Remarks by Bill Nye

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I never had any advantages when I was a boy, but your mother and I decided
that we would sock you full of knowledge, if your liver held out,
regardless of expense. We calculate to do it, only we want you to go as
slow on swallowtail coats as possible till we can sell our hay.

Now, regarding that boat-paddling suit, and that baseball suit, and that
bathing suit, and that roller-rinktum suit, and that lawn-tennis suit,
mind, I don't care about the expense, because you say a young man can't
really educate himself thoroughly without them, but I wish you'd send home
what you get through with this fall, and I'll wear them through the winter
under my other clothes. We have a good deal severer winters here than we
used to, or else I'm failing in bodily health. Last winter I tried to go
through without underclothes, the way I did when I was a boy, but a
Manitoba wave came down our way and picked me out of a crowd with its eyes
shet.

In your last letter you alluded to getting injured in a little "hazing
scuffle with a pelican from the rural districts." I don't want any harm to
come to you, my son, but if I went from the rural districts and another
young gosling from the rural districts undertook to haze me, I would meet
him when the sun goes down, and I would swat him across the back of the
neck with a fence board, and then I would meander across the pit of his
stomach and put a blue forget-me-not under his eye.

Your father aint much on Grecian mythology and how to get the square root
of a barrel of pork, but he wouldn't allow any educational institutions to
haze him with impunity. Perhaps you remember once when you tried to haze
your father a little, just to kill time, and how long it took you to
recover. Anybody that goes at it right can have a good deal of fun with
your father, but those who have sought to monkey with him, just to break
up the monotony of life, have most always succeeded in finding what they
sought.

[Illustration: RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.]

I ain't much of a pensman, so you will have to excuse this letter. We are
all quite well, except old Fan, who has a galded shoulder, and hope this
will find you enjoying the same great blessing.

Your Father.

Archimedes.

Archimedes, whose given name has been accidentally torn off and swallowed
up in oblivion, was born in Syracuse, 2,171 years ago last spring. He was
a philosopher and mathematical expert. During his life he was never
successfully stumped in figures. It ill befits me now, standing by his
new-made grave, to say aught of him that is not of praise. We can only
mourn his untimely death, and wonder which of our little band of great men
will be the next to go.

Archimedes was the first to originate and use the word "Eureka." It has
been successfully used very much lately, and as a result we have the
Eureka baking powder, the Eureka suspender, the Eureka bed-bug buster, the
Eureka shirt, and the Eureka stomach bitters. Little did Archimedes wot,
when he invented this term, that it would come into such general use.

Its origin has been explained before, but it would not be out of place
here for me to tell it as I call it to mind now, looking back over
Archie's eventful life.

King Hiero had ordered an eighteen karat crown, size 7-1/8, and, after
receiving it from the hands of the jeweler, suspected that it had been
adulterated. He therefore applied to Archimedes to ascertain, if possible,
whether such was the case or not. Archimedes had just got in on No. 3, two
hours late, and covered with dust. He at once started for a hot and cold
bath emporium on Sixteenth street, meantime wondering how the dickens he
would settle that crown business.

He filled the bath-tub level full, and, piling up his raiment on the
floor, jumped in. Displacing a large quantity of water, equal to his own
bulk, he thereupon solved the question of specific gravity, and,
forgetting his bill, forgetting his clothes, he sailed up Sixteenth street
and all over Syracuse, clothed in shimmering sunlight and a plain gold
ring, shouting "Eureka!" He ran head-first into a Syracuse policeman and
howled "Eureka!" The policeman said: "You'll have to excuse me; I don't
know him." He scattered the Syracuse Normal school on its way home, and
tried to board a Fifteenth street bob-tail car, yelling "Eureka!" The
car-driver told him that Eureka wasn't on the car, and referred Archimedes
to a clothing store.

Everywhere he was greeted with surprise. He tried to pay his car-fare, but
found that he had left his money in his other clothes.

