Remarks by Bill Nye

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We had a neighbor who was very wealthy. He noticed that we boys earned our
own spending money, and he yearned to have his son try to ditto. So he
told the boy that he was going away for a few weeks and that he would give
him $2 per cord, or double price, to saw the wood. He wanted to teach the
boy to earn and appreciate his money. So, when the old man went away, the
boy secured a colored man to do the job at $1 per cord, by which process
the youth made $10. This he judiciously invested in clothes, meeting his
father at the train in a new summer suit and a speckled cane. The old man
said he could see by the sparkle in the boy's clear, honest eyes, that
healthful exercise was what boys needed.

When I was a boy I frequently acquired large sums of money by carrying
coal up two flights of stairs for wealthy people who were too fat to do it
themselves. This money I invested from time to time in side shows and
other zoological attractions.

One day I saw a coal cart back up and unload itself on the walk in such a
way as to indicate that the coal would have to be manually elevated inside
the building. I waited till I nearly froze to death, for the owner to come
along and solicit my aid. Finally he came. He smelled strong of carbolic
acid, and I afterward learned that he was a physician and surgeon.

We haggled over the price for some time, as I had to carry the coal up two
flights in an old waste paper basket and it was quite a task. Finally we
agreed. I proceeded with the work. About dusk I went up the last flight of
stairs with the last load. My feet seemed to weigh about nineteen pounds
apiece and my face was very sombre.

In the gloaming I saw my employer. He was writing a prescription by the
dim, uncertain light. He told me to put the last basketful in the little
closet off the hall and then come and get my pay. I took the coal into the
closet, but I do not know what I did with it. As I opened the door and
stepped in, a tall skeleton got down off the nail and embraced me like a
prodigal son. It fell on my neck and draped itself all over me. Its
glittering phalanges entered the bosom of my gingham shirt and rested
lightly on the pit of my stomach. I could feel the pelvis bone in the
small of my back. The room was dark, but I did not light the gas. Whether
it was the skeleton of a lady or gentleman, I never knew; but I thought,
for the sake of my good name, I would not remain. My good name and a
strong yearning for home were all that I had at that time.

So I went home. Afterwards, I learned that this physician got all his coal
carried up stairs for nothing in this way, and he had tried to get rooms
two flights further up in the building, so that the boys would have
further to fall when they made their egress.

About Portraits.

Hudson, Wis., August 25, 1885.

Hon. William F. Vilas, Postmaster-General, Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir,--For some time I have been thinking of writing to you and asking
you how you were getting along with your department since I left it. I did
not wish to write you for the purpose of currying favor with an
administration against which I squandered a ballot last fall. Neither do I
desire to convey the impression that I would like to open a correspondence
with you for the purpose of killing time. If you ever feel like sitting
down and answering this letter in an off-hand way it would please me very
much, but do not put yourself out to do so. I wanted to ask you, however,
how you like the pictures of yourself recently published by the patent
insides. That was my principal object in writing. Having seen you before
this great calamity befell you, I wanted to inquire whether you had really
changed so much. As I remember your face, it was rather unusually
intellectual and attractive for a great man. Great men are very rarely
pretty. I guess that, aside from yourself, myself, and Mr. Evarts, there
is hardly an eminent man in the country who would be considered handsome.
But the engraver has done you a great injustice, or else you have sadly
changed since I saw you. It hardly seems possible that your nose has
drifted around to leeward and swelled up at the end, as the engraver would
have us believe. I do not believe that in a few short months the look of
firmness and conscious rectitude that I noticed could have changed to that
of indecision and vacuity which we see in some of your late portraits as
printed.

[Illustration: A NOSE ON THE BIAS.]

I saw one yesterday, with your name attached to it, and it made my heart
ache for your family. As a resident in your State I felt humiliated. Two
of Wisconsin's ablest men have been thus slaughtered by the rude broad-axe
of the engraver. Last fall, Senator Spooner, who is also a man with a
first-class head and face, was libeled in this same reckless way. It makes
me mad, and in that way impairs my usefulness. I am not a good citizen,
husband or father when I am mad. I am a perfect simoom of wrath at such
times, and I am not responsible for what I do.

