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BALED HAY

By Bill Nye

A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves o' Grass."

Author of "Bill Nye and Boomerang,"

"Forty Liars and Other Lies,"

"Goose-Neck Smith,"

"How Came Your Eye
Out, and Your Nose Not Skun?" Etc., Etc., Etc.

_Heap cold day when Melican man no lite em blook_.AH SIN.

Illustrated by F. Opper, of "Puck"

Chicago. New York, San Francisco:

Belford, Clarke & Co

1884

[Illustration: cover]

[Illustration: 0007]

[Illustration: 0009]




DEDICATION.

TO MY WIFE:

Who has courteously and heroically laughed at my feeble and emaciated
jokes, even when she did not feel like it; who has again and again
started up and agitated successfully the flagging and reluctant
applause, who has courageously held my coat through this trying ordeal,
and who, even now, as I write this, is in the front yard warning people
to keep off the premises until I have another lucid interval,

This Volume is Affectionately Inscribed,

BY THE

AUTHOR.

PIAZZA TO THE THIRD VOLUME.

There can really be no excuse for this last book of trite and beautiful
sayings. I do not attempt, in any way, to palliate this great wrong. I
would not do so even if I had an idea what palliate meant.

It will, however, add one more to the series of books for which I am to
blame, and the pleasure of travel will be very much enhanced, for me, at
least.

There is one friend I always meet on the trains when I travel. He is the
news agent. He comes to me with my own books in his arms, and tells me
over and over again of their merits. He means it, too. What object could
he have in coming to me, not knowing who I am, and telling me of their
great worth? Why would he talk that way to me if he did not really feel
it?

That is one reason I travel so much. When 1 get gloomy and heartsick,
I like to get on a train and be assured once more, by a total stranger,
that my books have never been successfully imitated.

Some authors like to have a tall man, with a glazed grip-sack, and whose
breath is stronger than his intellect, selling their works; but I do not
prefer that way.

I like the candor and ingenuousness of the train-boy. He does not come
to the front door while you are at prayers, and ring the bell till the
hat-rack falls down, and then try to sell you a book containing 2,000
receipts for the blind staggers. He leans gently over you as you look
out the car window, and he puts some pecan meats in your hand, and
thus wins your trusting heart. Then he sells you a book, and takes an
interest in you.

This book will go to swell the newsboy's armful, and if there be any
excuse, under the sun, for its publication, aside from the royalty; that
is it.

I have taken great care to thoroughly eradicate anything that would have
the appearance of poetry in this work, and there is not a thought or
suggestion contained in it that would soil the most delicate fabric.

Do not read it all at once, however, in order to see whether he
married the girl or not. Take a little at a time, and it will cure
gloom on the "_similia simili-bus curanter_" principle. If you read
it all at once, and it gives you the heaves, I am glad of it, and you
deserve it. I will not bind myself to write the obituary of such people.

Hudson, Wis., Sept, 5,1883.




BALED HAY

A NOVEL NOVELETTE

|I NEVER wrote a novel, because I always thought it required more of
a mashed-rasp-berry imagination than I could muster, but I was the
business manager, once, for a year and a half, of a little two-bit
novelette that has never been published.

I now propose to publish it, because I cannot keep it to myself any
longer.

Allow me, therefore, to reminisce.

Harry Bevans was an old schoolmate of mine in the days of and although
Bevans was not his sure-enough name, it will answer for the purposes
herein set forth. At the time of which I now speak he was more bashful
than a book agent, and was trying to promote a cream-colored mustache
and buff "Donegals" on the side.

Suffice it to say that he was madly in love with Fanny Buttonhook, and
too bashful to say so by telephone.

Her name wasn't Buttonhook, but I will admit it for the sake of
argument. Harry lived over at Kalamazoo, we will say, and Fanny at
Oshkosh. These were not the exact names of the towns, but I desire to
bewilder the public a little in order to avoid any harassing disclosures
in the future. It is always well enough, I find, to deal gently will
those who are alive and moderately muscular.

Young Bevans was not specially afraid of old man Buttonhook, or his
wife. He didn't dread the enraged parent worth a cent. He wasn't afraid
of anybody under the cerulean dome, in fact, except Miss Buttonhook;
but when she sailed down the main street, Harry lowered his colors and
dodged into the first place he found open, whether it was a millinery
store or a livery stable.

Once, in an unguarded moment, he passed so near her that the gentle
south wind caught up the cherry ribbon that Miss Buttonhook wore at her
throat, and slapped Mr. Bevans across the cheek with it before he knew
what ailed him. There was a little vision of straw hat, brown hair,
and pink-and-white cuticle, as it were, a delicate odor of violets, the
"swish" of a summer silk, and my friend, Mr. Bevans, put his hand to his
head, like a man who has a sun-stroke, and fell into a drug store and a
state of wild mash, ruin and helpless chaos.

His bashfulness was not seated nor chronic. It was the varioloid, and
didn't hurt him only when Miss Buttonhook was present, or in sight. He
was polite and chatty with other girls, and even dared to be blithe and
gay sometimes, too, but when Frances loomed up in the distance, he would
climb a rail fence nine feet high to evade her.

He told me once that he wished I would erect the frame-work of a
letter to Fanny, in which he desired to ask that he might open up a
correspondence with her. He would copy and mail it, he said, and he was
sure that I, being a disinterested party, would be perfectly calm.

I wrote a letter for him, of which I was moderately proud. It would melt
the point on a lightning rod, it seemed to me, for it was just as full
of gentleness and poetic soothe as it could be, and Tupper, Webster's
Dictionary and my scrap-book had to give down first rate. Still it was
manly and square-toed. It was another man's confession, and I made it
bulge out with frankness and candor.

As luck would have it, I went over to Oshkosh about the time Harry's
prize epistle reached that metropolis, and having been a confidant
of Miss B's from early childhood, I had the pleasure of reading Bev's
letter, and advising the young lady about the correspondence.

Finally a bright thought struck her. She went over to an easy chair, and
sat down on her foot, coolly proposing that I should outline a letter
replying to Harry's, in a reserved and rather frigid manner, yet bidding
him dare to hope that if his orthography and punctuation continued
correct, he might write occasionally, though it must be considered
entirely _sub rosa_ and abnormally _entre nous_ on account of "Pa."

By the way, "Pa" was a druggist, and one of the salts of the
earth--Epsom salts, of course.

I agreed to write the letter, swore never to reveal the secret workings
of the order, the grips, explanations, passwords and signals, and then
wrote her a nice, demure, startled-fawn letter, as brief as the collar
to a party dress, and as solemn as the Declaration of Independence.

Then I said good-by, and returned to my own home, which was neither
in Kalamazoo nor Oshkosh. There I received a flat letter from 'William
Henry Bevans, inclosing one from Fanny, and asking for suggestions as
to a reply. Her letter was in Miss Buttonhook's best vein. I remember
having written it myself.

Well, to cut a long story short, every other week I wrote a letter for
Fanny, and on intervening weeks I wrote one for the lover at Kalamazoo.
By keeping copies of all letters written, I had a record showing where I
was, and avoided saying the same pleasant things twice.

Thus the short, sweet summer scooted past. The weeks were filled
with gladness, and their memory even now comes back to me, like a
wood-violet-scented vision. A wood-violet-scented vision comes high, but
it is necessary in this place.

Toward winter the correspondence grew a little tedious, owing to the
fact that I had a large, and tropical boil on the back of my neck, which
refused to declare its intentions or come to a focus for three weeks. In
looking over the letters of both lovers yesterday, I could tell by the
tone of each just where this boil began to grow up, as it were, between
two fond hearts.

This feeling grew till the middle of December, when there was a red-hot
quarrel. It was exciting and spirited, and after I had alternately
flattered myself first from Kalamazoo and then from Oshkosh, it was
a genuine luxury to have a row with myself through the medium of the
United States mails.

Then I made up and got reconciled. I thought it would be best to secure
harmony before the holidays so that Harry could go over to Oshkosh and
spend Christmas. I therefore wrote a letter for Harry in which he said
he had, no doubt, been hasty, and he was sorry. It should not occur
again. The days had been like weary ages since their quarrel, he
said--vicariously, of course--and the light had been shut out of his
erstwhile joyous life. Death would be a luxury unless she forgave him,
and Hades would be one long, sweet picnic and lawn festival unless she
blessed him with her smile.

You can judge how an old newspaper reporter, with a scarlet imagination,
would naturally dash the color into another man's picture of humility
and woe.

She replied--by proxy--that he was not to blame. It was her waspish
temper and cruel thoughtlessness. She wished he would come over and take
dinner with them on Christmas day and she would tell him how sorry she
was. When the man admits that he's a brute and the woman says she's
sorry, it behooves the eagle eye of the casual spectator to look up into
the blue sky for a quarter of an hour, till the reconciliation has had
a chance and the brute has been given time to wipe a damp sob from his
coat-collar.

I was invited to the Christmas dinner. As a successful reversible
amanuensis I thought I deserved it. I was proud and happy. I had passed
through a lover's quarrel and sailed in with whitewinged peace on time,
and now I reckoned that the second joint, with an irregular fragment
of cranberry jelly, and some of the dressing, and a little of the white
meat please, was nothing more than right.

Mr. Bevans forgot to be bashful twice during the day, and even smiled
once also. He began to get acquainted with Fanny after dinner, and
praised her beautiful letters. She blushed clear up under her "wave,"
and returned the compliment.

That was natural. When he praised her letters I did not wonder, and
when she praised his I admitted that she was eminently correct. I never
witnessed better taste on the part of two young and trusting hearts.

After Christmas I thought they would both feel like buying a manual and
doing their own writing, but they did not dare to do so evidently. They
seemed to be afraid the change would be detected, so I piloted them into
the middle of the succeeding fall, and then introduced the crisis into
both their lives.

It was a success.

I felt about as well as though I were to be cut down myself, and married
off in the very prime of life. Fanny wore the usual clothing adopted
by young ladies who are about to be sacrificed to a great horrid man. I
cannot give the exact description of her trousseau, but she looked like
a hazel-eyed angel, with a freckle on the bridge of her nose. The
groom looked a little scared, and moved his gloved hands as though they
weighed twenty-one pounds apiece.

However, it's all over now. I was up there recently to see them. They
are quite happy. Not too happy, but just happy enough. They call their
oldest son Birdie. I wanted them to call him William, but they were
headstrong and named him Birdie. That wounded my pride, and so I called
him Earlie Birdie.




GREELEY AID RUM.

|WHEN I visit Greeley I am asked over and over again as to the practical
workings of woman suffrage in Wyoming, and when I go back to Wyoming I
am asked how prohibition works practically in Greeley, Col. By telling
varied and pleasing lies about both I manage to have a good deal of fun,
and also keep the two elements on the anxious seat.

There are two sides to both questions, and some day when I get time
and have convalesced a little more, I am going to write a large book
relating to these two matters. At present I just want to say a word
about the colony which bears the name of the Tribune philosopher, and
nestles so lovingly at the chilly feet of the Rocky mountains. As I
write, Greeley is apparently an oasis in the desert. It looks like
a fertile island dropped down from heaven in a boundless stretch of
buffalo grass, sage hens and cunning little prairie dogs. And yet you
could not come here as a stranger, and within the colonial barbed wire
fence, procure a bite of cold rum if you were President of the United
States, with a rattlesnake bite as large as an Easter egg concealed
about your person. You can, however, become acquainted, if you are of a
social nature and keep your eyes open.

I do not say this because I have been thirsty these few past weeks and
just dropped on the game, as Aristotle would say, but just to prove that
men are like boys, and when you tell them they can't have any particular
thing, that is the thing they are apt to desire with a feverish yearn.
That is why the thirstful man in Maine drinks from the gas fixture; why
the Kansas drinkist gets his out of a rain-water barrel, and why other
miracles too numerous to mention are performed.

Whisky is more bulky and annoying to carry about in the coat-tail
pocket than a plug of tobacco, but there have been cases where it was
successfully done. I was shown yesterday a little corner that would hold
six or eight bushels. It was in the wash-room of a hotel, and was about
half full. So were the men who came there, for before night the entire
place was filled with empty whisky bottles of every size, shape and
smell. The little fat bottle with the odor of gin and livery stable was
there, and the large flat bottle that you get at Evans, four miles away,
generally filled with something that tastes like tincture of capsicum,
spirits of ammonia and lingering death, is also represented in this
great congress of cosmopolitan bottles sucked dry and the cork gnawed
half up.

When I came to Greeley, I was still following the course of treatment
prescribed by my Laramie City physician, and with the rest, I was
required to force down three adult doses of brandy per day. He used
to taste the prescription at times to see if it had been properly
compounded. Shortly after my arrival here I ran out of this remedy
and asked a friend to go and get the bottle refilled. He was a man not
familiar with Greeley in its moisture-producing capacity, and he was
unable to procure the vile demon in the town for love or wealth. The
druggist even did not keep it, and although he met crowds of men with
tears in their eyes and breath like a veteran bung-starter, he had to
go to Evans for the required opiate. This I use externally, now, on the
vagrant dog who comes to me to be fondled and who goes away with his
hair off. Central Colorado is full of partially bald dogs who have wiped
their wet, cold noses on me, not wisely but too well.




ABOUT SAW MILLS.

River Falls, Wis., May 80.

|I HAVE just returned from a trip up the North Wisconsin railway, where
I went to catch a string of codfish, and anything else that might be
contagious. The trip was a pleasant one and productive of great good in
many ways. I am hardening myself to railway traveling, like Timberline
Jones' man, so that I can stand the return journey to Laramie in July.

Northern Wisconsin is the place where the "foreign lumber" comes from
which we use in Laramie in the erection of our palatial residences. I
visited the mill last week that furnished the lumber used in the Oasis
hotel at Greeley. They yank a big wet log into that mill and turn it
into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay
car. The log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs while it is
being worked into lumber. These iron dogs are not like those we see on
the front steps of a brown stone house occasionally. They are another
breed of dogs.

[Illustration: 0027]

The managing editor of the mill lays out the log in his mind, and works
it into dimension stuff, shingle holts, slabs, edgings, two by fours,
two by eights, two by sixes, etc., so as to use the goods to the best
advantage, just as a woman takes a dress pattern and cuts it so she
won't have to piece the front breadths, and will still have enough left
to make a polonaise for the last-summer gown.

I stood there for a long time watching the various saws and listening
to their monotonous growl, and wishing that I had been born a successful
timber thief instead of a poor boy without a rag to my back.

At one of these mills, not long ago, a man backed up to get away from
the carriage, and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was
revolving at the rate of about 200 times a minute. The saw took a large
chew of tobacco from the plug he had in his pistol pocket, and then
began on him.

But there's no use going into details. Such things are not cheerful.
They gathered him up out of the sawdust and put him in a nail keg and
carried him away, but he did not speak again. Life was quite extinct.
Whether it was the nervous shock that killed him, or the concussion of
the cold saw against his liver that killed him, no one ever knew.

The mill shut down a couple of hours so that the head sawyer could file
his saw, and then work was resumed once more.

We should learn from this never to lean on the buzz saw when it moveth
itself aright.




EXPERIMENTS WITH OLD CHEESE.

|A RECENT article in a dairy paper is entitled, "Experiments with Old
Cheese." We have experimented some on the venerable cheese, too. One
plan is to administer chloroform first, then perform the operation while
the cheese is under its influence. This renders the experiment entirely
painless, and at the same time it is more apt to keep quiet. After the
operation the cheese may be driven a few miles in the open air, which
will do away with the effects of the chloroform.




THE RAG-CARPET.

|WITH the threatened eruption of the rag carpet as a kind of venerable
successor to the genuine Boston-made Turkish rug, there comes a wail on
the part of the male portion of humanity, and a protest on the part of
all health-loving humanity.

I rise at this moment as the self-appointed representative of poor,
down-trodden and long-suffering man. Already lady friends are looking
with avaricious and covetous eyes on my spring suit, and, in fancy,
constructing a stripe of navy blue, while some other man's spring
clothes are already spotted for the "hit-or-miss" stripe of this
time-honored humbug.

It does seem to me that there is enough sorrowing toil going for nothing
already; enough of back ache and delirium, without tearing the shirts
off a man's back to sew into a big ball, and then weave into a
rag carpet made to breathe death and disease, with its prehistoric
perspiration and its modern drug store dyes.

The rug now commonly known as the Turkish prayer rug, has a sad, worn
look, but it does not come up to the rag carpet of the dear old home.

Around it there clusters, perhaps, a tradition of an Oriental falsehood,
but the rag carpet of the dear old home, rich in association, is an
heir-loom that passes down from generation to generation, like the horse
blanket of forgotten years or the ragbag of the dear, dead past. Here is
found the stripe of all-wool delaine that was worn by one who is now
in the golden hence, or, stricken with the Dakota fever, living in the
squatter's home; and there is the fragment of underclothes prematurely
jerked from the back of the husband and father before the silver of a
century had crept into his hair. There is no question but the dear old
rag carpet, with poisonous greens and sickly yellows and brindle
browns and doubtful blacks, is a big thing. It looks kind of modest and
unpretending, and yet speaks of the dead past, and smells of the antique
and the garret.

It represents the long months when aching fingers first sewed the
garments, then the first dash of gravy on the front breadth, the
maddening cry, the wild effort to efface it with benzine, the sorrowful
defeat, the dusty grease-spot standing like a pork-gravy plaque upon the
face of the past, the glad relinquishment of the garment, the attack
of the rag-carpet fiend upon it, the hurried crash as it was torn into
shreds and sewn together, then the mad plunge of the dust-powdered mass
into the reeking bath of Paris green or copperas, then the weaver's
gentle racket, and at last the pale, consumptive, freckled, sickly
panorama of outrageous coloring, offending the eye, the nose, the thorax
and the larynx, to be trodden under feet of men, and to yield up
its precious dose of destroying poisons from generation even unto
generation.

It is not a thing of beauty, for it looks like the colored engraving
of a mortified lung. It is not economical, for the same time devoted
to knocking out the brains of frogs and collecting their hams for the
metropolitan market would yield infinitely more; and it is not worth
much as an heirloom, for within the same time a mortgage may be placed
upon the old homestead which will pass down from father to son, even to
nations yet unborn, and attract more attention in the courts than all
the rag carpets that it would require to span the broad, spangled dome
of heaven.

I often wonder that Oscar Wilde, the pale patron of the good, the true
and the beautiful, did not rise in his might and knock the essential
warp and filling out of the rag carpet. Oscar did not do right, or he
would have stood up in his funny clothes and fought for reform at so
much per fight. While he made fun of the Chicago water works, a grateful
public would have buried him in cut flowers if, instead, he had warped
it to the rag carpet and the approaching dude.

A TRYING SITUATION.

|THERE are a great many things in life which go to atone for the
disappointments and sorrows which one meets," but when a young man's
rival takes the fair Matilda to see the baseball game, and sits under
an umbrella beside her, and is at the height of enjoyment, and gets the
benefit of a "hot ball" in the pit of his stomach, there is a nameless
joy settles down in the heart of the lonesome young man, such as the
world can neither give nor take away.




ONE KIND OF A BOY.

|I AM always sorry to see a youth get irritated and pack up his clothes,
in the heat of debate, and leave the home nest. His future is a little
doubtful, and it is hard to prognosticate whether he will fracture
limestone for the streets of a great city, or become President of the
United States; but there is a beautiful and luminous life ahead of him
in comparison with that of the boy who obstinately refuses to leave the
home nest.

The boy who cannot summon the moral courage some day to uncoil the
tendrils of his heart from the clustering idols of the household, to
grapple with outrageous fortune, ought to be taken by the ear and led
away out into the great untried realm of space.

While the great world throbs on, he sighs and refuses to throb. While
other young men put on their seal-brown overalls and wrench the laurel
wreath and other vegetables from cruel fate, the youth who dangles near
the old nest, and eats the hard-earned groceries of his father, shivers
on the brink of life's great current and sheds the scalding tear.

He is the young-man-afraid-of-the-sawbuck, the human being with the
unlaundried spinal column. The only vital question that may be said to
agitate his pseudo brain is, whether he shall marry and bring his wife
to the home nest, or marry and tear loose from his parents to live
with his father-in-law. Finally he settles it and compromises by living
alternately with each.

How the old folks yearn to see him. How their aged eyes light up when
he comes with his growing family to devour everything in sight and yawn
through the space between meals. This is the heyday of his life; the
high noon of the boy who never ventured to ride the yearling colt, or to
be yanked through the shimmering sunlight at the tail of a two-year-old.
He never dared to have any fun because he might bump his nose and make
it bleed on his clean clothes. He never surreptitiously cut the copper
wire off the lightning rod to snare suckers with, and he never went in
swimming because the great, rude boys might duck him or paint him with
mud. He shunned the green apple of boyhood, and did not slide down hill
because he would have to pull his sled back to the top again.

Now, he borrows other people's newspapers, eats the provisions of
others, and sits on the counter of the grocery till the proprietor calls
him a counter irritant.

There can be nothing more un-American than this flabby polyp, this
one-horse tadpole that never becomes a frog. The average American would
rather burst up in business six times in four years, and settle for nine
cents on the dollar, than to lead such a life. He would rather be an
active bankrupt than a weak and bilious barnacle on the clam-shell of
home.

The true American would rather work himself into luxury or the lunatic
asylum than to hang like a great wart upon the face of nature. This
young man is not in accordance with the Yankee schedule, and yet I do
not want to say that he belongs to any other nation. Foreign powers may
have been wrong; trans-Atlantic nations may have erred, and the system
of European government may have been erroneous, but I would not come out
and charge them with this horrible responsibility. They never harmed me,
and I will not tarnish their fair fame with this grave indictment.

He will breathe a certain amount of atmosphere, and absorb a given
amount of feed for a few years, and then the full-grown biped will leave
the home nest at last. The undertaker will come and get him and take
what there is left of him out to the cemetery. That will be all. There
can be no deep abiding sorrow for him here; public buildings will not be
draped in mourning, and you can get your mail at the usual hour when he
dies. The band will not play a sadder strain because the fag-end of
a human failure has tapered down to death, and the soft and shapeless
features are still. You will have no trouble getting a draft cashed on
that day, and the giddy throng will join the picnic as they had made
arrangements to do.




THE CHAMPION MEAN MAN.

|LARAMIE has the champion mean man. He has a Sunday handkerchief made
to order with scarlet spots on it, which he sticks up to his nose just
before the plate starts round, and leaves the church like a house on
fire. So after he has squeezed out the usual amount of gospel, he
slips around the corner and goes home ten cents ahead, and has his
self-adjusting nose-bleed handkerchief for another trip.




FRATERNAL SPARRING.

|I HAVE just returned from a little two-handed tournament with the
gloves. I have filled my nose with cotton waste so that I shall not soak
this sketch in gore as I write.

I needed a little healthful exercise and was looking for something that
would be full of vigorous enthusiasm, and at the same time promote the
healthful flow of blood to the muscles. This was rather difficult.
I tried most everything, but failed. Being a sociable being (joke) I
wanted other people to help me exercise, or go along with me when I
exercised. Some men can go away to a desert isle and have fun with
dumb-bells and a horizontal bar, but to me it would seem dull and
commonplace after a while, and I would yearn for more humanity.

Two of us finally concluded to play billiards; but we were only amateurs
and the owner intimated that he would want the table for Fourth of July,
so we broke off in the middle of the first game and I paid for it.

Then a younger brother said he had a set of boxing-gloves in his room,
and although I was the taller and had longer arms, he would hold up as
long its he could., and I might hammer him until I gained strength and
finally got well.

I accepted this offer because I had often regretted that I had not made
myself familiar with this art, and also because I knew it would create
a thrill of interest and fire me with ambition, and that's what a
hollow-eyed invalid needs to put him on the road to recovery.

The boxing-glove is a large fat mitten, with an abnormal thumb and a
string at the wrist by which you tie it on, so that when you feed it to
your adversary he cannot swallow it and choke himself. I had never
seen any boxing-gloves before, but my brother said they were soft and
wouldn't hurt anybody. So we took off some of our raiment and put them
on. Then we shook hands. I can remember distinctly yet that we shook
hands. That was to show that we were friendly and would not slay each
other.

My brother is a great deal younger than I am and so I warned him not to
get excited and come for me with anything that would look like wild and
ungovernable fury, because I might, in the heat of debate, pile his jaw
up on his forehead and fill his ear full of sore thumb. He said that was
all right and he would try to be cool and collected.

Then we put our right toes together and I told him to be on his guard.
At that moment I dealt him a terrific blow aimed at his nose, but
through a clerical error of mine it went over his shoulder and spent
itself in the wall of the room, shattering a small holly-wood bracket,
for which I paid him $3.75 afterward. I did not wish to buy the bracket
because I had two at home, but he was arbitrary about it and I bought
it.

We then took another athletic posture, and in two seconds the air was
full of poulticed thumb and buckskin mitten. I soon detected a chance
to put one in where my brother could smell of it, but I never knew just
where it struck, for at that moment I ran up against something with the
pit of my stomach that made me throw up the sponge along with some other
groceries, the names of which I cannot now recall.

My brother then proposed that we take off the gloves, but I thought I
had not sufficiently punished him, and that another round would complete
the conquest, which was then almost within my grasp. I took a bismuth
powder and squared myself, but in warding off a left-hander, I forgot
about my adversary's right and ran my nose into the middle of his
boxing-glove. Fearing that I had injured him, I retreated rapidly on my
elbows and shoulder-blades to the corner of the room, thus giving him
ample time to recover. By this means my younger brother's features were
saved, and are to-day as symmetrical as my own.

I can still cough up pieces of boxing-gloves, and when I close my eyes
I can see calcium lights and blue phosphorescent gleams across the
horizon; but I am thoroughly convinced that there is no physical
exercise which yields the same amount of health and elastic vigor to
the puncher that the manly art does. To the punchee, also, it affords a
large wad of glad surprises and nose bleed, which cannot be hurtful to
those who hanker for the pleasing nervous shock, the spinal jar and the
pyrotechnic concussion.

That is why I shall continue the exercises after I have practiced with
a mule or a cow-catcher two or three weeks, and feel a little more
confidence in myself.




CHIPETA'S ADDRESS TO THE UTES.

|PEOPLE of my tribe! the sorrowing widow of the dead Ouray speaks to
you. She comes to you, not as the squaw of the dead chieftain, to rouse
you to war and victory, but to weep with you over the loss of her people
and the greed of the pale face.

The fair Colorado, over whose Rocky mountains we have roamed and hunted
in the olden time, is now overrun by the silver-plated Senator and the
soft-eyed dude.

We are driven to a small corner of the earth to die, while the oppressor
digs gopher holes in the green grass and sells them to the speculator of
the great cities toward the rising sun.

Through the long, cold winter my people have passed, in want and cold,
while the conqueror of the peaceful Ute has worn $250 night-shirts and
filled his pale skin with pie.

Chipeta addresses you as the weeping squaw of a great man whose bones
will one day nourish the cucumber vine. Ouray now sleeps beneath the
brown grass of the canyon, where the soft spring winds may stir the dead
leaves, and the young coyote may come and monkey o'er his grave. Ouray
was ignorant in the ways of the pale face. He could not go to Congress,
for he was not a citizen of the United States. He had not taken out
his second papers. He was a simple child of the forest, but he stuck
to Chipeta. He loved Chipeta like a hired man. That is why the widowed
squaw weeps over him.

A few more years and I shall join Ouray--my chief, Ouray the big Injun
from away up the gulch. His heart is still open to me. Chipeta could
trust him, even among tire smiling maidens of her tribe. Ouray was true.
There was no funny business in his nature. He loved not the garb of the
pale face, but won my heart while he wore a saddle-blanket and a look of
woe.

Chipeta looks to the north and the south, and all about are the graves
of her people. The refinement of the oppressor has come, with its
divorce and schools and gin cocktails and flour bread and fall
elections, and we linger here like a boil on the neck of a fat man.

Even while I talk to you, the damp winds of April are sighing through my
vertebras, and I've got more pains in my back than a conservatory.

Weep with the widowed Chipeta. Bow your heads and howl, for our harps
are hung on the willows and our wild goose is cooked.

Who will be left to mourn at Chipeta's grave? None but the starving
pappooses of my nation. We stand in the gray mist of spring like dead
burdocks in the field of the honest farmer, and the chilly winds of
departing winter make us hump and gather like a burnt boot.

All we can do is to wail. We are the red-skinned wailers from Wailtown.

Colorado is no more the home of the Ute. It is the dwelling place of
the bonanza Senator, who doesn't know the difference between the plan of
salvation and the previous question.

Chipeta cannot vote. Chipeta cannot pay taxes to a great nation, but you
will be apt to hear her gentle voice, and her mellow racket will fill
the air till her tongue is cold, and they tuck the buffalo robe about
her and plant her by the side of her dead chieftain, where the south
wind and the sage hen are singing.

[Illustration: 0046]




BILL NYE'S CAT.

(BY PERMISSION.)

|I AM not fond of cats, as a general rule. I never yearned to have one
around the house. My idea always was, that I could have trouble enough
in a legitimate way without adding a cat to my woes. With a belligerent
cook and a communistic laundress, it seems to me most anybody ought to
be unhappy enough without a cat.

I never owned one until a tramp cat came to our house one day during the
present autumn, and tearfully asked to be loved. He didn't have anything
in his make-up that was calculated to win anybody's love, but he seemed
contented with a little affection,--one ear was gone and his tail was
bald for six inches at the end, and he was otherwise well calculated to
win confidence and sympathy. Though we could not be madly in love with
him, we decided to be friends, and give him a chance to win the general
respect.

Everything would have turned out all right if the bobtail waif had not
been a little given to investigation. He wanted to know more about the
great world in which he lived, so he began by inspecting my house. He
got into the store-room closet and found a place where the carpenter had
not completed his job. This is a feature of the Laramie artisan's style.
He leaves little places in unobserved corners generally, so that he can
come back some day and finish it at an additional cost of fifty dollars.
This cat observed that he could enter at this point and go all over the
imposing structure between the flooring and the ceiling. He proceeded to
do so.

*****

We will now suppose that a period of two days has passed. The wide halls
and spacious façades of the Nye mansion are still. The lights in the
banquet-hall are extinguished, and the ice-cream freezer is hushed to
rest in the wood-sned. A soft and tearful yowl, deepened into a regular
ring-tail-peeler, splits the solemn night in twain. Nobody seemed to
know where it came from.

I rose softly and went to where the sound had seemed to well up from. It
was not there.

I stood on a piece of cracker in the diningroom a moment, waiting for it
to come again. This time it came from the boudoir of our French artist
in soup-bone symphonies and pie--Mademoiselle Bridget O'Dooley. I went
there and opened the door softly, so as to let the cat out without
disturbing the giant mind-that had worn itself out during the day in the
kitchen, bestowing a dry shampoo to the china.

Then I changed my mind and came out. Several articles of vertu, beside
Bridget, followed me with some degree of vigor.

The next time the tramp cat yowled he seemed to be in the recesses of
the bath-room. I went down stairs and investigated. In doing so I
drove my superior toe into my foot, out of sight, with a door that I
encountered. My wife joined me in the search. She could not do much, but
she aided me a thousand times by her counsel. If it had not been for
her mature advice I might have lost much of the invigorating exercise of
that memorable night.

