Remarks by Bill Nye

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Just as the town seemed doomed, the hook and ladder company came rushing
down the street with their navy-blue hook and ladder truck. It is indeed a
beauty, being one of the Excelsior noiseless hook and ladder factory's
best instruments, with tall red pails and rich blue ladders.

Some delay ensued, as several of the officers claimed that under a new
bylaw passed in January they were permitted to ride on the truck to fires.
This having been objected to by a gentleman who had lived in Chicago
several years, a copy of the by-laws was sent for and the dispute
summarily settled. The company now donned its rubber overcoats with great
coolness and proceeded at once to deftly twist the tail of the firefiend.

It was a thrilling sight as James McDonald, a brother of Terrance
McDonald, Trombone, Ind., rapidly ascended one of the ladders in the full
glare of the devouring element and fell off again.

Then a wild cheer arose to a height of about nine feet, and all again
became confused.

It was now past 11 o'clock, and several of the members of the hook and
ladder company who had to get up early the next day in order to catch a
train excused themselves and went home to seek much-needed rest.

Suddenly it was discovered that the brick livery stable of Mr. Abraham
McMichaels, a nephew of our worthy assessor, was getting hot. Leaving the
Palace rink to its fate, the hook and ladder company directed its
attention to the brick barn, and, after numerous attempts, at last
succeeded in getting its large iron prong fastened on the second story
window-sill, which was pulled out. The hook was again inserted, but not so
effectively, bringing down at this time an armful of hay and part of an
old horse blanket. Another courageous jab was made with the iron hook,
which succeeded in pulling out about 5 cents worth of brick. This was
greeted by a wild burst of applause from the bystanders, during which the
hook and ladder company fell over each other and added to the horror of
the scene by a mad burst of pale-blue profanity.

It was not long before the stable was licked up by the firefiend, and the
hook and ladder company directed its attention toward the undertaking,
embalming, and ice-cream parlors of our highly esteemed fellow-townsman,
Mr. A. Burlingame. The company succeeded in pulling two stone window-sills
out of this building before it burned. Both times they were encored by the
large and aristocratic audience.

Mr. Burlingame at once recognized the efforts of the heroic firemen by
tapping a keg of beer, which he distributed among them at 25 cents per
glass.

This morning a space forty-seven feet wide, where but yesterday all was
joy and prosperity and beauty, is covered over with blackened ruins. Mr.
Pendergast is overcome by grief over the loss of his rink, but assures us
that if he is successful in getting the full amount of his insurance he
will take the money and build two rinks, either one of which will be far
more imposing than the one destroyed last evening.

A movement is on foot to give a literary and musical entertainment at
Burley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the
"fire laddies," at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the Robins
Nest Again," and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Jo," a selection
which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents
for each offense.

Let there be a full house.

The Little Barefoot Boy.

With the moist and misty spring, with the pink and white columbine of the
wildwood and the breath of the cellar and the incense of burning overshoes
in the back yard, comes the little barefoot boy with fawn colored hair and
a droop in his pantaloons. Poverty is not the grand difficulty with the
little barefoot boy of spring. It is the wild, ungovernable desire to
wiggle his toes in the ambient air, and to soothe his parboiled heels in
the yielding mud.

I see him now in my mind's eye, making his annual appearance like a
rheumatic housefly, stepping high like a blind horse. He has just left his
shoes in the woodshed and stepped out on the piazza to proclaim that
violet-eyed spring is here. All over the land the gladiolus bulb and the
ice man begin to swell. The south wind and the new-born calf at the barn
begin to sigh. The oak tree and the dude begin to put on their spring
apparel. All nature is gay. The thrush is warbling in the asparagus
orchard, and the prima donna does her throat up in a red flannel rag to
wait for another season.

All these things indicate spring, but they are not so certain and
unfailing as the little barefoot boy whose white feet are thrust into the
face of the approaching season. Five months from now those little dimpled
feet, now so bleached and tender, will look like a mudturtle's back and
the superior and leading toe will have a bandage around it, tied with a
piece of thread.

Who would believe that the budding hoodlum before us, with the yellow
chilblain on his heel and the early spring toad in his pocket, which he
will present to the timid teacher as a testimonial of his regard this
afternoon, may be the Moses who will lead the American people forty years
hence into the glorious sunlight of a promised land.

