Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems - Bill Nye 2 стр.

CHAPTER IV

It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horseman. The horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter from the dome of the court house and bathe the green plains of Syracuse with mellow splendor.

The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern sky look soft and yielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and all nature seems oppressed with the solemn hush and stillness of the surrounding and engulfing horror.

The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cayuse plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is singing a merry song. Damon has been delayed by road agents and washouts, and he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little too long and dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making up time now and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his part. He and Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of fine-cut from each other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before the curtain, bows and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders the band to play something soothing, gives Damon the appointment of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Pythias the Syracuse post-office, and everything is lovely. Orchestra plays something touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno. In hoc usufruct Nux Vomica est.

SAD MEMORIES OF THE DEAD YEAR

It is with the deepest regret that I write in advance the obituary of the year 1879, and pay a last tribute to another landmark in our history before it be consigned to the boundless realms of the past. I do not write this as an item of local interest, because the year will fold its icy limbs and die at about the same time to the people of the East as to us. The limit of totality will strike us about the same. But I write of the last moments of 1879, as the subject seems to me.

The year now nearly gone has been fraught with almost innumerable blessings. None of us can look back over it without remembering many moments of pleasure. With what unalloyed bliss at this moment comes back to me the memory of that rich golden day of summer when the first watermelon billed the town and I mortgaged my little home and bought it. Then also I call to mind the day when the first strawberries began to be convalescent and were able to be out, and how forty or fifty of our leading business men formed a joint stock company and bought a whole box, Ah! life gives no richer recompense for its numberless ills than the proud moments when one buys the first box of unhappy dyspeptic berries of the season, and then compromises with one's creditors at ten cents on the dollar.

Then followed the ripe and radiant days of the Indian summer when the peaks of the distant mountains that bound the horizon, melt away into the soft warm sky, and the only sound that breaks the stillness is the merry roundelay of the John rabbit softly cooing to his mate. It is the choice season of the year when there is a solemn hush resting over the whole broad universe, a stillness like that which falls upon a peasant's dance when the "E" string of the leading violin dissolves partnership, and hits the bass violinist in the eye.

There are, indeed, many things for which we individually and as a people should be devoutly thankful. Think, for instance, how many Indians along our frontier have escaped violent deaths. Consider for a moment how a long and bloody war has been avoided by the more gentle sway of peace.

See how the olive branch waves, where a few months ago the tocsin of war echoed from the rugged hills of the West. The saber now hangs idly in its sheath and the alarums of war have petered out. See what a kind and considerate policy toward the wild untutored savage will do toward promoting the advance of universal civilization. By means of the Boston peace plan the opera and pin-pool and other adjuncts of wealth and refinement will be placed within the reach of the most illiterate and worthless sons of the forest.

It is true we are looked upon by other nations as the republic with a warm molasses poultice Indian policy; but right and softness and gentleness have overcome brute force and might. We of the West are too apt to be violent and radical in our treatment of the Indian. When he kills our family, all the family we have got, perhaps, too, and leaves us a lonely widower with the graves of our mangled household to remember him by, we are too prone to be bitter, and say mean, hateful things about him, and run him down and destroy his boom. We do not stop to consider that this is all the fun he has. We should learn to control ourselves, and look upon the Indian as a diamond in the rough. That's the way I do. I look upon Colorow as a regular Kohinoor, if he were only polished. I would be willing to polish him, too, if I had time and felt strong enough. I would hold his nose against an emery wheel, or something of that kind, very cheerfully, if my time were not all taken up.

But I have wandered away from what I was going to say relative to the old year and drifted into the Indian question, thus crowding out many sweet little things which I had mapped out to say of the snowy winding sheet which shrouds the dying year, and some more things of that kind, touching: and beautiful in the extreme. I have allowed other matters to take the place of these little poetical passages and make a dull, prosy article of what I had intended to construct into a frail and beautiful fabric, with slender pinnacles, sublime arches and Queen Anne woodshed.

He eats nothing but fresh Ohio men.

Do not fail to see our Mammoth Street Parade, the Grand Oriental and Princely Pageant, over nine miles in length, and don't you forget it! It has been pronounced by the crowned heads of the world to be the most Scrumptuous Mighty and Magnificent Confederation of Wonders. Knights in full panoply ladies without any panoply on. Endless ranks of gold bedizened cages, recherche chariots; boss camels, with or without humps; cages of mammoth reptilian angle-worms; lions stuffed with baled hay; petrified circus jokes; preserved seats; gazelle-like elephants, and a bang-up outfit generally.

It is well worth a journey of one hundred miles to see alone our mammoth band chariot, flecked with burnished gold, and costing $250 per fleck.

We will not be outflecked! Bear in mind the time and place!

GRANITE CANON, AUGUST 14TH. Afternoon and evening, with Grand Matinee for baldheaded men at 5 p.m. each day.

I challenge the world to produce the equal of this highly intellectual and amusing little cuss. He stands on four feet at one and the same time, in the mammoth pavilion, and at one price of admission, eating out of the hand with the utmost docility and reckless abandon. Boomerang is the only living performing trick stallion ever born in captivity.