Some thought it was the revised statute of Hercules; that he had become
weary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had started
out for fresh air. I give this as I remember it. The story is foundered on
fact.

Archimedes once said: "Give me where I may stand, and I will move the
world." I could write it in the original Greek, but, fearing that the
nonpareil delirium tremens type might get short, I give it in the English
language.

It may be tardy justice to a great mathematician and scientist, but I have
a few resolutions of respect which I would be very glad to get printed on
this solemn occasion, and mail copies of the paper to his relatives and
friends:

"WHEREAS, It has pleased an All-wise Providence to remove from our midst
Archimedes, who was ever at the front in all deserving labors and
enterprises; and

"WHEREAS, We can but feebly express our great sorrow in the loss of
Archimedes, whose front name has escaped our memory; therefore

"_Resolved_, That in his death we have lost a leading citizen of Syracuse,
and one who never shook his friends--never weakened or gigged back on
those he loved.

"_Resolved_, That copies of these resolutions will be spread on the
moments of the meeting of the Common Council of Syracuse, and that they be
published in the Syracuse papers eodtfpdq&cod, and that marked copies of
said papers be mailed to the relatives of the deceased."

To the President-Elect.

Dear Sir.--The painful duty of turning over to you the administration of
these United States and the key to the front door of the White House has
been assigned to me. You will find the key hanging inside the storm-door,
and the cistern-pole up stairs in the haymow of the barn. I have made a
great many suggestions to the outgoing administration relative to the
transfer of the Indian bureau from the department of the Interior to that
of the sweet by-and-by. The Indian, I may say, has been a great source of
annoyance to me, several of their number having jumped one of my most
valuable mining claims on White river. Still, I do not complain of that.
This mine, however, I am convinced would be a good paying property if
properly worked, and should you at any time wish to take the regular army
and such other help as you may need and re-capture it from our red
brothers, I would be glad to give you a controlling interest in it.

[Illustration: A DEARTH OF SOAP IN THE LAUNDRY AND BATH-ROOM.]

You will find all papers in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and a small
jar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which you
will be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that were the
immediate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are now all
buried. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your own. They
are none too good for you. You deserve them. We may differ politically,
but that need not interfere with our warm personal friendship.

You will observe on taking possession of the administration, that the navy
is a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that it be newly
painted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to receive a
majority of the suffrages of the people for the office which you now hold,
I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not influence you in
the course which you may see fit to adopt.

There are many affairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in this
brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity about
appearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein the
public might charge me with interference.

I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whatever
your convictions may be upon great questions of national interest, either
foreign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out the gas on
retiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond anticipations
which are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people whose aggregated
eye is now on to you.

Bill Nye.

P.S.--You will be a little surprised, no doubt, to find no soap in the
laundry or bath-rooms. It probably got into the campaign in some way and
was absorbed.

B.N.

Anatomy.

The word anatomy is derived from two Greek spatters and three polywogs,
which, when translated, signify "up through" and "to cut," so that anatomy
actually, when translated from the original wappy-jawed Greek, means to
cut up through. That is no doubt the reason why the medical student
proceeds to cut up through the entire course.

[Illustration: STUDYING ANATOMY.]

Anatomy is so called because its best results are obtained from the
cutting or dissecting of organism. For that reason there is a growing
demand in the neighborhood of the medical college for good second-hand
organisms. Parties having well preserved organisms that they are not
actually using, will do well to call at the side door of the medical
college after 10 P.M.

The branch of the comparative anatomy which seeks to trace the unities of
plan which are exhibited in diverse organisms, and which discovers, as far
as may be, the principles which govern the growth and development of
organized bodies, and which finds functional analogies and structural
homologies, is denominated philosophical or transcendental anatomy. (This
statement, though strictly true, is not original with me.)

