Remarks by Bill Nye

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Julius Caesar's motto used to be, "Avoid an unusual word as you would a
rock at sea," and Jule was right about it, too. Large and unusual words,
especially in the mouths of ignorant people, are worse than "Rough on
Rats" in a boarding-house pie.

Years ago there used to be a pompous cuss in southern Wisconsin, who was a
self-made man. Extremely so. Those who used to hear him assert again and
again that he was a self-made man always felt renewed confidence in the
Creator.

He rose one evening in a political meeting, and swelling out his bosom, as
his eagle eye rested on the chairman, he said:

"Mr. Cheerman! I move you that the cheer do appoint a committee of three
to attend to the matter under discussion, and that sayed committee be
clothed by the cheer with ominiscient and omnipotent powers."

The motion was duly seconded and the cheerman said he guessed that it
wouldn't be necessary to put it to a vote.

"I guess it will be all right, Mr. Pinkham. I guess there'll be no
declivity to that."

And so the committee was appointed and clothed with omniscient and
omnipotent powers, there being no declivity to it.

We had a self-made lawyer at one time in the northern part of the State
who would rather find a seventy-five cent word and use it in a speech
where it did not belong than to eat a good square meal. He was more fatal
to the King's English than O'Dynamite Rossa. One day he was telling how
methodical one of the county officials was.

"Why," said he, "I never saw a man do so much and do it so easy. But the
secret of it is plain enough. You see, he has a regular rotunda of
business every day."

If he meant anything, I suppose he meant a routine of business, but a man
would have to be a mind reader to follow him some days when he had about
six fingers of cough medicine aboard and began to paw around in the dark
and musty garret of his memory for moth-eaten words that didn't mean
anything.

A neighbor of mine went to Washington during the Guiteau trial and has
been telling us about it ever since. He is one of those people who don't
want to be close and stingy about what they know. He likes to go through
life shedding information right and left. He likes to get a crowd around
him and then tell how he was in Washington at the time of the "post
mortise examination." "Boys, you may talk all your a mind to, but the
greatest thing I saw in Washington," said he, "was Dr. Mary Walker on the
street every morning riding one of these philosophers."

[Illustration: HE PAINTED THE FENCE GREEN.]

He painted the top of his fence green, last year, so it would "kind of
combinate with his blinds."

If he would make his big words "combinate" with what he means a little
better, he would not attract so much attention. But he don't care. He
hates to see a big, fat word loafing around with nothing to do, so he
throws one in occasionally for exercise, I guess.

In the Minnesota legislature, in 1867, they had under discussion a bill to
increase the per diem of members from three dollars to five dollars. A
member of the lower house, who voted for the measure, was hauled over the
coals by one of his constituents and charged with corruption in no
unmeasured terms. To all this the legislator calmly answered that when he
got down to the capital and found out the awful price of board, he
concluded that his "per diadem" ought to be increased, and so he supported
the measure. Then the belligerent constituent said:

"I beg your pardon and acquit you of all charges of corruption, for a
legislator who does not know the difference between a crown of glory and
the price of a day's work is too big a blankety blanked fool to be
convicted of an intentional wrong."

Petticoats at the Polls.

There have been many reasons given, first and last, why women should not
vote, but I desire to say, in the full light of a ripe experience, that
some of them are fallacious. I refer more particularly to the argument
that it will degrade women to go to the polls and vote like a little man.
While I am not and have never been a howler for female suffrage, I must
admit that it is much more of a success than prohibition and speculative
science.

My wife voted eight years with my full knowledge and consent, and to-day I
cannot see but that she is as docile and as tractable as when she won my
trusting heart.

Now those who know me best will admit that I am not a ladies' man, and,
therefore, what I may say here is not said to secure favor and grateful
smiles. I am not attractive and I am not in politics. I believe that I am
homelier this winter than usual. There are reasons why I believe that what
I may say on this subject will be sincere and not sensational or selfish.

It has been urged that good women do not generally exercise the right of
suffrage, when they have the opportunity, and that only those whose social
record has been tarnished a good deal go to the polls. This is not true.

