Bill Nye

“ But James Owen O'Connor did one thing which I take the liberty of publicly alluding to. He took that saddest and most melancholy bit of bloody history, trimmed with assassinations down the back and looped up with remorse, insanity, duplicity and unrequited love, and he filled it with silvery laughter and cauliflower and mirth, and various other groceries which the audience throw in from time to time, thus making it more of a spectacular piece than under the conservative management of such old-school men as Booth, who seem to think that Hamlet should be soaked full of sadness. ”

“ Going over the hill, at Crow Creek, whose perfumed waters kiss the livery stables and abattoirs at Camp Carlin, three slender Sarah Bernhardt coyotes came towards the train, looking wistfully at me as if to say: "Why, partner, how you have fleshed up!" Answering them from the platform of the car, I said: "Go East, young men, and flesh up with the country." Honestly and seriously, I do think that if the coyote would change off and try the soft-shell crab diet for a while, he would pick right up. ”

“ The police of Paris rarely get together in front of the court-house to [Pg 172] pitch horseshoes or dwell on the outlook for the goober crop.
And yet the same blue, ozonic sky, if I may be allowed to coin a word, the same soft, restful, dolce frumenti air of gentle, genial health, and of cark destroying, magnetic balm to the congested soul, the inflamed nerve and the festering brain, are present in Asheville that one finds in the quiet drives of San Cloo with the successful squirt of the mighty fountains of Vairsi and the dark and whispering forests of Fon-taine-bloo. ”

“ When all her talents as an artiste and politician palled upon his old rum-soaked and emaciated brain, and ennui, like a mighty canker, ate away large corners of his moth-eaten soul, she would sit in the gloaming and sing to him, "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More," meantime accompanying herself on the harpsichord or the sackbut or whatever they played in those days. ”

“ Is the time coming when general dealers in apparel and gents' furnishing goods for the use of bare facts, and men who attend to the costuming, draping, and swaddling of nude ideas, will compete so closely with each other that, before a think has its eyes fairly open, one of these gentlemen will slap a suit of clothes on it, with a Waterbury watch in each pocket, and have a boy half way to the office with the bill? ”

“ Riley is essentially a lyric poet. But his spirit is that of Walt Whitman; he speaks the universal democracy, the equality of man, the hatred of assumption and snobbery, that our republic stands for, if it stands for anything. Now downright didacticism in a poet is an abomination. But if a poet has no right to ponder the meanings of things, the feelings of man for man and the higher "criticism of life," then no one has. If to Pope's "The proper study of mankind is man," you add "nature" and "nature's God," you will fairly well outline the poet's field. ”

“ How can you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at the expense of his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the future usefulness of the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting the future of the human race who feed upon him? ”

“ Mere art (Heaven save the "mere"!) is not, and has never been, enough to place a poet among the great spirits of the world. It has furnished a number of nimble mandolinists and exquisite dilettants for lazy moods. But great poetry must always be something more than sweetmeats; it must be food—temptingly cooked, winningly served, well spiced and well accompanied, but yet food to strengthen the blood and the sinews of the soul. ”

“ We should learn from all the above that a humble origin does not prevent a successful career. Had Abraham Lincoln been wealthy, he would have been taught, perhaps, a style of elocution and gesture that would have taken first rate at a parlor entertainment, and yet he might never have made his Gettysburg speech. While he was president he never looked at his own hard hands and knotted knuckles that he was not reminded of his toiling neighbors, whose honest sweat and loyal blood had made this mighty republic a source of glory and not of shame forever. ”

“ The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is no cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from mediocrity to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient student, and the earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide his time, gets what James Owen O'Connor received—the just condemnation of those who are abundantly able to judge. ”

“ There are writers that take Pegasus on giddier flights of fancy, and writers that sit him more grandly, and writers that put him through daintier paces, and writers that burden him with anguish nearer that of the dread Rider of the White Horse, and there are writers that make him a very bucking broncho of wit, but there is no one that turns Pegasus into just such an ambling nag of lazy peace and pastoral content as James—I had almost said Joshua Whitcomb—Riley. ”

“ Colonel Root is himself no kindergarten savant, being the author and discoverer of a method of breaking up a sitting-hen by first calling her away from her deep-seated passion, tying a red-flannel rag around her leg, and then still further turning her attention from her wild yearning to hatch out a flock of suburban villas by sitting on a white front-door knob. ”

“ Then, reaching in his pocket, he drew forth a card, and writing his autograph on it, he gave it to the astounded engineer, telling him to use it wisely and not fritter it away. 'But are you not robbing yourself?' exclaimed the astonished and delighted engineer. 'No, oh no,' said the munificent parent, 'I have others left.' And this is the man who asks our suffrages! Will you vote for him or for Alick Meyerdinger, the purest one-legged man that ever rapped with his honest knuckles on top of a bar and asked the boys to put a name to it. ”

“ Every thinkful student has doubtless noticed that when he enters the office, or autograph department, of an American inn, a lithe and alert male person seizes his valise or traveling-bag with much earnestness. He then conveys it to some sequestered spot and does not again return. He is the porter of the hotel or inn. He may be a modest porter just starting out, or he may be a swollen and purse-proud porter with silver in his hair and also in his pocket. ”