Toward morning we discovered that the cat was between the floor of the
children's play-room and the ceiling of the dining-room. We tried till
daylight to persuade the cat to come out and get acquainted, but he
would not.

At last we decided that the quickest way to get the poor little thing
out was to let him die in there, and then we could tear up that portion
of the house and get him out. While he lived we couldn't keep him still
long enough to tear a hole in the house and get at him.

It was a little unpleasant for a day or two waiting for death to come
to his relief, for he seemed to die hard, but at last the unearthly
midnight yowl was still. The plaintive little voice ceased to vibrate on
the still and pulseless air. Later, we found, however, that he was not
dead. In a lucid interval he had discovered the hole in the store-room
where he entered, and, as we found afterward a gallon of coal-oil
spilled in a barrel of cut loaf-sugar, we concluded that he had escaped
by that route.

That was the only time that I ever kept a cat, and I didn't do it then
because I was suffering for something to fondle. I've got a good deal
of surplus affection, I know, but I don't have to spread it out over a
stump-tail orphan cat.




AUTUMN THOUGHTS.

|IN the Rocky mountains now the eternal whiteness is stealing down
toward the foot-hills and the brown mantle of October hangs softly on
the swelling divide, while along the winding streams, cottonwood and
willow are turned to gold, and the deep green of the solemn pines lies
farther back against the soft blue of the autumn sky. The sigh of the
approaching storm is heard at eventide, and the hostile Indian comes
into the reservation to get some arnica for his chilblain, and to heal
up the old feeling of intolerance on the part, of the pale face.

He leaves the glorious picture of mountain and glen; the wide sweep of
magnificent nature, where a thousand gorgeous dyes are spread over the
remains of the dead summer, and folding his tepee, he steals into the
home of the white man that he may be once more at peace with the world.

The hectic of the dying year saddens and depresses him, for is it not
an emblem to him of the death of his race? Is it not to him an assurance
that in the golden ultimately, the red man will be sought for on the
face of the earth and he will not be able to represent. He will not
be there either in person or by proxy. Here and there may be found the
little silent mounds with some glass beads and teeth in them, but the
silent warrior with the Roman nose will not be there.

[Illustration: 0051]

The Indian agent will have a large, conservative cemetery on his hands,
and the brave warrior will be marching single file through the corridors
of the hence.

At this moment he does not look romantic. Clothed in a coffee sack and a
little brief authority, he would not make a good vignette on a $5 bill.
His wife, too, looks careworn, and the old glad light is not in her
eye. Pier gunny-sack dolman is not what it once was, and her beautifully
arched foot has spread out over the reservation more than it used to.
Her step has lost its old elasticity, and so have her suspenders.

Autumn brings to her nothing but regret for the past and hopelessness
for the future. The cold and cruel winter will bring her nothing but
bitter memories and condemned government grub. The solemn hush of nature
and the gorgeous coloring of the forest do not awake a thrill in her
wild heart. She cares not for the dead summer or the mellow mist of the
grand old mountains.

She doesn't care two cents. She knows that no sealskin sacque will come
to her on the Christmas trees, and the glad welcome of the placid and
select oyster is not for her.

Is it surprising, then, that to this decaying belle of an old family
the sparkle of hope is unknown? Can we wonder, as we contemplate her
history, that to her the soldier pantaloons of last year, and the
bullwhacker's straw hat of '79, are obnoxious?

She is like her sex, and her joy is fractured by the knowledge that her
moccasins are down at the heel, and her stockings existing in the realms
of fancy. We should not look with scorn upon Mrs. Rise-up-William-Riley,
for hope is dead in her breast, and the wigwam is desolate in the
sage-brush.

Daughter of a great nation, we are not mad at you. You are not to be
blamed because the republican party has busted your crust. We do not
hate you because you eat your steak-rare and wear your own hair. It is
your own right to do so if you wish. Brace up, therefore, and take a
tumble, as it were, and try to be cheerful. We will not massacre you if
you will not massacre us. All we want is peace, and you can wear what
you like, only wear something, if you please, when you come into our
society. We do not ask you to conform strictly to our false and peculiar
costumes, but wear something to protect you from the chilling blasts of
winter and you will win our respect. You needn't mingle in our society
much if you do not choose to, but wrap yourself up in most any kind
of clothing that will silence the tongue of slander, and try to quit
drinking. You would get along first-rate if you would only let liquor
alone. Do not try to drown your sorrows in the flowing bowl. It's
expensive and unsatisfactory. Take our advice and swear off. We have
tried it, and we know what we are talking about.

You have a glorious future before you, if you will cease to drink
the vintage of the pale face, and monkey with petty larceny. Look at
Pocahontas and Mrs. Tecumseh. They didn't drink. They were women of
no more ability than you have, but they were high-toned, and they got
there, Eli. Now they are known to history along with Cornwallis and
Payne. You can do the same if you choose to. Do not be content to lead a
yellow dog around by a string and get inebriated, but rise up out of the
alkali dust, and resolve that you will shun the demon of drink.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.




THE MAN WHO INTERRUPTS.

|I DO not, as a rule, thirst for the blood of my fellow-man. I am
willing that the law should in all ordinary cases take its course, but
when we begin to discuss the man who breaks into a conversation and
ruins it with his own irrelevant ideas, regardless of the feelings
of humanity, I am not a law and order man. The spirit of the "Red
Vigilanter" is roused in my breast and I hunger for the blood of that
man.

Interrupters are of two classes: First, the common plug who thinks
aloud, and whose conversation wanders with his so-called mind. He breaks
into the saddest and sweetest of sentiment, and the choicest and
most tearful of pathos, with the remorseless ignorance that marks a
stump-tail cow in a dahlia bed. He is the bull in my china shop,
the wormwood in my wine, and the kerosene in my maple syrup. I am shy in
conversation, and my unfettered flights of poesy and sentiment are rare,
but this man is always near to mar all with a remark, or a marginal
note, or a story or a bit of politics, ready to bust my beautiful dream
and make me wish that his name might be carved on a marble slab in some
quiet cemetery, far away.

Dear reader, did you ever meet this man--or his wife? Did you ever
strike some beautiful thought and begin to reel it off to your friends
only to be shut off in the middle of a sentence by this choice and
banner idiot of conversation? If so, come and sit by me, and you may
pour your woes into my ear, and I in turn will pour a few gallons into
your listening ear.

I do not care to talk more than my share of the time, but I would be
glad to arrive at a conclusion just to see how it would seem. I would be
so pleased and so joyous to follow up an anecdote till I had reached the
"nub," as it were, to chase argument home to conviction, and to clinch
assertion with authority and evidence.

The second class of interrupters is even worse. It consists of the
man--and, I am pained to state, his wife also--who see the general drift
of your remarks and finish out your story, your gem of thought or
your argument. It is very seldom that they do this as you would do it
yourself, but they are kind and thoughtful and their services are always
at hand. No matter how busy they may be, they will leave their own work
and fly to your aid. With the light of sympathy in their eyes, they
rush into the conversation, and, partaking of your own zeal, they take
the words from your mouth, and cheerfully suck the juice out of your
joke, handing back the rind and hoping for reward. That is where they
get left, so far as I am concerned. I am almost always ready to repay
rudeness with rudeness, and cold preserved gall with such acrid sarcasm
as I may be able to secure at the moment. No one will ever know how I
yearn for the blood of the interrupter. At night I camp on his trail,
and all the day I thirst for his warm life's current. In my dreams I am
cutting his scalp loose with a case-knife, while my fingers are twined
in his clustering hair. I walk over him and promenade across his abdomen
as I slumber. I hear his ribs crack, and I see his tongue hang over his
shoulder as he smiles death's mirthful smile.

I do not interrupt a man no more than I would tell him he lied. I give
him a chance to win applause or decomposed eggs from the audience,
according to what he has to say, and according to the profundity of
his profund. All I want is a similar chance and room according to my
strength. Common decency ought to govern conversation without its being
necessary to hire an umpire armed with a four-foot club, to announce who
is at the bat and who is on deck.

It is only once in a week or two that the angel troubles the waters and
stirs up the depths of my conversational powers, and then the chances
are that some leprous old nasty toad who has been hanging on the brink
of decent society for two weeks, slides in with a low kerplunk, and my
fair blossom of thought that has been trying for weeks to bloom,
withers and goes to seed, while the man with the chilled steel and
copper-riveted brow, and a wad of self-esteem on his intellectual
balcony as big as an inkstand, walks slowly away to think of some other
dazzling gem, and thus be ready to bust my beautiful phantom, and tear
out my high-priced bulbs of fancy the next time I open my mouth.




THE ROCKY MOUKTAIN COW.

|THE attention of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association is
respectfully called to a large bay cow, who is hanging around this place
under an assumed name. She has no visible means of support, and has
been seen trying to catch the combination to the safes of several of our
business men here. She has also stolen into our lot several times and
eaten two or three lengths of stovepipe that we neglected to lock up.




PRESERVING EGGS.

|THE Scientific American gives this as an excellent mode of preserving
eggs: "Take fresh, ones, put a dozen or more into a small willow basket,
and immerse this for five seconds in boiling water, containing about
five pounds of common brown sugar per gallon, then pack, when cool,
small ends down, in an intimate mixture of one part of finely powdered
charcoal and two of dry bran. In this way they will last six months or
more. The scalding water causes the formation of a thin skin of hard
albumen near the inner surface of the shell, and the sugar of syrup
closes all the pores."

The Scientific American neglects, however, to add that when you open
them six months after they were picked and preserved, the safest way is
to open them out in the alley with a revolver, at sixteen paces. When
you have succeeded in opening one, you can jump on a fleet horse and get
out of the country before the nut brown flavor catches up with you.




HUMAN' NATURE ON THE HALF-SHELL.

|I AM up here in River Falls, Wisconsin, and patiently waiting for the
snow-banks to wilt away and gentle spring to come again. Gentle spring,
as I go to press, hath not yet loomed up. Nothing in fact hath loomed
up, as yet, save the great Dakota boom. Everybody, from the servant
girl with the symphony in smut on her face and the boundless waste of
freckles athwart her nose, up to the normal school graduate, with enough
knowledge to start a grist mill for the gods, has "a claim" in the
promised land, the great wild goose orchard and tadpole aquarium of the
new Northwest.

The honest farmer deserts his farm, around which clusters a thousand
memories of the past, and buckling on his web feet, he flees to the frog
ponds of the great northern watershed, to make a "tree claim," and be
happy.

Such is life. We battle on bravely for years, cutting out white-oak
grubs, and squashing army worms on a shingle, in order that we may dwell
beneath our own vine and plum tree, and then we sell and take wings
toward a wild, unknown country, where land is dirt cheap, where the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

That is where we get left, if I may be allowed an Americanism, or
whatever it is. We are never at rest. The more we emigrate the more
worthless, unsatisfied and trifling we become. I have seen the same
family go through Laramie City six times because they knew not of
contentment. The first time they went west in a Pullman car "for their
health." The husband rashly told a sad-eyed man that he lied, and in a
little while the sun was obscured by loose teeth and hair. The ground
was torn up and vegetation was killed where the discussion was held.

Then the family went home to Toledo. They went in a day coach and said a
Pullman car was full of malaria and death. Their relatives made sport
of them and lifted up their yawp and yawped at them insomuch that the
yawpness thereof was as the town caucus for might. Then the tourists on
the following spring packed up two pillows, and a pink comforter, and
a change of raiment, and gat them onto the emigrant train and journeyed
into the land which is called Arizona, where the tarantula climbeth up
on the innerside of the pantaloon and tickleth the limb of the pilgrim
as he journeyeth, and behold he getteth in his work, and the leg of that
man is greater than it was aforetime, even like unto the leg of a piano.

A FRIGID ROUTE.

|THERE'S no doubt but that the Fort Collins route to the North Park, is
a good, practicable route, but the only man who has started out over it
this spring fetched up in the New Jerusalem.

The trouble with that line of travel is, that the temperature is too
short. The summer on the Fort Collins route is noted mainly for its
brevity. It lasts about as long as an ordinary eclipse of the sun.

The man who undertook to go over the road this spring on snow shoes,
with a load consisting of ten cents' worth of fine cut tobacco, has not
been heard from yet at either end of the line, and he is supposed to
have perished, or else he is still in search of an open polar sea.

It is hoped that dog days will bring him to the surface, but if the
winter comes on as early this fall as there are grave reasons to fear,
a man couldn't get over the divide in the short space of time which will
intervene between Decoration day and Christmas.

We hate to discourage people who have an idea of going over the Fort
Collins road to North Park, but would suggest that preparations be made
in advance for about five hundred St. Bernard dogs and a large supply
of arctic whisky, to be placed on file where it can be got at without a
moment's delay.




TOO CONTIGUOUS.

|THERE is a firm on Coyote creek, in New Jersey, that would like to
advertise in _The Boomerang_, and the members of the firm are evidently
good square men, although they are not large. They lack about four feet
in stature of being large enough to come within the range of our vision.

They have got more pure gall to the superficial foot than anybody we
ever heard of. It seems that the house has a lot of vermifuge to feed
plants, and a bedbug tonic that it wants to bring before the public, and
it wants us to devote a quarter of a column every day to the merits of
these bug and worm discouragers, and then take our pay out of tickets in
the drawing of a brindle dog next spring.

We might as well come right out end state that we are not publishing
this paper for our health, nor because we like to loll around in
luxury all day in the voluptuous office of the staff. We have mercenary
motives, and we can't work off wheezy parlor organs and patent corn
plasters and threshing machines very well. We desire the scads. We can
use them in our business, and we are gathering them in just as fast as
we can. At the present time we are pretty well supplied with rectangular
churns and stem-winding mouse traps. We do not need them, It takes too
much time to hypothecate them.

In closing, we will add, that New Jersey people will not be charged much
more for advertising space than Wyoming people. We have made special
rates so that we can give the patrons of the East almost as good terms
as our home advertisers.




THE AMENDE HONORABLE.

|IT is rather interesting to watch the manner by which old customs have
been slightly changed and handed down from age to age. Peculiarities of
old traditions still linger among us, and are forked over to posterity
like a wappy-jawed teapot or a long-time mortgage.. No one can explain
it, but the fact still remains patent that some of the oddities of our
ancestors continue to appear from time to time, clothed in the changing
costumes of the prevailing fashion.

Along with these choice antiquities, and carrying the nut-brown flavor
of the dead and relentless years, comes the amende honorable. From the
original amende in which the offender appeared in public clothed only in
a cotton-flannel shirt, and with a rope about his neck as an evidence a
formal recantation, down to this day when (sometimes) the pale editor,
in a stickful of type, admits that "his informant was in error," the
amende honorable has marched along with the easy tread of time. The
blue-eyed moulder of public opinion, with one suspender hanging down
at his side, and writing on a sheet of news-copy paper, has a more
extensive costume, perhaps, than the old-time offender who bowed in the
dust in the midst of the great populace, and with a halter under his ear
admitted his offense, but he does not feel any more cheerful over it.

I have been called upon several times to make the amende honorable, and
I admit that it is not an occasion of mirth and merriment. People who
come into the editorial office to invest in a retraction are generally
very healthy, and have a stiff, reserved manner that no cheerfulness of
hospitality can soften..

I remember of an accident of this kind which occurred last summer in my
office, while I was writing something scathing. A large map with an air
of profound perspiration about him, and a plaid flannel shirt, stepped
into the middle of the room, and breathed in the air that I was not
using. He said he would give me four minutes in which to retract, and
pulled out a watch by which to ascertain the exact time.

[Illustration: 0067]

I asked him if he would not allow me a moment or two to go over to the
telegraph office and to wire my parents of my awful death. He said I
could walk out of that door when I walked over his dead body. Then I
waited a long time, until he told me my time was up, and asked what
I was waiting for. I told him I was waiting for him to die, so that I
could walk over his dead body. How could I walk over a corpse until life
was extinct?

He stood and looked at me first in astonishment, afterward in pity.
Finally tears welled up in his eyes, and plowed their way down his brown
and grimy face. Then he said that I need not fear him. "You are safe,"
said he. "A youth who is so patient and so cheerful as you are--who
would wait for a healthy man to die so that you could meander over his
pulseless remnants, ought not to die a violent death. A soft-eyed seraph
like you, who is no more conversant with the ways of this world than
that, ought to be put in a glass vial of alcohol and preserved. I came
up here to kill you and throw you into the rain-water barrel, but now
that I know what a patient disposition you have, I shudder to think of
the crime I was about to commit."




JOAQUIN AND JUNIATA.

|JOAQUIN MILLER has just published a new book called "The Shadows of
Shasta." It is based on the Hiawatha, Blue Juniata romance, which the
average poet seems competent to yank loose from the history of the
sore-eyed savage at all times.

Whenever a dead-beat poet strikes bedrock and don't have shekels enough
to buy a bowl of soup, he writes an inspired ode to the unfettered
horse-thief of the west.

It is all right so far as we know. If the poet will wear out the
smoke-tanned child of the forest writing poetry about him, and then if
the child of the forest will rise up in his death struggle and mash the
never-dying soul out of the white-livered poet, everything will be O.K.,
and we will pay the funeral expenses.

If it could be so arranged that the poet and the bright Alfarita
bug-eater and the bilious wild-eyed bard of the backwoods could be shut
up in a corral for six weeks together, with nothing to eat but each
other, it would be a big thing for humanity. We said once that we
wouldn't dictate to this administration, but let it flicker along alone.
We just throw out the above as a suggestion, however, hoping that it
will not be ignored.




SOME VAGUE THOUGHTS.

|SPRING, gentle, touchful, tuneful, breezeful, soothful spring is here.
It has not been here more than twenty minutes, and my arctics stand
where I can reach them in case it should change its mind.

The bobolink sits on the basswood vines, and the thrush in the
gooseberry tree is as melodious as a hired man. The robin is building
his nest--or rather her nest, I should say, perhaps--in the boughs
of the old willow that was last year busted by thunder--I beg your
pardon--by lightning, I should say. The speckled calf dines teat-a-teat
with his mother, and strawberries are like a baldheaded man's brow--they
come high, but we can't get along without them.

I never was more tickled to meet gentle spring than I am now. It
stirs up my drug-soaked remains, and warms the genial current of life
considerably. I frolicked around in the grass this afternoon and filled
my pockets full of 1000-legged worms, and other little mementoes of
the season. The little hare-foot boy now comes forth and walks with
a cautious tread at first, like a blind horse; but toward the golden
autumn the backs of his feet will look like a warty toad, and there will
be big cracks in them, and one toe will be wrapped up in part of a bed
quilt, and he will show it with pride to crowded houses.

Last night I lay awake for several hours thinking about Mr. Sherrod and
how long we had been separated, and I was wondering how many weary days
would have to elapse before we would again look into each other's eyes
and hold each other by the hand, when the loud and violent concussion of
a revolver shot near West Main street and Cascade avenue rent the sable
robe of night. I rose and lit the gas to see if I had been hit. Then
I examined my pockets to see if I had been robbed of my led pencil and
season pass. I found that I had not.

This morning I learned that a young doctor, who had been watching his
own house from a distance during the evening, had discovered that,
taking advantage of the husband's absence, a blonde dry goods clerk had
called to see the crooked but lonely wife. The doctor waited until
the young man had been in the house long enough to get pretty well
acquainted, and then he went in himself to see that the youth was making
himself perfectly comfortable.

There was a wild dash toward the window, made by a blonde man with his
pantaloons in his hand, the spatter of a bullet in the wall over the
young man's head and then all was still for a moment save the low sob
of a woman with her head covered up by the bed clothes. Then the two men
clinched and the doctor injected the barrel of a thirty-two self-cocker
up the bridge of the young man's nose, knocked him under the wash stand,
yanked him out by the hem of his garment and jarred him into the coal
bucket, kicked him up on a corner bracket and then swept the quivering
ruins into the street with a stub-broom. He then lit the chandelier and
told his sobbing wife that she wasn't just the temperament for him and
he was afraid that their paths might diverge. He didn't care much
for company and society while she seemed to yearn for such things
constantly. He came right out and admitted that he was of a nervous
temperament and quick tempered. He loved her, but he had such an
irritable, fiery disposition that he guessed he would have to excuse
her; so he escorted her out to the gate and told her where the best
hotel was, came in, drove out the cat, blew out the light and retired.

Some men seem almost like brutes in their treatment of their wives. They
come home at some eccentric hour of the night, and because they have
to sleep on the lounge, they get mad and try to shoot holes in the
lambrequins, and look at their wives in a harsh, rude tone of voice. I
tell you it's tough.




THE YOUMORIST.

|You are an youmorist, are you not?" queried a long-billed pelican
addressing a thoughtful, mental athlete, on the Milwaukee & St. Paul
road the other day.

"Yes, sir," said the sorrowful man, brushing away a tear. "I am an
youmorist. I am not very much so, but still I can see that I am drifting
that way. And yet I was once joyous and happy as you are. Only a few
years ago, before I was exposed to this malady, I was as blithe as a
speckled yearling, and recked not of aught--nor anything else, either.
Now my whole life is blasted. I do not dare to eat pie or preserves,
and no one tells funny stories when I am near. They regard me as a
professional, and when I get in sight the 'scrub nine' close up and wait
for me to entertain the crowd and waddle around the ring."

"What do you mean by that?" murmured the purple-nosed interrogation
point.

"Mean? Why, I mean that whether I'm drawing a salary or not, I'm
expected to be the 'life of the party.' I don't want to be the life of
the party. I want to let some one else be the life of the party. I want
to get up the reputation of being as cross as a bear with a sore head.
I want people to watch their children for fear I'll swallow them. I want
to take my low-cut-evening-dress smile and put it in the bureau drawer,
and tell the world I've got a cancer in my stomach, and the heaves and
hypochondria, and a malignant case of leprosy."

"Do you mean to say that you do not feel facetious all the time, and
that you get weary of being an youmorist?"

"Yes, hungry interlocutor. Yes, low-browed student, yes. I am not always
tickled. Did you ever have a large, angry, and abnormally protuberent
boil somewhere on your person where it seemed to be in the way? Did you
ever have such a boil as a traveling companion, and then get introduced
to people as an youmorist? You have not? Well, then, you do not know all
there is of suffering in this sorrow-streaked world. When wealthy people
die why don't they endow a cast-iron castle with a draw-bridge to it and
call it the youmorists' retreat? Why don't they do some good with their
money instead of fooling it away on those who are comparatively happy?"

"But how did you come to git to be an youmorist?"

"Well, I don't know. I blame my parents some. They might have prevented
it if they'd taken it in time, but they didn't. They let it run on till
it got established, and now its no use to go to the Hot Springs or to
the mountains, or have an operation performed. You let a man get the
name of being an youmorist and he doesn't dare to register at the
hotels, and he has to travel anonymously, and mark his clothes with his
wife's name, or the public will lynch him if he doesn't say something
youmorous.

"Where is your boy to-night?" continued the gloomy humorist. "Do you
know where he is? Is he at home under your watchful eye, or is he away
somewhere nailing the handles on his first little joke? Parent, beware.
Teach your boy to beware. Watch him night and day, or all at once,
when he is beyond your jurisdiction, he will grow pale. He will have a
far-away look in his eye, and the bright, rosy lad will have become the
flatchested, joyless youmorist.

"It's hard to speak unkindly of our parents, but mingled with my own
remorse I shall always murmur to myself, and ask over and over, why did
not my parents rescue me while they could? Why did they allow my
chubby little feet to waddle down to the dangerous ground on which the
sad-eyed youmorist must forever stand?

"Partner, do not forget what I have said to-day. 'Whether your child
be a son or daughter, it matters not. Discourage the first sign of
approaching humor. It is easier to bust the backbone of the first
little, tender jokelet that sticks its head through the virgin soil,
than it is to allow the slimy folds of your son's youmorous lecture to
be wrapped about you, and to bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave."




MY CABINET.

|I HAVE made a small collection of wild, western things during the past
seven years, and have put them together, hoping some day, when I get
feeble, to travel with the aggregation and erect a large monument of
kopecks for my executors, administrators and assigns forever.

Beginning with the skull of old Hi-lo-Jack-and-the-game, a Sioux
brave, the collection takes in my wonderful bird, known as the
Walk-up-the-creek, and another _vara avis_, with carnivorous bill and
web feet, which has astonished everyone except the taxidermist and
myself. An old grizzly bear hunter--who has plowed corn all his life and
don't know a coyote from a Maverick steer--looked at it last fall and
pronounced it a "kingfisher," said he had killed one like it a year ago.
Then I knew that he was a pilgrim and a stranger, and that he had bought
his buckskin coat and bead-trimmed moccasins at Niagara Falls, for the
bird is constructed of an eagle's head, a canvas back duck's bust and
feet, with the balance sage hen and baled hay.

Last fall I desired to add to my rare collection a large hornet's nest.
I had an embalmed tarantula and her porcelain-lined nest, and I desired
to add to these the gray and airy home of the hornet. I procured one of
the large size after cold weather and hung it in my cabinet by a string.
I forgot about it until this spring. When warm weather came, something
reminded me of it. I think it was a hornet. He jogged my memory in some
way and called my attention to it. Memory is not located where I
thought it was. It seemed as though whenever he touched me he awakened a
memory--a warm memory with a red place all around it.

Then some more hornets came and began to rake up old personalities.
I remember that one of them lit on my upper lip. He thought it was a
rosebud. When he went away it looked like a gladiola bulb. I wrapped a
wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling so
that I could go through the folding doors and tell my wife about it.

Hornets lit ah over me and walked around on my person. I did not dare
to scrape them off because they are so sensitive. You have to be very
guarded in your conduct toward a hornet.

I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering
honey and June bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago, I stirred him
up with a club, more as a practical joke than anything else, and he came
and lit in my sunny hair--that was when I wore my own hair and he walked
around through my gleaming tresses quite awhile, making tracks as large
as a watermelon all over my head. If he hadn't run out of tracks my head
would have looked like a load of summer squashes. I remember I had to
thump my head against the smoke-house in order to smash him, and I had
to comb him out with a fine comb, and wear a waste-paper basket two
weeks for a hat.

Much has been said of the hornet, but he has an odd, quaint way after
all, that is forever new.




HEALTH FOOD.

|WHILE trying to reconstruct a telescoped spine and put some new copper
rivets in the lumbar vertebrae, this spring, I have had occasion to
thoroughly investigate the subject of so-called health food, such as
gruels, beef tea inundations, toasts, oat meal mush, bran mash, soups,
condition powders, graham gem, ground feed, pepsin, laudable mush, and
other hen feed usually poked into the invalid who is too weak to defend
himself.

Of course it stands to reason that the reluctant and fluttering spirit
may not be won back to earth, and joy once more beam in the leaden eye
unless due care be taken relative to the food by means of which nature
may be made to assert herself.

I do not care to say to the world through the columns of the Free Press,
that we may woo from eternity the trembling life with pie. Welsh rabbit
and other wild game will not do at first. But I think I am speaking the
sentiments of a large and emaciated constituency when I say, that there
is getting to be a strong feeling against oat meal submerged in milk and
in favor of strawberry short cake.

I almost ate myself into an early grave in April by flying into the face
of Providence and demoralizing old Gastric with oat meal. I ate oat meal
two weeks, and at the end of that time my friends were telegraphed for,
but before it was too late, I threw off the shackles that bound me. With
a desperation born of a terrible apprehension, I rose and shook off
the fatal oat meal habit and began to eat beefsteak. At first life hung
trembling in the balance and there was no change in the quotations of
beef, but later on there was a slight, delicate bloom on the wan cheek,
and range cattle that had barely escaped a long, severe winter on the
plains, began to apprehend a new danger and to seek the secluded canyons
of the inaccessible mountains.

I often thought while I was eating health food and waiting for death,
how the doctor and other invited guests at the post mortem would start
back in amazement to find the remnants of an eminent man filled with
bran!

Through all the painful hours of the long, long night and the eventless
day, while the mad throng rushed onward like a great river toward
eternity's ocean, this thought was uppermost in my mind. I tried to get
the physician to promise that he would not expose me, and show the
world what a hollow mockery I had been, and how I had deceived my best
friends. I told him the whole truth, and asked him to spare my family
the humiliation of knowing that though I might have led a blameless
life, my sunny exterior was only a thin covering for bran and shorts and
middlings, cracked wheat and pearl barley.

I dreamed last night of being in a large city where the streets were
paved with dry toast, and the buildings were roofed with toast, and the
soil was bran and oat meal, and the water was beef tea and gruel. All at
once it came over me that I had solved the great mystery of death, and
had been consigned to a place of eternal punishment. The thought was
horrible! A million eternities in a city built of dry toast and oat
meal! A home for never-ending cycles of ages, where the principal hotel
and the post-office building and the opera house were all built of
toast, and the fire department squirted gruel at the devouring element
forever!

It was only a dream, but it has made me more thoughtful, and people
notice that I am not so giddy as I was.

A NEW POET.

|A NEW and dazzling literary star has risen above the horizon, and is
just about to shoot athwart the starry vault of poesy. How wisely are
all things ordered, and how promptly does the new star begin to beam,
upon the decline of the old.

Hardly had the sweet singer of Michigan commenced to wane and to
flicker, when, rising above the western hills, the glad light of the
rising star is seen, and adown the canyons and gulches of the Rocky
mountains comes the melodious cadences of the poet of the Greeley Eye.

Couched in the rough terms of the west; robed in the untutored language
of the Michael Angelo slang of the miner and the cowboy, the poet at
first twitters a little on a bough far up the canyon, gradually waking
the echoes, until the song is taken up and handed back by every rock and
crag along the rugged ramparts of the mighty mountain barrier.

Listen to the opening stanza of "The Dying Cowboy and the Preacher:"

``So, old gospel shark, they tell me I must die;

``That the wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut,

``Well, I will "pass in my checks" without a whimper or a cry,

``And die as I have lived--"a hard nut."=

This is no time-worn simile, no hackneyed illustration or bald-headed
decrepit comparison, but a new, fresh illustration that appeals to the
western character, and lifts the very soul out of the kinks, as it were.

"Wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut."

Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How
melodious and yet how real. Hone but the true poet would have thought to
compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off
hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.

In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel,
the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.

How and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of
the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then
a calm falls upon the scene. Anon, the driver bangs the mule that is
ostensibly pulling his daylights out, but who is, in fact, humping up
like an angle worm, without pulling a pound.

Then the poet comes to the close of the cowboy's career in this style:

```"Do I repent?" No--of nothing present or past;

```So skip, old preach, on gospel pap I won't be fed;

```My breath comes hard; I--am going--but--I--am game to

`````the--last.

```And reckless of the future, as the present, the cowboy was

`````dead.=

If we could write poetry like that, do you think we would plod along
the dreary pathway of the journalist? Do you suppose that if we had the
heaven-born gift of song to such a degree that we could take hold of the
hearts of millions and warble two or three little ditties like that,
or write an effigy before breakfast, or construct an ionic, anapestic
twitter like the foregoing, that we would carry in our own coal, and
trim our own lamps, and wear a shirt two weeks at a time?

No, sir, he would hie us away to Europe or Salt Lake, and let our hair
grow long, and we would write some obituary truck that would make people
disgusted with life, and they would sigh for death that they might leave
their insurance and their obituaries to their survivors.

