Remarks by Bill Nye

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One hundred and twenty-five years after that a prisoner at Vienna, named
Jacob Dagen, told the jailer that he could fly. The jailer seemed
incredulous, and so Jake constructed a pair of double barrel umbrellas,
that worked by hand, and fluttered with his machine into the air fifty
feet. He came down in a direct line, and in doing so ran one of the
umbrellas through his thorax. I am glad it is not the custom now to wear
an umbrella in the thorax.

In England, during the present century, several inventors produced flying
machines, but in an evil hour agreed to rise on them themselves, and so
they died from their injuries. Some came down on top of the machines,
while others preceded their inventions by a few feet, but the result was
the same. The invention of flying machines has always been handicapped, as
it were, by this fact Men invent a flying machine and then try to ride it
and show it off, and thus they are prevented by death from perfecting
their rolling stock and securing their right of way.

In 1842, Mr. William Henderson got out a "two-propeller" machine, and
tried to incorporate a company to utilize it for the purpose of carrying
letters, running errands, driving home the cows, lighting the Northern
Lights and skimming the cream off the Milky Way, but it didn't seem to
compete very successfully with other modes of travel, and so Mr. Henderson
wrapped it up in an old tent and put it away in the hay-mow.

In 1853, Mr. J.H. Johnson patented a balloon and parachute dingus which
worked on the principle of a duck's foot in the mud. I use scientific
terms because I am unable to express myself in the common language of the
vulgar herd. This machine had a tail which, under great excitement, it
would throw over the dash board as it bounded through the air.

Probably the biggest thing in its way under this head was the revival of
flying under the presidency of the Duke of Argyle, the society being
called the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. This society made some
valuable calculations and experiments in the interest of aerostation,
adding much to our scientific knowledge, and filling London with cripples.

In 1869, Mr. Joseph T. Kaufman invented and turned loose upon the people
of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet
kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to
ornithology as the _flyupithecrick_, and had an air brake, patent coupler,
buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood
casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not
seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a
clothes line to it and used it for a band wagon.

Rufus Porter invented an aerial dewdad ten years ago in Connecticut, where
so many crimes have been committed since Mark Twain moved there. This was
called the "aeraport," and looked like a seed wart floating through space.
This engine was worked by springs connected with propellers. A saloon was
suspended beneath it, I presume on the principle that when a man is
intoxicated he weighs a pound less. This machine flew around the rotunda
of the Merchants' Exchange, in New York City, eleven times, like a hen
with her head cut off, but has not been on the wing much since then.

Other flying machines have been invented, but the air is not peopled with
them as I write. Most of them have folded their pinions and sought the
seclusion of a hen-house. It is to be hoped that very soon some such
machine will be perfected, whereby a man may flit from the fifth story
window of the Grand Pacific Hotel, in Chicago, to Montreal before
breakfast, leaving nothing in his room but the furniture and his kind
regards.

Such an invention would be hailed with much joy, and the sale would be
enormous. Now, however, the matter is still in its infancy. The mechanical
birds invented for the purpose of skimming through the ether blue, have
not skum. The machines were built with high hopes and a throbbing heart,
but the aforesaid ether remains unskum as we go to press. The Milky Way is
in the same condition, awaiting the arrival of the fearless skimmer. Will
men ever be permitted to pierce the utmost details of the sky and ramble
around among the stars with a gum overcoat on? Sometimes I trow he will,
and then again I ween not.

Asking for a Pass.

The general passenger agent of a prominent road leading out of Chicago
toward the south, tells me that he is getting a good many letters lately
asking for passes, and he complains bitterly over the awkward and
unsatisfactory style of the correspondence. Acting on this suggestion and
though a little late in the day, perhaps, I have erected the following as
a guide to those who contemplate writing under similar circumstances:

Office of The Evening Squeal, January 14, 1886.

General Passenger Agent, Great North American Gitthere R.R., Chicago, Ill.

