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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78694 ***
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 771
+Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+The Humor of
+“Bill” Nye
+
+Edited, with an Introduction, by
+John W. Gunn
+
+HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
+GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1924
+Haldeman-Julius Company
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+THE HUMOR OF “BILL” NYE
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The first book I remember (excepting several Dickens novels, flotsam of
+an abandoned attic library) is a cheap, ill-favored, coarsely printed
+volume of “Bill” Nye’s sketches, elegantly entitled _Baled Hay_. I
+discovered it in a corner of the village postoffice, where there were
+a couple of shelves of nondescript books--cheap in every sense: in
+price, binding and contents--which served as the sole local excuse for
+a bookstore. This copy of “Bill” Nye is the link between my boyish and
+my mature reading. Nye is the one author whom I enjoy to this day in
+precisely the same spirit and to the same degree that I enjoyed him as
+a boy. This fact indicates his limitation and his peculiar appeal. He
+is limited to a crude, obvious, undeveloped humor; and his appeal is
+to the undiscriminating childlike mirth in a man. He is juvenile in
+essence, in subject, in manner. I might say that “Bill” Nye was funny
+to me in the same way that almost any trifling break in the monotony of
+the schoolroom was funny--a suddenly overturned chair, a spilled bottle
+of ink, or an egregious blunder in recitation.
+
+Perhaps this is not an adequate explanation. It is not every schoolboy
+that responds to the boisterous fun of “Bill” Nye. They prefer, as in
+later life, something with plenty of action--_Peck’s Bad Boy_, for
+example or the misadventures of Mr. Bowser (wasn’t this the name?).
+Yet I say it is to the boy in man, to the uncouth comic spirit that
+lurks in every age of man, that “Bill” Nye appeals. One enjoys him
+in the mood of a boy released from school, or, better still, in the
+spirit of spring-time truancy. What a book like _Treasure Island_ is to
+the sense of adventure, what fairy tales are to the sense of wonder,
+“Bill” Nye is to the sense of humor. The enjoyment of “Bill” Nye is not
+found in the intellectual glow of satire, in the keen smile of wit, in
+the subtle thrill of epigram or paradox, but in the loud laughter of
+the commonest of comic things. For this reason I find in him a speedy
+and unfailing escape from melancholy thoughts. No matter how jaded
+one’s spirits, how deeply plunged in gloom, Nye’s grimacing, cavorting
+absurdities will surely produce the usual number of laughs. There is
+not demanded any delicate receptive mood, any particular conjunction of
+happy spirits. He is as gratuitously and independently ludicrous and
+laughable as a circus clown.
+
+One could not call “Bill” Nye subtle--heavens! no--but his humor is
+often artificial, in that it depends not absolutely upon incidents
+that in themselves are humorous, but upon an odd, perverse, irrational
+use of words. He tells somewhere of a would-be author, who fondly
+anticipated, when his work should be finished, a crowd of publishers
+“trampling the daisies” in the front yard. After wearily writing
+“Finis,” he looked out of the window and was “surprised by the abrupt
+and pronounced manner in which they were not there.” This is absurd
+enough, in all conscience; and because it is absurd--unexpectedly
+and unreasonably absurd--I, for one, find it laughable. And who can
+resist a chuckle at this sort of expression: “the low rumble of the
+throbbing Boston brain dimly heard in the distance”? Writing of
+taxidermy, on which he gravely pretends to be an authority, he refers
+to “upholstered beasts.” Again, we have this phrase: “the still, white
+features of a soup-bone that has outlived its usefulness.” And this:
+“the death-rattle of a bathtub.” He declares that he is willing to “sit
+up all night to doubt” the theory of eternal damnation. Writing of the
+stern and hidebound Puritans who settled on the “stern and rockbound”
+coast of New England, he defines religious freedom as “the art of
+giving intolerance a little more room.” I am grateful for every blow,
+however light, at Puritanism and intolerance. Whether it be Voltaire or
+“Bill” Nye (a sufficiently grotesque comparison!) there is relish in
+the ironic or humorous view of the atrabilious Cotton Mathers of this
+world. I quote another of Nye’s amusing references to the Puritans:
+“Among the Puritans there were several who had enlarged consciences,
+and who desired to take in extra work for others who had no consciences
+and were busy in the fields.” The dreary economic background
+that perhaps had much to do with the narrowness of outlook that
+distinguished the Puritans is succinctly described by Nye: “The people
+were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian
+corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the
+following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should
+give them strength to dig for clams again.” There is shrewdness, too,
+in this observation on the Civil War: “Most great wars are arranged by
+people who stay at home and sell groceries to the widow and orphan and
+old maids at one hundred per cent advance.”
+
+The best of “Bill” Nye, to my notion, are his humorous historical
+sketches--pseudo-historical, indeed, but frequently affording glimpses
+of the truth that are not to be found in the sober accepted chronicles.
+The quality of this phase of his humor is, I think, simply explained.
+It consists of an irreverence that is, at bottom, touched with
+skepticism. Hero-worship, if it is a more or less universal instinct of
+human nature, is a rather stiff and uncomfortable and trying exercise.
+It is, too, an overestimated and overworked instinct, that has been too
+persistently and prodigiously appealed to in popular history. These
+“steel engravings,” plaster saints and wooden models of heroism are
+(certainly at times) an unlovable and tiresome company.
+
+One finds a wholesome, hearty reaction from this hero-worship in “Bill”
+Nye’s jolly brand of history. He goes guffawing down the Hall of
+Fame, swatting blithely the sedate statues of the brave and good and
+mighty and learned. Here he is, indeed, a very schoolboy, throwing his
+history-book aside, and shooting paper wads at the immobile, insensibly
+decorous figures of Columbus and Washington and Ben Franklin and the
+rest. In spite of oneself, one laughs even at one’s favorite hero, and,
+with seeming inconsequence, regards this hero thereafter in a more
+human and favorable light. There is relief, there is relaxation--a
+healthful unbending of the faculties--in these droll, preposterous,
+utterly irrelevant comments. We see Columbus suffering from a period
+of geographical depression--nothing to discover--and being recommended
+to Queen Isabella as a capable man in his trade, who “is willing to
+let his work show for itself”; Washington as a man equally efficient
+in prayer and profanity, swearing with a vigor that would “break up
+the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual”; Ben Franklin as
+foreman, “cussing” the rival paper and yelling for more copy; Daniel
+Webster as “a good off-hand speaker,” who “wore the largest hat of any
+man then in Congress”; Noah Webster, he of the immortal dictionary, as
+the man who “had the best command of language of any American author
+prior to our day.”
+
+Opinions may well differ regarding the humor of this sort of
+thing--certainly it is not profound nor subtle nor artistic humor,
+being more or less trifling horseplay indeed--but there is laughter in
+it nevertheless and it is an escape from that seriousness which often
+weighs too heavily on the spirit. It is good to laugh, whatever the
+occasion; and one who has a robust and expansive sense of humor will
+not fail to laugh occasionally with “Bill” Nye.
