Remarks by Bill Nye

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The duties of the physician are with the living, those of the coroner with
the dead. No effort, therefore, should be made to unite them. It is in
violation of all the finer feelings of humanity. When the physician
decides that his tendencies point mostly toward immortality and the names
of his patients are nearly all found on the moss-covered stones of the
cemetery, he may abandon the profession with safety and take hold of
politics. Then, should his tastes lead him to the inquest, let him
gravitate toward the office of coroner; but the two should not be united.

No man ought to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines
the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him
professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the
county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over
the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish
to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment
which will be in strong contrast with the darker and more ignorant epochs
of time, when the practice of medicine was united with the profession of
the barber, the well-digger, the farrier, the veterinarian or the coroner.

Why, this physician plenipotentiary and coroner extraordinary that I have
referred to, didn't know when he got a call whether to take his morphine
syringe or his venire for a jury. He very frequently went to see a patient
with a lung tester under one arm and the revised statutes under the other.
People never knew when they saw him going to a neighbor's house, whether
the case had yielded to the coroner's treatment or not. No one ever knew
just when over-taxed nature would yield to the statutes in such case made
and provided.

When the jury was impanelled, however, we always knew that the medical
treatment had been successfully fatal.

Once he charged the county with an inquest he felt sure of, but in the
night the patient got delirious, eluded his nurse, the physician and
coroner, and fled to the foot-hills, where he was taken care of and
finally recovered.

The experiences of some of the patients who escaped from this man read
more like fiction than fact. One man revived during the inquest, knocked
the foreman of the jury through the window, kicked the coroner in the
stomach, fed him a bottle of violet ink, and, with a shriek of laughter,
fled. He is now traveling under an assumed name with a mammoth circus,
feeding his bald head to the African lion twice a day at $9 a week and
found.

[Illustration]

Down East Rum.

Rum has always been a curse to the State of Maine. The steady fight that
Maine has made, for a century past, against decent rum, has been worthy of
a better cause.

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow and some more things of that kind? He that
monkeyeth with Maine rum; he that goeth to seek emigrant rum.

In passing through Maine the tourist is struck with the ever-varying
styles of mystery connected with the consumption of rum.

In Denver your friend says: "Will you come with me and shed a tear?" or
"Come and eat a clove with me."

In Salt Lake City a man once said to me: "William, which would you rather
do, take a dose of Gentile damnation down here on the corner, or go over
across the street and pizen yourself with some real old Mormon Valley tan,
made last week from ground feed and prussic acid?" I told him that I had
just been to dinner, and the doctor had forbidden my drinking any more,
and that I had promised several people on their death beds never to touch
liquor, and besides, I had just taken a large drink, so he would have to
excuse me.

But in Maine none of these common styles of invitation prevail. It is all
shrouded in mystery. You give the sign of distress to any member in good
standing, pound three times on the outer gate, give two hard kicks and one
soft one on the inner door, give the password, "Rutherford B. Hayes," turn
to the left, through a dark passage, turn the thumbscrew of a mysterious
gas fixture 90 deg. to the right, holding the goblet of the encampment
under the gas fixture, then reverse the thumbscrew, shut your eyes, insult
your digester, leave twenty-five cents near the gas fixture, and hunt up
the nearest cemetery, so that you will not have to be carried very far.

If a man really wants to drink himself into a drunkard's grave, he can
certainly save time by going to Maine. Those desiring the most prompt and
vigorous style of jim-jams at cut rates will do well to examine Maine
goods before going elsewhere. Let a man spend a week in Boston, where the
Maine liquor law, I understand, is not in force, and then, with no warning
whatever, be taken into the heart of Maine; let him land there a stranger
and a partial orphan, with no knowledge of the underground methods of
securing a drink, and to him the world seems very gloomy, very sad, and
extremely arid.

At the Bangor depot a woman came up to me and addressed me. She was rather
past middle age, a perfect lady in her manners, but a little full.

I said: "Madam, I guess you will have to excuse me. You have the
advantage. I can't just speak your name at this moment. It has been now
thirty years since I left Maine, a child two years old. So people have
changed. You've no idea how people have grown out of my knowledge. I don't
see but you look just as young as you did when I went away, but I'm a poor
hand to remember names, so I can't just call you to mind."

She was perfectly ladylike in her manner, but a little bit drunk. It is
singular how drunken people will come hundreds of miles to converse with
me. I have often been alluded to as the "drunkard's friend." Men have been
known to get intoxicated and come a long distance to talk with me on some
subject, and then they would lean up against me and converse by the hour.
A drunken man never seems to get tired of talking with me. As long as I am
willing to hold such a man up and listen to him, he will stand and tell me
about himself with the utmost confidence, and, no matter who goes by, he
does not seem to be ashamed to have people see him talking with me.