Dear Sir.--I desire to know by return mail whether or no you would be
pleased to swap transportation for kind words. I am the editor of "The
Squeal," published at this place. It is a paper pure in tone, world wide
in its scope and irresistible in the broad sweep of its mighty arm.

[Illustration: THE PRESS.]

I desire to visit the great exposition at New Orleans this winter, and
would be willing to yield you a few words of editorial opinion, set in
long primer type next to pure reading matter, and without advertising
marks.

My object in thus addressing you is two-fold. I have always wanted to do
your road a kind act that would put it on its feet, but I have never
before had the opportunity. This winter I feel just like it, and am not
willing, but anxious. Another object, though trivial, perhaps, to you, is
vital to me. If I do not get the pass, I am afraid I shall not reach there
till the exposition is over. You can see for yourself how important it is
that I should have transportation. Day after day the president on to the
grounds and ask if I am there. Some official will salute him and answer
sadly, "No, your highness, he has not yet arrived, but we look for him
soon. He is said to be stuck in a mud hole somewhere in Egypt." Then the
exposition will drag on again.

[Illustration: STUCK IN A MUD HOLE.]

You may make the pass read, "For self, Chicago to New Orleans and return,"
and I will write the editorial, or you may make it read, "Self and wife"
and I will let you write it yourself. Nothing is too good for my friends.
When a man does me a kind act or shows signs of affection, I just allow
him to walk all over me and make himself perfectly free with the policy of
my paper.

The "Evening Squeal" has been heard everywhere. We send it to the four
winds of Heaven, and its influence is felt wherever the English language
is respected. And yet, if you want to belong to my coterie of friends, you
can make yourself just as free with its editorial columns as you would if
you owned it.

And yet "The Squeal" is a bad one to stir up. I shudder to think what the
result would be if you should incur the hatred of "The Squeal." Let us
avoid such a subject or the possibility of such a calamity.

"The Squeal" once opposed the candidacy of a certain man for the office of
school district clerk, and in less than four years he was a corpse! Struck
down in all his wanton pride by one of the popular diseases of the day.

My paper at one time became the foe of a certain road which tapped the
great cranberry vineyards of northern Minnesota, and that very fall the
berries soured on the vines!

I might go on for pages to show how the pathway of "The Squeal" has been
strewn with the ruins of railroads, all prosperous and happy till they
antagonized us and sought to injure us.

I believe that the great journals and trunk lines of the land should stand
in with one another. If you have the support and moral encouragement of
the press you will feel perfectly free to run over any one who gets on
your track. Besides, if I held a pass over your road I should feel very
much reserved about printing the details of any accident, delay or washout
along your line. I aim to mould public opinion, but a man can subsidize
and corrupt me if he goes at it right. I write this to kind of give you a
pointer as to how you can go to work to do so if you see fit.

Should you wish to pervert my high moral notions in relation to railways,
please make it good for thirty days, as it may take me a week or so to
mortgage my property and get ready to go in good style. I will let you
know on what day I will be in New Orleans, so that you can come and see me
at that time. Should you have difficulty in obtaining an audience with me,
owing to the throng of crowned heads, just show this autograph letter to
the doorkeeper, and he will show you right in. Wipe your boots before
entering.

Yours truly,

Daniel Webster Briggs,
Editor of "The Squeal."

It is my opinion that no railroad official, however disobliging, would
hesitate a moment about which way he would swing after reading an epistle
after this pattern. Few, indeed, are the men who would be impolitic enough
to incur the displeasure of such a paper as I have artfully represented
"The Squeal" to be.

Words About Washington.

The name of George Washington has always had about it a glamour that made
him appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with large feet and
a mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pumpkin pie. I use the
word glamour, not so much because I know what glamour means, but because I
have never used it before, and I am getting a little tired of the short,
easy words I have been using so long.

George Washington's face has beamed out upon us for many years now, on
postage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze, in
photographs of original portraits, paintings, end stereoscopic views. We
have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates,
cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the solitude of
the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged in prayer.

