Remarks by Bill Nye

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"If that's a wild and crazy delusion, let me be always deluded. If forty
millions of chubby little angels bow their dimpled knees every evening to
a false and foolish tradition, let me do so, too. If I die, then I will be
in good company, even if I go no farther than the clouds of the valley."

One Kind of Fool.

A young man, with a plated watch-chain that would do to tie up a sacred
elephant, came into Denver the other day from the East, on the Julesburg
Short line, and told the hotel clerk that he had just returned from
Europe, and was on his way across the continent with the intention of
publishing a book of international information. He handed an oilcloth grip
across the counter, registered in a bold, bad way and with a flourish that
scattered the ink all over the clerk's white shirt front.

He was assigned to a quiet room on the fifth floor, that had been damaged
by water a few weeks before by the fire department. After an hour or two
spent in riding up and down the elevator and ringing for things that
didn't cost anything, he oiled his hair and strolled into the dining-room
with a severe air and sat down opposite a big cattle man, who never oiled
his hair or stuck his nose into other people's business.

The European traveler entered into conversation with the cattle man. He
told him all about Paris and the continent, meanwhile polishing his hands
on the tablecloth and eating everything within reach. While he ate another
man's dessert, he chatted on gaily about Cologne and pitied the cattle man
who had to stay out on the bleak plains and watch the cows, while others
paddled around Venice and acquired information in a foreign land.

At first the cattle man showed some interest in Europe, but after awhile
he grew quiet and didn't seem to enjoy it. Later on the European tourist,
with soiled cuffs and auburn mane, ordered the waiters around in a
majestic way, to impress people with his greatness, tipped over the
vinegar cruet into the salt and ate a slice of boiled egg out of another
man's salad.

Casually a tall Kansas man strolled in and asked the European tourist what
he was doing in Denver. The cattle man, who, by the way, has been abroad
five or six times and is as much at home in Paris as he is in Omaha,
investigated the matter, and learned that the fresh French tourist had
been herding hens on a chicken ranch in Kansas for six years, and had
never seen blue water. He then took a few personal friends to the
dining-room door, and they watched the alleged traveler. He had just taken
a long, refreshing drink from the finger bowl of his neighbor on the left
and was at that moment, trying to scoop up a lump of sugar with the wrong
end of the tongs.

There are a good many fools who drift around through the world and dodge
the authorities, but the most disastrous ass that I know is the man who
goes West with two dollars and forty cents in his pocket, without brains
enough to soil the most delicate cambric handkerchief, and tries to play
himself for a savant with so much knowledge that he has to shed
information all the time to keep his abnormal knowledge from hurting him.

John Adams' Diary.

December 3, 1764.--I am determined to keep a diary, if possible, the rest
of my life. I fully realize how difficult it will be to do so. Many others
of my acquaintance have endeavored to maintain a diary, but have only
advanced so far as the second week in January. It is my purpose to write
down each evening the events of the day as they occur to my mind, in order
that in a few years they may be read and enjoyed by my family. I shall try
to deal truthfully with all matters that I may refer to in these pages,
whether they be of national or personal interest, and I shall seek to
avoid anything bitter or vituperative, trying rather to cool my temper
before I shall submit my thoughts to paper.

[Illustration: "WHERE'S THE PIE?"]

December 4.--This morning we have had trouble with the hired girl. It
occurred in this wise: We had fully two-thirds of a pumpkin pie that had
been baked in a square tin. This major portion of the pie was left over
from our dinner yesterday, and last night, before retiring to rest, I
desired my wife to suggest something in the cold pie line, which she did.
I lit a candle and explored the pantry in vain. The pie was no longer
visible. I told Mrs. Adams that I had not been successful, whereupon we
sought out the hired girl, whose name is Tootie Tooterson, a foreign
damsel, who landed in this country Nov. 7, this present year. She does not
understand our language, apparently, especially when we refer to pie. The
only thing she does without a strong foreign accent is to eat pumpkin pie
and draw her salary. She landed on our coast six weeks ago, after a
tedious voyage across the heaving billows. It was a close fight between
Tootie and the ocean, but when they quit, the heaving billows were one
heave ahead by the log.

