The humor of "Bill" Nye

The first book I remember (excepting several Dickens novels, flotsam of an abandoned attic library) is a cheap, ill-favored, coarsely printed volume of “Bill” Nye’s sketches, elegantly entitled Baled Hay. I discovered it in a corner of the village postoffice, where there were a couple of shelves of nondescript books—cheap in every sense: in price, binding and contents—which served as the sole local excuse for a bookstore. This copy of “Bill” Nye is the link between my boyish and my mature reading. Nye is the one author whom I enjoy to this day in precisely the same spirit and to the same degree that I enjoyed him as a boy. This fact indicates his limitation and his peculiar appeal. He is limited to a crude, obvious, undeveloped humor; and his appeal is to the undiscriminating childlike mirth in a man. He is juvenile in essence, in subject, in manner. I might say that “Bill” Nye was funny to me in the same way that almost any trifling break in the monotony of the schoolroom was funny—a suddenly overturned chair, a spilled bottle of ink, or an egregious blunder in recitation.

Perhaps this is not an adequate explanation. It is not every schoolboy that responds to the boisterous fun of “Bill” Nye. They prefer, as in later life, something with plenty of action—Peck’s [Pg 6]Bad Boy, for example or the misadventures of Mr. Bowser (wasn’t this the name?). Yet I say it is to the boy in man, to the uncouth comic spirit that lurks in every age of man, that “Bill” Nye appeals. One enjoys him in the mood of a boy released from school, or, better still, in the spirit of spring-time truancy. What a book like Treasure Island is to the sense of adventure, what fairy tales are to the sense of wonder, “Bill” Nye is to the sense of humor. The enjoyment of “Bill” Nye is not found in the intellectual glow of satire, in the keen smile of wit, in the subtle thrill of epigram or paradox, but in the loud laughter of the commonest of comic things. For this reason I find in him a speedy and unfailing escape from melancholy thoughts. No matter how jaded one’s spirits, how deeply plunged in gloom, Nye’s grimacing, cavorting absurdities will surely produce the usual number of laughs. There is not demanded any delicate receptive mood, any particular conjunction of happy spirits. He is as gratuitously and independently ludicrous and laughable as a circus clown.

One could not call “Bill” Nye subtle—heavens! no—but his humor is often artificial, in that it depends not absolutely upon incidents that in themselves are humorous, but upon an odd, perverse, irrational use of words. He tells somewhere of a would-be author, who fondly anticipated, when his work should be finished, a crowd of publishers “trampling the daisies” in the front yard. After wearily writing “Finis,” he looked out of the window and was “surprised by the abrupt and pronounced [Pg 7]manner in which they were not there.” This is absurd enough, in all conscience; and because it is absurd—unexpectedly and unreasonably absurd—I, for one, find it laughable. And who can resist a chuckle at this sort of expression: “the low rumble of the throbbing Boston brain dimly heard in the distance”? Writing of taxidermy, on which he gravely pretends to be an authority, he refers to “upholstered beasts.” Again, we have this phrase: “the still, white features of a soup-bone that has outlived its usefulness.” And this: “the death-rattle of a bathtub.” He declares that he is willing to “sit up all night to doubt” the theory of eternal damnation. Writing of the stern and hidebound Puritans who settled on the “stern and rockbound” coast of New England, he defines religious freedom as “the art of giving intolerance a little more room.” I am grateful for every blow, however light, at Puritanism and intolerance. Whether it be Voltaire or “Bill” Nye (a sufficiently grotesque comparison!) there is relish in the ironic or humorous view of the atrabilious Cotton Mathers of this world. I quote another of Nye’s amusing references to the Puritans: “Among the Puritans there were several who had enlarged consciences, and who desired to take in extra work for others who had no consciences and were busy in the fields.” The dreary economic background that perhaps had much to do with the narrowness of outlook that distinguished the Puritans is succinctly described by Nye: “The people were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian corn enough to give them sufficient strength [Pg 8]to pull clams enough the following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should give them strength to dig for clams again.” There is shrewdness, too, in this observation on the Civil War: “Most great wars are arranged by people who stay at home and sell groceries to the widow and orphan and old maids at one hundred per cent advance.”

The best of “Bill” Nye, to my notion, are his humorous historical sketches—pseudo-historical, indeed, but frequently affording glimpses of the truth that are not to be found in the sober accepted chronicles. The quality of this phase of his humor is, I think, simply explained. It consists of an irreverence that is, at bottom, touched with skepticism. Hero-worship, if it is a more or less universal instinct of human nature, is a rather stiff and uncomfortable and trying exercise. It is, too, an overestimated and overworked instinct, that has been too persistently and prodigiously appealed to in popular history. These “steel engravings,” plaster saints and wooden models of heroism are (certainly at times) an unlovable and tiresome company.

One finds a wholesome, hearty reaction from this hero-worship in “Bill” Nye’s jolly brand of history. He goes guffawing down the Hall of Fame, swatting blithely the sedate statues of the brave and good and mighty and learned. Here he is, indeed, a very schoolboy, throwing his history-book aside, and shooting paper wads at the immobile, insensibly decorous figures of Columbus and Washington and Ben Franklin [Pg 9]and the rest. In spite of oneself, one laughs even at one’s favorite hero, and, with seeming inconsequence, regards this hero thereafter in a more human and favorable light. There is relief, there is relaxation—a healthful unbending of the faculties—in these droll, preposterous, utterly irrelevant comments. We see Columbus suffering from a period of geographical depression—nothing to discover—and being recommended to Queen Isabella as a capable man in his trade, who “is willing to let his work show for itself”; Washington as a man equally efficient in prayer and profanity, swearing with a vigor that would “break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual”; Ben Franklin as foreman, “cussing” the rival paper and yelling for more copy; Daniel Webster as “a good off-hand speaker,” who “wore the largest hat of any man then in Congress”; Noah Webster, he of the immortal dictionary, as the man who “had the best command of language of any American author prior to our day.”

Opinions may well differ regarding the humor of this sort of thing—certainly it is not profound nor subtle nor artistic humor, being more or less trifling horseplay indeed—but there is laughter in it nevertheless and it is an escape from that seriousness which often weighs too heavily on the spirit. It is good to laugh, whatever the occasion; and one who has a robust and expansive sense of humor will not fail to laugh occasionally with “Bill” Nye.

