny. I moved to where i now am leaving sevral onsettled accounts where i lived. But i wood do almost anything to recover mi waifs helth. She tried Woman's Suffrins and can now lick me with 1 hand tied behind hur. i o everything to the free yuse of the femail ballot. So good bi. at Present

"Union Forever McGilligin."

Rawhide, Feb. 2, 1880.

"Dear Sir: I came to Wyoming one year ago to-day. At that time I only weighed 153 pounds and felt all the time as though I might die. I was a walking skeleton. Coyotes followed me when I went away from the house.

"My husband told me to try Woman's Suffrage. I did so. I have now run up to my old weight of 213 pounds, and I feel that with the proper care and rest, and rich wholesome diet, I mav be spared to my husband and family till next spring.

"I am now joyful and happy. I go about my work all day singing Old Zip Coon and other plaintive melodies. After using Woman's Suffrage two days I sat up in a rocking chair and ate one and three-fourths mince pies. Then I worried down a sugar-cured ham and have been gaining ever since.

"Ah! it is a pleasant thing to come back to life and its joys again.

"Yours truly, Ethel Lillian Kersikes."

PORTUGUESE WITHOUT A MASTER

I am spending my leisure moments these days studying the Portuguese language.

It is not very generally used, it is true, but I might meet a Portuguese some day who wanted to hold a conversation with me very much, and I would feel more at ease if I could speak the language with elegance and precision.

I am working at the task silently and earnestly without a master, and I am sometimes a little mystified by the startling and original exhibitions of imported syntax and etymology as shown in the English translations given in the book which I am studying. It is a kind of Portuguese primer, designed and constructed by Jose De Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, and although the Portuguese part of it seems to be all right, I am at times a little annoyed at the novel arrangement of the English translations.

The authors in their preface seem to convey the impression that other compilers and writers who have attempted this thing have not seemed to meet the demands of the times, but Messrs. Fonseca & Carolino intimate that they have supplied a want long felt, and they seem tickled almost to death over the fact that they have the bulge on their predecessors. In their apparently modest way they say:

"The works which we are conferring for this labor found use us for nothing, but those who were publishing to Portugal or out, they were most all composed for some foreign or some national, acquainted in the spirit of both languages. It was resulting from that carelessness to rest these works fill of imperfections, and anomalies of style, and idiotisms, for this language in spite of the infinite typographical faults which sometimes invert the sense of the periods."

Parties who have become cloyed with the spicy fragrance of "Fifteen" might find pleasing diversion in the foregoing sentence. It is quaint and unique in its style, and although I consider it perfectly original, I am led to believe that there are little poetic gems from Walt Whitman in it.

Further on the authors in poetic prose say:

"We expect them, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him and for her typographical perfection) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons and especially of the youth at which we dedicate him particularly."

Ah, how well those dark-eyed dwellers in perpetual summer know how to inspire even the dull and commonplace sentences of a preface with a living, breathing soul! How the threadbare language of apology and modest braggadocio used by the hesitating but puffed up author ever since the first work published by Moses, is made to submit to the tropical influence of sunny Portugal, and comes forth breathing the seductive odors of that glad clime where the poet's song of undying love to the dark-eyed maid is ever throbbing in passionate pulsations upon the perfumed air.

But I must give a Portuguese translation rendered back into English, of the well known anecdote told on the physician who didn't take his own medicine:

"A physician eighty years of age, had enjoyed of a health unalterable. Their friends did him of it compliments every days. 'Mister Doctor,' they said to him, 'you are admirable man. What you make then for to bear as well?' 'I will tell you it, gentlemen,' he was answered them, 'and I exhort you in same time at to follow my example. I live of the product of my ordering without take any remedy who I command to my sicks.'"

One fault with American wit, in my estimation, is its coarseness and lack of polish. I have mentioned it a great many times and wept over it in extreme sorrow. Here, however, we have it down fine. The Portuguese joke is no doubt the most mirth provoking, and at the same time the most refined and delicate joke now made. We send our manufactures to all foreign countries to successfully compete with theirs; but our joke can never hold up its head and ask for the award or bronze medal where these Portuguese rib-ticklers and button-hole busters and suspender wrenchers are allowed to compete for the free for-all prizes. The Portuguese joke with facings of same held in place with bias folds of something else, is really the most recherche joke now on the market. Americans may for years to come be able to furnish a good, fair, stoga joke that will do to stub around home with, but they cannot design a joke that will do to dress up in and wear on great occasions. The low-neck, Oxford-tie, Portuguese burst of humor, hand-sewed, with sole leather counter and steel shank, and with the name of the author blown in the bottle, is bound to command the highest market price for a century or more to come.

We may command the smoking car and Congress trade, but Portugal must furnish the easy riding, gentle, picnic and croquet joke. It may be also fed to invalids with a spoon. A friend of mine who had been sick for nine years took a Portuguese joke that I gave him right out of the can without diluting it, and by that means gradually led up to fricasseed oat-meal gruel stuffed with sawdust and other rich dishes. It saved his life, but his intellect is impaired so that he don't know a calcium light from the splendor of the New Jerusalem.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOG

In speaking of the domestic and useful animals of Laramie, it would not be right to overlook the hog. I do not allude to him as useful at all, but he is very domestic. He is more so than the people seem to demand. I never saw hogs with such a strong domestic tendency as the Laramie hogs have. They have a deep and abiding love for home, all of them, and they don't care whose home it is either.

There is a tremendous pressure of hog to the square inch here. The town is filled with homeless, unhappy and starving hogs.