+
+One can say, although it goes without saying, that Nye is not of the
+company of the world’s great humorists. One would not mention him in
+the same breath with Sterne, or Rabelais, or Moliere, or Dick Steele,
+or Oscar Wilde, or our own Mark Twain. The humor of Nye is the humor
+of what Nye himself called “the new and crass civilization” of his
+day. It is not the humor of the highest culture. It is a humor that
+is barely commentary--a mere pointing out of absurdities--rather than
+deliberately or delicately creative. “Bill” Nye is superficial; he is
+sophomoric; he is often somnolent; but he is funny, and indeed this
+word defines him exactly. He is funny rather than truly humorous in
+the finer sense of the word. In the latter part of the nineteenth
+century, “Bill” Nye grew up with the Western American frontier country,
+and in the midst of these raw beginnings of a new and strange and
+boisterously immature society, full of the most violent contrasts, he
+exercised his peculiar and contemporaneous humor. A very little of
+“Bill” Nye will suffice for the general reader. His kind of humor has
+its natural limits and, writing as a journalist, much of what he wrote
+is labored and dull. This little book contains some of the best and
+most characteristic of his sketches; and if it cannot quite be said
+that this is all of him that is worth-while or enjoyable, at least it
+represents the extent to which he may be read agreeably and profitably
+by one who desires no more than a bowing acquaintance with him; it is,
+truth to tell, an accurate measure of the man’s importance.
+
+
+
+
+WORDS ABOUT WASHINGTON
+
+
+The name of George Washington has always had about it a glamor that
+made him appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with large
+feet and a mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pumpkin pie.
+I use the word glamor, not so much because I know what glamor means,
+but because I have never used it before, and I am getting a little
+tired of the short, easy words I have been using so long.
+
+George Washington’s face has beamed out upon us for many years now,
+on postage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze,
+in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic
+views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the warpath and
+on skates, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the
+solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree,
+engaged in prayer.
+
+We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe
+that he did not breathe our air or eat American groceries. But George
+Washington was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study
+of his life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from
+the proud history of the Father of his Country. I say it simply that
+the boys of America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel
+so timid about trying it.
+
+When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the
+lime-kiln at Mount Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his
+subordinates at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break
+up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention
+it in order to show the boys of our day that profanity will make them
+resemble George Washington. That was one of his weak points, and no
+doubt he was ashamed of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think
+that if they get drunk, and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe
+and George D. Prentice. There are lawyers who play poker year after
+year, and get regularly skinned, because they have heard that some of
+the able lawyers of the past century used to come home at night with
+poker chips in their pockets.
+
+Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I
+have seen poets who relied solely on the potency of their breath, and
+lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever
+did of the statutes in such case made and provided.
+
+George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first
+in war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would
+be first baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned
+at any hour of the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in
+the hearts of his countrymen, George’s postoffice address was at once
+secured.
+
+Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear
+that in America! It is a place where it is a positive disadvantage to
+be born wealthy. And yet, sometimes I wish they had experimented a
+little that way on me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of course,
+because it is too late; but it seems to me that, with my natural good
+sense and keen insight into human nature, I could have struggled along
+under the burdens and cares of wealth with great success. I do not care
+to die wealthy, but if I could have been born wealthy, it seems to me
+that I would have been tickled almost to death.
+
+I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and
+to say that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong
+sometimes in his judgment of others, both individually and in the
+aggregate, but he who gets ready to be a great man will surely find the
+opportunity.
+
+Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it for
+me, but they will never find out.
+
+In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for
+three reasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his
+friends. Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule.
+Some people cannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue
+jackass.
+
+Another reason why Washington is loved and honored today is that he
+died before we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly
+superior to the method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till
+their constituency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die.
+
+
+
+
+B. FRANKLIN, DECEASED
+
+
+Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only
+child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of
+Benjamin’s parents, they would have been childless. Think of getting
+up in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among
+seventeen pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a
+family where you would be called upon, every morning, to select your
+own cud of spruce gum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds
+stuck on a window sill. And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined.
+He desired to go to sea, and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his
+brother James, who was a printer. It is said that Franklin at once
+took hold of the great Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late
+in the interests of freedom. It is claimed that Franklin at this time
+invented the deadly weapon known as the printer’s towel. He found that
+a common crash towel could be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony,
+concentrated lye, and roller composition, and that after a few years of
+time and perspiration it would harden so that the “Constant Reader” or
+“Veritas” could be stabbed with it and die soon.
+
+Many believe that Franklin’s other scientific experiments were
+productive of more lasting benefits to mankind than this, but I do not
+agree with them.
+
+This paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly
+by James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt
+want. Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time.
+The idea of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume
+to the editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper
+while the other was in jail. In those days you couldn’t sass the king,
+and then, when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his
+paper, and took out his ad., you couldn’t put it off on “our informant”
+and go right along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your
+subscribers wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured
+in the tin dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the
+other side.
+
+How many of us today, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay in
+jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of
+all our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom
+while a double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven
+congresses of ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native
+lair, went by us?
+
+At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to
+Philadelphia and New York, where he got a chance to “sub” for a few
+weeks, and then got a regular “sit.” Franklin was a good printer, and
+finally got to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting
+by the hour in the composing room and spitting on the stone while he
+cussed the make-up and press work of the other papers. Then he would
+go into the editorial rooms and scare the editors to death with a wild
+shriek for more copy. He knew just how to conduct himself as a foreman,
+so that strangers would think he owned the paper.
+
+In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the
+_Pennsylvania Gazette_. He was then regarded as a great man, and most
+everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and
+spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist
+in any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him.
+
+Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of
+lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that
+he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or
+odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the _Gazette_
+office by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder
+storm, Franklin would tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed
+with a string and an old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and
+get enough lightning for a mess.
+
+In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made
+a good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes
+in distributing their mail than there have ever been since. If a man
+mailed a letter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where
+it was addressed.
+
+Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly on
+business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going
+to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively
+speaking, and attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the
+English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and,
+leaving his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask the king: “How’s
+trade?” Franklin never put on any frills, but he was not afraid of a
+crowned head. He used to say, frequently, that to him a king was no
+more than a seven spot.
+
+He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn’t do
+it. Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given
+it permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got
+acquainted with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of
+him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and
+start a paper. They also promised him the county printing, but he said
+no, he would have to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy
+about him.
+
+Franklin wrote _Poor Richard’s Almanac_ in 1732-57, and it was
+republished in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his
+name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and though he lived
+to be quite an old man, he never got over it entirely, but continued
+to be but an illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do
+differently, but he steadily refused to do so.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
+
+
+It was a beautiful evening at the close of a warm, luscious day in
+old Spain. It was such an evening as one would select for trysting
+purposes. The honeysuckle gave out the sweet announcement of its
+arrival on the summer breeze, and the bulbul sang in the dark vistas of
+the olive trees--sang of his love and his hope, and of the victory he
+anticipated in the morrow’s bulbul fight, and the plaudits of the royal
+couple who would be there. The pink west paled away to the touch of
+twilight, and the soft zenith was sown with stars coming like celestial
+fire-flies on the breast of a mighty meadow.
+
+Across the dusk, with bowed head, came a woman. Her air was one of
+proud humility. It was the air of royalty in the presence of an
+over-ruling power. It was Isabella. She was on her way to confession.
+She carried a large, beautifully bound volume containing a memorandum
+of her sins for the day. Ever and anon she would refer to it, but the
+twilight had come on so fast that she could not read it.
+
+Reaching the confessional, she kneeled, and, by the aid of her notes,
+she told off to the good Father and receptacle of the queen’s trifling
+sins, Fernando de Talavera, how wicked she had been. When it was over
+and the queen had risen to go, Fernando came forth, and with a solemn
+obeisance said:
+
+“May it please your Majesty, I have today received a letter from my
+good friend the prior of the Franciscan convent of St. Mary’s of Rabida
+in Andalusia. With your Majesty’s permission, I will read it to you.”
+
+“Proceed,” exclaimed Isabella, gravely, taking a piece of crochet work
+from her apron and seating herself comfortably near the dim light.
