Kitabı oku: «Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems», sayfa 12
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOG
In speaking of the domestic and useful animals of Laramie, it would not be right to overlook the hog. I do not allude to him as useful at all, but he is very domestic. He is more so than the people seem to demand. I never saw hogs with such a strong domestic tendency as the Laramie hogs have. They have a deep and abiding love for home, all of them, and they don't care whose home it is either.
There is a tremendous pressure of hog to the square inch here. The town is filled with homeless, unhappy and starving hogs.
They run between your legs during the day, and stand in your front yard and squeal during the night. Most of them are orphans. When Thanksgiving comes it will bring no joy to them. It will be like any other day.
About all the fun they have is to root a gate off the hinges, and then run off with a table cloth in their mouths. We should not be too severe, however, on the hog. What means has he of knowing that there is a city ordinance against his running about town? Kind reader, do you think the innocent little hog would openly violate a law of the land if he knew of its existence? Certainly not. It is pardonable ignorance on the part of the hog, the same as it is with the Indian, which causes him to break over the statutes and ordinances of his country.
Our plan, therefore, is to civilize the hog. Build churches and school houses for him. Educate him and teach him the ways of industry. Put a spade and a plow at his disposal, and teach him to till the soil. The natural impulses of the hog are good, but he has been imposed upon by dishonest white men.
Long before man came with his modern appliances, the hog was here. He owned the land and used it to raise acorns and grub-worms on. But the white man has entered on the fair domain, and, regardless of his solemn treaties, has taken this land and asks that the hog, the original owner of the soil, shall be penned up in a little reservation ten feet by twelve, made of cheap pine slabs.
Every principle of right, and justice, and equity, and humanity cries out against this tyrannical action on the part of the white man. Men who would scorn to do a dishonorable act, ordinarily, snatch the broad lands that were formerly owned by the hog, away from him, and deliberately go to raising wheat on them. This is not right. We should remember that the hog has certain rights which we are bound to respect.
Did you ever stop to think, dear reader, that the hog of the present day is but a poor, degraded specimen of the true aboriginal hog, before civilization had encroached upon him? Then do not join the popular cry against him. Once he was pure as the beautiful snow.
THE BUCKNESS WHEREWITH THE BUCK BEER BUCKETH
Buck beer is demoralizing in its tendency when it moveth itself aright. It layeth hold of the intellect and twisteth it out of shape.
My son, go not with them who go to seek buck beer, for at the last it stingeth like the brocaded hornet with the red-hot narrative, and kicketh like the choleric mule.
Who hath woe? Who hath babbling? Who hath redness of eyes? He that goeth to seek the schooner of buck beer.
Who hath sorrow? Who striveth when the middle watch of the night hath come, to wind up the clock with the 15 puzzle.
He that kicketh against the buck beer and getteth left.
Verily, the buckness of the buck beer bucketh with a mighty buck, insomuch that the buckee riseth at the noon hour with a head that compasseth the town round about, and the swellness thereof waxeth more and more, even from Dan to Beer – sheba. (Current joke in the Holy Land.)
Who clamoreth with a loud voice and saith, verily, am not I a bad man? Who is he that walketh unsteadily and singeth unto himself, "The bright angels are waiting for me?" Who wotteth not even a fractional wot, but setteth his chronometer with the wooden watch of the watchmaker, and by means of a tooth-brush?
Go to. Is it not he who bangeth his intellect ferninst the bock beer, even unto the eleventh hour?
BILLIOUS NYE AND THE AMATEUR STAGE
A great portion of my time at present is taken up in preparations for my appearance in a few weeks on the amateur stage.
Excursion trains will run from Denver on this occasion, and no pains will be spared to make the grand spectacular hoo-doo one long to be remembered.
Whenever any society or association desires to make a few thousand dollars for the relief of knock-kneed Piutes, or to purchase liver-pads for impecunious Senegambians, it only has to advertise that I am to appear on the amateur stage in a heavy part.