Careful study of the human organism after death, shows traces of
functional analogies and structural homologies in people who were supposed
to have been in perfect health all their lives Probably many of those we
meet in the daily walks of life, many, too, who wear a smile and outwardly
seem happy, have either one or both of these things. A man may live a
false life and deceive his most intimate friends in the matter of
anatomical analogies or homologies, but he cannot conceal it from the
eagle eye of the medical student. The ambitious medical student makes a
specialty of true inwardness.

The study of the structure of animals is called zootomy. The attempt to
study the anatomical structure of the grizzly bear from the inside has not
been crowned with success. When the anatomizer and the bear have been
thrown together casually, it has generally been a struggle between the two
organisms to see which would make a study of the structure of the other.
Zootomy and moral suasion are not homogeneous, analogous, nor indigenous.

Vegetable anatomy is called phytonomy, sometimes. But it would not be safe
to address a vigorous man by that epithet. We may call a vegetable that,
however, and be safe.

Human anatomy is that branch of anatomy which enters into the description
of the structure and geographical distribution of the elements of a human
being. It also applies to the structure of the microbe that crawls out of
jail every four years just long enough to whip his wife, vote and go back
again.

Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical.
Those terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals,
specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, but
really mean something else. I would explain here what they actually do
mean if I had more room and knew enough to do it.

Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, into
fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles,
angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or
department of the interior, and so on.

People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomy
on subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but they
are productive of insomnia, so I will not give them.

I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have not
been there since. When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it in
the dissecting-room of a large and flourishing medical college does not
occur to me.

I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no hesitation
about mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting up other
nationalities. I should always fear, while pursuing my studies, that I
might be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do that. I
should like to do anything that would advance the cause of science, but I
should not want to form the habit of dissecting people, lest some day I
might be called upon to dissect a friend for whom I had a great
attachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me.

[Illustration]

Mr. Sweeney's Cat.

Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul, and though a recent
chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of a
sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood in
his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to earn
their salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling drugs at
the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in order to place
their goods within the reach of all.

As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned
head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told him
that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that as it
hadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally wear
it out.

He is a mighty pleasant man to meet, anyhow, and you can have just as much
fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in
his veins. You could be with him for days on a fishing trip and never
notice it at all.

But I was going to speak more in particular about Mr. Sweeney's cat. Mr.
Sweeney had a large cat, named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very fond.
Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was known all
over St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker took in the
town after office hours, nobody seemed to know anything about it. She
would be around bright and cheerful the next morning and attend to her
duties at the store just as though nothing whatever had happened.

One day last summer Mr. Sweeney left a large plate of fly-paper with water
on it in the window, hoping to gather in a few quarts of flies in a
deceased state. Dr. Mary Walker used to go to this window during the
afternoon and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasant
memories of her past life. That afternoon she thought she would call up
some more memories, so she went over on the counter and from there jumped
down on the window-sill, landing with all four feet in the plate of
fly-paper.

At first she regarded it as a joke, and treated the matter very lightly,
but later on she observed that the fly-paper stuck to her feet with great
tenacity of purpose. Those who have never seen the look of surprise and
deep sorrow that a cat wears when she finds herself glued to a whole sheet
of fly-paper, cannot fully appreciate the way Dr. Mary Walker felt. She
did not dash wildly through a $150 plate-glass window, as some cats would
have done. She controlled herself and acted in the coolest manner, though
you could have seen that mentally she suffered intensely. She sat down a
moment to more fully outline a plan for the future. In doing so, she made
a great mistake. The gesture resulted in glueing the fly-paper to her
person in such a way that the edge turned up behind in the most abrupt
manner, and caused her great inconvenience.

[Illustration: AT FIRST SHE REGARDED IT AS A JOKE.]

Some one at that time laughed in a coarse and heartless way, and I wish
you could have seen the look of pain that Dr. Mary Walker gave him.

Then she went away. She did not go around the prescription case as the
rest of us did, but strolled through the middle of it, and so on out
through the glass door at the rear of the store. We did not see her go
through the glass door, but we found pieces of fly-paper and fur on the
ragged edges of a large aperture in the glass, and we kind of jumped at
the conclusion that Dr. Mary Walker had taken that direction in retiring
from the room.

