Bill Nye

“ Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit down on him. Little do women realize that all a man needs under the broad cerulean dome of heaven is love—and board and clothes. Love is his life. If some woman or other don't love him, and love him like a hired man, he pines away and eventually climbs the golden stair. ”

“ Ah, what recompense have wealth and position for the unalloyed joys of childhood, and how gladly to-day as I sit in the midst of my oriental splendor and costly magnificence, and thoughtfully run my fingers through my infrequent bangs, would I give it all, wealth, position and fame, for one balmy, breezy day gathered from the mellow haze of the long ago when I stood full knee-deep in the luke-warm pool near my suburban home in the quiet dell, and allowed the yielding and soothing mud and meek-eyed pollywogs to squirt up between my dimpled toes. ”

“ Thou hast given to that gentle, timid shepherd lad who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart like the adamantine lemon pie of the railroad lunch-room. Thou hast taught him to drive his sword through plated mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the palpitating gizzard of his foe, and to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion even as the smooth-cheeked Roman Senator looks into the laughing eyes of the girls in the treasury department. ”

“ Along the dreary pathway of this cloud-environed life of ours there is no joy so pure, no triumph so complete, no success so fraught with rapture, as that of the female artiste who hangs on the flying trapeze by her chilblain and kisses her hand to the perspiring throng.
It is not the disheartening sense of failure alone which makes a man swear in the stilly night, nor yet the fact that he has slapped his alabaster limb harder than he needed to, but it is the trifling and heartless way in which the mosquito kisses his hand to the audience, and soars away humming a Tyrolean lay. ”

“ No, Julia, you don't look like a woman whose career as a housewife would be a success. From the mournful look in your limpid eye, I would say that your lignum-vitæ bread, and celluloid custard pie, and indestructible waffles, and fireproof pancakes, and burglar-proof chicken pie, would give you away. Your mind would be far away in the poet's realm, and you would put shoe blacking in the blanc mange, and silver gloss starch in the tea, and cod liver oil in the sponge cake. So, Julia, you may continue right along as you are doing. It don't do much harm, and no doubt it does you a heap of good. ”

“ Ah, how well those dark-eyed dwellers in perpetual summer know how to inspire even the dull and commonplace sentences of a preface with a living, breathing soul! How the threadbare language of apology and modest braggadocio used by the hesitating but puffed up author ever since the first work published by Moses, is made to submit to the tropical influence of sunny Portugal, and comes forth breathing the seductive odors of that glad clime where the poet's song of undying love to the dark-eyed maid is ever throbbing in passionate pulsations upon the perfumed air. ”

“ Those who have never been wakened from a sweet, sweet dream by the low sad wail of a narrow-gauge mule, so close to the ear that the warm breath of the songster can be felt on the cheek, do not know what it is to be loved by a patient, faithful, dumb animal. ”

“ Anon the golden bars of resplendent light are shot across the deep blue of heaven, the fleecy clouds are tipped and bordered with pale gold, while the heavy billows of bronze are floating in a mighty ocean of the softest azure. The blue grows deeper and the gold more dazzling. The scarlet becomes intensified and the softened east takes up the magnificent reflection. The hills and mountains are bathed in the beams of this occidental splendor, and the landscape adorns itself in honor of nature's most wonderful diurnal spectacle. ”

“ Let us ignore the death of every plug who claims to be a James' boy, unless he identifies himself. Let us examine the matter and see if the trade mark is on every wrapper or blown in the bottle, before we fill the air with woe and bust the broad canopy of heaven wide open with our lamentations over the untimely death of the James' boys. If we succeed in standing them off while they live we can afford to control our grief and silently battle with our emotions when they are still in death, until we know we are snorting and bellowing over the correct corpse. ”

“ You cannot see the green grass and waving trees. While others see the pleasant fields and lovely landscape you wander on year after year in the hopeless gloom. Poor man. Do you not at times yearn for immortality and pine to be among the angels where the light of a glorious eternity will enter upon your sightless vision like a beautiful dream? ”

“ While she is shading her eyes from the blinding glare of the orb of day, the aforesaid orb of day keeps right on setting, according to advertisement, and at last disappears behind the snowy range, lighting up, as it does so, the fleecy clouds and turning them into gold, figuratively speaking, making the picture one of surpassing lovliness. But what does she care for a $13.00 sunset, or the low, sad wail of the sage-hen far up the canon, as it calls to its mate? What does she care for the purple landscape and the mournful sigh of the new milch cow which is borne to her over the greet divide? ”

“ When a man wants to be a merry laughing girl and can't, and he stands trembling on the dividing line between manhood and womanhood and hesitating which way to fall, I often wish that I had a foot like Brigham Young's tombstone with a swing to it like a pile driver and I would like to kick the young man with the old gold hat band and the polka dotted necktie so far into the realms of space that when he fell people would think he was a red-headed meteor looking for a soft place to fall into. ”

“ The other day I had just planted my celluloid radishes and irrigated my turnips and sown my hunting-case summer squashes, and this cow went by trying to convey the impression that she was out for a walk.
That night the blow fell. The queen of night was high in the blue vault of heaven amid the twinkling stars. All nature was hushed to repose. The people of Laramie were in their beds. So were my hunting-case summer squashes. I heard a stealthy step near the conservatory where my celluloid radishes and pickled beets are growing, and I arose. ”