I am not a brilliant success in the "Say-wilt-be-mine" part. Just as I get the heroine up close to me near the footlights, and begin to hug her a little as I would at home, and I temporarily forget that a thousand eyes are upon me, it comes over me that my wife is in the audience and does not seem to enjoy the play. This throws a large four-dollar gloom over the entire surroundings, and I seem to lose my grip, so to speak.
Many years ago when I was young and, as one might say, in the hey-day of vigorous manhood, and had an appetite like a P. K. Dederick Perpetual Hay Press, I consented to take a leading part, and although I could generally worry through a little light comedy, I had not then learned how rough and uncouth I appeared as the heavy lover. I therefore consented to hug a beautiful young thing before five hundred people, and in the full glare of the footlights, whom I would not have dared to wink at in her father's parlor at midnight, with the lamp turned clear down.
I have an easy, gliding stage gait that is something between a "pace" and a "rack." It is full of the very poetry of motion.
I "racked" up to the heroine at the proper time and told her how I loved her and how it was tearing me all to pieces, and so forth. Just as I was coming to the grand flourish, however, I forgot a word, and while I was thinking that up, the remainder of the speech slowly drifted away to where I couldn't get at it.
To add to the general hilarity of the occasion the stage manager, who was furnishing at that moment some pale blue lightning and distant thunder, and who happened to be drunk, threw in a heavy snow storm that should have gone into another piece.
I stood there waiting and trying to think of my part about thirty years, I should think. Any way, the snow got knee deep and the heroine excused herself and went away to warm her feet. She told me to call her up by telephone when I could think of my piece.
I thought the audience would be mad and mob me, but it didn't. There seemed to be general good feeling and harmony all the way through. I told them that I could not call to mind the exact words of my part, but if those present would like to hear a little poem that had gone the rounds of the press a good deal and which I composed myself, entitled "The Burial of Sir John Moore," I would render it in my own choice and happy style.
It is not a humorous poem, but the audience seemed to think it was, for all the way through from the time the procession started out with Sir John till he was planted, everybody was tickled nearly to death.
Now I do not take the part of the leading lover any more. The awkward young man who carries dead bodies off the stage is good enough for me.
A JOURNALISTIC CORRECTION
OFFICE OF THE MEEK-EYED TARANTULA
We have, it appears, said something, casually, in our kind-hearted way, that the sensitive Slimtown Harmonica has taken to heart, and feels badly over, so we will try, as far as possible, to place ourself in a correct position. We spoke of the Harmonica in connection with another subject which we took the liberty to write upon, and did so simply with the idea of using the Harmonica as a simile. We find, however, that we were wrong. The Harmonica is not a simile. On the contrary, it is a parabola. It is a base, inferior isosceles, and its editor is nothing but a cosmopolitan hypothenuse; and if he wants to take it up, we may be found at our office at any time between the hours of A. m. and p. m. We were wrong in speaking of the Harmonica as a comparison or a simile but we want it distinctly understood that we know what the Harmonica and its editor are, and we are not afraid to say so, either. They are pre-Adamite, vicarious isotherms, and we think that it is time the people of the west were apprized of that fact too..
BANKRUPT SALE OF LITERARY GEMS
OFFICE OF THE MORMON BAZOO
Little boys who are required by their teacher to write compositions at school can save a great deal of unnecessary worry and anxiety by calling on the editor of this paper, and glancing over the holiday stock of second-hand poems and essays. Debating clubs and juvenile lyceums supplied at a large reduction. The following are a few selections, with price:
"Old Age," a poem written in red ink, price ten cents. "The Dog," blank verse, written on foolscap with a hard pencil, five cents. "Who will love me all the while?" a tale, price three cents per pound. "Hold me in your clean white arms," song and dance, by the author of "Beautiful Snow," price very reasonable; it must be sold. "She ain't no longer mine, nor I ain't hern," or the sad story of two sundered hearts; spruce gum and licorice taken in exchange for this piece. "God: his attributes and peculiarities," will be sold at a cent and a half per pound, or traded for a tin dipper for the office. Give us a call before purchasing elsewhere.
The stock on hand must be disposed of, in order to give place to the new stock of odes and sonnets on Spring, and contributions on "the violet" and the "skipful lamb."
THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE
Marriage is, to a man, at once the happiest and saddest event of his life. He quits all the companions and associations of his youth, and becomes the chief attraction of a new home.
Every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is to be changed, and yet he flees with joy to the untrodden paths before him. Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit down on him. Little do women realize that all a man needs under the broad cerulean dome of heaven is love – and board and clothes. Love is his life. If some woman or other don't love him, and love him like a hired man, he pines away and eventually climbs the golden stair. Man is born with strong yearnings for the unyearnablc, and he does not care so much for wealth as he does for some one who will love him under all circumstances and in all conditions.
If women would spend their evenings at home with their husbands, they would see a marked change in the brightness of their homes. Too many sad-eyed men are wearing away their lives at home alone. Would that I had a pen of fire to write in letters of living light the ignominy and contumely and – some more things like that, the names of which have escaped my memory – that are to-day being visited upon my sex.
Remember that your husband has the most delicate sensibilities, and keenly feels your coldness and neglect. The former may be remedied by toasting the feet over a brisk fire before going to bed, but the latter can only be remedied by a total reform on your part. Think what you promised his parents when you sued for his hand. Think how his friends, and several girls to whom he had at different times been engaged, came to you with tears in their eyes and besought you not to be unkind to him. Do these things ever occur to you as you throw him over the card table and mop the floor with his remains? Do you ever feel the twinges of remorse after you have put an octagonal head on him for not wiping the dishes drier? Think what a luxurious home you took him from, and how his mother used to polish his boots and take care of him, and then consider what drudgery you subject him to now. Think what pain it must cause him when you growl and swear at him. Perhaps when you went away to your work you did not leave him wood and coal and water; does he ever murmur or repine at your neglect?
Ah, if wives knew the wealth of warm and true affection locked up in the bosoms of their husbands, and would draw it out, instead of allowing the hired girl to get all the benefit, what a change there would be in this earth of ours. But they never do until the companion of their joys and sorrows has winged his way to the ever-green shore and takes charge of the heavenly orchestra, and then for about two weeks you will see a violently red proboscis glimmering and sparkling under a costly black veil, after which the good qualities of the deceased will be preserved in alcohol, to be thrown up to No. 2 in the bright days to come.
Then, in conclusion, wives in Israel and other railroad towns, love your husbands while it is yet day. Give him your confidence. If your active corn manifests a wish to leave the reservation, go to your husband with it. Lean on him. He will be your solid muldoon. He will get an old wood rasp and make that corn look sick. He is only waiting for your confidence and your trust. Tell him your business affairs and he will help you out. He will, no doubt, offer to go without help in the house in order to economize, and he will think of numberless other little ways to save money. Do as we have told you and you will never regret it. Your lives will then be one great combination of rare and beautiful dissolving views. You will journey down the pathway of your earthly existence with the easy poetical glide of the fat man who steps on the treacherous orange peel. Your last days will be surrounded with a halo of love, and as your eyes get dim with age and one by one your teeth drop out, you can say with pride that you have never, never gone back on your solid pard.
A UTE PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION
The presidential conventions of last summer, and their attendant excitement, personal bitterness, and political sharpness, have called to my mind an occurrence in the history of a nation, of whose politics and whose statesmanship the civilized world knows but little.
Much has been said pro and con relative to the Indian character in general, and recently, of the Ute nation in particular, but those who knew the least have been most willing to shed information right and left, and to beam down upon the great reading world with the effulgence of the average cultivated lunatic.
I do not intend at this time to enlarge upon the question of western intolerance and eastern hero worship, as applied to the Indian nation, but simply to remark in my own gentle, soothing style, that those who know the Indian best, have the least respect and veneration for him.
At some other time I may say something relative to the Indian's home life, and attempt to show that while he appears in his public career to great advantage, both as a general and as a statesman, he is prone, like other great men, to little domestic irregularities. At this time, however, I intend simply to give some particulars of the great convention of 1875, which have never been brought to the eye of the reading public.