He may possibly do it, but he doesn't look like it now.

Yet John A. Logan and Samuel J. Tilden were once barefooted boys, with a
suspender apiece. It doesn't seem possible, does it?

How can we imagine at this time Julius Caesar and Hannibal Hamlin and
Lucretia Borgia at some time or other stubbed their bare toes against a
root and filled the horizon with pianissimo wails. The barefoot boy of
spring will also proceed to bathe in the river as soon as the ice and the
policeman are out. He will choose a point on the boulevard, where he can
get a good view of those who pass, and in company with eleven other little
barefoot boys, he will clothe himself in an Adam vest, a pair of bare-skin
pantaloons, a Greek slave overcoat and a yard of sunlight, and gaze
earnestly at those who go by on the other side. Up and down the bank,
pasting each other with mud, the little barefoot boys of spring chase each
other, with their vertebrae sticking into the warm and sleepy air, while
down in the marsh, where the cat-tails and the broad flags and the peach
can and the deceased horse grow, the bull-frog is twittering to his mate.

[Illustration: A TESTIMONIAL OF REGARD.]

Later on, the hoarse voice of a rude parental snorter is heard
approaching, and twelve slim Cupids with sunburned backs are inserted into
twelve little cotton shirts and twelve despondent pairs of pantaloons hang
at half-mast to twelve home-made suspenders, and as the gloaming gathers
about the old home, twelve boys back up against the ice-house to cool off,
while the enraged parent hangs up the buggy whip in the old place.

Favored a Higher Fine.

Will Taylor, the son of the present American Consul at Marseilles, was a
good deal like other boys while at school in his old home, at Hudson, Wis.
One day he called his father into the library, and said:

"Pa, I don't like to tell you, but the teacher and I have had trouble."

"What's the matter now?"

"Well, I cut one of the desks a little with my knife, and the teacher says
I've got to pay a dollar or take a lickin'."

"Well, why don't you take the licking and say nothing more about it? I can
stand considerable physical pain, so long as it visits our family in that
form. Of course, it is not pleasant to be flogged, but you have broken a
rule of the school, and I guess you'll have to stand it. I presume that
the teacher will in wrath remember mercy, and avoid disabling you so that
you can't get your coat on any more."

"But, pa, I feel mighty bad about it already, and if you'd pay my fine I'd
never do it again. I know a good deal more about it now, and I will never
do it again. A dollar ain't much to you, pa, but it's a heap to a boy that
hasn't got a cent. If I could make a dollar as easy as you can, pa, I'd
never let my little boy get flogged that way just to save a dollar. If I
had a little feller that got licked bekuz I didn't put up for him, I'd
hate the sight of money always. I'd feel as if every dollar in my pocket
had been taken out of my little kid's back."

"Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a dollar to save you
from punishment this time, but if anything of this kind ever occurs again
I'll hold you while the teacher licks you, and then I'll get the teacher
to hold you while I lick you. That's the way I feel about that. If you
want to go around whittling up our educational institutions you can do so;
but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself. I don't propose to
buy any more damaged school furniture. You probably grasp my meaning, do
you not? I send you to school to acquire an education, not to acquire
liabilities, so that you can come around and make an assessment on me. I
feel a great interest in you, Willie, but I do not feel as though it
should be an assessable interest. I want to go on, of course, and improve
the property, but when I pay my dues on it I want to know that it goes
toward development work. I don't want my assessments to go toward the
purchase of a school-desk with American hieroglyphics carved on it.

"I hope that you will bear this in your mind, my son, and beware. It will
be greatly to your interest to beware. If I were in your place I would put
in a large portion of my time in the beware business."

The boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school, and no more
was ever said about the matter until Mr. Taylor learned casually several
months later that the Spartan youth had received the walloping and filed
away the dollar for future reference. The boy was afterward heard to say
that he favored a much heavier fine in cases of that kind. One whipping
was sufficient, he said, but he favored a fine of $5. It ought to be
severe enough to make it an object.

"I Spy."

