 section 10 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Best on, Blessed Memory One of the attractions of life at the Cheyenne Indian Agency is a reserve seat ticket to the regular slaughterhouse matinee. The agency butchers kill at the rate of ten bullocks per hour while at work and so great was the rush to the slaughter pens for the internal economy of the slaughtered animals that major love found it necessary to erect a box office and gate where none but those holding tickets could enter and provide themselves with these delicacies. This is not a sensation. It is the plain truth and we desire to call the attention of those who love and admire the Indian at a distance of two thousand miles and to the aesthetic love for the beauty which prompts the crooked fanged and dusky bride of old fly up the creek to rob the soap-grease man in the glue factory that she may make a Cheyenne holiday. As a matter of fact, common decency will not permit us to enter into a discussion of this matter. Firstly, it would not be fit for the high order of readers who are now paying their money for the boomerang and secondly, the Indian maiden at the present moment stands on a lofty crag of the rocky mountains beautiful in her wild simplicity, wearing the fringed garments of her tribe. To the sentimentalist, she appears outlined against the glorious sky of the new west, wearing a coronet of eagle's feathers and a health corset trimmed with fantastic beadwork and wonderful and impossible designs and savage art. Shall we then rush in and with ruthless hand shatter this beautiful picture? Shall we portray her as she appears on her return from the great slaughterhouse benefit and moral aggregation of digestive mementos? Shall we draw a picture of her clothed in a horse blanket with a necklace of the false teeth of the pale face and her coarse unkempt hair hanging over her smoky features and clinging to her warty bony neck? No, no. Far be it from us to destroy the lovely vision of copper-colored grace and smoke-tanned beauty which the freckled student of the Aphide East has erected in the rose-hued chambers of fancy. Let her dwell there as a plump-limbed princess of a brave people. Let her adorn her hat-rack of his imagination, proud, beautiful, grand, gloomy and peculiar. While as a matter of fact she is at that moment leaving the vestibule of the slaughterhouse, conveying in the soiled laprobe, which is her sole adornment, the mangled lungs of a Texas steer. No man shall say that we have busted the beautiful cigar sign vision that he has erected in his memory. Let the graceful Indian queen that has lived on in his heart ever since he studied history saw the graphic picture of the landing of Columbus in which Columbus is just unsheathing his bread knife and the stage Indians are fleeing to the tall brush. Let her, we say, still live on. The ruthless hand that writes nothing but everlasting truth and the stub pencil that yanks the cloak of the false and artificial from cold and perhaps unpalatable fact. Let all spare this little imaginary Indian maiden with a back comb and gold garters. Let her withstand the onward march of centuries while the true Indian maiden eats the fricazede locus of the plains and wears the cavalry pants of progress. We may be rough and thoughtless many times, but we cannot come forward and ruthlessly shatter the red goddess at whose shrine the far away student of Blackhawk and other fourth reader warriors worship. As we said, we declined to pull the cloak from the true Indian maiden of today and show her as she is. That cloak may be all she has on, and no gentleman will be rude even to the daughter of old Bobtail Flush, the Cheyenne Brave. A Judicial Warbler Jacob Beeson Blair, who has been recently nominated as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming and Judge of the Second Judicial District, with his headquarters at this place, is one of the most able and consistent officials that Wyoming has ever had. I might go further and say that he stands at the head of them all. A year ago, as an evidence of his popularity, I will say that he was unanimously nominated to represent the Territory in Congress, which nomination he gracefully declined. He has put his spare capital into mines and shown that he is a resident of Wyoming and not of the classic halls of Washington or the sea-beach shores of Maryland, my Maryland. Two years ago I had the pleasure of making a trip to the mines on Douglas Creek or, as it was then called, Last Chance, in company with Judge Blair and Delicate Downey, owners of the Keystone Gold Mine in that district. The party also included Governor Hoyt, Assayer Murphy, Postmaster Hayford, and several other prominent men. Judge Brown and Sheriff Boswell were also in the party at the mine. Judge Blair is, by natural choice, a Methodist who renewed our spiritual strength throughout the trip in a way that was indeed pleasant and profitable. The Judge sings in a soft, subdued kind of way that makes the walls of the firmament crack and the heavens roll together like a scroll. When he sings, How tedious and tasteless the hours when Jesus no longer I see The coyotes and jackrabbits within a radius of seventy-five miles hunt their respective holes and remain there till the danger has passed. Looking at the Judge as he sits on the bench, singeing the road agent for ten years in solitary confinement, one would not think he could warble so when he gets into the mountains. But he can. He's a regular prima donna, so to speak. When he starts to sing, the sound is like an Aeolian harp, sighing through the pine forests and dying away upon the silent air. Gradually it swells into the wild melody of the hotel gong. A fire at a ball. Down at Gunnison last week a large, select ball was given in a hall, one end of which was partitioned off for sleeping rooms. A young man who slept in one of these rooms and who had grieved because he had not been invited and had to roll around and suffer while the glad throng tripped the light bombastic toe, alas, discovered a knot hole in the partition through which he could watch the giddy multitude. While peeping through the knot hole he discovered that one of the dancers, who had an aperture in the heel of his shoe and another in his sock to correspond, was standing by the wall with the ventilated foot near the knot hole. It was but the work of a moment to hold the candle against his exposed heel until the thick epidermis had been heated red hot. Then there was a whale that had rent the battlements above and drowned the blasts of the music. There was a wild, scared cry of fire, a frightened throng rushing hither and thither and then, where mirth and music and rum had gladdened the eye and read in the cheek a moment ago, all was still, saved the low, convulsive Twitter of a scantily clad man as he lay on the floor of his dungeon tower and dug his nails in the floor. A little puff. Some time ago the Cheyenne's son noted that Judge Crosby, known to Colorado and Wyoming people quite well, was making strenuous efforts, with some show of success, to obtain the appointment of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming. Since that I have noticed with great sorrow that the President, in his youthful thoughtlessness and juvenile independence, has appointed another man for the position. I speak of this because so many Colorado and Wyoming people knew Mr. Crosby and interest in him, as I might say. Some of us only knew him fifty cents worth, while others knew him for various amounts, up to five dollars and ten dollars. He was an earnest, unflagging and industrious borrower. When times were dull he used to borrow of me. Then I would throw up my hands and let him go through me. It was not a hazardous act at all on my part. The Judge knew everybody, and everybody knew him, and seemed nervous when they saw him, for fear that the regular assessment was about to be made. Every few days he wanted to buy a pair of socks. But he never bought them. Forty or fifty of us got together and compared notes the other day. We ascertained that not less than one hundred dollars had been contributed to the Crosby's sock fund during his stay here, and yet the old man wore the same socks to Washington that he had worn in the San Juan County. A like amount was also contributed to the wash bill fund, and still he never had any washing done. We often wondered why so much money was squandered on laundry expenses, and yet that he should have the general perspective and spicy fragrance of a Mormon immigrant train. He used to come into my office and be sociable with me because he was just a journalist. It surprised me at first to meet a journalist who never changed his shirt. I thought that journalists as a rule wore diamond studs and had to be looked at through smoked glass. He liked me. He told me so one day when we were alone, and after I had promised to tell no one. Then he asked me for a quarter. I told him I had nothing less than a fifty cent piece. He said he would go and get it changed. I said it would be a shame for an old man, and lame at that, to go out and get it changed. So I said I would go. I went out and played thirteen of my eternal revolving games of billiards, and about dusk went back to the office whistling a merry round-delay, knowing that he had starved out and gone away. I found him at my desk, where he had written to every senator and representative in Congress, and every man who had ever been a senator or representative in Congress. Likewise every man, woman, and child who ever expected to be a senator or representative in Congress. Also to every superintendent and passenger agent of every known line of railway, for a past every known point of the civilized world. And this correspondence he had used my letterheads and envelopes and stamps, and he wasn't done either. He was just getting animated and warming up to his work, and perspiring so that I had to open the hall door and burn some old gum overshoes and other disinfectants before I could breathe. A large society is being formed here and in Cheyenne, called the Crosby Suffer Aid Association. It is for the purpose of furnishing speedy relief to the sufferers from the Crosby outbreak. We desire the cooperation and assistance of Colorado philanthropists and will, so far as plausible, furnish relief to Colorado sufferers from the great scourge. Later Henry Rothschild Crosby Esquire passed through here a few evenings since on his way to Evanston, Wyoming, where he takes charge of his office as receiver of public monies for the western land office. Henry seems to feel as though I had not stood by him through his political struggle at Washington. At least I learned from other parties that he does not seem to hunger and thirst after my genial society and thinks that what little influence I may have had has not been used in his interest. That is where Henry hit the nail on the head. With that far-sided statesmanship and clear unerring logic for which