“ For police and fire purposes the system shows a wonderful degree of intelligence, not only as a speedy means of conveying calls for the fire department, health department, department of street cleaning, department of interior and good of the order, but it furnishes also a method of transmitting emergency calls, so that no citizen—no matter how poor or unknown—need go without an emergency. The citizen has only to turn the crank of the little iron marten-house till the gong ceases to ring, then push on the "Citizens' button," and he can have fun with most any emergency he likes. ”

“ He has caught the real American. He is the laureate of the bliss of laziness. His child poems are the next best thing to the child itself; they have all the infectious essence of gayety, and all the naïveté, and all the knife-like appeal. It could not reasonably be demanded that his prose should equal the perfection of his verse, but nothing more eerie has ever been done than the little story, "Where is Mary Alice Smith?" with its strange use of rime at the end.
Of all dialect writers he has been the most versatile. ”

“ Gazing up at the bright cold stars after kicking forth the cat, I realize that another Sabbath has been filed away in the great big brawny bosom of the past, and with a little remorseful sigh and an incipient sob when I think that I am not making a better record, I drive a fence nail in over the door latch and seek my library which, on being properly approached, opens and becomes a beautiful couch. ”

“ A boy may thoughtlessly select the wrong state, or even a foreign country, as the site for his birthplace, and then the most exemplary life will not avail him. But hardest of all, perhaps, for one who aspires to the highest office within the gift of the people, is the selection of a house in which to be born. For this reason I have selected a few specimen birthplaces for the guidance of those who may be ignorant of the points which should be possessed by a birthplace. ”

“ What do we care that homely men grudge our candidate his symmetry of form and graceful upholstered carriage? What do we care that calumny crawls out of its hole, calumniates him a couple of times and then goes back? We are here to-night to show by our presence that we like Mrs. Nye very much. She is a good cook, and she would certainly do honor to this district as a social leader, in case she should go to Cheyenne as the wife of our assemblyman. ”

“ Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on the road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling a storage think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. ”

“ Suppose that you were the president of the United States, and your think-supply got snow-bound at Newark in a vestibule train, and congress were waiting for you to veto a bill. You could not think the thought in the first place, and even if you could you would hate to send it to congress until it was properly clothed. I am told that nothing shocks congress so much as the sudden appearance "in its midst" of a naked and new-born thought.
But General Dado has the advantage over General Grant in one respect. He can not be injured much. ”

“ California, at any season of the year, is a miracle of beauty, as almost every one knows. Nature heightens the effect for the tenderfoot by compelling him to cross the Alpine heights of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and freeze approximately to death in the cold heart of a snow blockade. ”

“ I have often admired your scholarly and spiritual expressions, and your modest life, and you will remember that at one time I asked you for your autograph, and you told me to go where the worm dieth not and the fire department is ineffectual. Will you not, I ask, aid a struggler and panter for fame, who desires the eye of the public, even if his own be italicised at the same time? ”

“ The world may smile upon you, and gold pour into your coffers, but the day will come when you will have to wrap the drapery of your hair about you and lie down to pleasant dreams. Then will arise the thought, alas!—Then You'll Remember Me. ”

“ I have one letter from a man of twenty-seven summers, who pants to bestow himself on some one at as early a date as possible. He tells me on a separate slip of paper, which he wishes destroyed, that he is a little given to "bowling up," a term with which I am not familiar, but he goes on to say that a good, noble woman, with love in her heart and an earnest desire to save a soul, could rush in and gather him in in good shape. ”

“ While the warrior, as a warrior, has nothing to do but continue victorious through life, he can not safely write a book for posterity. Literature is at all times more or less hazardous under present copyright regulations, but it becomes doubly so when our estates have to reimburse some silent thinker who thought things for us while amanuensing in our employ. ”

“ I have been wanting for the past year to settle down, but I have not saw a girl that I thought would make me a good, true wife. I know I have saw a good deal of the world, and am inclined to be cynical for I see how hollow everything is, and how much need there is for a great reform. ”

“ Now we take a herd of oysters off the trail, all run down, and feed them artificially till they swell up to a fancy size, and bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in the fall on acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. ”

“ In early days in Denver, Henry C. Brown, then in the full flush and vigor of manhood, opened negotiations with the agent of the Atchison stage line for a ticket back to Atchison, as he was heart-broken and homesick. He owned a quarter-section of land, with a heavy growth of prairie dogs on it, and he had almost persuaded the agent to swap him a ticket for this sage brush conservatory, when the ticket seller backed gently out of the trade. Mr. Brown then sat him down on the sidewalk and cried bitterly.
I just tell this to show how easily some men weep. ”

“ That evening a load of lumber was deposited on my lawn, and a man came in to borrow a few pounds of fence nails. I asked him what he wanted to do, for I thought he was going to nail a campaign lie or something. He said he was the man who was sent up to build a kind of "trussle" in front of my house. "What for?" I asked, with eyes like a startled fawn. "Why, for the speakers to stand on," he said. "It is a kind of a combination racket. Something between a home indorsement and a mass-meeting of creditors. You are to be surprised and gratified to-morrow evening, as near as I can make out." ”