Remarks by Bill Nye

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The Church Debt.

I have been thinking the matter over seriously and I have decided that if
I had my life to live over again, I would like to be an eccentric
millionaire.

I have eccentricity enough, but I cannot successfully push it without more
means.

I have a great many plans which I would like to carry out, in case I could
unite the two necessary elements for the production of the successful
eccentric millionaire.

Among other things, I would be willing to bind myself and give proper
security to any one who would put in money to offset my eccentricity, that
I would ultimately die. We all know how seldom the eccentric millionaire
now dies. I would be willing to inaugurate a reform in that direction.

I think now that I would endow a home for men whose wives are no longer
able to support them. In many cases the wife who was at first able to
support her husband comfortably, finally shoulders a church debt, and in
trying to lift that she overworks and impairs her health so that she
becomes an invalid, while hor husband is left to pine away in solitude or
dependent on the cold charities of the world.

My heart goes out toward those men even now, and in case I should fill the
grave of the eccentric millionaire, I am sure that I would do the square
thing by them.

The method by which our wives in America are knocking the church debt
silly, by working up their husbands' groceries into "angel food" and
selling them below actual cost, is deserving of the attention of our
national financiers.

The church debt itself is deserving of notice in this country. It
certainly thrives better under a republican form of government than any
other feature of our boasted civilization. Western towns spring up
everywhere, and the first anxiety is to name the place, the second to
incur a church debt and establish a roller rink.

After that a general activity in trade is assured. Of course the general
hostility of church and rink will prevent _ennui_ and listlessness, and
the church debt will encourage a business boom. Naturally the church debt
cannot be paid without what is generally known through the West as the
"festival and hooraw." This festival is an open market where the ladies
trade the groceries of their husbands to other ladies' husbands, and
everybody has a "perfectly lovely time." The church clears $2.30, and
thirteen ladies are sick all the next day.

This makes a boom for the physicians and later on for the undertaker and
general tombist. So it will be seen that the Western town is right in
establishing a church debt as soon as the survey is made and the town
properly named. After the first church debt has been properly started,
others will rapidly follow, so that no anxiety need be felt if the church
will come forward the first year and buy more than it can pay for.

[Illustration: PUGILISM IN RELIGION.]

The church debt is a comparatively modern appliance, and yet it has been
productive of many peculiar features. For instance, we call to mind the
clergyman who makes a specialty of going from place to place as a
successful debt demolisher. He is a part of the general system, just as
much as the ice cream freezer or the buttonhole bouquet.

Then there is a row or social knock-down-and-drag-out which goes along
with the church debt. All these things add to the general interest, and to
acquire interest in one way or another is the mission of the c.d.

I once knew a most exemplary woman who became greatly interested in the
wiping out of a church debt, and who did finally succeed in wiping out the
debt, but in its last expiring death struggle it gave her a wipe from
which she never recovered. She had succeeded in begging the milk and the
cream, and the eggs and the sandwiches, and the use of the dishes and the
sugar, and the loan of an oyster, and the use of a freezer and fifty
button-hole bouquets to be sold to men who were not in the habit of wearing
bouquets, but she could not borrow a circular artist to revolve the crank
of the freezer, so she agitated it herself. Her husband had to go away
prior to the festivities, but he ordered her not to crank the freezer. He
had very little influence with her, however, and so to-day he is a
widower. The church debt was revived in the following year, and now there
isn't a more thriving church debt anywhere in the country. Only last week
that church traded off $75 worth of groceries, in the form of asbestos
cake and celluloid angel food, in such a way that if the original cost of
the groceries and the work were not considered, the clear profit was $13,
after the hall rent was paid. And why should the first cost of the
groceries be reckoned, when we stop to think that they were involuntarily
furnished by the depraved husband and father.

I must add, also, that in the above estimate doctors' bills and funeral
expenses are not reckoned.

[Illustration]

A Collection of Keys.