Nothing can arouse the indignation of your friends, regardless of party,
so much as the thought that while you are working so hard in the
postoffice at Washington with your coat off, collecting box rent and
making up the Western mail, the remorseless engraver and electrotyper are
seeking to down you by making pictures of you in which you appear either
as a dude or a tough.

While I have not the pleasure of being a member of your party, having
belonged to what has been sneeringly alluded to as the g.o.p., I cannot
refrain from expressing my sympathy at this time. Though we may have
differed heretofore upon important questions of political economy, I
cannot exult over these portraits. Others may gloat over these efforts to
injure you, but I do not. I am not much of a gloater, anyhow.

I leave those to gloat who are in the gloat business.

Still, it is one of the drawbacks incident to greatness. We struggle hard
through life that we may win the confidence of our fellow-men, only at
last to have pictures of ourselves printed and distributed where they will
injure us.

[Illustration: ASSORTED PHYSIOGNOMY.]

I desire to add before closing this letter, Mr. Vilas, that with those who
are acquainted with you and know your sterling worth, these portraits will
make no difference. We will not allow them to influence us socially or
politically. What the effect may be upon offensive partisans who are total
strangers to you, I do not know.

My theory in relation to these cuts is, that they are combined and
interchangeable, so that, with slight modifications, they are used for all
great men. The cut, with the extras that go with it, consists of one head
with hair (front view), one bald head (front view), one head with hair
(side view), one bald head (side view), one pair eyes (with glasses), one
pair eyes (plain), one Roman nose, one Grecian nose, one turn-up nose, one
set whiskers (full), one moustache, one pair side-whiskers, one chin, one
set large ears, one set medium ears, one set small ears, one set
shoulders, with collar and necktie for above, one monkey-wrench, one set
quoins, one galley, one oil can, one screwdriver. These different features
are then arranged so that a great variety of clergymen, murderers,
senators, embezzlers, artists, dynamiters, humorists, arsonists,
larcenists, poets, statesmen, base ball players, rinkists, pianists,
capitalists, bigamists and sluggists are easily represented. No newspaper
office should be without them. They are very simple, and any child can
easily learn to operate it. They are invaluable in all cases, for no one
knows at what moment a revolting crime may be committed by a comparatively
unknown man, whose portrait you wish to give, and in this age of rapid
political transformations, presentations and combinations, no enterprising
paper should delay the acquisition of a combined portrait for the use of
its readers.

Hoping that you are well, and that you will at once proceed to let no
guilty man escape, I remain, yours truly,

Bill Nye.

The Old South.

The Old South Meeting House, in Boston, is the most remarkable structure
in many respects to be found in that remarkable city. Always eager
wherever I go to search out at once the gospel privileges, it is not to be
wondered at, that I should have gone to the Old South the first day after
I landed in Boston.

It is hardly necessary to go over the history of the Old South, except,
perhaps, to refresh the memory of those who live outside of Boston. The
Old South Society was organized in 1669, and the ground on which the old
meetinghouse now stands was given by Mrs. Norton, the widow of Rev. John
Norton, since deceased. The first structure was of wood, and in 1729 the
present brick building succeeded it. King's Handbook of Boston says: "It
is one of the few historic buildings that have been allowed to remain in
this iconoclastic age."

So it seems that they are troubled with iconoclasts in Boston, too. I
thought I saw one hanging around the Old South on the day I was there, and
had a good notion to point him out to the authorities, but thought it was
none of my business.

I went into the building and registered, and then from force of habit or
absent-mindedness handed my umbrella over the counter and asked how soon
supper would be ready. Everybody registers, but very few, I am told, ask
how soon supper will be ready. The Old South is now run on the European
plan, however.

The old meeting-house is chiefly remarkable for the associations that
cluster around it. Two centuries hover about the ancient weather-vane and
look down upon the visitor when the weather is favorable.

Benjamin Franklin was baptized and attended worship here, prior to his
wonderful invention of lightning. Here on each succeeding Sabbath sat the
man who afterwards snared the forked lightning with a string and put it
in a jug for future generations. Here Whitefield preached and the rebels
discussed the tyranny of the British king. Warren delivered his famous
speech here upon the anniversary of the Boston massacre and the "tea
party" organized in this same building. Two hundred years ago exactly,
the British used the Old South as a military riding school, although a
majority of the people of Boston were not in favor of it.