Miss Tooterson landed in Massachusetts in a woolen dress and hollow clear
down into the ground. A strong desire to acquire knowledge and cold,
hand-made American pie seems to pervade her entire being.

She has only allowed Mrs. Adams and myself to eat what she did not want
herself.

Miss Tooterson has also introduced into my household various European
eccentricities and strokes of economy which deserve a brief notice here.
Among other things she has made pie crust with castor oil in it, and
lubricated the pancake griddle with a pork rind that I had used on my lame
neck. She is thrifty and saving in this way, but rashly extravagant in the
use of doughnuts, pie and Medford rum, which we keep in the house for
visitors who are so unfortunate as to be addicted to the doughnut, pie or
rum habit.

It is discouraging, indeed, for two young people like Mrs. Adams and
myself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such a
robust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart upon
such a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie so
near to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut mastro and feminine
virtuoso, but I did, and so I returned from the pantry desolate.

[Illustration: A PIE SOLOIST.]

I told Abigail that unless we poisoned a few pies for Tootie the Adams
family would be a short-lived race. I could see with my prophetic eye that
unless the Tootersons yielded the Adamses would be wiped out. Abigail
would not consent to this, but decided to relieve Miss Tooterson from duty
in this department, so this morning she went away. Not being at all
familiar with the English language, she took four of Abigail's sheets and
quite a number of towels, handkerchiefs and collars. She also erroneously
took a pair of my night-shirts in her poor, broken way. Being entirely
ignorant of American customs, I presume that she will put a belt around
them and wear them externally to church. I trust that she will not do
this, however, without mature deliberation.

[Illustration: IGNORANT OF AMERICAN CUSTOMS.]

I also had a bottle of lung medicine of a very powerful nature which the
doctor had prepared for me. By some oversight, Miss Tooterson drank this
the first day that she was in our service. This was entirely wrong, as I
did not intend to use it for the foreign trade, but mostly for home
consumption.

This is a little piece of drollery that I thought of myself. I do not
think that a joke impairs the usefulness of a diary, as some do. A diary
with a joke in it is just as good to fork over to posterity as one that is
not thus disfigured. In fact, what has posterity ever done for me that I
should hesitate about socking a little humor into a diary? When has
posterity ever gone out of its way to do me a favor? Never! I defy the
historian to show a single instance where posterity has ever been the
first to recognize and remunerate ability.

John Adams' Diary.
(No. 2.)

December 6.--It is with great difficulty that I write this entry in my
diary, for this morning Abigail thought best for me to carry the oleander
down into the cellar, as the nights have been growing colder of late.

I do not know which I dislike most, foreign usurpation or the oleander. I
have carried that plant up and down stairs every time the weather has
changed, and the fickle elements of New England have kept me rising and
falling with the thermometer, and whenever I raised or fell I most always
had that scrawny oleander in my arms.

Richly has it repaid us, however, with its long, green, limber branches
and its little yellow nubs on the end. How full of promises to the eye
that are broken to the heart. The oleander is always just about to meet
its engagements, but later on it peters out and fails to materialize.

I do not know what we would do if it were not for our house plants. Every
fall I shall carry them cheerfully down cellar, and in the spring I will
bring up the pots for Mrs. Adams to weep softly into. Many a night at the
special instance and request of my wife I have risen, clothed in one
simple, clinging garment, to go and see if the speckled, double and
twisted Rise-up-William-Riley geranium was feeling all right.

Last summer Abigail brought home a slip of English ivy. I do not like
things that are English very much, but I tolerated this little sickly
thing because it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were the
salient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do? What
might be its specialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty of
climbing. It was a climber from away back. "All right," I then to her did
straightway say, "let her climb." It was a good early climber. It climbed
higher than Jack's beanstalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of our
plants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or in
ascending the golden stair most all the time.

I descended the stairs with the oleander this morning, though the oleander
got there a little more previously than I did. Parties desiring a good,
secondhand oleander tub, with castors on it, will do well to give us a
call before going elsewhere. Purchasers desiring a good set of second-hand
ear muffs for tulips will find something to their advantage by addressing
the subscriber.