In the autumn of the above year at that delightful season when
The maple turns to crimson,
And the sassafras to gold.
When the soft and mellow light of the declining year sheds a subdued splendor of misty, dreamy languor over the snow-clad mountains and wooded canyons of Colorado, when the deep green of the mountain pine is darkly outlined against the pale gold of the poplar, and the cottonwood, and the willow, the chairman of the Republican central committee of the Ute nation, issued a call for a mammoth convention, to be held at Hot Sulphur Springs, for the purpose of nominating a candidate for head chief, to succeed Ula, whose term of office had expired by reason of his having violated the provisions of his first general order, in which he had pronounced himself as a champion of civil service reform.
The day for the grand convention had arrived, and Hot Sulphur Springs had become, all at once, a lively, bustling city. From every point of the compass came the wild shouts of the gathering delegates, with their credentials in one pocket, and their patriotism in pint bottles in the other.
The convention was called to order, and effected a permanent organization by electing Shavano as permanent chairman.
Shavano rose with stalely gravity, bowed to the assembled convention, and walked to the platform, escorted by his trainer. He gracefully removed a quid of partially masticated government plug tobacco, and laying it carefully on the speaker's desk, said:
"Warriors of the Ute Nation, and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are gathered once more amid the solemn silence of the mountains, and under the dying leaves of the forest, to nominate a candidate to serve as executive of the Ute nation.
"Ula, the medicine man for this moon, who had hoped to be here, and who had his impromptu speech written for this occasion, will not be able to attend. I had hoped to see him here that he might act as secretary, but last evening he was shot by request.
"It seems that he had diagnosed the case of Prairie Dog, the son of Coyote, and had pronounced it to be membranous croup; but the coroner's inquest developed the fact that Prairie Dog had climbed the golden stair, the victim to a can of concentrated lye.
"A mighty nation, whose numbers are as the sands of the sea, can afford to let its medicine men fool around with its people and experiment with them till they meander up the flume, but the Ute nation is not large. It is a mere handful. We have only enough for a quorum, and we can not use any of them for scientific experiments. That is why Ula is on the evergreen shore instead of acting as our secretary to-day. At the request of the sorrowing friends of Prairie Dog, the medicine man's license was revoked, and Ula was fixed up for an extempore shot-pouch; so another person will have to act as your secretary.
"Warriors, I do not wish to trespass on your time. You have selected me as your chairman, and I thank you for the honor.
"We are now a small and powerless nation. Our war-cry is answered by the hilarious laughter of our foes. Once we were great. Our hunting grounds were without limit and our villages were as the leaves of the forest.
"To-day the white man plants his Swedish turnips above the graves of our ancestors. We are the orphan children of a great people and our sun is set.
"Once we were wealthy and powerful. Now we are poor and weak, and our wives cannot keep a hired girl.
"Why do the wails of our people echo among the canyons and desolated villages?
"Why are we left to mourn the loss of our wild horses and why are our own hillsides dotted with the locations and prospect holes of the pale face?
"Who is at fault that the graves of our fathers are staked as the 'Gilt Edge,' or the 'Bullion Lode,' or the 'Lucky Sal,' or the 'Calamity Jane,' or the 'Cross-Eyed Hannah with a Cork Limb?'
"I charge these woes of our people upon the puerile policy and fire-water reign of a democratic administration over the nation. [Deafening cheers.]
"Warriors and gentlemen of the convention: I have only one more word to say. I ask that the rotten fabric of the Ula, Bourbon, dyed-in-the-wool administration be overturned, that peace and prosperity may once more smile upon us.
"In conclusion I would ask the further pleasure of the convention." [Uproarious applause; the audience joining in "Old John Brown he had a little Injun."]
A committee on credentials was then selected, consisting of five members, of which Buffalo Tripe was chairman.
An adjournment to the following day at 10 A. m. was next taken by the convention.
The delegates were formally invited by the proprietor of the Jack Rabbit house to attend a little social walk-around and select scalp-dance on the following evening.
At the appointed hour the convention was called to order by the chair, and a report from the committee on credentials was called for.