It would be well to pause here and consider the trying situation in which
our ancestors were placed at that time. Coming to Massachusetts as they
did, at a time when the country was new and prices extremely high, they
had hoped to escape from oppression and establish themselves so far away
from the tyrant that he could not come over here and disturb them without
suffering from the extreme nausea incident to a long sea voyage. Alas,
however, when they landed at Plymouth rock there was not a decent hotel in
the place. The same stern and rock-bound coast which may be discovered
along the Atlantic sea-board to-day was there, and a cruel, relentless sky
frowned upon their endeavors.

Where prosperous cities now flaunt to the sky their proud domes and
floating debts, the rank jimson weed nodded in the wind and the pumpkin
pie of to-day still slumbered in the bosom of the future. What glorious
facts have, under the benign influence of fostering centuries, been born
of apparent impossibility. What giant certainties have grown through these
years from the seeds of doubt and discouragement and uncertainty! (Big
firecrackers and applause.)

[Illustration: MR. FRANKLIN EXPERIMENTS.]

At that time our ancestors had but timidly embarked in the forefather
business. They did not know that future generations in four-button
cutaways would rise up and call them blessed and pass resolutions of
respect on their untimely death. If they stayed at home the king taxed
them all out of shape, and if they went out of Boston a few rods to get
enough huckleberries for breakfast, they would frequently come home so
full of Indian arrows that they could not get through a common door
without great pain.

Such was the early history of the country where now cultivation and
education and refinement run rampant and people sit up all night to print
newspapers so that we can have them in the morning.

The land on which the Old South stands is very valuable for business
purposes, and $400,000 will have to be raised in order to preserve the old
landmark to future generations. I earnestly hope that it will be secured,
and that the old meeting-house--dear not alone to the people of Boston,
but to the millions of Americans scattered from sea to sea, who cannot
forget where first universal freedom plumed its wings--will be spared to
entertain within its hospitable walls, enthusiastic and reverential
visitors for ages without end.

Knights of the Pen.

When you come to think of it, it is surprising that so many newspaper men
write so that any one but an expert can read it. The rapid and voluminous
work, especially of daily journalism, knocks the beautiful business
college penman, as a rule, higher than a kite. I still have specimens of
my own handwriting that a total stranger could read.

I do not remember a newspaper acquaintance whose penmanship is so
characteristic of the exacting neatness and sharp, clear cut style of the
man, as is that of Eugene Field, of the Chicago _News_. As the "Nonpareil
Writer" of the Denver _Tribune_, it was a mystery to me when he did the
work which the paper showed each day as his own. You would sometimes find
him at his desk, writing on large sheets of "print paper" with a pen and
violet ink, in a hand that was as delicate as the steel plate of a bank
note and the kind of work that printers would skirmish for. He would ask
you to sit down in the chair opposite his desk, which had two or three old
exchanges thrown on it. He would probably say, "Never mind those papers.
I've read them. Just sit down on them if you want to." Encouraged by his
hearty manner, you would sit down, and you would continue to sit down till
you had protruded about three-fourths of your system through that hollow
mockery of a chair. Then he would run to help you out and curse the chair,
and feel pained because he had erroneously given you the ruin with no seat
to it. He always felt pained over such things. He always suffered keenly
and felt shocked over the accident until you had gone away, and then he
would sigh heavily and "set" the chair again.

[Illustration: THE RUIN.]

Frank Pixley, the editor of the San Francisco _Argonaut_, is not
beautiful, though the _Argonaut_ is. He is grim and rather on the Moses
Montefiore style of countenance, but his hand-writing does not convey the
idea of the man personally, or his style of dealing with the Chinese
question. It is rather young looking, and has the uncertain manner of an
eighteen-year-old boy.

Robert J. Burdette writes a small but plain hand, though he sometimes
suffers from the savage typographical error that steals forth at such a
moment as ye think not, and disfigures and tears and mangles the bright
eyed children of the brain.

