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

MY MULE BOOMERANG,

Whose bright smile haunts me still, and whose low, mellow notes are ever sounding in my ears, to whom I owe all that I am as a great man, and whose presence has inspired me ever and anon throughout the years that are gone.

THIS VOLUME,

this coronet of sparkling literary gems as it were, this wreath of fragrant forget-me-nots and meek-eyed johnny-jump-ups, with all its wealth of rare tropical blossoms and high-priced exotics, is cheerfully and even hilariously dedicated

By the Author.

THE APOLOGY

{In my Boudoir,

{Nov. 17,1880.

Belford, Clarke & Co.:

Gentlemen: – In reply to your favor of the 22d ult., I herewith transmit the material necessary for a medium size volume of my chaste and unique writings.

The matter has been arranged rather hurriedly, and no doubt in classifying this rectangular mass of soul, I have selected some little epics and ethereal flights of fancy which are not as good as others that I have left out, but my only excuse is this: the literary world has been compelled to yield up first one well known historical or scientific work and then another, careful investigation having shown that they were unreliable. This left suffering humanity almost destitute of a reliable work to which it could turn in its hour of great need.

So I have been compelled to hurry more than I wanted to.

It affords me great pleasure, however, to know what a feeling of blessed rest and childlike confidence and assurance-and some more things of that nature-will follow the publication of this work.

Print the book in large coarse type, so that the old people can get a chance at it. It will reconcile them to death, perhaps.

Then sell it at a moderate price. It is really priceless in value, but put it within the reach of all, and then turn it loose without a word of warning. The Author.

Laramie City, Wyoming.

OSTROPHE TO AN ORPHAN MULE

 
Oh! lonely, gentle, unobtrusive mule!
Thou standest idly 'gainst the azure sky,
And sweetly, sadly singeth like a hired man.
 
 
Who taught thee thus to warble
In the noontide heat and wrestle with
Thy ceep, corroding grief and joyless woe?
Who taught thy simple heart
Its pent-up, wildly-warring waste
Of wanton woe to carol forth upon
The silent air?
 
 
I chide thee not, because thy
Song is fraught with grief-embittered
Monotone and joyless minor chords
Of wild, imported melody, for thou
Art restless, woe begirt and
Compassed round about with gloom,
Thou timid, trusting, orphan mule!
Few joys indeed, are thine,
Thou thrice-bestricken, madly
Mournful, melancholy mule.
And he alone who strews
Thy pathway with his cold remains
Can give thee recompense
Of lemoncholy woe.
 
 
He who hath sought to steer
Thy limber, yielding tail
Ferninst thy crupper-band
Hath given thee joy, and he alone.
'Tip true, he may have shot
Athwart the Zodiac, and, looking
O'er the outer walls upon
The New Jerusalem,
Have uttered vain regrets.
 
 
Thou reckest not, O orphan mule,
For it hath given thee joy, and
Bound about thy bursting heart,
And held thy tottering reason
To its throne.
 
 
Sing on, O mule, and warble
In the twilight gray,
Unchidden by the heartless throng.
Sing of thy parents on thy father's side.
Yearn for the days now past and gone:
For he who pens these halting,
Limping lines to thee
Doth bid thee yearn, and yearn, and yearn.
 

A MINERS' MEETING – MY MINE – A MIRAGE ON E PLAINS

Camp on the New Jerusalem Mine, May 28, 1880

I write this letter in great haste, as I have just returned from the new carbonate discoveries, and haven't any surplus time left.

While I was there a driving snow storm raged on the mountains, and slowly melting made the yellow ochre into tough plastic clay which adhered to my boots to such an extent that before I knew it my delicately arched feet were as large as a bale of hay with about the same symmetrical outlines.

A miners' meeting was held there Wednesday evening, and a district to be called Mill Creek District, was formed, being fifteen miles each way. The Nellis cabin or ranch is situated in the center of the district.

I presided over the meeting to give it an air of terror and gloom. It was very impressive. There was hardly a dry eye in the house as I was led to the chair by two old miners. I seated myself behind the flour barrel, and pounding on the head of the barrel with a pick handle, I called the august assemblage to order.

Snuffing the candle with my fingers in a graceful and pleasing style, and wiping the black off on my pants, I said: "Gentlemen of the Convention: In your selection of a chairman I detect at once your mental acumen and intelligent foresight. While you feel confident that, in the rose-colored future, prosperity is in store for you, you still remember that now you look to capital for the immediate development of your district.