“ Every little while the youth would reach up to where it was and feel around nervously to see if it had climbed the golden stairs or was still on deck.
It was not a heavy mustache at all. It was about as voluptuous as a buffalo gnat's eye-brow.
I never saw a mustache before that brought the scalding tears to my eyes like that one. I thought how lonely the young man would be when it had glided up the flume and left him in this cold, uncharitable world with nothing to love and cling to but an earnest and unhappy boil on the back of his neck that wouldn't come to a focus. ”

“ Julia can't fool me much on a Michigan winter. When the seductive breath from the north comes soughing across Lake Superior, redolent with the blossom rock of the copper mines, and dead cranberry vines, and slippery elm bark, the poet or poetess who could maliciously crawl into a buffalo overcoat, and write a dirge that worked in "sighing soft winds," just for the benefit of one whose spirit is in a land where house plants never freeze, should have no poetic license. ”

“ The wail of departed spirits is on the winds that blow over this wide free land. The tears of departed heroes of our people fall in the rain drops, for their land is given away. To-day I look upon the sad wreck of a great people, and I ask you to go with me, and with our united hearts' blood win back the fair domain. ”

“ Some have such sensitive natures that they cannot look at the remains of an Indian who has been run over by two sections of freight, but I can. Somehow I do not feel that nervous distrust when I look at the red man with his osophagus wrapped around his head and tied in a double bow knot, that I do when he is full of the vigor of health.
When a train of cars has jammed his thigh-bone through his diaphragm and flattened his head out like a soup plate, I feel then that I can trust him. ”

“ If it be an indication of shrewdness and forethought to establish a village nine hundred miles from a railroad, wood, water and grub, and live on alkali and moss agates and wander down the vista of time without a square meal, then the prairie dog is beyond the barest possibility of doubt, keen and shrewd to a wonderful degree. But if instinct or animal sagacity be reckoned according to the number and amount of creature comforts afforded within a given space, I have a cow in my mind that will double discount all the chuckle-headed, cactus eating prairie dogs west of the Missouri. ”

“ There are few, indeed, of us who do not love the heaven-born music of true poesy. Hardened, indeed, must he be whose soul is dead to the glad song of the true poet, and we can but pity the gross, brutal nature which refuses to throb and burn with spiritual fire lighted with coals from the altar of the gods. ”

“ One summer day when the little birds were pouring forth their lay, and the little lambs were frisking on the green sward, and yanking their tails athwart the ambient air, she lit out for the great untried West with a grasshopper sufferer. The fluff and bloom of existence for her too is gone. She bangs eternal punishment out of thirteen consecutive children near Ogallalla, Nebraska, and wears out her sweet girlish nature working up her husband's underclothes into a rag carpet. It seems tough, but such is life. ”

“ He will drift away into the mighty, surging mass of humanity, and we shall forget it. Perhaps, when the Governor of Maine holds a mass meeting and re-union at Augusta, he will be there. But he will drop out of my horizon like the memory of a red-headed girl, and I shall go on my way until some other newspaper man with a letter from Whitelaw Reid, or George Washington, or Noah, or some other prominent man, comes along, and then I shall, no doubt, open up to his view the same untold wealth of confidence and generous trust. ”

“ Some take to agriculture and spend the long days of golden summer among the clover blossoms of the meadow, raking hay and hornets into large winrows, while they sniff the refreshing odor of the mignonette and the morning glory, and the boiling soft soap and potato bugs that have been mashed into the sweet bye-and-bye. ”

“ THOUGHTS ON SPRING Spring is the most joyful season of the year. The little brooklets are released from their icy fetters and go laughing and rippling along their winding way. The birds begin to sing in the budding branches, and the soft South wind calls forth the green grass. ”

“ Is it nothing forsooth for a nomadic race of buffalo slayers and maple sugar makers and cranberry pickers to rise from the dust and learn to love the wise institutions of a free government? To lay aside the old hickory bow of the original red man and take up the improved breech-loader? To take kindly to mixed drinks and Sabbath school picnics and temperance lectures and base-ball matches? To live contentedly about the agencies, playing poker for the whiskies during the cold and cruel winter? ”

“ THE RELENTLESS GARDEN HOSE. It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form and I do not know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week and wearing one of those large floppy sun bonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the Mountains of Hepsidam. ”

“ Dangerous Davis mounted his broncho, and tying his new wife on behind him on the saddle with an old shawl strap, plunged his spurs into the panting sides of his calico colored steed, and in a few moments was flying over the green plains, while the mountain breeze caught up the oleaginous saffron-hued tresses of the bride and in wild glee mingled them with the broncho's sorrel tail, and tossed them to the four winds of heaven. ”

“ I do not say this intending to reflect upon the noble profession of mining, for I have been taught to respect the pleasing lie which is told in a harmless way, to cheer the great surging mass of humanity who get tired of the same old truths that have been handed down from generation to generation. ”

“ Here and there along the river bank, like a lot of pic-nickers, the guileless miners are panning pounded quartz, or submitting their socks to the old process for freeing them from decomposed quartzite, and nonargentiferous clayite. Flying from the dome of the opera house is a red flannel shirt, while a pair of corpulent drawers of the same ruddy complexion, is gathering all the clear, bracing atmosphere of that locality. ”