Baled Hay. A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's «Leaves o' Grass»
TextAN INCIDENT OF THE CAMPAIGN
COLONEL THOMAS JUNIUS DAYTON entered the democratic headquarters on Second street, a few nights ago, having been largely engaged, previously, in talking over the political situation, with sugar in it. The first person he saw on entering, was an individual in the back part of the room, writing.
Colonel Dayton ordered him out.
The man would not go, maintaining that he had a right to meet together in democratic headquarters as often as he desired. The Colonel still insisted that he was an outsider and could have nothing in common with the patriotic band of bourbons whose stamping ground he had thus entered.
Finally the excitement became so great that a man was called in to umpire the game and sponge off the hostiles, but before blood was shed a peacemaker asked Colonel Dayton what the matter was with him.
"This man is a Democrat. I've known him for years. What's the reason you don't want him in here?"
"That's all right," said the Colonel, with his eyes starting from their sockets with indignation, "you people can be easily fooled. I cannot. I know him to be a spy in our camp. I have smelled his breath and find he is not up in the Ohio degree. I have also discovered him to be able to read and write. He cannot answer a single democratic test. He is a bogus bourbon, and my sentiments are that he should be gently but firmly fired. If the band will play something in D that is kind of tremulous, I will take off my coat and throw the gentleman over into a vacant lot. I think I know a Democrat when I see him. Perhaps you do not. He cannot respond to a single grand hailing sign. He hasn't the cancelled internal revenue stamp on his nose, and his breath lacks that spicy election odor which we know so well. Away with him! Fling his palpitating remains over the drawbridge and walk on him. Spread him out on the ramparts and jam him into the culverin. Those are my sentiments. We want no electroplate Democrats here. This is the stronghold of the highly aesthetic and excessively bon-ton, Andrew Jackson peeler, and if justice cannot be done to this usurper by the party, I shall have to go out and get an infirm hoe handle and administer about $9 worth of rebuke myself."
He went out after the hoe handle, and while absent, the stranger said he didn't want to be the cause of any ill feeling, or to stand in the way of the prosperity of his party, so he would not remain. He put on his hat and stole out into the night, a quiet martyr to the blind rage of Colonel Dayton, and has not since been seen.
WHY DO THEY DO IT?
BEN HILL, died, after suffering intolerable anguish from a tobacco cancer, caused by excessive smoking. The consumers of the western-made cigar are now and then getting a nice little dose of leprosy from the Chinese constructed cigars of San Francisco, and yet people go right on inviting the most horrible diseases known to science, by smoking, and smoking to excess. Why do they do it? It is one of those deep, dark mysteries that nothing but death can unravel. We cannot fathom it, that's certain. (Give us a light, please.)
TWO STYLES
ONE of the peculiarities of correspondence is witnessed at this office every day, to which we desire to call the attention of our growing girls and boys, who ought to know that there is a long way and a short way of saying things on paper; a right way and a wrong way to express thoughts on a postal card, just as there is in conversation. We all admire the business man who is terse and to the point, and we dislike the man who hangs on to the door knob as though life was a never-ending summer dream, and refuses to say good-bye. It's so with correspondence. In touching upon the letters received at this office, we refer to a car load received at this office during the past year, relating to sample copies. Still they are a good specimen of the different styles of doing the same thing.
For instance, here is a line which tells the story in brief, without wearing out your eyes and days by ponderous phrases and useless verbiage. "Useless verbiage and frothy surplusage" is a synonym which we discovered in '75, while excavating for the purpose of laying the foundations of our imposing residence up the gulch. Persons using the same will please fork over ten per cent of the gross receipts:
"Bangor, Maine, 11-10-82.
"Find 10c for which send sample copy Boomerang to above address. Yours, etc.,
"Thomas Billings."
Some would have said "please" find inclosed ten cents. That is not absolutely necessary. If you put ten cents in the letter that covers all seeming lack of politeness and it's all right. If, however, you are out of a job, and have nothing else to do but to write for sample copies of papers, and wait for the department at Washington to allow you a pension, you might say, "Please find inclosed," etc., otherwise the ten cents will make it all right.