+
+“It is dated the sixth month and tenth day of the month, and reads as
+follows:
+
+“‘Dear Brother: This letter will be conveyed into your hands by the
+bearer hereof. His name is Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, who
+has been living on me for two years. But he is a good man, devout and
+honest. He is willing to work, but I have nothing to do in his line.
+Times, as you know, are dull, and in his own profession nothing seems
+to be doing. He is by profession a discoverer. He has been successful
+in the work where he has had opportunities, and there has been no
+complaint so far on the part of those who have employed him. Everything
+he has ever discovered has remained that way, and he is willing to
+let his work show for itself. Should you be able to bring this to the
+notice of her Majesty, who is tender of heart, I would be most glad;
+and should her most gracious Majesty have any discovering to be done,
+or should she contemplate a change or desire to substitute another in
+the place of the present discoverer, she will do well to consider the
+qualifications of my friend. Very sincerely and fraternally thine,
+etc., etc.’”
+
+The queen inquired still further regarding Columbus, and, taking the
+letter, asked Talavera to send him to the royal sitting room at ten
+o’clock the following day.
+
+When Columbus arose the next morning he found a note from the royal
+confessor, and, without waiting for breakfast, for he had almost
+overcome the habit of eating, he reversed his cuffs, and, taking a
+fresh handkerchief from his valise and putting it in his pocket so that
+the corner would coyly stick out a little, he was soon on his way to
+the palace. He carried also a small globe wrapped up in a newspaper.
+
+The interview was encouraging until the matter of money necessary for
+the trip was touched upon. His Majesty was called in, and spoke sadly
+of the public deficit. He said that there were one hundred dollars
+still due on his salary, and the palace had not been painted for eight
+years. He had taken orders on the store till he was tired of it. “Our
+meat bill,” said he, taking off his crown and mashing a hornet on the
+wall, “is sixty days overdue. We owe the hired girl for three weeks;
+and how are we going to get funds enough to do any discovering, when
+you remember that we have got to pay for an extra session this fall for
+the purpose of making money plenty?”
+
+But Isabella came and sat by him in her winning way, and with the
+moistened corner of her handkerchief removed a spot of maple syrup
+from the ermine trimming of his reigning gown. She patted his hand,
+and, with her gentle voice, cheered him and told him that if he would
+economize and go without cigars or wine, in less than two hundred years
+he would have saved enough to fit Columbus out.
+
+A few weeks later he had saved one hundred and fifty dollars in this
+way. The queen then went at twilight and pawned a large breast-pin,
+and, although her chest was very sensitive to cold, she went without it
+all the following winter, in order that Columbus might discover America
+before immigration set in here.
+
+Too much cannot be said of the heroism of Queen Isabella and the
+courage of her convictions. A man would have said, under such
+circumstances, that there would be no sense in discovering a place that
+was not popular. Why discover a place when it is so far out of the way?
+Why discover a country with no improvements? Why discover a country
+that is so far from the railroad? Why discover, at great expense, an
+entirely new country?
+
+But Isabella did not stop to listen to these croaks. In the language of
+the Honorable Jeremiah M. Rusk, “She seen her duty and she done it.”
+That was Isabella’s style.
+
+Columbus now began to select steamer chairs and rugs. He had already
+secured the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, and on the 3rd of August,
+1492, he sailed from Palos.
+
+Isabella brought him a large bunch of beautiful flowers as he was about
+to sail, and Ferdinand gave him a nice yachting cap and a spicy French
+novel to read on the road.
+
+He was given a commission as viceroy or governor of all the lands he
+might discover, with hunting and shooting privileges on same.
+
+He stopped several weeks at the Canary Islands, where he and his one
+hundred and twenty men rested and got fresh water. He then set out
+sailing due west over an unknown sea to blaze the way for liberty.
+
+Soon, however, his men began to murmur. They began also to pick on
+Columbus and occupy his steamer chair when he wanted to use it himself.
+They got to making chalk marks on the deck and compelling him to pay a
+shilling before he could cross them. Some claimed that they were lost
+and that they had been sailing around for over a week in a circle, one
+man stating that he recognized a spot in the sea that they had passed
+eight times already.
+
+Finally they mutinied, and started to throw the great navigator
+overboard, but he told them that if they would wait until the next
+morning he would tell them a highly amusing story that he heard just
+before he left Palos.
+
+Thus his life was saved, for early in the morning the cry of “Land ho!”
+was heard, and America was discovered.
+
+A saloon was at once started, and the first step thus taken towards the
+foundation of a republic. From that one little timid saloon, with its
+family entrance, has sprung the magnificent and majestic machine which,
+lubricated with spoils and driven by wind, gives to every American
+today the right to live under a Government selected for him by men who
+make that their business.
+
+Columbus discovered America several times after the 12th of October,
+1492, and finally, while prowling about looking for more islands,
+discovered South America near the mouth of the Orinoco.
+
+He was succeeded as governor by Francisco de Bobadilla, who sent him
+back finally in chains. Thus we see that the great are not always
+happy. There is no doubt that millions of people every year avoid many
+discomforts by remaining in obscurity.
+
+
+
+
+THE PURITANS
+
+
+In the fall of 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth during a
+disagreeable storm, and, noting the excellent opportunity for future
+misery, began to erect a number of rude cabins. This party consisted
+of one hundred and two people of a resolute character who wished to
+worship God in a more extemporaneous manner than had been the custom in
+the Church of England.
+
+They found that the Indians of Cape Cod were not ritualistic, and that
+they were willing to dispose of inside lots at Plymouth on reasonable
+terms, retaining, however, the right to use the lands for massacre
+purposes from time to time.
+
+The Pilgrims were honest, and gave the Indians something for their land
+in almost every instance, but they put a price upon it which has made
+the Indian ever since a comparatively poor man.
+
+Half of this devoted band died before spring, and yet the idea of
+returning to England did not occur to them. “No,” they exclaimed, “we
+will not go back to London until we can go first-class, if we have to
+stay here two hundred years.”
+
+During the winter they discovered why the lands had been sold to them
+so low. The Indians of one tribe had died there of a pestilence the
+year before, and so when the Pilgrims began to talk trade they did not
+haggle over prices.
+
+In the early spring, however, they were surprised to hear the word
+“Welcome” proceeding from the door-mat of Samoset, an Indian whose
+chief was named Massasoit. A treaty was then made for fifty years,
+Massasoit taking “the same.”
+
+Canonicus once sent to Governor Bradford a bundle of arrows tied up in
+a rattlesnake’s skin. The Governor put them away in the pantry with his
+other curios, and sent Canonicus a few bright new bullets and a little
+dose of powder. That closed the correspondence. In those days there
+were no newspapers, and most of the fighting was done without guarantee
+or side bets.
+
+Money matters, however, were rather panicky at the time, and the people
+were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian
+corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the
+following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should
+give them strength to dig for clams again. Thus a trip to London and
+the Isle of Wight looked farther and farther away.
+
+After four years they numbered only one hundred and eighty-four,
+counting immigration and all. The colony only needed, however, more
+people and Eastern capital.
+
+It would be well to pause here and remember the annoyances connected
+with life as a forefather. Possibly the reader has considered the
+matter already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and
+watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is
+to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620
+must have felt proud yet anxious about the clam yield also, as each new
+mouth opened on the prospect.
+
+Speaking of clams, it is said by some of the forefathers that the Cape
+Cod menu did not go beyond codfish croquettes until the beginning of
+the eighteenth century, when pie was added by act of legislature.
+
+Clams are not so restless if eaten without the brisket, which is said
+to lie hard on the stomach.
