Remarks by Bill Nye

B >> Bill Nye >> Remarks

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

[Illustration: WORKING FOR REFORM.]

Now, what do you care for an administration which will only gratify those
two old parties? Are you going to snap your fingers in disdain at men who
admit that they are superior to anybody else? Do you want history to
chronicle the fact that President Cleveland accepted the aid of the pure
and highly cultivated gentlemen who never did anything naughty or
unpretty, and then appointed his Cabinet from men who had been known for
years as rude, naughty Democrats?

My friend says that he feels sure you would not have done so if you had
fully realized how he felt about it. He claims that in the first week of
your administration you have basely truckled to the corrupt majority. You
have shown yourself to be the friend of men who never claimed to be truly
good.

If you persist in this course you will lose the respect and esteem of my
friend and another man who is politically pure, and who has never smirched
his escutcheon with an office. He has one of the cleanest and most
vigorous escutcheons in that county. He never leaves it out over night
during the summer, and in the winter he buries it in sawdust. Both of
these men will go back to the Republican party in 1888 if you persist in
the course you have thus far adopted. They would go back now if the
Republican party insisted on it.

Mr. President, I hate to write to you in this tone of voice, because I
know the pain it will give you. I once held an office myself, Mr.
President, and it hurt my feelings very much to have a warm personal
friend criticise my official acts.

The worst feature of the whole thing, Mr. President, is that it will
encourage crime. If men who never committed any crime are allowed to earn
their living by the precarious methods peculiar to manual labor, and if
those who have abstained from office for years, by request of many
citizens, are to be denied the endorsement of the administration, they
will lose courage to go on and do right in the future. My friend desires
to state vicariously, in the strongest terms, that both he and his wife
feel the same way about it, and they will not promise to keep it quiet any
longer. They feel like crippling the administration in every way they can
if the present policy is to be pursued.

He says he dislikes to begin thus early to threaten a President who has
barely taken off his overshoes and drawn his mileage, but he thinks it may
prevent a recurrence of these unfortunate mistakes. He claims that you
have totally misunderstood the principles of the mugwumps all the way
through. You seem to regard the reform movement as one introduced for the
purpose of universal benefit. This was not the case. While fully endorsing
and supporting reform, he says that they did not go into it merely to kill
time or simply for fun. He also says that when he became a reformer and
supported you, he did not think there were so many prominent Democrats who
would have claims upon you. He can only now deplore the great national
poverty of offices and the boundless wealth of raw material in the
Democratic party from which to supply even that meagre demand.

He wishes me to add, also, that you must have over-estimated the zeal of
his party for civil service reform. He says that they did not yearn for
civil service reform so much as many people seem to think.

I must now draw this letter to a close. We are all well with the exception
of colds in the head, but nothing that need give you any uneasiness. Our
large seal-brown hen last week, stimulated by a rising egg market,
over-exerted herself, and on Saturday evening, as the twilight gathered,
she yielded to a complication of pip and softening of the brain and
expired in my arms. She certainly led a most exemplary life and the forked
tongue of slander could find naught to utter against her.

Hoping that you are enjoying the same great blessing and that you will
write as often as possible without waiting for me, I remain,

Very respectfully yours,

Bill Nye.

[Dictated Letter.]

Milling in Pompeii.

While visiting Naples, last fall, I took a great interest in the wonderful
museum there, of objects that have been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii.
It is a remarkable collection, including, among other things, the
cumbersome machinery of a large woolen factory, the receipts, contracts,
statements of sales, etc., etc., of bankers, brokers, and usurers. I was
told that the exhumist also ran into an Etruscan bucket-shop in one part
of the city, but, owing to the long, dry spell, the buckets had fallen to
pieces.

The object which engrossed my attention the most, however, was what seems
to have been a circular issued prior to the great volcanic vomit of 79
A.D., and no doubt prior even to the Christian era. As the date is torn
off however, we are left to conjecture the time at which it was issued. I
was permitted to make a copy of it, and with the aid of my hired man, I
have translated it with great care.

Office of Lucretius & Procalus,
Dealers In
Flour, Bran, Shorts, Middlings, Screenings, Etruscan Hen Feed, and Other
Choice Bric-A-Brac.