Here's another style, which evinces a peculiarity we do not admire. It bespeaks the man who thinks that life and its associations are given us in order to wear out the time, waiting patiently meanwhile for Gabriel to render his little overture.
It occurs to us that life is real, life is earnest, and so forth. We cannot sit here in the gathering gloom and read four pages of a letter, which only expresses what ought to have been expressed in four lines. We feel that we are here to do the greatest good to the greatest-number, and we dislike the correspondent who hangs on to the literary door knob, so to speak, and absorbs our time, which is worth $5.35 per hour.
Here we go —
"New Centreville, Wis., Nov. 8, 1882.
"Mr. William Nye, esq., Laramie City, Wyoming:
"Dear Sir: – I have often saw in our home papers little pieces cut out of your paper The Larmy Boomerang, yet I have never saw the paper itself. I hardly pick up a paper, from the Fireside. Friend to the Christian at Work, that I do not see something or a nother from your faseshus pen and credited to The Boomerang. I have asked our bookstore for a copy of the paper, and he said go to grass, there wasn't no such perioddickle in existence. He is a liar; but I did not tell him so because I am just recovering from a case of that kind now, which swelled both eyes shet and placed me under the doctor's care.
"It was the result of a campaign lie, and at this moment I do not remember whether it was the other man or me which told it. Things got confused and I am not clear on the matter now.
"I send ten cents in postage stamps, hoping you will favor me with a speciment copy of The Boomerang and I may suscribe. I send postage stamps because they are more convenient to me, and I suppose that you can use them all right as you must have a good deal of writing to do. I intend to read the paper thorrow and give my folks the benefit also. I love to read humerrus pieces to my children and my wife and hear their gurgly laugh well up like a bobollink's. I now take an estern paper which is gloomy in its tendencies, and I call it the Morg. It looks at the dark side of life and costs $3 a year and postage.
"So send the speciment if you please and I will probbly suscribe for The Boomerang, as I have saw a good many extrax from it in our papers here and I have not as yet saw your paper."
GOSHALLHEMLOCK SALVE
THE bullwacking, mule-skinning proprieter of a life-giving salve wants us to advertise for him, and to state that, with his Goshallhemlock salve he "can cure all chronicle diseases whatever."
"We would do it if we could, sweet being; but owing to the fullness of the paper and the foreman, we must turn you cruelly away.
"Yours truly,
"James Letson."
THE STAGE BALD-HEAD
MOST everyone, who was not born blind, knows that the stage bald-head is a delusion and a snare. The only all-wool, yard-wide bald-head we remember on the American stage, is that of Dunstan Kirke as worn by the veteran Couldock.
Effie Ellsler wears her own hair and so does Couldock, but Couldock wears his the most. It is the most worn anyhow.
What we started out to say, is, that the stage bald-head and the average stage whiskers make us weary with life. The stage bald-head is generally made of the internal economy of a cow, dried so that it shines, and cut to fit the head as tightly as a potatoe sack would naturally fit a billiard cue. It is generally about four shades whiter than the red face of the wearer, or vice versa. We do not know which is the worst violation of eternal fitness, the red-faced man who wears a deathly white bald-head, or the pale young actor who wears a florid roof on his intellect. Sometimes in starring through the country and playing ten or fifteen hundred engagements, a bald-head gets soiled. We notice that when a show gets to Laramie the chances are that the bald-head of the leading old man is so soiled that he really needs a sheep-dip shampoo. Another feature of this accessory of the stage is its singular failure to fit. It is either a little short at both ends, or it hangs over the skull in large festoons, and wens and warts, in such a way as to make the audience believe that the wearer has dropsy of the brain.
You can never get a stage bald-head near enough like nature to fool the average house-fly. A fly knows in two moments whether it is the genuine, or only a base imitation, and the bald-head of the theatre fills him with nausea and disgust. Nature, at all times hard to imitate, preserves her bald head as she does her sunny skies and deep blue seas, far beyond the reach of the weak, fallible, human imitator. Baldness is like fame, it cannot be purchased. It must be acquired. Some men may be born bald, some may acquire baldness, and others may have baldness thrust upon them, but they generally acquire it.