+
+Salem and Charlestown were started by Governor Endicott, and Boston was
+founded in 1630. To these various towns the Puritans flocked, and even
+now one may be seen in ghostly garments on Thanksgiving Eve flitting
+here and there turning off the gas in the parlor while the family are
+at tea, in order to cut down expenses.
+
+Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were united in 1692.
+
+Roger Williams, a bright young divine, was the first to interfere with
+the belief that magistrates had the right to punish Sabbath breakers,
+blasphemers, etc. He also was the first to utter the idea that a man’s
+own conscience must be his own guide and not that of another.
+
+Among the Puritans there were several who had enlarged consciences, and
+who desired to take in extra work for others who had no consciences and
+were busy in the fields. They were always ready to give sixteen ounces
+to the pound, and were honest, but they got very little rest on Sunday,
+because they had to watch the Sabbath breaker all the time.
+
+It is said that the Puritans knocked what fun there was out of the
+Indian. Did any one ever see an Indian smile since the landing of the
+Pilgrims?
+
+Roger Williams was too liberal to be kindly received by the clergy, and
+so he was driven out of the settlement. Finding that the Indians were
+less rigid and kept open on Sundays, he took refuge among them (1636),
+and before spring had gained eighteen pounds and converted Canonicus,
+one of the hardest cases in New England and the first man to sit up
+until after ten o’clock at night. Canonicus gave Roger the tract of
+land on which Providence now stands.
+
+Mrs. Anne Hutchinson gave the Pilgrims trouble also. Having claimed
+some special revelations and attempted to make a few remarks regarding
+them, she was banished.
+
+Banishment, which meant a homeless life in a wild land, with no one but
+the Indians to associate with, in those days, was especially annoying
+to a good Christian woman, and yet it had its good points. It offered
+a little religious freedom, which could not be had among those who
+wanted it so much that they braved the billow and the wild beast, the
+savage, the drouth, the flood, and the potato bug, to obtain it before
+anybody else got a chance at it. Freedom is a good thing.
+
+Twenty years later the Quakers shocked every one by thinking a few
+religious thoughts on their own hooks. The colonists executed four of
+them, and before that tortured them at a great rate.
+
+During dull times and on rainy days it was a question among the
+Puritans whether they would banish an old lady, bore holes with a
+red-hot iron through a Quaker’s tongue, or pitch horseshoes.
+
+
+
+
+NERO
+
+
+Nero, who was a Roman emperor from 54 to 68 A. D., was said to have
+been one of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever
+had. He was a nephew of Caligula, the Emperor, on his mother’s side,
+and a son of Dominitius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The
+above was really Nero’s name, but in the year 50 A. D. his mother
+married Claudius and her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Cæsar
+Drusus Germanicus. This name he was in the habit of wearing during
+the cold weather, buttoned up in front. During the hot weather, Nero
+was all the name he wore. In 53, Nero married Octavia, daughter of
+Claudius, and went right to housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get
+along first-rate. Nero soon wearied of his young wife and finally
+transferred her to the New Jerusalem.
+
+In 54, Nero’s mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne
+for several weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the
+steady job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary.
+
+His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried
+on during that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could
+successfully hold a man’s coat all day, while the man went to the front
+to get killed. He loved to go out riding over the battlefields, as soon
+as it was safe, in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn’t
+care if the wheels rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some
+other man’s gore. It gave him great pleasure to drive about over the
+field of carnage and gloat over the dead. Nero was not a great success
+as an Emperor, but as a gloater he has no rival in history.
+
+Nero’s reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and
+Roman fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome
+was destroyed. The Emperor was charged with starting this fire in order
+to get the insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street.
+
+Instead of taking off his crown, hanging it up in the hall, and helping
+to put out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero
+took his violin upstairs and played, “I’ll Meet You When the Sun Goes
+Down.” This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part
+of those who opposed the administration. Several persons openly
+criticized Nero’s policy and then died.
+
+A man in those days would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell
+his wife not to keep dinner waiting. “I am going down town to criticize
+the Emperor a few moments,” he would say. “If I do not get home in time
+for dinner, meet me on the ‘evergreen shore.’”
+
+Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppea Sabina. She died
+afterwards at her husband’s earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so
+much about being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower
+always gratified and pleased him.
+
+He was a very zealous monarch and kept Rome pretty well stirred
+up during his reign. If a man failed to show up anywhere on time,
+his friends would look sadly at each other and say, “Alas, he has
+criticized Nero.”
+
+A man could wrestle with the yellow fever, or the small-pox, or the
+Asiatic cholera and stand a chance of recovery, but when he spoke
+sarcastically of Nero, it was good-bye John.
+
+When Nero decided that a man was an offensive partisan, that man would
+generally put up the following notice on his office door:
+
+“Gone to see the Emperor in relation to charge of offensive
+partisanship. Meet me at the cemetery at 2 o’clock.”
+
+Finally, Nero overdid this thing and ran it into the ground. He did not
+want to be disliked and so those who disliked him were killed. This
+made people timid and muzzled the press a good deal.
+
+The Roman papers in those days were all on one side. They did not
+dare to be fearless and outspoken, for fear that Nero would take out
+his ad. So they would confine themselves to the statement that: “The
+genial and urbane Afranius Burrhus painted his new and recherche
+picket fence last week,” or “Our enterprising fellow townsman, Cæsar
+Kersikes, will remove the tail of his favorite bulldog next week, if
+the weather should be auspicious,” or “Miss Agrippina Bangoline, eldest
+daughter of Romulus Bangoline, the great Roman rinkist, will teach the
+school at Eupatorium, Trifoliatum Holler, this summer. She is a highly
+accomplished young lady, and a good speller.”
+
+Nero got more and more fatal as he grew older, and finally the Romans
+began to wonder whether he would not wipe out the Empire before he
+died. His back yard was full all the time of people who had dropped in
+to be killed, so that they could have it off their minds.
+
+Finally, Nero himself yielded to the great strain that had been placed
+upon him and, in the midst of an insurrection in Gaul, Spain and Rome
+itself, he fled and killed himself.
+
+The Romans were very grateful for Nero’s great crowning act in the
+killing line, but they were dissatisfied because he delayed it so long,
+and therefore they refused to erect a tall monument over his remains.
+While they admired the royal suicide and regarded it as a success, they
+censured Nero’s negligence and poor judgment in suiciding at the wrong
+end of his reign.
+
+I have often wondered what Nero would have done if he had been Emperor
+of the United States for a few weeks and felt as sensitive to
+newspaper criticism as he seems to have been. Wouldn’t it be a picnic
+to see Nero cross the Jersey ferry to kill off a few journalists who
+had adversely criticized his course? The great violin virtuoso and
+lightweight Roman tyrant would probably go home by return mail, wrapped
+in tinfoil, accompanied by a note of regret from each journalist in
+New York, closing with the remark that “in the midst of life we are in
+death, therefore now is the time to subscribe.”
+
+
+
+
+A SINGULAR “HAMLET”
+
+
+The closing debut of that great Shakesperean humorist and emotional
+ass, Mr. James Owen O’Connor, at the Star Theater, will never be
+forgotten. During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his
+individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello,
+and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a
+pleasure to see him in any thing wherein he killed himself.
+
+Encouraged by the success of beautiful but self-made actresses and
+hoping to win a place for himself and his portrait in the great soap
+and cigarette galaxy, Mr. O’Connor placed himself in the hands of some
+misguided elocutionist, and then sought to educate the people of New
+York and elocute them out of their thralldom up into the glorious light
+of the O’Connor school of acting.