he is so remarkable. I do not blame those who were instrumental in securing his appointment, remember. Not at all. No doubt I would have done the same thing if I had been in Washington all winter and Henry had hovered around me for breakfast and for lunch and for dinner and for supper and for in-between meals and for picnics and had borrowed my money and my overcoat and my meal ticket and my bath ticket and my pool-checks and my socks and my robe de nuit and my toothbrush and my gas and writing materials and stationery but it should be borne in mind that I am a resident of Wyoming. I have property here and it behooves me to do and say what I can for the interests of our people. I may have to borrow some things myself some day and I don't want to find then that they have all been borrowed. Let Hank stand back a little while and give other boys a chance. Note, in order to give the gentle reader an idea of Mr. Crosby's personal appearance I have consented to draw a picture of him myself. It isn't very pretty but it is horribly accurate. It is so lifelike that it seems as though I could almost detect his maroon-colored breath. B. N. End of Section 10. Section 11 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Genius and Whiskey I see in a recent issue of The Sun a short article clipped from a Sydney paper relative to William Henry Harrison, which brings to my mind fresh recollections of the long ago. I knew William too. I knew him for a small amount which I wish I had now to give to suffering Ireland. He came upon me in the prime of summertime and said he was a newspaper man. That always gets me. When a man says to me that he is a newspaper man and proves it by showing the usual discouraging state of resources and liabilities I always come forward with the collateral. William wanted to go into the mountains and recover his exhausted nerve force and build up his brain power with our dry bracing air. He knew Mr. Foley was then working a claim in last chance. So he went out there to tone up his exhausted energies. He went out there and after a few weeks a note came in from the man with the historical cognomen asking me to send him a gallon of best old crow. I went to my guidebook and encyclopedia and ascertained that this was a kind of drink. I then purchased the amount and sent it on. Mr. Foley said that William stayed by the jug till it was dry and then he came into town. I met him on the street and asked him how his intellect seemed after his picnic in the mountains. He said she was all right now and he felt just as though he could do the entire staff work on the New York Herald for two weeks and not sweat a hair. But he didn't pay for the old crow. It slipped his mind. When time hung heavy on my hands I used to write William a note and cheerfully done him for the amount. I would also ask him how his intellect seemed by this time and also make other little jocular remarks. But he has never forwarded me the amount. If the bill had been for pantaloons or grub or other luxuries I might have excused him. But when I loan a man money for a staple like whiskey I don't think it's asking too much to hope that in the flight of time it would be paid back. However, I can't help it now. It's about time that another bogus journalist should put in an appearance. I have a few dollars ahead and I am yearning to lay out the sum on struggling genius. The Two-Headed Girl The cultivated Two-Headed Girl has visited the West. It is very rare that a town the size of Laramie experiences the rare treat of witnessing anything so enjoyable. In addition to the mental feast which such a thing affords one goes away feeling better, feeling that life has more in it to live for and is not after all such a veil of tears as he had at times believed it. Through the trials and disappointments of this earthly pilgrimage the soul is at times cast down and discouraged. Man struggles against ill fortune and unlooked for woes year after year until he becomes misanthropical and soured. But when a Two-Headed Girl comes along and he sees her it cheers him up. She speaks to his better nature in two different languages at one in the same time and at one price. When I went to the show I felt gloomy and apprehensive. The eighteenth ballot had been taken and the bulletin seemed to have a tiresome sameness. The future of the Republic was not encouraging. I felt as though if I could get first cost for the blasted thing I would sell it. I had also been breaking in a pair of new boots that day and spectators had been betting wildly on the boots while I had no backers at three o'clock in the afternoon and had nearly decided to withdraw on the last ballot. I went to the entertainment feeling as though I should criticize it severely. The Two-Headed Girl is not beautiful. Neither one of her in fact is handsome. There is quite a similarity between the two probably because they have been in each other's society a great deal and have adopted the same ways. She is an Ethiopian by descent and natural choice, being about the same complexion as Frank Miller's oil-blacking, price ten cents. She was at one time a poor slave, but by her winning ways in genuine integrity and genius she has won her way to the hearts of the American people. She has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that two heads are better than one. A good-sized audience welcomed this popular favorite. When she came forward to the footlights and made her two-ply bow, she was greeted by round after round of applause from the elite of the city. I felt pleased and gratified. The fact that a recent course of scientific lectures here was attended by from fifteen to thirty people and the present brilliant success of the Two-Headed Girl proved to me beyond a doubt that we live in an age of thought and philosophical progress. Science may be all right in its place, but does it make the world better? Does it make a permanent improvement on the minds and thoughts of the listener? Do we go away from such a lecture feeling that we have made a grand stride toward a glad emancipation from the mental thralldom of ignorance and superstition? Do people want to be assailed year after year with a nebular theory and the professor Huxley theory of natural selection and things of that nature? No. One thousand times, no. They need to be led on quietly by an appeal to their better natures. They need to witness a first-class bureau of monstrosities such as men with heads as big as a bandwagon, women with two heads, cart of giants, men with limbs bristling out all over them like the velvety bloom on a prickly pear. When I get a little leisure and can attend to it, I'm going to organize a grand constellation of living wonders of this kind and make thirteen or fourteen hundred farewell tours with it, not so much to make money, but to meet a long-felt want of the American people for something which will give a higher mental tone to the tastes of those who never lag in their tireless march toward perfection. The Cultivation of Gum An idea has occurred to us that, situated as we are at a considerable elevation and being comparatively out of the line of tropical growth, we should try to propagate plants that will withstand the severe winter and the sudden and sometimes fatal surprise of spring. Plants in this locality worry along very well through the winter in a kind of semi-unconscious state, but when spring drops down on them about the Fourth of July, they are not prepared for it, and they yield to the severe nervous shock and pass with a gentle gliding motion up the flume. This has suggested to our mind the practicability of cultivating the chewing gum plant. We advance this thought with some timidity, knowing that our enemies will use all these novel and untried ideas against us in a presidential campaign. But the good of the country is what we are after and we do not want to be misunderstood. Chewing gum is rapidly advancing in price and the demand is far beyond the supply. The call for gum is co-extensive with the onward move of education. They may be said to go hand in hand. Wherever institutions of learning are found, there you will see the tall, graceful form of the chewing gum tree rising toward heaven with its branches extending toward all humanity. Here in Wyoming we could easily propagate this plant. It is hardy and don't seem to care whether winter lingers in the lap of spring or not. We have the figures also to substantiate this article. We will figure on the basis of twenty boxes of gum to the plant. And this is a very low estimate indeed. Then the plants may easily be three feet apart. This would be three million ninety seven thousand six hundred plants to the acre, or sixty one million nine hundred fifty two thousand boxes containing one hundred chews in each box, or six billion one hundred ninety five million two hundred thousand chews to the acre. We have a million acres that could be used in this way, which would yield in a good year six quadrillion one hundred ninety five trillion two hundred billion chews at one cent each. The reader will see at a glance that this is no wild romantic notion on our part, but a terrible reality. Wyoming could easily supply the present demand and wag the jaws of nations yet unborn. It makes us tired to think of it. Of course, anything like this will meet with strong opposition on the part of those who have no faith in enterprises, but let a joint stock company be formed with sufficient capital to purchase the tools in gum seed, and we will be responsible for the result. Very likely the ordinary spruce gum, made of lard and resin, would be best as an experiment, after which the prize package gum plant could be tried. These experiments could be followed up with a trial of the gumdrop, gum overshoe, gum arabic, and other varieties of gum. Dr. Hayford would be a good man to take hold of this. Colonel Donilon says, however, that he don't think it is practical. No use of enlarging on this subject, it will never be tried. Probably the town is full of people who are willing to chew the gum, but wouldn't raise a hand towards starting a gum orchard. We are sick and tired of pointing out different avenues to wealth, only to be laughed at and ridiculed. We have reasoned it out. A home magazine comes to us this week in which we find the following, connected with a society article. After alluding to the young men of the nineteenth century and their peculiarities, it continues, In fact, many of the more fashionable strains are all black, except the distinctive white feet and snout, so noticeable at this epic in our history. This, it would seem, will make a radical change in the prevailing young man. With white feet and white snout, the masher must also be black aside from those features. This will add the charm of extreme novelty to our social gatherings, and furnish sufficient excuse for a man like us, with blonde brined and strawberry blonde feet, staying at home with the ban of society and the loose smoking jacket