They run between your legs during the day, and stand in your front yard and squeal during the night. Most of them are orphans. When Thanksgiving comes it will bring no joy to them. It will be like any other day.

About all the fun they have is to root a gate off the hinges, and then run off with a table cloth in their mouths. We should not be too severe, however, on the hog. What means has he of knowing that there is a city ordinance against his running about town? Kind reader, do you think the innocent little hog would openly violate a law of the land if he knew of its existence? Certainly not. It is pardonable ignorance on the part of the hog, the same as it is with the Indian, which causes him to break over the statutes and ordinances of his country.

Our plan, therefore, is to civilize the hog. Build churches and school houses for him. Educate him and teach him the ways of industry. Put a spade and a plow at his disposal, and teach him to till the soil. The natural impulses of the hog are good, but he has been imposed upon by dishonest white men.

Long before man came with his modern appliances, the hog was here. He owned the land and used it to raise acorns and grub-worms on. But the white man has entered on the fair domain, and, regardless of his solemn treaties, has taken this land and asks that the hog, the original owner of the soil, shall be penned up in a little reservation ten feet by twelve, made of cheap pine slabs.

Every principle of right, and justice, and equity, and humanity cries out against this tyrannical action on the part of the white man. Men who would scorn to do a dishonorable act, ordinarily, snatch the broad lands that were formerly owned by the hog, away from him, and deliberately go to raising wheat on them. This is not right. We should remember that the hog has certain rights which we are bound to respect.

Did you ever stop to think, dear reader, that the hog of the present day is but a poor, degraded specimen of the true aboriginal hog, before civilization had encroached upon him? Then do not join the popular cry against him. Once he was pure as the beautiful snow.

THE BUCKNESS WHEREWITH THE BUCK BEER BUCKETH

Buck beer is demoralizing in its tendency when it moveth itself aright. It layeth hold of the intellect and twisteth it out of shape.

My son, go not with them who go to seek buck beer, for at the last it stingeth like the brocaded hornet with the red-hot narrative, and kicketh like the choleric mule.

Who hath woe? Who hath babbling? Who hath redness of eyes? He that goeth to seek the schooner of buck beer.

Who hath sorrow? Who striveth when the middle watch of the night hath come, to wind up the clock with the 15 puzzle.

He that kicketh against the buck beer and getteth left.

Verily, the buckness of the buck beer bucketh with a mighty buck, insomuch that the buckee riseth at the noon hour with a head that compasseth the town round about, and the swellness thereof waxeth more and more, even from Dan to Beer – sheba. (Current joke in the Holy Land.)

Who clamoreth with a loud voice and saith, verily, am not I a bad man? Who is he that walketh unsteadily and singeth unto himself, "The bright angels are waiting for me?" Who wotteth not even a fractional wot, but setteth his chronometer with the wooden watch of the watchmaker, and by means of a tooth-brush?

Go to. Is it not he who bangeth his intellect ferninst the bock beer, even unto the eleventh hour?

BILLIOUS NYE AND THE AMATEUR STAGE

A great portion of my time at present is taken up in preparations for my appearance in a few weeks on the amateur stage.

Excursion trains will run from Denver on this occasion, and no pains will be spared to make the grand spectacular hoo-doo one long to be remembered.

Whenever any society or association desires to make a few thousand dollars for the relief of knock-kneed Piutes, or to purchase liver-pads for impecunious Senegambians, it only has to advertise that I am to appear on the amateur stage in a heavy part.

I am not a brilliant success in the "Say-wilt-be-mine" part. Just as I get the heroine up close to me near the footlights, and begin to hug her a little as I would at home, and I temporarily forget that a thousand eyes are upon me, it comes over me that my wife is in the audience and does not seem to enjoy the play. This throws a large four-dollar gloom over the entire surroundings, and I seem to lose my grip, so to speak.

Many years ago when I was young and, as one might say, in the hey-day of vigorous manhood, and had an appetite like a P. K. Dederick Perpetual Hay Press, I consented to take a leading part, and although I could generally worry through a little light comedy, I had not then learned how rough and uncouth I appeared as the heavy lover. I therefore consented to hug a beautiful young thing before five hundred people, and in the full glare of the footlights, whom I would not have dared to wink at in her father's parlor at midnight, with the lamp turned clear down.

I have an easy, gliding stage gait that is something between a "pace" and a "rack." It is full of the very poetry of motion.

I "racked" up to the heroine at the proper time and told her how I loved her and how it was tearing me all to pieces, and so forth. Just as I was coming to the grand flourish, however, I forgot a word, and while I was thinking that up, the remainder of the speech slowly drifted away to where I couldn't get at it.

To add to the general hilarity of the occasion the stage manager, who was furnishing at that moment some pale blue lightning and distant thunder, and who happened to be drunk, threw in a heavy snow storm that should have gone into another piece.

I stood there waiting and trying to think of my part about thirty years, I should think. Any way, the snow got knee deep and the heroine excused herself and went away to warm her feet. She told me to call her up by telephone when I could think of my piece.

I thought the audience would be mad and mob me, but it didn't. There seemed to be general good feeling and harmony all the way through. I told them that I could not call to mind the exact words of my part, but if those present would like to hear a little poem that had gone the rounds of the press a good deal and which I composed myself, entitled "The Burial of Sir John Moore," I would render it in my own choice and happy style.

It is not a humorous poem, but the audience seemed to think it was, for all the way through from the time the procession started out with Sir John till he was planted, everybody was tickled nearly to death.

Now I do not take the part of the leading lover any more. The awkward young man who carries dead bodies off the stage is good enough for me.

A JOURNALISTIC CORRECTION

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 GEMSOFFICE 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.