We also have two very highly ornamental green dogoods for ivy vines to
ramble over. We could be induced to sell these dogoods at a sacrifice, in
order to make room for our large stock of new and attractive dogoods.
These articles are as good as ever. We bought them during the panic last
fall for our vines to climb over, but, as our vines died of membranous
croup in November, these dogoods still remain unclum. Second-hand dirt
always on hand. Ornamental geranium stumps at bed-rock prices. Highest
cash prices paid for slips of black-and-tan foliage plants. We are
headquarters for the century plant that draws a salary for ninety-nine
years and then dies.

I do not feel much like writing in my diary to-day, but the physician says
that my arm will be better in a day or two, so that it will be more of a
pleasure to do business.

We are still without a servant girl, so I do some of the cooking. I make a
fire each day and boil the teakettle. People who have tried my boiled
teakettle say it is very fine.

Some of my friends have asked me to run for the Legislature here next
election. Somehow I feel that I might, in public life, rise to distinction
some day, and perhaps at some future time figure prominently in the
affairs of a one-horse republic at a good salary.

I have never done anything in the statesman line, but it does not look
difficult to me. It occurs to me that success in public life is the result
of a union of several great primary elements, to-wit:

Firstly--Ability to whoop in a felicitous manner.

Secondly--Promptness in improving the proper moment in which to whoop.

Thirdly--Ready and correct decision in the matter of which side to whoop
on.

Fourthly--Ability to cork up the whoop at the proper moment and keep it in
a cool place till needed.

And this last is one of the most important of all. It is the amateur
statesman who talks the most. Fearing that he will conceal his identity as
a fool, he babbles in conversation and slashes around in his shallow banks
in public.

As soon as I get the house plants down cellar and get their overshoes on
for the winter, I will more seriously consider the question of our
political affairs here in this new land where we have to tie our scalps on
at night and where every summer is an Indian summer.

John Adams' Diary
(No. 3.)

December 10.--I have put in a long and exhausting day in the court to-day
in the case of Merkins vs. Merkins, a suit for divorce in which I am the
counsel for the plaintiff, Eliza J. Merkins.

The case itself is a peculiarly trying one, and the plaintiff adds to its
horrors by consulting me when I want to do something else. I took her case
at an agreed price, and so Mrs. Merkins is trying to get her money's worth
by consulting me in a way I abhor. She has consulted me in every mood and
tense that I know of; at my office, on the street, in church, at the
festive board and at different funerals to which we both happened to be
called. Mrs. Merkins has hung like a pall over several Massachusetts
funerals which otherwise had every symptom of success.

I am a great admirer of woman as a woman, but as a client in a suit for
divorce she has her peculiarities. I have seen Eliza in every phase of the
case. She has been calm and tearful, stormy and snorting, low-spirited and
red-nosed, violent and menacing, resigned but sobby, trustful and
confidential, high strung and haughty, crushed and weepy.

She makes a specialty of shedding the red-hot scalding tear wherever she
can obtain permission to do so. She has wept in my wood-box, in my new
spittoon, on my desk and on my birthday. I told her that I wished she
would please weep on something else. There were enough objects in nature
upon which a poor woman who wept constantly and had no other visible means
of support could shed the wild torrents of her grief, without weeping on
my anniversary. A man wants to keep his birthday as dry as possible. He
hates to have it wept on by a client who has jewed him down to half price,
and then insisted on coming in to sob with him in the morning before he
has swept the office floor.

One time she came and sobbed on my shoulder. Her tears are of the warm,
damp kind, and feel disagreeable as they roll down the neck of a
comparative stranger, who never can be aught but a friend. She rested her
bonnet on my bosom while she wept, and I then discovered that she has been
in the habit of wearing this bonnet while cooking her buckwheat pancakes.
I presume she keeps her bonnet on all the time, so that she may be ready
to dash out and consult me at all times without delay. Still, she ought
not to do it, for when she leans her head on the bosom of her counsel in
order to consult him, he detects the odor of the early sausage and the
fleeting pancake.

You may bust such a bonnet and crush it if you will,
But the scent of the pancake will cling round it still.