Dr. Mary Walker never returned to St. Paul, and her exact whereabouts are
not known, though every effort was made to find her. Fragments of flypaper
and brindle hair were found as far west as the Yellowstone National Park,
and as far north as the British line, but the doctor herself was not
found. My own theory is, that if she turned her bow to the west so as to
catch the strong easterly gale on her quarter, with the sail she had set
and her tail pointing directly toward the zenith, the chances for Dr. Mary
Walker's immediate return are extremely slim.

[Illustration]

The Heyday of Life.

There will always be a slight difference in the opinions of the young and
the mature, relative to the general plan on which the solar system should
be operated, no doubt. There are also points of disagreement in other
matters, and it looks as though there always would be.

To the young the future has a more roseate hue. The roseate hue comes
high, but we have to use it in this place. To the young there spreads out
across the horizon a glorious range of possibilities. After the youth has
endorsed for an intimate friend a few times, and purchased the paper at
the bank himself later on, the horizon won't seem to horizon so
tumultuously as it did aforetime. I remember at one time of purchasing
such a piece of accommodation paper at a bank, and I still have it. I
didn't need it any more than a cat needs eleven tails at one and the same
time. Still the bank made it an object for me, and I secured it. Such
things as these harshly knock the flush and bloom off the cheek of youth,
and prompt us to turn the strawberry box bottom side up before we purchase
it.

Youth is gay and hopeful, age is covered with experience and scars where
the skin has been knocked off and had to grow on again. To the young a
dollar looks large and strong, but to the middle-aged and the old it is
weak and inefficient.

When we are in the heyday and fizz of existence, we believe everything;
but after awhile we murmur: "What's that you are givin' us," or words of
like character. Age brings caution and a lot of shop-worn experience,
purchased at the highest market price. Time brings vain regrets and wisdom
teeth that can be left in a glass of water over night.

Still we should not repine. If people would repine less and try harder to
get up an appetite by persweating in someone's vineyard at so much per
diem, it would be better. The American people of late years seem to have a
deeper and deadlier repugnance for mannish industry, and there seems to be
a growing opinion that our crops are more abundant when saturated with
foreign perspiration. European sweat, if I may be allowed to use such a
low term, is very good in its place, but the native-born Duke of Dakota,
or the Earl of York State should remember that the matter of perspiration
and posterity should not be left solely to the foreigner.

There are too many Americans who toil not, neither do they spin. They
would be willing to have an office foisted upon them, but they would
rather blow their so-called brains out than to steer a pair of large
steel-gray mules from day to day. They are too proud to hoe corn, for fear
some great man will ride by and see the termination of their shirts
extending out through the seats of their pantaloons, but they are not too
proud to assign their shattered finances to a friend and their shattered
remains to the morgue.

Pride is all right if it is the right kind, but the pride that prompts a
man to kill his mother, because she at last refuses to black his boots any
more, is an erroneous pride. The pride that induces a man to muss up the
carpet with his brains because there is nothing left for him to do but to
labor, is the kind that Lucifer had when he bolted the action of the
convention and went over to the red-hot minority.

Youth is the spring-time of life. It is the time to acquire information,
so that we may show it off in after years and paralyze people with what we
know. The wise youth will "lay low" till he gets a whole lot of knowledge,
and then in later days turn it loose in an abrupt manner. He will guard
against telling what he knows, a little at a time. That is unwise. I once
knew a youth who wore himself out telling people all he knew from day to
day, so that when he became a bald-headed man he was utterly exhausted and
didn't have anything left to tell anyone. Some of the things that we know
should be saved for our own use. The man who sheds all his knowledge, and
don't leave enough to keep house with, fools himself.

They Fell.