+
+The first week he was in the hands of critics, and they spoke quite
+serenely of his methods. Later, it was deemed best to place his merits
+in the hands of a man who would be on an equal footing with him. What
+O’Connor wanted was one of his peers, who would therefore judge him
+fairly. I was selected because I know nothing whatever about acting and
+would thus be on an equality with Mr. O’Connor.
+
+After seeing his Hamlet I was of the opinion that he did wisely in
+choosing New York for debutting purposes, for had he chosen Denver,
+Colorado, at the end of the third act kind hands would have removed him
+from the stage by means of benzine and a rag.
+
+I understand that Mr. O’Connor charged Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and
+Henry Irving with using their influence among the masses in order to
+prejudice said masses against Mr. O’Connor, thus making it unpleasant
+for him to act, and inciting in the audience a feeling of gentle
+but evident hostility, which Mr. O’Connor deprecated very much
+whenever he could get a chance to do so. I looked into this matter a
+little and I do not think it was true. Until almost the end of Mr.
+O’Connor’s career, Messrs. Abbey and Irving were not aware of his great
+metropolitan success, and it is generally believed among the friends
+of the two latter gentlemen that they did not feel it so keenly as Mr.
+O’Connor was led to suppose.
+
+But James Owen O’Connor did one thing which I take the liberty of
+publicly alluding to. He took that saddest and most melancholy bit of
+bloody history, trimmed with assassinations down the back and looped
+up with remorse, insanity, duplicity and unrequited love, and he filled
+it with silvery laughter and cauliflower and mirth, and various other
+groceries which the audience threw in from time to time, thus making it
+more of a spectacular piece than under the conservative management of
+such old-school men as Booth, who seem to think that Hamlet should be
+soaked full of sadness.
+
+I went to see Hamlet, thinking that I would be welcome, for my
+sympathies were with James when I heard that Mr. Irving was picking on
+him and seeking to injure him. I went to the box office and explained
+who I was, and stated that I had been detailed to come and see Mr.
+O’Connor act; also that in what I might say afterwards my instructions
+were to give it to Abbey and Irving if I found that they had tampered
+with the audience in any way.
+
+The man in the box office did not recognize me, but said that Mr. Fox
+would extend to me the usual courtesies. I asked where Mr. Fox could
+be found, and he said inside. I then started to go inside, but ran
+against a total stranger, who was “on the door,” as we say. He was
+feeding red and yellow tickets into a large tin oven, and looking far,
+far away. I conversed with him in low, passionate tones, and asked
+him where Mr. Fox could be found. He did not know, but thought he was
+still in Europe. I went back and told the box office that Mr. Fox was
+in Europe. He said no, I would find him inside. “Well, but how shall I
+get inside?” I asked eagerly, for I could already, I fancied, hear the
+orchestra beginning to twang its lyre.
+
+“Walk in,” said he, taking in $2 and giving back 50 cents in change to
+a man with a dead cat in his overcoat pocket.
+
+I went back, and springing lightly over the iron railing while the
+gatekeeper was thinking over his glorious past, I went all around over
+the theater looking for Mr. Fox. I found him haggling over the price of
+some vegetables which he was selling at the stage door and which had
+been contributed by admirers and old subscribers to Mr. O’Connor at a
+previous performance.
+
+When Mr. Fox got through with that I presented to him my card, which
+is as good a piece of job work in colors as was ever done west of
+the Missouri river, and to which I frequently point with pride. Mr.
+Fox said he was sorry, but that Mr. O’Connor had instructed him to
+extend no courtesies whatever to the press. The press, he claimed,
+had said something derogatory to Mr. O’Connor as a tragedian, and
+while he personally would be tickled to death to give me two divans
+and a folding-bed near the large fiddle, he must do as Mr. O’Connor
+had bid--or bade him, I forget which; and so, restraining his tears
+with great difficulty, he sent me back to the entrance and although I
+was already admitted in a general way, I went to the box office and
+purchased a seat. I believe now that Mr. Fox thought he had virtually
+excluded me from the house when he told me I should have to pay in
+order to get in.
+
+I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large
+and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.
+
+Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening
+under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called “Egmont.”
+The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to
+take a note to Mr. O’Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had
+returned with the statement that Mr. O’Connor was busy rehearsing his
+soliloquy and removing a shirred egg from his outer clothing.
+
+He also said he could not promise an audience to any one. It was all he
+could do to get one for himself.
+
+So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is
+in front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with
+long-handled hay knives are on guard.
+
+All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and
+stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net
+over his head--so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any
+flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys
+it. Nobody seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as
+quick as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the
+head with a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I
+knew then that it was only a man made up to look like a presence.
+
+One of the guards, whose name, I think, was Smith, had a droop to his
+legs and an instability about the knees which were highly enjoyable.
+He walked like a frozen-toed hen, and stood first on one foot and then
+on the other, with almost human intelligence. His support was about as
+poor as O’Connor’s.
+
+After awhile the ghost vanished with what is called a stately tread,
+but I would regard it more as a territorial tread. Horatio did quite
+well, and the audience frequently listened to him. Still, he was
+about the only one who did not receive crackers or cheese as a slight
+testimonial of regard from admirers in the audience. Finally, Mr. James
+Owen O’Connor entered. It was fully five minutes before he could be
+heard, and even then he could not. His mouth moved now and then, and a
+gesture would suddenly burst forth, but I did not hear what he said. At
+least I could not hear distinctly what he said. After awhile, as people
+got tired and went away, I could hear better.
+
+Mr. O’Connor introduced into his Hamlet a set of gestures evidently
+intended for another play. People who are going to act out on the stage
+can not be too careful in getting a good assortment of gestures that
+will fit the play itself. James had provided himself with gestures
+that might do for Little Eva, or “Ten Nights in a Bar-room,” but they
+did not fit Hamlet. There is where he makes a mistake. Hamlet is a man
+whose victuals don’t agree with him. He feels depressed and talks about
+sticking a bodkin into himself, but Mr. O’Connor gives him a light,
+elastic step, and an air of persiflage, bonhomie, and frisk, which do
+not match the character.
+
+Mr. O’Connor sought in his conception and interpretation of Hamlet to
+give it a free and jaunty Kokomo flavor--a nameless twang of tansy and
+dried apples, which Shakespeare himself failed to sock into his great
+drama.
+
+There is really a good lesson to be learned from the pitiful and
+pathetic tale of James Owen O’Connor. Injudicious friends, doubtless,
+overestimated his value, and unduly praised his Smart Aleckutionary
+powers. Loving himself unwisely but too extensively, he was led away
+into the great, untried purgatory of public scrutiny, and the general
+indictment followed.
+
+The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is
+no cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from
+mediocrity to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient
+student, and the earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide
+his time, gets what James Owen O’Connor received--the just condemnation
+of those who are abundantly able to judge.
+
+In seeking to combine the melancholy beauty of Hamlet’s deep and
+earnest pathos with the gentle humor of “A Hole in the Ground,” Mr.
+O’Connor evidently corked himself, as we say at the Browning Club, and
+it was but justice after all. Before we curse the condemnation of the
+people and the press, let us carefully and prayerfully look ourselves
+over, and see if we have not overestimated ourselves.
+
+There are many men alive today who do not dare say anything without
+first thinking how it will read in their memoirs--men whom we can not,
+therefore, thoroughly enjoy until they are dead, and yet whose graves
+will be kept green only so long as the appropriation lasts.