Buffalo Tripe, on behalf of the committee, submitted the report that the delegates present were all entitled to seats, except that Dead Man's canyon had a double delegation.
The report of the committee on credentials was accepted, and the committee discharged. The chair then selected a new committee to examine the two delegations from Dead Man's canon, and instructed it to report adversely on the drunkest one.
This was regarded as a victory for the friends of Ouray, the favorite son from Stray Horse Gulch.
Nominations then being in order, the Silver-Tongued Cactus Plant from Middle Park arose majestically and said:
"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention: Our people have called us to do their work around the council fire and name for them a chief. [Loud cheers.] They look to us to-day for the assurance of their future prosperity.
"We stand in the moccasins of mighty men to-day with our tribes. Let us not betray their confidence. Let us be able to return to our squaws and pappooses with the smile of the Great Father upon us. [Applause.] It is a solemn moment for our whole nation, and the silence of a mighty forest amid the gathering storm is upon us. Mr. Chairman, I have the pleasure of nominating for our executive, Ouray, the man who never told a lie." [Thunders of applause and wild demonstrations throughout the entire wigwam.]
After the excitement had died away Hohne-pah-Snocke-monthegob, which in the Ute tongue means the man-with-the-patent-liver-pad, arose, and, laying aside a chew of tobacco about the size of an early rose potato, said:
"Mr. Chairman and delegates of the convention: I wish to put in nomination to-day Douglas, the amusing little cuss from Stinking Water. [Cheers.] I nominate him because he is a dark horse. As a candidate he is extremely brunette. His record is also on that order. I think he will run, as I may say, like a bay steer in the cucumber-patch. He is the swift-foot of the prairie, and the Mountain Zephyr of Cheyenne can not overtake him. He is also intellectual, and has written several little gems on spring. He is a philosopher, a scholar and a judge of whisky. He will harmonize the disaffected elements of our tribe, and secure the German vote. Douglas has a staving war record, and is lazy and shiftless enough to command the respect and esteem of the entire nation. The crisis seems to demand a standard-bearer who will meet the cunning of the pale face with the cunning of the red man, and I therefore make this nomination in order that I may go to my camp in the Gunnison country feeling that I have done my duty by calling the attention of my people to a man who is well calculated to lead us to success. Douglas has filled almost every position of trust or profit in our nation. He has held nearly every office within the gift of the people from watermelon stealer extraordinary up to most supreme bartender of the nation, and he has never betrayed a trust. I therefore do myself the great honor to place his name in nomination." [Cheers and bass drum solo.]
No more names were placed in nomination, and shortly afterward the convention had declared its preference for Ouray as its candidate.
He was called upon at his room by a committee and serenaded at the Jack-Rabbit House by a large band with torchlight procession.
On being called out, Ouray made a very short speech, as follows:
"Warriors and Fellow-Citizens of Indian Descent: I thank you for the honor you have conferred upon me to-day, and promise, if elected, to do all that I have agreed to do, besides what I may hereafter agree to do. I hope you will excuse me from making a long speech as I am very much worn out with my labors in securing this unexpected nomination. I also have an engagement to speak before the Young Men's Christian Association to-morrow, and also to address the Pocahontas Lodge of Good Templars the day following.
"I am very much overcome with surprise, this nomination having come entirely unsought, and compelled thus to receive a nomination forced upon me, together with the mental strain and constant worry necessary on my part to bring about this gratifying result, you will not be surprised that I thus abruptly close my remarks and bid you good-night."
This speech was greeted with round after round of applause, after which Douglas was called for by his friends. He did not meet with any great degree of success, for when he undertook to inhale a full breath and start his speech the friends of the regular nominee would present him with some antique eggs of the vintage of '49, and Douglas had to adjourn and rinse his mouth out with government whiskey. This occasioned delay and annoyance.
The delegates tripped the light fantastic till toward morning and then retired. In the afternoon they all arose with a light, maroon taste in their mouths, told the gentlemanly proprietor of the Jack-Rabbit House to charge their respective bills to the government, mounted their horses, and the most harmonious convention known to the world had become a matter of history.