A WORD IN SELF-DEFENSE.

|IT might be well in closing to say a word in defense of myself.

The varied and uniformly erroneous notions expressed recently as to my
plans for the future, naturally call for some kind of an expression on
this point over my own signature. In the first place, it devolves upon
me to regain my health in full if it takes fourteen years. I shall not,
therefore, "publish a book,"

"prepare an youmorous lecture,"

"visit
Florida,"

"probate the estate of Lydia E. Pinkham, deceased," nor
make any other grand break till I have once more the old vigor and
elasticity, and gurgling laugh of other days.

In the meantime, let it be remembered that my home is in Laramie City,
and that unless the common council pass an ordinance against it, I shall
return in July if I can make the trip between snow storms, and evade the
peculiarities of a tardy and reluctant spring. Bill Nye.




PINES FOE HIS OLD HOME

|TOM FAGAN, of this city, has a wild horse that don't seem to take
to the rush and hurry and turmoil of a metropolis. He has been so
accustomed to the glad, free air of the plains and mountains that the
hampered and false life of a throbbing city, with its myriad industries,
makes him nervous and unhappy. He sighs for the boundless prairie and
the pure breath of the lifegiving mountain atmosphere. So taciturn is
he in fact, and so cursed by homesickness and weariness of an artificial
and unnatural horse society here in Laramie, that he refuses to eat
anything and is gradually pining away. Sometimes he takes a light lunch
out of Mr. Fagan's arm, but for days and days he utterly loathes food.
He also loathes those who try to go into the stable and fondle him.
He isn't apparently very much on the fondle. He don't yearn for human
society, but seems to want to be by himself and think it over.

The wild horse in stories soon learns to love his master and stay by him
and carry him through flood or fire, and generally knows more than the
Cyclopedia Brittanica; but this horse is not the historical horse that
they put into wild Arabian falsehoods. He is just a plain, unassuming
wild horse of Wyoming descent, whose pedigree is slightly clouded, and
who is sensitive on the question of his ancestry. All he wants is just
to be let alone, and most everybody has decided that he is right. They
came do that conclusion after they had soaked their persons in arnica
and glued themselves together with poultices.

[Illustration: 0089]

Perhaps, after a while, he will conclude to eat hay and grow up with
the country, but now he sighs for his native bunch-grass and the buffalo
wallow wherein he has heretofore made his lair. We don't wonder much,
though, that a horse who has lived in the country should be a little
rattled here when he finds the electric light, and bicycles, and lawn
mowers, and Uncle Tom's Cabin troupes, and baled hay at $20 per ton. It
makes him as wild and skittish as it does an eighteen-year-old girl the
first time she comes into town, and for the first time is met by the
blare of trumpets, and the oriental wealth of the circus with its
deformed camels and uniformed tramps driving its miles of cages with
no animals in them. The great natural world and the giddy maelstrom
of seething, perspiring humanity, peculiar to the city world, are two
separate and distinct existences.




ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

|UP in Polk county, Wisconsin, not long ago, a man who had lost eight
children by diphtheria, while the ninth hovered between life and death
with the same disease, went to the-health officer of the town and asked
aid to prevent the spread of the terrible scourge. The health officer
was cool and collected. He did not get excited over the anguish of the
father whose last child was at that moment hovering upon the outskirts
of immortality. He calmly investigated the matter, and never for a
moment lost sight of the fact that he was a town officer and a professed
Christian.

"You ask aid, I understand," said he, "to prevent the spread of the
disease, and also that the town shall assist you in procuring new and
necessary clothing to replace that which you have been compelled to burn
in order to stop the further inroads of diphtheria. Am I right?" The
poor man answered affirmatively.

"May I ask if your boys who died were Christian boys, and whether they
improved their gospel opportunities and attended the Sabbath school, or
whether they were profane and given over to Sabbath-breaking?"

The bereft father said that his boys had never made a profession of
Christianity; that they were hardly old enough to do so, and that they
might have missed some gospel opportunities owing to the fact that they
were poor, and hadn't clothes fit to wear to Sabbath school. Possibly,
too, they had met with wicked companions, and had been taught to swear;
he could not say but they might have sworn, although he thought they
would have turned out to be good boys had they lived.

"I am sorry that the case is so bad," said the health officer. "I am led
to believe that God has seen fit to visit you with affliction in order
to express His Divine disapproval of profanity, and I cannot help you.
It ill becomes us poor, weak worms of the dust to meddle with the just
judgments of God. Whether as an individual or as a _quasi corporation_,
it is well to allow the Almighty to work out His great plan of
salvation, and to avoid all carnal interference with the works of God."

The old man went back to his desolated home and to the bedside of his
only living child. I met him yesterday and he told me all about it.

"I am not a professor of religion," said he, "but I tell you, Mr. Nye,
I can't believe that this board of health has used me right. Somehow I
ain't worried about my little fellers that is gone.

"They was little fellers, anyway, and they wasn't posted on the plan of
salvation, but they was always kind and they always minded me and their
mother. If God is using diphtheria agin perfanity this season they
didn't know it. They was too young to know about it and I was too poor
to take the papers, so I didn't know it nuther. I just thought that
Christ was partial to kids like mine, just the same as He used to be
2,000 years ago when the country was new. I admit that my little shavers
never went to Sabbath school much, and I wasn't scholar enough to throw
much light onto God's system of retribution, but I told 'em to behave
themselves, and they did, and we had a good deal of fun together--me and
the boys--and they was so bright, and square, and cute that I didn't see
how they could fall under divine wrath, and I don't believe they did.

"I could tell you lots of smart little things that they used to do, Mr.
Nye, but they wa'n't mean and cussed. They was just frolicky and gay
sometimes because they felt good. I don't believe God had it in for 'em
bekuz they was like other boys, do you? Fer if I thought so it would
kind o' harden me and the old lady and make us sour on all creation.

"Mind you, I don't kick because I'm left alone here in the woods, and
the sun don't seem to shine, and the birds seems a little backward about
singin' this spring, and the house is so quiet, and she is still all
the time and cries in the night when she thinks I am asleep. All that
is tough, Mr. Nye--tough as old Harry, too--but its so, and I ain't
murmurin', but when the board of health says to me that the Ruler of
the Universe is makin' a tower of Northern Wisconsin, mowin' down little
boys with sore throat because they say 'gosh,' I can't believe it.

"I know that people who ain't familiar with the facts will shake their
heads and say that I am a child of wrath, but I can't help it, All I can
do is to go up there under the trees where them little graves is, and
think how all-fired pleasant to me them little, short lives was, and
how every one of them little fellers was welcome when he come, poor as
I was, and how I rastled with poor crops and pine stumps to buy cloze
for 'em, and didn't care a cent for style as long as they was well.
That's the kind of heretic I am, and if God is like a father that
settles it, He wouldn't wipe out my family just to establish discipline,
I don't believe. The plan of creation must be on a bigger scale than
that, it seems to me, or else it's more or less of a fizzle.

"That board of health is better read than I am. It takes the papers and
can add up figures, and do lots of things that I can't do; but when
them fellers tell me that they represent the town of Balsam Lake and the
Kingdom of Heaven, my morbid curiosity is aroused, and I want to see the
stiffykits of election."




HOW TO PUT UP A STOVE-PIPE.

|PUTTING up stove-pipe is easy enough, if you only go at it right. In
the morning, breakfast on some light, nutritious diet, and drink two
cups of hot coffee; after which put on a suit of old clothes--or new
ones, if you can get them on time--put on an old pair of buckskin
gloves, and, when everything is ripe for the fatal blow, go and get a
good hardware man who understands his business. If this rule be strictly
adhered to, the gorgeous eighteen-karat-stem-winding profanity of the
present day may be very largely diminished, and the world made better.




FUN OF BEING A PUBLISHER.

|BEING a publisher is not all sunshine, joy and johnny-jump-ups,
although the gentle and tractable reader may at times think so.

A letter was received two years ago by the publishers of this book, on
the outside of which was the request to the "P. Master of Chicago to
give to the most reliable man in Chicago and oblige."

The P. Master thereupon gave the letter to Messrs. Belford, Clarke &
Co., who have sent it to me as a literary curiosity. I want it to go
down to posterity, so I put it in this great work. I simply change the
names, and where words are too obscure, doctor them up a little:

Butler, Bates county, Mo., Jan. the 2, 1881.

I have a novle fresh and pure from the pen, wich I would like to be
examined by you. I wish to bring it before the public the ensuing
summer.

I have wrote a good deal for the press, and always with great success. I
wrote once an article on the growth of pie plant wich was copied fur and
wide. You may have heard of me through my poem on "The Cold, Damp Sea or
the Murmuring Wave and its Sad Kerplunk."

I dashed it off one summer day for the Scabtown _Herald_.

In it, I enter the fair field of fancy and with exquisite word-painting,
I lead the reader on and on till he forgets that breakfast is ready,
and follows the thrilling career of Algonquin and his own fair-haired
Sciataca through page after page of delirious joy and poetic rithum.

In this novle, I have wove a woof of possibilities, criss-crossed with
pictures of my own wild, unfettered fancy, which makes it a work at once
truthful and yet sufficiently unnatural to make it egorly sot for by the
great reading world.

The plot of the novle is this:

Algonquin is a poor artist, who paints lovely sunsets and things,
nights, and cuts cordwood during the day, struggling to win a competence
so that he can sue for the hand of Sciataca, the wealthy daughter of a
plumber.

She does not love him much, and treats him coldly; but he perseveres
till one of his exquisite pictures is egorly snapt up by a wealthy man
at $2. The man afterwards turns out to be Sciataca's pa.

He says unkind things of Algonquin, and intimates that he is a better
artist in four-foot wood than he is as a sunset man. He says that
Algonquin is more of a Michael Angelo in basswood than anywhere else,
and puts a wet blanket on Sciataca's love for Algonquin.

Then Sciataca grows colder than ever to Algonquin, and engages herself
to a wealthy journalist.

Just as the wedding is about to take place, Algonquin finds that he is
by birth an Ohio man. Sciataca repents and marries her first love.
He secures the appointment of governor of Wyoming, and they remove to
Cheyenne.

Then there are many little bursts of pictureskness and other things that
I would like to see in print.

I send also a picture of myself which I would like to have in the book.
Tell the artist to tone down the freckles so that the features may be
seen by the observer, and put on a diamond pin, so that it will have the
appearance of wealth, which the author of a book generally wears.

It is not wrote very good, but that won't make any difference when it is
in print.

When the reading public begins to devour it, and the scads come rolling
in, you can deduct enough for to pay your expenses of printing and
pressing, and send me the balance by post-office money order. Please get
it on the market as soon as possible, as I need a Swiss muzzlin and some
other togs suitable to my position in liturary circles. Yours truly,
Luella Blinker.




LINGERIE.

|A LADY'S underwear is politely spoken of as "lingerie," but the great
horrid man crawls into his decrepit last year's undershirt every Monday
morning, and swears because his new underclothes are so "lingerie" about
making their appearance.




FRUIT.

|A CLASS of croakers that one meets with everywhere, have steadily
maintained that fruit cannot be raised in this Territory. In
conversation with a small boy yesterday, we learned that this is not
true. It is very simple and easy to do, even in this rigorous climate.
He showed us how it is done. He has a small and delicately constructed
harpoon with a tail to it--the apparatus attached to a long string. He
goes into the nearest market, and while the clerk is cutting out some
choice steaks for the man with the store teeth, the boy throws his
harpoon and hauls in on the string. In this way he raises all kinds of
fruit, not only for his own use, but he has some to sell.

He showed us some that he raised. It was as good as any of the fruit
that we buy here, only that there was a little hole on one side, but
that don't hurt the fruit for immediate use. He "puts some down," but
don't can or dry any. He says that he applies his where he feels the
worst. When he feels as though a Greening or a Bellflower would help
him, he goes out and picks it. He showed us a string with a grappling
hook attached, on which he had raised a bushel of assorted fruit this
fall, and it wasn't a very good string, either.




THE BONE OF CONTENTION.

|TWO self-accused humorists of Ohio have had a fight over the authorship
of the facetious phenomenon and laugh-jerking success, "Who ever saw
a tree box?" The bone of contention between these two gigantic minds,
evidently, is not their funny-bone.




CONGRATULATORY.

|I CANNOT close this letter without writing my congratulations to Mr.
Raymond, of _Tribune_, upon the position of Notary Public, which he
has secured. True merit cannot long go unrewarded. I, too, am a Notary
Public. So is Patterson of the Georgetown _Miner_. And yet we were all
once poor boys, unknown and unrecognized. Patterson was the son of a
wealthy editor in Michigan, who wished "Sniktau" to be a minister of the
everlasting gospel, but "Snik." knew that he was destined to enter upon
a wider and more important field. He devoted himself to the study of
profanity in all its various branches, until now he can swear more
men, and do a bigger "so-help-me-God" business than any other
go-as-you-please affidavit man in Colorado.

I have held my office through a part of the administration of Grant, and
all of the Hayes administration, so far, and all through the countless
political changes of the territorial administration. I state this with a
pardonable pride. It shows it was not the result of political influence
or party, but was the natural outgrowth of official rectitude and just
dealing toward all. When a man comes before me to make affidavit or to
acknowledge a deed, I recognize no party, no friend. They are all served
alike and charged alike.

I was appointed to this high official position under the administration
of Governor Thayer. At that time C. O. D. French was secretary. I had to
lubricate the wheels of government before I could catch on, as it were.
C. O. D. French wanted $5. I sent it to him. I wrote him that when the
people seemed determined to foist upon me the high official honor of
Notary Public, the paltry sum of $5 should not stand in the way. I have
held the position ever since. Political enemies have endeavored to tear
to pieces my record, both officially and socially, but through evil and
good report, I have still held it.

The nation to-day looks to her notaries public for her crowning glory
and successful future. In their hands rest the might and the grandeur
and the glory which, like a halo, in the years to come, will encircle
the brow of Columbia. I feel the responsibility that rests upon me, and
I tremble with the mighty weight of weal or woe for a great nation which
hangs upon my every official act. I presume Mr. Raymond feels the same
way. He ought, certainly, for the eyes of a great republic watch us with
feverish anxiety. It is an awful position to be placed in. Let those who
tread the lower walks of life envy not the brain-and-nerve-destroying
position of the notary public, whose every movement is portentous, and
great with its burden of good or ill for nations unborn. That is what
is making an old man of me before my time, and sprinkling my strawberry
blonde hair with gray.




THE AGONY IS OVER.

|IT has occurred to us that the destruction of timber near the
Continental Divide, in Colorado, which is also called, "The Backbone of
the Continent," will naturally be a severe blow to the lumber region of
Colorado.

We began studying on this joke last summer, and have wrestled
prayerfully with it ever since, with the above result. Do not think,
O gay, lighthearted reader, that these jokes are spontaneous, and that
mirth is pumped out of the recesses of the editor's brain as a grocer
pumps coal oil out of a tin tank. They come with fasting and sadness,
and vexation of spirit, and groanings that cannot be uttered, and
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now that we are over this joke safely, no
doubt that we shall begin to flesh up again.




OSTRICH CAVALRY.

|THE question of mounting the United States cavalry upon ostriches, as
a matter of economy, is being agitated on the strength of their easy
propagation in Arizona and New Mexico. There being now one hundred and
seventeen of these birds in that region, the result of the increase
from nine of them imported several years ago. However successful ostrich
farming may be in and of itself, we cannot speak too highly of the
feasibility of using the bird for cavalry purposes. It is an established
fact that the ostrich is very swift and will live for days without food,
and be verier viceable all the time.

A detachment of ostrich cavalry could light out across the enemy's
country like the wind, and easily distance an equal force mounted upon
horses, and after several days' march, instead of a weary, worn, and
jaded-out lot of horses, there would be a flock of ostriches, hungry but
in good spirits, and the quartermasters could issue some empty bottles,
and some sardine boxes, and some government socks, and an old blue
overcoat or two, and the irons from an old ambulance, to each bird; and
at evening, while the white tents were glimmering in the twilight,
the birds would lie in a little knot chewing their cud constantly, and
snoring in a subdued way that would shake the earth for miles around.

One great difficulty would be to keep a sufficient guard around the arms
and ammunition to prevent the cavalry from eating them up. Think of
a half dozen ostriches breaking into an inclosure while the guard
was asleep, or off duty, and devouring fifteen or twenty rounds of
ammunition in one night, or stealing into the place where the artillery
was encamped, and filling themselves up with shells and round shot, and
Greek fire and gatling guns.




AN ELECTRIC BELT.

|A CHEYENNE man who was once mildly struck by lightning, calls it an
"electric belt."




THE ANNUAL WAIL

|AS usual, the regular fall wail of the eastern press on the Indian
question, charging that the Indians never committed any depredations
unless grossly abused, has arrived. We are unpacking it this morning and
marking the price on it. Some of it is on manifold, and the remainder
on ordinary telegraph paper. It will be closed out very cheap. Parties
wishing to supply boarding schools with essays and compositions, cannot
do better than to apply at once. We are selling Boston lots, with large
brass-mounted words, at two and three cents per pound. Every package
draws a prize of a two-pound can of baked beans. If large orders are
received from any one person, we will set up the wail and start it to
running, free of cost. It may be attached to any newspaper in a few
minutes, and the merest child can readily understand it. It is very
simple. But it is not as simple as the tallowy poultice on the average
eastern paper, who grinds them out at $4 per week, and found.

We also have some old wails, two or three years old--and older--that
have never been used, which we will sell very low. Old Sioux wails,
Modoc wails, etc., etc. They do not seem to meet with a ready sale in
the west, and we rather suspect it's because we are too near the scene
of the Indian troubles. Parties who have been shot at, scalped, or had
their wives and children massacred by the Indians, do not buy eastern
wails.

Eastern wails are meant for the eastern market, and if we can get this
old stock off our hands, we will hereafter treat the Indian question in
our plain, matter of fact way.

The namby-pamby style of Indian editorial and molasses-candy-gush that
New Englanders are now taking in, makes us tired. Life is too short. It
is but a span. Only as a tale that has been told. Just like the coming
of a guest, who gets his meal ticket punched, grabs a tooth pick, and
skins out.

Then why do we fool away the golden years that the Creator has given us
for mental improvement and spiritual elevation, in trying to fill up the
enlightened masses with an inferior article of taffy?

Every man who knows enough to feed himself out of a maple trough, knows,
or ought to know, that the Indian is treacherous, dishonest, diabolical
and devilish in the extreme, and that he is only waiting the opportunity
to spread out a little juvenile hell over the fair face of nature if
you give him one-sixteenth of a chance. He will wear pants and comb his
hair, and pray and be a class leader at the agency for fifty-nine years,
if he knows that in the summer of the sixtieth year he can murder a few
Colorado settlers and beat out the brains of the industrious farmers.

Industry is the foe of the red man. He is a warrior. He has royal blood
in his veins, and the vermin of the Montezumas dance the German over
his filthy carcass. That's the kind of a hair pin he is. He never works.
Nobody but Chinamen and plebians ever work.




HE WAS NOT A BURGLAR.

|THE young man who was seen climbing in a window on Center street
yesterday, was not a burglar as some might suppose, but on the contrary
he was a man whose wife had left the keys to the house lying on the
mantel, and locked them in by means of a spring lock on the front
door. He did not climb in the window because he preferred that way, but
because the door unlocked better from the inside.




BEST ON, BLESSED MEMORY.

|ONE of the attractions of life at the Cheyenne Indian agency, is the
reserved seat ticket to the regular slaughter-house matinee. The agency
butchers kill at the rate of ten bullocks per hour while at work, and so
great was the rush to the slaughter-pens for the internal economy of
the slaughtered animals, that Major Love found it necessary to erect a
box-office and gate, where none but those holding tickets could enter
and provide themselves with these delicacies.

This is not a sensation, it is the plain truth, and we desire to call
the attention of those who love and admire the Indian at a distance of
2,000 miles, and to the aesthetic love for the beautiful which prompts
the crooked-fanged and dusky bride of old Fly-up-the-Creek to rob the
soap-grease man and the glue factory, that she may make a Cheyenne
holiday. As a matter of fact, common decency will not permit us to enter
into a discussion of this matter. Firstly, it would not be fit for the
high order of readers who are now paying their money for _The Boomerang_;
and secondly, the Indian maiden at the present moment stands on a lofty
crag of the Rocky mountains, beautiful in her wild simplicity, wearing
the fringed garments of her tribe. To the sentimentalist she appears
outlined against the glorious sky of the new west, wearing a coronet of
eagle's feathers, and a health-corset trimmed with fantastic bead-work
and wonderful and impossible designs in savage art.

Shall we then rush in and with ruthless hand shatter this beautiful
picture? Shall we portray her as she appears on her return from the
great slaughter-house benefit and moral aggregation of digestive
mementoes? Shall we draw a picture of her clothed in a horse-blanket,
with a necklace of the false teeth of the pale face, and her coarse
unkempt hair hanging over her smoky features and clinging to her warty,
bony neck? No, no. Far be it from us to destroy the lovely vision of
copper-colored grace and smoke-tanned beauty, which the freckled student
of the effete east has erected in the rose-hued chambers of fancy. Let
her dwell there as the plump-limbed princess of a brave people. Let her
adorn the hat-rack of his imagination--proud, beautiful, grand, gloomy
and peculiar--while as a matter of fact she is at that moment
leaving the vestibule of the slaughter-house, conveying in the soiled
lap-robe--which is her sole adornment--the mangled lungs of a Texas
steer.

No man shall ever say that we have busted the beautiful Cigar Sign
Vision that he has erected in his memory. Let the graceful Indian queen
that has lived on in his heart ever since he studied history and saw the
graphic picture of the landing of Columbus, in which Columbus is just
unsheathing his bread knife, and the stage Indians are fleeing to the
tall brush; let her, we say, still live on. The ruthless hand that
writes nothing but everlasting truth, and the stub pencil that yanks
the cloak of the false and artificial from cold and perhaps unpalatable
fact, null spare this little imaginary Indian maiden with a back-comb
and gold garters. Let her withstand the onward march of centuries while
the true Indian maiden eats the fricasseed locust of the plains and
wears the cavalry pants of progress. We may be rough and thoughtless
many times, but we cannot come forward and ruthlessly shatter the red
goddess at whose shrine the far-away student of Black-hawk and other
fourth-reader warriors, worship.

As we said, we decline to pull the cloak from the true Indian maiden of
to-day and show her as she is. That cloak may be all she has on, and no
gentleman will be rude even to the daughter of Old Bob-Tail-Flush, the
Cheyenne brave.

A JUDICIAL WARBLER

|JACOB BEESON BLAIR, who has been recently renominated as associate
justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, and judge of the second
judicial district, with his headquarters at this place, is one of the
most able and consistent officials that Wyoming ever had. I might go
further and say that he stands at the head of them all. A year ago,
as an evidence of his popularity, I will say that he was unanimously
nominated to represent the Territory in Congress, which nomination he
gracefully declined. He has put his spare capital into mines, and
shown that he is a resident of Wyoming, and not of the classic halls of
Washington, or the sea-beat shores of "Maryland, my Maryland."

Two years ago I had the pleasure of making a trip to the mines on
Douglas creek, or, as it was then called, Last Chance, in company with
Judge Blair and Delegate Downey, owners of the Keystone gold mine in
that district. The party also included Governor Hoyt, Assayer Murphy,
Postmaster Hayford, and several other prominent men. Judge Brown and
Sheriff Boswell were also in the party at the mine. Judge Blair is,
by natural choice, a Methodist, and renewed our spiritual strength
throughout the trip in a way that was indeed pleasant and profitable.
The Judge sings in a soft, subdued kind of a way that makes the walls of
the firmament crack, and the heavens roll together like a scroll. When
he sings--=

```How tedious and tasteless the hours

````When Jesus no longer I see,=

the coyotes and jack-rabbits within a radius of seventy-five miles, hunt
their respective holes, and remain there till the danger has passed.

Looking at the Judge as he sits on the bench singeing the road agent for
ten years in solitary confinement, one would not think he could warble
so when he gets into the mountains. But he can. He is a regular prima
donna, so to speak.

When he starts to sing, the sound is like an Æolian harp, sighing
through the pine forests and dying away upon the silent air. Gradually
it swells into the wild melody of the hotel gong.

A FIRE AT A BALL.

|DOWN at Gunnison last week a large, select ball was given in a hall,
one end of which was partitioned off for sleeping rooms. A young man
who slept in one of these rooms, and who felt grieved because he had not
been invited, and had to roll around and suffer while the glad throng
tripped the light bombastic toe, at last discovered a knot-hole in
the partition through which he could watch the giddy multitude. While
peeping through the knot-hole, he discovered that one of the dancers,
who had an aperture in the heel of his shoe and another in his sock to
correspond, was standing by the wall with the ventilated foot near the
knot-hole. It was but the work of a moment to hold a candle against this
exposed heel until the thick epidermis had been heated red hot. Then
there was a wail that rent the battlements above and drowned the blasts
of the music. There was a wild scared cry of "fire": a frightened
throng rushing hither and thither, and then, where mirth and music and
rum had gladdened the eye and reddened the cheek a moment ago, all was
still save the low convulsive titter of a scantily clad man, as he lay
on the floor of his donjon tower and dug his nails in the floor.

A LITTLE PUFF.

|SOME time ago the Cheyenne _Sun_ noticed that Judge Crosby, known to
Colorado and Wyoming people quite well, was making strenuous efforts,
with some show of success, to obtain the appointment of Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming. Since that, I have noticed with
great sorrow that the President, in his youthful thoughtlessness and
juvenile independence, has appointed another man for the position.

I speak of this because so many Colorado and Wyoming people knew Mr.
Crosby and had an interest in him, as I might say. Some of us only knew
him fifty cents worth, while others knew him for various amounts up to
$5 and $10. He was an earnest, unflagging and industrious borrower. When
times were dull he used to borrow of me. Then I would throw up my hands
and let him go through me. It was not a hazardous act at all on my part.

The Judge knew everybody, and everybody knew him, and seemed nervous
when they saw him, for fear that the regular assessment was about to be
made. Every few days he wanted "to buy a pair of socks," but he never
bought them. Forty or fifty of us got together and compared notes the
other day. We ascertained that not less than $100 had been contributed
to the Crosby Sock Fund during his stay here, and yet the old man wore
the same socks to Washington that he had worn in the San Juan country.
A like amount was also contributed to the Wash Bill Fund, and still
he never had any washing done. We often wondered why so much money was
squandered on laundry expenses, and yet, that he should have the general
perspective and spicy fragrance of a Mormon emigrant train. He used to
come into my office and be sociable with me because he was a journalist.
It surprised me at first to meet a journalist who never changed his
shirt. I thought that journalists, as a rule, wore diamond studs and
had to be looked at through smoked glass.

He liked me. He told me so one day when we were alone, and after I had
promised to tell no one. Then he asked me for a quarter. I told him I
had nothing less than a fifty-cent piece. He said he would go and get it
changed. I said it would be a shame for an old man, and lame at that, to
go out and get it changed; so I said I would go. I went out and played
thirteen of my eternal revolving games of billiards, and about dusk
went back to the office whistling a merry roundelay, knowing that he had
starved out and gone away. I found him at my desk, where he had written
to every Senator and Representative in Congress, and every man who had
ever been a Senator or Representative in Congress; likewise every man,
woman and child who ever expected to be a Senator or a Representative
in Congress; also, to every superintendent and passenger agent of every
known line of railway, for a pass to every known point of the civilized
world, and this correspondence he had used my letter heads, and
envelopes and stamps, and he wasn't done either. He was just getting
animated and warming up to his work, and perspiring so that I had
to open the hall door and burn some old gum overshoes and other
disinfectants before I could breathe.

A large society is being formed here and in Cheyenne, called the "Crosby
Sufferer Aid Association." It is for the purpose of furnishing speedy
relief to the sufferers from the Crosby outbreak. We desire the
cooperation and assistance of Colorado philanthropists, and will, so
far as possible, furnish relief to Colorado sufferers from the great
scourge.

Later.--Henry Rothschild Crosby, Esq., passed through here a few
evenings since, on his way to Evanston, Wyoming, where he takes charge
of his office as receiver of public moneys for the western land office.

Henry seems to feel as though I had not stood by him through his
political struggle at Washington. At least I learn from other parties
that he does not seem to hunger and thirst after my genial society, and
thinks that what little influence I may have had, has not been used in
his interest.

That is where Henry hit the nail on the head, with that far-sighted
statesmanship and clear, unerring logic for which he is so remarkable.

I do not blame those who were instrumental in securing his appointment,
remember. Not at all. No doubt I would have done the same thing if I
had been in Washington all winter, and Henry had hovered around me
for breakfast, and for lunch, and for dinner, and for supper, and
for between meals, and for picnics, and had borrowed my money, and my
overcoat, and my meal ticket, and my bath ticket, and my pool checks,
and my socks, and my _robs de nuit_, and my tooth brush, and my gas and
writing materials and stationery; but it should be born in mind that I
am a resident of Wyoming. I have property here and it behooves me to do
and say what I can for the interests of our people. I may have to borrow
some things myself some day and I don't want to find, then, that they
have all been borrowed.

Let Hank stand back a little while and give the other boys a chance.

[Note.--In order to give the gentle reader an idea of Mr. Crosby's
personal appearance, I have consented to draw a picture of him myself.
It isn't very pretty, but it is horribly accurate. It is so life-like,
that it seems as though I could almost detect his maroon-colored
breath.--B. N]

[Illustration: 0122]




GENIUS AND WHISKY.

|I SEE in a recent issue of the _Sun_ a short article clipped from a
Sidney paper, relative to William Henry Harrison, which brings to my
mind fresh recollections of the long ago. I knew William too. I knew him
for a small amount which I wish I had now, to give to suffering Ireland.
He came upon me in the prime of summer time and said he was a newspaper
man. That always gets me. When a man says to me that he is a newspaper
man, and proves it by showing the usual discouraging state of resources
and liabilities, I always come forward with the collateral.

William wanted to go into the mountains and recover his exhausted
nerve-force, and build up his brain-power with our dry, bracing air. He
knew Mr. Foley, who was then working a claim in Last Chance, so he went
out there to tone up his exhausted energies. He went out there, and
after a few weeks a note came in from the man with the historical
cognomen, asking me to send him a gallon of best Old Crow. I went to
my guide book and encyclopoedia and ascertained that this was a kind of
drink. I then purchased the amount and sent it on.

Mr. Foley said that William stayed by the jug till it was dry, and
then he came into town. I met him on the street and asked him how his
intellect seemed after his picnic in the mountains. He said she was all
right now, and he felt just as though he could do the entire staff work
on the New York _Herald_ for two weeks and not sweat a hair. But he
didn't pay for the Old Crow. It slipped his mind. When time hung heavy
on my hands, I used to write William a note and cheerfully dun him for
the amount. I would also ask him how his intellect seemed by this time,
and also make other little jocular remarks. But he has never forwarded
the amount. If the bill had been for pantaloons, or grub, or other
luxuries, I might have excused him, but when I loan a man money for a
staple like whisky. I don't think it's asking too much to hope that in
the flight of time it would be paid back. However, I can't help it now.
It's about time that another bogus journalist should put in an
appearance. I have a few dollars ahead, and I am yearning to lay out the
sum on struggling genius.