One can say, although it goes without saying, that Nye is not of the company of the world’s [Pg 10]great humorists. One would not mention him in the same breath with Sterne, or Rabelais, or Moliere, or Dick Steele, or Oscar Wilde, or our own Mark Twain. The humor of Nye is the humor of what Nye himself called “the new and crass civilization” of his day. It is not the humor of the highest culture. It is a humor that is barely commentary—a mere pointing out of absurdities—rather than deliberately or delicately creative. “Bill” Nye is superficial; he is sophomoric; he is often somnolent; but he is funny, and indeed this word defines him exactly. He is funny rather than truly humorous in the finer sense of the word. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, “Bill” Nye grew up with the Western American frontier country, and in the midst of these raw beginnings of a new and strange and boisterously immature society, full of the most violent contrasts, he exercised his peculiar and contemporaneous humor. A very little of “Bill” Nye will suffice for the general reader. His kind of humor has its natural limits and, writing as a journalist, much of what he wrote is labored and dull. This little book contains some of the best and most characteristic of his sketches; and if it cannot quite be said that this is all of him that is worth-while or enjoyable, at least it represents the extent to which he may be read agreeably and profitably by one who desires no more than a bowing acquaintance with him; it is, truth to tell, an accurate measure of the man’s importance.

The name of George Washington has always had about it a glamor that made him appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with large feet and a mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pumpkin pie. I use the word glamor, not so much because I know what glamor means, but because I have never used it before, and I am getting a little tired of the short, easy words I have been using so long.

George Washington’s face has beamed out upon us for many years now, on postage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze, in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the warpath and on skates, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged in prayer.

We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe that he did not breathe our air or eat American groceries. But George Washington was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study of his life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from the proud history of the Father of his Country. I say it simply that the boys of America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel so timid about trying it.

When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the lime-kiln at Mount [Pg 12]Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to show the boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble George Washington. That was one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamed of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk, and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice. There are lawyers who play poker year after year, and get regularly skinned, because they have heard that some of the able lawyers of the past century used to come home at night with poker chips in their pockets.

Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have seen poets who relied solely on the potency of their breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever did of the statutes in such case made and provided.

George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first in war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would be first baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hour of the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in the hearts of his countrymen, George’s postoffice address was at once secured.

Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear that in America! It is a place where it is a positive disadvantage to be born wealthy. And yet, sometimes [Pg 13]I wish they had experimented a little that way on me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of course, because it is too late; but it seems to me that, with my natural good sense and keen insight into human nature, I could have struggled along under the burdens and cares of wealth with great success. I do not care to die wealthy, but if I could have been born wealthy, it seems to me that I would have been tickled almost to death.

I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and to say that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong sometimes in his judgment of others, both individually and in the aggregate, but he who gets ready to be a great man will surely find the opportunity.

Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it for me, but they will never find out.

In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for three reasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his friends. Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule. Some people cannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue jackass.

Another reason why Washington is loved and honored today is that he died before we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly superior to the method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till their constituency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die.

Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of Benjamin’s parents, they would have been childless. Think of getting up in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among seventeen pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of spruce gum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window sill. And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea, and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was a printer. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests of freedom. It is claimed that Franklin at this time invented the deadly weapon known as the printer’s towel. He found that a common crash towel could be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony, concentrated lye, and roller composition, and that after a few years of time and perspiration it would harden so that the “Constant Reader” or “Veritas” could be stabbed with it and die soon.

Many believe that Franklin’s other scientific experiments were productive of more lasting benefits to mankind than this, but I do not agree with them.

This paper was called the New England Courant. It was edited jointly by James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want. Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The idea of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to the editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while the other was in jail. In those days you couldn’t sass the king, and then, when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his paper, and took out his ad., you couldn’t put it off on “our informant” and go right along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscribers wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tin dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side.

How many of us today, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay in jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of all our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while a double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses of ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us?

At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to Philadelphia and New York, where he got a chance to “sub” for a few weeks, and then got a regular “sit.” Franklin was a good printer, and finally got to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in the composing room and spitting on the stone while he [Pg 16]cussed the make-up and press work of the other papers. Then he would go into the editorial rooms and scare the editors to death with a wild shriek for more copy. He knew just how to conduct himself as a foreman, so that strangers would think he owned the paper.

In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the Pennsylvania Gazette. He was then regarded as a great man, and most everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him.

Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the Gazette office by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklin would tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and an old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for a mess.

In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made a good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes in distributing their mail than there have ever been since. If a man mailed a letter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it was addressed.

Franklin frequently went over to England in [Pg 17]those days, partly on business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, and attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask the king: “How’s trade?” Franklin never put on any frills, but he was not afraid of a crowned head. He used to say, frequently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot.

He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn’t do it. Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given it permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquainted with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper. They also promised him the county printing, but he said no, he would have to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him.

Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1732-57, and it was republished in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and though he lived to be quite an old man, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but an illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, but he steadily refused to do so.

It was a beautiful evening at the close of a warm, luscious day in old Spain. It was such an evening as one would select for trysting purposes. The honeysuckle gave out the sweet announcement of its arrival on the summer breeze, and the bulbul sang in the dark vistas of the olive trees—sang of his love and his hope, and of the victory he anticipated in the morrow’s bulbul fight, and the plaudits of the royal couple who would be there. The pink west paled away to the touch of twilight, and the soft zenith was sown with stars coming like celestial fire-flies on the breast of a mighty meadow.

Across the dusk, with bowed head, came a woman. Her air was one of proud humility. It was the air of royalty in the presence of an over-ruling power. It was Isabella. She was on her way to confession. She carried a large, beautifully bound volume containing a memorandum of her sins for the day. Ever and anon she would refer to it, but the twilight had come on so fast that she could not read it.

Reaching the confessional, she kneeled, and, by the aid of her notes, she told off to the good Father and receptacle of the queen’s trifling sins, Fernando de Talavera, how wicked she had been. When it was over and the queen had risen to go, Fernando came forth, and with a solemn obeisance said:

“May it please your Majesty, I have today [Pg 19]received a letter from my good friend the prior of the Franciscan convent of St. Mary’s of Rabida in Andalusia. With your Majesty’s permission, I will read it to you.”

“Proceed,” exclaimed Isabella, gravely, taking a piece of crochet work from her apron and seating herself comfortably near the dim light.