Dear reader, do you remember the boy of your school who did the heavy
falling through the ice and was always about to break his neck, but
managed to live through it all? Do you call to mind the youth who never
allowed anybody else to fall out of a tree and break his collar bone when
he could attend to it himself? Every school has to secure the services of
such a boy before it can succeed, and so our school had one. When I
entered the school I saw at a glance that the board had neglected to
provide itself with a boy whose duty it was to nearly kill himself every
few days in order to keep up the interest so I applied for the position. I
secured it without any trouble whatever. The board understood at once from
my bearing that I would succeed. And I did not betray the trust they had
reposed in me.

[Illustration: BRINGING IN THE REMAINS.]

Before the first term was over I had tried to climb two trees at once and
been carried home on a stretcher; been pulled out of the river with my
lungs full of water, and artificial respiration resorted to; been jerked
around over the north half of the county by a fractious horse whose halter
I had tied to my leg, and which leg is now three inches longer than the
other; together with various other little early eccentricities which I
cannot at this moment call to mind. My parents at last got so that along
about 2 o'clock P.M. they would look anxiously out of the window and say,
"Isn't it about time for the boys to get here with William's remains? They
generally get here before 2 o'clock."

One day five or six of us were playing "I spy" around our barn. Every body
knows how to play "I spy." One shuts his eyes and counts 100, for
instance, while the others hide. Then he must find the rest and say "I
spy" so-and-so and touch the "goal" before they do. If anybody beats him
to the goal the victim has to "blind" over again.

Well, I knew the ground pretty well, and could drop twenty feet out of the
barn window and strike on a pile of straw so as to land near the goal,
touch it, and let the crowd in free without getting found out. I did this
several times and got the blinder, James Bang, pretty mad. After a boy has
counted 500 or 600, and worked hard to gather in the crowd, only to get
jeered and laughed at by the boys, he loses his temper. It was so with
James Cicero Bang. I knew that he almost hated me, and yet I went on.
Finally, in the fifth ballot, I saw a good chance to slide down and let
the crowd in again as I had done on former occasions. I slipped out of the
window and down the side of the barn about two feet, when I was detained
unavoidably. There was a "batten" on the barn that was loose at the upper
end. I think I was wearing my father's vest on that day, as he was away
from home, and I frequently wore his clothes when he was absent. Anyhow
the vest was too large, and when I slid down that loose board ran up
between the vest and my person in such a way as to suspend me about
eighteen feet from the ground, in a prominent but very uncomfortable
position.

I remember it quite distinctly. James C. Bang came around where he could
see me. He said: "I spy Billy Nye and touch the goal before him." No one
came to remove the barn. No one came to sympathize with me in my great
sorrow and isolation. Every little while James C. Bang would come around
the corner and say: "Oh, I see ye. You needn't think you're out of sight
up there. I can see you real plain. You better come down and blind. I can
see ye up there!"

I tried to unbutton my vest and get down there and lick James, but it was
of no use. It was a very trying time. I can remember how I tried to kick
myself loose, but failed. Sometimes I would kick the barn and sometimes I
would kick a large hole in the horizon. Finally I was rescued by a
neighbor who said he didn't want to see a good barn kicked into chaos just
to save a long-legged boy that wasn't worth over six bits.

It affords me great pleasure to add that while I am looked up to and madly
loved by every one that does not know me, Jas. C. Bang is brevet president
of a fractured bank, taking a lonely bridal tour by himself in Europe and
waiting for the depositors to die of old age.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they most generally get there with
both feet. (Adapted from the French by permission.)

Mark Anthony.

Marcus Antonius, commonly called Mark Antony, was a celebrated Roman
general and successful politician, who was born in 83 B.C. His
grandfather, on his mother's side, was L. Julius Caesar, and it is
thought that to Mark's sagacity in his selection of a mother, much of
his subsequent success was due.

Young Antony was rather gay and festive during his early years, and led a
life that in any city but Rome would have occasioned talk. He got into a
great many youthful scrapes, and nothing seemed to please him better than
to repeatedly bring his father's gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave.
Debauchery was a matter to which he gave much thought, and many a time he
was found consuming the midnight oil while pursuing his studies in this
line.

At that time Rome was well provided for in the debauchery department, and
Mr. Antony became a thorough student of the entire curriculum.

About 57 B.C. he obtained command of the cavalry of Gambinino in Syria
and Egypt. He also acted as legate for Caesar in Gaul about 52 B.C., as
nearly as I can recall the year. I do not know exactly what a legate is,
but it had something to do with the Roman ballet, I understand, and
commanded a good salary.