THE TWO-HEADED GIRL

|THE cultivated two-headed girl has visited the west. It is very rare
that a town the size of Laramie experiences the rare treat of witnessing
anything so enjoyable. In addition to the mental feast which such a
thing affords, one goes away feeling better--feeling that life has more
in it to live for, and is not after all such a vale of tears as he had
at times believed it.

Through the trials and disappointments of this earthly pilgrimage,
the soul is at times cast down and discouraged. Man struggles against
ill-fortune and unlooked-for woes, year after year, until he becomes
misanthropical and soured, but when a two-headed girl comes along and
he sees her it cheers him up. She speaks to his better nature in two
different languages at one and the same time, and at one price.

When I went to the show I felt gloomy and apprehensive. The eighteenth
ballot had been taken and the bulletins seemed to have a tiresome
sameness. The future of the republic was not encouraging. I felt as
though, if I could get first cost for the blasted thing, I would sell
it.

I had also been breaking in a pair of new boots that day, and spectators
had been betting wildly on the boots, while I had no backers at three
o'clock in the afternoon, and had nearly decided to withdraw on the last
ballot. I went to the entertainment feeling as though I should criticise
it severely.

The two-headed girl is not beautiful. Neither one of her, in fact, is
handsome. There is quite a similarity between the two, probably because
they have been in each other's society a great deal and have adopted the
same ways.

She is an Ethiopian by descent and natural choice, being about the same
complexion as Frank Miller's oil blacking, price ten cents.

She was at one time a poor slave, but by her winning ways and genuine
integrity and genius, she has won her way to the hearts of the American
people. She has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that two heads are
better than one.

A good sized audience welcomed this popular favorite. When she came
forward to the footlights and made her two-ply bow she was greeted by
round after round of applause from the _elite_ of the city.

I felt pleased and gratified. The fact that a recent course of
scientific lectures here was attended by from fifteen to thirty people,
and the present brilliant success of the two-headed girl proved to me,
beyond a doubt, that we live in an age of thought and philosophical
progress.

Science may be all right in its place, but does it make the world
better? Does it make a permanent improvement on the minds and thoughts
of the listener? Do we go away from such a lecture feeling that we have
made a grand stride toward a glad emancipation from the mental thraldom
of ignorance and superstition? Do people want to be assailed, year after
year, with a nebular theory, and the Professor Huxley theory of natural
selections and things of that nature?

No! 1,000 times no!

They need to be led on quietly by an appeal to their better natures.
They need to witness a first-class bureau of monstrosities, such as men
with heads as big as a band wagon, women with two heads, Cardiff giants,
men with limbs bristling out all over them like the velvety bloom on a
prickly pear.

When I get a little leisure, and can attend to it,

I am going to organize a grand constellation of living wonders of this
kind, and make thirteen or fourteen hundred farewell tours with it, not
so much to make money, but to meet a long-felt, want of the American
people for something which will give a higher mental tone to the tastes
of those who never lag in their tireless march toward perfection.




THE CULTIVATION OF GUM.

|AN idea has occurred to us, that, situated as we are at a considerable
elevation, and being comparatively out of the line of tropical growth,
we should try to propagate plants that will withstand the severe winter
and the sudden and sometimes fatal surprise of spring. Plants in
this locality worry along very well through the winter in a kind of
semi-unconscious state, but when spring drops down on them about the
Fourth of July they are not prepared for it, and they yield to the
severe nervous shock and pass with a gentle gliding motion up the flume.

This has suggested to our mind the practicability of cultivating the
chewing-gum plant. We advance this thought with some timidity, knowing
that our enemies will use all these novel and untried ideas against us
in a presidential campaign; but the good of the country is what we are
after and we do not want to be misunderstood.

Chewing-gum is rapidly advancing in price, and the demand is far beyond
the supply. The call for gum is co-extensive with the onward move of
education. They may be said to go hand in hand. Wherever institutions
of learning are found, there you will see the tall, graceful form of the
chewing-gum tree rising toward heaven with its branches extending toward
all humanity.

Here, in Wyoming, we could easily propagate this plant. It is hardy and
don't seem to care whether winter lingers in the lap of spring or not.
We have the figures, also, to substantiate this article. We will figure
on the basis of twenty boxes of gum to the plant--and this is a very low
estimate, indeed--then the plants may easily be three feet apart. This
would be 3,097,600 plants to the acre, or 61,952,000 boxes, containing
100 chews in each box, or 6,195,200,000 chews to the acre. We have a
million acres that could be used in this way, which would yield in a
good year 6,195,200,000,000,000 chews at one cent each.

The reader will see at a glance that this is no wild romantic notion
on our part, but a terrible reality. Wyoming could easily supply the
present demand and wag the jaws of nations yet unborn. It makes us tired
to think of it.

Of course, anything like this will meet with strong opposition on the
part of those who have no faith in enterprises, but let a joint stock
company be formed with sufficient capital to purchase the tools and
gum seed, and we will be responsible for the result. Very likely
the ordinary spruce gum (made of lard and resin) would be best as an
experiment, after which the prize-package gum plant could be tried.

These experiments could be followed up with a trial of the gum drop, gum
overshoe, gum arabic and other varieties of gum. Doctor Hayford would be
a good man to take hold of this. Col. Donnellan says, however, that he
don't think it is practical. No use of enlarging on this subject--it
will never be tried. Probably the town is full of people who are
willing to chew the gum, but wouldn't raise a hand toward starting a
gum orchard. We are sick and tired of pointing out different avenues to
wealth only to be laughed at and ridiculed.




WE HAVE REASONED IT OUT.

|A HOME magazine comes to us this week, in which we find the following,
connected with a society article. After alluding to the young men of
the nineteenth century, and their peculiarities, it continues: "In
fact, many of the more fashionable strains are all black, except the
distinctive white feet and snout, so noticeable at this epoch in our
history."

This, it would seem, will make a radical change in the prevailing young
man. With white feet and white snout, the masher must also be black
aside from those features. This will add the charm of extreme novelty to
our social gatherings, and furnish sufficient excuse for a man like us,
with blonde rind and strawberry blonde feet, staying at home, with the
ban of society and a loose smoking jacket on him.

Farther on, this peculiar essay says: "He is noted for his wonderfully
fine blood, the bone is fine, the hair thin, the carcass long but broad,
straight and deep-sided, with smooth skin, susceptible to no mange or
other skin diseases."

We almost busted our capacity trying to figure out this startler in the
fashion line, and wore ourself down to a mere geometrical line in our
endeavor to fathom this thing when, yesterday, in reading an article
in the same paper entitled, "The Berkshire Hog," we discovered that the
sentences above referred to had evidently been omitted by the foreman,
and put in the society article. It is unnecessary to state that a
blessed calm has settled down in the heart of this end of _The Boomerang_.
Time, at last, makes all things size up in proper shape. Blessed be the
time which matures the human mind and the promissory note.




CARVING SCHOOLS.

|THEY are agitating the matter of instituting carving schools in the
east, so that the rising generation will be able to pass down through
the corridors of time without its lap full of dressing and its bosom
laden with gravy and remorse. The students at this school will wear
barbed-wire masks while practicing. These masks will be similar to those
worn by German students, who slice each other up while obtaining an
education.




DIGNITY.

|COLONEL INGERSOLL said, at Omaha the other day, that he hated a
dignified man and that he never knew one who had a particle of sense;
that such men never learned, and were constantly forgetting something.

Josh Billings says that gravity is no more the sign of mental strength
than a paper collar is the evidence of a shirt.

This leads us to say that the man who ranks as a dignified snoozer, and
banks on winning wealth and a deathless name through this one source of
strength, is in the most unenviable position of any one we know. Dignity
does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty
minutes, but after awhile it fails to get there. Dignity works all right
in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a
salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support, will
do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and the air
of patronage. Colonel Ingersoll may be wrong in the matter of future
punishment, but his head is pretty level on the dignity question.
Dignity works all right with a man who is worth a million dollars and
has some doubts about his suspenders; but the man who is to get a large
sum of money before he dies, and get married and accomplish some good,
must place himself before his fellow men in the attitude of one who has
ideas that are not too lonely and isolated.

Let us therefore aim higher than simply to appear cold and austere. Let
us study to aid in the advancement of humanity and the increase of baled
information. Let us struggle to advance and improve the world, even
though in doing so we may get into ungraceful positions and at times
look otherwise than pretty. Thus shall we get over the ground, and
though we may do it in the eccentric style of the camel, we will get
there, as we said before, and we will have camped and eaten our supper
while the graceful and dignified pedestrian lingers along the trail.

Works, not good clothes and dignity, are the grand hailing sign, and he
who halts and refuses to jump over an obstacle because he may not do
it so as to appear as graceful as a gazelle, will not arrive until the
festivities are over.

A SNORT OF AGONY.

|OUR attention has been called to a remark made by the New York
_Tribune_, which would intimate that the journal referred to didn't
like Acting-Postmaster F. Hatton, and characterizing the editor of The
Boomerang as a "journalistic pal" of General Hatton's. We certainly
regret that circumstances have made it necessary for us to rebuke the
_Tribune_ and speak, harshly to it. Frank Hatton may be a journalistic
pal of ours. Perhaps so. We would be glad to class him as a journalistic
pal of ours, even though he may not have married rich. We think just as
much of General Hatton as though he had married wealthy. We can't all
marry rich and travel over the country, and edit our papers vicariously.
That is something that can only happen to the blessed few.

It would be nice for us to go to Europe and have our _pro tem._ editor
at home working for $20 per week, and telegraphing us every few minutes
to know whether he should support Cornell or Folger. The pleasure of
being an editor is greatly enhanced by such privileges, and we often
feel that if we could get away from the hot, close office of The
Boomerang, and roam around over Scandahoovia and the Bosphorus, and
mould the policy of _The Boomerang_ by telegraph, and wear a cork helmet
and tight pants, we would be far happier. Still it may be that Whitelaw
Reid is no happier with his high priced wife and his own record of
crime, than we are in our simplicity here in the wild and rugged west,
as we write little epics for our one-horse paper, and borrow tobacco of
the foreman.

It is not all of life to live, nor all of death to die. We should live
for a purpose, Mr. Reid, not aimlessly like a blind Indian, 200 miles
from the reservation at Christmas-tide.

Now, Mr. Reid, if you will just tell Mr. Nicholson, when you get back
home, that in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton he
has exceeded his authority, we will feel grateful to you--and so will
Mr. Hatton. If you don't do it, we shall be called upon to stop the
_Tribune_, and subscribe for _Harper's Weekly_. This we should dislike
to do very much, because we have taken the _Tribune_ for years. We used
to take it when the editor stayed at home and wrote for it. Our
father used to take the _Tribune_, too. He is the editor of the Omaha
_Republican_, and needs a good New York paper, but he has quit taking
the _Tribune_. He said he must withdraw his patronage from a paper that
is edited by a tourist. All the Nyes will now stop taking the _Tribune_,
and all subscribe for some other dreary paper. We don't know just
whether it will be _Harper's Weekly_, or the _Shroud_.

Later.--Mr. Reid went through here on Tuesday, and told us that he
might have been wrong in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank
Hatton, and in fact did not know that the _Tribune_ had said so. He
simply told Nicholson to kind of generally go for the administration,
and turn over a great man every morning with his scathing pen, and
probably Nicholson had kind of run out of great men, and tackled the
North American Indian fighter of _The Boomerang_. Mr. Reid also said, as
he rubbed some camphor ice on his nose, and borrowed a dollar from his
wife to buy his supper here, that when he got back to New York, he was
going to write some pieces for the _Tribune_ himself. He was afraid he
couldn't trust Nicholson, and the paper had now got where it needed an
editor right by it all the time. He said also that he couldn't afford
to be wakened up forty times a night to write telegrams to New York,
telling the _Tribune_ who to indorse for governor. It was a nuisance, he
said, to stand at the center of a way station telegraph office, in his
sun-flower night shirt, and write telegrams to Nicholson, telling him
who to sass the next morning. Once, he said, he telegraphed him to
dismember a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton's, and the operator made a
mistake. So the next morning the _Tribune_ had a regular old ring-tail
peeler of an editorial, which planted one of Mr. Reid's special friends
in an early grave. So we may know from this that moulding the course of
a great paper by means of red messages, is fraught with some unpleasant
features.

[Illustration: 0137]




ALWAYS BOOM AT THE TOP.

|YOUNG man, do not stand lounging on the threshold of the glorious
future, while the coming years are big with possibilities, but take off
your coat and spit on your hands and win the wealth which the world will
yield you. You may not be able to write a beautiful poem, and die of
starvation; but you can go to work humbly as a porter and buy a whisk
broom, and wear people's clothes out with it, and in five years you can
go to Europe in your own special car. As the strawberry said to the box,
"there is always room at the top."




INACCURATE.

|ONCE more has Laramie been, slandered and traduced. Once more our free
and peculiar style has been spoken lightly of and our pride trailed in
the dust.

Last week the _Police Gazette_, an illustrated family journal of great
merit, appeared with a half page steel engraving, executed by one of the
old masters, representing two Laramie girls on horseback yanking a fly
drummer along the street at a gallop, because he tried to make a mash on
them and they did not yearn for his love.

There are two or three little errors in the illustration, to which we
desire to call the attention of the eastern reader of Michael Angelo
masterpieces that appear in the Police Gazette. First, the saloon or
hurdy-gurdy shown in the left foreground is not the exact representation
of any building in Laramie, and the dobe pig pens and A tents of which
the town seems to be composed, are not true to nature.

Again, the streets do not look like the streets of Laramie. They look
more like the public thoroughfares of Tie City or Jerusalem. Then the
girls do not look like Laramie girls, and we are acquainted with all the
girls in town, and consider ourself a judge of those matters. The girls
in this illustration look too much as though they had mingled a great
deal with the people of the world. They do not have that shy, frightened
and pure look that they ought to have. They appear to be that kind of
girls that one finds in the crowded metropolis under the gas light,
yearning to get acquainted with some one.

There are several features of the illustration which we detect as
erroneous, and among the rest we might mention, casually, that the
incident illustrated never occurred here at all. Aside from these little
irregularities above named, the picture is no doubt a correct one. We
realize fully that times get dull even in New York sometimes, and it is
necessary, occasionally, to draw on the imagination, but the _Gazette_
artist ought to pick up some hard town like Cheyenne, and let us alone
awhile.




THE WESTERN "CHAP."

|FEW know how voraciously we go for anything in the fashion line. Many
of our exchanges are fashion magazines, and nothing is read with such
avidity as these highly pictorial aggregations of literature. If
there are going to be any changes in the male wardrobe this winter, it
behooves us to know what they are. We intend to do so. It is our high
prerogative and glorious privilege to live in a land of information.
If we do not provide ourself with a few, it is our own fault. Man has
spanned the ocean with an electric cable, and runs his street cars
with another cable that puts people out of their misery as quick as
a giant-powder caramel in a man's chest-protector, under certain
circumstances. Science has done almost everything for us, except to
pay our debts without leaning toward repudiation. We are making rapid
strides in the line of progression. That is, the scientists are. Every
little while you can hear a scientist burst a basting thread off his
overalls, while making a stride.

It is equally true that we are marching rapidly along in the line of
fashion. Change, unceasing change, is the war cry, and he who undertakes
to go through the winter with the stage costumes of the previous winter,
will find, as Voltaire once said, that it is a cold day.

We look with great concern upon the rapid changes which a few weeks have
made. The full voluptuous swell and broad cincha of the chaparajo have
given place to the tight pantaletts with feathers on them, conveying
the idea that they cannot be removed until death, or an earthquake shall
occur..

"Chaps," as they are vulgarly called, deserve more than a passing
notice. They are made of leather with fronts of dog-skin with the hair
on. The inside breadths are of calf or sheep-skin, made plain,
but trimmed down the side seam with buckskin bugles and oil-tanned
bric-a-brac of the time of Michael Angelo Kelley. On the front are plain
pockets used for holding the ball programme and the "pop." The pop is a
little design in nickel and steel, which is often used as an inhaler.
It clears out the head, and leaves the nasal passages and phrenological
chart out on the sidewalk, where pure air is abundant. "Chaps" are
rather attractive while the wearer is on horseback, or walking toward
you, but when he chasses and "all waltz to places," you discern that
the seat of the garment has been postponed _sine die_. This, at first,
induces a pang in the breast of the beholder. Later, however, you become
accustomed to the barren and perhaps even stern demeanor of the wearer.
You gradually gain control of yourself and master your raging desire
to rush up and pin the garment together. The dance goes on. The _elite_
take an adult's dose of ice-cream and other refreshments; the leader of
the mad waltz glides down the hall with his mediæval "chaps," swishing
along as he sails; the violin gives a last shriek; the superior fiddle
rips the robe of night wide open, with a parting bzzzzt; the mad frolic
is over, and $5 have gone into the dim and unfrequented freight depot of
the frog-pond-environed past.




AN INCIDENT OF THE CAMPAIGN.

|COLONEL THOMAS JUNIUS DAYTON entered the democratic headquarters
on Second street, a few nights ago, having been largely engaged,
previously, in talking over the political situation, with sugar in it.
The first person he saw on entering, was an individual in the back part
of the room, writing.

Colonel Dayton ordered him out.

The man would not go, maintaining that he had a right to meet together
in democratic headquarters as often as he desired. The Colonel still
insisted that he was an outsider and could have nothing in common
with the patriotic band of bourbons whose stamping ground he had thus
entered.

Finally the excitement became so great that a man was called in to
umpire the game and sponge off the hostiles, but before blood was shed a
peacemaker asked Colonel Dayton what the matter was with him.

"This man is a Democrat. I've known him for years. What's the reason you
don't want him in here?"

"That's all right," said the Colonel, with his eyes starting from their
sockets with indignation, "you people can be easily fooled. I cannot. I
know him to be a spy in our camp. I have smelled his breath and find he
is not up in the Ohio degree. I have also discovered him to be able to
read and write. He cannot answer a single democratic test. He is a
bogus bourbon, and my sentiments are that he should be gently but firmly
fired. If the band will play something in D that is kind of tremulous, I
will take off my coat and throw the gentleman over into a vacant lot.
I think I know a Democrat when I see him. Perhaps you do not. He cannot
respond to a single grand hailing sign. He hasn't the cancelled internal
revenue stamp on his nose, and his breath lacks that spicy election odor
which we know so well. Away with him! Fling his palpitating remains over
the drawbridge and walk on him. Spread him out on the ramparts and jam
him into the culverin. Those are my sentiments. We want no electroplate
Democrats here. This is the stronghold of the highly aesthetic and
excessively _bon-ton_, Andrew Jackson peeler, and if justice cannot be
done to this usurper by the party, I shall have to go out and get an
infirm hoe handle and administer about $9 worth of rebuke myself."

He went out after the hoe handle, and while absent, the stranger said he
didn't want to be the cause of any ill feeling, or to stand in the way
of the prosperity of his party, so he would not remain. He put on his
hat and stole out into the night, a quiet martyr to the blind rage of
Colonel Dayton, and has not since been seen.




WHY DO THEY DO IT?

|BEN HILL, died, after suffering intolerable anguish from a tobacco
cancer, caused by excessive smoking. The consumers of the western-made
cigar are now and then getting a nice little dose of leprosy from the
Chinese constructed cigars of San Francisco, and yet people go right on
inviting the most horrible diseases known to science, by smoking, and
smoking to excess. Why do they do it? It is one of those deep, dark
mysteries that nothing but death can unravel. We cannot fathom it,
that's certain. (Give us a light, please.)




TWO STYLES.

|ONE of the peculiarities of correspondence is witnessed at this office
every day, to which we desire to call the attention of our growing girls
and boys, who ought to know that there is a long way and a short way of
saying things on paper; a right way and a wrong way to express thoughts
on a postal card, just as there is in conversation. We all admire the
business man who is terse and to the point, and we dislike the man
who hangs on to the door knob as though life was a never-ending summer
dream, and refuses to say good-bye. It's so with correspondence. In
touching upon the letters received at this office, we refer to a car
load received at this office during the past year, relating to sample
copies. Still they are a good specimen of the different styles of doing
the same thing.

For instance, here is a line which tells the story in brief, without
wearing out your eyes and days by ponderous phrases and useless
verbiage. "Useless verbiage and frothy surplusage" is a synonym which
we discovered in '75, while excavating for the purpose of laying the
foundations of our imposing residence up the gulch. Persons using the
same will please fork over ten per cent of the gross receipts:

_"Bangor, Maine, 11-10-82._

_"Find 10c for which send sample copy Boomerang to above address. Yours,
etc.,_

_"Thomas Billings."_

Some would have said "please" find inclosed ten cents. That is not
absolutely necessary. If you put ten cents in the letter that covers all
seeming lack of politeness and it's all right. If, however, you are out
of a job, and have nothing else to do but to write for sample copies
of papers, and wait for the department at Washington to allow you a
pension, you might say, "Please find inclosed," etc., otherwise the ten
cents will make it all right.

Here's another style, which evinces a peculiarity we do not admire. It
bespeaks the man who thinks that life and its associations are given us
in order to wear out the time, waiting patiently meanwhile for Gabriel
to render his little overture.

It occurs to us that life is real, life is earnest, and so forth. We
cannot sit here in the gathering gloom and read four pages of a letter,
which only expresses what ought to have been expressed in four lines.
We feel that we are here to do the greatest good to the greatest-number,
and we dislike the correspondent who hangs on to the literary door knob,
so to speak, and absorbs our time, which is worth $5.35 per hour.

Here we go--

"New Centreville, Wis., Nov. 8, 1882.

"Mr. William Nye, esq., Laramie City, Wyoming:

"Dear Sir:--I have often saw in our home papers little pieces cut out of
your paper The Larmy Boomerang, yet I have never saw the paper itself.
I hardly pick up a paper, from the Fireside. Friend to the Christian at
Work, that I do not see something or a nother from your faseshus pen and
credited to _The Boomerang_. I have asked our bookstore for a copy of the
paper, and he said go to grass, there wasn't no such perioddickle in
existence. He is a liar; but I did not tell him so because I am just
recovering from a case of that kind now, which swelled both eyes shet
and placed me under the doctor's care.

"It was the result of a campaign lie, and at this moment I do not
remember whether it was the other man or me which told it. Things got
confused and I am not clear on the matter now.

"I send ten cents in postage stamps, hoping you will favor me with
a speciment copy of _The Boomerang_ and I may suscribe. I send postage
stamps because they are more convenient to me, and I suppose that you
can use them all right as you must have a good deal of writing to do. I
intend to read the paper thorrow and give my folks the benefit also. I
love to read humerrus pieces to my children and my wife and hear their
gurgly laugh well up like a bobollink's. I now take an estern paper
which is gloomy in its tendencies, and I call it the Morg. It looks at
the dark side of life and costs $3 a year and postage.

"So send the speciment if you please and I will probbly suscribe for The
Boomerang, as I have saw a good many extrax from it in our papers here
and I have not as yet saw your paper."




GOSHALLHEMLOCK SALVE.

|THE bullwacking, mule-skinning proprieter of a life-giving salve wants
us to advertise for him, and to state that, with his Goshallhemlock
salve he "can cure all chronicle diseases whatever."

"We would do it if we could, sweet being; but owing to the fullness of
the paper and the foreman, we must turn you cruelly away.

"Yours truly,

"James Letson."




THE STAGE BALD-HEAD.

|MOST everyone, who was not born blind, knows that the stage bald-head
is a delusion and a snare. The only all-wool, yard-wide bald-head we
remember on the American stage, is that of Dunstan Kirke as worn by the
veteran Couldock.

Effie Ellsler wears her own hair and so does Couldock, but Couldock
wears his the most. It is the most worn anyhow.

What we started out to say, is, that the stage bald-head and the average
stage whiskers make us weary with life. The stage bald-head is generally
made of the internal economy of a cow, dried so that it shines, and
cut to fit the head as tightly as a potatoe sack would naturally fit a
billiard cue. It is generally about four shades whiter than the red
face of the wearer, or _vice versa_. We do not know which is the worst
violation of eternal fitness, the red-faced man who wears a deathly
white bald-head, or the pale young actor who wears a florid roof on his
intellect. Sometimes in starring through the country and playing ten
or fifteen hundred engagements, a bald-head gets soiled. We notice that
when a show gets to Laramie the chances are that the bald-head of the
leading old man is so soiled that he really needs a sheep-dip shampoo.
Another feature of this accessory of the stage is its singular failure
to fit. It is either a little short at both ends, or it hangs over the
skull in large festoons, and wens and warts, in such a way as to make
the audience believe that the wearer has dropsy of the brain.

You can never get a stage bald-head near enough like nature to fool the
average house-fly. A fly knows in two moments whether it is the genuine,
or only a base imitation, and the bald-head of the theatre fills him
with nausea and disgust. Nature, at all times hard to imitate, preserves
her bald head as she does her sunny skies and deep blue seas, far beyond
the reach of the weak, fallible, human imitator. Baldness is like fame,
it cannot be purchased. It must be acquired. Some men may be born bald,
some may acquire baldness, and others may have baldness thrust upon
them, but they generally acquire it.

"The stage beard is also rather dizzy, as a rule. It looks as much like
a beard that grew there, as a cow's tail would if tied to the bronze dog
on the front porch. When you tie a heavy black beard on a young actor,
whose whole soul would be churned up if he smoked a full-fledged cigar,
he looks about as savage as a bowl of mush and milk struck with a club."




FATHERLY WORDS.

|N. W. P., writes:--"I am a young man twenty-five years old. I am in
love with a young lady of seventeen. Her mind being very different
from mine, I have not told her of my love, nor asked to call on her. I
thought her so giddy that she did not want any steady company. She is
a great lover of amusement. She is a perfect lady in her deportment,
although she is more like a child of fourteen than a young lady of
seventeen. I think she is very pretty, but she seems to enjoy flirting
to the greatest extent. One evening at a party I asked her to promenade
with me, and she would not do it. I then asked her to allow me to bring
her refreshments, which she would not do. I then asked her to let me
take her home when she was ready to go, and the answer was, 'No, I will
not do any such thing,' and turning round she left me. I have met her
several times since. She always bows to me. Everywhere she meets me
she recognizes me pleasantly. How, did I do wrong in asking her those
privileges at the party, I having no introduction to her? I am still in
love with her."

After she had refused to promenade with you, and had declined to permit
you to bring her refreshments, it was pressing matters rather too far
for you to ask her to allow you to accompany her home "whenever she was
ready to go." Still, as she treats you kindly whenever you meet, it is
evident that you did not offend her very deeply. Perhaps she sees that
you love her, and does not wish to discourage you.

You were, no doubt, a little previous in trying to get acquainted with
the young lady. She may be giddy, but she has just about sized you up
in shape, and no doubt, if you keep on trying to love her without her
knowledge or consent, she will hit you with something, and put a Swiss
sunset over your eye. Do not yearn to win her affections all at once.
Give her twenty or thirty years in which to see your merits. You will
have more to entitle you to her respect by that time, no doubt. During
that time you may rise to be president and win a deathless name.

The main thing you have to look out for now, however, is to restrain
yourself from marrying people who do not want to marry you. That style
of freshness will, in thirty or forty years, wear away. If it does not,
probably the vigorous big brother of some young lady of seventeen, will
consign you to the silent tomb. Do not try to promenade with a young
lady unless she gives her consent. Do not marry anyone against her
wishes. Give the girl a chance. She will appreciate it, and even though
she may not marry you, she will permit you to sit on the fence and
watch her when she goes to marry some one else. Do not be despondent.
Be courageous, and some day, perhaps, you will get there. At present the
horizon is a little bit foggy.

As you say, she may be so giddy that she doesn't want steady company.
There is a glimmer of hope in that. She may be waiting till she gets
over the agony and annoyance of teething before she looks seriously into
the matters of matrimony. If that should turn out to be the case we are
not surprised. Give her a chance to grow up, and in the meantime, go and
learn the organ grinder's profession and fix yourself so that you can
provide for a family. Sometimes a girl only seventeen years old is able
to discern that a young intellectual giant like you is not going to make
a dazzling success of life as a husband. Brace up and try to forget your
sorrow, N. W. P., and you may be happy yet.




THE GOOD TIME COMING.

|ANGORA cloth is a Parisian novelty. Shaggy woolen goods are all the
rage, and this Angora cloth is a perfect type of shaggy materials. It is
a soft, downy article, like the fur of an Angora cat. Very showy
toilets are of Angora cloth, trimmed with velvet applique work to form
passementerie.

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

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

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




MANIA FOR MARKING CLOTHES.

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

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

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

[Illustration: 0161]

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

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

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

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

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




REGARDING THE NOSE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




SOMETHING TOO MUCH OF THIS.

|THE Pawnee Republican, of the 13th, innocently and impertinently,
remarks: "Fred Nye, father of Bill Aye, the humorist, is the editor
of the Omaha _Republican, vice_Datus Brooks, gone to Europe."--_Omaha
Herald._

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




COLOR BLINDNESS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LITTLE PREVIOUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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




IS DUELING MURDER?

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




HEAP GONE.

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

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

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

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

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




THE EDITORIAL LAMP.

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

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




DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY.

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




THE MAROON SAUSAGE.

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




TESTIMONIALS OF REGARD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About two o'clock the following special was received:

[Special to the Boomerang.]

"[D. H. acct. charity.]

"Wyoming, October 27.

"Dear Bill Nye:

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




THE CHINESE COMPOSITOR

|THE Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do, but
must walk from one case to another constantly, as the characters needed
cover such a large number, that they cannot be put into anything
like the space used in the English newspaper office. In setting up an
ordinary piece of manuscript, the Chinese printer will waltz up and down
the room for a few moments, and then go down stairs for a line of lower
case. Then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story
after some caps, and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of
astonishers.

The successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very
intelligent, but he must be a good pedestrian. He may work and walk
around over the building all day to set up a stick full, and then half
the people in this county couldn't read it, after all.

"Clarke, Potter and Walsh."




SNOWED UNDER

|WE have met the enemy, and we are his'n.

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

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

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

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

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

Under the circumstances some would go and yield to the soothing
influences of the maddening bowl, but we do not advise that. It would
only furnish temporary relief, and the recoil would be unpleasant.

We resume our arduous duties with a feeling of extreme _ennui_, and with
that sense of surprise and astonishment that a man does who has had a
large brick block fall on him when he was not expecting it. Although
we feel a little lonely to-day--having met but a few Republicans on the
street, who were obliged to come out and do their marketing--we still
hope for the future.

The grand old Republican party--

But that's what we said last week. It sounds hollow now and meaningless,
somehow, because our voice is a little hoarse, and we are snowed under
so deep that it is difficult for us to enunciate.

Now about those bets. If the parties to whom we owe bets--and we owe
most everybody--will just agree to take the stakes, and not go into
details; not stop to ask us about the state of our mind, and talk
about how it was done, we don't care. We don't wish to have this thing
explained at all. We are not of an inquiring turn of mind. Just plain
facts are good enough for us, without any harrowing details. In the
meantime we are going to work to earn some more money to bet on the next
election. Judge Folger, and others, come over and see us when you have
time, and we will talk this matter over. Mr. B. Butler, we wish we had
your longevity. With a robust constitution, we find that most any man
can wear out cruel fate and get there at last. We do not feel so angry
as we do grieved and surprised. We are pained to see the American people
thus betray our confidence, and throw a large wardrobe into the hands of
the relentless foe.




