Remarks by Bill Nye

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Here may be noticed the canvas-back moose and a strong antipathy to good
rum. I do not wonder that the people of Maine are hostile to rum--if they
judge all rum by Maine rum. The moose is one of the most gamey of the
finny tribe. He is caught in the fall of the year with a double-barrel
shotgun and a pair of snow-shoes. He does not bite unless irritated, but
little boys should not go near the female moose while she is on her nest.
The masculine moose wears a harelip, and a hat rack on his head to which
is attached a placard on which is printed:

PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

This shows that the moose is a humorist.

Doosedly Dilatory.

Since the investigation of Washington pension attorneys, it is a little
remarkable how scarce in the newspapers is the appearance of
advertisements like this.

Pensions! Thousands of soldiers of the late war are still entitled to
pensions with the large accumulations since the injury was received. We
procure pensions, back pay, allowances. Appear in the courts for
nonresident clients in United States land cases, etc. Address Skinnem &
Co., Washington, D.C.

I didn't participate in the late war, but I have had some experience in
putting a few friends and neighbors on the track of a pension. Those who
have tried it will remember some of the details. It always seemed to me a
little more difficult somehow for a man who had lost both legs at
Antietam, than for the man who got his nose pulled off at an election
three years after the war closed. It, of course, depended a good deal on
the extemporaneous affidavit qualifications of the applicant. About five
years ago an acquaintance came to me and said he wanted to get a pension
from the government, and that he hadn't the first idea about the details.
He didn't know whether he should apply to the President or to the
Secretary of State. Would I "kind of put him onto the racket." I asked him
what he wanted a pension for, and he said his injury didn't show much, but
it prevented his pursuit of kopecks and happiness. He had nine children by
his first wife, and if he could get a pension he desired to marry again.

As to the nature of his injuries, he said that at the battle of Fair Oaks
he supported his command by secreting himself behind a rail fence and
harassing the enemy from time to time, by a system of coldness and neglect
on his part. While thus employed in breaking the back of the Confederacy,
a solid shot struck a crooked rail on which he was sitting, in such a way
as to jar his spinal column. From this concussion he had never fully
recovered. He didn't notice it any more while sitting down and quiet, but
the moment he began to do manual labor or to stand on his feet too long,
unless he had a bar or something to lean up against, he felt the cold
chill run up his back and life was no object.

I told him that I was too busy to attend to it, and asked him why he
didn't put his case in the hands of some Washington attorney, who could be
on the ground and attend to it. He decided that he would, so he wrote to
one of these philanthropists whom we will call Fitznoodle. I give him the
_nom de plume_ of Fitznoodle to nip a $20,000 libel suit in the bud. Well,
Fitznoodle sent back some blanks for the claimant to sign, by which he
bound himself, his heirs, executors, representatives and assigns, firmly
by these presents to pay to said Fitznoodle, the necessary fees for
postage, stationery, car fare, concert tickets, and office rent, while
said claim was in the hands of the pension department. He said in a letter
that he would have to ask for $2, please, to pay for postage. He inclosed
a circular in which he begged to refer the claimant to a reformed member
of the bar of the District of Columbia, a backslidden foreign minister and
three prominent men who had been dead eleven years by the watch. In a
postscript he again alluded to the $2 in a casual way, waved the American
flag two times, and begged leave to subscribe himself once more. "Yours
Fraternally and professionally, Good Samaritan Fitznoodle, Attorney at
Law, Solicitor in Chancery, and Promotor of Even-handed Justice in and for
the District of Columbia." The claimant sent his $2, not necessarily for
publication, but as a guaranty of good faith.

