Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)

Death is ever a surprise, even at the end of a long illness and after a ripe old age. To those who are near it seems abrupt; so to his grandchildren, some of whom survived him, his children having died of old age, the death of Methuselah came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

Methuselah succeeded in cording up more of a record, such as it was, than any other man of whom history informs us. Time, the tomb-builder and amateur mower, came and leaned over the front yard and looked at Methuselah, and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his scythe, and went away whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for nearly ten centuries, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the general wreck of men and nations.

Even as the young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and passeth by on the other side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-glass and his overworked hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin of hair around the base of it, mowed all around Methuselah and then passed on.

Methuselah decorated the graves of those who perished in a dozen different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over nine hundred years of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting places and offer his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage his grandchildren to go. Then Methuselah would sit around Noah's front steps, and smoke and criticise the conduct of the war, also the conduct of the enemy.

It is said of Methuselah that he never was the same man after his son Lamech died. He was greatly attached to Lamech, and, when he woke up one night to find his son purple in the face with membraneous croup, he could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy who had just rounded the glorious morn of his 777th year had never occurred to him. But death loves a shining mark, and he garnered little Lammie and left Methuselah to mourn for a couple of centuries.

Methuselah finally got so that he couldn't sleep any later than 4 o'clock in the morning, and he didn't see how any one else could. The older he got, and the less valuable his time became, the earlier he would rise, so that he could get an early start. As the centuries filed slowly by, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large slick-headed cane and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and extricate himself from his clothes again and retire, he rose earlier and earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience and a long clean record.

We can almost fancy how the physicians, who had disagreed about his case all the way through, came and insisted on a post-mortem examination to prove which was right and what was really the matter with him. We can imagine how people went by shaking their heads and regretting that Methuselah should have tampered with tobacco when he knew that it affected his heart.

But he is gone. He lived to see his own promissory notes rise, flourish, acquire interest, pine away at last and finally outlaw. He acquired a large farm in the very heart of the county-seat, and refused to move or to plot, and called it Methuselah's addition. He came out in spring regularly for nine hundred years after he got too old to work out his poll-tax on the road, and put in his time telling the rising generation how to make a good road. Meantime other old people, who were almost one hundred years of age, moved away and went West where they would attract attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting old around where Methuselah was, and being ordered about and scolded and kept in the background by him.

So when at last he died, people sighed and said: "Well, it was better for him to die before he got childish. It was best that he should die at a time when he knew it all. We can't help thinking what an acquisition Methuselah will be on the evergreen shore when he gets there, with all his ripe experience and his habits of early rising."

And the next morning after the funeral Methuselah's family did not get out of bed till nearly 9 o'clock.

A Black Hills Episode

A little, warty, dried-up sortO' lookin' chap 'at hadn't ortA ben a-usin' round no bar,With gents like us a-drinkin' thar!And that idee occurred to meThe livin' minit 'at I seeThe little cuss elbowin' inTo humor his besettin' sin.There 're nothin' small in me at all,But when I heer the rooster callFor shugar and a spoon, I says:"Jest got in from the States, I guess."He never 'peared as if he heerd,But stood thar, wipin' uv his beard,And smilin' to hisself as ifI'd been a-givin' him a stiff.And I-says-I, a edgin' byThe bantam, and a-gazin' highAbove his plug – says I: "I knowedA little feller onc't 'at blowedAround like you, and tuck his drinksWith shugar in – and his folks thinksHe's dead now – 'cause we boxed and sentThe scraps back to the Settlement!"The boys tells me, 'at got to seeHis modus operandum, heJest 'peared to come onjointed-likeAfore he ever struck a strike!And I'll admit, the way he fitWuz dazzlin' – what I see uv hit;And squarin' things up fair and fine,Says I: "A little 'shug' in mine!"