on him. Farther on, this peculiar essay says, He is noted for his wonderfully fine blood, the bone is fine, the hair thin, the carcass long but broad, straight and deep-sided, with smooth skin, susceptible to no mange or other skin diseases. We almost busted our capacity trying to figure out this startler in the fashion line, and wore ourselves down to a mere geometrical line in our endeavor to fathom this thing when, yesterday, in reading an article on the same paper entitled, The Berkshire Hogg, we discovered that the sentences above referred to had evidently been omitted by the foremen, and put in the Society article. It is unnecessary to state that a blessed calm has settled down in the heart of this end of the Boomerang, time at last makes all things size up in proper shape, blessed be the time which matures the human mind, and the promissory note, carving schools. They are agitating the matter of instituting carving schools in the East, so that the rising generation will be able to pass down through the corridors of time without its lap full of dressing and its bosom laden with gravy and remorse. The students at this school will wear barbed wire masks while practicing. These masks will be similar to those worn by German students, who slice each other up while obtaining an education. End of Section 11. Section 12 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Dignity. Kingersall said at Omaha the other day, that he hated a dignified man, and that he never knew one who had a particle of sense. That such men never learned and were constantly forgetting something. Josh Billing says that gravity is no more the sign of mental strength than a paper collar is the evidence of a shirt. This leads us to say that the man who ranks as a dignified snoozer and banks on winning wealth and a deathless name through this one source of strength is in the most unenviable position of anyone we know. Dignity does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty minutes, but after a while it fails to get there. Dignity works all right in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support will do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and an air of patronage. Colonel Ingersoll may be wrong in the matter of future punishment, but his head is pretty level on the dignity question. Dignity works all right with the man who is worth a million dollars and has some doubts about his suspenders, but the man who is to get a large sum of money before he dies and get married and accomplish some good will place himself before his fellow men in the attitude of one who has ideas that are not too lonely and isolated. Let us therefore aim higher than simply to appear cold and austere. Let us study to aid in the advancement of humanity and the increase of bailed information. Let us struggle to advance and improve the world, even though in doing so we may get into ungraceful positions and at times look otherwise than pretty. Thus shall we get over the ground, and though we may do it in the eccentric style of the camel, we will get there, as we said before, and we will have camped and eaten our supper while the graceful and dignified pedestrian lingers along the trail. Works not good clothes and dignity are the grand hailing sign, and he who halts and refuses to jump over an obstacle because he may not do it so as to appear as graceful as a gazelle will not arrive until the festivities are over. A snort of agony. Our attention has been called to a remark made by the New York Tribune, which would intimate that the journal referred to didn't like acting postmaster F. Hatton and characterizing the editor of the boomerang as a journalistic pal of General Hatton's. We certainly regret that circumstances have made it necessary for us to rebuke the Tribune and speak harshly to it. Frank Hatton may be a journalistic pal of ours. Perhaps so. We would be glad to class him as a journalistic pal of ours, even though he may not have married Rich. We think just as much of General Hatton as though he had married wealthy. We can't all marry Rich and travel over the country and edit our papers vicariously. That is something that can only happen to the blessed few. It would be nice for us to go to Europe and have our pro tem editor at home working for twenty dollars per week and telegraphing us every few minutes to know whether he should support Cornell or Folger. The pleasure of being an editor is greatly enhanced by such privileges and we often feel that if we could get away from the hot, close office of the boomerang and roam around over Scandahuvia and the Bosphorus and mold the policy of the boomerang by telegraph and wear a cork helmet and tight pants, we would be far happier. Still it may be that White Law Reed is no happier with his high-priced wife and his own record of crime than we are in our simplicity here in the wild and rugged west as we write little epics for our one-horse paper and borrow tobacco of the foreman. It is not all of life to live nor all of death to die. We should live for a purpose, Mr. Reed, not aimlessly like a blind Indian two hundred miles from the reservation at Christmastide. Now, Mr. Reed, if you will just tell Mr. Nicholson when you get back home that in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton, he has exceeded his authority. We will feel grateful to you. And so will Mr. Hatton. If you don't do it, we shall be called upon to stop the Tribune and subscribe for Harper's Weekly. This we should dislike to do very much because we have taken the Tribune for years. We used to take it when the editor stayed at home and wrote for it. Our father used to take the Tribune, too. He is the editor of the Omaha Republican and needs a good New York paper, but he has quit taking the Tribune. He said he must withdraw his patronage from a paper that is edited by a tourist. All the knives will now stop taking the Tribune and all subscribe for some other dreary paper. We don't know just whether it will be Harper's Weekly or the Shroud. Later. Mr. Reed went through here on Tuesday and told us that he might have been wrong in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton who in fact did not know that the Tribune had said so. He simply told Nicholson to kind of generally go for the administration and turn over a great man every morning with his scathing pen and probably Nicholson had kind of run out of great men and tackled the North American Indian fighter of the boomerang. Mr. Reed also said as he rubbed some campfire ice on his nose and borrowed a dollar from his wife to buy his supper here in New York he was going to write some pieces for the Tribune himself. He was afraid he couldn't trust Nicholson and the paper had now got where it needed an editor right by it all the time. He said also that he couldn't afford to be wakened up forty times a night to write telegrams to New York telling the Tribune who to endorse for governor. It was a nuisance he said to stand at the center of a way station office in his sunflower night shirt and write telegrams to Nicholson telling him who to sass the next morning. Once he said he telegraphed him to dismember a journalistic pal of Frank Hattons and the operator made a mistake. So the next morning the Tribune had a regular old ring-tailed peeler of an editorial which planted one of Mr. Reed's special friends in an early grave. So we may know from this that molding the course of a great paper by means of read messages is fraught with some unpleasant features. Always room at the top. Young man, do not stand lounging on the threshold of the glorious future while the coming years are big with possibilities but take off your coat and spit on your hands and win the wealth which the world will yield you. You may not be able to write a beautiful poem and die of starvation but you can go to work humbly as a porter and buy a whisk broom and wear people's clothes out with it and in five years you can go to Europe in your own special car. As the strawberry said to the box there is always room at the top. Inaccurate. Once more has Laramie been slandered and traduced. Once more our free and peculiar style is spoken lightly of and our pride trailed in the dust. Last week the police Gazette, an illustrated family journal of great merit appeared with a half-page steel engraving executed by one of the old masters representing two Laramie girls on horseback yanking a fly-drummer along the street at a gallop because he tried to make a mash on them and they did not yearn for his love. There are two or three little errors in the illustration to which we desire to call the attention of the eastern reader of Michelangelo masterpieces that appear in the police Gazette. First, the saloon or hurdy-gurdy shown in the left foreground is not the exact representation of any building in Laramie and the doby pig-pens and a-tents of which the town seems to be composed are not true to nature. Again the streets do not look like the streets of Laramie they look more like the public thoroughfares of Thai city or Jerusalem. Then the girls do not look like Laramie girls and we are acquainted with all the girls in town and consider ourselves a judge of those matters. The girls in this illustration look too much as though they had mingled a great deal with the people of the world they do not have that shy, frightened and pure look that they ought to have. They appear to be the kind of girls that one finds in the crowded metropolis under the gaslight yearning to get acquainted with someone. There are several features of the illustration which we detect as erroneous and among the rest we might mention casually that the incident illustrated never occurred here at all. Aside from these little irregularities above named the picture is no doubt a correct one. We realize fully that times get dull even in New York sometimes it is necessary occasionally to draw on the imagination. But the Gazette artists ought to pick up some hard town like Cheyenne and let us alone a while. The Western Chap Few know how voraciously we go for anything in the fashion line. Many of our exchanges are fashion magazines and nothing is read with such avidity as these highly pictorial aggregations of literature. If there are going to be any changes in the male wardrobe this winter it behooves us to know what they are. We intend to do so. It is our high prerogative and glorious privilege to live in a land of information. If we do not provide ourselves with a few it is our own fault. Man has spanned the ocean with an electric cable and runs his street cars with another cable that puts people out of their misery as quick as a giant powder caramel in a man's chest protector under certain circumstances. Science has done almost everything for us except to pay our debts without leaning toward repudiation. We are making rapid strides in the line of progression. That is, the scientists are. Every little while you can hear a scientist burst a basting thread off his overalls