Later on Mr. Fitznoodle said that the first step would be to file a
declaration enclosing $5 and the names of two witnesses who were present
when the claimant was born, and could identify him as the same man who
enlisted from Emporia in the Thirteenth Kansas Nighthawks. Five dollars
must be enclosed to defray the expenses of a trip to the office of the
commissioner of pensions, which trip would naturally take in eleven
saloons and ten cents in car fare. "P.S.--Attach to the declaration the
signature and seal of a notary public of pure character, $5, the
certificate of the clerk of a court of record as to the genuineness of
the signature of the notary public, his term of appointment and $5."
These documents were sent, after which there was a lull of about three
months. Then the swelling in Mr. Fitznoodle's head had gone down a
little, but there was still a seal brown taste in his mouth. So he wrote
the claimant that it would be necessary to jog the memory of the
department about $3 dollars worth; and to file collateral testimony
setting forth that claimant was a native born American or that he had
declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, that he
had not formed nor expressed an opinion for or against the accused, which
the testimony would not eradicate, that he would enclose $3, and that he
had never before applied for a pension. After awhile a circular from the
pension end of the department was received, stating that the claimant's
application had been received, filed and docketed No. 188,935,062-1/2, on
page 9,847 of book G, on the thumb-hand side as you come in on the New
York train. On the strength of this document the claimant went to the
grocery and bought an ecru-colored ham, a sack of corn meal and a pound
of tobacco. In June Mr. Fitznoodle sent a blank to be filled out by the
claimant, stating whether he had or had not been baptized prior to his
enlistment; and, if so, to what extent, and how he liked it so far as he
had gone. This was to be sworn to before two witnesses, who were to be
male, if possible, and if not, the department would insist on their being
female. These witnesses must swear that they had no interest in the said
claim, or anything else. On receipt of this, together with $5 in
postoffice money order or New York draft, the document would be filed
and, no doubt, acted upon at once. In July, a note came from the attorney
saying that he regretted to write that the pension department was now
250,000 claims behind, and if business was taken up in its regular order,
the claim under discussion might not be reached for between nine and ten
years. However, it would be possible to "expedite" the claim, if $25
could be remitted for the purpose of buying a spike-tail coat and plug
hat, in which to appear before the commissioner of pensions and mash him
flat on the shape of the attorney. As the claimant didn't know much of
the practical working of the machinery of government, he swallowed this
pill and remitted the $25. Here followed a good deal of red tape and
international monkeying during which the claimant was alternately taking
an oath to support the constitution of the United States, and promising
to support the constitution and by-laws of Mr. Fitznoodle. The claimant
was constantly assured that his claim was a good one and on these
autograph letters written with a type-writer, the war-born veteran with a
concussed vertebra bought groceries and secured the funds to pay his
assessments.

For a number of years I heard nothing of the claim, but a few months ago,
when Mr. Fitznoodle was arrested and jerked into the presence of the grand
jury, a Washington friend wrote me that the officers found in his table a
letter addressed to the man who was jarred in the rear of the Union army,
and in which (the letter, I mean), he alluded to the long and pleasant
correspondence which had sprung up between them as lawyer and client, and
regretting that, as the claim would soon be allowed, their friendly
relations would no doubt cease, would he please forward $13 to pay freight
on the pension money, and also a lock of his hair that Mr. Fitznoodle
could weave into a watchchain and wear always. As the claimant does not
need the papers, he probably thinks by this time that Mr. Good Samaritan
Fitznoodle has been kidnapped and thrown into the moaning, hungry sea.

Every Man His Own Paper-Hanger.

It would please me very much, at no distant day, to issue a small book
filled with choice recipes and directions for making home happy. I have
accumulated an immense assortment of these things, all of general use and
all excellent in their way, because they have been printed in papers all
over the country--papers that would not be wrong. Some of these recipes I
have tried.

I have tried the recipe for paste and directions for applying wall paper,
as published recently in an agricultural paper to which I had become very
much attached.

This recipe had all the characteristics of an ingenuous and honest
document. I cut it out of the paper and filed it away where I came very
near not finding it again. But I was unfortunate enough to find it after a
long search.

The scheme was to prepare a flour paste that would hold forever, and at
the same time make the paper look smooth and neat to the casual observer.
It consisted of so many parts flour, so many parts hot water and so many
parts common glue. First, the walls were to be sized, however. I took a
common tape measure and sized the walls.

Then I put a dishpan on the cook stove, poured in the flour, boiling water
and glue. This rapidly produced a dark brown mess of dough, to which I was
obliged to add more hot water. It looked extremely repulsive to me, but it
looked a good deal better than it smelled.