[Illustration: THAT BUTTONHOLE.]

I once had a friend who was very much liked by every one, so he drifted
into politics. For seven years he tried to live on free whiskey and
popular approval, but it wrecked him at last. Finally he formed the habit
of meeting me every day and explaining it to me, and giving me free
exhibitions of a breath that he had acquired at great expense. After he
got so feeble that he could not walk any more, this breath of his used to
pull him out of bed and drag him all over town. It don't seem hardly
possible, but it is so. I can show you the town yet.

He used to take me by the buttonhole when he conversed with me. This is a
diagram of the buttonhole.

If I had a son I would warn him against trying to subsist solely on
popular approval and free whiskey. It may do for a man engaged solely in
sedentary pursuits, but it is not sufficient in cases of great muscular
exhaustion. Free whiskey and popular approval on an empty stomach are
highly injurious.

Railway Etiquette.

Many people have traveled all their lives and yet do not know how to
behave themselves when on the road. For the benefit and guidance of such,
these few crisp, plain, horse-sense rules of etiquette have been framed.

In traveling by rail on foot, turn to the right on discovering an
approaching train. If you wish the train to turn out, give two loud toots
and get in between the rails, so that you will not muss up the right of
way. Many a nice, new right of way has been ruined by getting a pedestrian
tourist spattered all over its first mortgage.

On retiring at night on board the train, do not leave your teeth in the
ice-water tank. If every one should do so, it would occasion great
confusion in case of wreck. It would also cause much annoyance and delay
during the resurrection. Experienced tourists tie a string to their teeth
and retain them during the night.

If you have been reared in extreme poverty, and your mother supported you
until you grew up and married, so that your wife could support you, you
will probably sit in four seats at the same time, with your feet extended
into the aisles so that you can wipe them off on other people, while you
snore with your mouth open clear to your shoulder blades.

If you are prone to drop to sleep and breathe with a low death rattle,
like the exhaust of a bath tub, it would be a good plan to tie up your
head in a feather bed and then insert the whole thing in the linen closet;
or, if you cannot secure that, you might stick it out of the window and
get it knocked off against a tunnel. The stockholders of the road might
get mad about it, but you could do it in such a way that they wouldn't
know whose head it was.

Ladies and gentlemen should guard against traveling by rail while in a
beastly state of intoxication.

In the dining car, while eating, do not comb your moustache with your
fork. By all means do not comb your moustache with the fork of another. It
is better to refrain altogether from combing the moustache with a fork
while traveling, for the motion of the train might jab the fork into your
eye and irritate it.

If your desert is very hot and you do not discover it until you have
burned the rafters out of the roof of your mouth, do not utter a wild yell
of agony and spill your coffee all over a total stranger, but control
yourself, hoping to know more next time.

In the morning is a good time to find out how many people have succeeded
in getting on the passenger train, who ought to be in the stock car.

Generally, you will find one male and one female. The male goes into the
wash room, bathes his worthless carcass from daylight until breakfast
time, walking on the feet of any man who tries to wash his face during
that time. He wipes himself on nine different towels, because when he gets
home, he knows he will have to wipe his face on an old door mat. People
who have been reared on hay all their lives, generally want to fill
themselves full of pie and colic when they travel.

The female of this same mammal, goes into the ladies' department and
remains there until starvation drives her out. Then the real ladies have
about thirteen seconds apiece in which to dress.

If you never rode in a varnished car before, and never expect to again,
you will probably roam up and down the car, meandering over the feet of
the porter while he is making up the berths. This is a good way to let
people see just how little sense you had left after your brain began to
soften.

In traveling, do not take along a lot of old clothes that you know you
will never wear.

B. Franklin, Deceased.

Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child.
If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of Benjamin's
parents, they would have been childless. Think of getting up in the
morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among seventeen
pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where
you would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of spruce
gum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window sill.
And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea,
and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was a
printer. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great
Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests of
freedom. It is claimed that Franklin at this time invented the deadly
weapon known as the printer's towel. He found that a common crash towel
could be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony, concentrated lye, and
roller composition, and that after a few years of time and perspiration it
would harden so that the "Constant Reader" or "Veritas" could be stabbed
with it and die soon.

[Illustration: A DEADLY ONSLAUGHT.]