He was also elected, in 50, B.C., as Argus and Tribune--acting as Tribune
at night and Argus during the day time, I presume, or he may have been
elected Tribune and ex-officio Argus. He was more successful as Tribune
than he was in the Argus business.

Early in 49, B.C., he fled to Caesar's camp, and the following year was
appointed commander-in-chief. He commanded the left wing of the army at
the battle of Pharsalia, and years afterward used to be passionately fond
of describing it and explaining how he saved the day, and how everybody
else was surprised but him, and how he was awakened by hearing one of the
enemy's troops, across the river, stealthily pulling on his pantaloons.

Antony married Fulvia, the widow of a successful demagogue named P.
Clodius. This marriage could hardly be regarded as a success. It would
have been better for the widow if she had remained Mrs. P. Clodius, for
Mark Antony was one of those old-fashioned Romans who favored the utmost
latitude among men, but heartily enjoyed seeing an unfaithful woman burned
at the stake. In those days the Roman girl had nothing to do but live a
pure and blameless life, so that she could marry a shattered Roman rake
who had succeeded in shunning a blameless life himself, and at last, when
he was sick of all kinds of depravity and needed a good, careful wife to
take care of him, would come with his dappled, sin-sick soul and shattered
constitution, and his vast acquisitions of debts, and ask to be loved by a
noble young woman. Nothing pleased a _blase_ Roman so well as to have a
young and beautiful girl, with eyes like liquid night, to take the job of
reforming him. I frequently get up in the night to congratulate myself
that I was not born, 2,000 years ago, a Roman girl.

The historian continues to say, that though Mr. Antony continued to live a
life of licentious lawlessness, that occasioned talk even in Rome, he was
singularly successful in politics.

He was very successful at funerals, also, and his off-hand obituary works
were sought for far and wide. His impromptu remarks at the grave of
Caesar, as afterward reported by Mr. Shakespeare, from memory, attracted
general notice and made the funeral a highly enjoyable affair. After this
no assassination could be regarded as a success, unless Mark Antony could
be secured to come and deliver his justly celebrated eulogy.

About 43, B.C., Antony, Octavius and Lepidus formed a co-partnership
under the firm name and style of Antony, Octavius & Co., for the purpose
of doing a general, all-round triumvirate business and dealing in Roman
republican pelts. The firm succeeded in making republicanism extremely
odious, and for years a republican hardly dared to go out after dark to
feed the horse, lest he be jumped on by a myrmidon and assassinated. It
was about this time that Cicero had a misunderstanding with Mark's
myrmidons and went home packed in ice.

Mark Antony, when the firm of Antony, Octavius & Co. settled up its
affairs, received as his share the Asiatic provinces and Egypt. It was at
this time that he met Cleopatra at an Egyptian sociable and fell in love
with her. Falling in love with fair women and speaking pieces over
new-made graves seemed to be Mark's normal condition. He got into a
quarrel with Octavius and settled it by marrying Octavia, Octavius'
sister, but this was not a love match, for he at once returned to
Cleopatra, the author of Cleopatra's needle and other works.

This love for Cleopatra was no doubt the cause of his final overthrow, for
he frequently went over to see her when he should have been at home
killing invaders. He ceased to care about slashing around in carnage, and
preferred to turn Cleopatra's music for her while she knocked out the
teeth of her old upright piano and sang to him in a low, passionate, _vox
humana_ tone.

So, at last, the great cemetery declaimer and long distance assassin, Mark
Antony, was driven out of his vast dominions after a big naval defeat at
Actium, in September, 31 B.C., retreated to Alexandria, called for more
reinforcements and didn't get them. Deserted by his fleet, and reduced to
a hand-me-down suit of clothes and a two-year-old plug hat, he wrote a
poetic wail addressed to Cleopatra and sent it to the Alexandria papers;
then, closing the door and hanging up his pantaloons on a nail so as to
reduce the sag in the knees, he blew out the gas and climbed over the high
board fence which stands forever between the sombre present and the dark
blue, mysterious ultimatum.

Man Overbored.

"Speaking about prohibition," said Misery Brown one day, while we sat lying
on the damp of the _Blue Tail Fly_, "I am prone to allow that the more you
prohibit, the more you--all at once--discover that you have more or less
failed to prohibit.