“It is dated the sixth month and tenth day of the month, and reads as follows:

“‘Dear Brother: This letter will be conveyed into your hands by the bearer hereof. His name is Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, who has been living on me for two years. But he is a good man, devout and honest. He is willing to work, but I have nothing to do in his line. Times, as you know, are dull, and in his own profession nothing seems to be doing. He is by profession a discoverer. He has been successful in the work where he has had opportunities, and there has been no complaint so far on the part of those who have employed him. Everything he has ever discovered has remained that way, and he is willing to let his work show for itself. Should you be able to bring this to the notice of her Majesty, who is tender of heart, I would be most glad; and should her most gracious Majesty have any discovering to be done, or should she contemplate a change or desire to substitute another in the place of the present discoverer, she will do well to consider the qualifications of my friend. Very sincerely and fraternally thine, etc., etc.’”

The queen inquired still further regarding Columbus, and, taking the letter, asked Talavera [Pg 20]to send him to the royal sitting room at ten o’clock the following day.

When Columbus arose the next morning he found a note from the royal confessor, and, without waiting for breakfast, for he had almost overcome the habit of eating, he reversed his cuffs, and, taking a fresh handkerchief from his valise and putting it in his pocket so that the corner would coyly stick out a little, he was soon on his way to the palace. He carried also a small globe wrapped up in a newspaper.

The interview was encouraging until the matter of money necessary for the trip was touched upon. His Majesty was called in, and spoke sadly of the public deficit. He said that there were one hundred dollars still due on his salary, and the palace had not been painted for eight years. He had taken orders on the store till he was tired of it. “Our meat bill,” said he, taking off his crown and mashing a hornet on the wall, “is sixty days overdue. We owe the hired girl for three weeks; and how are we going to get funds enough to do any discovering, when you remember that we have got to pay for an extra session this fall for the purpose of making money plenty?”

But Isabella came and sat by him in her winning way, and with the moistened corner of her handkerchief removed a spot of maple syrup from the ermine trimming of his reigning gown. She patted his hand, and, with her gentle voice, cheered him and told him that if he would economize and go without cigars or wine, in less than two hundred years he would have saved enough to fit Columbus out.

A few weeks later he had saved one hundred and fifty dollars in this way. The queen then went at twilight and pawned a large breast-pin, and, although her chest was very sensitive to cold, she went without it all the following winter, in order that Columbus might discover America before immigration set in here.

Too much cannot be said of the heroism of Queen Isabella and the courage of her convictions. A man would have said, under such circumstances, that there would be no sense in discovering a place that was not popular. Why discover a place when it is so far out of the way? Why discover a country with no improvements? Why discover a country that is so far from the railroad? Why discover, at great expense, an entirely new country?

But Isabella did not stop to listen to these croaks. In the language of the Honorable Jeremiah M. Rusk, “She seen her duty and she done it.” That was Isabella’s style.

Columbus now began to select steamer chairs and rugs. He had already secured the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, and on the 3rd of August, 1492, he sailed from Palos.

Isabella brought him a large bunch of beautiful flowers as he was about to sail, and Ferdinand gave him a nice yachting cap and a spicy French novel to read on the road.

He was given a commission as viceroy or governor of all the lands he might discover, with hunting and shooting privileges on same.

He stopped several weeks at the Canary Islands, where he and his one hundred and [Pg 22]twenty men rested and got fresh water. He then set out sailing due west over an unknown sea to blaze the way for liberty.

Soon, however, his men began to murmur. They began also to pick on Columbus and occupy his steamer chair when he wanted to use it himself. They got to making chalk marks on the deck and compelling him to pay a shilling before he could cross them. Some claimed that they were lost and that they had been sailing around for over a week in a circle, one man stating that he recognized a spot in the sea that they had passed eight times already.

Finally they mutinied, and started to throw the great navigator overboard, but he told them that if they would wait until the next morning he would tell them a highly amusing story that he heard just before he left Palos.

Thus his life was saved, for early in the morning the cry of “Land ho!” was heard, and America was discovered.

A saloon was at once started, and the first step thus taken towards the foundation of a republic. From that one little timid saloon, with its family entrance, has sprung the magnificent and majestic machine which, lubricated with spoils and driven by wind, gives to every American today the right to live under a Government selected for him by men who make that their business.

Columbus discovered America several times after the 12th of October, 1492, and finally, while prowling about looking for more islands, [Pg 23]discovered South America near the mouth of the Orinoco.

He was succeeded as governor by Francisco de Bobadilla, who sent him back finally in chains. Thus we see that the great are not always happy. There is no doubt that millions of people every year avoid many discomforts by remaining in obscurity.

In the fall of 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth during a disagreeable storm, and, noting the excellent opportunity for future misery, began to erect a number of rude cabins. This party consisted of one hundred and two people of a resolute character who wished to worship God in a more extemporaneous manner than had been the custom in the Church of England.

They found that the Indians of Cape Cod were not ritualistic, and that they were willing to dispose of inside lots at Plymouth on reasonable terms, retaining, however, the right to use the lands for massacre purposes from time to time.

The Pilgrims were honest, and gave the Indians something for their land in almost every instance, but they put a price upon it which has made the Indian ever since a comparatively poor man.

Half of this devoted band died before spring, and yet the idea of returning to England did not occur to them. “No,” they exclaimed, “we [Pg 24]will not go back to London until we can go first-class, if we have to stay here two hundred years.”

During the winter they discovered why the lands had been sold to them so low. The Indians of one tribe had died there of a pestilence the year before, and so when the Pilgrims began to talk trade they did not haggle over prices.

In the early spring, however, they were surprised to hear the word “Welcome” proceeding from the door-mat of Samoset, an Indian whose chief was named Massasoit. A treaty was then made for fifty years, Massasoit taking “the same.”

Canonicus once sent to Governor Bradford a bundle of arrows tied up in a rattlesnake’s skin. The Governor put them away in the pantry with his other curios, and sent Canonicus a few bright new bullets and a little dose of powder. That closed the correspondence. In those days there were no newspapers, and most of the fighting was done without guarantee or side bets.

Money matters, however, were rather panicky at the time, and the people were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should give them strength to dig for clams again. Thus a trip to London and the Isle of Wight looked farther and farther away.

After four years they numbered only one hundred and eighty-four, counting immigration [Pg 25]and all. The colony only needed, however, more people and Eastern capital.

It would be well to pause here and remember the annoyances connected with life as a forefather. Possibly the reader has considered the matter already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620 must have felt proud yet anxious about the clam yield also, as each new mouth opened on the prospect.

Speaking of clams, it is said by some of the forefathers that the Cape Cod menu did not go beyond codfish croquettes until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when pie was added by act of legislature.

Clams are not so restless if eaten without the brisket, which is said to lie hard on the stomach.