Very often we read a man's work and imagine we shall find him like it,
cheery, bright and entertaining; but we know him and find that personally
he is a refrigerator, or an egotist, or a man with a torpid liver and a
nose like a rose geranium. You will not be disappointed in Bob Burdette,
however, You think you will like him, and you always do. He will never be
too famous to be a gentleman.

George W. Peck's hand is of the free and independent order of chirography.
It is easy and natural, but not handsome. He writes very voluminously,
doing his editorial writing in two days of the week, generally Friday and
Saturday. Then he takes a rapid horse, a zealous bird dog and an improved
double barrel duck destroyer and communes with nature.

Sam Davis, an old time Californian, and now in Nevada, writes the freest
of any penman I know. When he is deliberate, he may be betrayed into
making a deformed letter and a crooked mark attached to it, which he
characterizes as a word. He puts a lot of these together and actually pays
postage on the collection under the delusion that it is a letter, that it
will reach its destination, and that it will accomplish its object.

He makes up for his bad writing, however, by being an unpublished volume
of old time anecdotes and funny experiences.

Goodwin, of the old _Territorial Enterprise_, and Mark Twain's old
employer, writes with a pencil in a methodical manner and very plainly.
The way he sharpens a "hard medium" lead pencil and skins the apostle of
the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, makes my heart
glad. Hardly a day passes that his life is not threatened by the low
browed thumpers of Mormondom, and yet the old war horse raises the
standard of monogamy and under the motto, "One country, one flag and one
wife at a time," he smokes his old meerschaum pipe and writes a column of
razor blades every day. He is the buzz saw upon which polygamy has tried
to sit. Fighting these rotten institutions hand to hand and fighting a
religious eccentricity through an annual message, or a feeble act of
congress, are two separate and distinct things.

If I had a little more confidence in my longevity than I now have, I would
go down there to the Valley of the Jordan, and I would gird up my loins,
and I would write with that lonely warrior at Salt Lake, and with the aid
and encouragement of our brethren of the press who do not favor the right
of one man to marry an old woman's home, we would rotten egg the bogus
Temple of Zion till the civilized world, with a patent clothes pin on its
nose, would come and see what was the matter.

I see that my zeal has led me away from my original subject, but I haven't
time to regret it now.

The Wild Cow.

When I was young and used to roam around over the country, gathering
water-melons in the light of the moon, I used to think I could milk
anybody's cow, but I do not think so now. I do not milk a cow now unless
the sign is right, and it hasn't been right for a good many years. The
last cow I tried to milk was a common cow, born in obscurity; kind of a
self-made cow. I remember her brow was low, but she wore her tail high and
she was haughty, oh, so haughty.

I made a common-place remark to her, one that is used in the very best of
society, one that need not have given offence anywhere. I said "So"--and
she "soed." Then I told her to "hist" and she histed. But I thought she
overdid it. She put too much expression in it.

Just then I heard something crash through the window of the barn and fall
with a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see what
it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it in getting
through the window.

I asked the neighbors if the barn was still standing. They said it was.
Then I asked if the cow was injured much. They said she seemed to be quite
robust. Then I requested them to go in and calm the cow a little, and see
if they could get my plug hat off her horns.

I am buying all my milk now of a milkman. I select a gentle milkman who
will not kick, and feel as though I could trust him. Then, if he feels as
though he could trust me, it is all right.

[Illustration: THE WILD COW.]

Spinal Meningitis.

So many people have shown a pardonable curiosity about the above named
disease, and so few have a very clear idea of the thrill of pleasure it
affords the patient, unless they have enjoyed it themselves, that I have
decided to briefly say something in answer to the innumerable inquiries I
have received.

Up to the moment I had a notion of getting some meningitis, I had never
employed a physician. Since then I have been thrown in their society a
great deal. Most of them were very pleasant and scholarly gentlemen, who
will not soon be forgotten; but one of them doctored me first for
pneumonia, then for inflammatory rheumatism, and finally, when death was
contiguous, advised me that I must have change of scene and rest.