ROUGH ON OSCAR.

|SOMEBODY shook a log-cabin bed-quilt at Oscar Wilde, when he was in
this country, and it knocked him so crazy for two days, that a man had
to lead him around town by a bed-cord to prevent him from butting his
head against a lump of oat-meal mush, and scattering his brains all over
the Union.




THE POSTAL CARD.

|NO one denies that the postal card is a great thing, and yet it makes
most people mad to get one This is because we naturally feel sensitive
about having our correspondence open to the eye of the postmaster and
postal clerk. Yet they do not read them. Postal employés hate a postal
card as cordially as anyone else. If they were banished and had nothing
to read but a package of postal cards, or a foreign book of statistics,
they would read the statistics. This wild hunger for postal cards on the
part of postmasters is all a myth. When the writer don't care who sees
his message, that knocks the curiosity out of those who handle those
messages. A man who would read a postal card without being compelled to
by some stringent statute, must be a little deranged. When you receive
one, you say, "Here's a message of so little importance that the writer
didn't care who saw it. I don't care much for it, myself." Then
you look it over and lay it away and forget it. Do you think that the
postmaster is going to wear out his young life in devouring literature
that the sendee don't feel proud of when he receives it? Hay, nay.

During our official experience we have been placed where we could have
read postal cards time and again, and no one but the All-seeing Eye
would have detected it; but we have controlled ourself and closed
our eyes to the written message, refusing to take advantage of the
confidence reposed in us by our government, and those who thus trusted
us with their secrets. All over our great land every moment of the day
or night these little cards are being silently scattered, breathing
loving words inscribed with a hard lead pencil, and shedding information
upon sundered hearts, and they are as safe as though they had never been
breathed.

They are safer, in most instances, because they cannot be read by
anybody in the whole world.

That is why it irritates us to have some one open up a conversation by
saying, "You remember what that fellow wrote me from Cheyenne on that
postal card of the 25th, and how he rounded me up for not sending
him those goods?" Now we can't keep all those things in our head. It
requires too much of a strain to do it on the salary we receive. A man
with a very large salary and a tenacious memory might keep run of the
postal correspondence in a small office, but we cannot do it. We are not
accustomed to it, and it rattles and excites us.

A CARD.

|I HAVE just received a letter from my friend, Bill Nye, of The
Laramie City Boomerang, wherein he informs me that he is engaged to the
beautiful and accomplished Lydia E. Pinkham, of "Vegetable Compounds"
fame, and that the wedding will take place on next Christmas. To be
sure, I am expected at the wedding, and I'll be on hand, if I can
secure a clean shirt by that time, and the roads ain't too bad. But I'm
somewhat at a loss what to get as a suitable present, as Bill informs
me in a postscript to his letter, that gifts of bibles, albums,
nickel-plated pickle dishes, chromos with frames, and the like, will not
be in order, as it is utterly impossible to pawn articles of this kind
in Laramie City.--_The Bohemian_.

We are sorry that the above letter, which we dashed off in a careless
moment, has been placed before the public, as later developments have
entirely changed the aspect of the matter; the engagement between
ourself and Lydia having been rudely broken by the young lady herself.
She has returned the solitaire filled ring, and henceforth we can be
nothing more to each other than friends. The promise which bade fair to
yield so much joy in the future has been ruthlessly yanked asunder, and
two young hearts must bleed through the coming years. Far be it from us
to say aught that would reflect upon the record of Miss Pinkham.

It would only imperil her chances in the future, and deny her the sweet
satisfaction of gathering in another guileless sucker like us. The
truth, however, cannot be evaded, that Lydia is no longer young. She is
now in the sere and yellow leaf. The gurgle of girlhood, and the romping
careless grace of her childhood, are matters of ancient history alone.

We might go on and tell how one thing brought on another, till the
quarrel occurred, and hot words and an assault and battery led to this
estrangement, but we will not do it. It would be wrong for a great,
strong man to take advantage of his strength and the public press,
to speak disparagingly of a young thing like Lyd. No matter how
unreasonably she may have treated us, we are dumb and silent on this
point. Journalists who have been invited, and have purchased costly
wedding presents, may ship the presents _by_ express, prepaid, and we
will accept them, and struggle along with our first great heart trouble,
while Lydia goes on in her mad career.




WHY WE ARE NOT GAY.

|IT was the policy of this paper, from its inception, whatever that is,
to frown upon and discourage fraud wherever the latter has shown its
hideous front. In doing so, we have simply done our duty, and our reward
has been great, partially in the shape of money, and partially in the
shape of conscious rectitude and new subscribers.

We shall continue this course until we are able to take a trip to
Europe, or until some large man comes into the office with a masked
battery and blows us out through the window into the mellow haze of an
eternal summer time.

We have been waiting until the present time for about 100,000 shade
trees in this town to grow, and as they seem to be a little reluctant
about doing so, and the season being now far advanced, we feel safe in
saying that they are dead. They were purchased a year ago of a nursery
that purported to be O. K., and up to that time no one had ever breathed
a word against it. Now, however, unless those trees are replaced, we
shall be compelled to publish the name of that nursery in large, glaring
type, to the world. The trees looked a little under the weather when
they arrived, but we thought we could bring them out by nursing them.
They stood up in the spring breeze like a seed wart, however, and
refused to leave. They are still obstinate. The agent concluded to
leave, but the trees did not. We feel hurt about it, because people
come here from a distance and laugh at our hoe-handle forest. They speak
jeeringly of our wilderness of deceased elms, and sneer at our defunct
magnolias. We hate to cast a reflection on the house, but we also
dislike to be played for Chinamen when we are no such thing.

We prefer to sit in the shade of the luxuriant telegraph pole, and
stroll at set of sun amid the umbrageous shadows of the barbed wire
fence, through which the sunlight glints and glitters to and fro.

Nothing saddens us like death in any form, and 100,000 dead trees
scattered through the city, sticking their limbs up into the atmosphere
like a variety actress, bears down upon us with the leaden weight of an
ever-present gloom.




SCIENTIFIC.

|THE Boomerang reporter, sent ont to find the North Pole, eighteen
months ago, has just been heard from. An exploring party recently found
portions of his remains in latitude 4-11-44, longitude sou'est by sou'
from the pole, and near the remains the following fragment of a diary:

July 1,1881.--Have just been out searching for a sunstroke and signs of
a thaw. Saw nothing but ice floe and snow as far as the eye could reach.
Think we will have snow this evening unless the wind changes.

July 2.--Spent the forenoon exploring to the northwest for right of way
for a new equatorial and North Pole railroad that I think would be of
immense value to commerce. The grade is easy, and the expense would be
slight. Ate my last dog to-day. Had intended him for the 4th, but got
too hungry, and ate him raw with vinegar; I wish I was at home eating
Boomerang paste.

July 3.--We had quite a frost last night, and it looks this morning as
though the corn and small fruits must have suffered. It is now two weeks
since the last of the crew died and left me alone. Ate the leather
ends of my suspenders to-day for dinner. I did not need the suspenders,
anyway, for by tightening up my pants I find they will stay on all
right, and I don't look for any ladies to call, so that even if my pants
came off by some oversight or other, nobody would be shocked.

July 4.--Saved up some tar roofing and a bottle of mucilage for my
Fourth of July dinner, and gorged myself to-day. The exercises were very
poorly attended and the celebration rather a failure. It is clouding up
in the west, and I'm afraid we're going to have snow. Seems to me we're
having an all-fired late spring here this year.

July 5.--Didn't drink a drop yesterday. It was the quietest Fourth I
ever put in. I never felt so little remorse over the way I celebrated as
I do to-day. I didn't do a thing yesterday that I was ashamed of except
to eat the remainder of a box of shoe blacking for supper. To-day I ate
my last boot-heel, stewed. Looks as though we might have a hard winter.

July 6.--Feel a little apprehension about something to eat. My credit
is all right here, but there is no competition, and prices are therefore
very high. Ice, however, is still firm. This would be a good ice-cream
country if there were any demand, but the country is so sparsely settled
that a man feels as lonesome here as a green-backer at a presidential
election. Ate a pound of cotton waste soaked in machine oil, to-day.
There is nothing left for to-morrow but ice-water and an old pocket-book
for dinner. Looks as though we might have snow.

July 7.--This is a good, cool place to spend the summer if provisions
were more plenty. I am wearing a seal-skin undershirt with three woolen
overshirts and two bear-skin vests, to-day, and when the dew begins to
fall, I have to put on my buffalo ulster to keep off the night air.
I wish I was home. It seems pretty lonesome here since the other boys
died. I do not know what I will get for dinner to-morrow, unless the
neighbors bring in something. A big bear is coming down the hatchway, as
I write. I wish I could eat him. It would be the first square meal for
two months. It is, however, a little mixed whether I will eat him or he
eat me. It will be a cold day for me if he----------

Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and from the chewed up appearance of
the book, we are led to entertain a horrible fear as to his safety.

[Illustration: 0191]




THE REVELATION RACKET IN UTAH.

|OUR esteemed and extremely connubial contemporary, the _Deseret News_,
says in a recent editorial:

"The Latter day Saints will rejoice to learn that the' vacancies which
have existed in the quorums of the twelve apostles and the first seven
presidents of seventies are now filled. During the conference recently
held, Elder Abram H. Cannon was unanimously chosen to be one of the
first seven presidents of seventies, and he was ordained to that office
on Monday, October 9th. Subsequently, the Lord, by revelation through
His servant, Prest. John Taylor, designated by name, Brothers George
Teasdale and Heber J. Grant, to be ordained to the apostleship, and
Brother Seymour B. Young to fill the remaining vacancy in the presidency
of the seventies. These brethren were ordained on Monday, October 16th,
the two apostles, under the hands of the first presidency and twelve,
and the other under the hands of the twelve and the presidency of the
seventies."

Now, that's a convenient system of politics and civil service. When
there is a vacancy, the president, John Taylor, goes into his closet
and has a revelation which settles it all right. If the man appointed
vicariously by the Lord is not in every way satisfactory, he may be
discharged by the same process. Instead, therefore, of being required to
rally a large force of his friends to aid him in getting an appointment,
the aspirant arranges solely with the party who runs the revelation
business. It will be seen at a glance, therefore, that the man who can
get the job of revelating in Zion, has it pretty much his own way. We
would not care who made the laws of Utah if we could do its revelating
at so much per revelate.

Think of the power it gives a man in a community of blind believers.
Imagine, if you please, the glorious possibilities in store for the
man who can successfully reveal the word of the Lord in an easy,
extemporaneous manner on five minutes notice.

This prerogative does not confine itself to politics alone. The
impromptu revelator of the Jordan has revelations when he wants to evade
the payment of a bill. He gets a divine order also if he desires to
marry a beautiful maid or seal the new school ma'am to himself. He has
a leverage which he can bring to bear upon the people of his diocese at
all times, even more potent than the press, and it does not possess the
drawbacks that a newspaper does. You can run an aggressive paper if you
want to in this country, and up to the time of the funeral you have a
pretty active and enjoyable time, but after the grave has been filled up
with the clods of the valley and your widow has drawn her insurance,
you naturally ask, "What is the advantage to be gained by this fearless
style of journalism?"

Still, even the inspired racket has its drawbacks. Last year, a little
incident occurred in a Mormon family down in southern Utah, which
weighed about nine pounds, and when the _ex officio_ husband, who had
been absent two years, returned, he acted kind of wild and surprised,
somehow, and as he went through the daily round of his work he could be
seen counting his fingers back and forth and looking at the almanac,
and adding up little amounts on the side of the barn with a piece of red
chalk.

Finally, one of the inspired mob of that part of the vineyard thought it
was about time to get a revelation and go down there, so he did so.
He sailed up to the _de facto_ husband and _quasi_ parent and solemnly
straightened up some little irregularities as to dates, but the
revelation was received with disdain, and the revelator was sent home in
an old ore sack and buried in a peach basket.

Sometimes there is, even in Utah, a manifestation of such irreverence
and open hostility to the church that it makes us shudder.




SAGE BRUSH TONIC.

|WE have a scheme on hand which we believe will be even more
remunerative than the newspaper business, if successfully carried
out. It is to construct a national remedy and joy-to-the-world tonic,
composed of the carefully expressed juice of our Rocky mountain tropical
herb, known as the sage brush. Sage brush is known to possess wonderful
medicinal properties. It is bitter enough to act as a tonic and to
convey the idea of great strength. Our idea would be to have our
portrait on each bottle, to attract attention and aid in effecting a
cure. We have noticed that the homeliest men succeed best as patent
medicine inventors, and this would be right in our hand.

The tonic could be erected at a cost of three cents per bottle,
delivered on the cars here, and after we got fairly to going we might
probably reduce even that price. At one dollar per bottle, we could
realize a living profit, and still do mankind a favor and turn loose
a boon to suffering humanity. It will make the hair grow, as everyone
knows, and it will stir up a torpid liver equally well. It just loves
to get after anything that is dormant. It might even help the Democratic
party, if it had a chance.

Our plan would be to advertise liberally, for we know the advantages of
judicious advertising. Only last week a man on South C street had three
cows to sell, which fact he set forth in this paper at the usual rates.
Before he went to bed that evening the cows were sold and people were
filing in the front gate like a row of men at the general delivery of
the postoffice. The next morning a large mob of people was found camped
out in front of the house, and the railroad was giving excursion rates
to those who wanted to come in from the country to buy these cows that
had been sold the day before.

We just quote this to show how advertising stirs the mighty deep and
wakes people up. We would make propositions to our brethren of the
press by which they could make some money out of the ad, too, instead of
telling them to put it in the middle of the telegraph page, surrounded
by pure reading matter, daily and weekly till forbid and pay when we get
ready.

Publishers will find that we are not that kind of people. We shall aim
to do the square thing, and will throw in an electrotype, showing us
just discovering the sage brush, and exclaiming "Eureka," while we
prance around like a Zulu on the war path. Underneath this we will
write, "Yours for Health," or words to that effect, and everything will
be pleasant and nice.

The Sage Brush Tonic will be made of two grades, one will be for
prohibition states and the other for states where prohibition is not in
general use. The prohibition tonic will contain, in addition to the sage
brush, a small amount of tansy and Jamaica ginger, to give it a bead and
prevent it from fermenting. A trial bottle will be sent to subscribers
of this paper, also a fitting little poem to be read at the funeral.
We will also publish death notice of those using the tonic, at one-half
rates.




LAME FROM HIS BERTH.

|A SAD-EYED man, the other night, fell out of his bed into the aisle of
a Pullman car and skinned his knee. He now claims that he was lame from
his berth. When he passes Carbon he will be hung by request.




THE PUBLIC PRINTER.




VERY few of the great mass of humanity know who makes the beautiful
public document, with its plain, black binding and wealth of statistics.
Few stop to think that hidden away from the great work-a-day world,
with eyelids heavy and red, and with finger-nails black with antimony,
toiling on at his case hour after hour, the public printer, during
the sessions of Congress, is setting up the thrilling chapters of the
Congressional Record, and between times yanking the Washington press
backward and forward, with his suspenders hanging down, as he prints
this beautiful sea-side library of song.

We are too prone to read that which gives us pleasure without thought
of the labor necessary to its creation. We glide gaily through the
Congressional Record, pleased with its more attractive features, viz:
its ayes and noes--little recking that Sterling P. Rounds, the public
printer, stands in the subdued gaslight with his stick half full, trying
to decipher the manuscript of some reticent representative, whose speech
was yesterday delivered to the janitor as he polished the porcelain
cuspidor of Congress.

This is a day and age of the world when men take that which comes to
them, and do not stop to investigate the pain and toil it costs. They
never inquire into the mystery of manufacture, or try to learn the
details of its construction. Most of our libraries are replete with
books which we have received at the hands of a generous government,
and yet we treat those volumes with scorn and contumely. We jeer at the
footsore bugologist who has chased the large, green worm from tree to
tree, in order that we may be wise. We speak sneeringly of the man who
stuffs the woodtick, and paints the gaudy wings of the squash-bug that
we may know how often she orates.

Year after year the entomologist treads the same weary road with his
bait-box tied to his waist, wooing to his laboratory the army-worm and
the sheep-scab larvæ in order that we, poor particles on the surface of
the great earth, may know how these minute creatures rise, flourish and
decay.

Then the public printer throws in his case, rubs his finger and thumb
over a lump of alum, takes a chew of tobacco, and puts in type these
words of wisdom from the lips of gray-bearded savants, that knowledge
may be scattered over the broad republic. Patiently he goes on with
the click of type, anon in an absorbed way, while we, gay, thoughtless
mortals, wear out the long summer day at a basket picnic, with deft
fingers selecting the large red ant from our cold ham.

Thus these books are made which come to us wrapped in manilla and
franked by the man we voted for last fall. Beautiful lithographs,
illustrating the different stages of hog cholera, deck their pages. Rich
oil paintings of gaudy tobacco worms chase each other from preface to
errata. Magnificent chromos of the foot and mouth disease appeal to us
from page after page, and statistics boil out between them, showing what
per cent of invalid or convalescent animals was sent abroad, and what
per cent was worked into oleomargarine and pressed corn beef.

And what becomes of all this wealth of information--this mammoth
aggregation of costly knowledge?

Cast ruthlessly away by a trifling, shallow, frivolous and
freckle-minded race!

It is no more than right that Sterling P. Rounds should know this. How
it will gall his proud heart to know how his beautiful books, and
his chatty and spicy Congressional Record are treated by a jeering,
heartless throng! Do you suppose that I would perspire over doubtful
copy night after night, and then tread a job printing press all the next
day printing books at which the bloodless, soulless public sneered, and
the broad-browed talent of a cruel generation spit upon? Not exactly.

I have a moderate amount of patience and self-control, but I am free
to say right here before the world, that if I had been in Mr. Rounds'
place, and had at great cost erected a scientific work upon "The Rise
and Fall of Botts in America," and a flippant nation of scoffers had
utilized that volume to press autumn leaves and scraggly ferns in, I
would rise in my proud might and mash the forms with a mallet, I would
jerk the lever of the Washington press into the middle of the effulgent
hence. I would kick over my case, wipe the roller on the frescoed walls,
and feed my statistics, to the hungry flames.

No publisher has ever been treated more shabbily; no compositor has, in
the history of literature, been more rudely disregarded and derided.

Think of this, dear reader, when you look carelessly over the brief
but wonderful career of the hop-louse, or with apparent _ennui_ dawdle
through the treatise on colic among silk-worms, and facial neuralgia
among fowls.

This will not only please Mr. Rounds, the young and struggling
compositor, but it will gratify and encourage all the friends of
American progress and the lovers of learning throughout our whole land.

A REPRODUCTIVE COMET.

|AN exchange remarks: "The present comet in the eastern sky, which can
be distinctly seen by everyone at early morning, is certainly the most
remarkable one of the modern comets. Professor Lewis Swift, director
of the Warner observatory, Rochester, New York, states that the comet
grazed the sun so closely as to cause great disturbance, so much so,
that it has divided into no less than eight separate parts, all of which
can be distinctly seen by a good telescope. There is only one other
instance on record, where a comet has divided, that one being Biella's
comet of 1846, which separated into two parts. Applications have been
made to Mr. H. H. Warner, by parties who have noticed these cometary
offshoots, claiming the $200 prize for each one of them. Whether the
great comet will continue to produce a brood of smaller comets remains
to be seen."

It is certainly to be hoped that it will not. If the comet is going
to multiply and replenish the earth, the average inhabitant had better
proceed in the direction of the tall timber.

It excites and rattles us a good deal now to look out for what comets we
have on hand; but that is mild, compared with what we will experience
if the heavens are to be filled every spring with new laid comets, and
comets that haven't got their eyes open yet. Our astronomers are able
to figure on the old parent comets, and they know when to look for them,
too; but if twins are to burst upon our vision occasionally, and little
bob-tail orphan comets are to float around through space, we will have
to kind of get up and seek out another solar system, where we will be
safe from this comet foundling asylum.

Instead of the calm sky of night, flooded with the glorious effulgence
of the silvery moon, surrounded by the twinkling stars, the coming sky
will be one grand Fourth of July exhibit of fireworks, with a thousand
little disobedient comets coming from the four corners of heaven in
search of the milky way.

Possibly science may be wrong. We have known science to make bad little
breaks of that kind, and when it advertised a particular show to come
off, it was delayed by a wreck on the main track, or something of that
kind, so that people were disappointed. Let us hope that this is the
case now, and that the comets now loafing around through space
with their coat tails on fire will not become parents. It would be
scandalous.

A LITTLE VAGUE.

|A TALL, pleasant-looking gentleman, with quick, restless eyes, and the
air of a man who had been in a newspaper office before, dropped into The
Boomerang science department yesterday, and asked the pale, scholarly
blossom, who sat writing an epic on the alarming prevalence of pip and
its future as a national evil, if he could be permitted to read the
_Deseret News_.

The scientist said certainly, and after a long and weary tussle got the
Mormon placque out of the ruins.

"I used to be foreman on the _Deseret News_," said the gentleman with
the penetrating eye; "I worked on the News two years, and had a case on
the _Tribune_. I've been foreman of thirty-seven papers during my life,
but my most unfortunate experience was on the _Deseret News_. I wanted
the paper just now to see if they were still running an ad. that I had
some trouble with when I was there.

"It was a contract we had with Dr. Balshazzer to advertise his Blue Eyed
Forget-me Not Perfume, Dr. Balshazzer's Red Tar Worm Buster, and Dr.
Balshazzer's Baled Brain Food and Tolurockandryeandcodliveroil. The Blue
Eyed Forget-me Not Perfume was to go solid in long primer, following
pure reading matter eod in daily and eowtf weekly. The Red Tar Worm
Buster was to go in nonpareil leaded, 192I.T.thFth98weow3mo, and repeat;
and the Baled Brain Food and Tolurock-andryecodliveroil was a six-inch
electrotype to go in on third page, following pure original humorous
matter, with six full head lines d&weod oct9tf, set in reading type
similar to copy; these to be inserted between pure religious news, with
no other advertising within four miles of the electro, or the reading
notices.

"At the same time we were running old Monkeywrench's Kidney Scraper on
the same kind of a contract. The business manager did not remember this
when we took the contract, so that as soon as we began to run the two
there was a collision between the Tolurockandryeandcodliver-oil and the
Kidney Scraper right off. I spoke to the business manager about it, and
he was puzzled. He didn't exactly know what it was best to do under the
circumstances, and he hated to lose old Balshazzer's whole trade, for he
wouldn't run any of his ads unless he would take them all according to
his contract.

"We tried to get him to let us run the BlueEyed Forget-me Not Perfume,
lapr9d&wly deod&wly 10:2t-eowtf; the Bed Tar Worm Buster, dol3 4t
da22tf aprlo-ly dol3tf, and the Brain Food and Tolurockandryecodliveroil
mchl8*ly jun4dtf&dangl8@gft>*&Sylds30tf&rsvpeod$, but he wouldn't do it.

"I displayed his ad. top of column adjoining humorous column with
three line readers and astonishers without advertising marks or signs
according to copy and instructions to foreman, all omissions or errors
to be subject to fine and imprisonment. They were to go pdq $eoy*Octp&s*
and they were to be double leaded and headed with italic caps. Still
I said it had been some time since I saw the contract and I had been
suffering with brain fever six months in jail and possibly my memory
might be defective. I would go over it again and see if I was right.

"The electrophones were to be blown in the bottle and the readers were
to be set in lower case slugs with guarantee of good faith and Rough
on Rats would not die in the house. Use Pinkham's Sozodont for itching,
freckles, bunions and croup. It saved my life. My good woman, why are
you bilious with em quads in solid minion. Eureka Jumbo Baking Powder
will not crack or fade in any climate sent on three months trial in
leaded brevier quoins and all wool column rules warranted to cure
rheumatism and army worms or money refunded. To be adjoining selected
miscellany or fancy brass dashes marked eodsyld&w*!*?--" At this moment
a dark browed man came in and told us that the young man was his charge
and on his way to Mount Pleasant asylum for the insane and that we would
have to excuse the intrusion. After subscribing for the paper and asking
us if we had heard from Ohio, he went.

The scientist said afterward that he found it difficult to follow the
young man in some of his statements and that he was just going to ask
him to go over that again and say it slower, when the Mount Pleasant man
came in and interrupted the flow of conversation.




SAD DESTRUCTION.

|THERE came very near being a holocaust in this office on Monday. An
absent-minded candidate for the legislature lit his cigar and gently
threw the match in the waste basket. Shortly after that we felt a
grateful warmth stealing up our back and melting the rubber in our
suspenders. The fire was promptly put under control by our editorial
fire department, but the basket is no longer fit to hold a large word.




THE IMMEDIATE REVOLTER

|WYOMING has recently been a great sufferer, mainly through the carrying
of revolvers in the caboose of the overalls. There is no more need of
carrying a revolver in Wyoming than there is of carrying an upright
piano in the coat tail pocket. Those who carry revolvers generally die
by the revolver, and he who agitates the six-shooter, by the six-shooter
shall his blood be shed. When a man carries a gun he does so because he
has said or done something for which he expects to be attacked, so it is
safe to say that when a man goes about our peaceful streets, loaded, he
has been doing some, little trick or other, and has in advance prepared
himself for a Smith-&-Wesson matinee. The other class of men who suffer
from the revolver comprises the white-livered and effeminate parties
who ought to be arrested for wearing men's clothes, and who never shoot
anybody except by accident. Fortunately they sometimes shoot themselves,
and then the fool-killer puts his coat on and rests half an hour. We
have been writing these things and obituaries alternately for several
years, and yet there is no falling off in the mortality. For every man
who is righteously slain, there are about a million law-abiding men,
women and children murdered. Eternity's parquette is filled with people
who got there by the self-cocking revolver route.

A man works twenty years to become known as a scholar, a newspaper man
and a gentleman, while the illiterate murderer springs into immediate
notoriety in a day, and the widow of his victim cannot even get her life
insurance. These things are what make people misanthropic and tenacious
of their belief in a hell.

If revolvers could not be sold for less than $500 a piece, with a
guarantee on the part of the vendee, signed by good sureties, that he
would support the widows and orphans, you would see more longevity lying
around loose, and western cemeteries would cease to roll up such mighty
majorities.




THE SECRET OF HEALTH.

|HEALTH journals are now asserting, that to maintain a sound
constitution you should lie only on the right side. The health journals
may mean well enough; but what are you going to do if you are editing a
Democratic paper?




HOUSEHOLD RECIPES.

|TO remove oils, varnishes, resins, tar, oyster soup, currant jelly, and
other selections from the bill of fare, use benzine, soap and chloroform
cautiously with whitewash brush and garden hose. Then hang on wood pile
to remove the pungent effluvia of the benzine.

To clean ceilings that have been smoked by kerosene lamps, or the
fragrance from fried salt pork, remove the ceiling, wash thoroughly with
borax, turpentine and rain water, then hang on the clothes line to dry.
Afterward pulverize and spread over the pie plant bed for spring wear.

To remove starch and roughness from flatirons, hold the iron on a large
grindstone for twenty minutes or so, then wipe off carefully with a rag.
To make this effective, the grindstone should be in motion while the
iron is applied. Should the iron still stick to the goods when in use,
spit on it.

To soften water for household purposes, put in an ounce of quicklime in
a certain quantity of water. If it is not sufficient, use less water or
more quicklime. Should the immediate lime continue to remain deliberate,
lay the water down on a stone and pound it with a base ball club.

To give relief to a burn, apply the white of an egg. The yolk of the egg
may be eaten or placed on the shirt bosom, according to the taste of
the person. If the burn should occur on a lady, she may omit the last
instruction.

To wash black silk stockings, prepare a tub of lather, composed of tepid
rain water and white soap, with a little ammonia. Then stand in the tub
till dinner is ready. Roll in a cloth to dry. Do not wring, but press
the water out. This will necessitate the removal of the stockings.

If your hands are badly chapped, wet them in warm water, rub them all
over with Indian meal, then put on a coat of glycerine and keep them
in your pockets for ten days. If you have no pockets convenient, insert
them in the pocket of a friend.

An excellent liniment for toothache or neuralgia, is made of sassafras,
oil of organum and a half ounce of tincture of capsicum, with half a
pint of alcohol. Soak nine yards of red flannel in this mixture, wrap it
around the head and then insert the head in a haystack till death comes
to your relief.

To remove scars or scratches from the limbs of a piano, bathe the limb
in a solution of tepid water and tincture of sweet oil. Then apply
a strip of court plaster, and put the piano out on the lawn for the
children to play horse with.

Woolen goods may be nicely washed if you put half an ox gall into two
gallons of tepid water. It might be well to put the goods in the water
also. If the mixture is not strong enough, put in another ox gall.
Should this fail to do the work, put in the entire ox, reserving the
tail for soup. The ox gall is comparatively useless for soup, and should
not be preserved as an article of diet.




WHAT IS LITERATURE?

|A SQUASH-NOSED scientist from away up the creek, asks, "What is
literature!" Cast your eye over these logic-imbued columns, you
sun-dried savant from the remote precincts. Drink at the never-failing
Boomerang springs of forgotten lore, you dropsical wart of a false
and erroneous civilization. Read our "Address to the Duke of Stinking
Water," or the "Ode to the Busted Snoot of a Shattered Venus DeMilo," if
you want to fill up your thirsty soul with high-priced literature. Don't
go around hungering for literary pie while your eyes are closed and your
capacious ears are filled with bales of hay.




THE PREVIOUS HOTEL.

|DOWN at Nathrop, Colorado, there is a large, new, and fine hotel, where
no guest ever ate or slept. It stands there near the South Park
track like the ghost of some nice, clean country inn. The reader will
naturally ask if the house is haunted, that no one stops at the very
attractive hotel in a country where good hotels are rare. No, it is not
that. It in not haunted so much as it would like to be. Though it is a
fine hotel, there is no town nearer it than Buena Vista, and no one is
going to do business at Buena Yista and go up to Nathrop on a hand-car
for his meals.

It is a case where a smart aleck of a man built a hotel, and asked his
fellow citizens to come and form a town around him and make him rich.
Mr. Nathrop was rather an impulsive man, and one day he said something
that reflected on another impulsive man, and when people came and looked
for Nathrop, they found that his body was tangled up in the sage brush,
and his soul was marching on.

The hotel was just completed, and the ladders, and the handsome lime
barrels, and hods, and old nail kegs, and fragments of laths, and pieces
of bricks, and scaffolds, and all those things that go to make life
desirable, are still there adorning the hotel and the front yard; but
there is no handsome man with a waxed mustache inside at the desk,
shaking his head sadly when he is asked for a room, and looking at you
with that high-born pity and contempt for your pleading, that the hotel
clerk--heir apparent to the universe--always keeps for those who go to
him with humility.