Salem and Charlestown were started by Governor Endicott, and Boston was founded in 1630. To these various towns the Puritans flocked, and even now one may be seen in ghostly garments on Thanksgiving Eve flitting here and there turning off the gas in the parlor while the family are at tea, in order to cut down expenses.

Roger Williams, a bright young divine, was the first to interfere with the belief that magistrates had the right to punish Sabbath breakers, blasphemers, etc. He also was the first to utter the idea that a man’s own conscience [Pg 26]must be his own guide and not that of another.

Among the Puritans there were several who had enlarged consciences, and who desired to take in extra work for others who had no consciences and were busy in the fields. They were always ready to give sixteen ounces to the pound, and were honest, but they got very little rest on Sunday, because they had to watch the Sabbath breaker all the time.

It is said that the Puritans knocked what fun there was out of the Indian. Did any one ever see an Indian smile since the landing of the Pilgrims?

Roger Williams was too liberal to be kindly received by the clergy, and so he was driven out of the settlement. Finding that the Indians were less rigid and kept open on Sundays, he took refuge among them (1636), and before spring had gained eighteen pounds and converted Canonicus, one of the hardest cases in New England and the first man to sit up until after ten o’clock at night. Canonicus gave Roger the tract of land on which Providence now stands.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson gave the Pilgrims trouble also. Having claimed some special revelations and attempted to make a few remarks regarding them, she was banished.

Banishment, which meant a homeless life in a wild land, with no one but the Indians to associate with, in those days, was especially annoying to a good Christian woman, and yet it had its good points. It offered a little religious freedom, which could not be had among [Pg 27]those who wanted it so much that they braved the billow and the wild beast, the savage, the drouth, the flood, and the potato bug, to obtain it before anybody else got a chance at it. Freedom is a good thing.

Twenty years later the Quakers shocked every one by thinking a few religious thoughts on their own hooks. The colonists executed four of them, and before that tortured them at a great rate.

During dull times and on rainy days it was a question among the Puritans whether they would banish an old lady, bore holes with a red-hot iron through a Quaker’s tongue, or pitch horseshoes.

Nero, who was a Roman emperor from 54 to 68 A. D., was said to have been one of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever had. He was a nephew of Caligula, the Emperor, on his mother’s side, and a son of Dominitius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was really Nero’s name, but in the year 50 A. D. his mother married Claudius and her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus. This name he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, buttoned up in front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53, Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right to housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soon [Pg 28]wearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the New Jerusalem.

In 54, Nero’s mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne for several weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steady job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary.

His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried on during that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfully hold a man’s coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed. He loved to go out riding over the battlefields, as soon as it was safe, in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn’t care if the wheels rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man’s gore. It gave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloat over the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as a gloater he has no rival in history.

Nero’s reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Roman fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome was destroyed. The Emperor was charged with starting this fire in order to get the insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street.

Instead of taking off his crown, hanging it up in the hall, and helping to put out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero took his violin upstairs and played, “I’ll Meet You When the Sun Goes Down.” This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part of those who opposed the administration. [Pg 29]Several persons openly criticized Nero’s policy and then died.

A man in those days would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell his wife not to keep dinner waiting. “I am going down town to criticize the Emperor a few moments,” he would say. “If I do not get home in time for dinner, meet me on the ‘evergreen shore.’”

Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppea Sabina. She died afterwards at her husband’s earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so much about being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower always gratified and pleased him.

He was a very zealous monarch and kept Rome pretty well stirred up during his reign. If a man failed to show up anywhere on time, his friends would look sadly at each other and say, “Alas, he has criticized Nero.”

A man could wrestle with the yellow fever, or the small-pox, or the Asiatic cholera and stand a chance of recovery, but when he spoke sarcastically of Nero, it was good-bye John.

When Nero decided that a man was an offensive partisan, that man would generally put up the following notice on his office door:

“Gone to see the Emperor in relation to charge of offensive partisanship. Meet me at the cemetery at 2 o’clock.”

Finally, Nero overdid this thing and ran it into the ground. He did not want to be disliked and so those who disliked him were killed. This made people timid and muzzled the press a good deal.

The Roman papers in those days were all on [Pg 30]one side. They did not dare to be fearless and outspoken, for fear that Nero would take out his ad. So they would confine themselves to the statement that: “The genial and urbane Afranius Burrhus painted his new and recherche picket fence last week,” or “Our enterprising fellow townsman, Cæsar Kersikes, will remove the tail of his favorite bulldog next week, if the weather should be auspicious,” or “Miss Agrippina Bangoline, eldest daughter of Romulus Bangoline, the great Roman rinkist, will teach the school at Eupatorium, Trifoliatum Holler, this summer. She is a highly accomplished young lady, and a good speller.”

Nero got more and more fatal as he grew older, and finally the Romans began to wonder whether he would not wipe out the Empire before he died. His back yard was full all the time of people who had dropped in to be killed, so that they could have it off their minds.

Finally, Nero himself yielded to the great strain that had been placed upon him and, in the midst of an insurrection in Gaul, Spain and Rome itself, he fled and killed himself.

The Romans were very grateful for Nero’s great crowning act in the killing line, but they were dissatisfied because he delayed it so long, and therefore they refused to erect a tall monument over his remains. While they admired the royal suicide and regarded it as a success, they censured Nero’s negligence and poor judgment in suiciding at the wrong end of his reign.

I have often wondered what Nero would have done if he had been Emperor of the United [Pg 31]States for a few weeks and felt as sensitive to newspaper criticism as he seems to have been. Wouldn’t it be a picnic to see Nero cross the Jersey ferry to kill off a few journalists who had adversely criticized his course? The great violin virtuoso and lightweight Roman tyrant would probably go home by return mail, wrapped in tinfoil, accompanied by a note of regret from each journalist in New York, closing with the remark that “in the midst of life we are in death, therefore now is the time to subscribe.”

The closing debut of that great Shakesperean humorist and emotional ass, Mr. James Owen O’Connor, at the Star Theater, will never be forgotten. During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello, and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a pleasure to see him in any thing wherein he killed himself.

Encouraged by the success of beautiful but self-made actresses and hoping to win a place for himself and his portrait in the great soap and cigarette galaxy, Mr. O’Connor placed himself in the hands of some misguided elocutionist, and then sought to educate the people of New York and elocute them out of their thralldom up into the glorious light of the O’Connor school of acting.