I did not have much faith in it, but I thought I would try it. I put some
of it on a long strip of wall paper and got up on a chair to apply it. In
the excitement of trying to stick it on the wall as nearly perpendicular
as possible, I lost my balance while still holding the paper and fell in
such a manner as to wrap four yards of bronze paper and common flour paste
around my wife's head, with the exception of about four feet of the paper
which I applied to an oil painting of a Gordon Setter in a gilt frame.

I decline to detail the dialogue which then took place between my wife and
myself. Whatever claim the public may have on me, it has no right to
demand this. It will continue to remain sacred. That is, not so very
sacred of course, if I remember my exact language at the time, but
sacredly secret from the prying eyes of the public.

It is singular, but it is none the less the never dying truth, that the
only time that paste ever stuck anything at all, was when I applied it to
my wife and that picture. After that it did everything but adhere. It
gourmed and it gummed everything, but that was all.

The man who wrote the recipe may have been stuck on it, but nothing else
ever was.

[Illustration: I LOST MY BALANCE.]

Finally a friend came along who helped me pick the paper off the dog and
soothe my wife. He said that what this paste needed was more glue and a
quart of molasses. I added these ingredients, and constructed a quart of
chemical molasses which looked like crude ginger bread in a molten state.

Then, with the aid of my friend, I proceeded to paper the room. The paper
would seem to adhere at times, and then it would refrain from adhering.
This was annoying, but we succeeded in applying the paper to the walls in
a way that showed we were perfectly sincere about it. We didn't seek to
mislead anybody or cover up anything. Any one could see where each roll of
paper tried to be amicable with its neighbor--also where we had tried the
laying on of hands in applying the paper.

We got all the paper on in good shape--also the bronze. But they were in
different places. The paper was on the walls, but the bronze was mostly on
our clothes and on our hands. I was very tired when I got through, and I
went to bed early, hoping to get much needed rest. In the morning, when I
felt fresh and rested, I thought that the paper would look better to me.

There is where I fooled myself. It did not look better to me. It looked
worse.

All night long I could occasionally hear something crack like a Fourth of
July. I did not know at the time what it was, but in the morning I
discovered.

It seems that, during the night, that paper had wrinkled itself up like
the skin on the neck of a pioneer hen after death. It had pulled itself
together with so much zeal that the room was six inches smaller each way
and the carpet didn't fit.

There is only one way to insure success in the publication of recipes.
They must be tried by the editor himself before they are printed. If you
have a good recipe for paste, you must try it before you print it. If you
have a good remedy for botts, you must get a botty horse somewhere and try
the remedy before you submit it. If you think of publishing the antidote
for a certain poison, you should poison some one and try the antidote on
him, in order to test it, before you bamboozle the readers of your paper.

This, of course, will add a good deal of extra work for the editor, but
editors need more work. All they do now is to have fun with each other,
draw their princely salaries, and speak sarcastically of the young poet
who sings,

"You have came far o'er the sea,
And I've went away from thee."

Sixty Minutes in America.

The following selections are from the advance sheets of a forthcoming work
with the above title, to be published by M. Foll de Roll. It is possible
that other excerpts will be made from the book, in case the present
harmonious state of affairs between France and America is not destroyed by
my style of translation.

In the preface M. Foll de Roll says: "France has long required a book of
printed writings about that large, wide land of whom we listen to so much
and yet so little _sabe_, as the piquant Californian shall say. America is
considerable. America I shall call vast. She care nothing how high freedom
shall come, she must secure him. She exclaims to all people: 'You like
freedom pretty well, but you know nothing of it. We throw away every day
more freedom than you shall see all your life. Come to this place when you
shall run out of freedom. We make it. Do not ask us for money, but if you
want personal liberty, please look over our vast stock before you
elsewhere go.'

"So everybody goes to America, where he shall be free to pay cash for what
the American has for sale.

"In this book will be found everything that the French people want to know
of that singular land, for did I not cross it from New Jersey City, the
town where all the New York people have to go to get upon the cars,
through to the town of San Francisco?

"For years the writer of this book has had it in his mind to go across
America, and then tell the people of France, in a small volume costing one
franc, all about the grotesque land of the freedom bird."