It is the truth that a good full vote always shows a list of the best
women and the wives of the best men. A bright day makes a better showing
of lady voters than a bad one, and the weather makes a more perceptible
difference in the female vote than the male, but when things are exciting
and the battle is red-hot, and the tocsin of war sounds anon, the wife and
mother puts on her armor and her sealskin sacque and knocks things
cross-eyed.

It is generally supposed that the female voter is a pantaloonatic, a half
horse, half alligator kind of woman, who looks like Dr. Mary Walker and
has the appearance of one who has risen hastily in the night at the alarm
of fire and dressed herself partially in her own garments and partially in
her husband's. This is a popular error. In Wyoming, where female suffrage
has raged for years, you meet quiet, courteous and gallant gentlemen, and
fair, quiet, sensible women at the polls, where there isn't a loud or
profane word, and where it is an infinitely more proper place to send a
young lady unescorted than to the postoffice in any city in the Union. You
can readily see why this is so. The men about the polls are always
candidates and their friends. That is the reason that neither party can
afford to show the slightest rudeness toward a voter. The man who on
Wednesday would tell her to go and soak her head, perhaps, would stand
bareheaded to let her pass on Tuesday. While she holds a smashed ballot
shoved under the palm of her gray kid glove she may walk over the
candidate's prostrate form with impunity and her overshoes if she chooses
to.

Weeks and months before election in Wyoming, the party with the longest
purse subsidizes the most livery stables and carriages. Then, on the
eventful day, every conveyance available is decorated with a political
placard and driven by a polite young man who is instructed to improve the
time. Thus every woman in Wyoming has a chance to ride once a year, at
least. Lately, however, many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go in
pairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmly
returning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jar
their mental poise a minute.

It is possible, and even probable, that a man and his wife may disagree on
politics as they might on religion. The husband may believe in Andrew
Jackson and a relentless hell, while his wife may be a stalwart and rather
liberal on the question of eternal punishment. If the husband manages his
wife as he would a clothes-wringer, and turns her through life by a crank,
he will, no doubt, work her politically; but if she has her own ideas
about things, she will naturally act upon them, while the man who is
henpecked in other matters till he can't see out of his eyes, will be
henpecked, no doubt, in the matter of national and local politics.

These are a few facts about the actual workings of female suffrage, and I
do not tackle the great question of the ultimate results upon the
political machinery if woman suffrage were to become general. I do not
pretend to say as to that. I know a great deal, but I do not know that.
There are millions of women, no doubt who are better qualified to vote,
and yet cannot, than millions of alleged men who do vote; but no one can
tell now what the ultimate effect of a change might be.

So far as Wyoming is concerned, the Territory is prosperous and happy. I
see, also, that a murderer was hung by process of law there the other day.
That looks like the onward march of reform, whether female suffrage had
anything to do with it or not. And they're going to hang another in March
if the weather is favorable and executive clemency remains dormant, as I
think it will.

All these things look hopeful. We can't tell what the Territory would have
been without female suffrage, but when they begin to hang men by law
instead of by moonlight, the future begins to brighten up. When you have
to get up in the night to hang a man every little while and don't get any
per diem for it, you feel as though you were a good way from home.

The Sedentary Hen.

Though generally cheerful and content with her lot, the hen at times
becomes moody, sullen and taciturn. We are often called upon to notice and
profit by the genial and sunny disposition of the hen, and yet there are
times in her life when she is morose, cynical, and the prey of consuming
melancholy. At such times not only her own companions, but man himself
shuns the hen.

At first she seems to be preoccupied only. She starts and turns pale when
suddenly spoken to. Then she leaves her companions and seems to be the
victim of hypochondria. Then her mind wanders. At last you come upon her
suddenly some day, seated under the currant bushes. You sympathize with
her and you seek to fondle her. She then picks a small memento out of the
back of your hand. You then gently but firmly coax her out of there with a
hoe, and you find that she has been seated for some time on an old croquet
ball, trying to hatch out a whole set of croquet balls. This shows that
her mind is affected. You pick up the croquet ball, and find it hot and
feverish, so you throw it into the shade of the woodshed. Anon, you find
your demented hen in the loft of the barn hovering over a door knob and
trying by patience and industry to hatch out a hotel.