The Rossville Lecture Course

Rossville, Mich., March, '87Folks up here at Rossville got up a lectur'-course;All the leadin' citizens they wus out in force;Met and talked at Williamses, and 'greed to meet agin,And helt another corkus when the next reports wuz in;Met agin at Samuelses; and met agin at Moore's,And Johnts he put the shutters up and jest barred the doors! —And yit, I'll jest be dagg-don'd! ef didn't take a week'Fore we'd settled where to write to git a man to speak!Found out where the Bureau wus, and then and there agreedTo strike while the iron's hot, and foller up the lead.Simp was secatary; so he tuck his pen in hand,And ast what they'd tax us for the one on "Holy Land" —"One of Colonel J. De-Koombs Abelust and BestLecturs," the circ'lar stated, "Give East er West!"Wanted fifty dollars, and his kyar-fare to and from,And Simp was hence instructed fer to write him not to come.Then we talked and jawed around another week er so,And writ the Bureau 'bout the town a-bein' sort o' slowAnd fogey-like, and pore as dirt, and lackin' enterprise,And ignornter'n any other 'cordin' to its size:Till finally the Bureau said they'd send a cheaper manFer forty dollars, who would give "A Talk about Japan" —"A regular Japanee hiss'f," the pamphlet claimed; and so,Nobody knowed his languige, and of course we let him go!Kindo' then let up a spell – but rallied onc't ag'in,And writ to price a feller on what's called the "violin" —A Swede, er Pole, er somepin – but no matter what he wus,Doc Sifers said he'd heerd him, and he wusn't wuth a kuss!And then we ast fer Swingses terms; and Cook, and Ingersoll —And blame! ef forty dollars looked like anything at all!And then Burdette, we tried fer him; and Bob he writ to sayHe wus busy writin' ortographts, and couldn't git away.At last – along in Aprile – we signed to take this-hereBill Nye of Californy, 'at was posted to appear"The Humorestest Funny Man 'at Ever Jammed a Hall!"So we made big preparations, and swep' out the church and all!And night he wus to lectur', and the neighbors all was there,And strangers packed along the aisles 'at come from ever'where,Committee got a telegrapht the preacher read, 'at run —"Got off at Rossville, Indiany, stead of Michigun."

The Tar-heel Cow

Asheville, N. C., December 9. – There is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous distiller have their homes.

Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies, it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.

The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her black retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose into the blue grass from ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the life of a Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.

Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.

The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of the greatest interest.

Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully to salt the mines.

The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.

Here the jackass at times becomes a co-worker with the cow in hauling tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the butter industry.

The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman, who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he adds a small pair of ear-bobbs during the holidays.

The cow is attached to each shaft and a small single-tree, or swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her escort.

I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than that of a new milch cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson Democratic wagon loaded with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly can feel very little interest.

Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for smoking purposes. It is the highest-price tobacco produced in this country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco while growing.

He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all about the tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but which may be of incalculable value to the press.

As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing their thoughtlessness to-day.

A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the climate. When they have remained here for one winter, however, they decide to leave it where it is.

It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.

Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to these columns, I shall watch for it with great interest.

Yours as here 2 4,Bill Nye.

P. S. – I should have said, relative to the cow of this State, that if the owners would work their butter more and their cows less they would confer a great boon on the consumer of both.

B. N.

A Character

ISwallowed up in gulfs of tho't —Eye-glass fixed – on – who knows what?We but know he sees us not.Chance upon him, here and there —Base-ball park – Industrial Fair —Broadway – Long Branch – anywhere!Even at the races, – yetWith his eye-glass tranced and setOn some dream-land minaret.At the beach, the where, perchance —Tenderest of eyes may glanceOn the fitness of his pants.Vain! all admiration – vain!His mouth, o'er and o'er againAbsently absorbs his cane.Vain, as well, all tribute paidTo his morning coat, inlaidWith crossbars of every shade.He is oblivious, thoWe played checkers to and froOn his back – he would not know.IISo removed – illustrious —Peace! kiss hands, and leave him thusHe hath never need of us!Come away! Enough! Let be!Purest praise, to such as he,Were as basest obloquy.Vex no more that mind of his,We, to him, are but as phizzUnto pop that knows it is.Haply, even as we prateOf him HERE – in astral state —Or jackastral – he, elate,Brouses 'round, with sportive hopsIn far fields of sphery crops,Nibbling stars like clover-tops.He, occult and psychic, mayNow be solving why to-dayIs not midnight. – But away!Cease vain queries! Let us go!Leave him all unfathomed. – Lo,He can hear his whiskers grow.