In the opening chapter he alludes to New York casually, and apologizes for
taking up so much space.

"When you shall land in New York, you shall feel a strange sensation. The
stomach is not so what we should call 'Rise up William Riley,' to use an
Americanism which will not bear translation. I ride along the Rue de
Twenty-three, and want to eat everything my eyes shall fall upon.

"I stay at New York all night, and eat one large supper at 6 o'clock, and
again at 9. At 12 I awake and eat the inside of my hektograph, and then
lie down once more to sleep. The hektograph will be henceforth, as the
American shall say, no good, but what is that when a man is starving in a
foreign land?

"I leave New York in the morning on the Ferry de Pavonia, a steamer that
goes to New Jersey City. Many people go to New York to buy food and
clothes. Then you shall see them return to the woods, where they live the
rest of the time. Some of the females are quite _petite_ and, as the
Americans have it,'scrumptious.' One stout girl at New Jersey City, I was
told, was 'all wool and a yard wide.'

"The relations between New York and New Jersey City are quite amicable,
and the inhabitants seem to spend much of their time riding to and fro on
the Ferry de Pavonia and other steamers. When I talked to them in their
own language they would laugh with great glee, and say they could not
parley voo Norwegian very good.

"The Americans are very fond of witnessing what may be called the
_tournament de slug_. In this, two men wearing upholstered mittens shake
hands, and then one strikes at the other with his right hand, so as to
mislead him, and, while he is taking care of that, the first man hits him
with his left and knocks out some of his teeth. Then the other man spits
out his loose teeth and hits his antagonist on the nose, or feeds him with
the thumb of his upholstered mitten for some time. Half the gate money
goes to the hospital where these men are in the habit of being repaired.

"One of these men, who is now the champion scrapper, as one American
author has it, was once a poor boy, but he was proud and ambitious. So he
practiced on his wife evenings, after she had washed the dishes, until he
found that he could 'knock her out,' as the American has it. Then he tried
it on other relatives, and step by step advanced till he could make almost
any man in America cough up pieces of this upholstered mitten which he
wears in public.

"In closing this chapter on New York, I may say that I have not said so
much of the city itself as I would like, but enough so that he who reads
with care may feel somewhat familiar with it. New York is situated on the
east side of America, near New Jersey City. The climate is cool and frosty
a part of the year, but warm and temperate in the summer months. The
surface is generally level, but some of the houses are quite tall.

"I would not advise Frenchmen to go to New York now, but rather to wait
until the pedestal of M. Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty has been paid for.
Many foreigners have already been earnestly permitted to help pay for this
pedestal."

Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss.

There are a good many difficult things to ride, I find, beside the bicycle
and the bucking Mexican plug. Those who have tried to mount and
successfully ride a wheelbarrow in the darkness of the stilly night will
agree with me.

You come on a wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and you
undertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find the
wheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is,
as a rule, phlegmatic and cool; but when a total stranger startles it, it
spreads desolation and destruction on every hand.

This is also true of the perambulator, or baby-carriage. I undertook to
evade a child's phaeton, three years ago last spring, as it stood in the
entrance to a hall in Main street. The child was not injured, because it
was not in the carriage at the time; but I was not so fortunate. I pulled
pieces of perambulator out of myself for two weeks with the hand that was
not disabled.

How a sedentary man could fall through a child's carriage in such a manner
as to stab himself with the awning and knock every spoke out of three
wheels, is still a mystery to me, but I did it. I can show you the
doctor's bill now.

The other day, however, I discovered a new style of riding animal. The
Rev. Mr. Hallelujah was at the depot when I arrived, and was evidently
waiting for the same Chicago train that I was in search of. Rev. Mr.
Hallelujah had put his valise down near an ordinary baggage-truck which
leaned up against the wall of the station building.

He strolled along the platform a few moments, communing with himself and
agitating his mind over the subject of Divine Retribution, and then he
went up and leaned against the truck. Finally, he somehow got his arms
under the handles of the truck as it stood up between his back and the
wall. He still continued to think of the plan of Divine Retribution, and
you could have seen his lips move if you had been there.