I'm getting to be quite a connoisseur of hotel keys as I get older. For
ten years I have been collecting these mementoes of travel and cording
them away in my key cabinet. Some have square brass tags attached to them,
others have round ones. Still others affect the octagonal, the fluted, the
hexagonal, the scalloped, the plain, the polished, the docorated, the
chaste, the Etruscan, the metropolitan, the rural, the cosmopolitan, the
shirred, the tucked, the biased, the high neck and long sleeve or the
_decolette_ style of brass check.

I have, so far, paid my bills, but I have not returned the keys to my
room. Hotel proprietors will please take notice and govern themselves
accordingly. When my visit to a pleasant city has become a beautiful
memory only, I all at once sit down on something hard and find that it is
the key to my former room at the hotel. Sitting down on a key tag of
corrugated brass, as big as a buckwheat pancake, would remind most anyone
of something or other.

I generally leave my tooth-brush in my room and carry off the key as a
kind of involuntary swap, so far as the hotel proprietor is concerned, but
I do not think it is a mutual benefit, particularly. I cannot use the key
to a hotel 500 miles away, and so far as a tooth-brush is concerned, it
generally has pleasant associations only for the owner. A man is fond of
his own toothbrush, but it takes years for him to love the tooth-brush of
a stranger.

There are a good many associations attached to these keys, like the tags.
They point backward to the rooms to which the keys belong. Here is a fat
one that led to room number 33-1/2 in the Synagogue hotel. It was a
cheerful room, where the bell boy said an old man had asphyxiated himself
with gas the previous week. I had never met the old man before, but that
night, about 1 o'clock A.M., I had the pleasure of his acquaintance. He
came in a sad and reproachful way, and showed me how the post-mortem
people had disfigured him. Of course it was a little tough to be mutilated
by an inquest, but that's no reason why he should come back there and
occupy a room that I was paying for so that I could be alone. He showed me
how he blew out the gas, and told me how a man could successfully blow
down the muzzle of a shot-gun or a gas jet, but both of these weapons had
a way of blowing back.

I have a key that brings back to me the memory of a room that I lived in
two days at one time. I do not mean that I lived the two days at once, but
that at one period I occupied that room, partially, for two days and two
nights, I say I partially occupied it, because I used to occupy it days
and share it nights with others; that is, I tried to occupy it nights. I
tried to get the clerk to throw off something because I didn't have the
exclusive use of the room. He wouldn't throw off anything. He even wanted
to fight me because I said that the room was occupied before I got it and
after I left it. Finally, I told him that if he would throw a bed quilt
over his diamond, so I could see him, I would fight him with buckwheat
cakes at five-hundred miles. I took my position the next morning at the
place appointed, but he did not appear.

Extracts from a Queen's Diary.

January 1.--I awoke late this forenoon with a pain through the head and a
taste of ennui in the mouth, which I can hardly account for. Can it be a
result of the party last evening? I ween it may be so. We had a lovely
card party last evening. It was very enjoyable, indeed. Whist was the
game.

January 3.--Yesterday all day I was unable to leave my room, owing to a
headache and nervous prostration, caused by late hours and too much
company, the doctor said. It is too bad, and yet I do so much enjoy our
card parties and the excitement of the game. To-night I am to take part in
a little quiet game of draw poker, I think they call it. I have not had
any experience heretofore in the game, but trust I shall soon learn it.
There has been some talk about L1 ante and L5 limit. I do not exactly
understand the terms. I hope it does not mean anything wrong.