while making a stride. It is equally true that we are marching rapidly along in the line of fashion. Change unceasing change is our war cry and he who undertakes to go through the winter with the stage costumes of the previous winter will find, as Voltaire once said, that it is a cold day. We look with great concern upon the rapid changes which a few weeks have made. The full voluptuous swell and broad cinch of the Chaparrajo have given place to the tight pantalettes with feathers on them conveying the idea that they cannot be removed until death or an earthquake shall occur. Chaps, as they are vulgarly called, deserve more than a passing notice. They are made of leather with fronts of dog skin with the hair on. The inside breaths are of calf or sheepskin made plain but trimmed down the side seam with dog skin bugles and oil-tanned bric-a-brack of the time Michelangelo Kelly. On the front are plain pockets used for holding the ball program and the pop. The pop is a little design in nickel and steel which is often used as an inhaler. It clears out the head and leaves the nasal passages in phrenological chart out on the sidewalk where pure air is abundant. Chaps are rather attractive while the wearer is a horse-back or walking toward you. But when he chases and all waltzed to places you discern that the seat of the garment has been postponed, signe d'aye. This at first induces a pang in the breast of the beholder. Later, however, you become accustomed to the barren and perhaps even stern demeanor of the wearer. You gradually gain control of yourself and master your raging desire to rush up and pin the garment together. The dance goes on. The elite take an adult's dose of ice cream and other refreshments. The leader of the mad waltz glides down the hall with his medieval chaps, swishing along as he sails. The violin gives a last shriek. The superior fiddle rips the robe of night wide open with a parting bzzzt. The mad frolic is over and five dollars have gone into the dim and unfrequent in freight depot of the frog pond and biernd past. End of Section 12. Section 13 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. An incident of the campaign. Colonel Thomas Junius Dayton entered the Democratic headquarters on Second Street a few nights ago, having been largely engaged previously in talking over the political situation with sugar in it. The first person he saw in entering was an individual in the back part of the room, writing, Colonel Dayton ordered him out. The man would not go, maintaining that he had a right to meet together in Democratic headquarters as often as he desired. The Colonel still insisted that he was an outsider and could have nothing in common with the patriotic band of bourbons whose stamping ground he had thus entered. Finally the excitement became so great that a man was called in to umpire the game and sponge off the hostiles. But before blood was shed a peacemaker asked Colonel Dayton what the matter was with him. Well, this man's a Democrat. I've known him for years. What's the reason you don't want him in here? That's all right, said the Colonel with his eyes starting from their sockets with indignation. You people can be easily fooled. I cannot. I know him to be a spy in our camp. I have smelled his breath and find he is not up in the Ohio degree. I have also discovered him to be able to read and write. He cannot answer a single Democratic test. He is a bogus bourbon and my sentiments are that he should be gently but firmly fired. If the band will play something in D that is kind of tremulous they will take off my coat and throw the gentleman over into a vacant lot. I think I know a Democrat when I see him. Perhaps you do not. He cannot respond to a single grand hailing sign. He hasn't the canceled internal revenue stamp on his nose and his breath lacks that spicy election odor which we know so well. Away with him! Fling his palpitating remains over the drawbridge and walk on him. Spread him out on the ramparts and jam him into the culverine. Those are my sentiments. We want no electroplate Democrats here. This is the stronghold of the highly aesthetic and excessively bon-ton, Andrew Jackson Peeler and if justice can't be done to this usurper by the party I shall have to go out and get an infirm whole handle and administer about nine dollars worth of rebuke myself. He went out after the hoe handle and while absent the stranger said he didn't want to be the cause of any ill feeling or to stand in the way of the prosperity of his party. So he would not remain. He put on his hat and stole out into the night a quiet martyr to the blind rage of Colonel Dayton and has not since been seen. Why do they do it? Ben Hill died after suffering intolerable anguish from a tobacco cancer caused by excessive smoking. The consumers of the western-made cigar are now and then getting a nice little dose of leprosy from the Chinese constructed cigars of San Francisco and yet people go right on inviting the most horrible diseases known to science by smoking and smoking to excess. Why do they do it? It is one of those deep dark mysteries that nothing but death can unravel. We cannot fathom it. That's certain. Give us a light, please. Two styles. One of the peculiarities of correspondence is witnessed at this office every day to which we desire to call the attention of our growing girls and boys who ought to know that there is a long way and a short way of saying things on paper. A right way and a wrong way to express thoughts on a postal card just as there is in conversation. We all admire the businessman who is tersened to the point and we dislike the man who hangs on to the doorknob as though life was a never-ending summer dream and refuses to say goodbye. It's so with correspondence. In touching upon the letters received at this office we refer to a carload received at this office during the past year relating to sample copies. Still they are a good specimen of the different styles of doing the same thing. For instance, here is a line which tells a story in brief without wearing out your eyes and days by ponderous phrases and useless verbiage. Useless verbiage and frothy surplusage is a cinnamon which we discovered in 75 while excavating for the purpose of playing the foundations of our imposing residents up the gulch. Persons using the same will please fork over 10% of the gross receipts. Banger Main, 111082. Find ten cents for which send sample copy boomerang to above address. Yours, etc. Thomas Billings. Some would have said please find and close ten cents. That is not absolutely necessary if you put ten cents in the letter that covers all seeming lack of politeness and it's all right. If however you are out of a job and have nothing else to do but to write for sample copies of papers and wait for the department at Washington to allow you a pension you might say please find and closed, etc. Otherwise the ten cents will make it all right. Here's another style which evinces a peculiarity we do not admire. It bespeaks the man who thinks that life and its associations are given us in order to wear out the time waiting patiently meanwhile for Gabriel to render his little overture. It occurs to us that life is real, life is earnest, and so forth. We cannot sit here in the gathering gloom and read four pages of a letter which only expresses what ought to have been expressed in four lines. We feel that we are here to do what is good to the greatest number and we dislike the correspondent who hangs on to the literary doorknob so to speak and absorbs our time which is worth 5.35 per hour. Here we go. New Centerville, Wisconsin November 3, 1882 Mr. William Nye Esquire Laramie City, Wyoming Dear sir I have often saw in our home papers little pieces cut out of your paper the Laramie Boomerang yet I have never saw the paper itself. I hardly pick up a paper from the fireside friend to the Christian at work, but I do not see something or another from your facetious pen and credited to the Boomerang. I have asked our bookstore for a copy of the paper and he said, go to grass there wasn't no such periodical in existence. He is a liar, but I did not tell him so because I am recovering from a case of that kind now which swelled both eyes shut and placed me under the doctor's care. It was a result of a campaign lie and at this moment I do not remember whether it was the other man or me which told it. Things got confused and I am not clear on the matter now. I send 10 cents in postage stamps hoping you will favor me with a specimen copy of the Boomerang and I may subscribe. I sent postage stamps because they are more convenient to me and I suppose that you can use them alright as you must have a good deal of writing to do. I intend to read the paper thorough and give my folks the benefit also. I love to read humorous pieces to my children and my wife and hear their gurgly laugh in the bubble links. I now take a Nestern paper which is gloomy in its tendencies and I call it the morgue. It looks at the dark side of life and costs $3 a year in postage. So send the specimen if you please and I will probably subscribe for the Boomerang as I have saw a good many intracts from it in our papers here and I have not as yet saw your paper. Goodbye. Yours truly James Lettson. Gosh all hemlock Sav. The bull-whacking mule-skinning proprietor of a life-giving Sav wants us to advertise for him and to state that with his gosh all hemlock Sav he can cure all chronic diseases whatever. We would do it if we could sweet being but owing to the fullness of the paper and the foreman we must turn you cruelly away. The Stage Bald Head Most everyone who is not born blind knows that the stage bald head is a delusion and a snare. The only all-wool yard-wide bald head we remember in the American stage is that of Dunston Kirk as worn by the veteran Koldock. Effie Elsler wears her own hair and so does Koldock but Koldock wears his the most. It is the most worn anyhow. What we started out to say is that the stage bald head and the average stage whiskers made us weary with life. The stage bald head is generally made of the internal economy of a cow, dried so that it shines and cut to fit the head as tightly as a potato sack would naturally fit a billiard cue. It is generally about four shades wider than a red face of the wear or vice versa. We do not know which is the worst violation of eternal fitness. The red-faced man who wears a deathly white bald head or the pale young actor who wears a florid roof on his intellect. Sometimes in starring through the country and playing ten or fifteen hundred engagements a bald head gets soiled. We notice that when a show gets to larry me the chances are that the bald head of the bleeding old man is so soiled that he really needs a sheep-dip shampoo. Another feature of this accessory of the stage is its singular failure to fit. It is either a little too short at both ends or it hangs over the skull in large festoons and wends and warts in such a