The first week he was in the hands of critics, and they spoke quite serenely of his methods. Later, it was deemed best to place his merits in the hands of a man who would be on an equal footing with him. What O’Connor wanted was one of his peers, who would therefore judge him fairly. I was selected because I know nothing whatever about acting and would thus be on an equality with Mr. O’Connor.

After seeing his Hamlet I was of the opinion that he did wisely in choosing New York for debutting purposes, for had he chosen Denver, Colorado, at the end of the third act kind hands would have removed him from the stage by means of benzine and a rag.

I understand that Mr. O’Connor charged Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and Henry Irving with using their influence among the masses in order to prejudice said masses against Mr. O’Connor, thus making it unpleasant for him to act, and inciting in the audience a feeling of gentle but evident hostility, which Mr. O’Connor deprecated very much whenever he could get a chance to do so. I looked into this matter a little and I do not think it was true. Until almost the end of Mr. O’Connor’s career, Messrs. Abbey and Irving were not aware of his great metropolitan success, and it is generally believed among the friends of the two latter gentlemen that they did not feel it so keenly as Mr. O’Connor was led to suppose.

But James Owen O’Connor did one thing which I take the liberty of publicly alluding to. He took that saddest and most melancholy bit of bloody history, trimmed with assassinations [Pg 33]down the back and looped up with remorse, insanity, duplicity and unrequited love, and he filled it with silvery laughter and cauliflower and mirth, and various other groceries which the audience threw in from time to time, thus making it more of a spectacular piece than under the conservative management of such old-school men as Booth, who seem to think that Hamlet should be soaked full of sadness.

I went to see Hamlet, thinking that I would be welcome, for my sympathies were with James when I heard that Mr. Irving was picking on him and seeking to injure him. I went to the box office and explained who I was, and stated that I had been detailed to come and see Mr. O’Connor act; also that in what I might say afterwards my instructions were to give it to Abbey and Irving if I found that they had tampered with the audience in any way.

The man in the box office did not recognize me, but said that Mr. Fox would extend to me the usual courtesies. I asked where Mr. Fox could be found, and he said inside. I then started to go inside, but ran against a total stranger, who was “on the door,” as we say. He was feeding red and yellow tickets into a large tin oven, and looking far, far away. I conversed with him in low, passionate tones, and asked him where Mr. Fox could be found. He did not know, but thought he was still in Europe. I went back and told the box office that Mr. Fox was in Europe. He said no, I would find him inside. “Well, but how shall I get inside?” I asked eagerly, for I could already, [Pg 34]I fancied, hear the orchestra beginning to twang its lyre.

“Walk in,” said he, taking in $2 and giving back 50 cents in change to a man with a dead cat in his overcoat pocket.

I went back, and springing lightly over the iron railing while the gatekeeper was thinking over his glorious past, I went all around over the theater looking for Mr. Fox. I found him haggling over the price of some vegetables which he was selling at the stage door and which had been contributed by admirers and old subscribers to Mr. O’Connor at a previous performance.

When Mr. Fox got through with that I presented to him my card, which is as good a piece of job work in colors as was ever done west of the Missouri river, and to which I frequently point with pride. Mr. Fox said he was sorry, but that Mr. O’Connor had instructed him to extend no courtesies whatever to the press. The press, he claimed, had said something derogatory to Mr. O’Connor as a tragedian, and while he personally would be tickled to death to give me two divans and a folding-bed near the large fiddle, he must do as Mr. O’Connor had bid—or bade him, I forget which; and so, restraining his tears with great difficulty, he sent me back to the entrance and although I was already admitted in a general way, I went to the box office and purchased a seat. I believe now that Mr. Fox thought he had virtually excluded me from the house when he told me I should have to pay in order to get in.

I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.

Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called “Egmont.” The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to take a note to Mr. O’Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had returned with the statement that Mr. O’Connor was busy rehearsing his soliloquy and removing a shirred egg from his outer clothing.

He also said he could not promise an audience to any one. It was all he could do to get one for himself.

So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is in front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with long-handled hay knives are on guard.

All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net over his head—so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys it. Nobody seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as quick as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the head with a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I knew then that it was only a man made up to look like a presence.

One of the guards, whose name, I think, was Smith, had a droop to his legs and an instability [Pg 36]about the knees which were highly enjoyable. He walked like a frozen-toed hen, and stood first on one foot and then on the other, with almost human intelligence. His support was about as poor as O’Connor’s.

After awhile the ghost vanished with what is called a stately tread, but I would regard it more as a territorial tread. Horatio did quite well, and the audience frequently listened to him. Still, he was about the only one who did not receive crackers or cheese as a slight testimonial of regard from admirers in the audience. Finally, Mr. James Owen O’Connor entered. It was fully five minutes before he could be heard, and even then he could not. His mouth moved now and then, and a gesture would suddenly burst forth, but I did not hear what he said. At least I could not hear distinctly what he said. After awhile, as people got tired and went away, I could hear better.

Mr. O’Connor introduced into his Hamlet a set of gestures evidently intended for another play. People who are going to act out on the stage can not be too careful in getting a good assortment of gestures that will fit the play itself. James had provided himself with gestures that might do for Little Eva, or “Ten Nights in a Bar-room,” but they did not fit Hamlet. There is where he makes a mistake. Hamlet is a man whose victuals don’t agree with him. He feels depressed and talks about sticking a bodkin into himself, but Mr. O’Connor gives him a light, elastic step, and an air of persiflage, bonhomie, and frisk, which do not match the character.

Mr. O’Connor sought in his conception and interpretation of Hamlet to give it a free and jaunty Kokomo flavor—a nameless twang of tansy and dried apples, which Shakespeare himself failed to sock into his great drama.

There is really a good lesson to be learned from the pitiful and pathetic tale of James Owen O’Connor. Injudicious friends, doubtless, overestimated his value, and unduly praised his Smart Aleckutionary powers. Loving himself unwisely but too extensively, he was led away into the great, untried purgatory of public scrutiny, and the general indictment followed.

The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is no cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from mediocrity to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient student, and the earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide his time, gets what James Owen O’Connor received—the just condemnation of those who are abundantly able to judge.

In seeking to combine the melancholy beauty of Hamlet’s deep and earnest pathos with the gentle humor of “A Hole in the Ground,” Mr. O’Connor evidently corked himself, as we say at the Browning Club, and it was but justice after all. Before we curse the condemnation of the people and the press, let us carefully and prayerfully look ourselves over, and see if we have not overestimated ourselves.