I told him that if he kept on prescribing for me, I thought I might depend
on both. Change of physicians, however, saved my life. This horse doctor,
a few weeks afterward, administered a subcutaneous morphine squirt in the
arm of a healthy servant girl because she had the headache, and she is now
with the rest of this veterinarian's patients in a land that is fairer
than this.

She lived six hours after she was prescribed for. He gave her change of
scene and rest. He has quite a thriving little cemetery filled with people
who have succeeded in cording up enough of his change of scene and rest to
last them through all eternity. He was called once to prescribe for a man
whose head had been caved in by a stone match-box, and, after treating the
man for asthma and blind staggers, he prescribed rest and change of scene
for him, too. The poor asthmatic is now breathing the extremely rarified
air of the New Jerusalem.

Meningitis is derived from the Latin _Meninges_, membrane, and--_itis_, an
affix denoting inflammation, so that, strictly speaking, meningitis is the
inflammation of a membrane, and when applied to the spine, or cerebrum, is
called spinal meningitis, or cerebro-spinal meningitis, etc., according to
the part of the spine or brain involved in the inflammation. Meningitis is
a characteristic and result of so-called spotted fever, and by many it is
deemed identical with it.

When we come to consider that the spinal cord, or marrow, runs down
through the long, bony shaft made by the vertebrae, and that the brain and
spine, though connected, are bound up in one continuous bony wall and
covered with this inflamed membrane, it is not difficult to understand
that the thing is very hard to get at. If your throat gets inflamed, a
doctor asks you to run your tongue out into society about a yard and a
half, and he pries your mouth open with one of Rogers Brothers' spoon
handles. Then he is able to examine your throat as he would a page of the
_Congressional Record_, and to treat it with some local application. When
you have spinal meningitis, however, the doctor tackles you with bromides,
ergots, ammonia, iodine, chloral hydrate, codi, bromide of ammonia,
hasheesh, bismuth, valerianate of ammonia, morphine sulph., nux vomica,
turpentine emulsion, vox humana, rex magnus, opium, cantharides, Dover's
powders, and other bric-a-brac. These remedies are masticated and acted
upon by the salivary glands, passed down the esophagus, thrown into the
society of old gastric, submitted to the peculiar motion of the stomach
and thoroughly chymified, then forwarded through the pyloric orifice into
the smaller intestines, where they are touched up with bile, and later on
handed over through the lacteals, thoracic duct, etc., to the vast
circulatory system. Here it is yanked back and forth through the heart,
lungs and capillaries, and if anything is left to fork over to the
disease, it has to squeeze into the long, bony, air-tight socket that
holds the spinal cord. All this is done without seeing the patient's
spinal cord before or after taking. If it could be taken out, and hung
over a clothes line and cleansed with benzine, and then treated with
insect powder, or rolled in corn meal, or preserved in alcohol, and then
put back, it would be all right; but you can't. You pull a man's spine out
of his system and he is bound to miss it, no matter how careful you have
been about it. It is difficult to keep house without the spine. You need
it every time you cook a meal. If the spinal cord could be pulled by a
dentist and put away in pounded ice every time it gets a hot-box, spinal
meningitis would lose its stinger.

I was treated by thirteen physicians, whose names I may give in a future
article. They were, as I said, men I shall long remember. One of them said
very sensibly that meningitis was generally over-doctored. I told him that
I agreed with him. I said that if I should have another year of meningitis
and thirteen more doctors, I would have to postpone my trip to Europe,
where I had hoped to go and cultivate my voice. I've got a perfectly
lovely voice, if I would take it to Europe and have it sand-papered and
varnished, and mellowed down with beer and bologna.

But I was speaking of my physicians. Some time I'm going to give their
biographies and portraits, as they did those of Dr. Bliss, Dr. Barnes and
others. Next year, if I can get railroad rates, I am going to hold a
reunion of my physicians in Chicago. It will be a pleasant relaxation for
them, and will save the lives of a large percentage of their patients.

Skimming the Milky Way.

THE COMET.

The comet is a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look some
like planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hit
anybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair on
it, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giving just as good
satisfaction everywhere.

The characteristic features of a comet are: A nucleus, a nebulous light or
coma, and usually a luminous train or tail worn high. Sometimes several
tails are observed on one comet, but this occurs only in flush times.

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