way as to make the audience believe that the wearer has dropsy of the brain. You can never get a stage bald head near enough like nature to fool the average house fly. A fly knows in two moments whether it is the genuine or only a base imitation and the bald head of the theater fills him with nausea and disgust. Nature at all times hard to imitate preserves her bald head as she does her sunny skies and deep blue seas far beyond the reach of the weak fallible human imitator. Baldness is like fame. It cannot be purchased. It is acquired. Some men may be born bald, some may acquire baldness and others may have baldness thrust upon them, but they generally acquire it. The stage beard is also rather dizzy as a rule. It looks as much like a beard that grew there as a cow's tail-wood if tied to the bronze dog on the front porch. When you tie a heavy black beard on a young actor who would be churned up if he smoked a full-fledged cigar, he looks about as savage as a bowl of mush and milk struck with a club. End of Section 13 Section 14 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Fatherly Words NWP writes, I'm a young man of twenty-five years old. I'm in love with a young lady of seventeen. Her mind being very different from mine, I have not told her of my love, nor asked to call on her. I thought her so giddy that she did not want any steady company. She is a great lover of amusement. She is a perfect lady in her department, although she is more like a child of fourteen than a young lady of seventeen. I think she is very pretty, but she seems to enjoy flirting to the greatest extent. One evening at a party I asked her to promenade with me, and she would not do it. I then asked her to allow me to bring her refreshments which she would not do. I then asked her to let me take her home when she was ready to go, and the answer was, no, I will not do any such thing. And turning around she left me. I have met her several times since. She always bows to me. Everywhere she meets me she surprises me pleasantly. Now, did I do wrong in asking her those privileges at the party? I having no introduction to her? I am still in love with her. After she had refused to promenade with you and had declined to permit you to bring her refreshments, it was pressing matters rather too far for you to ask her to allow you to accompany her home whenever she was ready to go. Still, as she treats you kindly whenever you meet, it is evident that you did not offend her very deeply. Perhaps she sees that you love her and does not wish to discourage you. You were no doubt a little previous in trying to get acquainted with the young lady. She may be giddy, but she has just about sized you up in shape, and no doubt if you keep on trying to love her without her knowledge or consent she will hit you with something and put a Swiss sunset over your eye. Do not yearn to win her affections all at once. Give her twenty or thirty years in which to see your merits. You will have more to entitle you to her respect by that time, no doubt. During that time you may rise to be president and win a deathless name. The main thing you have to look out for now, however, is to restrain yourself from marrying people who do not want to marry you. That style of freshness will, in thirty or forty years, wear away. If it does not, probably the vigorous big brother of some young lady of seventeen will consign you to the silent tomb. Do not try to promenade with the young lady unless she gives her consent. Do not marry anyone against her wishes. Give the girl a chance. She will appreciate it and even though she may not marry you, she will permit you to sit on the fence and watch her when she goes to marry someone else. Do not be despondent. Be courageous and someday, perhaps, you will get there. At present the horizon is a little bit foggy. As you say, she may be so giddy that she doesn't want steady company. There is a glimmer of hope in that. She may be waiting until she gets over the agony and annoyance of teething before she looks seriously into the matters of matrimony. If that should turn out to be the case, we are not surprised. Give her a chance to grow up and in the meantime go and learn the organ grinder's profession and fix yourself so that you can provide for a family. Sometimes a girl only seventeen years old is able to discern that a young intellectual giant like you is not going to make a dazzling success of life as a husband. Brace up and try to forget your sorrow in WP and you may be happy yet. The good time coming. Angora cloth is a Parisian novelty. Shaggy woollen goods are all the rage and this Angora cloth is a perfect type of shaggy materials. It is a soft downy article like the fur of an Angora cat. Very shoy toilets are of Angora cloth trimmed with velvet applique work to form passementry. Angora cloth may be fashionable but the odor of the Angora goat is losing favor. A herd of these goats crossed the Sierra Nevadas during the autumn and as soon as they got over the range we knew it at Laramie just as well as we knew of the earthquake shock on the seventh instant. The Angora goat is very quiet in other respects shrub. He certainly demands attention. A little band of Angora goats has been quartered in Laramie city lately and though they have been well behaved they have made themselves known from time to time whenever we have opened the casement to let in the glorious air of heaven. In letting in the glorious air of heaven we have in several instances let in a good deal of the mohair industry and some seductive fragrance. There is a glowing prospect that within the next year a bone fertilizer mill, a soap emporium and a glue factory will have been started here and now with the Angora goat looming up in the distance with his molasses candy horns his erect but tremulous and undecided tail piercing the atmosphere and the seductive odor peculiar to this fowl we feel that life in Wyoming will not, after all, be a hollow mockery. Here to fore we have been compelled to worry along with polygamy and the odor of the alkali flat but times are changing now and we will one day have all the wonderful and complicated smells of Chicago at our door. Then will the desert indeed blossom as the rose and the mountain lion and Billy the Kid will lie down together. Mania for Marking Clothes The most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew, said Buck Bramble to a boomerang man was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon River. He was also reserved in Taciturn among the miners and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew. I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed and told him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out when he asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a female seminary, I would have to stand it, I suppose. He thought I ought to mark my clothes in a way and said he would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three shots through the valise. After that a coolness sprang up between us and the warm friendship that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way. Only the man had them on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject and as they had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days they thought the most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him and then send the brain to New York in a baking powder can. So they hung him one night to the bow of a sighing mountain pine. The autopsy was, of course, crude but they sawed open his head and scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to New York. By some mistake or other he got mixed up with some sample specimens of ore from the Brindle-Tom cat discovery and was sent to the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner as was intended. The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved letter to the boys saying that he was an old man anyway and he wished they would consider his grey hairs and not try to palm off their old groceries on him. He might have made errors in his essays perhaps, all men were more or less liable to mistakes but he flattered himself that he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can of these composed lobster salad even if it was in a baking powder can. He hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense anymore but use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old and began to totter down toward the silent tomb. This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty whether he was okay in the upper story or not. Regarding the nose the annals of surgery contain many cases where the nose has been cut or torn off and being replaced has grown fast again recovering its jeopardized functions. One of the earliest 1680 is related by the surgeon Fiora Venti who happened to be nearby when a man's nose having been cut off had fallen in the sand. He remarks that he took it up washed it, replaced it and that it grew together. Still this is a little bit hazardous and in warm weather the nose might refuse to catch on. It would be mortifying in the extreme to have the nose drop off in a dish of ice cream in a large banquet. Not only would it be disagreeable to the owner of the nose but those who sat near him. He adds the address of the owner of the repaired nose and requests any doubter to go and examine for himself. Reginald in the Gazette Salutaire 1714 tells of a patient whose nose was bitten off by a smuggler. The owner of the nose wrapped it in a bit of cloth and said to Reginald who, although the part was cold reset it and it became attached. This is another instance where by being sufficiently previous the nose was secured and handed down to future generations. Yet as we said before it is a little bit risky and a nose of that character cannot be relied upon at all times. After a nose has once seceded it cannot be expected to adhere to the old constitution with such loyalty as prior to that change. Although these cases call for more credulity than most of us have to spare yet later cases published in trustworthy journals would seem to corroborate this. In the clinical annals and medical Gazette of Heidelberg 1830 there are 16 similar cases cited by the surgeon Dr. Hoffecker who was appointed by the Senate to attend the duels of the students. It seems that during these duels it is not uncommon for a student to slice off the nose of his adversary and lay it on the table until the duel is over. After that the surgeon puts it on with mucilage and it never misses a meal but keeps right on growing. The wax nose is attractive but in a warm room it is apt to get excited and wander down the moustache or it may stray away under the collar and when the proprietor goes to wipe the feature he does not wipe anything but space. A gold nose that opens on one side is engraved with hunter case and key wind is attractive especially on a bright day. The coin's silver nose is very well in its way but rather commonplace unless designed to match the tea service with knives and forks. In that case good taste is repaid by admiration and pleasure on the part of the guest. The paper mache nose is durable unless liable to become cold and disagreeable. It is also lighter and not liable to season crack. False noses are made of paper mache, leather, gold, silver and wax. These last are fitted in the typicals or springs and are difficult to distinguish from a true nose. Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel and wore a golden one which he attached to his face with cement which he always carried about. This was a good scheme as it found him always prepared for accidents. He could at any moment repair to a dressing room or even slide into an alley where he could avoid the prying gaze of the vulgar world and glue his nose on. Of course he ran the risk of getting it on crooked and a little out of line with his other features. But this would naturally only attract attention and fix the minds of those with whom he might be called upon to converse. A man with his nose glued on wrong side up could hold the attention of an audience for hours when any other man would seem tedious and uninteresting. End of section 14 Section 15 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Something too much of this. The Pawnee Republican of the thirteenth innocently and impertently remarks Fred Nye, father of Bill Nye the humorist is the editor of the Omaha Republican Vice-Datess Brooks Gone to Europe Harold Will the press of the country please provide us with a few more parents? Old Jim Nye and several other valuable fathers of ours have already cloned the golden elevator. We now feel like a comparative orphan. The time was when we could hold a reunion of our parents and have a pretty big time. But it's a mighty lonely thing to stand on the shores of time and see your parents whittle down to three or four young men like Fred Nye of the Republican. Colorblindness The paper world says there's no use talking. The newspaper men of the press are today becoming more and more colorblind. In other words, they have lost that subtle flavor of description for which the public yearns. They have missed that wonderful spice and aroma of narration which is the life of all newspaper work. We do not take this to self at all, but we desire before we say one word to make a few remarks. The boomerang has been charged with airing on the other side and coloring things a little too high. Sir Garnett Wolsey in a private letter to us during the late Egyptian assault and battery stated that if we aired at all it was on the highly colored side. There is an excuse for lack of spice and all that sort of thing in the newspaper world. The men who write for our dailies as a rule have to write about two miles per day and they ought not to be kicked if it is not as interesting as Uncle Tom's cabin or Leaves of Grass. We have done some 900 miles of writing ourselves during our short, sharp and decisive career and we know what we are talking about. Those things we wrote at a time over ten acres of paper per day were not thrilling they did not catch the public eye but were just naturally consigned to oblivion's bottomless maw. Read that last sentence twice it will do you no harm. The public it seems to us has created a false standard of merit for the newspaper. People take a big daily and pay ten dollars per year for it because it is the biggest paper in the world and then don't read a quarter of it. They are doing a smart thing no doubt but it is killing the feverish young men with throbbing brains who are doing the work. Would you consider that a large pair of shoes or a large wife should be sought for just because you can get more material for the same price? Not much Marianne. Excellence is what we seek not bulk. Write better things and less of them then you will do better and the public will be pleased to see the change. Should anyone who reads these words be suffering from an insatiable hunger for a paper that aims at elegance of diction, high tone logic and pink cambrick sentiment and a moderate price, he will do well to call it this office and look over our goods. Samples sent me on application to any part of the United States or Europe. We refer to Herbert Spencer the Laramie National Bank and the postmaster of this city as to our reputation for truth and veracity. A little previous Speaking of elections and returns brings back to our memory the time when it was pretty close in a certain congressional district in Wisconsin where W.T. Price is now putting up a job on the Democrats. In those days returns didn't come in by telegraph but on horseback and on foot and it was annoying to wait for figures by which to determine the result. At Hudson the politicians had made a pretty close estimate but were waiting one evening after election at a saloon on Buckeye Street for something definite from Eau Claire County. The session was very dull and to get the little Spartan hand someone suggested that old Judge Weatherby ought to set him up. Judge Weatherby was a staunch old Democrat and had rigidly treated himself for twenty years and just as rigidly refused to treat anybody else. The result was that he had secured a vigorous bloom on his own nose but had never put the glass to his neighbor's lips. He intimated on this occasion however that if he could get encouraging news from Eau Claire for the Democrats he would turn loose. The party waited till midnight and had just decided to go home when a travel-worn horseman rode up to the door. He was very reticent and he was a stranger. No one seemed to want to open up a conversation with him. Till at last Judge Weatherby who couldn't keep the great question of politics out of his mind just got in from Eau Claire County was the reply how did Eau Claire County go was the Judge's next question oh I don't pay attention to no politics but they told me it went 453 majority for the Democrats there upon the Judge threw his hat in the air for the first and last time in his life treated the entire crowd of Republicans and Democrats alike it was very late when he went home also very late when he got downtown the next day when he did come down he was surprised to find a Republican brass band out and the news all over the city that the Republican candidate had been elected by several hundred majority in the afternoon he learned that Hod Taylor now clergyman of Marseille had hired a tramp to ride into the Buckeye Saloon a previous evening and report as stated in order to bring about a good state of feeling on the judges part Judge Weatherby since that time is regarded as the most skeptical Democrat in that congressional district and even if he were to be assured over and over again that his party was victorious he would still doubt it is such things as these that go a long way toward encouraging a feeling of distrust between parties and causes politicians to be looked upon with great mistrust although Mr. Taylor is now in France attending to the affairs of his government and trying to become familiar with the French language he often pauses in his work as the memory of this little incident comes over his mind and a hot tear falls on the report is making out to send on to the Secretary of State at Washington can it be that his hard heart is at last touched with remorse his dueling murder somebody wants to know whether dueling is murder and we reply in clarion tones that it depends largely on how fatal it is dueling with monogram note paper at a distance of 1200 yards is not murder heap gone another landmark of Laramie has gone another wreck has been strewn upon the sands of time another gay bark has gone to pieces upon the cruel rocks and above the broken spars and jib boom and four top gallant royal main brace and spanker boom euker deck the cold damp tide is moaning we refer to L.W. Schroeder who recently left this place incognito also in debt largely to various people of this gay and festive metropolis Laramie has been the home at various times of some of the most classical dead beats of modern times but Schroeder was the noblest the most grand and colossal of dead beats that has ever visited our shores born with unusual abilities in this direction he early learned how to enlarge and improve upon the talents thus bestowed him and here in Laramie he soon won a place at the front as a man who purchased everything and paid for nothing he had a way of approaching the grocer and the merchant that was well calculated to deceive and he did in several instances make representations which we now learn were false he was by profession a carpenter and joiner having learned the art while cutting cordwood on the Missouri bottoms near Omaha for the Collins brothers here he rapidly won his way to the front rank by erecting some of the most commanding architectural ruins of which modern wood assassination can boast he would take a hatchet and a buck saw and carve out his fortune anywhere in the world and it wouldn't cost him ascent he filled this whole trans Missouri country with his fame and his promissory notes and then skinned out and left us here to mourn goodbye Schroeder wherever you go we will remember you and hope that you may succeed in piling up a monument of indebtedness as you did here you were industrious and untiring in your efforts to become a great financial wreck and success has crowned your efforts we will not grudge you the glory that coagulates about your massive brow the editorial lamp there is something unique about an editor's lamp that enables almost anyone to select it from a large number of other lamps it is suede generis and extremely original the large metropolitan papers use gas in the editorial rooms and make up for the loss of the kerosene lamp by furnishing their offices with some other article furniture that is equally attractive the boomerang lamp especially during the election has had its intensity wonderfully softened and toned down through various causes you can take most any other lamp and trim the wick so that it will burn squarely and not smoke but the editorial lamp is peculiar in this respect the wick gets so it will burn straight when you find that it does not burn the oil then you get it filled and put in a new wick experimenting with this you get your fingers perfumed with coal oil and spill some in your lap then you turn it up so you can see and as you get a flow of thought you look up to find that you have smudded up your chimney and you murmur something that you are glad no one is near to hear when our life record is made up and handed down to posterity if a generous people will kindly overlook the remarks we have made over our lamp and also the little extemporaneous statements made at picnics we will do as much for the public and make this thing as near even as possible end of section 15 section 16 of bailed hay by Bill Nye this LibriVox recording is in the public domain difficult to identify a dead fisherman was taken to the San Francisco morgue the other day with