There are many men alive today who do not dare say anything without first thinking how it will read in their memoirs—men whom we can not, therefore, thoroughly enjoy until [Pg 38]they are dead, and yet whose graves will be kept green only so long as the appropriation lasts.

Without wishing to alarm the American people, or create a panic, I desire briefly and seriously to discuss the great question, “Whither are we drifting, and what is to be the condition of the coming man?” We can not shut our eyes to the fact that mankind is passing through a great era of change; even womankind is not built as she was a few brief years ago. And is it not time, fellow citizens, that we pause to consider what is to be the future of the American?

Food itself has been the subject of change both in the matter of material and preparation. This must affect the consumer in such a way as to some day bring about great differences. Take, for instance, the oyster, one of our comparatively modern food and game fishes, and watch the effects of science upon him. At one time the oyster browsed around and ate what he could find in Neptune’s backyard, and we had to eat him as we found him. Now we take a herd of oysters off the trail, all run down, and feed them artificially till they swell up to a fancy size and bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is perverted, and instead of [Pg 39]being allowed to fatten up in the fall on acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. How can you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at the expense of his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the future usefulness of the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting the future of the human race who feed upon him?

I only use the oyster as an illustration, and I do not wish to cause alarm, but I say that if we stimulate the oyster artificially and swell him up by scientific means, we not only do so at the expense of his better nature and keep him away from his family, but we are making our mark on the future race of men. Oyster-fattening is now, of course, in its infancy. Only a few years ago an effort was made at St. Louis to fatten cove oysters while in the can, but the system was not well understood, and those who had it in charge only succeeded in making the can itself more plump. But now oysters are kept on ground feed and given nothing to do for a few weeks, and even the older and overworked sway-backed and rickety oysters of the dim and murky past are made to fill out, and many of them have to put a gore in the waistband of their shells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the objects toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with the utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get a setback, when the present hunting-case [Pg 40]oyster will give place to the open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed a hotel. Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in a hip-pocket a flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two little Japanese bottles, one of which will contain salt and the other pepper, and there will be some way provided by which you can tell which is which. But are we improving the oyster now? That is a question we may well ask ourselves. Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on him, or is it bloat? And what will be the result in the home life of the oyster? We take him from all domestic influences whatever in order to make a swell of him by our modern methods, but do we improve his condition morally, and what is to be the great final result on man?

The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist. Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation points and a medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science and advancement till Reason totters on her throne.

But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future. Our race is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations, political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods of relaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions, malformations and some more things of the same kind.

Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of the optic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with [Pg 41]the same ear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just stands around drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear anything. Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the muscular and nervous strain that is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in place and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulus that should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wanders away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the great mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when it rains is more than it is equal to.

Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on the floor with the butt end of the cue ever and anon, produces at last optical illusions, phantasmagoria and visions of pink spiders with navy-blue abdomens. Baseball is not alone highly injurious to the umpire, but it also induces crooked fingers, bone spavin and hives among habitual players. Jumping the rope induces heart disease. Poker is unduly sedentary in its nature. Bicycling is highly injurious, especially to skittish horses. Boating induces malaria. Lawn tennis can not be played in the house. Archery is apt to be injurious to those who stand around and watch the game, and pugilism is a relaxation that jars heavily on some natures.

Football produces what may be called the endogenous or ingrowing toenail, stringhalt and mania. Copenhagen induces a melancholy, and the game of bean bag is unduly exciting. Horse racing is too brief and transitory as an [Pg 42]outdoor game, requiring weeks and months for preparation and lasting only long enough for a quick person to ejaculate “Scat!” The pitcher’s arm is a new disease, the outgrowth of baseball; the lawn tennis elbow is another result of a popular open air amusement, and it begins to look as though the coming American would hear with one overgrown telephonic ear, while the other will be rudimentary only. He will have an abnormal baseball arm with a lawn tennis elbow, a powerful football kicking leg with the superior toe driven back into the palm of his foot. He will have a highly trained biceps muscle over his eye to retain his glass, and that eye will be trained to shoot a curved glance over a high hat and witness anything on the stage.

Other features will grow abnormal, or shrink from the lack of use, as a result of our customs. For instance, the man whose business is to get along a crowded street with the utmost speed will have, finally, a hard, sharp horn growing on each elbow, and a pair of spurs growing out of each ankle. These will enable him to climb over a crowd and get there early. Constant exposure to these weapons on the part of the pedestrian will harden the walls of the thorax and abdomen until the coming man will be an impervious man. The citizen who avails himself of all modern methods of conveyance will ride from his door on the horse car to the elevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the train and a revolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the street car will be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track, and [Pg 43]the passenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will simply hang out a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a combination car will call for him, take him to the nearest elevated station, elevate him, car and all, to the track, take him where he wants to go, and call for him at any hour of the night to bring him home. He will do his exercising at home, chiefly taking artificial sea baths, jerking a rowing machine or playing on a health lift till his eyes hang out on his cheeks, and he need not do any walking whatever. In that way the coming man will be over-developed above the legs, and his lower limbs will look like the desolate stems of a frozen geranium. Eccentricities of limb will be handed over like baldness from father to son among the dwellers in the cities, where every advantage in the way of rapid transit is to be had, until a metropolitan will be instantly picked out by his able digestion and rudimentary legs, just as we now detect the gentleman from the interior by his wild endeavors to overtake an elevated train.

In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on the road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling a storage think-tank. This will enable a man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when anyone says to him, “A penny for your thoughts,” he can go to his valise and give [Pg 44]him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and can never hold on to them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, can set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thought comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and the genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it back at his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucose syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absent friends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it. In this way the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it will be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in the back office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughts into little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, after which they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home.

All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and physical. Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000 of people and feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day. Take four men, we will say, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. See how politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation—all might be wiped out. A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough to last them [Pg 45]through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man’s house each day, for less than he now pays for gas. Just before election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your button-hole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply. It would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a while every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself so much, need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employed by the National Think Retort and Supply Works. We talk a great deal about the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, after all, as the mixture of politics and independent thought. Will the coming voter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal ear constantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideas furnished by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party in power?

I had a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled an engagement in a strange city and retired to my cozy room at the hotel.

The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had been locked up to [Pg 46]await the arrival of an Uncle Tom’s Cabin company. The last loiterer had returned to his home and the lights in the palace of the pork packer were extinguished.

No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bathtub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed.

The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for another’s gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder when, if he would enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more safely.

Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the bell boy afterward testified that he heard me do so.

The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assurance of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into a gentle repose.

Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the regular features, would have said that no heart could be [Pg 47]so hard as to harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple.

I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or other, no doubt, broke my slumber and I opened my eyes wildly. The room was in semi-darkness.

A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets.

Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly wrapper.

Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it.

I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life.

But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the [Pg 48]gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my hard-earned wealth.

Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be trying to suppress it. I reached gently under my pillow, and securing the money I put it in the pocket of my robe de nuit. Then, with great care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson’s great work on “How to Ventilate the Human Form.” I said to myself that I would sell my life as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the trade.

Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the corner.

When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark corner. Also another sigh of relief later on.

I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his pantaloons were hanging in a chair at the other end of the room.

However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed toward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling.

People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the [Pg 49]public in that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator.

It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do so than have the affair garbled by careless hands.

Sir.—I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal and the key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 36, 66 and 99, though I do not remember at this moment which comes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which direction you should turn it first in order to make it operate.

There is some mining stock in my private drawer in the safe, which I have not yet removed. This stock you may have, if you desire it. It is a luxury, but you may have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead of this mining stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it will cost less to keep him.

You will find the postal cards that have not been used under the distributing table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery window.

Looking over my stormy and eventful administration [Pg 50]as postmaster here, I find abundant cause for thanksgiving. At the time I entered upon the duties of my office the department was not yet on a paying basis. It was not even self-sustaining. Since that time, with the active cooperation of the chief executive and the heads of the department, I have been able to make our postal system a paying one, and on top of that I am now able to reduce the tariff on average-sized letters from three cents to two. I might add that this is rather too too, but I will not say anything that might seem undignified in an official resignation which is to become a matter of history.

Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of office I have safely passed. I am able to turn over the office today in a highly improved condition and to present a purified and renovated institution to my successor.

Acting under the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up his administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the feather bed a part of my official duties, I filed it away in an obscure place and burned it in effigy, also in the gloaming. This act maddened my predecessor to such a degree that he then and there became a candidate for justice of the peace on the Democratic ticket. The Democratic party was able, however, with what aid it secured from the Republicans, to plow the old man under to a great degree.

It was not long after I had taken my official oath before an era of unexampled prosperity opened for the American people. The price of beef rose to a remarkable altitude, and other vegetables commanded a good figure and a ready market. We then began to make active preparations for the introduction of the strawberry roan two-cent stamps and the black-and-tan postal note. One reform has crowded upon the heels of another, until the country is today upon the foam-crested wave of permanent prosperity.

Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without thanking yourself and the heads of departments at Washington for your active, cheery and prompt cooperation in these matters. You can do as you see fit, of course, about incorporating this idea into your Thanksgiving proclamation, but rest assured it would not be ill-timed or inopportune. It is not alone a credit to myself. It reflects credit upon the administration also.

I need not say that I herewith transmit my resignation with great sorrow and genuine regret. We have toiled on together month after month, asking for no reward except the innate consciousness of rectitude and the salary as fixed by law. Now we are to separate. Here the roads seem to fork, as it were, and you and I, and the cabinet, must leave each other at this point.

You will find the key under the door-mat, and you had better turn the cat out at night when [Pg 52]you close the office. If she does not go readily, you can make it clearer to her mind by throwing the cancelling stamp at her.

If Deacon Hayford does not pay up his box rent, you might as well put his mail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk and insists on a letter from one of his wives every day in the week, you can salute him through the box delivery with an old Queen Anne tomahawk, which you will find near the Etruscan water pail. This will not in any manner surprise either of these parties.

Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed only with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. I believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz.: Those who are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannot receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, including Sunday.

Mr. President, as an official of this government I now retire. My term of office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for my eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers of a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickening thud.

We are stopping quietly here, taking our meals in our rooms mostly, and going out very little indeed. When I say we, I use the term editorially.

We notice first of all the great contrast between this and other hotels, and in several instances this one is superior. In the first place, there is a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep here that can not be felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete themselves in the wardrobe during the day and steal one’s pantaloons and contents at night. This is one of the compensations of life in prison.

Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do. We all retire at the same time, and a murderer can not sit up any later at night than the smaller or unknown criminal can.

You can get to Ludlow Street Jail by taking the Second Avenue elevated train to Grand Street and then going east two blocks, or you can fire a shotgun into a Sabbath school.

You can pay five cents to the Elevated Railroad and get here, or you can put some other man’s nickel in your own slot and come here with an attendant.

William Marcy Tweed was the contractor of Ludlow Street Jail and here also he died. He was the son of a poor chairmaker and was born April 3, 1823. From the chair business [Pg 54]in 1853 to congress was the first false step. Exhilarated by the delirium of official life, and the false joys of franking his linen home every week, and having cake and preserves franked back to him at Washington, he resolved to still further taste the delights of office, and in 1857 we find him as a school commissioner.

In 1860 he became Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society, an association at that time more purely political than politically pure. As president of the board of supervisors, head of the department of public works, state senator, and Grand Sachem of Tammany, Tweed had a large and seductive influence over the city and state. The story of how he earned a scanty livelihood by stealing a million at a pop, and thus, with the most rigid economy, scraped together $20,000,000 in a few years by patient industry and smoking plug tobacco, has been frequently told.

Tweed was once placed here in Ludlow Street Jail in default of $3,000,000 bail. How few there are of us who could slap up that amount of bail if rudely gobbled on the street by the hand of the law. While riding out with the sheriff, in 1875, Tweed asked to see his wife, and said he would be back in a minute.

He came back by way of Spain, in the fall of ’76, looking much improved. But the malaria and dissipation of Blackwell’s Island afterwards impaired his health, and having done time there, and having been arrested afterwards and placed in Ludlow Street Jail, he died here April 12, 1878, leaving behind him a large, vain world, and an equally vain judgment [Pg 55]for $6,537,117.38, to which he said he would give his attention as soon as he could get a paving contract in the sweet ultimately.

From the exterior Ludlow Street Jail looks somewhat like a conservatory of music, but as soon as one enters he readily discovers his mistake. The structure has 100 feet frontage, and a court, which is sometimes called the court of last resort. The guest can climb out of this court by ascending a polished brick wall about 100 feet high and then letting himself down in a similar way on the Ludlow street side.

That one thing is doing a great deal towards keeping quiet a number of people here who would otherwise, I think, go away.

James D. Fish and Ferdinand Ward both remained here prior to their escape to Sing Sing. Red Leary also made his escape from this point but did not succeed in reaching the penitentiary. Forty thousand prisoners have been confined in Ludlow Street Jail, mostly for civil offenses. A man in New York runs a very short career if he tries to be offensively civil.