Many believe that Franklin's other scientific experiments were productive
of more lasting benefit to mankind than this, but I do not agree with
them.

This paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly by
James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want.
Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The idea
of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to the
editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while the
other was in jail. In those days you couldn't sass the king, and then,
when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his paper, and
took out his ad., you couldn't put it off on "our informant" and go right
along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscribers
wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tin
dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side.

[Illustration: STOPPING HIS PAPER.]

How many of us to-day, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay in
jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of all
our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while a
double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses of
ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us?

At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to
Philadelphia and New York, where he got a chance to "sub" for a few weeks,
and then got a regular "sit." Franklin was a good printer, and finally got
to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in the
composing room and spitting on the stone, while he cussed the make-up and
press work of the other papers. Then he would go into the editorial rooms
and scare the editors to death with a wild shriek for more copy. He knew
just how to conduct himself as a foreman, so that strangers would think he
owned the paper.

In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_. He was then regarded as a great man, and most
everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and
spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in
any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him.

Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of
lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he
would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd
specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the _Gazette_ office
by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklin
would tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and an
old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for a
mess.

[Illustration: "HOW'S TRADE?"]

In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made a
good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes in
distributing their mail than there has ever been since. If a man mailed a
letter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it was
addressed.

Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly on
business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to the
castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, and
attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course,
to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella up
against the throne, ask the king: "How's trade?" Franklin never put on any
frills, but he was not afraid of a crowned head. He used to say,
frequently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot.

He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn't do it,
Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given it
permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquainted
with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris,
and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper.
They also promised him the county printing, but he said no, he would have
to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him.

Franklin wrote "Poor Richard's Almanac" in 1732-57, and it was republished
in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William.
William was an illegitimate son, and, though he lived to be quite an old
man, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but an
illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, but
he steadily refused to do so.

Life Insurance as a Health Restorer.

Life insurance is a great thing. I would not be without it. My health is
greatly improved since I got my new policy. Formerly I used to have a
seal-brown taste in my mouth when I arose in the morning, but that has
entirely disappeared. I am more hopeful and happy, and my hair is getting
thicker on top. I would not try to keep house without life insurance. Last
September I was caught in one of the most destructive cyclones that ever
visited a republican form of government. A great deal of property was
destroyed and many lives were lost, but I was spared. People who had no
insurance were mowed down on every hand, but aside from a broken leg I was
entirely unharmed.

[Illustration: PROTECTED BY LIFE INSURANCE.]

I look upon life insurance as a great comfort, not only to the
beneficiary, but to the insured, who very rarely lives to realize anything
pecuniarily from his venture. Twice I have almost raised my wife to
affluence and cast a gloom over the community in which I lived, but
something happened to the physician for a few days so that he could not
attend to me, and I recovered. For nearly two years I was under the
doctor's care. He had his finger on my pulse or in my pocket all the time.
He was a young western physician, who attended me on Tuesdays and Fridays.
The rest of the week he devoted his medical skill to horses that were
mentally broken down. He said he attended me largely for my society. I
felt flattered to know that he enjoyed my society after he had been thrown
among horses all the week that had much greater advantages than I.

My wife at first objected seriously to an insurance on my life, and said
she would never, never touch a dollar of the money if I were to die, but
after I had been sick nearly two years, and my disposition had suffered a
good deal, she said that I need not delay the obsequies on that account.
But the life insurance slipped through my fingers somehow, and I
recovered.

In these days of dynamite and roller rinks, and the gory meat-ax of a new
administration, we ought to make some provision for the future.

The Opium Habit.

I have always had a horror of opiates of all kinds. They are so seductive
and so still in their operations. They steal through the blood like a wolf
on the trail, and they seize upon the heart at last with their white fangs
till it is still forever.

Up the Laramie there is a cluster of ranches at the base of the Medicine
Bow, near the north end of Sheep Mountain, and in sight of the glittering,
eternal frost of the snowy range. These ranches are the homes of the young
men from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and now there are several
"younger sons" of Old England, with herds of horses, steers and sheep,
worth millions of dollars. These young men are not of the kind of whom the
metropolitan ass writes as saying "youbetcherlife," and calling everybody
"pardner." They are many of them college graduates, who can brand a wild
Maverick or furnish the easy gestures for a Strauss waltz.

They wear human clothes, talk in the United States language, and have a
bank account. This spring they may be wearing chaparajos and swinging a
quirt through the thin air, and in July they may be at Long Branch, or
coloring a meerschaum pipe among the Alps.