There is no Senegambian, with a whisk broom, waiting to brush your
clothes off your back, and leave you arrayed in a birth-mark and the
earache, at twenty-five cents per brush. There is no young, fair masher,
strutting up and down the piazza, trying to look brainy and capable of
a thought. It is only a hollow mockery, for the chamber-maid with the
large slop-pail does not come at daylight to pound on your door, and
try to get in and fix up your room, and wake you up, and frighten you
to death with her shocking chaos of wart-environed and freckle-frescoed
beauty.

There the new hotel will, no doubt, stand for ages, while a little way
off, in his quiet grave, the proprietor, laid to rest in an old linen
handkerchief, is sleeping away the years till he shall be awakened by
the last grand reveille. There's no use talking, it's tough.




ANECDOTE OF SPOTTED TAIL.

|THE popularity of the above-named chieftain dates from a very trifling
little incident, as did that of many other men who are now great.

Spotted Tail had never won much distinction up to that time, except as
the owner of an appetite, in the presence of which his tribe stood in
dumb and terrible awe.

During the early days of what is now the great throbbing and ambitious
west, the tribe camped near Fort Sedgwick, and Big Mouth, a chief of
some importance, used to go over to the post regularly for the purpose
of filling his brindle hide full of "Fort Sedgwick Bloom of Youth."

As a consequence of Big Mouth's fatal yearning for liquid damnation, he
generally got impudent, and openly announced on the parade ground that
he could lick the entire regular army. This used to offend some of the
blood-scarred heroes who had just arrived from West Point, and in the
heat of debate they would warm the venerable warrior about two feet
below the back of his neck with the fiat of their sabers.

[Illustration: 0219]

This was a gross insult to Big Mouth, and he went back to the camp,
where he found Spotted Tail eating a mule that had died of inflammatory
rheumatism. Big Mouth tearfully told the wild epicure of the way he had
been treated, and asked for a council of war. Spot picked his teeth with
a tent pin, and then told the defeated relic of a mighty race that if he
would quit strong drink, he would be subjected to fewer insults.

Big Mouth then got irritated, and told S. Tail that his remarks showed
that he was standing, in with the aggressor, and was no friend to his
people.

Spotted Tail said that Mr. B. Mouth was a liar, by yon high heaven, and
before there was time to think it over, he took a butcher knife, about
four feet long, from its scabbard and cut Mr. Big Mouth plumb in two
just between the umbilicus and the watch pocket.

As the reader who is familiar with anatomy has already surmised, Big
Mouth died from the effects of this wound, and Spotted Tail was at once
looked upon as the Moses of his tribe. He readily rose to prominence,
and by his strict attention to the duties of his office, made for
himself a name as a warrior and a pie biter, at which the world turned
pale.

This should teach us the importance of taking the tide at its flood,
which leads on to fortune, and to lay low when there is a hen on, as
Benjamin Franklin has so truly said.




THE ZEALOUS VOTER.

|SPEAKING of New York politics," said Judge Hildreth, of Cummings, the
other day, "they have a cheerful way of doing business in Gotham, and at
first it rather surprised me. I went into New York a short time before
election, and a Democratic friend told me I had better go and get
registered so I could 'wote.' I did so, for I hate to lose the divine
right of suffrage, even when I'm a good way from home.

"When election day came around, I went over to the polls in a body,
in the afternoon, but they wouldn't let me vote. I told them I was
registered all right, and that I had a right and must exercise it the
same as any other Democrat in this enlightened land, but they swore at
me and entreated me roughly, and told me to go there myself, and that I
had already voted once and couldn't do it any more. I had always thought
that New York was prone to vigilance and industry in the suffrage
business, and early and often was what I supposed was the grand hailing
sign. It made me mad, therefore, to have the city get so virtuous all at
once that it couldn't even let me vote once.

"I was irritated and extremely ill-natured when I went back to Mr.
McGinnis, and told him. of the great trouble I had had with the judges
of election, and I denounced New York politics with a great deal of
fervor.

"Mr. McGinnis said it was all right.

"'That's aizy enough to me, George. Give me something difficult. Sit
down and rist yoursilf. Don't get excited and talk so loud. I know'd
yez was out lasht night wid the byes and you didn't feel like gettin' up
airly to go to the polls, so I got wan av the byes to go over and wote
your name. That's all roight, come here 'nd have someding.'

"I saw at a glance that New York people were attending to these things
thoroughly and carefully, and since that when I hear that 'a full vote
hasn't been polled in New York city' for some unknown cause, I do not
think it is true. I look upon the statement with great reserve, for I
believe they vote people there who have been dead for centuries, and
people who have not yet arrived in this country, nor even expressed a
desire to come over. I am almost positive that they are still voting
the bones of old A. T. Stewart up in the doubtful wards, and as soon as
Charlie Ross is entitled to vote, he will most assuredly be permitted to
represent.

"Why, there's one ward there where they vote the theatre ghosts and
the spirit of Hamlet's father hasn't missed an election for a hundred
years."




HOW TO PRESERVE TEETH

|I FIND," said an old man to a Boomerang reporter, yesterday, "that
there is absolutely no limit to the durability of the teeth, if they are
properly taken care of. I never drink hot drinks, always brush my teeth
morning and evening, avoid all acids whatever, and although I am 65
years old, my teeth are as good as ever they were."

"And that is all you do to preserve your teeth, is it?"

"Yes, sir; that's all--barring, perhaps, the fact that I put them in a
glass of soft water nights."




MR. BEECHER'S BRAIN.

|MR. BEECHER, has raked in $2,000,000 with his brain. A good, tall,
bulging brow, and a brain that will give down like that, are rather
to be chosen than a blind lead, and an easy running cerebellum, than a
stone quarry with a silent but firm skunk in it.




OH, NO!

|THE telephone line between Cheyenne and Laramie City will soon be in
operation. It won't work, however. It may be a success for a time, but
sooner or later Bill Nye will set his lopsided jaws at work in front
of the transmitter, and pour a few quarts of untutored lies into the
contribution box, which does service as a part of the telephone machine.
Then the wires will be yanked off the poles, a hissing torrent of
prevarication will blow the battery jars clean over into Utah, and the
listener at the Cheyenne end will be gathered up in a basket. Weeping
friends will hold a funeral over a pair of old boots and a fragment of
shoulder blade--the remains of the departed Cheyennese. It is a weird
and pixycal thing to be a natural born liar, but there are times when a
robust lie will successfully defy the unanimous inventive genius of the
age."--_Sun_.

Oh, do not say those cruel words, kind friend. Do not throw it up to
us that we are weird and pixycal. Oh, believe us, kind sir, we may have
done wrong, but we never did that. We know that election is approaching,
and all sorts of bygone crookedness is raked up at that time, even when
a man is not a candidate for office, but we ask the public to scan our
record and see if the charge made by the _Sun_ is true. It may be that
years ago we escaped justice and fled to the west under an assumed name,
but no man ever before charged us with being weird and pixycal. We have
been in all kinds of society, perhaps, and mingled with people who were
our inferiors, having been pulled by the police once while visiting a
Democratic caucus, but that was our misfortune, not our fault. We were
not a member of the caucus and were therefore discharged, but even
little things like that ought to be forgotten.

As for entering any one's apartments and committing a pixycal crime, we
state now without fear of successful contradiction, that it is not so.
It is no sign because a man in an unguarded moment entered the Rock
Creek eating house and gave way to his emotions, that he is a person to
be shunned. It was hunger, and not love for the questionable, that made
us go there. It is not because we are by nature weird or pixycal, for
we are not. We are not angry over this charge. It just simply hurts
and grieves us. It comes too, at a time when we are trying to lead a
different life, and while others are trying to lend us every aid and
encouragement. We have many friends in Cheyenne who want to see us come
up and take higher ground, but how can we do so if the press lends
its influence against us. That's just the way we feel about it. If the
public prints try to put us down and crush us in this manner, we will
probably get desperate and be just as weird and pixycal as we can be.




THE MARCH OF CIVILIZATION.

|SPOKANE IKE," the Indian who killed a doctor last summer for failing
to cure his child, has been hanged. This shows the onward march of
civilization, and vouchsafes to us the time when a doctor's life will be
in less danger than that of his patient.




AN UNCLOUDED WELCOME.

|N.P. WILLIS once said: "The sweetest thing in life is the unclouded
welcome of a wife." This is true, indeed, but when her welcome is
clouded with an atmosphere of angry words and coal scuttles, there is
something about it that makes a man want to go out in the woodshed and
sleep on the ice-chest.




THE PILLOW-SHAM HOLDER.

|SOME enemy to mankind has recently invented an infernal machine known
as the pillow-sham holder, which is attached to the head of the bedstead
and works with a spiral spring. It is a kind of refined towel-rack on
which you hang your pillow-shams at night so they wont get busted by the
man of the house. The man of the house generally gets the pillow-shams
down under his feet when he undresses and polishes off his cunning
little toes on the lace poultice on which his wife prides herself. This
pillow-sham holder saves all this. You just yank your pillow-sham off
the bed and hang it on this high-toned sham holder, where it rests all
night. At least that's the intention. After a little while, however, the
spring gets weak, and the holder buckles to, or caves in, or whatever
you may call it, at the most unexpected moment. The slightest movement
on the part of the occupant of the bed, turns loose the pillow-sham
holder, and the slumberer gets it across the bridge of his or her nose,
as the case may be. Sometimes the vibration caused by a midnight snore,
will unhinge this weapon of the devil, and it will whack the sleeper
across the features in a way that scares him almost to death. If
you think it is a glad surprise to get a lick across the perceptive
faculties in the middle of a sound slumber, when you are dreaming of
elysium and high-priced peris and such things as that, just try the
death-dealing pillow-sham holder, and then report in writing to the
chairman of the executive committee. It is well calculated to fill the
soul with horror and amaze. A raven-black Saratoga wave, hanging on the
back of a chair, has been known to turn white in a single night as the
result of the sudden kerflummix of one of these cheerful articles of
furniture.




SOMETHING FRESH.

|OUR Saturday dispatches announce that an infernal machine had just been
received at the office of Chief Justice Field, and later on, Justice
Field, who was in Wyoming Saturday, said to a reporter that the machine
was one that was sent to him in 1866, and that last week he sent it down
to a gun factory to have the powder taken out, as he wished to stuff it
and preserve it among the archives.

With the aid of the telegraph and the facilities of the Associated
Press, it does seem as though we were living in an age of almost
miraculous possibilities. Here is an instance where an infernal machine
is sent to a prominent man, and in less than sixteen years the news is
flashed to the four quarters of the globe like lightning. How long will
it be before the whole bloody history of the war of the rebellion will
be sent to every hamlet in the land? How long before the safe arrival of
the ark, and the losses occasioned by the deluge, will be given to us in
dollars and cents?

People don't fully realize the advantages we possess in this glorious
nineteenth century. They take all these things as a matter of course,
and forget how the palpitating brain palps for them, and how the
quivering nerve quivs on and on through the silent night in order that
humanity may keep informed in relation to ancient history.

A BAKEFOOTED GODDESS.

|THERE'S one little national matter that has been neglected about long
enough, it seems to us. If the goddess of liberty is allowed to go
barefoot for another century, her delicate toes will spread out over
this nation like the shadow of a great woe.




YANKED TO ETERNITY.

|ONCE, when a section-crew came down the mountain on the South Park
road, from Alpine Tunnel to Buena Vista, a very singular thing occurred,
which has never been given to the public. Every one who knows anything
at all, knows that riding down that mountain on a push-car, descending
at the rate of over 200 feet to the mile, means utter destruction,
unless the brake is on. This brake is nothing more nor less then a
piece of scantling, which is applied between one of the wheels and the
car-bed, in such a way as to produce great friction.

The section-crew referred to, got on at Hancock with their bronzed and
glowing hides as full of arsenic and rain-water as they could possibly
hold. Being recklessly drunk, they enjoyed the accumulated velocity of
the car wonderfully, until the section boss lost the break off the car,
and then there was a slight feeling of anxiety. The car at last acquired
a velocity like that of a young and frolicsome bob-tailed comet turned
loose in space. The boys began to get nervous at last, and asked each
other what should be done.

There seemed to be absolutely nothing to do but to shoot onward into the
golden presently.

All at once the section boss thought of something. He was drunk, but the
deadly peril of the moment suggested an idea. There was a rope on the
car which would do to tie to something heavy and cast off for an anchor.
The idea was only partially successful, however, for there was nothing
to tie to but a spike hammer. This was tried but it wouldn't work. Then
it was decided to tie it to some one of the crew and cast him loose
in order to save the lives of those who remained. It was a glorious
opportunity. It was a heroic thing to do. It was like Arnold
Winklered's great sacrifice, by which victory was gained by filling his
own system full of lances and making a toothpick holder of himself, in
order that his comrades might break through the ranks of their foes.

George O'Malley, the section boss, said that he was willing that Patsy
McBride should snatch the laurels from outrageous fortune and bind them
on his brow, but Mr. McBride said he didn't care much for the encomiums
of the world. He hadn't lost any encomiums, and didn't want to trade his
liver for two dollars' worth of damaged laurels.

Everyone declined. All seemed willing to go down into history without
any ten-line pay-local, and wanted someone else to get the effulgence.
Finally, it was decided that a man by the name of Christian Christianson
was the man to tie to. He had the asthma anyhow, and life wasn't much of
an object to him, so they said that, although he declined, he must take
the nomination, as he was in the hands of his friends.

So they tied the rope around Christian and cast anchor.

******

The car slowed up and at last stopped still. The plan had succeeded.
Five happy wives greeted their husbands that night as they returned from
the jaws of destruction. Christian Christianson did not return. The days
may come and the days may go, but Christian's wife will look up toward
the summit' of the snow-crowned mountains in vain.

He will never entirely return. He has done so partially, of course, but
there are still missing fragments of him, and it looks as though he must
have lost his life.




WHY WE SHED THE SCALDING.

|IN justice to ourself we desire to state that the Cheyenne _Sun_ has
villified us and placed us in a false position before the public. It has
stated that while at Rock Creek station, in the early part of the week,
we were taken for a peanutter, and otherwise ill-treated at the railroad
eating corral and omelette emporium, and that in consequence of such
treatment we shed great scalding tears as large as watermelons. This is
not true. We did shed the tears as above set forth, but not because of
ill-treatment on the part of the eating-house proprietor.

It was the presence of death that broke our heart and opened the
fountains of our great deep, so to speak. When we poured the glucose
syrup on our pancakes, the stiff and cold remains of a large beetle and
two cunning little twin cockroaches fell out into our plate, and lay
there hushed in an eternal repose.

Death to us is all powerful. The King of Terrors is to us the mighty
sovereign before whom we must all bow, from the mighty emperor down
to the meanest slave, from the railroad superintendent, riding in his
special car, down to the humblest humorist, all alike must some day curl
up and die. This saddens us at all times, but more peculiarly so when
Death, with his relentless lawn mower, has gathered in the young and
innocent. This was the case where two little twin cockroaches, whose
lives had been unspotted, and whose years had been unclouded by wrong
and selfishness, were called upon to meet death together. In the
stillness of the night, when others slept, these affectionate little
twins crept into the glucose syrup and died.

We hope no one will misrepresent this matter. We did weep, and we are
not ashamed to own it. We sat there and sobbed until the tablecloth was
wet for four feet, and the venerable ham was floating around in tears.
It was not for ourself, however, that we wept. No unkindness on the part
of an eating-house ever provoked such a tornado of woe. We just weep
when we see death and are brought in close contact with it. And we were
not the only one that shed tears. Dickinson and Warren wept, strong
men as they were. Even the butter wept. Strong as it was it could not
control its emotions.

We don't very often answer a newspaper attack, but when we are accused
of weeping till people have to take off their boots and wring out their
socks, we want the public to know what it is for.




ANOTHER SUGGESTION.

|WE were surprised and grieved to see, on Monday evening, a man in the
dress circle at the performance of Hazel Kirke at Blackburn's Grand
Opera House, who had communed with the maddening bowl till he was
considerably elated. When Pitticus made a good hit, or Hazel struck a
moist lead, and everybody wept softly on the carpet, this man furnished
a war-whoop that not only annoyed the audience, but seemed also to break
up the actors a little. Later, he got more quiet, and at last went to
sleep and slid out of his chair on the floor. It is such little episodes
as these that make strangers dissatisfied with the glorious west. When
you go to see something touchful on the stage, you do not care to have
your finer feelings ruffled by the yells of a man who has got a corner
on delirium tremens.

It is also humiliating to our citizens to be pulled up off the floor by
the coat-collar and steered out the door by a policeman.

We hope that as progress is more plainly visible in Wyoming, and as we
get more and more refined, such things will be of less and less frequent
occurrence, till a man can go to see a theatrical performance with just
as much comfort as he would in New York and other eastern towns.

Another point while we are discussing the performance of Hazel Kirke.
There were some present on Monday night, sitting hack in the third
balcony, who need a theatrical guide to aid them in discovering which
are the places to weep and which to gurgle.

It was a little embarrassing to Miss Ellsler to make a grand dramatic
hit that was supposed to yank loose a freshet of woe, to be greeted with
a snort of demoniac laughter from the rear of the grand opera house.

It seemed to unnerve her and surprise her, but she kept her balance and
her head. When death and ruin, and shame and dishonor, were pictured
in their tragic horror, the wild, unfettered humorist of a crude
civilization fairly yelled with delight. He thought that the tomb and
such things were intended to be synonymous with the minstrel show and
the circus. He thought that old Dunstan Kirke was there with his
sightless eyes to give Laramie the grandest, riproaringest tempest of
mirth that she had ever experienced. That is why we say that we will
never have a successful performance in the theatrical line, till some of
this class are provided with laugh-and-cry guide books.




PISCATORIAL AND EDITORIAL

|A CORRESPONDENT of the New York _Post_ says that the codfish frequents
"the table lands of the sea." The codfish, no doubt, does this to secure
as nearly as possible a dry, bracing atmosphere. This pure air of the
submarine table lands gives to the codfish that breadth of chest and
depth of lungs which we have always noticed.

The glad, free smile of the codfish is largely attributed to the
exhilaration of this oceanic altitoodleum.

The correspondent further says, that "the cod subsists largely on the
sea cherry." Those who have not had the pleasure of seeing the codfish
climb the sea cherry tree in search of food, or clubbing the fruit from
the heavily-laden branches with chunks of coral, have missed a very fine
sight.

The codfish, when at home rambling through the submarine forests,
does not wear his vest unbuttoned, as he does while loafing around the
grocery stores of the United States.




ANOTHER FEATHERED SONGSTER

|A FORT STEELE taxidermist has presented this office with a stuffed
bird of prey about nine feet high, which we have put up in _The Boomerang_
office, and hereby return thanks for. It is a kind of a cross between a
dodo and a meander-up-the-creek. Its neck is long, like the right of way
to a railway, and its legs need some sawdust to make them look healthy.
Those who subscribe for the paper, can look at this great work of art
free.

This bird is noted for its brief and horizontal alimentary canal. It
has no devious digestive arrangements, but contents itself with an
economical and unostentatious trunk-line of digestion so simple that any
child can understand it. He (or she, as the case may be) in his (or her)
stocking feet can easily look over into next fall, and when standing in
our office, peers down at us from over the stove-pipe in a reproachful
way that fills us with remorse.

We have labeled it "The Democrat Wading Up Salt Creek" and filed it away
near the skull of an Indian that we killed years ago when we got mad and
wiped out a whole tribe. The geological name of this bird we do not at
this moment recall, but it is one of those sorrowful-looking fowls that
stick their legs out behind when they fly, and are not good for food.

Parties wishing to see the bird, and subscribe for the _Home Journal_
can obtain an audience by kicking three times on the last hall door on
the left and throwing two dollars through the transom.




ABOUT THE OSTRICH




THERE is some prospect of ostrich farming developing into quite an
industry in the southwest, and it will sometime be a cold day when the
simple-minded rustic of that region will not have ostrich on toast if he
wants it. Ostrich farming, however, will always have its drawbacks.
The hen ostrich is not a good layer as a rule, only laying two eggs per
annum, which, being about the size of a porcelain wash bowl, make her
so proud that she takes the balance of the year for the purpose of
convalescing.

The ostrich is chiefly valuable for the plumage which he wears, and
which, when introduced into the world of commerce, makes the husband
almost wish that he were dead.

Probably the ostrich will not come into general use as an article of
food, few people caring for it, as the meat is coarse, and the gizzard
full of old hardware, and relics of wrecked trains and old irons left
where there has been a fire.

Carving the ostrich is not so difficult as carving the quail, because
the joints are larger and one can find them with less trouble. Still,
the bird takes up a great deal of room at the table, and the best
circles are not using them.

The ostrich does not set She don't have time. She does not squat down
over something and insist on hatching it out if it takes all summer, but
she just lays a couple of porcelain cuspidors in the hot sand when she
feels like it, and then goes away to the seaside to quiet her shattered
nerves.




TOO MUCH GOD AND NO FLOUR.

|OLD CHIEF POCOTELLO, now at the Fort Hall agency, in answer to an
inquiry relative to the true Christian character of a former Indian
agent at that place, gave in very terse language the most accurate
description of a hypocrite that was ever given to the public. "Ugh! Too
much God and no flour."




WE ARE GETTING CYNICAL

|IT begins to look now as though Major F. G. Wilson, who stopped here a
short time last week and week before, might be a gentleman in disguise.
He has done several things since he left here, that look to a man up
a tree like something irregular and peculiar. The major has not only
prevaricated, but he has done so in such a way as to beat his friends
and to make them yearn for his person in order that they may kick
him over into the inky night of space. He has represented himself as
confidential adviser and literary tourist of several prominent New York,
Chicago, Omaha and Tie Siding dailies, and had such good documents to
show in proof of his identity in that capacity that he has received
many courtesies which, as an ordinary American dead-beat, he might have
experienced great difficulty in securing. We simply state this in order
to put our esteemed contemporaries on their guard, so that they will
not let him spit in their overshoes and enjoy himself as he did here. He
wears a white hat on his head and a crooked tooth in the piazza of his
mouth. This pearly fang he uses to masticate and reduce little delicate
irregular fragments of plug tobacco, which he borrows of people who have
time to listen to the silvery tinkle of his bazoo.

When last seen he was headed west, and will probably strike Eureka,
Nevada, in a week or two. His mission seems to be mainly to make people
feel a goneness in their exchequer, and to distribute tobacco dados over
the office stoves of our great land. He is a man who writes long letters
to the New York _Herald_ that are never printed. His freshly blown nose
is red, but his newspaper articles are not. He claims to represent the
Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association lately, too. The company represents
the Insurance and he attends to the Mutual Reserve Fund. He has mutually
reserved all the funds he could get hold of since he struck the west,
besides mutually reserving enough strong drink to eat a hole through the
Ames monument.

Such men as Major Wilson make us suspicious of humanity, and very likely
the next man who comes along here and represents that he is a great man,
and wants five dollars on his well-rounded figure and fair fame will
have to be identified. We have helped forty or fifty such men to make a
bridal tour of Wyoming and now we are going to saw off and quit. When a
great journalist comes into this office again with an internal revenue
tax on his breath and nineteen dollars back on his baggage, we will
probably pick up a fifty pound chunk of North Park quartz and spread
his intellectual faculties around this building till it looks like the
Custer massacre.




ASK US SOMETHING DIFFICULT.

|WHAT becomes of our bodies?" asks a soft eyed scientist, and we answer
in stentorian tones, that they get inside of a red flannel undershirt as
the maple turns to crimson and the sassafras to gold. Ask us something
difficult, ethereal being, if you want to see us get up and claw for our
library of public documents.

A MINING EXPERIMENT

|A MILD-EYED youth, wearing a dessert-spoon hat and polka-dot socks,
went into Middle Park the other day and claimed to be a mining expert.
The boys inveigled him into driving a stick of giant powder into a
drill-hole at the bottom of a shaft with an old axe, and now they are
trying to get him out of the ground with ammonia and a tooth-brush.

A NEW INDUSTRY.

|THE want column of the Chicago _News_ for October 10th has the
following: "Twelve frightful examples' wanted, to travel with Scott
Marble's new drama and appear in the realistic bar-room scene of the
'Drunkard's Daughter.' Arthur G. Cambridge, dramatic agent, 75 South
Clark street."

This throws open a field of usefulness to a class of men who hitherto
have seen no prospect whatever for the future. It brings within the
reach of such men a business which, requiring no capital, still gives
the actor much time to do as he chooses. Beauty often wins for itself a
place in the great theatrical world, but it is rare that the tomato nose
and the watery eye secure a salary for their proprietors. Business must
be picking up when the wiggly legs and danger-signal nose will bring
so much per week and railroad fare. Perhaps prohibition has got the
"frightful example" business down to where it commands the notice of the
world because of its seldom condition.




THE MIMIC STAGE.

|AT the performance of "The Phoenix" here, the other night, there was a
very affecting place where the play is transferred very quickly from
a street scene to the elegant apartments of Mr. Blackburn, the heavy
villain. The street scene had to be raised out of the way, and the
effect of the transition was somewhat marred by the reluctance of the
scenery in rolling up out of the way. It got about half way up, and
stopped there in an undecided manner, which annoyed the heavy villain
a good deal. He started to make some blood-curdling remarks about Mr.
Bludsoe, and had got pretty well warmed up when the scenery came down
with a bang on the stage. The artist who pulls up the curtain and fills
the hall lamps, then pulled the scene up so as to show the villain's
feet for fifteen or twenty minutes, but he couldn't get it any farther.
It seemed that the clothes line, by which the elaborate scenery is
operated, got tangled up some way, and this caused the delay. After that
another effort was made, and this time the street scene rolled up to
about the third story of a brick hotel shown in the foreground, and
stopped there, while the clarionet and first violin continued a kind of
sad tremulo. Then a dark hand, with a wart on one finger and an oriental
dollar store ring on another, came out from behind the wings and began
to wind the clothes-line carefully around the pole at the foot of the
scene. The villain then proceeded with his soliloquy, while the street
scene hung by one corner in such a way as to make a large warehouse on
the corner of the street stand at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

Laramie will never feel perfectly happy until these little hitches are
dispensed with. Supposing that at some place in the play, where the
heroine is speaking soft and low to her lover and the proper moment has
arrived for her to pillow her sunny head upon his bosom, that street
scene should fetch loose, and come down with such momentum as to knock
the lovers over into the arms of the bass-viol player. Or suppose that
in some death-bed act this same scene, loaded with a telegraph pole at
the bottom, should settle down all at once in such a way as to leave the
death-bed out on the corner of Monroe and Clark streets, in front of a
candy store.

Modern stage mechanism has now reached such a degree of perfection that
the stage carpenter does not go up on a step ladder, in the middle of a
play, and nail the corner of a scene to a stick of 2x4 scantling, while
a duel is going on near the step ladder. In all the larger theatres and
opera houses, now, they are not doing that way.

Of course little incidents occur, however, even on the best stages, and
where the whole thing works all right. For instance, the other day, a
young actor, who was kneeling to a beautiful heiress down east, got a
little too far front, and some scenery, which was to come together
in the middle of the stage to pianissimo music, shut him outside and
divided the tableau in two, leaving the young actor apparently kneeling
at the foot of a street lamp, as though he might be hunting for a half a
dollar that he had just dropped on the sidewalk.

There was a play in New York, not long ago, in which there was a kind of
military parade introduced, and the leader of a file of soldiers had his
instructions to march three times around the stage to martial music, and
then file off at the left, the whole column, of course, following him.
After marching once around, the stage manager was surprised to see the
leader deliberately wheel, and walk off the stage, at the left, with
the whole battalion following at his heels. The manager went to him
and abused him shamefully for his haste, and told him he had a mind
to discharge him; but the talented hack driver, who thus acted as the
military leader, and who had over-played himself by marching off the
stage ahead of time, said:

[Illustration: 0249]

"Well, confound it, you can discharge me if you want to, but what was a
man to do? Would you have me march around three times when my military
pants were coming off, and I knew it? Military pride, pomp, parade,
and circumstance, are all right; but it can be overdone. A military
squadron, detachment, or whatever it is, can make more of a parade,
under certain circumstances, than is advertised. I didn't want to give
people more show than they paid for, and I ask you to put yourself in my
place. When a man is paid three dollars a week to play a Roman soldier,
would you have him play the Greek slave? No, sir; I guess I know what
I'm hired to play, and I'm going to play it. When you want me to play
Adam in the Garden of Eden, just give me my fig leaf and salary enough
to make it interesting, and I will try and properly interpret the
character for you, or refund the money at the door."




DECLINE OF AMERICAN HUMOR

|DEAR, mellow-voiced, starry-eyed reader, did you ever see something
about "the decline of American humor?" Well, we got a gob of American
humor, yesterday, written by a yahoo with pale pink hair, which was
entitled "Marriage in Mormondom on the Tontine Plan." Well, we declined
it. Decline of American humor. _Sabe?_




CHICAGO CUSTOM HOUSE

|THE Chicago custom house and post office, built from designs by Oscar
Wild, and other delirum tremens artists, is getting wiggly, and bids
fair to some day fall down and scrunch about 500 United States employes
into the great billowy sea of the eternal hence. It is a sick looking
structure, with little gothic warts on top, and red window sashes, and
little half-grown smoke houses sprouting out of it in different places.
It is grand, gloomy and peculiar, and looks as though it might be cursed
with an inward pain.




FOREIGN OPINION

|WE are indebted to Fred J. Prouting, correspondent of the foreign and
British newspaper press, for a copy of the London _Daily_ of the 9th
inst., containing the following editorial notice:

"If ever celebrity were attained unexpectedly, most assuredly it was
that thrust upon Bill Nye by Truthful James. It is just possible,
however, that the innumerable readers of Mr. Bret Harte's 'Heathen
Chinee' may have imagined Bill Nye and Ah Sin to be purely mythical
personages. So far as the former is concerned, any such conclusion now
appears to have been erroneous. Bill Nye is no more a phantom than any
other journalist, although the name of the organ which he 'runs' savors
more of fiction than of fact. But there is no doubt about the matter,
for the Washington correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ telegraphed
on the 29th instant, that Bill Nye had accepted a post under the
government. He has lately been domiciled in Laramie City, Wyoming
territory, and is editor of The Daily Boomerang. In reference to
Acting-Postmaster-Gen. Hatton's appointment of him as postmaster at
Laramie City, the opponent of Ah Sin writes an extremely humorous
letter, 'extending' his thanks, and advising his chief of his opinion
that his 'appointment is a triumph of eternal truth over error and
wrong.' Nye continues: 'It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the
nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection. I don't
know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has
so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom.' In this quiet strain of
banter, Bill Nye continues to the end of his letter, which suggests the
opinion that whatever the official qualifications of the new postmaster
may be, the inhabitants of Laramie City must have a very readable
newspaper in The Daily Boomerang."

While thanking our London contemporary for its gentle and harmless
remarks, we desire to correct an erroneous impression that the seems to
have as to our general style: The British press has in some way arrived
at the conclusion that the editor of this fashion-guide and mental
lighthouse on the rocky shores of time (terms cash), is a party with
wild tangled hair, and an like a tongue of flame.