nothing by which to identify him but his fish line there may be features of difference between fish lines but as a rule there is a long tame sweep of monotony about them which confuses the authorities in tracing a man's antecedents the maroon sausage the maroon sausage will be in favor this winter as was the case last season in our best circles it will be caught up at the end and tied in a plain knot with strings of the same testimonials of regard Friday was a large day in the office of this paper a delegation consisting of Ed Walsh and J.J. Clark trained dispatchers of this division of the Union Pacific Road waited on the editor hereof with two tokens of their esteem one consisting of a bird that had been taxidermied at Wyoming Station by the agent Mr. Gullier the great corn canner of the west aided by another man who has up to this date evaded the authorities as soon as he is captured his name will be given to the public the bird is mainly constructed on the duck plan with web feed and spike tail the material gave out however and the artist was obliged to complete the bird by putting an eagle's head on him this gives the winged king of birds a low squatty and plebeian cast of countenance and bothers the naturalist in determining its class and in diagnosing the case with the piercing keen eye of the eagle and the huge Roman nose peculiar to that bird coupled with the pose of the duck we have a magnificent combination in the way of an ornithological specimen science would be tickled to death to wrestle with this feathered anomaly the eagle looks as though he would like to soar first rate if it were not for circumstances over which he has no control while the other portions of his person would suggest that he would be glad to paddle around an hour or two in the yielding mud we have placed this singular circumstance where he can look down upon us in a reproachful way while we write obstruous articles upon the contiguity of the hence the same committee also presented a bottle of what purported to be ginger ale it was wrapped up in a newspaper and the cork was held in place by a piece of copper wire as we do not drink anything whatever now but we presented it to the composing room and told the boys to sail in and have a grand debauch generosity is always rewarded sooner or later the office boy took it into the composing room and partially opened it then it opened itself with a loud report that shook the dome of the boomerang office and pied a long article on yellow fever in Texas almost immediately after it opened itself it escaped into space at least it filled the space box of one of the cases full there was only about a spoonful left in the bottle and no one felt as though he wanted to rob the rest so it stands there yet if Mr. Gullier could put up his goods in such shape as to avoid this high degree of effervescence he would succeed but in canning corn and bottling beer he has so far put too much vigor into the goods and when you open them they escape almost immediately while we are grateful for the kind and thoughtful spirit we regret that we are unable to test the merits of the beverage without collecting it from the sky where it now is it looks to us as though some day Mr. Gullier while engaged in canning and bottling of some of his gaseous goods would be lifted over into the middle of the holidays and we warn him against being too reckless or he will certainly meander through the atmosphere some time and the place that knew him once will know him no more forever about two o'clock the following special was received special to the boomerang DH account charity Wyoming October 27 Dear Bill Nye we made the run from Laramie to Wyoming in one hour Gullier says do not open that bottle it might go off he sent you the wrong bottle by mistake it is a preparation for annihilating tramps and produces instant dissolution we after careful inquiry and rigid investigation find that the bird is filled with dynamite nitroglycerin etc in fact it is an infernal machine and is set to go off at 3 30 this PM Clark Potter and Walsh the Chinese compositor the Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do but must walk from one case to another constantly as the characters needed cover such a large number that they cannot be put into anything like the space used in the English newspaper office in setting up an ordinary piece of manuscript the Chinese printer will waltz up and down the room for a few moments and then go downstairs for a line of lower case then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story after some caps and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of astonishers the successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very intelligent but he must be a good pedestrian he may work and walk around over the building all day to set up a stick full and then half the people in this county couldn't read it after all snowed under we have met the enemy and we are hism we have made our remarks and we are now ready to listen to the gentleman from New York we could have dug out perhaps and explained about New York but when almost every state in the union rose up and made certain statements yesterday we found that the job of explaining this matter thoroughly would be weirsome and require a great deal of time we do not blame the democracy for this we are a little surprised however and grieved it will interfere with our wardrobe this winter with an overcoat on Wyoming a plug hat on Iowa a pair of pantaloons on Pennsylvania and boots in the general result it looks now as though we would probably go through the winter wrapped in a bed quilt and profound meditation we intended to publish an extra this morning but the news was of such a character that we thought we would get along without it what was the use of publishing an extra with a Republican majority only in red butte the cause of this great democratic fresh it in New York yesterday but why go into details we all have an idea why it was so the number of votes would seem to indicate that there was a tendency toward democracy throughout the state now in Pennsylvania if you will look over the returns carefully but why should we take up your valuable time in offering an explanation of a political matter of the past under the circumstances some would go and yield to the soothing influences of the Maddening Bowl but we do not advise that it would only furnish temporary relief and the recoil would be unpleasant we resume our arduous duties with a feeling of extreme ennui and with that sense of surprise and astonishment a man does who has had a large brick block fall in him when he was not expecting it although we feel a little lonely today having met but a few Republicans on the street who were obliged to come out and do their marketing we still hope for the future the grand old Republican party but that's what we said last week it sounds hollow now and meaningless somehow because our voice is a little hoarse and we are snowed under so deep that it is difficult for us to enunciate but about those bets if the parties to whom we owe bets and we owe most everybody will just agree to take the stakes and not go into details not stop to ask us about the state of our mind and talk about how it was done we don't care we don't wish to have this thing explained at all we are not of an inquiring turn of mind just plain facts are good enough for us without any harrowing details in the meantime we are going to work to earn some more money to bet on the next election Judge Folger and others come over and see us when you have time and we will talk this matter over Mr. B. Butler wishes we had your longevity with a robust Constitution we find that most any man can wear out cruel fate and get there at last we do not feel so angry as we do grieved and surprised we are pained to see the American people thus betray our confidence and throw a large wardrobe into the hands of the relentless foe rough on Oscar somebody shook a log cabin bedquill at Oscar Wilde when he was in this country and it knocked him so crazy for two days that a man had to lead him around town by a bed-court to prevent him from butting his head against a lump of oatmeal mush and scattering his brains all over the Union End of Section 16 Section 17 of Bailed Hay by Bill Nye this lever vox recording is in the public domain the postal card no one denies that the postal card is a great thing and yet it makes most people mad to get one this is because we naturally feel sensitive about having our correspondence open to the eye of the postmaster and postal clerk yet they do not read them postal employees hate a postal card as cordially as anyone else if they were banished and had nothing to read but a package of postal cards or a foreign book of statistics they would read the statistics this wild hunger for postal cards and a part of postmasters is all a myth when the writer don't care who sees his message that knocks the curiosity out of those who handle those messages a man who would read a postal card without being compelled to by some stringent statute must be a little deranged when you receive one you say here's a message of so little importance that the writer didn't care who saw it I don't care much for it myself then you look it over and lay it away and forget it do you think that the postmaster is going to wear out his young life in devouring literature that the sendee don't feel proud of when he receives it nay nay during our official experience we have been placed where we could have read postal cards time and again and no one but the all seeing eye would have detected it but we have controlled our self and closed our eyes to the written message refusing to take advantage of the confidence reposed in us by our government and those who thus trusted us with their secrets all over our great land every moment of the day or night these little cards are being silently scattered breathing loving words inscribed with a hard led pencil and shedding information upon sundered hearts and they are as safe as though they had never been breathed they are safer in most instances because they cannot be read by anybody in the whole world that is why it irritates us to have someone open up a conversation by saying you remember what that fellow wrote me from Cheyenne on that postal card of the 25th and how he rounded me up for not sending him those goods now we can't keep all those things in our head it requires too much of a strain to do it on the salary we receive a man with a very large salary and a tenacious memory might keep run of the postal correspondence in a small office but we cannot do it we are not accustomed to it and it rattles and excites us a card I have just received a letter from my friend Bill Nye of the Laramie City Boomerang wherein he informs me that he is engaged to the beautiful and accomplished Lydia E. Pinkham of vegetable compound fame and that the wedding will take place on next Christmas to be sure I'm expected at the