The Diary of Darius T. Skinner

"Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, Dec. 31, 188-. – It hardly seems possible that I am here in New York, putting up at a hotel where it costs me $5 or $6 a day just simply to exist. I came here from my far away-home entirely alone. I have no business here, but I simply desired to rub up against greatness for awhile. I need polish, and I am smart enough to know it.

"I write this entry in my diary to explain who I am and to help identify myself in case I should come home to my room intoxicated some night and blow out the gas.

"The reason I am here is that last summer while whacking bulls, which is really my business, I grub-staked Alonzo McReddy and forgot about it till I got back and the boys told me that Lon had struck a First National bank in the shape of the Sarah Waters claim. He was then very low with mountain fever and so nobody felt like jumping the claim. Saturday afternoon Alonzo passed away and left me the Sarah Waters. That's the only sad thing about the whole business now. I am raised from bull-whacking to affluence, but Alonzo is not here. How we would take in the town together if he'd lived, for the Sarah Waters was enough to make us both well fixed.

"I can imagine Lon's look of surprise and pride as he looks over the outer battlements of the New Jerusalem and watches me paint the town. Little did Lon think when I pulled out across the flat with my whiskers full of alkali dust and my cuticle full of raw agency whisky, that inside of a year I would be a nabob, wearing biled shirts every single day of my life, and clothes made specially for me.

"Life is full of sudden turns, and no one knows here in America where he'll be in two weeks from now. I may be back there associating with greasers again as of yore and skinning the same bulls that I have heretofore skun.

"Last evening I went to see 'The Mikado,' a kind of singing theater and Chinese walk-around. It is what I would call no good. It is acted out by different people who claim they are Chinamen, I reckon. They teeter around on the stage and sing in the English language, but their clothes are peculiar. A homely man, who played that he was the lord high executioner and chairman of the vigilance committee, wore a pair of wide, bandana pants, which came off during the first act. He was cool and collected, though, and so caught them before it was everlastingly too late. He held them on by one hand while he sang the rest of his piece, and when he left the stage the audience heartlessly whooped for him to come back.

"'The Mikado' is not funny or instructive as a general thing, but last night it was accidently facetious. It has too much singing and not enough vocal music about it. There is also an overplus of conversation through the thing that seems like talking at a mark for $2 a week. It may be owing to my simple ways, but 'The Mikado' is too rich for my blood.

"We live well here at the Fifth Avenue. The man that owns the place puts two silver forks and a clean tablecloth on my table every day, and the young fellows that pass the grub around are so well dressed that it seems sassy and presumptions for me to bother them by asking them to bring me stuff when I'd just as soon go and get it myself and nothing else in the world to do.

"I told the waiter at my table yesterday that when he got time I wished he would come up to my room and we could have a game of old sledge. He is a nice young man, and puts himself out a good deal to make me comfortable.

"I found something yesterday at the table that bothered me. It was a new kind of a silver dingus, with two handles to it, for getting a lump of sugar into your tea. I saw right away that it was for that, but when I took the two handles in my hand like a nut cracker and tried to scoop up a lump of sugar with it I felt embarrassed. Several people who were total strangers to me smiled.

"After dinner the waiter brought me a little pink-glass bowl of lemonade and a clean wipe to dry my mouth with, I reckon, after I drank the lemonade. I do not pine for lemonade much, anyhow, but this was specially poor. It was just plain water, with a lemon rind and no sugar into it.

"One rural rooster from Pittsburg showed his contempt for the blamed stuff by washing his hands in it. I may be rough and uncouth in my style, but I hope I will never lower myself like that in company."