_Highest Cash Price Paid for Neapolitan Winter Wheat and Roman Corn

Why haul your Wheat through the sand to Herculaneum when we pay the same
price here?_

Office and Mill, Via VIII, Near the Stabian Gate, Only Thirteen Blocks
From the P.O., Pompeii.

Dear Sir: This circular has been called out by another one issued last
month by Messrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus, alleged millers and wheat
buyers of Herculaneum, in which they claim to pay a quarter to a half-cent
more per bushel than we do for wheat, and charge us with docking the
farmers around Pompeii a pound per bushel more than necessary for cockle,
wild buck-wheat, and pigeon-grass seed. They make the broad statement that
we have made all our money in that way, and claim that Mr. Lucretius, of
our mill, has erected a fine house, which the farmers allude to as the
"wild buckwheat villa."

[Illustration: TWO OLD ROMANS.]

We do not, as a general rule, pay any attention to this kind of stuff; but
when two snide romans, who went to Herculaneum without a dollar and drank
stale beer out of an old Etruscan tomato-can the first year they were
there, assail our integrity, we feel justified in making a prompt and
final reply. We desire to state to the Roman farmers that we do not test
their wheat with the crooked brass tester that has made more money for
Messrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus than their old mill has. We do not do
that kind of business. Neither do we buy a man's wheat at a cash price and
then work off four or five hundred pounds of XXXX Imperial hog feed on him
in part payment. When we buy a man's wheat we pay him in money. We do not
seek to fill him up with sour Carthagenian cracked wheat and orders on the
store.

We would also call attention to the improvements that we have just made in
our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also
engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank
day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that
the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller
has gone to his meals or stopped to spit on his hands.

The mill of our vile contemporaries at Herculaneum is an old one that was
used around Naples one hundred years ago to smash rock for the Neapolitan
road, and is entirely out of repair. It was also used in a brick-yard here
near Pompeii; then an old junk man sold it to a tenderfoot from Jerusalem
as an ice-cream freezer. He found that it would not work, and so used it
to grind up potato bugs for blisters. Now it is grinding ostensible flour
at Herculaneum.

We desire to state to the farmers about Pompeii and Herculaneum that we
aim to please. We desire to make a grade of flour this summer that will
not have to be run through the coffee mill before it can be used. We will
also pay you the highest price for good wheat, and give you good weight.
Our capacity is now greatly enlarged, both as to storage and grinding. We
now turn out a sack of flour, complete and ready for use, every little
while. We have an extra handle for the mill, so that in case of accident
to the one now in use, we need not shut down but a few moments. We call
attention to our XXXX Git-there brand of flour. It is the best flour in
the market for making angels' food and other celestial groceries. We fully
warrant it, and will agree that for every sack containing whole kernels of
corn, corncobs, or other foreign substances, not thoroughly pulverized, we
will refund the money already paid, and show the person through our mill.

[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN MILLER.]

We would also like to call the attention of farmers and housewives around
Pompeii to our celebrated Dough Squatter. It is purely automatic in its
operation, requiring only two men to work it. With this machine two men
will knead all the bread they can eat and do it easily, feeling thoroughly
refreshed at night. They also avoid that dark maroon taste in the mouth so
common in Pompeii on arising in the morning.

To those who do not feel able to buy one of these machines, we would say
that we have made arrangements for the approaching season, so that those
who wish may bring their dough to our mammoth squatter and get it treated
at our place at the nominal price of two bits per squat. Strangers calling
for their squat or unsquat dough, will have to be identified.

Do not forget the place, Via VIII, near Stabian gate.

Lucretius & Peocalus,

Dealers in choice family flour, cut feed and oatmeal with or without
clinkers in it. Try our lumpless bran for indigestion.

Broncho Sam.

Speaking about cowboys, Sam Stewart, known from Montana to Old Mexico as
Broncho Sam, was the chief. He was not a white man, an Indian, a greaser
or a negro, but he had the nose of an Indian warrior, the curly hair of an
African, and the courtesy and equestrian grace of a Spaniard. A wide
reputation as a "broncho breaker" gave him his name.