That is not the case, and therefore our English co-worker in the
great field of journalism is, no doubt, laboring under a popular
misapprehension. Could the editor of the _News_ look in upon us as we
pull down tome after tome of forgotten lore in our study; or, with a
glad smile, glance hurriedly over the postal card in transit through our
postoffice, he would see, not as he supposes, a wild and cruel slayer
of his fellow men, but a thoughtful, scholarly and choice fragment of
modern architecture, with lines of care about the firmly chiseled mouth,
and with the subdued and chastened air of a man who has run for the
legislature and failed to get there, Eli.

The London _News_ is an older paper than ours, and we therefore
recognize the value of its kind notice. _The Boomerang_ is a young paper,
and has therefore only begun fairly to do much damage as a national
misfortune, but the time is not far distant, when, from Greenland's icy
mountains to India's coral strand, we propose to search out suffering
humanity and make death easier and more desirable, by introducing this
choice malady.

Regarding the postoffice, we wish to state that we shall aim to make
it a great financial success, and furnish mail at all times to all who
desire it, whether they have any or not. We shall be pretty busy, of
course, attending to the office during the day, and writing scathing
editorials during the night, but we will try to snatch a moment now and
then to write a few letters for those who have been inquiring sadly and
hopelessly for letters during the past ten years. It is, indeed, a
dark and dreary world to the man who has looked in at the same general
delivery window nine times a day for ten years, and yet never received
a letter, nor even a confidential postal card from a commercial man,
stating that on the 5th of the following month he would strike the town
with a new and attractive line of samples.

We should early learn to find put such suffering as that, and if we are
in the postoffice department we may be the means of much good by
putting new envelopes on our own dunning letters and mailing them to the
suffering and distressed. Let us, in our abundance, remember those who
have not been dunned for many a weary year. It will do them good, and we
will not feel the loss.




THEY HAVE CURBED THEIR WOE.

|THEY say that Brigham Young's grave is looking as bare and desolate as
a boulevard now. At first, while her grief was fresh, his widow used to
march out there five abreast, and just naturally deluge the grave with
scalding tears, and at that time the green grass grew luxuriantly, and
the pig-weed waved in the soft summer air; but as she learned to control
her emotions, the humidity of the atmosphere disappeared, and grief's
grand irrigation failed to give down. We should learn from this that the
man who flatters himself that in marrying a whole precinct during life,
he is piling up for the future a large invoice of ungovernable woe,
is liable to get left. The prophet's tomb looks to-day like a deserted
buffalo wallow, while his widow has dried her tears, and is trying to
make a mash on the Utah commission. Such is life in the far west, and
such the fitting resting place of a red-headed old galvanized prophet,
who marries a squint-eyed fly-up-the-creek, and afterward gets a special
revelation requiring him to marry a female mass-meeting. Let us be
thankful for what we have, instead of yearning for a great wealth of
wife. Then the life insurance will not have to be scattered so, and
our friends will be spared the humiliating spectacle of a bereft and
sorrowing herd of widow, turned loose by the cold hand of death to
monkey o'er our tomb.




HUNG BY REQUEST.

|THIS county has had two hemp carnivals during the past few weeks, and
it begins to look like old times again. In each case the murder was
unprovoked, and the victim a quiet gentleman. That is why there was a
popular feeling against the murderer, and a spontaneous ropestretching
benefit as a result. While we deplore the existence of a state of
affairs that would warrant these little expressions of feeling, we
cannot come right out and condemn the exercises which followed.

The more we read the political record of the candidate for office, as
set forth in opposing journals, the more we feel that there are already
few enough good men in this country, so that we do not care to spare
any of them. If, therefore, the mischievous bad man is permitted to thin
them out this way, the day is not distant when we won't have good men
enough to run the newspapers, to say nothing of other avocations.

We know that eastern people will speak of us as a ferocious tribe on
the Wyoming reservation, but we desire to call the attention of our more
law-abiding brethren to the fact that there has been in the past year a
lynching in almost every state in the Union, to say nothing of several
hundred cases where there should have been. Do you suppose Wyoming
young ladies would consent to play the waltz known as "Under the Elms,"
composed by Walter Malley, if Walter had been as frolicsome here as he
was down on the Atlantic coast? Scarcely. We may be the creatures of
impulse here, but not that kind of impulse.

Minneapolis hung a man during the past year, and so did Bloomington and
other high-toned towns, and shall we, because we are poor and lonely,
be denied this poor boon? We hope not. Because we have left the East and
moved out here to make some money and build up a new country, shall we
be refused the privileges we would have enjoyed if we had remained in
the states. We trow not.

A telegraph pole with a remains hanging on it is not a cheerful
sight, but it has a tendency to annoy and mentally disturb those who
contemplate the violent death of some good man. It unnerves the brave
assassin and makes him restless and apprehensive. Death is always
depressing, but it is doubly so when it has that purple and suffocated
appearance which is noticeable in the features of the early fall fruit
of the telegraph pole. Lately, we will state, however, the telegraph
pole has fallen into disfavor, and is not much used, owing to a rumor
which gained circulation some time ago, to the effect that Jay Gould
intended to charge the vigilance committee rent.

A COLORED GREEK SLATE.

|A NUDE colored woman, as wild as a gorilla, startling the people of
the Marvel section of Missouri. She has been seen several times, and the
last time threw a young lady, who was horseback riding, into hysteria,
and with a grunt--not unlike that of a wild hog--jumped up and ran into
the forest. At the time of her discovery she was burrowing into the side
of the road, catching and eating crawfish, which she ate claws, hide and
all. She is very black, and foams at the mouth when angry, like a wild
animal at bay. She is probably a colored Greek slave in search of an
umbrella and the remainder of her wardrobe. Still, she may be a brunette
society belle, who went in swimming where a mud-turtle caught her by the
pink toe, and the nervous shock has unsettled her mind.




THE MELVILLES.

|AN exchange says that Mrs. Melville has become deranged through excess
of joy over the unexpected return of her husband. Another one says that
it is thought that Lieutenant Melville is off his basement as a result
of exposure to the vigorous and bracing air of the north pole. Still
another says that Mr. Melville was always mean and hateful toward his
wife, and that when he was at home, she had to do her own washing and
wind the clock herself. From the different stories now floating about
relative to the Melville family, we are led to believe that he is a
kind and considerate husband, pleasant and good-natured toward his
wife--while asleep; and that she is a kind, beautiful and accomplished
wife--when she is sober. How many of our best wives are falling victims
to the alcoholic habit recently! How sad to think that, as husbands, we
will soon be left to wait and watch and vigil through the long, weary
night for that one to return who promised us on the nuptial day that she
would protect and love us. Ah, what a silent, but seductive foe to the
husband is rum! How it creeps into the home circle and snatches the
wife in the full blush and bloom of womanhood, while the pale, sad-eyed
husband sits at the sewing machine and barely makes enough to keep the
little ones from want.

No one can fully realize, but he who has been there, so to speak, the
terrible shock that Mr. Melville received on the first evening that
his wife came staggering home. No one can tell how the pain froze his
throbbing gizzard, or how he shuddered in the darkness, and filled the
pillow-sham full of sobs when he first knew that she had got it up her
nose. Ah, what a picture of woe we see before us. There in the solemn
night, robed in? long, plainly constructed garment of pure white,
buttoned at the throat in a negligent manner, stands Mr. Melville with
his bare, tall brow glistening in the flickering rays of a kerosene
lamp, which he holds in his hand, while on the front porch stands the
wife who a few years ago promised to defend and protect him. She is a
little unsteady on her feet, and her hat is out of plumb. She tries to
be facetious, and asks him if that is where Mr. Melville lives. He looks
at her coldly and says it is, but unfortunately it is not an inebriate's
home and refuge for the budge demolisher. Then he bursts into tears, and
his sobs shake the entire ranch. But we draw a curtain over the scene.
*****

A year later he may be discovered about two miles southwest of the north
pole. Cool, but happy. He is trying to forget his woe. He smells like
sperm-oil and looks like a bald-headed sausage, but the woe of drink is
forgotten.'

How sad that he has returned and suffered again. What a mistake that he
did not remain where, instead of his wife's coolness, he would have had
only that of nature to contend against.




MENDING BROKEN NECKS.

|THEY have successfully set a boy's broken neck, in Connecticut, and now
it looks as though the only way to kill a man is to take him about 200
miles from any physician, and run him through a Hoe Perfecting Press.
If this thing continues, they will some day put some electricity into
Pharaoh's daughter and engage her as a ballet-dancer, along with other
tender pullets of her own age.




ARE YOU A MORMON?

|WE are indebted to Elder Wilkins, of Logan, Utah,
first-assistant-general-tooly-muck-a-hi Z. C. M. I. and Z. W. of T.
U. O. M. and B. company, and president of the cache stake of Zion,
constituting last in the quorum of seventies, for the late edition of
the Mormon Guide and Hand Book of the Endowment House. It is a very
pleasant work to read, and makes the whole endowment scheme as clear to
the average mind as though he had been through it personally.

Pictures of the endowment chemiloon and Z. C. M. I. bib are given
to show the novice exactly how they appear to the unclothed and
unregenerate vision. The convert, it seems, first goes to the desk, on
entering, and registers. Then she leaves her every-day clothes in the
baggage room and gets a check for them. The next thing on the programme
is a bath, called the farewell bath, because it is the last one taken by
the endowment victim.

The convert is then anointed with machine oil from a cow's horn, after
which she is named something, supposed to be the celestial cognomen.
Then comes the endowment robe, which is a combination arrangement that
don't look pretty. After that, the apprentice to polygamy goes into an
impromptu garden of Eden, where the apple business is gone through with.
A thick-necked path-master from Logan takes the character of Adam, and a
pale-haired livery stable keeper from Salt Lake acts as the ruler of the
universe. This is not making light of a sacred subject. It is just the
simple, plain, horrible truth.

[Illustration: 0265]

The creation of the world is thus gone through with by these blatant
priests of Latter Day bogus sanctity, and the exercises are continued
after this fashion through all their disgusting details. We have no
time or inclination to enlarge upon them. Truth is sometimes nauseating,
especially while discussing the Mormon problem.

If Brigham Young had lived, he would have helped out his church by a
revelation that would have knocked the daylights out of polygamy; but
as it is now, John Taylor, with his characteristic stubborness, will
not attend to it, his revelation machine being somewhat out of whack,
as Oscar Wilde would say, so that the anointing with the so-called
sanctified lubricant will continue till the United States sits down on
the whole grand farce.




CAUTION.

|A MAN is going about the streets of Laramie claiming to be John the
Baptist. He has light hair and chin whiskers, is stout built and
looks like a farmer. We desire to warn those of our readers who may be
inclined to trust him, that he is not what he purports to be. We have
taken great pains to look the matter up, and find, as a result of our
research, that John the Baptist is dead.

A BLOW TO THE GOVERNMENT

|AT the October term of the district court we shall resign the office of
United States Commissioner for this judicial district, an office which
we have held so long, and with such great credit to ourself. Fearing
that in the hurry and rush of other business our contemporaries might
overlook the matter, we have consented to mention, briefly, the fact
that at the opening of court, Judge Blair will be called upon to accept
the resignation of one of our most tried and true officials, who has for
so long held up this corner of the great national fabric.

It has been our solemn duty to examine the greaser who sold liquor
to our red brother, and filled him up with the deadly juice of the
sour-mash tree. It has devolved upon us to singe the soft-eyed lad who
stole baled hay from the reservation, and it has also been our glorious
privilege to examine, in a preliminary manner, the absent-minded party
who gathered unto himself the U. S. mule.

We have attempted to resign before, but failed. One reason was, that it
was a novel proceeding in Wyoming, and no one seemed to know how to go
to work at it. No one had ever resigned before, and the matter had to be
hunted up and the law thoroughly understood.

The office is one of great profit, as we have said before. It brings
wealth into the coffers of the U. S. Commissioner in a way that is well
calculated to turn the head of most people. We have, however, succeeded
in controlling ourself, and have so far suppressed that beastly pride
which wealth engenders. With a salary of $7.25 per annum, and lead
pencils, we have-steadily refused to go to Europe, preferring rather to
plod along here in the wild west, although we may never see the beauties
of a foreign shore.

Official duty was at all times weighing upon our mind like a leaden
load. Oft in the stilly night we have been wakened by the oppressing
thought that, perhaps at that moment, on some distant reservation, some
pale-faced villain might be selling valley-tan to the gentle, untutored
Indian brave, and it has tortured us and robbed us of slumber and joy.
Now it is a relief to know that very soon we shall be free from this
great responsibility. If an Indian gets drunk on the reservation, or a
time-honored government mule is stolen, we shall not be expected to
get up in the night and administer swift and terrible justice to the
offender. Old-man-with-a-torpid-liver can go as drunk as he pleases on
the reservation. It does not come under our jurisdiction any more. We
can sleep now nights while some other man peels his coat, and acts as
the United States nemesis for this diocese.

Sometime during the ensuing week we will turn over the lead pencil and
the blotting paper of the office to our successor. We leave the Indian
temperance movement in his hands. The United States mule, kleptomaniac
also, we leave with him. With a clear conscience and an unliquidated
claim against the government for $9.55, the earnings of the past two
years, we turn over the office, knowing that although we have sacrificed
our health, we have never evaded our duty, no matter how dangerous or
disagreeable.

Yet we do not ask for any gold-headed cane as a mark of esteem on the
part of the government. We have a watch that does very well for us, so
that a testimonial consisting of a gold watch, costing $250, would be
unnecessary. Any little trinket of that kind would, of course, show
how ready the department of justice is to appreciate the work of an
efficient officer, but we do not look for it, nor ask it. A thoroughly
fumigated and disinfected conscience is all we want. That is enough for
us. Do not call out the band. Just let us retire from the office quietly
and unostentatiously. As regards the United States Commissionership, we
retire to private life. In the bosom of our family we will forget the
turbulent voyage of official life through which we have passed, and as
we monkey with the children around our hearthstone, we will shut our
eyes to the official suffering that is going on on all around us.




POISONS AND THEIR ANECDOTES.

|AN amateur scientist sends us a long article written with a purple
pencil on both sides of twelve sheets of legal cap, and entitled
"Poisons and Their Anecdotes."

Will the soft-eyed mullet-head please call and get it, also a lick over
the eye with a hot stove leg, and greatly oblige the weary throbbing
brain that, moulds the scientific course of this paper?




CORRESPONDENCE.

Cheyenne, September 6, 1882.

|THE party, consisting of Governor Hale and wife, Secretary Morgan and
wife, President Slack, of the "Wyoming Press Association, and wife, Mr.
Baird and myself, started out of Laramie, about 8:30 last evening, and
excurted along over the hill with some hesitation, arriving here this
morning at four o'clock. The engine at first slipped an eccentric on
Dale Creek bridge, and we remained there some time, delayed but happy.
Then, as the night wore away and the gray dawn came down over the broad
and mellow sweep of plain to the eastward, an engine ahead of us on a
freight train blew off her monkey-wrench, and we were delayed in the
neighborhood of Hazzard several more hours. Hazzard is a thriving town
on the eastern slope of the mountains, with glorious possibilities for a
town site. With gas and waterworks and a city debt of $200,000, Hazzard
will some day attract notice from the civilized world. If her vast
deposits of sand and alkali could be brought to the notice of capital,
Hazzard would some day take rank with such cities as Wilcox and Tie
City.

Still we had a good deal of fun. We heard that Whitelaw Reid, of the New
York was on board, and we sent the porter into the other car after him.
Mr. Reid did not behave as we thought he would at first. We had presumed
that he was cold and distant in his manners, but he is not. As soon as
the first embarrassment of meeting us was over, he sailed right in and
did all the talking himself, just as any cultivated gentleman would. He
told us all about New York politics and how he was fighting the machine,
at the same time, however, casually dropping a remark or two that led us
to conclude that it was only one machine that didn't want another one
to win. He is a tall, rather fine-looking man, with a Grecian nose and
long, dark hair, which he does up in tin foil at night. I told him that
I was grieved to know that his hired man had, inadvertently no doubt,
referred to me in a manner that gave the American people an idea that
I was a good deal bigger man than I really was. I asked him whether he
wanted to apologize then and there or be thrown over Dale Creek bridge
into the rip-snorting torrent below.

He said he didn't believe that such a remark had been made, but if
it had he would go home and kill the man who wrote it, if that would
poultice up my wounded heart. I said it would. If he would just mail
me the remains of the man who made the remark, not necessarily for
publication, but as a guarantee of good faith, it would be all right.

We talked all night, and incurred the everlasting displeasure of a fat
man from San Francisco, who told the porter he wanted his money back
because he hadn't slept any all night. He seemed mad because we were
having a little harmless conversation among ourselves, and when the
clock in the steeple struck four he rolled over in his berth, gave a
large groan and then got up and dressed. Some people are so morbidly
nervous that they cannot sleep on a train, and they naturally get cross
and say ungentlemanly things. This man said some things while he was
dressing and buttoning his suspenders, that made my blood run cold.
A man who has no better control of his temper than that, ought not
to travel at all. He just simply makes a North American side-show of
himself.

Cheyenne is very greatly improved since I was here last. The building
up of the corner opposite the Inter Ocean hotel has added greatly to
the attractiveness of the Magic City, and other work is being done which
enhances the beauty of the city very much. F. E. Warren is one of the
most enterprising and thoroughly vigorous western business men I ever
knew. He is an anomaly, I might say. When I say he is an anomaly, I
do not mean to reflect upon him in any way, though I do not know the
meaning of the word. I simply mean that he is the chief grand rustle of
a very rustling city.




WHAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEEDS.

|THE candidate for county commissioner, on the Democratic ticket, of
Sweetwater county, keeps a drug store, and when a little girl burned
her arm against the cook stove, and her father went after a package of
Russia salve, the genial Bourbon gave her a box of "Rough on Rats." What
the Democratic party needs, is not so much a new platform, but a carload
of assorted brains that some female seminary had left over.

A LETTER FROM LEADVILLE.

Leadville, Colorado, Sept. 10.

|THIS morning we rose at 4:30, and rode from Buena Vista to Leadville,
arriving at the Clarendon for breakfast. Our party has been reduced in
one way and another until there are only eight here to-day. Secretary
Morgan and family remained at Buena Vista on account of the illness
of Misa Lillie Morgan, who suffers severely from sea-sickness on the
mountain railroads.

One thing I have not mentioned, and an incident certainly worthy of
note, was the sudden decision of our president, E. A. Slack, on Friday,
to remain at a little station on the South Parle road, above Como, while
the party continued on to Buena Vista. Mr. Slack is a man of iron will
and sudden impulses, as all who know him are aware. He got in a car at
the station referred to, and under the impression that it belonged to
our train, remained in it till he got impatient about something, and
asked a man who came in with a broom, why we were making such a stop at
that station. The man said that this car had been side-tracked, and the
train had gone sometime ago.

Then Mr. Slack made the rash remark that he would remain there until the
next train. He acts readily in an emergency, and he saw at a glance that
the best thing that he could do would be to just stay there, and examine
the country until he could get the next train. He telegraphed us that
the fare was so high on our train that he would see if he couldn't
get better rates on the following day. In the meantime, he struck
Superintendent Egbert's special car, and rode around over the country
till morning, while our party took in Buena Vista. The city is but two
years old, but very thriving, and has 2,500 to 3,000 population. At
the depot we were met by Agent Smith, of the South Park road, who had
secured rooms for us at the Grand Park hotel. He had also arranged for
carriages to take us out to Cottonwood Hot Springs, about six miles
up Cottonwood creek, where we took supper. We found a first-class
sixty-four room hotel there, with hot baths, and everything comfortable
and neat. The proprietors are Messrs. Stafford and Hartenstein--the
latter having been a medical student under Dr. Agnew. After a
good-supper we returned to Buena Vista, where the home military company,
under Captain Johnson, led by the Buena Yista band, serenaded us. I
responded in a brief but telling speech, which I would give here if I
had not forgotten what it was. Some of the other members of the party
wanted to make the speech, but I said no, it would not be right. I was
representing the president, Mr. Slack, and wearing his overcoat, and
therefore it would devolve on me to make the grand opening remarks.
It was the greatest effort of my life, and town lots in Buena Vista
depreciated fifty per cent.

We found A. D. Butler, formerly of Cheyenne, now at Buena Vista, also
Tom Campbell, well known to Laramie people, doing well at the new city,
and a prospective member of the Colorado legislature. George Marion,
formerly of Laramie, is also at Buena Vista, engaged in the retail
bridge trade. We also met Messrs. Leonard, of the and Kennedy, of the
_Herald_, who treated us the whitest kind. Mr. Leonard and wife went
with us yesterday over to Gunnison City. Billy Butler, formerly of
Laramie, is now at Buena Vista, successfully engaged in mining.

Yesterday we put in the most happy day of the entire trip. Under the
very kind and thoughtful guidance of Superintendent E. Wilbur, of the
Gunnison division of the South Park road, we went over the mountain to
Gunnison and through the wonderful Alpine tunnel, the highest railroad
point in the United States, and with its approaches 2,600 feet long.
When you pass through the tunnel the brakeman makes you close your
window and take in your head. He does this for two reasons: first, you
can't see anything if you look out, and secondly, the company don't like
to hire an extra man to go through the tunnel twice a day and wipe the
remains of tourists off the walls.

The newsboy told me that a tourist from Philadelphia once tried to wipe
his nose on the Alpine tunnel, while the train was in motion, and when
they got through into daylight, and his companions told him to take in
his head, he couldn't do it--because it was half a mile behind examining
the formation of the tunnel. Later, it was found that the man was dead.
The passengers said that they noticed a kind of crunching noise while
going through the tunnel that sounded like the smashing of false teeth,
but they paid no attention to it.

Mr. Wilbur afterward told me that there had never been a passenger
killed on the road, so I may have been misled by this newsboy. Still,
he didn't look like a boy who would trifle with a man's feelings in that
way.

However, I will leave the remainder of the Gunnison trip for another
letter, as this is already too long.




TABLE MANNERS OF CHILDREN.

|YOUNG children who have to wait till older people have eaten all there
is in the house, should not open the dining-room door during the meal
and ask the host if he is going to eat all day. It makes the company
feel ill at ease, and lays up wrath in the parents' heart.

Children should not appear displeased with the regular courses at
dinner, and then fill up on pie. Eat the less expensive food first, and
then organize a picnic in the preserves afterward.

Do not close out the last of your soup by taking the plate in your mouth
and pouring the liquid down your childish neck. You might spill it on
your bosom, and it enlarges and distorts the mouth unnecessarily.

When asked what part of the fowl you prefer, do not say you will take
the part that goes over the fence last. This remark is very humorous,
but the rising generation ought to originate some new table jokes that
will be worthy of the age in which we live.

Children should early learn the use of the fork, and how to handle it.
This knowledge can be acquired by allowing them to pry up the carpet
tacks with this instrument, and other little exercises, such as the
parent mind may suggest.

The child should be taught at once not to wave his bread around over the
table, while in conversation, or to fill his mouth full of potatoes, and
then converse in a rich tone of voice with some one out in the yard.
He might get his dinner down his trochea and cause his parents great
anxiety.

In picking up a plate or saucer filled with soup or with moist food, the
child should be taught not to parboil his thumb in the contents of the
dish, and to avoid swallowing soup bones or other indigestible debris.

Toothpicks are generally the last course, and children should not be
permitted to pick their teeth and kick the table through the other
exercises. While grace is being said at table, children should know that
it is a breach of good breeding to smouge fruit cake just because their
parents' heads are bowed down, and their attention for the moment turned
in another direction. Children ought not to be permitted to find fault
with the dinner, or fool with the cat while they are eating. Boys
should, before going to the table, empty all the frogs and grasshoppers
out of their pockets, or those insects might crawl out during the
festivities, and jump into the gravy.

If a fly wades into your jelly up to his gambrels, do not mash him with
your spoon before all the guests, as death is at all times depressing
to those who are at dinner, and retards digestion. Take the fly out
carefully, with what naturally adheres to his person, and wipe him on
the table cloth. It will demonstrate your perfect command of yourself,
and afford much amusement for the company. Do not stand up in your chair
and try to spear a roll with your fork. It is not good manners to do so,
and you might slip and bust your crust, by so doing. Say "thank you,"
and "much obliged," and "beg pardon," wherever you can work in
these remarks, as it throws people off their guard, and gives you an
opportunity to get in your work on the pastry and other bric-a-brac near
you at the time.




WHAT IT MEANT.

|WHEN Billy Boot was a little boy, he was of a philosophical and
investigating turn of mind, and wanted to know almost everything. He
also desired to know it immediately. He could not wait for time to
develop his intellect, but he crowded things and wore out the patience
of his father, a learned savant, who was president of a livery stable in
Chicago.

One day Billy ran across the grand hailing sign, which is generally
represented as a tapeworm in the beak of the American eagle, on which is
inscribed "E Pluribus Unum." Billy, of course, asked his father what "E
Pluribus Unum" meant. He wanted to gather in all the knowledge he could,
so that when he came out west he could associate with some of our best
men.

[Illustration: 0283]

"I admire your strong appetite for knowledge, Billy," said Mr. Root;
"you have a morbid craving for cold hunks of ancient history and
cyclopedia that does my soul good; and I am glad, too, that you come
to your father to get accurate data for your collection. That is right.
Your father will always lay aside his work at any time and gorge your
young mind with knowledge that will be as useful to you as a farrow cow.
'E Pluri-bus Unum' is an old Greek inscription that has been handed down
from generation to generation, preserved in brine, and signifies that
'the tail goes with the hide.'"




VOTERS IN UTAH.

|THIS is the form of the oath required of voters in Utah under the new
law:

Territory of Utah, County of Salt Lake. I ------------ being first duly
sworn (or affirmed), depose and say that I am over twenty-one years of
age, and have resided in the territory of Utah for six months, and in
the precinct of ---------- one month immediately preceding the date
thereof, and (if a male) am a native born or naturalized (as the case
may be) citizen of the United States and a tax payer in this territory.
(Or, if a female) I am native born, or naturalized, or the widow or
daughter (as the case may be) of a native born or naturalized citizen of
the United States. And I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that I
am not a bigamist or polygamist; that I am not a violater of the laws of
the United States prohibiting bigamy or polygamy; that I do not live or
cohabit with more than one woman in the marriage relation, nor does any
relation exist between me and any woman which has been entered into or
continued in violation of said laws of the United States, prohibiting
bigamy or polygamy, (and if a woman) that I am not the wife of a
polygamist, nor have I entered into any relation with any man in
violation of the laws of the United States concerning polygamy or
bigamy.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this ------ day of ----------, 1882.
Registration Officer ---------- Precinct.

It will be seen that at the next election some of the brethren and
sisters in Zion will be disfranchised unless they do some pretty tall
swearing. This is a terrible state of affairs, and the whole civilized
world will feel badly to know that some of our people are going to be
left out in the cold, cold world with no voice and no vote just because
they have been too zealous in the wedlock business.

Matrimony is a glorious thing, but it can be overdone. A man can become
a victim to the nuptial habit just the same as he can the opium habit.
It then assumes entire control over him, and he has to be chained up
or paralyzed with a club, or he would marry all creation. This law,
therefore, is salutary in its operations. It is intended as a gentle
check on those who have allowed themselves to become matrimony's
maniacs. If we marry one of the daughters of a family, and are happy
over it, is that any reason why we should marry the other daughters and
the old lady and the colored cook? We think not. It is natural for man
to acquire railroads and promissory notes and houses and lands, but he
should not undertake to acquire a corner on the wife trade.

Hence we say the law is just and must be permitted to take its course,
even though it may disfranchise many of the most prominent pelicans of
the Mormon church. Matrimony in Utah has been allowed to run riot, as
it were. The cruel and relentless hand of this hydra-headed monster has
been laid upon the youngest and the fairest of the Mormon people.

Matrimony has broken out there in a large family in some instances, and
has not even spared the widowed and toothless mother. It generally seeks
its prey among the youngest and fairest, but in Utah it has not spared
even the old and the infirm. Like a cruel epidemic, it has at first
raked in the blooming maidens of Mormondom and at last spotted the
lantern jawed dregs of foreign female emigration. In one community, this
great scourge entered and took all the women under forty-five, and then
got into a block where there were nineteen old women who didn't average
a tooth apiece, and swept them away like a cyclone.

People who do not know anything of this great evil, can have no
knowledge of it. Those who have not investigated this question have
certainly failed to look into it. We cannot find out about this question
without ascertaining something of it.




INCONGRUITY

|OUR attention has been called recently to an illustration by Hopkins
in a work called Forty Liars, in which a miner is represented as sliding
down a mountain in a gold pan with a handle on it. Mr. Hopkins, no
doubt, labors under a wrong impression of some kind, relative to the
gold pan. He seems to consider the gold pan and the frying pan as
synonymous. In this he is wrong.

The gold pan is a large low pan without a handle and made of very
different metal from a skillet or frying pan.

The artist should study as far as possible to imitate nature and not
make a fool of himself. Some artists consider it funny to represent a
farmer milking a cow on the wrong side. They also show the same farmer,
later on, plowing with a plow that turns the furrow over to the left,
another eccentricity of genius. There are many little things like this
that the artist should look into more closely so as not to bust up the
eternal fitness of things.

We presume that Mr Hopkins would represent a gang of miners working a
placer with giant powder and washing out smelting ore in a tin dipper.
Its pretty hard, though, for an artist who never saw a mining camp, to
sit and watch a New York beer tournament and draw pictures of life in a
mining camp, and people ought not to expect too much.




RIDING DOWN A MOUNTAIN.

|GUNNISON CITY is one of the peculiarities of a mining boom. It spreads
out and slops over the plain like a huge camp meeting, but without shape
or beauty.

The plains there are red and sandy; the trees are not nearer than the
foot-hills; and the city, which claims 5,000 inhabitants, though 3,000
would, no doubt, be more accurate, is composed of a wide area of ground,
with scattering houses that look lonely in the midst of the desolation.
Mining in Colorado, this season, has not advanced with the wonderful
impetus which characterized it in previous years. Wherever you go, you
hear first one reason, and then another, why good mines are not being
worked. There is trouble among the stock-holders; a game of freeze
out; lack of capital to put in proper machinery, or excessive railroad
freights, to pay which virtually paralyzes the reduction of ore owned by
men too poor to erect the expensive works necessary to the realization
of profit from the mines.

Returning from Gunnison City, now, you rise at a rate of over 200 feet
to the mile, zig-zagging up the almost perpendicular mountain, near the
summit of which is the Alpine tunnel. As you near the tunnel, there is
a perpendicular and sometimes even a jutting wall above you, hundreds
of feet at your right, while far below you, on your left, is a yellow
streak, which at first you take to be an old mountain trail, but which
you soon discover is the circuitous track over which you have just come.

Near here, while the road was being built, a fine span of horses balked
on the grade, and like all balky horses, proceeded to back off the road.
The owner got out of the wagon, and told them they could keep that thing
up if they wanted to, but he could not endorse their policy. They kept
backing off until the wagon went over the brink, and then there was a
little scratching of loose stones, the kaleidoscope of legs and hoofs,
a little rush and rumble, and the world was wealthier by one less balky
team. The owner never went down to see where they went to, or how they
lit. He was afraid they would not survive their injuries, so he did not
go down there. Later, the carrion crows and turkey buzzards indicated
where the refractory team had landed; and deep in the mountain gorge the
white bones lie amid the wreck of a lumber wagon, as monuments of equine
folly.