As you enter Ludlow Street Jail the door is carefully closed after you and locked by means of an iron lock about the size of a pictorial family Bible. You then remain on the inside for quite a spell. You do not hear the prattle of soiled children any more. All the glad sunlight, and stench-condensing pavements, and dark-haired inhabitants of Rivington street, are seen no longer, and the heavy iron storm door shuts out the wail of the combat from the alley nearby. Ludlow Street Jail may [Pg 56]be surrounded by a very miserable and dirty quarter of the city, but when you get inside all is changed.

You register first. There is a good pen there that you can write with, and the clerk does not chew tolu and read a sporting paper while you wait for a room. He is there to attend to business, and he attends to it. He does not seem to care whether you have any baggage or not. You can stay here for days, even if you don’t have any baggage. All you need is a kind word and a mittimus from the court.

One enters this sanitarium either as a boarder or a felon. If you decide to come in as a boarder, you pay the warden $15 a week for the privileges of sitting at his table and eating the luxuries of the market. You also get a better room than at many hotels, and you have a good strong door, with a padlock on it, which enables you to prevent the sudden and unlooked-for entrance of the chambermaid. It is a good-sized room, with a wonderful amount of seclusion, a plain bed, table, chairs, carpet and so forth. After a few weeks at the seaside, at $19 per day, I think the room in which I am writing is not unreasonable at $2.

You can pay $50 to $100 per week here if you wish, and get your money’s worth, too. For the latter sum one may live in the bridal chamber, so to speak, and eat the very best food all the time.

Heavy iron bars keep the mosquitoes out, and at night the house is lighted by incandescent lights of one-candle power each. Neat [Pg 57]snuffers, consisting of the thumb and forefinger polished on the hair, are to be found in each occupied room.

Bread is served to the Freshmen and Juniors in rectangular wads. It is such bread as convicts’ tears have moistened many thousand years. In that way it gets quite moist.

The most painful feature about life in Ludlow Street Jail is the confinement. One can not avoid a feeling of being constantly hampered and hemmed in.

One more disagreeable thing is the great social distinction here. The poor man who sleeps in a stone niche near the roof, and who is constantly elbowed and hustled out of his bed by earnest and restless vermin with a tendency toward insomnia, is harassed by meeting in the courtyard and corridors the paying boarders who wear good clothes, live well, have their cigars, brandy and Kentucky Sec all the time.

But, great Scott! what a comfort it is to a man like me, who has been nearly killed by a cyclone, to feel the firm, secure walls and solid time lock when he goes to bed at night! Even if I can not belong to the 400, I am almost happy.

We retire at 7:30 o’clock at night and arise at 6:30 in the morning, so as to get an early start. A man who has five or ten years to stay in a place like this naturally likes to get at it as soon as possible each day, and so he gets up at 6:30.

We dress by the gaudy light of the candle, and while we do so, we remember far away at home our wife and the little boy asleep in her arms. They do not get up at 6:30. It is at this hour we remember the fragrant drawer in the dresser at home where our clean shirts, and collars and cuffs, and socks and handkerchiefs, are put every week by our wife. We also recall as we go about our stone den, with its odor of former corned beef, and the ghost of some bloody-handed predecessor’s snore still moaning in the walls, the picture of green grass by our own doorway, and the apples that were just ripening when the bench warrant came.

The time from 6:30 to breakfast is occupied by the average, or non-paying inmate, in doing the chamber work and tidying up his state-room. I do not know how others feel about it, but I dislike chamber work most heartily, especially when I am in jail. Nothing has done more to keep me out of jail, I guess, than the fact that while there I have to make up my bed and dust the piano.

Breakfast is generally table d’hote and consists of bread. A tincup of coffee takes the taste of the bread out of your mouth, and then if you have some Limburger cheese in your pocket you can with that remove the taste of the coffee.

Dinner is served at 12 o’clock and consists of more bread with soup. This soup has everything in it except nourishment. The bead on this soup is noticeable for quite a distance. It is disagreeable. Several days ago I heard that the Mayor was in the soup, but I didn’t realize [Pg 59]it before. I thought it was a newspaper yarn. There is everything in this soup, from shop-worn rice up to neat’s-foot oil. Once I thought I detected cuisine in it.

The dinner menu is changed on Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays, on which days you get the soup first and the bread afterwards. In this way the bread is saved.

Three days in a week each man gets at dinner a potato containing a thousand-legged worm. At 6 o’clock comes supper with toast and responses. Bread is served at supper time, together with a cup of tea. To those who dislike bread and never eat soup, or do not drink tea or coffee, life at Ludlow Street Jail is indeed irksome.

I asked for kumiss and a pony of Benedictine, as my stone boudoir made me feel rocky, but it has not yet been sent up.

Somehow, while here, I can not forget poor old man Dorrit, the Master of the Marshalsea, and how the Debtors’ Prison preyed upon his mind till he didn’t enjoy anything except to stand off and admire himself. Ludlow Street Jail is a good deal like it in many ways, and I can see how in time the canker of unrest and the memories of those who did us wrong but who are basking in the bright and bracing air, while we, to meet their obligations, sacrifice our money, our health and at last our minds, would kill hope and ambition.

Before closing this brief and incomplete account as a guest at Ludlow Street Jail I ought, in justice to my family, to say, perhaps, that I came down this morning to see a friend [Pg 60]of mine who is here because he refuses to pay alimony to his recreant and morbidly sociable wife. He says he is quite content to stay here, so long as his wife is on the outside. He is writing a small ready-reference book on his side of the great problem, “Is Marriage a Failure?”

With this I shake him by the hand and in a moment the big iron storm door clangs behind me, the big lock clicks in its hoarse, black throat and I welcome even the air of Ludlow street so long as the blue sky is above it.

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Page 30: “townsman, Caesar Kersikes”	“townsman, Cæsar Kersikes”
Page 32: “After seing his Hamlet”	“After seeing his Hamlet”
Page 58: “chamberwork most heartily”	“chamber work most heartily”

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The humor of "Bill" Nye

The Humor of “Bill” Nye

THE HUMOR OF “BILL” NYE

INTRODUCTION

WORDS ABOUT WASHINGTON

B. FRANKLIN, DECEASED

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

THE PURITANS

NERO

A SINGULAR “HAMLET”

THE DUBIOUS FUTURE

A THRILLING EXPERIENCE

A RESIGN

A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW

Transcriber’s note

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