As soon as I saw that her object was to lean up against me and not only
convulse herself with sobs, but that she intended to jar me also with her
great woe, I told her that I would have to request her to avaunt. I then,
as she did not act upon my suggestion, avaunted her myself. I avaunted her
into a chair with a sickening thud.

[Illustration: A TENDER CASE.]

She then burst forth in a torrent of vituperation. When the abnormal
sobber is suddenly corked up, these sobs rankle in the system and burst
forth in the shape of vituperation. In the course of her remarks, she
stated in a violent manner that she would denounce me throughout the
country and retain other counsel. I told her I wished she would, as my
sympathies were with Mr. Merkins. I told her that she must either pay me a
larger fee or I should insist on her weeping in the alley before she came
up.

She then took her departure with a rising inflection. On the following
day, however, I found her at the office door, and she stood near and
consulted me again, while I took up the ashes and started a fire in the
stove.

Her case is quite peculiar.

She wants a divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty to animals,
or something of that kind, and when she first told me about it I thought
she had a case, but when we came to trial I found that she had had every
reason to believe that if she could be segregated from Mr. Merkins she
could at once become the bride of a gentleman who ploughed the raging
main.

Just as we went to the jury to-day with the case, she heard casually that
the gentleman who had been in the main-ploughing business had just married
without her knowledge or consent.

"Heap Brain."

Much trouble has been done by a long haired phrenologist in the West who
has, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparison
of a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no head
examined would indicate anything less than a member of the lower house of
congress. Artists, orators, prima-donnas and statesmen are plenty, but
there are no charts showing the natural-born farmer, carpenter, shoemaker
or chambermaid.

That is the reason butter is so high west of the Missouri river to-day,
while genius actually runs riot.

What this day and age of the world needs, is a phrenologist who will paw
around among the intellectual domes of free-born American citizens, and
search out a few men who can milk a cow in a cool and unimpassioned tone
of voice.

It is true that every man in America is a sovereign, but he had better not
overdo it. The man who sits up nights to be a sovereign and allows the
calves to eat his brown-eyed beans, is not leading his fellow men up to a
higher and nobler life. The sovereign business can be run in the ground if
we are not careful.

[Illustration: A FUTURE PRESIDENT.]

Very likely the white-eyed boy with the hickory dado along the base of his
overalls is the boy who in future years is to be the president of the
United States. But do not, oh, do not trow, fair young reader, that every
Albino youth in our broad land who wears an isosceles triangle in navy
blue flannel athwart his system, is going to be the chief magistrate of
this mighty republic.

We need statesmen and orators and artists very much; but the world at this
moment also needs several athletic parties with the horse-sense adequate
to produce flour and other vegetables necessary to feed the aforesaid
statesmen, orators, etc., etc.

Let me say a word to the bright-eyed youth of America, Let me murmur in
your ear this never dying truth: When a long-haired crank asks you a
dollar to tell you, you are a young Demosthenes, stand up and look
yourself over at a distance before you swallow it all.

There is no use talking, we have got to procure provisions in some manner,
and in order to do so the natural-born bone and muscle of the country must
go at and promote the growth of such things, or else we artists, poets and
statesmen, will have to take off our standing collars and do it ourselves.

Phrenology is a good thing, no doubt, if we can purify it. So long as it
does not become the slave of capital, there is nothing about phrenology
that is going to do harm; but when it becomes the creature of the trade
dollar, it looks as though the country would be filled up with wild-eyed
genius that hasn't had a square meal for two weeks. The time will surely
come when America will demand less statesmanship and more flour; when less
statistics and a purer, nobler and more progressive style of beefsteak
will demand our attention.

I had hoped that phrenology would step in and start this reform; but so
far it has not, within the range of my observation. It may be, however,
that the mental giant bump translator with whom I came in contact was not
a fair representative. Still, he has been in the business for over thirty
years, and some of our most polished criminals have passed under his
hands.