We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe that
he did not breathe our air or eat American groceries. But George
Washington was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study of
his life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from the
proud history of the Father of his Country. I say it simply that the boys
of America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel so timid
about trying it.

When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the limekiln
at Mount Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates at times,
in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in the
Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to show
the boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble George
Washington. That was one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamed
of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk,
and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice.
There are lawyers who play poker year after year, and get regularly
skinned, because they have heard that some of the able lawyers of the past
century used to come home at night with poker chips in their pockets.

Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have
seen poets who relied solely on the potency of their breath, and lawyers
who knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever did of the
statutes in such case made and provided.

George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first in
war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would be first
baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hour
of the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in the hearts of his
countrymen, George's postoffice address was at once secured.

Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear that
in America! It is the place where it is a positive disadvantage to be born
wealthy. And yet, sometimes I wish they had experimented a little that way
on me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of course, because it is too
late; but it seems to me that, with my natural good sense and keen insight
into human nature, I could have struggled along under the burdens and
cares of wealth with great success. I do not care to die wealthy, but if I
could have been born wealthy, it seems to me I would have been tickled
almost to death.

I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and to
say that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong sometimes
in his judgment of others, both individually and in the aggregate, but he
who gets ready to be a great man will surely find the opportunity.

Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it for
me, but they will never find out.

In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for three
reasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his friends.
Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule. Some people
cannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue jackass.

Another reason why Washington is loved and honored to-day, is that he died
before we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly superior to
the method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till their
constituency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die.

The Board of Trade.

I went into the Chicago Board of Trade awhile ago to see about buying some
seed wheat for sowing on my farm next spring. I heard that I could get
wheat cheaper there than anywhere else, so I went over. The members of the
Board seemed to be all present. They were on the upper floor of the house,
about three hundred of them, I judge, engaged in conversation. All of them
were conversing when I entered, with the exception of a sad-looking man
who had just been squeezed into a corner and injured, I was told. I told
him that arnica was as good as anything I knew of for that, but he seemed
irritated, and I strode majestically away. Probably he thought I had no
business to speak to him without an introduction, but I never stand on
ceremony when I see anyone in pain.

[Illustration: INDULGING IN CONVERSATION.]

I got a ticket when I went in, and began to look around for my wheat. I
didn't see any at first. I then asked one of the conversationalists how
wheat was.

"Oh, wheat's pretty steady just now, 'specially October, but yesterday we
thought the bottom had dropped out. Perfect panic in No. 2, red; No. 2,
Chicago Spring, 73-7/8. Dull, my Christian friend, dull is no name for it.
More fellers got pinched yesterday than would patch purgatory fifteen
miles. What you doing, buying or selling?"

"Buying."

"Better let me sell you some choice Chicago Spring way down. Get some man
you know on the Board to make the trade for you."

"Well, if you've got something good and cheap, and that you know will
grow, I'd like to look at it," I said.

He took me over by the door where there was a dishpan full of wheat, and
asked me how that struck me, I said it looked good and asked him how much
he could spare of it at .73. He said he had 50,000 bushels that he wasn't
using, and he thought he could get me another 50,000 of a friend, if I
wanted it. I said no, 100,000 bushels was more than I needed. I told him
that if he would let me have that dishpan full, one-half cash and the
balance in installments, I might trade with him, but I didn't want him to
sell me his last bushel of wheat and rob himself.

"Very likely you've got a family," said I, "and you mustn't forget that
we've got a long, cold, hard winter ahead of us. Hang on to your wheat.
Don't let Tom, Dick and Harry come along and chisel you out of your last
kernel, just to be neighborly."

I remained in the room an hour and a half, the cynosure of all eyes. There
is a great deal of sociability there. Three hundred men all talking
diagonally at each other at the same time, reminds me of a tete-a-tete I
once had with a warm personal friend, who was a boiler-maker. He invited
me to come around to the shop and visit him. He said we could crawl down
through the manhole into the boiler and have a nice visit while he worked.