To master an untamed broncho and teach him to lead, to drive and to be
safely-ridden was Sam's mission during the warm weather when he was not
riding the range. His special delight was to break the war-like heart of
the vicious wild pony of the plains and make him the servant of man.

I've seen him mount a hostile "bucker," and, clinching his italic legs
around the body of his adversary, ride him till the blood would burst from
Sam's nostrils and spatter horse and rider like rain. Most everyone knows
what the bucking of the barbarous Western horse means. The wild horse
probably learned it from the antelope, for the latter does it the same
way, i.e., he jumps straight up into the air, at the same instant
curving his back and coming down stiff-legged, with all four of his feet
in a bunch. The concussion is considerable.

I tried it once myself. I partially rode a roan broncho one spring day,
which will always be green in my memory. The day, I mean, not the broncho.

It occupied my entire attention to safely ride the cunning little beast,
and when he began to ride me I put in a minority report against it.

I have passed through an earthquake and an Indian outbreak, but I would
rather ride an earthquake without saddle or bridle than to bestride a
successful broncho eruption. I remember that I wore a large pair of
Mexican spurs, but I forgot them until the saddle turned. Then I
remembered them. Sitting down on them in an impulsive way brought them to
my mind. Then the broncho steed sat down on me, and that gave the spurs an
opportunity to make a more lasting impression on my mind.

To those who observed the charger with the double "cinch" across his back
and the saddle in front of him like a big leather corset, sitting at the
same time on my person, there must have been a tinge of amusement; but to
me it was not so frolicsome.

There may be joy in a wild gallop across the boundless plains, in the
crisp morning, on the back of a fleet broncho; but when you return with
your ribs sticking through your vest, and find that your nimble steed has
returned to town two hours ahead of you, there is a tinge of sadness about
it all.

Broncho Sam, however, made a specialty of doing all the riding himself. He
wouldn't enter into any compromise and allow the horse to ride him.

In a reckless moment he offered to bet ten dollars that he could mount and
ride a wild Texas steer. The money was put up. That settled it. Sam never
took water. This was true in a double sense. Well, he climbed the
cross-bar of the corral-gate, and asked the other boys to turn out their
best steer, Marquis of Queensbury rules.

As the steer passed out, Sam slid down and wrapped those parenthetical
legs of his around that high-headed, broad-horned brute, and he rode him
till the fleet-footed animal fell down on the buffalo grass, ran his hot
red tongue out across the blue horizon, shook his tail convulsively,
swelled up sadly and died.

It took Sam four days to walk back.

A ten-dollar bill looks as large to me as the star spangled banner, some
times; but that is an avenue of wealth that had not occurred to me.

I'd rather ride a buzz-saw at two dollars a day and found.

[Illustration: A BRONCO ERUPTION.]

How Evolution Evolves.

The following paper was read by me in a clear, resonant tone of voice,
before the Academy of Science and Pugilism at Erin Prairie, last month,
and as I have been so continually and so earnestly importuned to print it
that life was no longer desirable, I submit it to you for that purpose,
hoping that you will print my name in large caps, with astonishers at the
head of the article, and also in good display type at the close:

Some Features Of Evolution.

No one could possibly, in a brief paper, do the subject of evolution full
justice. It is a matter of great importance to our lost and undone race.
It lies near to every human heart, and exercises a wonderful influence
over our impulses and our ultimate success or failure. When we pause to
consider the opaque and fathomless ignorance of the great masses of our
fellow men on the subject of evolution, it is not surprising that crime is
rather on the increase, and that thousands of our race are annually
filling drunkards' graves, with no other visible means of support, while
multitudes of enlightened human beings are at the same time obtaining a
livelihood by meeting with felons' dooms.

These I would ask in all seriousness and in a tone of voice that would
melt the stoniest heart: "Why in creation do you do it?" The time is
rapidly approaching when there will be two or three felons for each doom.
I am sure that within the next fifty years, and perhaps sooner even than
that, instead of handing out these dooms to Tom, Dick and Harry as
formerly, every applicant for a felon's doom will have to pass through a
competitive examination, as he should do.

It will be the same with those who desire to fill drunkards' graves. The
time is almost here when all positions of profit and trust will be
carefully and judiciously handed out, and those who do not fit themselves
for those positions will be left in the lurch, whatever that may be.