When a hen imagines that she is inspired to incubate, she at once ceases
to be an ornament to society and becomes a crank. She violates all the
laws and customs of nature and society in trying to hatch a conservatory
by setting through the long days and nights of summer on a small flower
pot.

Man may win the affections of the tiger, the lion, or the huge elephant,
and make them subservient to his wishes, but the setting hen is not
susceptible to affection. You might as well love the Manitoba blizzard or
try to quell the cyclone by looking calmly in its eye. The setting hen is
filled with hatred for every living thing. She loves to brood over her
wrongs or anything else she can find to squat on.

I once owned a hen that made a specialty of setting. She never ceased to
be the proud anonymous author of a new, warm egg, but she yearned to be a
parent. She therefore seated herself on a nest where other hens were in
the habit of leaving their handiwork for inspection. She remained there
during the summer hatching steadily on while the others laid, until she
filled my barnyard with little orphaned henlets of different ages. She
remained there night and day, patiently turning out poultry for me to be a
father to. I brought up on the bottle about one hundred that summer that
had been turned out by this morbidly maternal hen. All she seemed to ask
in return was my kind regards and esteem. I fed her upon the nest and
humored her in every way. Every day she became a parent, and every day
added to my responsibility.

[Illustration: SUCCESS WITH CHICKENS.]

One day I noticed that she seemed weak and there was a far away look in
her eye. For the first time the horrible truth burst upon my mind. I
buried my face in the haymow and I am not ashamed to say that I wept.
Strong man as I am, I am not too proud to say that I soaked that haymow
through with unavailing tears.

My hen was dying even then. Her breath came hot and quick like the swift
rush of a hot ball that caves in the short-stop and speeds away to
center-field.

The next morning one hundred chickens of various sizes were motherless,
and if anything had happened to me they would have been fatherless.

For many years I have made a close study of the setting hen, but I am
still unsettled as to what is best to do with her. She is a freak of
nature, a disagreeable anomaly, a fussy phenomenon. Logic, rhetoric and
metaphor are all alike to the setting hen. You might as well go down into
the bosom of Vesuvius and ask it to postpone the next eruption.

A Bright Future for Pugilism.

The recent prominence of Mr. John E. Dempsey, better known as Jack
Dempsey, of New York, brings to mind a four days' trip taken in his
company from Portland, Oregon, to St. Paul, over the Northern Pacific.

There were three pugilists in the party besides myself, viz. Dempsey, Dave
Campbell and Tom Cleary. We made a grand, triumphant tour across the
country together, and I may truthfully state that I never felt so free to
say anything I wanted to--to other passengers--as I did at that time. I
wish I could afford to take at least one pugilist with me all the time. In
traveling about the country lecturing, a good pugilist would be of great
assistance. I would like to set him on the man who always asks: "Where do
you go to from here, Mr. Nye?" He does not ask because he wants to know,
for the next moment he asks right over again. I do not know why he asks,
but surely it is not for the purpose of finding out.

Well, throughout our long journey across the State of Oregon and the
Territories of Idaho, Montana and Dakota, and the State of Minnesota, it
was one continual ovation. Dempsey had a world-wide reputation, I found,
co-extensive with the horizon, as I may say, and bounded only by the
zodiac.

In my great forthcoming work, entitled "Half-Hours with Great Men, or
Eminent People Which I Have Saw," I shall give a fuller description of
this journey. The book will be a great boon.

Mr. Dempsey is not a man who would be picked out as a great man. You might
pass by him two or three times without recognizing his eminence, and yet,
at a scrapping matinee or swatting recital, he seems to hold his audiences
at his own sweet will--also his antagonist.

Mr. Dempsey does not crave notoriety. He seems rather to court seclusion.
This is characteristic of the man. See how he walked around all over the
State of New York last week--in the night, too--in order to evade the
crowd.

His logic, however, is wonderful. Though quiet and unassuming in his
manner, his arguments are powerful and generally make a large protuberance
wherever they alight.

Nothing is more pleasing than the sight of a man who has risen by his own
unaided effort, fought his way up, as it were, and yet who is not vain.
Mr. Dempsey conversed with me frequently during our journey, and did not
seem to feel above me.