+
+
+
+
+THE DUBIOUS FUTURE
+
+
+Without wishing to alarm the American people, or create a panic, I
+desire briefly and seriously to discuss the great question, “Whither
+are we drifting, and what is to be the condition of the coming man?”
+We can not shut our eyes to the fact that mankind is passing through
+a great era of change; even womankind is not built as she was a few
+brief years ago. And is it not time, fellow citizens, that we pause to
+consider what is to be the future of the American?
+
+Food itself has been the subject of change both in the matter of
+material and preparation. This must affect the consumer in such a way
+as to some day bring about great differences. Take, for instance, the
+oyster, one of our comparatively modern food and game fishes, and watch
+the effects of science upon him. At one time the oyster browsed around
+and ate what he could find in Neptune’s backyard, and we had to eat
+him as we found him. Now we take a herd of oysters off the trail, all
+run down, and feed them artificially till they swell up to a fancy
+size and bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask
+as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work
+the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is
+perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in the fall on
+acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the
+artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. How can
+you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health
+lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at the expense of
+his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the future usefulness
+of the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting the future of the
+human race who feed upon him?
+
+I only use the oyster as an illustration, and I do not wish to cause
+alarm, but I say that if we stimulate the oyster artificially and swell
+him up by scientific means, we not only do so at the expense of his
+better nature and keep him away from his family, but we are making our
+mark on the future race of men. Oyster-fattening is now, of course,
+in its infancy. Only a few years ago an effort was made at St. Louis
+to fatten cove oysters while in the can, but the system was not well
+understood, and those who had it in charge only succeeded in making
+the can itself more plump. But now oysters are kept on ground feed and
+given nothing to do for a few weeks, and even the older and overworked
+sway-backed and rickety oysters of the dim and murky past are made
+to fill out, and many of them have to put a gore in the waistband of
+their shells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the
+objects toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert
+with the utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science
+should get a setback, when the present hunting-case oyster will give
+place to the open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough
+to feed a hotel. Further than that, the oyster of the future will
+carry in a hip-pocket a flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two
+little Japanese bottles, one of which will contain salt and the other
+pepper, and there will be some way provided by which you can tell which
+is which. But are we improving the oyster now? That is a question we
+may well ask ourselves. Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on
+him, or is it bloat? And what will be the result in the home life of
+the oyster? We take him from all domestic influences whatever in order
+to make a swell of him by our modern methods, but do we improve his
+condition morally, and what is to be the great final result on man?
+
+The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist.
+Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation points and
+a medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science
+and advancement till Reason totters on her throne.
+
+But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future.
+Our race is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations,
+political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods
+of relaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions,
+malformations and some more things of the same kind.
+
+Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of the
+optic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with the
+same ear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just
+stands around drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear
+anything. Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the
+muscular and nervous strain that is necessary to retain a single
+eyeglass in place and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws
+the mental stimulus that should go to the thinker itself, until at last
+the mind wanders away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied,
+and the great mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or
+coming in when it rains is more than it is equal to.
+
+Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on the
+floor with the butt end of the cue ever and anon, produces at last
+optical illusions, phantasmagoria and visions of pink spiders with
+navy-blue abdomens. Baseball is not alone highly injurious to the
+umpire, but it also induces crooked fingers, bone spavin and hives
+among habitual players. Jumping the rope induces heart disease. Poker
+is unduly sedentary in its nature. Bicycling is highly injurious,
+especially to skittish horses. Boating induces malaria. Lawn tennis can
+not be played in the house. Archery is apt to be injurious to those who
+stand around and watch the game, and pugilism is a relaxation that jars
+heavily on some natures.
+
+Football produces what may be called the endogenous or ingrowing
+toenail, stringhalt and mania. Copenhagen induces a melancholy, and
+the game of bean bag is unduly exciting. Horse racing is too brief
+and transitory as an outdoor game, requiring weeks and months for
+preparation and lasting only long enough for a quick person to
+ejaculate “Scat!” The pitcher’s arm is a new disease, the outgrowth of
+baseball; the lawn tennis elbow is another result of a popular open
+air amusement, and it begins to look as though the coming American
+would hear with one overgrown telephonic ear, while the other will be
+rudimentary only. He will have an abnormal baseball arm with a lawn
+tennis elbow, a powerful football kicking leg with the superior toe
+driven back into the palm of his foot. He will have a highly trained
+biceps muscle over his eye to retain his glass, and that eye will be
+trained to shoot a curved glance over a high hat and witness anything
+on the stage.
+
+Other features will grow abnormal, or shrink from the lack of use, as
+a result of our customs. For instance, the man whose business is to
+get along a crowded street with the utmost speed will have, finally,
+a hard, sharp horn growing on each elbow, and a pair of spurs growing
+out of each ankle. These will enable him to climb over a crowd and get
+there early. Constant exposure to these weapons on the part of the
+pedestrian will harden the walls of the thorax and abdomen until the
+coming man will be an impervious man. The citizen who avails himself of
+all modern methods of conveyance will ride from his door on the horse
+car to the elevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the
+train and a revolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the
+street car will be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track,
+and the passenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will
+simply hang out a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a
+combination car will call for him, take him to the nearest elevated
+station, elevate him, car and all, to the track, take him where he
+wants to go, and call for him at any hour of the night to bring him
+home. He will do his exercising at home, chiefly taking artificial sea
+baths, jerking a rowing machine or playing on a health lift till his
+eyes hang out on his cheeks, and he need not do any walking whatever.
+In that way the coming man will be over-developed above the legs, and
+his lower limbs will look like the desolate stems of a frozen geranium.
+Eccentricities of limb will be handed over like baldness from father to
+son among the dwellers in the cities, where every advantage in the way
+of rapid transit is to be had, until a metropolitan will be instantly
+picked out by his able digestion and rudimentary legs, just as we
+now detect the gentleman from the interior by his wild endeavors to
+overtake an elevated train.
+
+In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on
+the road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for
+calling a storage think-tank. This will enable a man to sit at home,
+and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think
+into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and
+a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft
+metal, so that when anyone says to him, “A penny for your thoughts,” he
+can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man
+who has such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and can never
+hold on to them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing
+materials, can set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the
+poetic thought comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a
+hopper, and the genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him
+to fire it back at his friends in the morning while they eat their
+pancakes and glucose syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of
+tinfoil to absent friends, who may put it into their phonographs and
+utilize it. In this way the world may harness the gray matter of its
+best men, and it will be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men
+tied up in a row in the back office of an intellectual syndicate,
+dropping pregnant thoughts into little electric coffee mills for a
+couple of hours a day, after which they can put on their coats, draw
+their pay, and go home.
+
+All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and
+physical. Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000
+of people and feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day. Take
+four men, we will say, two to do the day thinking and two more to
+go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world
+would have to go fishing. See how politics would become simplified.
+Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and
+vituperation--all might be wiped out. A pair of political thinkers
+could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough
+to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a
+man’s house each day, for less than he now pays for gas. Just before
+election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose
+of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your button-hole
+to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull
+on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply. It
+would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is
+now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a while
+every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself so much,
+need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employed by
+the National Think Retort and Supply Works. We talk a great deal about
+the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, after all,
+as the mixture of politics and independent thought. Will the coming
+voter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal ear
+constantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideas
+furnished by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party in
+power?
+
+
+
+
+A THRILLING EXPERIENCE
+
+
+I had a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled
+an engagement in a strange city and retired to my cozy room at the
+hotel.
+
+The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had been
+locked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom’s Cabin company. The
+last loiterer had returned to his home and the lights in the palace of
+the pork packer were extinguished.