Two delegates to the General Convocation of the Sons of Ice Water were
sitting in the lobby of the Windsor, in the city of Denver, not long ago,
strangers to each other and to everybody else. One came from Huerferno
county, and the other was a delegate from the Ice Water Encampment of
Correjos county.

From the beautiful billiard hall came the sharp rattle of ivory balls, and
in the bar-room there was a glitter of electric light, cut glass, and
French plate mirrors. Out of the door came the merry laughter of the giddy
throng, flavored with fragrant Havana smoke and the delicate odor of lemon
and mirth and pine apple and cognac.

The delegate from Correjos felt lonely, and he turned to the Ice Water
representative from Huerferno:

"That was a bold and fearless speech you made this afternoon on the demon
rum at the convocation."

"Think so?" said the sad Huerferno man.

"Yes, you entered into the description of rum's maniac till I could almost
see the red-eyed centipedes and tropical hornets in the air. How could you
describe the jimjams so graphically?"

"Well, you see, I'm a reformed drunkard. Only a little while ago I was in
the gutter."

"So was I."

"How long ago?"

"Week ago day after to-morrow."

"Next Tuesday it'll be a week since I quit."

"Well, I swan!"

"Ain't it funny?"

"Tolerable."

"It's going to be a long, cold winter; don't you think so?"

"Yes, I dread it a good deal."

"It's a comfort, though, to know that you never will touch rum again."

"Yes, I am glad in my heart to-night that I am free from it. I shall never
touch rum again."

When he said this he looked up at the other delegate, and they looked into
each other's eyes earnestly, as though each would read the other's soul.
Then the Huerferno man said:

"In fact, I never did care much for rum."

Then there was a long pause.

Finally the Correjos man ventured: "Do you have to use an antidote to cure
the thirst?"

"Yes, I've had to rely on that a good deal at first. Probably this vain
yearning that I now feel in the pit of the bosom will disappear after
awhile."

"Have you got any antidote with you?"

"Yes, I've got some up in 232-1/2. If you'll come up I'll give you a
dose."

"There's no rum in it, is there?"

"No."

Then they went up the elevator. They did not get down to breakfast, but at
dinner they stole in. Tho man from Huerferno dodged nervously through the
archway leading to the dining-room as though he had doubts about getting
through so small a space with his augmented head, and the man from
Correjos looked like one who had wept his eyes almost blind over the woe
that rum has wrought in our fair land.

When the waiter asked the delegate from Correjos for his dessert order,
the red-nosed Son of Ice Water said: "Bring me a cup of tea, some pudding
without wine sauce, and a piece of mince pie. You may also bring me a
corkscrew, if you please, to pull the brandy out of the mince pie with."

Then the two reformed drunkards looked at each other, and laughed a
hoarse, bitter and joyous laugh.

At the afternoon session of the Sons of Ice Water, the Huerferno delegate
couldn't get his regalia over his head.

Second Letter to the President.

To the President.--I write this letter not on my own account, but on
behalf of a personal friend of mine who is known as a mugwump. He is a
great worker for political reform, but he cannot spell very well, so he
has asked me to write this letter. He knew that I had been thrown among
great men all my life, and that, owing to my high social position and fine
education, I would be peculiarly fitted to write you in a way that would
not call forth disagreeable remarks, and so he has given me the points and
I have arranged them for you.

In the first place, my friend desires me to convey to you, Mr. President,
in a delicate manner, and in such language as to avoid giving offense,
that he is somewhat disappointed in your Cabinet. I hate to talk this way
to a bran-new President, but my friend feels hurt and he desires that I
should say to you that he regrets your short-sighted policy. He says that
it seems to him there is very little in the course of the administration
so far to encourage a man to shake off old party ties and try to make men
better. He desires to say that after conversing with a large number of the
purest men, men who have been in both political parties off and on for
years and yet have never been corrupted by office, men who have left
convention after convention in years past because those conventions were
corrupt and endorsed other men than themselves for office, he finds that
your appointment of Cabinet officers will only please two classes, viz:
Democrats and Republicans.

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