In connection with the untold and priceless splendor of the glittering pageant, I will introduce the Dynamo, Hydro-phosphatic, Perihelion Electric Light, in comparison with which the mid-day sun looks like a convalescent white bean. In brilliancy and refulgent splendor, it without doubt lays over and everlastingly knocks the socks off all other lights now in the known world.

This statement I am prepared to back up with the necessary kopecks.

The wonderful Tattooed Steer from Stinking Water. If not exactly as represented, your money will be refunded to you as you pass out the door.

This costly and truly picturesque Queen Anne Steer was secured at great cost to the management, and will positively appear every day in the regular programme, and within the mammoth pavilion. If he does not in every respect do as I advertise, and with one hand tied behind him, I will be responsible.

This statement I am prepared to back up with the necessary kopecks.

The wonderful Tattooed Steer from Stinking Water. If not exactly as represented, your money will be refunded to you as you pass out the door.

This costly and truly picturesque Queen Anne Steer was secured at great cost to the management, and will positively appear every day in the regular programme, and within the mammoth pavilion. If he does not in every respect do as I advertise, and with one hand tied behind him, I will be responsible.

Before and after visiting my Mammoth Show.

The royal Mexican Plug, Billy English, and the truly remarkable mule with the genuine camel's hair tail, Winfield Scott Hancock.

These animals, with almost human intelligence, walk around the ring, stepping first on one foot and then on the other.

They have been procured at enormous expense and may be found only with my stupendous aggregation of trained animals.

They represent the perfect pyramid at each performance as represented in the above engraving.

The steer which performs upon the flying trapeze and horizontal bar.

The only steer that has ever successfully enacted the aeria-dive or eagle swoop.

The wonderful performing steer, Zazel, is the only one-horned, one-eared and bob-tailed steer ever born in captivity; This steer is found alone with Bill Nye's Great Cast-Iron Hippodrome and 27-Karat Utopian Giganticum.

I extend to the members of the press everywhere a most hearty invitation. They will be furnished with luxuriant reclining chairs, porcelain cuspidores, and gold toothpicks to pick out the fragments of lemonade from their pearly teeth.

A special clown will be devoted to the members of the press.

A guide will have charge of visiting journalists to show them the curiosities, and see that they do not forget and carry anything away.

Members of the press will be allowed to sit on the top seats and let their feet hang down.

Do not fool with the animals.

The Owltown Bunghole says: "No living man has ever heretofore dared to perform all he advertised. Bill Nye certainly has secured the most wonderful and costly galaxy of arenic talent, and the most perfect and oriental conglomeration of grand, gloomy and peculiar zoological specimens from the four corners of the globe. The editor and his nineteen children, with his wife and hired girl, were passed in yesterday by the handsome and gentlemanly, modest and lady-like proprietor of Bill Nye's ownest own and simultaneous world-renowned hippodrome and menagerie."

A report has been set in circulation, probably by some unprincipled rival showmen, to the effect that I will not exhibit with my entire show at Granite Canon, but that the main show will be divided, the famous Trakene Stallion, Boomerang, going to Greeley; the Royal Mexican Plug Billy English, going to Whiskey Flat; the Mammoth Reptilian Angleworm going to Last Chance; the famous Trick Mule, Winfield Scott Hancock, going to Tie City, while the balance of the show would appear at Granite Canon.

I pronounce this and all similar reports the most flagrant, lying canards, as I shall not only appear at Granite Canon with my entire aggregation of my own and only jam-up-and-scrumptuous show and North American Boss and Supreme Oriental and Collossal Menagerie, but at all points where I have advertised to appear. I make no show, but I can buy and sell every show on the road before breakfast, and don't you forget it.

I travel on my own special train, and regular passenger and express trains are held while I have the right of way with my elegant drawing-room and palace cars for the animals, and colossal silver chariots for the men.

I exhibit also under my acres and acres of canvas, and two-bits will admit you to all parts of the show.

Special trains will run to and from Granite Canon on the day of the show at regular rates.

Simultaneously yours,

Bill Nye.

LETTER FROM PARIS

I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken in the United States, for I am tired of-the infernal lingo of this God-forsaken country, and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and on some other subject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it any more.

Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends to step into a big drug-store on the Rue de La Sitting Bull, to get a glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians. He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said:

uZe vooly voo a la boomerang?"

I patted the soda fountain and said:

"No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I will take about two fingers of bug-juice in mine to sweeten my breath."

But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no doubt, and got him a job in a drug store. So I said:

"Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and if you will put a little tangle-foot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will pick up a pound weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with spirituous frumenti, old rye, benzine bay rum anything! Parley voo, e pluri-bus unam, sic semper go braugh! Do you understand that?"

But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives on.

Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400.

I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to; partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and telescope the duodenum into the æsophagus. I used to stand that way and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green cold waves and the wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it all day.

I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am trying to arrange it so as to go home by land. I think I can make up for the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and turned it over to the Atlantic ocean for inspection, than I have eaten since I came here.

PREHISTORIC CROCKERY

During my rambles through the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky mountains recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although worn down somewhat and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope and the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time very large and high.