Pretty soon some young ladies came along, rosy in winter air, beautiful
beyond compare, frosty crystals in their hair; smiled they on the preacher
there.

He returned the smile and bowed low. As he did so, as near as I can figure
it out, he stepped back on the iron edge of the truck that the baggageman
generally jabs under the rim of an iron-bound sample-trunk when he goes to
load it. Anyhow, Mr. Hallelujah's feet flew toward next spring. The truck
started across the platform with him and spilled him over the edge on the
track ten feet below. So rapid was the movement that the eye with
difficulty followed his evolutions. His valise was carried onward by the
same wild avalanche, and "busted" open before it struck the track below.

I was surprised to see some of the articles that shot forth into the broad
light of day. Among the rest there was a bran fired new set of ready-made
teeth, to be used in case of accident. Up to that moment I didn't know
that Mr. Hallelujah used the common tooth of commerce. These teeth slipped
out of the valise with a Sabbath smile and vulcanized rubber gums.

[Illustration: A RAPID MOVEMENT.]

In striking the iron track below, the every-day set which the Rev. Mr.
Hallelujah had in use became loosened, and smiled across the road-bed and
right of way at the bran fired new array of incisors, cuspids, bi-cuspids
and molars that flew out of the valise. Mr. Hallelujah got up and tried to
look merry, but he could not smile without his teeth. The back seams of
his Newmarket coat were more successful, however.

Mr. Hallelujah's wardrobe and a small boy were the only objects that dared
to smile.

Somnambulism and Crime.

A recent article in the London _Post_ on the subject of somnambulism,
calls to my mind several little incidents with somnambulistic tendencies
in my own experience.

This subject has, indeed, attracted my attention for some years, and it
has afforded me great pleasure to investigate it carefully.

Regarding the causes of dreams and somnambulism, there are many theories,
all of which are more or less untenable. My own idea, given, of course, in
a plain, crude way, is that thoughts originate on the inside of the brain
and then go at once to the surface, where they have their photographs
taken, with the understanding that the negatives are to be preserved. In
this way the thought may afterward be duplicated back to the thinker in
the form of a dream, and, if the impulse be strong enough, muscular action
and somnambulism may result.

On the banks of Bitter Creek, some years ago, lived an open-mouthed man,
who had risen from affluence by his unaided effort until he was entirely
free from any incumbrance in the way of property. His mind dwelt on this
matter a great deal during the day. Thoughts of manual labor flitted
through his mind, but were cast aside as impracticable. Then other means
of acquiring property suggested themselves. These thoughts were
photographed on the delicate negative of the brain, where it is a rule to
preserve all negatives. At night these thoughts were reversed within the
think resort, if I may be allowed that term, and muscular action resulted.
Yielding at last to the great desire for possessions and property the
somnambulist groped his way to the corral of a total stranger, and
selecting a choice mule with great dewy eyes and real camel's hair tail,
he fled. On and on he pressed, toward the dark, uncertain west, till at
last rosy morn clomb the low, outlying hills and gilded the gray outlines
of the sage-brush. The coyote slunk back to his home, but the somnambulist
did not.

He awoke as day dawned, and, when he found himself astride the mule of
another, a slight shudder passed the entire length of his frame. He then
fully realized that he had made his debut as a somnambulist. He seemed to
think that he who starts out to be a somnambulist should never turn back.
So he pressed on, while the red sun stepped out into the awful quiet of
the dusty waste and gradually moved up into the sky, and slowly added
another day to those already filed away in the dark maw of ages.

Night came again at last, and with it other somnambulists similar to the
first, only that they were riding on their own beasts. Some somnambulists
ride their own animals, while others are content to bestride the steeds of
strangers.

The man on the anonymous mule halted at last at the mouth of a deep canon.
He did so at the request of other somnambulists. Mechanically he got down
from the back of the mule and stood under a stunted mountain pine.

After awhile he began to ascend the tree by means of his neck. When he had
reached the lower branch of the tree he made a few gestures with his feet
by a lateral movement of the legs. He made several ineffectual efforts to
kick some pieces out of the horizon, and then, after he had gently
oscilliated a few times, he assumed a pendent and perpendicular position
at right angles with the limb of the tree.

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