Well, a young man whom we will call Curtis lived at one of these ranches
years ago, and, though a quiet, mind-your-own-business fellow, who had
absolutely no enemies among his companions, he had the misfortune to incur
the wrath of a tramp sheep-herder, who waylaid Curtis one afternoon and
shot him dead as he sat in his buggy. Curtis wasn't armed. He didn't dream
of trouble till he drove home from town, and, as he passed through the
gates of a corral, saw the hairy face of the herder, and at the same
moment the flash of a Winchester rifle. That was all.

A rancher came into town and telegraphed to Curtis' father, and then a
half dozen citizens went out to help capture the herder, who had fled to
the sage brush of the foot-hills.

They didn't get back till toward daybreak, but they brought the herder
with them, I saw him in the gray of the morning, lying in a coarse gray
blanket, on the floor of the engine house. He was dead.

I asked, as a reporter, how he came to his death, and they told me--opium!
I said, did I understand you to say "ropium?" They said no, it was opium.
The murderer had taken poison when he found that escape was impossible.

I was present at the inquest, so that I could report the case. There was
very little testimony, but all the evidence seemed to point to the fact
that life was extinct, and a verdict of death by his own hand was
rendered.

It was the first opium work I had ever seen, and it aroused my curiosity.
Death by opium, it seems, leaves a dark purple ring around the neck. I did
not know this before. People who die by opium also tie their hands
together before they die. This is one of the eccentricities of opium
poisoning that I have never seen laid down in the books. I bequeath it to
medical science. Whenever I run up against a new scientific discovery, I
just hand it right over to the public without cost.

Ever since the above incident, I have been very apprehensive about people
who seem to be likely to form the opium habit. It is one of the most
deadly of narcotics, especially in a new country. High up in the pure
mountain atmosphere, this man could not secure enough air to prolong life,
and he expired. In a land where clear, crisp air and delightful scenery
are abundant, he turned his back upon them both and passed away. Is it not
sad to contemplate?

More Paternal Correspondence.

My dear son.--I tried to write to you last week, but didn't get around to
it, owing to circumstances. I went away on a little business tower for a
few days on the cars, and then when I got home the sociable broke loose in
our once happy home.

While on my commercial tower down the Omehaw railroad buying a new
well-diggin' machine of which I had heard a good deal pro and con, I had
the pleasure of riding on one of them sleeping-cars that we read so much
about.

I am going on 50 years old, and that's the first time I ever slumbered at
the rate of forty-five miles per hour, including stops.

I got acquainted with the porter, and he blacked my boots in the night
unbeknownst to me, while I was engaged in slumber. He must have thought
that I was your father, and that we rolled in luxury at home all the time,
and that it was a common thing for us to have our boots blacked by
menials. When I left the car this porter brushed my clothes till the hot
flashes ran up my spinal column, and I told him that he had treated me
square, and I rung his hand when he held it out toards me, and I told him
that at any time he wanted a good, cool drink of buttermilk, to just
holler through our telephone. We had the sociable at our house last week,
and when I got home your mother set me right to work borryin' chairs and
dishes. She had solicited some cakes and other things. I don't know
whether you are on the skedjule by which these sociables are run or not.
The idea is a novel one to me.

The sisters in our set, onct in so often, turn their houses wrong side out
for the purpose of raising four dollars to apply on the church debt. When
I was a boy we worshiped with less frills than they do now. Now it seems
that the debt is a part of the worship.

Well, we had a good time and used up 150 cookies in a short time. Part of
these cookies was devoured and the balance was trod into our all-wool
carpet. Several of the young people got to playing Copenhagen in the
setting-room and stepped on the old cat in such a way as to disfigure him
for life. They also had a disturbance in the front room and knocked off
some of the plastering.

So your mother is feeling slim and I am not very chipper myself. I hope
that you are working hard at your books so that you will be an ornament to
society. Society is needing some ornaments very much. I sincerely hope
that you will not begin to monkey with rum. I should hate to have you with
a felon's doom or fill a drunkard's grave. If anybody has got to fill a
drunkard's grave, let him do it himself. What has the drunkard ever done
for you, that you should fill his grave for him?

[Illustration: ROUGH ON THE OLD CAT.]

I expect you to do right, as near as possible. You will not do exactly
right all the time, but try to strike a good average. I do not expect you
to let your studies encroach, too much on your polo, but try to unite the
two so that you will not break down under the strain. I should feel sad
and mortified to have you come home a physical wreck. I think one physical
wreck in a family is enough, and I am rapidly getting where I can do the
entire physical wreck business for our neighborhood.

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