wedding and I'll be on hand if I can secure a clean shirt by that time and the roads ain't too bad but I'm somewhat at a loss what to get is a suitable present as Bill informs me in a post script to his letter that gifts of bibles, albums, nickel plated pickle dishes and almost with frames and the lack will not be in order as it is utterly impossible to pawn articles of this kind in Laramie City The Bohemian we are sorry that the above letter which we dashed off in a careless moment has been placed before the public as later developments have entirely changed the aspect of the matter the engagement between oneself and Lydia having been rudely broken by the young lady herself she has returned the solitaire filled ring and henceforth we can be nothing more to each other than friends the promise which bade fair to yield so much joy in the future has been ruthlessly yanked asunder and two young hearts must bleed through the coming years far be it from us to say ought that would reflect upon the record of Miss Pinkham it would only imperil her chances in the future I heard this sweet satisfaction of gathering in another guileless sucker like us the truth however cannot be evaded that Lydia is no longer young she is now in the searing yellow leaf the gurgle of girlhood and the romping careless grace of her childhood are matters of ancient history alone we might go on and tell how one thing brought on another till the quarrel occurred the words and an assaultant battery led to this estrangement but we will not do it it would be wrong for a great strong man to take advantage of his strength and the public press to speak disparagingly of a young thing like lid no matter how unreasonably she may have treated us we are dumb and silent on this point journalists who have been invited and have purchased costly wedding presents may ship the presents by express prepaid and we will accept them and struggle along with our first great heart trouble while Lydia goes on her mad career why we are not gay it was the policy of this paper from its inception whatever that is to frown upon and discourage fraud wherever the latter has shown its hideous front in doing so we have simply done our duty and our reward has been great partially in the shape of money and partially in the shape of conscious rectitude and new subscribers we shall continue this course until we are able to take a trip to Europe or until some large man comes into the office with a mask battery and blows us out through the window into the mellow haze of an internal summertime we have been waiting until the present time for about 100,000 shade trees in this town to grow and as they seem to be a little reluctant about doing so and the season being now far advanced we feel safe in saying that they are dead they were purchased a year ago of a nursery that purported to be OK and up to that time no one had ever breathed a word against it now however, unless those trees are replaced we shall be compelled to publish the name of that nursery in large glaring type to the world the trees looked a little under the weather when they arrived but we thought we could bring them out by nursing them they stood up in the spring breeze like a seed wart however and refused to leave they are still obstinate the agent concluded to leave but the trees did not we feel hurt about it because people come here from a distance and laugh at our hoe handle forest they speak jeeringly of our wilderness of deceased elms and sneer at our defunct magnolias we hate to cast a reflection on the house but we also dislike to be played for Chinaman when we are no such thing we prefer to sit in the shade of the luxuriant telegraph pole and stroll at set of sun among the abrasious shadows of the barbed wire fence through which the sunlight glints and glitters to and fro nothing saddens us like death in any form and 100,000 dead trees scattered through the city sticking their limbs up into the atmosphere like a variety actress bears down upon us with the leaden weight of an ever-present gloom scientific the boomerang reporter sent out to find the north pole 18 months ago has just been heard from an exploring party recently found portions of his remains in latitude 4 11 44 longitude south west by south from the pole and near the remains the following fragment of a diary July 1st 1881 have just been out searching for a sunstroke and signs of a thaw saw nothing but ice flow and snow so far as the eye could reach think we will have snow this evening unless the wind changes July 2nd spent the forenoon exploring to the north west for right of way for a new equatorial and north pole railroad that I think would be of immense value to commerce the grade is easy and the expense would be slight ate my last dog today had intended him for the fourth but got too hungry and ate him raw with vinegar I wish I was at home eating boomerang paste July 3rd we had quite a frost last night and it looks this morning as though the corn and small fruits must have suffered it is now two weeks since the last of the crew died and left me alone ate the leather ends of my suspenders today for dinner I did not need the suspenders anyway for by tightening up my pants I find they will stay on all right and I don't look for any ladies to call so that even if my pants came off by some oversight or other nobody would be shocked July 4th saved up some tar roofing and a bottle of mucilage for my fourth of July dinner and gorged myself today the exercises were very poorly attended and the celebration rather a failure it is clouding up in the west and I'm afraid we're going to have snow it seems to me we're having an all fired late spring here this year July 5th didn't drink a drop yesterday it was the quietest fourth I ever put in I never felt so little remorse over the way I celebrated as I do today I didn't do a thing yesterday that I was ashamed of except to eat the remainder of a box of shoe blacking for supper today I ate my last boot heel stewed looks as though we might have a hard winter July 6th feel a little apprehension about something to eat my credit is all right here but there is no competition and prices are therefore very high ice however is still firm this will be a good ice cream country if there were any demand but the country is so sparsely settled that a man feels as lonesome here as a greenbacker at a presidential election ate a pound of cotton waste soaked in machine oil today there is nothing left for tomorrow but ice water and an old pocketbook for dinner looks as though we might have snow July 7th this is a good cool place to spend the summer if provisions were more plenty I am wearing a seal skin undershirt with three woolen over shirts and two bare skin vests today and when the dew begins to fall I have to put on my buffalo ulster to keep off the night air I wish I was home it seems pretty lonesome here since the other boys died I do not know what I will get for dinner tomorrow unless the neighbors bring in something a big bear is coming down the hatchway as I write I wish I could eat him it would be the first square meal for two months it is however a little mixed whether I will eat him or he eat me it will be a cold day for me if he here the diary breaks off abruptly and from the chewed up appearance of the book we are led to entertain a horrible fear as to his safety the revelation racket in Utah our esteemed and extremely cannubial contemporary the desert news says in a recent editorial the latter day saints will rejoice to learn that the vacancies which have existed in the quorums of the 12 apostles and the first seven presidents of the 70s are now filled during the conference recently held elder Abram H. Cannon was unanimously chosen to be one of the first seven presidents of 70s and he was ordained to that office on Monday October 9 subsequently the Lord by revelation through his servant pressed John Taylor designated by name brothers George Teasdale and Herbert J. Grant to be ordained to the Apostleship and brother Seymour B. Young to fill the remaining vacancy in the presidency of the 70s Brethren were ordained Monday October 16 the two Apostles under the hands of the first presidency in 12 and the other under the hands of the 12 and the presidency of the 70s now that's a convenient system of politics and civil service when there is a vacancy the president John Taylor goes into his closet and has a revelation which settles it all right if the man appointed by curiously by the Lord is not in every way satisfactory he may be discharged by the same process instead therefore of being required to rally a large force of his friends to aid him in getting an appointment the aspirant arranges solely with the party who runs the revelation business it will be seen at a glance therefore that the man who can get the job of revelating in Zion has it pretty much his own way we would not care who made the laws of Utah if we could do its revelating at so much per revelant think of the power it gives a man in a community of blind believers imagine if you please the glorious possibilities in store for the man who can successfully reveal the word of the Lord in an easy extemporaneous manner on five minutes notice this prerogative does not confine itself to politics alone the impromptu revelator of the Jordan has revelations when he wants to evade the payment of a bill he gets a divine order also if he desires to marry a beautiful maid or seal the new school ma'am to himself he has leverage which he can bring to bear upon the people of his diocese at all times even more potent than the press and it does not possess the drawbacks that a newspaper does you can run an aggressive paper if you want to in this country and up to the time of the funeral you have a pretty active and enjoyable time but after the grave has been filled up with the clods of the valley and your widow has drawn her insurance you naturally ask what is the advantage to be gained by this fearless style of journalism still even the inspired racket has its drawbacks last year a little incident occurred in a Mormon family down in southern Utah which weighed about nine pounds and when the ex officio husband who had been absent two years returned he acted kind of wild and surprised somehow and as he went through the daily round of his work he could be counting his fingers back and forth and looking at the almanac and adding up little mounts on the side of the barn with a piece of red chalk finally one of the inspired mob of that part of the vineyard thought it was about time to get a revelation and go down there so he did so he sailed up to the de facto husband and quasi parent and solemnly straightened up some little irregularities as to dates but the revelation was received with disdain and the revelator was sent home in an old or sack and buried in a peach basket sometimes there is evening Utah manifestation of such irreverence and open hostility to the church then it makes us shudder and of section 17