It is with this fact glaring me in the face that I have consented to
appear before you to-day and lay bare the whole hypothesis, history, rise
and fall, modifications, anatomy, physiology and geology of evolution. It
is for this that I have poured over such works as Huxley, Herbert Spencer,
Moses in the bulrushes, Anaxagoras, Lucretius and Hoyle. It is for the
purpose of advancing the cause of common humanity and to jerk the rising
generation out of barbarism into the dazzling effulgence of clashing
intellects and fermenting brains that I have sought the works of
Pythagoras, Democritus and Epluribus. Whenever I could find any book that
bore upon the subject of evolution, and could borrow it, I have done so
while others slept.

That is a matter which rarely enters into the minds of those who go easily
and carelessly through life. Even the general superintendent of the
Academy of Science and Pugilism here in Erin Prairie, the hotbed of a free
and untrammeled, robust democracy, does not stop to think of the midnight
and other kinds of oil that I have consumed in order to fill myself full
of information and to soak my porous mind with thought. Even the O'Reilly
College of this place, with its strong mental faculty, has not informed
itself fully relative to the great effort necessary before a lecturer may
speak clearly, accurately and exhaustingly of evolution.

And yet, here in this place, where education is rampant, and the idea is
patted on the back, as I may say; here in Erin Prairie, where progress and
some other sentiments are written on everything; here where I am
addressing you to-night for $2 and feed for my horse, I met a little child
with a bright and cheerful smile, who did not know that evolution
consisted in a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

So you see that you never know where ignorance lurks. The hydra-headed
upas tree and bete noir of self-acting progress, is such ignorance as
that, lurking in the very shadow of magnificent educational institutions
and hard words of great cast. Nothing can be more disagreeable to the
scientist than a bete noir. Nothing gives him greater satisfaction than to
chase it up a tree or mash it between two shingles.

For this reason, as I said, it gives me great pleasure to address you on
the subject of evolution, and to go into details in speaking of it. I
could go on for hours as I have been doing, delighting you with the
intricacies and peculiarities of evolution, but I must desist. It would
please me to do so, and you would no doubt remain patiently and listen,
but your business might suffer while you were away, and so I will close,
but I hope that anyone now within the sound of my voice, and in whose
breast a sudden hunger for more light on this great subject may have
sprung up, will feel perfectly free to call on me and ask me about it or
immerse himself in the numerous tomes that I have collected from friends,
and which relate to this matter.

In closing I wish to say that I have made no statements in this paper
relative to evolution which I am not prepared to prove; and, if anything,
I have been over-conservative. For that reason I say now, that the person
who doubts a single fact as I have given it to-night, bearing upon the
great subject of evolution, will have to do so over my dumb remains.

And a man who will do that is no gentleman. I presume that many of these
statements will be snapped up and sharply criticised by other theologians
and many of our foremost thinkers, but they will do well to pause before
they draw me into a controversy, for I have other facts in relation to
evolution, and some personal reminiscences and family history, which I am
prepared to introduce, if necessary, together with ideas that I have
thought up myself. So I say to those who may hope to attract notice and
obtain notoriety by drawing me into a controversy, beware. It will be to
your interest to beware!

Hours With Great Men.

I presume that I could write an entire library of personal reminiscences
relative to the eminent people with whom I have been thrown during a busy
life, but I hate to do it, because I always regarded such things as sacred
from the vulgar eye, and I felt bound to respect the confidence of a
prominent man just as much as I would that of one who was less before the
people. I remember very well my first meeting with General W.T. Sherman.
I would not mention it here if it were not for the fact that the people
seem so be yearning for personal reminiscences of great men, and that is
perfectly right, too.

It was since the war that I met General Sherman, and it was on the line of
the Union Pacific Railway, at one of those justly celebrated
eating-houses, which I understand are now abandoned. The colored waiter
had cut off a strip of the omelette with a pair of shears, the scorched
oatmeal had been passed around, the little rubber door mats fried in
butter and called pancakes had been dealt around the table, and the
cashier at the end of the hall had just gone through the clothes of a
party from Vermont, who claimed a rebate on the ground that the waiter had
refused to bring him anything but his bill. There was no sound in the
dining-room except the weak request of the coffee for more air and
stimulants, or perhaps the cry of pain when the butter, while practicing
with the dumb-bells, would hit a child on the head; then all would be
still again.

