Bill Nye

“ Almost every one can have a good deal of fun in America except the American. He seems to be so busy paying his taxes that he has very little time to vote, or to mingle in society's giddy whirl, or to mix up with the nobility. That is the reason why the alien who rides across the United States in the "Limited Mail" and writes a book about us before breakfast wonders why we are always in a hurry. ”

“ We have advertised to furnish a bunch of freedom to every man, woman, and child who comes to our shores, and we are going to deliver the goods whether we have any left for ourselves or not.
What would the great world beyond the seas say to us if some day the blue-eyed Oriental, with his heart full of love for our female seminaries and our old women's homes, should land upon our coasts and crave freedom in car-load lots but find that we were using all the liberty ourselves? But what do we want of liberty, anyhow? ”

“ The Fenimore Cooper Indian is no doubt a brave and highly intellectual person, educated abroad, refined and cultivated by foreign travel, graceful in the grub dance or scalp walk-around, yet tender-hearted as a girl, walking by night fifty-seven miles in a single evening to warn his white friends of danger. The Indian introduced into literature was a bronze Apollo who bathed almost constantly and only killed white people who were unpleasant and coarse. ”

“ When any man, North or South, in a public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and mawkish way of the great love he now has for his old enemy, watch him. He is getting ready to ask a favor. There is a beautiful, poetic idea in the reunion of two contending and shattered elements of a great nation. ”

“ Thus was New York discovered via Albany and Fort Lee, and five minutes after the two touched glasses, the brim of the schoppin and the Manhattan cocktail tinkled together, and New York was inaugurated.
Obtaining a gentle and philanthropical gentleman who knew too well the city by gas-light, they saw the town so thoroughly that nearly every building in the morning wore a bright red sign which read—
Regarding the question as to who has the right to claim the priority of discovery of New York, I unite with one of the ablest historians now living in stating that I do not know. ”

“ There is something beautifully pathetic in the picture of the North and the South clasped in each other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot tears down each other's backs as it is done in a play, but do you believe that the aged mothers on either side have learned to love the foe with much violence yet? ”

“ Officers were approached by the enemy with from one hundred to one thousand pounds if they would accept and use their influence to effect a reconciliation; but, with blazing eye and unfaltering attitude, each stated that he was not for sale, and returned to his frozen mud-hole to rest and dream of food and freedom.
Those were the untitled nobility from whom we sprung. Let us look over our personal record and see if we are living lives that are worthy of such heroic sires. ”

“ The general opinion of the author, thirty-five years afterwards, is that the war was as unavoidable as the deluge, and as idiotic in its incipiency as Adam's justly celebrated defence in the great "Apple Sass Case."
Men will fight until it is educated out of them, just as they will no doubt retain rudimentary tails and live in trees till they know better. It's all owing to how a man was brought up.
Of course after we have been drawn into the fight and been fined and sent home, we like to maintain that we were fighting for our home, or liberty, or the flag, or something of the kind. ”

“ Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars of war, and succeeding generations, fostered by the smiles of national prosperity, soften the bitterness of the past and mellow the memory of a mighty struggle in which each contending host called upon Almighty God to sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be just. ”

“ The way she jumped from a clay-eating crowd into the bosom of the English aristocracy by this dramatic ruse was worthy of a greater recognition than merely to figure among the makers of smoking-tobacco with fancy wrappers, when she never had a fancy wrapper in her life.
Smith was captured once by the Indians, and, instead of telling them that he was by birth a gent, he gave them a course of lectures on the use of the compass and how to learn where one is at. Thus one after another the Indians went away. I often wonder why the lecture is not used more as a means of escape from hostile people. ”

“ More citizens and less voters will some day be adopted as the motto of the Republic.
One reference to the late war, and I will close. I want to refer especially to the chronic reconciler who when war was declared was not involved in it, but who now improves every opportunity, especially near election-time, to get out a tired olive-branch and make a tableau of himself. He is worse than the man who cannot forgive or forget.
The growth of reconciliation between the North and the South is the slow growth of years, and the work of generations. ”