"I am free to state that, although I have been but a few hours in your locality, I am highly gratified with your appearance, and I cheerfully assure you that the coffers which I command are at your disposal. In me you behold a capitalist who proposes to develop the country, regardless of expense.

"I also recognize your good sense in selecting an old miner and mineral expert to preside over your meeting. Although it may require something of a mental strain for your chairman to detect the difference between porphyry and perdition, yet in the actual practical workings of a mining camp he feels that he is equal to any emergency.

"After the band plays something soothing and the chaplain has drawn up a short petition to the throne of grace, I shall be glad to know the pleasure of the meeting."

Round after round of applause greeted this little gem of oratory. A small boy gathered up the bouquets and filed them with the secretary, when the meeting proceeded with its work. Most of the delegates came instructed, and therefore the business was soon transacted.

I located a claim called the Boomerang. I named it after my favorite mule. I call my mule Boomerang because he has such an eccentric orbit and no one can tell just when he will clash with some other heavenly body.

He has a sigh like the long drawn breath of a fog-horn. He likes to come to my tent in the morning about daylight and sigh in my ear before I am awake. He is a highly amusing little cuss, and it tickles him a good deal to pour about 13 1/2 gallons of his melody into my car while I am dreaming, sweetly dreaming. He enjoys my look of pleasant surprise when I wake up.

He would cheerfully pour more than 13 1/2 gallons of sigh into my ear, but that is all my ear will hold. There is nothing small about Boomerang. He is generous to a fault and lavishes his low, sad, tremulous wail on every one who has time to listen to it.

Those who have never been wakened from a sweet, sweet dream by the low sad wail of a narrow-gauge mule, so close to the ear that the warm breath of the songster can be felt on the cheek, do not know what it is to be loved by a patient, faithful, dumb animal.

The first time he rendered this voluntary for my benefit, I rose in my wrath and some other clothes, and went out and shot him. I discharged every chamber of my revolver into his carcass, and went back to bed to wait till it got lighter. In a couple of hours I arose and went out to bury Boomerang. The remains were off about twenty yards eating bunch grass. In the gloom and uncertainty of night, I had shot six shots into an old windlass near a deserted shaft.

Boomerang and I get along first-rate together. When I am lonesome I shoot at him, and when he is lonesome he comes up and lays his head across my shoulder, and looks at me with great soulful eyes and sings to me.

On our way in from the mines we saw one of those beautiful sights so common in this high altitude and clear atmosphere. It was a mirage.

In the party were a lawyer, a United States official, a banker and myself. The other three members of the quartet, aside from myself are very modest men and do not wish to have their names mentioned. They were very particular about it and I have respected their wishes. Whatever Messrs. Blake, Snow or Ivinson ask me to do I will always do cheerfully.

But we were speaking about the mirage. Across to the northeast our attention was at first attracted by a rank of gray towers growing taller and taller till their heads were lifted into the sky above, while at their feet there soon appeared a glassy lake in which was reflected the outlines of the massive gray walls above. It was a beautiful sight. The picture was as still and lovely to look upon as a school ma'am. We all went into raptures. It looked like some beautiful scene in Palestine. At least Snow said so, and he has read a book about Palestine, and ought to know.

There was a silence in the air which seemed to indicate the deserted sepulchre of other days, and the grim ruins towering above the depths of clear waters on whose surface was mirrored the visage of the rocks and towers on their banks, all spoke of repose and decay and the silent, stately tread of relentless years.

By and by, from out the grey background of the picture, there stole the wild, tremulous, heart-broken wail of a mule.

It seemed to jar upon the surroundings and clash harshly against our sensitive natures. Some one of the party swore a little. Then another one came to the front, and took the job off his hands. We all joined, in a gentlemanly kind of way, in condemning the mule for his lack of tact, to say the least.

All at once the line of magnificent ruins shortened and became reduced in height. They changed their positions and moved off to the left, and our dream had melted into the matter of fact scene of twenty-two immigrant wagons drawn by rat-tail mules and driven by long-haired Mormons, with the dirt and bacon rinds of prehistoric times adhering to them everywhere.

What a vale of tears this is anyway!

We are only marching toward the tomb, after all. We should learn a valuable lesson from this and never tell a lie.

THE TRUE STORY OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS

CHAPTER I

The romantic story of Damon and Pythias, which has been celebrated in verse and song, for over two thousand years, is supposed to have originated during the reign of Dionysius I., or Dionysius the Elder as he was also called, who resigned about 350 years B.C. He must have been called "The Elder," more for a joke than anything else, as he was by inclination a Unitarian, although he was never a member of any church whatever, and was in fact the wickedest man in all Syracuse.