An erroneous phrenologist once told me that I would shine as a revivalist,
and said that I ought to marry a tall blonde with a nervous, sanguinary
temperament. Then he said, "One dollar, please," and I said, "All right,
gentle scientist with the tawny mane, I will give you the dollar and marry
the tall blonde with the bank account and bilious temperament, when you
give me a chart showing me how to dispose of a brown-eyed brunette with a
thoughtful cast of countenance, who married me in an unguarded moment two
years ago."

He looked at me in a reproachful kind of way, struck at me with a chair in
an absent-minded manner and stole away.

The Approaching Humorist.

The following letter has been received, and, as it encloses no unsmirched
postage stamp to insure a private reply, I take great pleasure in
answering it in these pages:

Christiana, Kas., Sept. 22nd, 1884

Dear Sir.--I am studying for a Humorist. Could you help me to some of the
Joliest Books that are written? With some of the best Jokes of the Day &c
&c &c.

Also what it would be best for me to do for to become an Humorist.

I am said to be a Natural Born Humorist by my friends and all I need is
Cultivation to make my mark.

Please reply by return mail.

Kindly Yours

Herman A.H.

For some time I have been grieving over the dearth of humor in America,
and wondering who the great coming humorist was to be. Several papers have
already deplored the lack of humor in our land, but they have not been
able to put their finger on the approaching humorist of the age. Just as
we had begun to despair, however, here he comes, quietly and
unostentatiously, modestly and ungrammatically. Unheralded and silently,
like Maud S. or any other eminent man, he slowly rises above the Kansas
horizon, and tells us that it will be impossible to conceal his identity
any longer. He is the approaching humorist of the nineteenth century.

It is a serious matter, Herman, to prescribe a course of study that will
be exactly what you need to bring you out. Perhaps you might do well to
take a Kindergarten course in spelling and the rudiments of grammar;
still, that is not absolutely necessary. A friend of mine named Billings
has done well as a humorist, though his knowledge of spelling seems to be
pitiably deficient. Grammar is convenient where a humorist desires to put
on style or show off before crowned heads, but it is not absolutely
indispensable.

Regarding the "Joliest Books" necessary for your perusal, in order to
chisel your name on the eternal tablets of fame, tastes will certainly
differ. I am almost sorry that you wrote to me, because we might not
agree. You write like one of these "Joly" humorists such as people employ
to go along with a picnic and be the life of the party, and whose presence
throughout the country has been so depressing. If one may be allowed to
judge of your genius by the few autograph lines forwarded, you belong to
that class of brain-workers upon whom devolves the solemn duty of pounding
sand. If you are really a brain-worker, will you kindly inform the writer
whose brain you are working now, and how you like it as far as you have
gone?

American humor has burst forth from all kinds of places, nearly. The
various professions have done their share. One has risen from a tramp
until he is wealthy and dyspeptic, and another was blown up on a steamboat
before he knew that he was a humorist.

Suppose you try that, Herman. M. Quad, one of the very successful
humorists of the day, both in a literary and financial way, was blown up
by a steamboat before he bloomed forth into the full flush and power of
success. Try that, Herman. It is a severe test, but it is bound to be a
success. Even if it should be disastrous to you, it will be rich in its
beneficial results to those who escape.

[Illustration]

What We Eat.

On 3d street, St. Paul, there stands a restaurant that has outside as a
sign, under a glass case, a rib roast, a slice of ham and a roast duck
that I remembered distinctly having seen there in 1860 and before the war.
I asked an epicure the other day if he thought it right to keep those
things there year after year when so many were starving throughout the
length and breadth of the land. He then straightway did take me up close
so that I could see that the food was made of plaster and painted, as
hereinbefore set forth and by me translated, as Walt Whitman would say.

A day or two afterward, at a rural hotel, I struck some of that same roast
beef and ham. I thought that the sign had been put on the table by
mistake, and I made bold to tell the proprietor about it, on the ground
that "any neglect or impertinence on the part of servants should be
reported at the office." He received the information with great rudeness
and a most disagreeable air.

There are two kinds of guests who live at the average hotel. One is the
party who gets up and walks over the whole _corps de hote_, from the
bald-headed proprietor to the bootblack, while the other is the meek and
mild-eyed man, doomed to sit at the table and bewail the flight of time
and the horrors of starvation while waiting for the relief party to come
with his food.

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