On Saturday evening we had the pleasure of riding down the dizzy grade
from Hancock, a distance of eighteen miles, at which time we descended
a mile perpendicularly in a push car, with Superintendent Wilbur as
conductor and engineer. A push car is a plain flat-car, about as big as
a dining-table, with four wheels, and nothing to propel it but gravity,
and nothing to stop it but a sharpened piece of two-by-four scantling.
Hancock is near the Alpine tunnel, at the summit of the mountains,
about 11,000 feet high. Secretary Morgan, Mrs. Morgan, with their
little daughter Gertrude; E. A. Slack, of the _Sun_, Frank Clark, of the
_Leader_, Superintendent Wilbur and ourself, constituted the party.

At first everybody was a little nervous with the accumulating velocity
of the car, and the yawning abyss below us; but later we got more
accustomed to it, and the solemn grandeur of the green pine-covered
canons, the lofty snow-covered peaks, apparently so near us; and the
rushing, foaming torrent far below us, were all we saw. Like lightning
we rounded the sharp curves where the road seemed to hang over instant
destruction, and we held our breath as we thought that, like Dutch
Charlie and other great men, only a piece of two-by-four scantling stood
between us and death.

Again and again the abrupt curve loomed up ahead, and below us, while we
flew along the narrow gauge at such a pace that we were almost sure the
car would, leave the track before it would round such a point, and each
time the two-by-four went down on the drive wheel with a pressure that
sent up volumes of blue smoke.

It was a wild, grand ride--so wild and grand in fact that even yet we
wake up at night with a start from a dream in which the same party
is riding down that canon at lightning speed, and Mr. Wilbur, in a
thoughtless moment, has dropped his pine brake overboard!

Shades of Sam Patch, but wouldn't it scatter the average excurter over
southern Colorado if such a thing should happen some day! Why, the woods
would be full of them, and for years to come, the prospector along Chalk
Creek Canon would find pyrites of editorial poverty, and indications of
collar buttons, and fragments of Archimedean levers, and other mementoes
of the great editorial hegira of 1882.




CORRALED HIM.

|LAST May Sheriff Boswell received a postal card from a man up near
Fort McKinney, describing a pair of horses that had just been stolen
and asking that Mr. Boswell would keep his eye peeled for the thief and
arrest him on sight.

Last week the sheriff discovered the identical team with color, brands
and everything to correspond. He told the driver that he would have
to turn over that team and come along to the bastile. The man stoutly
protested his innocence and claimed that he owned the team, but Boswell
laughed him to scorn and said he often got such games of talk as that
when he arrested horse thieves.

Just as they were going down into the damp corridors, Judge Blair met
the criminal, recognized him at once and called him by name. It seems
that he was the man who had originally written Boswell, and having found
his horses he had neglected to inform him. Thus, when he came to town
four months afterward, he got snatched. You not only have to call the
officer's attention to a larceny in this country, but it is absolutely
necessary that you call off the sleuth hound of eternal justice when
you have found the property, or you will be gathered in unless you can
identify yourself. Boswell's initials are N. K., and now the boys call
him Nemesis K. Boswell.

|THE London _Lancet_ upsets the popular theory that abundant hair is
a sign of bodily or mental strength. The fact is, it says, that
notwithstanding the Samson precedent, the Chinese, who are the most
enduring of all races, are mostly bald; and as to the supposition that
long and thick hair is a sign of intellectuality, all antiquity, all
madhouses and all common observation are against it. The easily-wheedled
Esau was hairy. The mighty Caesar was bald. Long haired men are
generally weak and fanatical, and men with scant hair are the
philosophers, and soldiers, and statesmen, of the world. Oscar Wilde,
Theodore Tilton, and others of the long-haired fraternity, should read
these statements with soulful and heart-yearning delight.

Will the editor of the _Lancet_ please step over to the saloon, opposite
the royal palace, and take something at our expense? Pard, we shake
with you. Count us in also. Reckon us along with Cæsar, and Elijah, and
Aristotle, please. Though young, we can show more polished intellect to
the superficial foot than many who have lived longer than we have.

Will the editor of the _Lancet_ please put our name on his list of
subscribers and send the bill to us? What we want is a good, live paper
that knows something, and isn't afraid to say it.

|WE were pained to see a large mule brought into town yesterday with
his side worn away until it looked very thin. It looked as though the
pensive mule had laid down to think over his past life, and being in the
company of seven other able-bodied mules, all of whom were attached to a
government freight wagon going down a mountain, this, particular animal,
while wrapped in a brown study, had been pulled several miles with so
much unction, as it were, that when the train stopped it was found that
this large and highly accomplished mule had worn his side off so thin
that you could see his inmost thoughts.




FIRMNESS.

|WHEN we saw him, he looked as though, if he had his life to live over
again, he would select a different time to ponder over his previous
history. Sometimes a mule's firmness causes his teetotal and everlasting
overthrow.

Firmness is a good thing in its place, but we should early learn that to
be firm, we need not stand up against a cyclone till our eternal economy
is blown into the tops of the neighboring trees. Moral courage is a good
thing, but it is useless unless you have a liver to go along with it.
Sometimes a man is required to lay down his life for his principles, but
the cases where he is expected to lay down his digester on the altar of
his belief, are comparatively seldom.

We may often learn a valuable lesson from the stubborn mule, and guard
against the too protruberant use of our own ideas in opposition to other
powers against which it is useless to contend. It may be wrong for giant
powder to blow the top of a man's head off without cause, but repealed
contests have proved that even when giant powder is in the wrong, it is
eventually victorious.

Let us, therefore, while reasonably fixed in our purpose, avoid the
display of a degree of firmness which will scatter us around over two
school districts, and confuse the coroner in his inquest.




PUT IN A SUMP.

|THE president of the North Park and Vandaliar Mining Company not long
ago got a letter from the superintendent which closed by saying that
everything was working splendidly. The ore body was increasing, and
the quality and richness of the rock improving with every foot. He also
added that he had constructed a sump in the mine.

The president having spent most of his life in military and political
affairs, had never found it necessary to use a sump, and so he didn't
know to a dead moral certainty what it was that the superintendent had
put in.

He hoped, however, that the expense would not cripple the company,
and that by handling it carefully, they might escape damage from an
explosion of the sump at an unlooked-for time.

He proceeded, however, to examine the unabridged, and found that it
meant a cistern, which is constructed at the bottom of a mine for the
purpose of collecting the water, and from which it is pumped.

The president, having posted himself, concluded to go and have a little
conversation with one of the directors, who is a druggist in the city,
and see if he knew the nature of a sump.

The president, in answer to the questions of the director relative to
the latest news from the mine, said that it was looking better all the
time, and that the superintendent had constructed a sump.

The director never blinked his eye. He acted like a man who has lived on
sumps all his life.

"Do you know what a sump is?" asked the president. "Why, of course,
anybody knows what a sump is. It's the place where they collect water
from a mine, and pump it from, to free the mine from water. A man who
don't know what a sump is, don't know his business, that's all I've got
to say."

The president looked hurt about something. He hadn't looked for the
conversation to assume just exactly the shape that it had. Finally he
said, "Well you needn't point your withering sarcasm at me. I know what
a sump is. I just wanted to see whether a man who had been in the pill
business all his life, knew what a sump was. I knew you claimed to know
almost everything, but I didn't believe you was up on that word. Now, if
it's a proper question, I'd like to know just how long you have been so
all-fired fluent about mining terms."

Then the director said that there was no use in putting on airs, and
swelling up with pride over a little thing like that. He, for one,
didn't propose to crow over other men who had not had the advantages
that he had, and he would be frank with the president, and admit that an
hour ago he didn't know the difference between a sump and a certiorari.

It seems that a passenger, who had come in on the same coach that
brought in the superintendent's letter, had casually dropped the remark
to the director that Smith had put a sump in the "Endomile," and the
director had lit out for a dictionary without loss of time, so that when
the two great miners got together, they were both proud and confident.
Each was proud because he knew what a sump was, and confident that the
other one didn't know.




MINING AS A SCIENCE

|THE study of mining as a science is one which brings with it a quiet
joy, which the novice knows nothing of. In Morrison's Mining Eights we
find the following:

"If all classes of lode deposits are to be regarded as legally
identical, it follows that where a vein is pinched for a considerable
distance, it is lost to the owner; if its apex is found in the slide, it
can not be located as a lode.

"The distinction which would relieve these points would be to allow the
dip to such lodes Only as have a _perpendicular base_ and are not on the
nature of _stratigraphical deposits!_ all the inconsistencies apparent
from the previous paragraph are the sequence to any other ruling.

"If it be alleged that such holdings are not applicable to fissure
veins, at once a distinction is made between the two classes of veins in
their consideration under the act; and if a single distinction in their
legal status be admitted, no reason can be alleged against further
distinctions with reference to their essential points at difference."

How, few who have not toiled over the long and wearisome works upon
mining as a legal branch of human knowledge, would care a cold, dead
clam, whether such lodes as have perpendicular bases, or those which
have stratigraphical deposits, are to be allowed under the law in
relation to pinched out or intersecting veins.

But to the student, whose whole life is wrapped up in the investigation
of this beautiful mystery, these logical sequences break upon his mind
with a beautiful effulgence that fills him with unstratified and purely
igneous or nomicaseous joy.

Reading farther in the thrilling work, above referred to, we find this
little garland of fragrant literary wood violets:

"Another point to be guarded against in the conveyance of a segregated
portion of a claim on a fissure vein, is, that a line drawn at right
angles to the side lines at the surface, and which is intended as the
dividing fine between the part retained and the part sold, may, when
carried vertically downward, cut off the vein on its dip in such a way
as to divide it, for instance, at the surface. It begins 'at the west
end of discovery shaft,' it may leave the bottom of such shaft entirely
in the west fraction of the lode within a comparatively few feet of
sinking. Such result, or a similar result, will invariably occur where
the vein has a dip, unless the end lines are at an exact right angle to
the strike of the vein."

Now, however, supposing that, for the sake of argument, the above be
true; but, in addition thereto, a segregation of non-metallic vertically
heterogeneous quartzite in non-conformity to presupposed notions of
horizontal deposits of mineral in place should be agatized and
truncated with diverging lines meeting at the point of intersection and
disappearing with the pinched veins or departing from known proximity
in company with the dividends, we have then to consider whether a winze
coming in at this juncture and pinching out the assessments, would
thereby invalidate tertiary flux, and thereby, in the light of a close
legal examination of the slide, bar out the placer or riparian rights
of contesting parties, or, if so, why in thunder should it not, or
at least, what could be done about it in case the same or a totally
different set of surrounding circumstances should or should not take
place?




DRAWBACKS OF ROYALTY.

|IT seems from our late dispatches that the prevailing assassin has
made his appearance in England, and has fired at Her Royal Tallness, the
Queen. The dispatch does not say why the man fired at Victoria, but the
chances are that she at some time in a careless moment refused him the
appointment of Book-keeper to the Queen's Livery Stable Extraordinary,
or neglected to confirm his nomination to the position as Usher
Plenipotentiary to the Royal Bath Room and Knight of the Queen's
Cuspidor.

Royalty gets it in the nose every day or two, and yet after the family
has hung onto the salary for several centuries it does not occur to
the average king that he could strike a job as humorist on some London
paper, at about the same salary and with none of the annoyances. The
most of those people who have worn a great, heavy cast iron crown, with
diamonds on it as big as a peanut, have become so attached to it that
they can't swear off in a moment.

We do not see where the orchestra comes in on a thing like that. The
average American would rather sell mining stock, and get wealthy without
a tail on his name and his hair all worn off with a crown two sizes too
large for him, than to be King of the Cannibal Islands with a missionary
baby on toast twice a day.




ENGLISH HUMOR

|THE London _Spectator_ says that "the humor of the United States, if
closely examined, will be found to depend in a great measure on
the ascendancy which the principle of utility has gained over the
imaginations of a rather imaginative people." The humor of England, if
closely examined, will be found just about ready to drop over the picket
fence into the arena, but never quite making connections. If we scan
the English literary horizon, we will find the humorist up a tall tree,
depending from a sharp knot thereof by the slack of his overalls. He is
just out of sight at the time you look in that direction. He always has
a man working in his place, however. The man who works in his place
is just paring down the half sole, and newly pegging a joke, that has
recently been sent in by the foreman for repairs.




ABOUT THE AUTOPSY.

|WE have been carefully reading and investigating the report of Dr.
Lamb, relative to the anatomical condition of the late remnants of
Charles J. Gluiteau, and also a partial or minority report furnished by
the other two doctors, who got on their ear at the time of the autopsy.
We are permitted to print the fragment of a private letter addressed
personally to the editor from one of these gentlemen, whose name we are
not permitted to use. He says:

"We found the late lamented, and after looking him over thoroughly, and
removing what works he had inside of him, agreed, almost at once, that
he was dead. This was the only point upon which we agreed.

"Shortly after we began to remove the internal economy of the deceased,
some little discussion arose between Doc Lamb and myself about the
extravasation of blood in the right pectoralis and the peculiar position
of the dewflicker on the dome of the diaphragm. I made a suggestion
about the causes that had led to this, stating, in my opinion, the
pericarditis had crossed the median line and congested the dewdad.

"He said it was no such thing, and that I didn't know the difference
between a malpighian capsule and an abdominal viscera.

"That insulted me, but I held my temper, going on with my work, removing
the gall-bladder and other things, as though nothing had been said.

"By and by, Lamb said I'd better quit fooling with the pancreas, and
come and help him. Then he advanced a tom-fool theory about an adhesion
of the dura mater to the jib-boom, or some medical rot or other, and I
told him that I thought he was wrong, and I didn't believe deceased
had any dura mater. Lamb flared up then, and struck at me with a bloody
towel. I then grabbed a fragment of liver, and pasted him in the nose.
I don't allow any sawbone upstart to impose on me, if I know it. He then
called me a very opprobrious epithet, indeed, and struck me in the eye
with a kidney. Then the fight became disgraceful, and by the time we
got through, the late lamented was considerably scattered. Here lay
a second-hand lobe of liver, while over there was the apex of a lung
hanging on a gas fixture. It was a pretty lively scrimmage, and made
quite a feeling between us. I still think, however, that I was right in
standing up for my theory, and when an old pelican like Lamb thinks he
can scare me into St. Vitus' dance, he fools himself. The fact is,
he don't know a gall-bladder from the gout, and he couldn't tell a
lobulated tumor from the side of a house. I told him so, too, while I
was putting some court plaster on my nose, after he pasted me with an
old prison bedstead. Lamb would get along better with me if he would
curb his violent temper. I guess he thought so, too, when I broke his
false teeth and jammed them so far back into his oesophagus that he got
blue in the face. I never allow a secondhand horse doctor to impose on
me, if I know it, and it is time Doc Lamb took a grand aborescent tumble
to himself."

A FEW CALM WORDS.

|A LONDON paper tells how when a certain Dean of Chester was all ready
to perform a marriage between persons of high standing, the bride was
very late. When she reached the altar, to the question, "Wilt thou take
this man?" she replied in most distinct tones, "I will not." On retiring
with the Dean to the vestry, she explained that her late arrival was
not her fault, and that the bridegroom had accosted her on her arrival
at the church with, "G--d d----n you, if this is the way you begin
you'll find it to to your cost when you're my wife."

That was no way to open up a honeymoon. They are not doing that way
recently, and in the bon ton and dishabille select and etcetera
society of the more metropolitan cities, such a remark would at once be
considered as outre and Corpus Christi.

The groom should stop and consider that sometimes the most annoying
accidents occur to a young lady in dressing. Suppose for instance that
in stooping over to button her shoe she breaks a spoke in her corset and
has to send it to the blacksmith shop, do you think that the groom is
justified in kicking over the altar and dragging his affianced up the
aisle by the hair of the head? We would rather suggest that he would
not. There are other distressing accidents which may happen at such
a time to the prospective bride, but we forbear to enter into the
harrowing details. No man with the finer feelings of a gentleman will
ever knock his new wife down in the church and tramp on her, until he
knows to a reasonable degree of certainty that he is right. It may be
annoying, of course, to the groom to stand and look out of the window
for half an hour while the bride is allaying the hemorrhage of a pimple
on her nose with a powder puff, but then, great hemlock! if a man can't
endure that and smile, how will he behave when the clothesline falls
down and the baby gets a kernel of corn up its nose?

These are questions which naturally occur to the candid and thinking
mind and command our attention. The groom who would swear at his wife
for being a few minutes late at the altar, would kill her and throw her
stiffened remains over into the sheep corral if she allowed the twins to
eat crackers in his bed and scatter the crumbs over his couch.

Let us look these matters calmly in the face, and not allow ourselves to
drift away into space.




DON'T LIKE OUR STYLE.

|OSCAR WILDE closes his remarks about

America thus: "But it is in the decay of manners that the thoughtful and
well-bred American has cause for regret. I have repeatedly said this,
but I am told in reply: 'We are still a young country, and you must
not be too severe upon us.' 'Yes,' I answer, 'but when your country
was still younger, it's manners were better. They have never been equal
since to what they were in Washington's time, a man whose manners were
irreproachable. I believe a most serious problem for the American people
to consider, is the cultivation of better manners among its people.
It is the most noticeable, the most painful defect in American
civilization." Yes, Oscar, you are, in a measure, correct. Our manners
are a little decayed. So also were the eggs with which you were greeted
in some of our cities. That may have given you a wrong impression as to
our manners and their state of health. We just want to straighten out
any little error of judgment on your part as to American customs, and to
impress upon your mind the fact that the decayed article which, in most
cases you considered our miasma-impregnated etiquette, was what is known
among savants as decayed cabbage.




MR. T. WILSON.

|THE gentleman above referred to has accomplished one of the most
remarkable feats known to modern science. Though uneducated, and perhaps
inexperienced, he has attracted toward himself the notice of the world.

Though he was once a poor boy, unnoticed and unknown, he has risen to
the proud eminence from which, with pride, and covered with glory and
sore places, he may survey the civilized world. He entered upon an
argument with Mr. Sullivan, knowing the mental strength and powers
of his adversary, and yet he never flinched. He stood up before his
powerful antagonist, and acquired a national reputation, and a large
octagonal breadth of black and blue intellect, which are the envy and
admiration of 50,000,000 people.

This should be a convincing argument to our growing youth of the
possibilities in store for the earnest, untiring and enthusiastic
thumper. It is an example of the wonderful triumph of mind over matter.
It shows how certain intellectual developments may be acquired
almost instantaneously. It demonstrates at once that phrenological
protuberances may be grown more rapidly and more spontaneously than the
scientist has ever been willing to admit.

A few weeks ago, Tug Wilson was as obscure as the greenback party. Now
he is known from ocean to ocean, and his fame is as universal as is that
of Dr. Tanner, the starvation prima donna of the world. Few men have the
intellectual stamina to withstand the strain of such an argument as
he did, but he left the arena with a collection of knobs and arnica
clustering around his brow, which he justly merited, and the world will
not grudge him this meagre acquisition. It was due to his own exertions
and his own prowess, and there is no American so mean as to wrest it
from him.

Thousands of our own boys, who to-day are spearing frogs, or bathing in
the rivers of their native land and parading on the shingly beach with
no clothes on to speak of, are left to choose between such a career of
usefulness and greatness of brow, and the hum-drum life of a bilious
student and pale, sad congressman. Will you rise to the proud pinnacle
of fame as a pugilist, boys, or will you plug along as a sorrowing,
overworked statesman? Now, in the spring-time of your lives, choose
between the two, and abide the consequences.




ETIQUETTE OF THE NAPKIN

|IT has been stated, and very truly too, that the law of the napkin
is but vaguely understood It may be said, however, on the start, that
custom and good breeding have uttered the decree that it is in poor
taste to put the napkin in the pocket and carry it away.

The rule of etiquette is becoming more and more thoroughly established,
that the napkin should be left at the house of the host or hostess,
after dinner.

There has been a good deal of discussion, also, upon the matter of
folding the napkin after dinner, and whether it should be so disposed
of, or negligently tossed into the gravy boat. If, however, it can be
folded easily, and without attracting too much attention and prolonging
the session for several hours, it should be so arranged, and placed
beside the plate, where it may be easily found by the hostess, and
returned to her neighbor from whom she borrowed it for the occasion. If,
however, the lady of the house is not doing her own work, the napkin may
be carefully jammed into a globular wad, and fired under the table, to
convey the idea of utter recklessness and pampered abandon.

The use of the finger bowl is also a subject of much importance to the
bon ton guest who gorges himself at the expense of his friends.

The custom of drinking out of the finger bowl, though not entirely
obsolete, has been limited to the extent that good breeding does not now
permit the guest to quaff the water from his finger howl, unless he does
so prior to using it as a finger bowl.

Thus it will be seen that social customs are slowly but surely cutting
down and circumscribing the rights and privileges of the masses.

At the court of Eugenie, the customs of the table were very rigid, and
the most prominent guest of H. R. H. was liable to get the G. B. if
he spread his napkin on his lap, and cut his egg in two with a carving
knife. The custom was that the napkin should be hung on one knee, and
the egg busted at the big end and scooped out with a spoon.

A prominent American, at her table, one day, in an unguarded moment,
shattered the shell of a soft-boiled egg with his knife, and, while
prying it apart, both thumbs were erroneously jammed into the true
inwardness of the fruit with so much momentum that the juice took him in
the eye, thus blinding him and maddening him to such a degree, that
he got up and threw the remnants into the bosom of the hired man
plenipotentiary, who stood near the table, scratching his ear with a
tray. As may readily be supposed, there was a painful interim during
which it was hard to tell for five or six minutes whether the prominent
American or the hired man would come out on top; but at last the
American, with the egg in his eye, got the ear of the high-priced hired
man in among his back teeth, and the honor of our beloved flag was
vindicated.




AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

|A SINGULAR thing occurred in England the other day, and in view of its
truth, and also in order that the American side of the affair may be
shown in the correct light, we give the facts as they occurred, having
obtained our information directly from the parties who were implicated
in the affair. We hesitate to take hold of the subject, but our duty to
the American people demands some action, and we do not falter.

During the past winter there arrived in London a suspicious-looking
metallic box, with a peculiar thumb-screw or button on the top. It was
sent by mail, and was addressed to a prominent land owner. This
gentleman had been on the watch for some explosive machine for some
time, and when it was brought to him, he at once turned it over to the
authorities for investigation. The police force, detective force and
chemists were called in, and requested to ascertain the nature of the
infernal machine, and, if possible, where it came from.

Experts examined the box, and, with the aid of a cord attached to
the suspicious button on top, pulled open the metallic box without
explosion. The substance contained therein, was of a dark color, with a
strong smell of ammonia. All kinds of tests were made by the experts, in
order to ascertain of what kind of combustible it was composed. The odor
was carefully noted, as well as the taste, and then there was a careful
chemical analysis made, which was barren of result. In the midst of
the general alarm, the London papers, with large scare-heads and
astonishers, gave full and elaborate reports of the attempt upon the
life of a prominent man, through the agency of a new and very peculiar
machine, loaded with an explosive, of which scientists could gain no
knowledge or information whatever.

It looked as though the assassin was far in advance of science, or at
least of professional chemists, and the matter was about to be given up
in despair, when the following letter arrived from San Antonio, Texas,
United States of America:

"My Dear Sir:--I sent you by a recent mail, prepaid, a small metallic
box of bat guano, from the caves of Texas, for analysis and experiment.
Please acknowledge receipt of saine.

"Morton Frewen."

Then the experts went home. They felt as though science had done all it
could in this case, and they needed rest, and perfect calm, and change
of scene. They hadn't seen their families for some time, and they wanted
to go home and get acquainted with their wives. They didn't ask for
any pay for their services. They just said it was in the interest of
science, and they couldn't have the heart to charge anything for it. One
chemist started off without his umbrella, and never went back after it.

When he got home he was troubled with nausea, and they had to feed him
on cracker toast for several weeks.

We tell this incident simply to vindicate America. The London papers
did not give all the proceedings, and we feel it our duty to place the
United States upon a square footing with England in this matter. Of
course it is a little tough on the experts, but when we know our duty
to our magnificent country and the land that gave us birth, there is no
earthly power we fear, no terrestrial snoozer who can deter us from its
performance.




THE CODFISH.

|THIS tropical bird very seldom wings his way so far west as Wyoming.
He loves the sea breezes and humid atmosphere of the Atlantic ocean, and
when isolated in this mountain clime, pines for his native home.

The codfish cannot sing, but is prized for his beautiful plumage and
seductive odor.

The codfish of commerce is devoid of digestive apparatus, and is more or
less permeated with salt.

Codfish on toast is not as expensive as quail on toast.

The codfish ball is made of the shattered remains of the adult codfish,
mixed with the tropical Irish potato of commerce.

The codfish has a great wealth of glad, unfettered smile. When he laughs
at anything, he has that same wide waste of mirth and back teeth that
Mr. Talmage has. The Wyoming codfish is generally dead. Death, in most
cases, is the result of exposure and loss of appetite. No one can look
at the codfish of commerce, and not shed a tear. Far from home, with his
system filled with salt, while his internal economy is gone, there is an
air of sadness and homesickness and briny hopelessness about him that no
one can see unmoved.

It is in our home life, however, that the codfish makes himself felt
and remembered. When he enters our household, we feel his all pervading
presence, like the perfume of wood violets, or the seductive odor of a
dead mouse in the piano.

Friends may visit us and go away, to be forgotten with the advent of
a new face; but the cold, calm, silent corpse of the codfish cannot be
forgotten. Its chastened influence permeates the entire ranch. It steals
into the parlor, like an unbidden guest, and flavors the costly curtains
and the high-priced lambrequins. It enters the dark closet and dallies
lovingly with your swallowtail coat. It goes into your sleeping
apartment, and makes its home in your glove box and your handkerchief
case.

That is why we say that it is a solemn thing to take the life of a
codfish. We would not do it. We would pass him by, a thousand times, no
matter how ferocious he might be, rather than take his life, and have
our once happy home haunted forever by his unholy presence.




HIS AGED MOTHER.

|AN exchange says that "the James boys had a morose and ugly
disposition." This may be regarded as authentic. The James boys were not
only morose, but they were at times irritable and even boorish. Some of
their acts would seem to savor of the most coarse and rude of impulses.
Jesse James at different times killed over fifty men. This would show
that his disposition must have been soured by some great sorrow. A
person who fills the New Jerusalem with people, or kills a majority of
the republican voters of a precinct, or the entire board of directors
of a national bank, or who remorselessly kills all the first-class
passengers on a through train, just because he feels crochety and
disagreeable, must be morose and sullen in his disposition. No man, who
is healthy and full of animal spirits, could massacre the ablebodied
voters of a whole village, unless he felt cross and taciturn naturally.

There should have been a post mortem examination of Mr. James to
determine what was the matter with him. We were in favor of a post
mortem examination of Mr. James twelve years ago, but there seemed to be
a feeling of reluctance on the part of the authorities about holding it.
No one seemed to doubt the propriety of such a movement, but there was
a kind of vague hesitation by the proper officials on account of his
mother. There has been a vast amount of thoughtfulness manifested by
the Missouri people on behalf of Jesse's mother. For nearly twenty years
they have put off the post mortem examination of Mr. James, because they
knew that his mother would feel wretched and gloomy when she saw her son
with his vitals in one market basket, and his vertebræ in another. The
American people hate like sin to step in between a mother and her child,
and create unpleasant sensations.

Mr. Pinkerton was the most considerate. At first he said he would hold
an autopsy on Mr. James right away, but it consumed so much time holding
autopsies on his detectives, that he postponed Jesse's post mortem for
a long time. He also hoped that after the lapse of years, may be, Mr.
James would become enfeebled so that he could steal up behind him, some
night, and stun him with a Chicago pie; but Jesse seemed vigorous, up to
a late date, and out of respect for his aged mother, the Chicago sleuth
hounds of justice have spared him.

Detectives are sometimes considered hardhearted and unloving in their
natures, but this is not the case. Very few of them can bear to witness
the shedding of blood, especially their own blood. Sometimes they find
it necessary to kill a man in order to restore peace to the country, but
they very rarely kill a man like James. This is partly due to the fact
that they hate to cut a man like that right down, before he has a chance
to repent. They are prone to give him probation, and yet another chance
to turn. Still, there are lots of mean, harsh, unthinking people who do
not give the detectives credit for this.




BUSINESS LETTERS.

|ALL business letters, as a rule, demand some kind of an answer,
especially those containing money. To neglect the reply to a letter is
an insult, unless the letter failed to contain a stamp. In your reply,
first acknowledge the receipt of the letter, then the receipt of the
money, whatever it is.

Letters asking for money or the payment of a bill, may be postponed from
time to time if necessary. No man should reply to such a letter while
angry. If the amount is small and you are moderately hot, wait two days.
If the sum is quite large and you are tempted to write an insulting
letter, wait two weeks, or until you have thoroughly cooled down.

Business letters should be written on plain, neat paper, with your name
and business neatly printed at the top by the Boomekang job printer.

Letters from railroad companies referring to important improvements,
etc., etc., should contain pass, not for publication, but as a guarantee
of good faith.

Neat and beautiful penmanship is very desirable in business
correspondence, but it is most important that you should not spell God
with a little g or codfish with a k. Ornamental penmanship is good, but
it will not take the cuss off if you don't know how to spell.

Read your letter over carefully after you have written it, if you can;
if not, send it with an apology about the rush of business.

In ordering goods, state whether you will remit soon or whether the
account should be placed in the refrigerator.




DANGER OF GARDENING.

|A COLORADO book agent writes us about as follows:

"For some time past it has been my desire to insure my life for the
benefit of my family, but I knew the public sentiment so well that I
feared it could not be done. I knew that there was a deep and bitter
enmity against book agents, which I found had pervaded the insurance
world to such an extent that I would be unable to obtain insurance at a
reasonable premium.

"The popular belief is that book agents are shot on sight and their
mangled bodies thrown into the tall grass or fed to the coyotes.

"I found, however, that I could get my life insured for two thousand
dollars by paying a premium of twelve dollars per year, as a book agent.
This was far better than anything I had ever looked for. The question
arose as to whether I worked in my garden or not, and I was forced to
admit that I did. It ought to reduce the premium if a man works in his
garden, and thus, by short periods of vigorous exercise, prolongs his
life, but it don't seem to be that way. They charged me an additional
three dollars on the premium, because I toiled a little among my pet
rutabagas.

"I don't know what the theory is about this matter. Perhaps the company
labors under the impression that a thousand-legged worm might crawl into
my ear and kill me, or a purple-top turnip might explode and knock my
brains out.

"Of course, in the midst of life we are in death, but I always used to
think I was safer mashing my squash-bugs and hoeing my blue-eyed beans
than when I was on the road, dodging bulldogs and selling books.

"Perhaps some amateur gardener, in a careless moment, at some time or
other, has been stabbed in the diaphragm by a murderous radish, or a
watermelon may have stolen up to some man, in years gone by, and brained
him with part of a picket fence. There must be statistics somewhere
by which the insurance companies have arrived at this high rate on
gardeners. If you know anything of this matter, I wish you would write
me, for if hoeing sweet corn and cultivating string beans is going to
sock me into an early grave I want to know it."