“ Philadelphia was founded in 1683 and work begun on a beautiful building known as the City Hall. Work has steadily progressed on this building from time to time since then, and at this writing it is so near completion as to give promise of being one of the most perfect architectural jobs ever done by the hand of man.
In two years Philadelphia had sprung from a wilderness, where the rank thistle nodded in the wind, to a town of over two thousand people, exclusive of Indians not taxed. In three years it had gained more than New York had in fifty years. ”

“ What are inherited titles and ancient names many times since dishonored, compared with the heritage of uncomplaining suffering and heroism which we boast of to-day because those modest martyrs were working people, proud that by the sweat of their brows they wrung from a niggardly soil the food they ate, proud also that they could leave the plough to govern or to legislate, able also to survey a county or rule a nation. ”

“ It takes a man of leisure to enjoy liberty, and we have no leisure whatever. It is a good thing to keep in the house for the use of guests, but we don't need it for ourselves.
Therefore we have a statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, because it shows that we keep Liberty on tap winter and summer. We want the whole broad world to remember that when it gets tired of oppression it can come here to America and oppress us. ”

“ October 8, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago, raging for forty-eight hours and devastating three thousand acres of the city. Twenty-five thousand buildings were burned, and two hundred million dollars' worth of property. One hundred thousand people lost their houses, and over seven and one-half millions of dollars were raised for those who needed it, all parts of the world uniting to improve the joyful opportunity to do good, without a doubt of its hearty appreciation. ”

“ If you wish to educate a man to be a successful oppressor, with a genius for introducing new horrors and novelties in pain, oppress him early in life and don't give him any reason for doing so. The idea that "God is love" was not popular in those days. The early settlers were so stern even with their own children that if the Indian had not given the forefather something to attract his attention, the boy crop would have been very light. ”

“ The Indians in 1813 fell upon Fort Mimms and massacred the entire garrison, men, women, and children, not because they felt a personal antipathy towards them, but because they—the red brothers—had sold their lands too low and their hearts were sad in their bosoms. There is really no fun in trading with an Indian, for he is devoid of business instincts, and reciprocity with the red brother has never been a success.
General Jackson took some troops and attacked the red brother, killing six hundred of him and capturing the rest of the herd. ”

“ WASHINGTON PLAYING THE FLUTE.
Whiskey will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have seen poets who relied on the potency of their breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bobtail flush than they ever did of the statutes in such case made and provided.
George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first in war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would be first baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hour of the day or night. ”

“ On one side the white man went armed to the field or the prayer-meeting, shooting an Indian on sight as he would a panther; on the other, a foe whose wife did the chores and hoed the scattering crops while he made war and extermination his joy by night and his prayer and life-long purpose by day.
Finally, however, the victory came sluggishly to the brave and deserving. One thousand Indians were killed at one pop, and their wigwams were burned. ”

“ Freedom is a good thing.
Twenty years later the Quakers shocked every one by thinking a few religious thoughts on their own hooks. The colonists executed four of them, and before that tortured them at a great rate.
During dull times and on rainy [Pg 54] days it was a question among the Puritans whether they would banish an old lady, bore holes with a red-hot iron through a Quaker's tongue, or pitch horse-shoes.
In 1643 the "United Colonies of New England" was the name of a league formed by the people for protection against the Indians. ”

“ Prosperity now attracted no attention whatever. Gold, worth nearly three dollars at the close of the war, fell to a dollar and ten cents, and the debt during the first two years of this administration was reduced two hundred million dollars.
Genuine peace reigned in the entire Republic, and o'er the scarred and shell-torn fields of the South there waved, in place of hostile banners, once more the cotton and the corn. ”