General Sherman sat at one end of the table, throwing a life-preserver to
a fly in the milk pitcher.

We had never met before, though for years we had been plodding along
life's rugged way--he in the war department, I in the postoffice
department. Unknown to each other, we had been holding up opposite corners
of the great national fabric, if you will allow me that expression.

I remember, as well as though it were but yesterday, how the conversation
began. General Sherman looked sternly at me and said:

"I wish you would overpower that butter and send it up this way."

"All right," said I, "if you will please pass those molasses."

That was all that was said, but I shall never forget it, and probably he
never will. The conversation was brief, but yet how full of food for
thought! How true, how earnest, how natural! Nothing stilted or false
about it. It was the natural expression of two minds that were too great
to be verbose or to monkey with social, conversational flapdoodle.

[Illustration: AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE BUTTER.]

I remember, once, a great while ago, I was asked by a friend to go with
him in the evening to the house of an acquaintance, where they were going
to have a kind of musicale, at which there was to be some noted pianist,
who had kindly consented to play a few strains, I did not get the name of
the professional, but I went, and when the first piece was announced I saw
that the light was very uncertain, so I kindly volunteered to get a lamp
from another room. I held that big lamp, weighing about twenty-nine
pounds, for half an hour, while the pianist would tinky tinky up on the
right hand, or bang, boomy to bang down on the bass, while he snorted and
slugged that old concert grand piano and almost knocked its teeth down its
throat, or gently dawdled with the keys like a pale moonbeam shimmering
through the bleached rafters of a deceased horse, until at last there was
a wild jangle, such as the accomplished musician gives to an instrument to
show the audience that he has disabled the piano, and will take a slight
intermission while it is sent to the junk shop.

With a sigh of relief I carefully put down the twenty-nine pound lamp, and
my friend told me that I had been standing there like liberty enlightening
the world, and holding that heavy lamp for Blind Tom.

I had never seen him before, and I slipped out of the room before he had a
chance to see me.

Concerning Coroners.

I am glad to notice that in the East there is a growing disfavor in the
public mind for selecting a practicing physician for the office of
coroner. This matter should have attracted attention years ago. Now it
gratifies me to notice a finer feeling on the part of the people, and an
awakening of those sensibilities which go to make life more highly prized
and far more enjoyable.

I had the misfortune at one time to be under the medical charge of a
coroner who had graduated from a Chicago morgue and practiced medicine
along with his inquest business with the most fiendish delight. I do not
know which he enjoyed best, holding the inquest or practicing on his
patient and getting the victim ready for the quest.

One day he wrote out a prescription and left it for me to have filled. I
was surprised to find that he had made a mistake and left a rough draft of
the verdict in my own case and a list of jurors which he had made in
memorandum, so as to be ready for the worst. I was alarmed, for I did not
know that I was in so dangerous a condition. He had the advantage of me,
for he knew just what he was giving me, and how long human life could be
sustained under his treatment. I did not.

That is why I say that the profession of medicine should not be allowed to
conflict with the solemn duties of the coroner. They are constantly
clashing and infringing upon each other's territory. This coroner had a
kind of tread-softly-bow-the-head way of getting around the room that made
my flesh creep. He had a way, too, when I was asleep, of glancing
hurriedly through the pockets of my pantaloons as they hung over a chair,
probably to see what evidence he could find that might aid the jury in
arriving at a verdict. Once I woke up and found him examining a draft that
he had found in my pocket. I asked him what he was doing with my funds,
and he said that he thought he detected a draft in the room and he had
just found out where it came from.

After that I hoped that death would come to my relief as speedily as
possible. I felt that death would be a happy release from the cold touch
of the amateur coroner and pro tem physician. I could look forward with
pleasure, and even joy, to the moment when my physician would come for the
last time in his professional capacity and go to work on me officially.
Then the county would be obliged to pay him, and the undertaker could take
charge of the fragments left by the inquest.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35