I remember of following him down through the hole into the boiler;
then they began to head boiler rivets, and I knew nothing more till I
returned to consciousness the next day to find myself in my own
luxuriously-furnished apartments.

The family physician was holding my hand. My wife asked: "Is he conscious
yet, do you think, doctor?"

"Yes," he replied, "your husband begins to show signs of life. He may live
for many years, but his intellect seems to have been mislaid during his
illness. Do you know whether the cat has carried anything out of this room
lately?"

Then my wife said: "Yes, the cat did get something out of this room only
the other day and ate it. Poor thing!"

The Cow-Boy.

So much amusing talk is being made recently anent the blood-bedraggled
cow-boy of the wild West, that I rise as one man to say a few things, not
in a dictatorial style, but regarding this so-called or so esteemed dry
land pirate who, mounted on a little cow-pony and under the black flag,
sails out across the green surge of the plains to scatter the rocky shores
of Time with the bones of his fellow-man.

A great many people wonder where the cow-boy, with his abnormal thirst for
blood, originated. Where did this young Jesse James, with his gory record
and his dauntless eye, come from? Was he born in a buffalo wallow at the
foot of some rock-ribbed mountain, or did he first breathe the thin air
along the brink of an alkali pond, where the horned toad and the centipede
sang him to sleep, and the tarantula tickled him under the chin with its
hairy legs?

Careful research and cold, hard statistics show that the cow-boy, as a
general thing, was born in an unostentatious manner on the farm. I hate to
sit down on a beautiful romance and squash the breath out of a romantic
dream; but the cow-boy who gets too much moist damnation in his system,
and rides on a gallop up and down Main street shooting out the lights of
the beautiful billiard palaces, would be just as unhappy if a mouse ran up
his pantaloon-leg as you would, gentle reader. He is generally a youth who
thinks he will not earn his twenty-five dollars per month if he does not
yell, and whoop, and shoot, and scare little girls into St. Vitus's dance.
I've known more cow-boys to injure themselves with their own revolvers
than to injure anyone else. This is evidently because they are more
familiar with the hoe than they are with the Smith & Wesson.

One night while I had rooms in the business part of a Territorial city in
the Rocky Mountain cattle country, I was awakened at about one o'clock A.
M. by the most blood-curdling cry of "Murder" I ever heard. It was murder
with a big "M." Across the street, in the bright light of a restaurant, a
dozen cow-boys with broad sombreros and flashing silver braid, huge
leather chaperajas,

Mexican spurs and orange silk neckties, and with flashing revolvers, were
standing. It seemed that a big, red-faced Captain Kidd of the band, with
his skin full of valley tan, had marched into an ice-cream resort with a
self-cocker in his hand, and ordered the vanilla coolness for the gang.
There being a dozen young folks at the place, mostly male and female, from
a neighboring hop, indulging in cream, the proprietor, a meek Norwegian
with thin white hair, deemed it rude and outre to do so. He said something
to that effect, whereat the other eleven men of alcoholic courage let off
a yell that froze the cream into a solid glacier, and shook two kerosene
lamps out of their sockets in the chandeliers.

[Illustration: HE YELLED MURDER.]

Thereupon, the little Y.M.C.A. Norwegian said:

"Gentlemans, I kain't neffer like dot squealinks and dot kaind of a tings,
and you fellers mit dot ledder pantses on and dot funny glose and such a
tings like dot, better keep kaind of quiet, or I shall call up the
policemen mit my delephone."

Then they laughed at him, and cried yet again with a loud voice.

This annoyed the ice-cream agriculturist, and he took the old axe-handle
that he used to jam the ice down around the freezer with, and peeled a
large area of scalp off the leader's dome of thought, and it hung down
over his eyes, so that he could not see to shoot with any degree of
accuracy.

After he had yelled "Murder!" three or four times, he fell under an
ice-cream table, and the mild-eyed Scandinavian broke a silver-plated
castor over the organ of self-esteem, and poured red pepper, and salt, and
vinegar, and Halford sauce and other relishes, on the place where the
scalp was loose.