+
+No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside,
+or the death-rattle in the throat of the bathtub. Then all was still as
+the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed.
+
+The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the
+gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for
+I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed
+kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns
+for another’s gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle
+his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will
+often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder when, if he would
+enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more
+safely.
+
+Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the
+bell boy afterward testified that he heard me do so.
+
+The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting
+assurance of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled
+me into a gentle repose.
+
+Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent
+slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs
+cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the
+regular features, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to
+harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple.
+
+I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or
+other, no doubt, broke my slumber and I opened my eyes wildly. The room
+was in semi-darkness.
+
+Hark!
+
+A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a
+human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes
+wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets.
+
+Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a
+sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done
+for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a
+woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred
+herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into
+a friendly wrapper.
+
+Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose
+and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with
+it.
+
+I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was
+nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a
+woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as
+I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her
+whole life.
+
+But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some
+cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till
+the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me,
+crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona
+act, rob me of my hard-earned wealth.
+
+Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be
+trying to suppress it. I reached gently under my pillow, and securing
+the money I put it in the pocket of my _robe de nuit_. Then, with great
+care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson’s great work on “How to
+Ventilate the Human Form.” I said to myself that I would sell my life
+as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret
+the trade.
+
+Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a
+thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the
+corner.
+
+When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark
+corner. Also another sigh of relief later on.
+
+I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt
+seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you
+have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that
+his pantaloons were hanging in a chair at the other end of the room.
+
+However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed
+toward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling.
+
+People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I
+had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in
+that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator.
+
+It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do
+so than have the affair garbled by careless hands.
+
+
+
+
+A RESIGN
+
+
+                                Postoffice Divan, Laramie City, W. T.,
+                                                 Oct. 1, 1883.
+
+  To the President of the United States:
+
+Sir.--I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation as
+postmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal and
+the key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set
+on the numbers 36, 66 and 99, though I do not remember at this moment
+which comes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which
+direction you should turn it first in order to make it operate.
+
+There is some mining stock in my private drawer in the safe, which I
+have not yet removed. This stock you may have, if you desire it. It is
+a luxury, but you may have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead
+of this mining stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it will cost
+less to keep him.
+
+You will find the postal cards that have not been used under the
+distributing table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove draws
+too hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery
+window.
+
+Looking over my stormy and eventful administration as postmaster here,
+I find abundant cause for thanksgiving. At the time I entered upon
+the duties of my office the department was not yet on a paying basis.
+It was not even self-sustaining. Since that time, with the active
+cooperation of the chief executive and the heads of the department, I
+have been able to make our postal system a paying one, and on top of
+that I am now able to reduce the tariff on average-sized letters from
+three cents to two. I might add that this is rather too too, but I will
+not say anything that might seem undignified in an official resignation
+which is to become a matter of history.
+
+Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of office I have
+safely passed. I am able to turn over the office today in a highly
+improved condition and to present a purified and renovated institution
+to my successor.
+
+Acting under the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the
+feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered
+up his administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass.
+Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made
+the feather bed a part of my official duties, I filed it away in an
+obscure place and burned it in effigy, also in the gloaming. This act
+maddened my predecessor to such a degree that he then and there became
+a candidate for justice of the peace on the Democratic ticket. The
+Democratic party was able, however, with what aid it secured from the
+Republicans, to plow the old man under to a great degree.
+
+It was not long after I had taken my official oath before an era of
+unexampled prosperity opened for the American people. The price of beef
+rose to a remarkable altitude, and other vegetables commanded a good
+figure and a ready market. We then began to make active preparations
+for the introduction of the strawberry roan two-cent stamps and the
+black-and-tan postal note. One reform has crowded upon the heels of
+another, until the country is today upon the foam-crested wave of
+permanent prosperity.
+
+Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without thanking yourself
+and the heads of departments at Washington for your active, cheery
+and prompt cooperation in these matters. You can do as you see fit,
+of course, about incorporating this idea into your Thanksgiving
+proclamation, but rest assured it would not be ill-timed or
+inopportune. It is not alone a credit to myself. It reflects credit
+upon the administration also.
+
+I need not say that I herewith transmit my resignation with great
+sorrow and genuine regret. We have toiled on together month after
+month, asking for no reward except the innate consciousness of
+rectitude and the salary as fixed by law. Now we are to separate. Here
+the roads seem to fork, as it were, and you and I, and the cabinet,
+must leave each other at this point.
+
+You will find the key under the door-mat, and you had better turn
+the cat out at night when you close the office. If she does not go
+readily, you can make it clearer to her mind by throwing the cancelling
+stamp at her.
+
+If Deacon Hayford does not pay up his box rent, you might as well
+put his mail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk
+and insists on a letter from one of his wives every day in the week,
+you can salute him through the box delivery with an old Queen Anne
+tomahawk, which you will find near the Etruscan water pail. This will
+not in any manner surprise either of these parties.
+
+Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed
+only with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me
+personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department.
+I believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz.: Those
+who are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they
+cannot receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day,
+including Sunday.
+
+Mr. President, as an official of this government I now retire. My term
+of office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon
+for my eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the
+heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers
+of a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a
+sickening thud.
+
+
+
+
+A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW
+
+
+We are stopping quietly here, taking our meals in our rooms mostly, and
+going out very little indeed. When I say we, I use the term editorially.
+
+We notice first of all the great contrast between this and other
+hotels, and in several instances this one is superior. In the first
+place, there is a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep
+here that can not be felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete
+themselves in the wardrobe during the day and steal one’s pantaloons
+and contents at night. This is one of the compensations of life in
+prison.
+
+Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do. We all
+retire at the same time, and a murderer can not sit up any later at
+night than the smaller or unknown criminal can.
+
+You can get to Ludlow Street Jail by taking the Second Avenue elevated
+train to Grand Street and then going east two blocks, or you can fire a
+shotgun into a Sabbath school.
+
+You can pay five cents to the Elevated Railroad and get here, or you
+can put some other man’s nickel in your own slot and come here with an
+attendant.
+
+William Marcy Tweed was the contractor of Ludlow Street Jail and here
+also he died. He was the son of a poor chairmaker and was born April 3,
+1823. From the chair business in 1853 to congress was the first false
+step. Exhilarated by the delirium of official life, and the false joys
+of franking his linen home every week, and having cake and preserves
+franked back to him at Washington, he resolved to still further
+taste the delights of office, and in 1857 we find him as a school
+commissioner.
+
+In 1860 he became Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society, an association
+at that time more purely political than politically pure. As president
+of the board of supervisors, head of the department of public works,
+state senator, and Grand Sachem of Tammany, Tweed had a large and
+seductive influence over the city and state. The story of how he earned
+a scanty livelihood by stealing a million at a pop, and thus, with the
+most rigid economy, scraped together $20,000,000 in a few years by
+patient industry and smoking plug tobacco, has been frequently told.
+
+Tweed was once placed here in Ludlow Street Jail in default of
+$3,000,000 bail. How few there are of us who could slap up that amount
+of bail if rudely gobbled on the street by the hand of the law. While
+riding out with the sheriff, in 1875, Tweed asked to see his wife, and
+said he would be back in a minute.
+
+He came back by way of Spain, in the fall of ’76, looking much
+improved. But the malaria and dissipation of Blackwell’s Island
+afterwards impaired his health, and having done time there, and having
+been arrested afterwards and placed in Ludlow Street Jail, he died here
+April 12, 1878, leaving behind him a large, vain world, and an equally
+vain judgment for $6,537,117.38, to which he said he would give his
+attention as soon as he could get a paving contract in the sweet
+ultimately.