January 4.--Poker is an odd game, indeed. I think it quite exciting,
though at first the odd terms rather confused me. I had not been
accustomed to such phrases as "show down," "bob-tail flush," and "King
full." I must ask Brown, as soon as his knees are able to be out, to
explain the meaning of these terms a little more fully to me. If poor
Brown's knees are not better soon, I shall be on kneesy about him. [Here
the diary has the appearance of being blurred with tears.] A bob-tail
flush, I learn, is something very disagreeable to have. One gentleman said
last evening that another bob-tail flush would certainly paralyze him. I
gather from that that it is something like a hectic flush. I can
understand the game called "old sledge," and have become quite familiar
with such terms as "beg," "gimmeone," "I've got the thin one," "how high
is that?" "one horse on me," "saw-off," etc., etc., but poker is full of
surprises. It seems so odd to see a gentleman "show out on a pair of
deuces" and gather in upward of two pounds with great merriment, while the
remainder of the party seem quite bored. One gentleman last evening showed
out on a full hand with "treys at the head," putting L3 12s. in his purse
with great glee, while another one of the party who had not shown up, but
I am positive had a better hand, became so angered that he got up and
kicked four front teeth out of the mouth of a favorite dog worth L20. I
took part in a spade flush during the evening and was quite successful, so
that I can easily pay my traveling expenses and have a few shillings to
buy ointment for poor Brown. It was my first winning, and made me quiver
all over with excitement. The game is already very fascinating to me, and
I am becoming passionately fond of it.

January 6.--I have just learned fully what a bob-tail flush is. It cost me
L50. I like information, but I do not like to buy it when it comes so
high. I drew two to fill in a heart flush last evening, and advanced the
money to back up my judgment; but one of the hearts I drew was a club,
which was entirely useless to me. I have sent out a sheriff with a bulldog
to ascertain if he can find the whereabouts of the party who started this
poker game, I do not know when I have felt so bored. After that I was so
timid that I allowed a friend to walk off with L2 on a pair of deuces. I
said to him that I called that a deuced bore, and he laughed heartily.

I find that you should not be too ready to show by your countenance
whether you are bored or pleased in poker. Tour opponent will take
advantage of it and play accordingly. It cost me L8 10s. to acquire a
knowledge of this fact. If all the information I ever got had cost me as
much as this poker wisdom, I would not now have two pennies to jingle
together in my purse. Still, we have had a good time, take it all in all,
and I shall not soon forget the evenings we have spent here together
buying knowledge regardless of cost. I think I shall try to control my
wild thirst for information awhile, however, till I can get some more
funds.

[Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and on turning the book over we find
the royal signature at the foot of the last page, "The Queen of Spades."]

Shorts.

A Colorado burro has been shipped across the Atlantic and presented to the
Prince of Wales. It is a matter of profound national sorrow that this was
not the first American jackass presented to his Tallness, the Prince.

At Omaha last week a barrel of sauer kraut rolled out of a wagon and
struck O'Leary H. Oleson, who was trying to unload it, with such force as
to kill him instantly and to flatten him out like a kiln-dried codfish.
Still, after thousands of such instances on record, there are many
scientists who maintain that sauer kraut is conducive to longevity.

As an evidence of the healthfulness of mountain climate, the people of
Denver point to a man who came there in '77 without flesh enough to bait a
trap, and now he puts sleeves in an ordinary feather-bed and pulls it on
over his head for a shirt. People in poor health who wish to communicate
with the writer in relation to the facts above stated, are requested to
enclose two unlicked postage stamps to insure a reply.

At Ubet, M.T., during the cold snap in January, one of the most inhuman
outrages known in the annals of crime was perpetrated upon a young man who
went West in the fall, hoping to make his pile in time to return in May
and marry the New York heiress selected before he went.

While stopping at the hotel, two frolicsome young women hired the porter
to procure the young man's pantaloons at dead of night They then sewed up
the bottoms of the legs, threw the doctored garment back through the
transom and squealed "Fire!"

When he got into the hall he was vainly trying to stab one foot through
the limb of his pantaloons while he danced around on the other and joined
in the general cry of "Fire!" The hall seemed filled with people, who were
running this way and that, ostensibly seeking a mode of egress from the
flames, but in reality trying to dodge the mad efforts of the young man,
who was trying to insert himself in his obstinate pantaloons.