Dionysius arose to the throne from the ranks, and used to call himself a self-made man. He was tyrannical, severe and selfish, as all self-made men are. Self-made men are very prone to usurp the prerogative of the Almighty and overwork themselves. They are not satisfied with the position of division superintendent of creation, but they want to be most worthy high grand muck-a-muck of the entire ranch, or their lives are gloomy fizzles.

Dionysius was indeed so odious and so overbearing toward his subjects that he lived in constant fear of assassination at their hands. This fear robbed him of his rest and rendered life a dreary waste to the tyrannical king. He lived in constant dread that each previous moment would be followed by the succeeding one. He would eat a hearty supper and retire to rest, but the night would be cursed with horrid dreams of the Scythians and White River Utes peeling off his epidermis and throwing him into a boiling cauldron with red pepper and other counter-irritants, while they danced the Highland fling around this royal barbecue.

Even his own wife and children were forbidden to enter his presence for fear that they would put "barn arsenic" in the blanc-mange, or "Cosgrove arsenic" in the pancakes, or Paris green in the pie.

During his reign he had constructed an immense subteroranean cavernous arrangement called the Ear of Dionysius, because it resembled in shape and general telephonic power, the human ear. It was the largest ear on record. One day a workman expressed the desire to erect a similar ear of tin or galvanized iron on old Di. himself. Some one "blowed on him," and the next morning his head was thumping about in the waste paper basket at the General Office. When one of the king's subjects, who thought he was solid with the administration, would say: "Beyond the possibility of a doubt, your Most Serene Highness is the kind and loving guardian of his people, and the idol of his subjects," His Royal Tallness would say, "What ye givin' us? Do you wish to play the Most Sublime Overseer of the Universe and General Ticket Agent Plenipotentiary for a Chinaman?

"Ha!!! You cannot fill up the King of Syracuse with taffy." Then he would order the chief executioner to run the man through the royal sausage grinder, and throw him into the Mediterranean. In this way the sausage grinder was kept running night and day, and the chief engineer who run the machine made double time every month.

CHAPTER II

I will now bring in Damon and Pythias.

Damon and Pythias were named after a popular secret organization because they were so solid on each other. They thought more of one another than anybody. They borrowed chewing tobacco, and were always sociable and pleasant. They slept together, and unitedly "stood off" the landlady from month to month in the most cheerful and harmonious manner. If Pythias snored in the night like the blast of a fog horn, Damon did not get mad and kick him in the stomach as some would. He gently but firmly took him by the nose and lifted him up and down to the merry rythm of "The Babies in Our Block."

They loved one another in season and out of season. Their affection was like the soft bloom on the nose of a Wyoming legislator. It never grew pale or wilted. It was always there. If Damon were at the bat, Pythias was on deck. If Damon went to a church fair and invited starvation, Pythias would go, too, and vote on the handsomest baby till the First National Bank of Syracuse would refuse to honor his checks.

But one day Damon got too much budge and told the venerable and colossal old royal bummer of Syracuse what he thought of him. Then Dionysius told the chief engineer of the sausage grinder to turn on steam and prepare for business. But Damon thought of Pythias, and how Pythias hadn't so much to live for as he had, and he made a compromise by offering to put Pythias in soak while the only genuine Damon went to see his girl, who lived at Albany. Three days were given him to get around and redeem Pythias, and if he failed his friend would go to protest.

CHAPTER III

We will now suppose three days to have elapsed since the preceding chapter. A large party of enthusiastic citizens of Syracuse are gathered around the grand stand, and Pythias is on the platform cheerfully taking off his coat. Near by stands a man with a broadax. The Syracuse silver cornet band has just played "It's funny when you feel that way," and the chaplain has made a long prayer, Pythias sliding a trade dollar into his hand and whispering to him to give him his money's worth. The Declaration of Independence has been read, and the man on the left is running his thumb playfully over the edge of his meat ax. Pythias takes off his collar and tie, swearing softly to himself at his miserable luck.

CHAPTER IV

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

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

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

SAD MEMORIES OF THE DEAD YEAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HERE WE COME!

HERE WE COME! HERE WE COME!

13 BILL NYE'S 13

Thirteenth Grand Semi-Annual FAREWELL CIRCUS AND HIPPODROME

He eats nothing but fresh Ohio men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before and after visiting my Mammoth Show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PRESS CORDIALLY INVITED

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

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

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

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

Do not fool with the animals.

PRESS COMMENTS

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

A CARD

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

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

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

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

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

Simultaneously yours,

Bill Nye.