"The stage beard is also rather dizzy, as a rule. It looks as much like a beard that grew there, as a cow's tail would if tied to the bronze dog on the front porch. When you tie a heavy black beard on a young actor, whose whole soul would be churned up if he smoked a full-fledged cigar, he looks about as savage as a bowl of mush and milk struck with a club."
FATHERLY WORDS
N. W. P., writes: – "I am a young man twenty-five years old. I am in love with a young lady of seventeen. Her mind being very different from mine, I have not told her of my love, nor asked to call on her. I thought her so giddy that she did not want any steady company. She is a great lover of amusement. She is a perfect lady in her deportment, although she is more like a child of fourteen than a young lady of seventeen. I think she is very pretty, but she seems to enjoy flirting to the greatest extent. One evening at a party I asked her to promenade with me, and she would not do it. I then asked her to allow me to bring her refreshments, which she would not do. I then asked her to let me take her home when she was ready to go, and the answer was, 'No, I will not do any such thing,' and turning round she left me. I have met her several times since. She always bows to me. Everywhere she meets me she recognizes me pleasantly. How, did I do wrong in asking her those privileges at the party, I having no introduction to her? I am still in love with her."
After she had refused to promenade with you, and had declined to permit you to bring her refreshments, it was pressing matters rather too far for you to ask her to allow you to accompany her home "whenever she was ready to go." Still, as she treats you kindly whenever you meet, it is evident that you did not offend her very deeply. Perhaps she sees that you love her, and does not wish to discourage you.
You were, no doubt, a little previous in trying to get acquainted with the young lady. She may be giddy, but she has just about sized you up in shape, and no doubt, if you keep on trying to love her without her knowledge or consent, she will hit you with something, and put a Swiss sunset over your eye. Do not yearn to win her affections all at once. Give her twenty or thirty years in which to see your merits. You will have more to entitle you to her respect by that time, no doubt. During that time you may rise to be president and win a deathless name.
The main thing you have to look out for now, however, is to restrain yourself from marrying people who do not want to marry you. That style of freshness will, in thirty or forty years, wear away. If it does not, probably the vigorous big brother of some young lady of seventeen, will consign you to the silent tomb. Do not try to promenade with a young lady unless she gives her consent. Do not marry anyone against her wishes. Give the girl a chance. She will appreciate it, and even though she may not marry you, she will permit you to sit on the fence and watch her when she goes to marry some one else. Do not be despondent. Be courageous, and some day, perhaps, you will get there. At present the horizon is a little bit foggy.
As you say, she may be so giddy that she doesn't want steady company. There is a glimmer of hope in that. She may be waiting till she gets over the agony and annoyance of teething before she looks seriously into the matters of matrimony. If that should turn out to be the case we are not surprised. Give her a chance to grow up, and in the meantime, go and learn the organ grinder's profession and fix yourself so that you can provide for a family. Sometimes a girl only seventeen years old is able to discern that a young intellectual giant like you is not going to make a dazzling success of life as a husband. Brace up and try to forget your sorrow, N. W. P., and you may be happy yet.
THE GOOD TIME COMING
ANGORA cloth is a Parisian novelty. Shaggy woolen goods are all the rage, and this Angora cloth is a perfect type of shaggy materials. It is a soft, downy article, like the fur of an Angora cat. Very showy toilets are of Angora cloth, trimmed with velvet applique work to form passementerie.
Angora cloth may be fashionable, but the odor of the Angora goat is losing favor. A herd of these goats crossed the Sierra Nevadas during the autumn, and as soon as they got over the range, we knew it at Laramie just as well as we knew of the earthquake shock on the 7th instant.
The Angora goat is very quiet in other respects; but as a fragrant shrub, he certainly demands attention. A little band of Angora goats has been quartered in Laramie City lately, and though they have been well behaved, they have made them have opened the casement to let in the glorious air of heaven. In letting in the glorious air of heaven, we have in several instances let in a good deal of the mohair industry and some seductive fragrance.
There is a glowing prospect that within the next year a bone fertilizer mill, a soap emporium and a glue factory will have been started here; and now, with the Angora goat looming up in the distance with his molasses-candy horns, his erect, but tremulous and undecided tail piercing the atmosphere, and the seductive odor peculiar to this fowl, we feel that life in Wyoming will not, after all, be a hollow mockery. Heretofore we have been compelled to worry along with polygamy and the odor of the alkali flat; but times are changing now, and we will one day have all the wonderful and complicated smells of Chicago at our door. Then will the desert indeed blossom as the rose, and the mountain lion and "Billy the Kid" will lie down together.