THE MAN IN THE MOON

O, The Man in the Moon has a crick in his back;Whee!Whimm!Ain't you sorry for him?And a mole on his nose that is purple and black;And his eyes are so weak that they water and runIf he dares to dream even he looks at the sun, —So he just dreams of stars, as the doctors advise —My!Eyes!But isn't he wise —To just dream of stars, as the doctors advise?And The Man in the Moon has a boil on his ear —Whee!Whing!What a singular thing!I know; but these facts are authentic, my dear, —There's a boil on his ear, and a corn on his chin —He calls it a dimple, – but dimples stick in —Yet it might be a dimple turned over, you know;Whang!Ho!Why, certainly so! —It might be a dimple turned over, you know!And The Man in the Moon has a rheumatic knee —Gee!Whizz!What a pity that is!And his toes have worked round where his heels ought to be. —So whenever he wants to go North he goes South,And comes back with porridge-crumbs all round his mouth,And he brushes them off with a Japanese fan,Whing!Whann!What a marvelous man!What a very remarkably marvelous man!

His Christmas Sled

I watch him, with his Christmas sled;He hitches on behindA passing sleigh, with glad hooray,And whistles down the wind;He hears the horses champ their bits,And bells that jingle-jingle —You Woolly Cap! you Scarlet Mitts!You miniature "Kriss Kringle!"I almost catch your secret joy —Your chucklings of delight,The while you whizz where glory isEternally in sight!With you I catch my breath, as swiftYour jaunty sled goes glidingO'er glassy track and shallow drift,As I behind were riding!He winks at twinklings of the frost.And on his airy race,Its tingles beat to redder heatThe rapture of his face: —The colder, keener is the air,The less he cares a feather.But, there! he's gone! and I gaze onThe wintriest of weather!Ah, boy! still speeding o'er the trackWhere none returns again,To Sigh for you, or cry for you,Or die for you were vain. —And so, speed on! the while I prayAll nipping frosts forsake you —Ride still ahead of grief, but mayAll glad things overtake you!

Her Tired Hands

Onboard a western train the other day I held in my bosom for over seventy-five miles the elbow of a large man whose name I do not know. He was not a railroad hog or I would have resented it. He was built wide and he couldn't help it, so I forgave him.

He had a large, gentle, kindly eye, and when he desired to spit, he went to the car door, opened it and decorated the entire outside of the train, forgetting that our speed would help to give scope to his remarks.

Naturally as he sat there by my side, holding on tightly to his ticket and evidently afraid that the conductor would forget to come and get it, I began to figure out in my mind what might be his business. He had pounded one thumb so that the nail was black where the blood had settled under it. This might happen to a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith or most anyone else. So it didn't help me out much, though it looked to me as though it might have been done by trying to drive a fence-nail through a leather hinge with the back of an axe, and nobody but a farmer would try to do that. Following up the clue, I discovered that he had milked on his boots and then I knew I was right. The man who milks before daylight, in a dark barn, when the thermometer is down to 28 degrees below and who hits his boot and misses the pail, by reason of the cold and the uncertain light and the prudishness of the cow, is a marked man. He cannot conceal the fact that he is a farmer unless he removes that badge. So I started out on that theory and remarked that this would pass for a pretty hard winter on stock.

The thought was not original with me, for I have heard it expressed by others either in this country or Europe. He said it would.

"My cattle has gone through a whole mowful o' hay sence October and eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it hed last year, and with their new pro-cess griss mills they jerk all the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to buy brand."

"Well, why do you run so much to stock? Why don't you try diversified farming, and rotation of crops?"

"Well, probably you got that idee in the papers. A man that earns big wages writing Farm Hints for agricultural papers can make more money with a soft lead pencil and two or three season-cracked idees like that'n I can carrying of 'em out on the farm. We used to have a feller in the drugstore in our town that wrote such good pieces for the Rural Vermonter and made up such a good condition powder out of his own head, that two years ago we asked him to write a nessay for the annual meeting of the Buckwheat Trust, and to use his own judgment about choice of subject. And what do you s'pose he had selected for a nessay that took the whole forenoon to read?"

"What subject, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Give it up!"

"Well, he'd wrote out that whole blamed intellectual wad on the subject of 'The Inhumanity of Dehorning Hydraulic Rams.' How's that?"

"That's pretty fair."

"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regards to some things. Every feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it, even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference between a new milch cow and a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these embroidered night-shirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago. Been a toilet soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder in the front yard and a southern aspect. The farm was no good. You couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits a passle of slim-tailed, yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream over and tried to sell it at the new creamatory while the funeral and hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read my paper and don't get left like that."