+
+From the exterior Ludlow Street Jail looks somewhat like a conservatory
+of music, but as soon as one enters he readily discovers his mistake.
+The structure has 100 feet frontage, and a court, which is sometimes
+called the court of last resort. The guest can climb out of this court
+by ascending a polished brick wall about 100 feet high and then letting
+himself down in a similar way on the Ludlow street side.
+
+That one thing is doing a great deal towards keeping quiet a number of
+people here who would otherwise, I think, go away.
+
+James D. Fish and Ferdinand Ward both remained here prior to their
+escape to Sing Sing. Red Leary also made his escape from this point but
+did not succeed in reaching the penitentiary. Forty thousand prisoners
+have been confined in Ludlow Street Jail, mostly for civil offenses. A
+man in New York runs a very short career if he tries to be offensively
+civil.
+
+As you enter Ludlow Street Jail the door is carefully closed after
+you and locked by means of an iron lock about the size of a pictorial
+family Bible. You then remain on the inside for quite a spell. You
+do not hear the prattle of soiled children any more. All the glad
+sunlight, and stench-condensing pavements, and dark-haired inhabitants
+of Rivington street, are seen no longer, and the heavy iron storm door
+shuts out the wail of the combat from the alley nearby. Ludlow Street
+Jail may be surrounded by a very miserable and dirty quarter of the
+city, but when you get inside all is changed.
+
+You register first. There is a good pen there that you can write with,
+and the clerk does not chew tolu and read a sporting paper while you
+wait for a room. He is there to attend to business, and he attends to
+it. He does not seem to care whether you have any baggage or not. You
+can stay here for days, even if you don’t have any baggage. All you
+need is a kind word and a mittimus from the court.
+
+One enters this sanitarium either as a boarder or a felon. If you
+decide to come in as a boarder, you pay the warden $15 a week for
+the privileges of sitting at his table and eating the luxuries of
+the market. You also get a better room than at many hotels, and you
+have a good strong door, with a padlock on it, which enables you to
+prevent the sudden and unlooked-for entrance of the chambermaid. It
+is a good-sized room, with a wonderful amount of seclusion, a plain
+bed, table, chairs, carpet and so forth. After a few weeks at the
+seaside, at $19 per day, I think the room in which I am writing is not
+unreasonable at $2.
+
+Still, of course, we miss the sea breeze.
+
+You can pay $50 to $100 per week here if you wish, and get your money’s
+worth, too. For the latter sum one may live in the bridal chamber, so
+to speak, and eat the very best food all the time.
+
+Heavy iron bars keep the mosquitoes out, and at night the house
+is lighted by incandescent lights of one-candle power each. Neat
+snuffers, consisting of the thumb and forefinger polished on the hair,
+are to be found in each occupied room.
+
+Bread is served to the Freshmen and Juniors in rectangular wads. It is
+such bread as convicts’ tears have moistened many thousand years. In
+that way it gets quite moist.
+
+The most painful feature about life in Ludlow Street Jail is the
+confinement. One can not avoid a feeling of being constantly hampered
+and hemmed in.
+
+One more disagreeable thing is the great social distinction here.
+The poor man who sleeps in a stone niche near the roof, and who is
+constantly elbowed and hustled out of his bed by earnest and restless
+vermin with a tendency toward insomnia, is harassed by meeting in the
+courtyard and corridors the paying boarders who wear good clothes, live
+well, have their cigars, brandy and Kentucky Sec all the time.
+
+The McAllister crowd here is just as exclusive as it is on the outside.
+
+But, great Scott! what a comfort it is to a man like me, who has been
+nearly killed by a cyclone, to feel the firm, secure walls and solid
+time lock when he goes to bed at night! Even if I can not belong to the
+400, I am almost happy.
+
+We retire at 7:30 o’clock at night and arise at 6:30 in the morning, so
+as to get an early start. A man who has five or ten years to stay in a
+place like this naturally likes to get at it as soon as possible each
+day, and so he gets up at 6:30.
+
+We dress by the gaudy light of the candle, and while we do so, we
+remember far away at home our wife and the little boy asleep in her
+arms. They do not get up at 6:30. It is at this hour we remember the
+fragrant drawer in the dresser at home where our clean shirts, and
+collars and cuffs, and socks and handkerchiefs, are put every week by
+our wife. We also recall as we go about our stone den, with its odor of
+former corned beef, and the ghost of some bloody-handed predecessor’s
+snore still moaning in the walls, the picture of green grass by our own
+doorway, and the apples that were just ripening when the bench warrant
+came.
+
+The time from 6:30 to breakfast is occupied by the average, or
+non-paying inmate, in doing the chamber work and tidying up his
+state-room. I do not know how others feel about it, but I dislike
+chamber work most heartily, especially when I am in jail. Nothing has
+done more to keep me out of jail, I guess, than the fact that while
+there I have to make up my bed and dust the piano.
+
+Breakfast is generally table d’hote and consists of bread. A tincup of
+coffee takes the taste of the bread out of your mouth, and then if you
+have some Limburger cheese in your pocket you can with that remove the
+taste of the coffee.
+
+Dinner is served at 12 o’clock and consists of more bread with soup.
+This soup has everything in it except nourishment. The bead on this
+soup is noticeable for quite a distance. It is disagreeable. Several
+days ago I heard that the Mayor was in the soup, but I didn’t realize
+it before. I thought it was a newspaper yarn. There is everything in
+this soup, from shop-worn rice up to neat’s-foot oil. Once I thought I
+detected cuisine in it.
+
+The dinner menu is changed on Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays, on which
+days you get the soup first and the bread afterwards. In this way the
+bread is saved.
+
+Three days in a week each man gets at dinner a potato containing
+a thousand-legged worm. At 6 o’clock comes supper with toast and
+responses. Bread is served at supper time, together with a cup of tea.
+To those who dislike bread and never eat soup, or do not drink tea or
+coffee, life at Ludlow Street Jail is indeed irksome.
+
+I asked for kumiss and a pony of Benedictine, as my stone boudoir made
+me feel rocky, but it has not yet been sent up.
+
+Somehow, while here, I can not forget poor old man Dorrit, the Master
+of the Marshalsea, and how the Debtors’ Prison preyed upon his mind
+till he didn’t enjoy anything except to stand off and admire himself.
+Ludlow Street Jail is a good deal like it in many ways, and I can see
+how in time the canker of unrest and the memories of those who did us
+wrong but who are basking in the bright and bracing air, while we, to
+meet their obligations, sacrifice our money, our health and at last our
+minds, would kill hope and ambition.
+
+Before closing this brief and incomplete account as a guest at Ludlow
+Street Jail I ought, in justice to my family, to say, perhaps, that I
+came down this morning to see a friend of mine who is here because he
+refuses to pay alimony to his recreant and morbidly sociable wife. He
+says he is quite content to stay here, so long as his wife is on the
+outside. He is writing a small ready-reference book on his side of the
+great problem, “Is Marriage a Failure?”
+
+With this I shake him by the hand and in a moment the big iron storm
+door clangs behind me, the big lock clicks in its hoarse, black throat
+and I welcome even the air of Ludlow street so long as the blue sky is
+above it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation
+was standardized.
+
+Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
+change:
+
+  Page 30: “townsman, Caesar Kersikes”     “townsman, Cæsar Kersikes”
+  Page 32: “After seing his Hamlet”        “After seeing his Hamlet”
+  Page 58: “chamberwork most heartily”     “chamber work most heartily”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78694 ***