I opened the conversation by telling him that I had seen a number of his
works. Nothing pleases a young author so much as a little friendly remark
in relation to his work. I had seen a study of his one day in New York
last spring. It was an italic nose with quotation marks on each side.

It was a very happy little bon mot on Mr. Dempsey's part, and attracted a
good deal of notice at the time.

Mr. Dempsey is not a college graduate, as many suppose. He is a self-made
man. This should be a great encouragement to our boys who are now unknown,
and whose portraits have not as yet appeared in the sporting papers.

But Mr. Dempsey's great force as a debater is less, perhaps, in the matter
than in the manner. His delivery is good and his gestures cannot fail to
convince the most skeptical. Striking in appearance, aggressive in his
nature, and happy in his gestures, he is certain to attract the attention
of the police, and he cannot fail to rivet the eye of his adversary. I saw
one of his adversaries, not long ago, whose eye had been successfully
riveted in that way.

And yet, John E. Dempsey was once a poor boy. He had none of the
advantages which wealth and position bring. But, confident of his latent
ability as a middle-weight convincer, he toiled on, ever on, sitting up
until long after other people had gone to bed, patiently knocking out
those who might be brought to him for that purpose. He never hung back
because the way looked long and lonely. And what is the result? To-day, in
the full vigor of manhood, he is sought out and petted by everyone who
takes an interest in the onward march of pugilism.

It is a wonderful record, though brief. It shows what patient industry
will accomplish unaided. Had John E. Dempsey hesitated to enter the ring
and said that he would rather go to school, where he would be safe, he
might to-day be an educated man; but what does that amount to here in
America, where everybody can have an education? He would have lost his
talent as a slugger, and drifted steadily downward, perhaps, till he
became a school-teacher or a narrow-chested editor, writing things day
after day just to gratify the morbid curiosity of a sin-cursed world.

In closing, I would like to say that I hope I have not expressed an
opinion in the above that may hereafter be used against me. Do not
understand me to be the foe of education. Education and refinement are
good enough in their places, but how shall we attract attention by trying
to become refined and educated in a land where, as I say, education and
refinement seem almost to run rampant.

Heretofore, in America, pugilism has been made subservient to the common
schools. Pugilism and polygamy have both been crowded to the wall. Now
pugilism is about to assert itself. The tin ear and the gory nose will
soon come to the front, and the day is not far distant when progressive
pugilism and the prize-ring will take the place of the poorly ventilated
common school and the enervating prayer meeting.

The Snake Indian.

There are about 5,000 Snake or Shoshone Indians now extant, the greater
part being in Utah and Nevada, though there is a reservation in Idaho and
another in Wyoming.

The Shoshone Indian is reluctant to accept of civilization on the European
plan. He prefers the ruder customs which have been handed down from father
to son along with other hairlooms. I use the word hairlooms in its
broadest sense.

There are the Shoshones proper and the Utes or Utahs, to which have been
added by some authorities the Comanches, and Moquis of New Mexico and
Arizona, the Netelas and other tribes of California. The Shoshone,
wherever found, is clothed in buckskin and blanket in winter, but dressed
more lightly in summer, wearing nothing but an air of intense gloom in
August. To this he adds on holidays a necklace made from the store teeth
of the hardy pioneer.

[Illustration: HOLIDAY COSTUME.]

The Snake or Shoshone Indian is passionately fond of the game known as
poker among us, and which, I learn, is played with cards. It is a game of
chance, though skill and a thorough knowledge of firearms are of great
use. The Indians enter into this game with great zeal, and lend to it the
wonderful energy which they have preserved from year to year by abstaining
from the debilitating effects of manual labor. All day long the red
warrior sits in his skin boudoir, nursing the sickly and reluctant
"flush," patient, silent and hopeful. Through the cold of winter in the
desolate mountains, he continues to

"Hope on, hope ever,"

that he will "draw to fill." Far away up the canyon he hears the sturdy
blows of his wife's tomahawk as she slaughters the grease wood and the
sage brush for the fire in his gilded hell where he sits and woos the lazy
Goddess of Fortune.

With the Shoshone, poker is not alone a relaxation, the game wherewith to
wear out a long and listless evening, but it is a passion, a duty and a
devotion. He has a face designed especially for poker. It never shows a
sign of good or evil fortune. You might as well try to win a smile from a
railroad right of way. The full hand, the fours, threes, pairs and
bob-tail flushes are all the same to him, if you judge by his face.