“ It was the history of all the other Colonies; poor, proud, with large masses of children clustering about, and Indians lurking in the out-buildings. The mother-country was negligent, and even cruel. Her political offscourings were sent to rule the people. The cranberry-crops soured on the vines, and times were very scarce.
It was during this period that Captain William Kidd, a New York ship-master and anti-snapper from Mulberry Street, was sent out to overtake and punish a few of the innumerable pirates who then infested the high seas. ”

“ The charter gave to all freemen a voice in making the laws. Among the first laws passed was one giving to every human being upon payment of poll-tax the right to worship freely according to the dictates of his own conscience. America thus became the refuge for those who had any peculiarity of religious belief, until to-day no doubt more varieties of religion may be found here than almost anywhere else in the world.
In 1635 the Virginia Colony and Lord Baltimore had some words over the boundaries between the Jamestown and Maryland Colonies. ”

“ With the advent of freedom of political opinion, the individual use of the conscience has become [Pg 70] popularized, and the time is coming when it will grow to a great size under our wise institutions and fostering skies. Instead of turning over our consciences to the safety deposit company of a great political party or religious organization and taking the key in our pocket, let us have individual charge of this useful little instrument and be able finally to answer for its growth or decay. ”

“ A few Indian wars now kept the people interested, and a large number of the red brothers, under Little Turtle, soon found themselves in the soup, as Washington put it so tersely in his message the following year. Twenty-five thousand square miles north of the Ohio were obtained by treaty from the Indians.
England claimed that traffic with America was not desirable, as the Americans did not pay their debts. Possibly that was true, for muskrat pelts were low at that time, and England refused to take cord-wood and saw-logs piled on the New York landing as cash. ”

“ The golden grain was drenched with the blood of men no less brave because they were not victorious, and the rich fields of Pennsylvania drank with thirsty eagerness the warm blood of many a Southern son. ”

“ It seems to me that we have too much liberty in this country in some ways. We have more liberty than we have money. We guarantee that every man in America shall fill himself up full of liberty at our expense, and the less of an American he is the more liberty he can have. ”

“ General Arnold had married a Tory lady, and lived in Philadelphia while recovering from his wounds received at Quebec and Saratoga. He was rather a high roller, and ran behind, so that it is estimated that his bills there per month required a peach-basket-full of currency with which to pay them, as the currency was then quoted. Besides, Gates had worried him, and made him think that patriotism was mostly politics. He was also overbearing, and the people of Philadelphia mobbed him once. He was reprimanded gently by Washington, but Arnold was haughty and yet humiliated. ”

“ America had many other discoverers besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others. ”

“ The news reached Philadelphia in the night, and when the watchman cried, "Past two o'clock, and Cornwallis is taken!" the people arose and went and prayed and laughed like lunatics, for they regarded the war as virtually ended. The old door-keeper of Congress died of delight. Thanks were returned to Almighty God, and [Pg 189] George Washington's nomination was a sure thing.
England decided that whoever counselled war any further was a public enemy, and Lord North, then prime minister, when he heard of the surrender of Cornwallis through a New York paper, exclaimed, "Oh, God! it is all over!" ”

“ The artilleryman unlimbered the gun, and while he was placing it General Jackson and staff crossed over and joined the army.
One cannot be too careful, during a war, in the matter of obedience to orders. We should always know as nearly as possible whether our orders come from the proper authority or not.
No one can help admiring this dashing officer's tour in the Shenandoah Valley, where he kept three major-generals and sixty thousand troops awake nights with fifteen thousand men, saved Richmond, scared Washington into fits, and prevented the union of McClellan's and McDowell's forces. ”

“ The colony now prospered. All freemen had the right to vote. Religious toleration was enjoyed first-rate, and, there being no negro slavery, Virginia bade fair to be the republic of the continent. But in 1619 the captain of a Dutch trading-vessel sold to the colonists twenty negroes. [Pg 42] The negroes were mostly married people, and in some instances children were born to them. This peculiarity still shows itself among the negroes, and now all over the South one hardly crosses a county without seeing a negro or a person with negro blood in his or her veins. ”