This revived the brave but murderous cow-gentleman, and he begged that he
might be allowed to go away.

The gentle Y.M.C.A. superintendent of the ten-stamp ice-cream freezers
then took the revolvers away from the bold buccaneer, and kicked him out
through a show-case, and saluted him with a bouquet of July oysters that
suffered severely from malaria.

All cow-boys are not sanguinary; but out of twenty you will generally find
one who is brave when he has his revolvers with him; but when he forgot
and left his shooters at home on the piano, the most tropical violet-eyed
dude can climb him with the butt-end of a sunflower, and beat his brains
out and spatter them all over that school district.

In the wild, unfettered West, beware of the man who never carries arms,
never gets drunk and always minds his own business. He don't go around
shooting out the gas, or intimidating a kindergarten school; but when a
brave frontiersman, with a revolver in each boot and a bowie down the back
of his neck, insults a modest young lady, and needs to be thrown through a
plate-glass window and then walked over by the populace, call on the
silent man who dares to wear a clean shirt and human clothes.

Stirring Incidents at a Fire.

Last night I was awakened by the cry of fire. It was a loud, hoarse cry,
such as a large, adult man might emit from his window on the night air.
The town was not large, and the fire department, I had been told, was not
so effective as it should have been.

For that reason I arose and carefully dressed myself, in order to assist,
if possible. I carefully lowered myself from my room, by means of a
staircase which I found concealed in a dark and mysterious corner of the
passage.

On the streets all was confusion. The hoarse cry of fire had been taken up
by others, passed around from one to another, till it had swollen into a
dull roar. The cry of fire in a small town is always a grand sight.

All along the street in front of Mr. Pendergast's roller rink the blanched
faces of the people could be seen. Men were hurrying to and fro, knocking
the bystanders over in their frantic attempts to get somewhere else. With
great foresight, Mr. Pendergast, who had that day finished painting his
roller rink a dull-roan color, removed from the building the large card
which bore the legend:

FRESH PAINT!

so that those who were so disposed might feel perfectly free to lean up
against the rink and watch the progress of the flames.

Anon the bright glare of the devouring element might have been seen
bursting through the casement of Mr. Cicero Williams's residence, facing
on the alley west of Mr. Pendergast's rink. Across the street the
spectator whose early education had not been neglected could distinctly
read the sign of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Alonzo Burlingame,
which was lit up by the red glare of the flames so that the letters stood
out plainly as follows:

Alonzo Burlingame,

Dealer in Soft and Hard Coal, Ice-Cream, Wood, Lime, Cement, Perfumery,
Nails, Putty, Spectacles, and Horse Radish.
Chocolate Caramels and Tar Roofing.
Gas Fitting and Undertaking in all Its Branches.
Hides, Tallow, and Maple Syrup.
Fine Gold Jewelry, Silverware, and Salt.
Glue, Codfish, and Gent's Neckwear.
Undertaker and Confectioner.
Diseases of Horses and Children a Specialty.

Jno. White, Ptr.

The flames spread rapidly, until they threatened the Palace rink of our
esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Pendergast, whose genial and urbane manner
has endeared him to all.

With a degree of forethought worthy of a better cause, Mr. Leroy W. Butts
suggested the propriety of calling out the hook and ladder company, an
organization of which every one seemed to be justly proud. Some delay
ensued in trying to find the janitor of Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company
No. 1's building, but at last he was secured, and, after he had gone home
for the key, Mr. Butts ran swiftly down the street to awaken the foreman,
but, after he had dressed himself and inquired anxiously about the fire,
he said that he was not foreman of the company since the 2d of April.

Meantime the firefiend continued to rise up ever and anon on his hind feet
and lick up salt-barrel after salt-barrel in close proximity to the Palace
rink, owned by our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Pendergast. Twice Mr.
Pendergast was seen to shudder, after which he went home and filled out a
blank which he forwarded to the insurance company.

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