When he gets hungry he cinches himself a little tighter and continues to
"rastle" with fate. You look at his smoky, old copper cent of a face, and
you see no change. You watch him as he coins the last buckshot of his
tribe and later on when he goes forth a pauper, and the corners of his
famine-breeding mouth have never moved, His little black, smoke-inflamed
eyes have never lighted with triumph or joy. He is the great aboriginal
stoic and sylvan dude. He does not smile. He does not weep. It certainly
must be intensely pleasant to be a wild, free, lawless, irresponsible,
natural born fool.

[Illustration: GOING AWAY BROKE.]

The Shoshones proper include the Bannocks, which are again subdivided into
the Koolsitakara or Buffalo Eaters, on Wind River, the Tookarika or
Mountain Sheep Eaters, on Salmon or Suabe Eivers, the Shoshocas or White
Knives, sometimes called Diggers, of the Humbolt Eiver and the Great Salt
Lake basin. Probably the Hokandikahs, Yahooskins and the Wahlpapes are
subdivisions of the Digger tribe. I am 'not sure of this, but I shall not
suspend my business till I can find out about it. If I cannot get at a
great truth right off I wait patiently and go right on drawing my salary.

The Shoshones live on the government and other small game. They will eat
anything when hungry, from a buffalo down to a woodtick. The Shoshone does
not despise small things. He loves insects in any form. He loves to make
pets of them and to study their habits in his home life.

[Illustration: THE HOME CIRCLE.]

Formerly, when a great Shoshone warrior died, they killed his favorite
wife over his grave, so that she could go to the happy hunting grounds
with him, but it is not so customary now. I tried to impress on an old
Shoshone brave once that they ought not to do that. I tried to show him
that it would encourage celibacy and destroy domestic ties in his tribe.
Since then there has been quite a stride toward reform among them. Instead
of killing the widow on the death of the husband, the husband takes such
good care of his health and avoids all kinds of intellectual strain or
physical fatigue, that late years there are no widows, but widowers just
seem to swarm in the Shoshone tribe. The woods are full of them.

Now, if they would only kill the widower over the grave of the wife, the
Indian's future would assume a more definite shape.

Roller Skating.

I have once more tried to ride a pair of roller skates. That is the reason
I got down on the rink and down on roller skates. That is the reason
several people got down on me. That is also the reason why I now state in
a public manner, to a lost and undone race, that unless the roller-rink is
at once abolished, the whole civilized race will at once be plunged into
arnica.

I had tried it once before, but had not carried my experiments to a
successful termination. I made a trip around the rink last August, but was
ruled out by the judges for incompetency, and advised to skate among the
people who were hostile to the government of the United States, while the
proprietors repaired the rink.

On the 9th of June I nestled in the bosom of a cyclone to excess, and it
has required the bulk of the succeeding months for nature to glue the bone
of my leg together in proper shape. That is the reason I have not given
the attention to roller-skating that I should.

A few weeks ago I read what Mr. Talmage said about the great national
vice. It was his opinion that, if we skated in a proper spirit, we could
leave the rink each evening with our immortal souls in good shape.

Somehow it got out that on Thursday evening I would undertake the feat of
skating three rounds in three hours with no protection to my scruples, for
one-half the gate money, Talmage rules. So there was quite a large
audience present with opera glasses. Some had umbrellas, especially on the
front rows. These were worn spread, in order to ward off fragments of the
rink which might become disengaged and set in motion by atmospheric
disturbances.

In obedience to a wild, Wagnerian snort from the orchestra, I came into
the arena with my skates in hand. I feel perfectly at home before an
audience when I have my skates in hand. It is a morbid desire to wear the
skates on my feet that has always been my _bete noire_. Will the office
boy please give me a brass check for that word so that I can get it when I
go away?

My first thought, after getting myself secured to the skates, was this:
"Am I in the proper frame of mind? Am I doing this in the right spirit? Am
I about to skate in such a way as to lift the fog of unbelief which now
envelopes a sinful world, or shall I deepen the opaque night in which my
race is wrapped?"

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