MANIA FOR MARKING CLOTHES
THE most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel to a Boomekang man, "was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon river. He was also reserved and taciturn among the miners, and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew.
"I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed.
"He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three shots through the valise.
"After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days, they thought the most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then send the brain to New York in a baking powder can.
"So they hung him one night to the bough of a sighing mountain pine.
"The autopsy was, of course, crude; but they sawed open his head and scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to New York. By some mistake or other it got mixed up with some sample specimens of ore from 'The Brindle Tom Cat' discovery, and was sent to the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner, as was intended.
"The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved letter to the boys, saying that he was an old man anyway, and he wished they would consider his gray hairs and not try to palm off their old groceries on him. He might have made errors in his assays, perhaps – all men were more or less liable to mistakes – but he flattered himself that he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can of decomposed lobster salad, even if it was in a baking-powder can. He hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense any more, but use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old and began to totter down toward the silent tomb.
"This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty, whether he was O. K. in the upper story, or not."
REGARDING THE NOSE
THE annals of surgery contain many cases where the nose has been cut or torn off, and being replaced has grown fast again, recovering its jeopardized functions. One of the earliest, 1680, is related by the surgeon (Fioraventi) who happened to be near by when a man's nose, having been cut off, had fallen in the sand. He remarks that he took it up, washed it, replaced it, and that it grew together.
Still, this is a little bit hazardous, and in warm weather the nose might refuse to catch on. It would be mortifying in the extreme to have the nose drop off in a dish of ice-cream at a large banquet. Not only would it be disagreeable to the owner of the nose, but to those who sat near him.
He adds the address of the owner of the repaired nose, and requests any doubter to go and examine for himself. Régnault, in the Gazette Salutaire, 1714, tells of a patient whose nose was bitten off by a smuggler. The owner of the nose wrapped it in a bit of cloth and sought Régnault, who, "although the part was cold, reset it, and it became attached."
This is another instance where, by being sufficiently previous, the nose was secured and handed down to future generations. Yet, as we said before, it is a little bit risky, and a nose of that character cannot be relied upon at all times. After a nose has once seceded it cannot be expected to still adhere to the old constitution with such loyalty as prior to that change.
Although these cases call for more credulity than most of us have to spare, yet later cases, published in trustworthy journals, would seem to corroborate this. In the Clinical Annals and Medical Gazette, of Heidelberg, 1830, there are sixteen similar cases cited by the surgeon (Dr. Hofacker) who was appointed by the senate to attend the duels of the students.
It seems that during these duels it is not uncommon for a student to slice off the nose of his adversary, and lay it on the table until the duel is over. After that the surgeon puts it on with mucilage and it never misses a meal, but keeps right on growing.
The wax nose is attractive, but in a warm room it is apt to get excited and wander down into the mustache, or it may stray away under the collar, and when the proprietor goes to wipe this feature he does not wipe anything but space. A gold nose that opens on one side and is engraved, with hunter case and key wind, is attractive, especially on a bright day. The coin-silver nose is very well in its way, but rather commonplace unless designed to match the tea service and the knives and forks. In that case, good taste is repaid by admiration and pleasure on the part of the guest.
The papier-maché nose is durable and less liable to become cold and disagreeable. It is also lighter and not liable to season crack.
False noses are made of papier-maché, leather, gold, silver and wax. These last are fitted to spectacles or springs, and are difficult to distinguish from a true nose.
Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel and wore a golden one, which he attached to his face with cement, which he always carried about.
This was a good scheme, as it found him always prepared for accidents. He could, at any moment, repair to a dressing room, or even slide into an alley where he could avoid the prying gaze of the vulgar world, and glue his nose on. Of course he ran the risk of getting it on crooked and a little out of line with his other features, but this would naturally only attract attention and fix the minds of those with whom he might be called upon to converse. A man with his nose glued on wrong side up, could hold the attention of an audience for hours, when any other man would seem tedious and uninteresting.