"Now, you can win a man over to your way of thinking, sometimes, but you
mustn't do it with the butt-end of a telegraph-pole. You might convert him
that way, perhaps, but the mental shock and phrenological concussion of
the argument might be disastrous to the convert himself.

"A man once said to me that rum was the devil's drink, that Satan's home
was filled with the odor of hot rum, that perdition was soaked with spiced
rum and rum punch. 'You wot not,' said he, 'the ruin rum has rot. Why,
Misery Brown,' said he, 'rum is my _bete noir_.' I said I didn't care what
he used it for, he'd always find it very warming to the system. I told him
he could use it for a hot _bete noir_, or a _blanc mange_, or any of those
fancy drinks; I didn't care.

"But the worst time I ever had grappling with the great enemy, I reckon,
was in the later years of the war, when I pretty near squashed the
rebellion. Grim-visaged war had worn me down pretty well. I played the big
tuba in the regimental band, and I began to sigh for peace.

"We had been on the march all summer, it seemed to me. We'd travel through
dust ankle-deep all day that was just like ashes, and halt in the red-hot
sun five minutes to make coffee. We'd make our coffee in five minutes, and
sometimes we'd make it in the middle of the road; but that's neither here
nor there.

"We finally found out that we would make a stand in a certain town, and
that the Q.M. had two barrels of old and reliable whisky in store. We
also found out that we couldn't get any for medical purposes nor anything
else All we could do was to suffer on and wait till the war closed. I
didn't feel like postponing the thing myself, so I began to investigate.
The great foe of humanity was stored in a tobacco-house, and the Q.M.
slept three nights between the barrels. The chances for a debauch looked
peaked and slim in the extreme. However, there was a basement below, and I
got in there one night with a half-inch auger, and two wash-tubs. Later on
there was a sound of revelry by night. There was considerable 'on with the
dance, let joy be unconfined.'

"The next day there was a spongy appearance to the top of the head, which
seemed to be confined to our regiment, as a result of the sudden giving
way, as it were, of prohibitory restrictions. It was a very disagreeable
day, I remember. All nature seemed clothed in gloom, and R.E. Morse,
P.D.Q., seemed to be in charge of the proceedings. Redeyed Regret was
everywhere.

"We then proceeded to yearn for the other barrel of woe, that we might
pile up some more regret, and have enough misery to last us through the
balance of the campaign. We acted on this suggestion, and, with a firm
resolve and the same half-inch auger, we stole once more into the basement
of the tobacco-house.

"I bored nineteen consecutive holes in the atmosphere, and then an
intimate friend of mine bored twenty-seven distinct holes in the floor,
only to bore through the bosom of the night. Eleven of us spent the most
of the night boring into the floor, and at three o'clock A.M. it looked
like a hammock, it was so full of holes. The quartermaster slept on
through it all. He slept in a very audible tone of voice, and every now
and then we could hear him slumbering on.

"At last we decided that he was sleeping middling close to that barrel, so
we began to bore closer to the snore. It was my turn to bore, I remember,
and I took the auger with a heavy heart. I bored through the floor, and
for the first time bored into something besides oxygen. It was the
quartermaster. A wild yell echoed through the southern confederacy, and I
pulled out my auger. It had on the point a strawberry mark, and a fragment
of one of those old-fashioned woven wire gray shirts, such as
quartermasters used to wear.

"I remember that we then left the tobacco-house. In the hurry we forgot
two wash-tubs, a half-inch auger, and 980,361 new half-inch auger holes
that had never been used."

"Done It A-Purpose."

At Greeley a young man with a faded cardigan jacket and a look of woe got
on the train, and as the car was a little crowded he sat in the seat with
me. He had that troubled and anxious expression that a rural young man
wears when he first rides on the train. When the engine whistled he would
almost jump out of that cardigan jacket, and then he would look kind of
foolish, like a man who allows his impulses to get the best of him. Most
everyone noticed the young man and his cardigan jacket, for the latter had
arrived at the stage of droopiness and jaded-across-the-shoulders look
that the cheap knit jacket of commerce acquires after awhile, and it had
shrunken behind and stretched out in front so that the horizon, as you
stood behind the young man, seemed to be bound by the tail of this
garment, which started out at the pocket with good intentions and suddenly
decided to rise above the young man's shoulder blades.

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