He did not tumble, as it were, until the night watchman got a Babcock fire
extinguisher and played on him. I do not know what he played on him. Very
likely it was, "Sister, what are the wild waves saying?"

Anyway, he staggered into his room, and although he could hear the
audience outside in their wild, tumultuous encore, he refused to come
before the curtain, but locked his door and sobbed himself to sleep,

How often do we forget the finer feelings of others and ignore their
sorrow while we revel in some great joy.

"We."

The world is full of literary people to-day, and they are divided into
three classes, viz: Those who have written for the press, those who are
writing for the press, and those who want to write for the press. Of the
first, there are those who tried it and found that they could make more in
half the time at something else, and so quit the field, and those who
failed to touch the great heart and pocketbook of the public, and
therefore subsided. Those who are writing for the press now, whether
putting together copy by the mile within the sound of the rumbling engine
and press, or scattered through the country writing more at their leisure,
find that they have to lay aside every weight and throw off all the
incumbrances of the mossy past.

One thing, however, still clings to the editor like a dab of paste on a
white vest or golden fleck of scrambled egg on a tawny moustache. One
relic of barbarism rears in gaunt form amid the clash and hurry and rush
of civilization, and in the dazzling light of science and smartness.

It is "we."

The budding editor of the rural civilizer for the first time peels his
coat and sharpens his pencil to begin the work of changing the great
current of public opinion. He is strong in his desire to knock error and
wrong galley west. He has buckled on his armor to paralyze monopoly and
purify the ballot He has hitched up his pantaloons with a noble resolve
and covered his table with virgin paper.

He is young, and he is a little egotistical, also. He wants to say, "I
believe" so and so, but he can't. Perspiration breaks out all over him. He
bites his pencil, and looks up with his clenched hand in his hair. The
slimy demon of the editor's life is there, sitting on the cloth bound
volume containing the report of the United States superintendent of swine
diseases.

Wherever you find a young man unloading a Washington hand press to fill a
long-felt want, there you will find the ghastly and venomous "we," ready
to look over the shoulder of the timid young mental athlete. Wherever you
find a ring of printer's ink around the door knob, and the snowy towel on
which the foreman wipes the pink tips of his alabaster fingers, you will
find the slimy, scaly folds of "we" curled up in some neighboring corner.

From the huge metropolitan journal, whose subscribers could make or bust a
president, or make a blooming king wish he had never been born, down to
the obscure and unknown dodger whose first page is mostly electrotype
head, whose second and third pages are patent, whose news is eloquent of
the dear dead past, whose fourth page ushers in a new baby, or heralds the
coming of the circus, or promulgates the fact that its giant editor has a
felon on his thumb, the trail of the serpent "we" is over them all. It is
all we have to remind us of royalty in America, with the exception,
perhaps, of the case now and then where a king full busts a bob-tail
flush.

A Mountain Snowstorm.

September does not always indicate golden sunshine, and ripening corn, and
old gold pumpkin pies on the half-shell. We look upon it as the month of
glorious perfection in the handiwork of the seasons and the time when the
ripened fruits are falling; when the red sun hides behind the bronze and
misty evening, and says good night with reluctance to the beautiful
harvests and the approaching twilight of the year.

It was on a red letter day of this kind, years ago, that Wheeler and
myself started out under the charge of Judge Blair and Sheriff Baswell to
visit the mines at Last Chance, and more especially the Keystone, a gold
mine that the Judge had recently become president of. The soft air of
second summer in the Rocky Mountains blew gently past our ears as we rode
up the valley of the Little Laramie, to camp the first night at the head
of the valley behind Sheep Mountain. The whole party was full of joy. Even
Judge Blair, with the frosts of over sixty winters in his hair, broke
forth into song. That's the only thing I ever had against Judge Blair. He
would forget himself sometimes and burst forth into song.

The following day we crossed the divide and rode down the gulch into the
camp on Douglass Creek, where the musical thunder of the stamp mills
seemed to jar the ground, and the rapid stream below bore away on its
turbid bosom the yellowish tinge of the golden quartz. It was a perfect
day, and Wheeler and I blessed our stars and, instead of breathing the air
of sour paste and hot presses in the newspaper offices, away in the
valley, we were sprawling in the glorious sunshine of the hills, playing
draw poker with the miners in the evening, and forgetful of the daily
newspaper where one man does the work and the other draws the salary. It
was heaven. It was such luxury that we wanted to swing our hats and yell
like Arapahoes.

The next morning we were surprised to find that it had snowed all night
and was snowing still. I never saw such flakes of snow in my life. They
came sauntering through the air like pure, white Turkish towels falling
from celestial clothes-lines. We did not return that day. We played a few
games of chance, but they were brief. We finally made it five cent ante,
and, as I was working then for an alleged newspaper man who paid me $50
per month to edit his paper nights and take care of his children daytimes,
I couldn't keep abreast of the Judge, the Sheriff and the Superintendent
of the Keystone.

The next day we had to go home. The snow lay ankle-deep everywhere and the
air was chilly and raw. Wheeler and I tried to ride, but the mountain road
was so rough that the horses could barely move through the snow, dragging
the buggy after them. So we got out and walked on ahead to keep warm. We
gained very fast on the team, for we were both long-legged and measured
off the miles like a hired man going to dinner. I wore a pair of
glove-fitting low shoes and lisle-thread socks. I can remember that yet. I
would advise anyone going into the mines not to wear lisle-thread socks
and low shoes. You are liable to stick your foot into a snow-bank or a mud
hole and dip up too much water. I remember that after we had walked
through the pine woods down the mountain road a few miles, I noticed that
the bottoms of my pantaloons looked like those of a drowned tramp I saw
many years ago in the morgue. We gave out after a while, waited for the
team, but decided that it had gone the other road. All at once it flashed
over us that we were alone in the woods and the storm, wet, nearly
starved, ignorant of the road and utterly worn out!

[Illustration: IT WAS TOUGH.]

It was tough!

I never felt so blue, so wet, so hungry, or so hopeless in my life. We
moved on a little farther. All at once we came out of the timber. There
was no snow whatever! At that moment the sun burst forth, we struck a
deserted supply wagon, found a two-pound can of Boston baked beans, got an
axe from the load, chopped open the can, and had just finished the
tropical fruit of Massachusetts when our own team drove up, and joy and
hope made their homes once more in our hearts.

We may learn from this a valuable lesson, but at this moment I do not know
exactly what it is.

Lost Money.

Most anyone could collect and tell a good many incidents about lost money
that has been found, if he would try, but these cases came under my own
observation and I can vouch for their truth.

A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid $1,000 while he was loading
hay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay he
discovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole load
into the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, a
handful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tine
came up with a $100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got it
all.

A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth and
asked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen miles
away and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before I
had amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told the
foreman that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimate
friend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, no
doubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values he
was obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparatively
useless after they had been used one season. I went back over the same
road the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although a
hundred teams had passed by it.

A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under,
and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and,
though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was
discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they
were sent and redeemed.

I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my house
and the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the road
between the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I then
advertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations of
the bills and stating, as was the case, that there was an elastic band
around the roll when lost. The paper had not been issued more than an hour
before I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of my
other vest.

This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, the
utter folly of two vests at the same time.

Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S.
Kelley, commonly called "Black Jim." He failed himself along in the
fifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but Lo
Bartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of $18. He got this money,
finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name of
which has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivion
business about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there.

Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said:

"Your money is up in the Wild Oat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it."

"No use, old man, she's gone up."

"No!!"

"Yes, she's a total wreck."

Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could,
considering that his breath was coming so hard.

"Who's there?"

"It's Jim Kelley, Black Jim, and I'm in something of a hurry."

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