Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) by Nye and Riley (13 inch ebook reader TXT) 📖
- Author: Nye and Riley
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Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when[Pg 138] she dies, it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.
The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her black retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose into the blue grass from ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the life of a Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.
Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.
The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru[Pg 139] colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of the greatest interest.
Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully to salt the mines.
The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.
Here the jackass at times becomes a co-worker with the cow in hauling tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the butter industry.
The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman, who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he adds a small pair of ear-bobbs during the holidays.
The cow is attached to each shaft and a small single-tree, or swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her escort.
I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than[Pg 140] that of a new milch cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson Democratic wagon loaded with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly can feel very little interest.
Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for smoking purposes. It is the highest-price tobacco produced in this country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco while growing.
He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all about the tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but which may be of incalculable value to the press.
As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing their thoughtlessness to-day.
A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the climate. When they have[Pg 141] remained here for one winter, however, they decide to leave it where it is.
It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.
Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to these columns, I shall watch for it with great interest.
Yours as here 2 4,
Bill Nye.
P. S.—I should have said, relative to the cow of this State, that if the owners would work their butter more and their cows less they would confer a great boon on the consumer of both.
B. N. [Pg 142]
A Character
I.
Swallowed up in gulfs of tho't—
Eye-glass fixed—on—who knows what?
We but know he sees us not.
Chance upon him, here and there—
Base-ball park—Industrial Fair—
Broadway—Long Branch—anywhere!
Even at the races,—yet
With his eye-glass tranced and set
On some dream-land minaret.
At the beach, the where, perchance—
Tenderest of eyes may glance
On the fitness of his pants.
Vain! all admiration—vain!
His mouth, o'er and o'er again
[Pg 143]Absently absorbs his cane.
Vain, as well, all tribute paid
To his morning coat, inlaid
With crossbars of every shade.
He is oblivious, tho
We played checkers to and fro
On his back—he would not know.
II.
So removed—illustrious—
Peace! kiss hands, and leave him thus
He hath never need of us!
Come away! Enough! Let be!
Purest praise, to such as he,
Were as basest obloquy.
Vex no more that mind of his,
We, to him, are but as phizz
Unto pop that knows it is.
Haply, even as we prate
Of him HERE—in astral state—
Or jackastral—he, elate,
Brouses 'round, with sportive hops
In far fields of sphery crops,
Nibbling stars like clover-tops.
He, occult and psychic, may
Now be solving why to-day
Is not midnight.—But away!
Cease vain queries! Let us go!
Leave him all unfathomed.—Lo,
He can hear his whiskers grow.
[Pg 144]
"Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, Dec. 31, 188-.—It hardly seems possible that I am here in New York, putting up at a hotel where it costs me $5[Pg 145] or $6 a day just simply to exist. I came here from my far away-home entirely alone. I have no business here, but I simply desired to rub up against greatness for awhile. I need polish, and I am smart enough to know it.
"I write this entry in my diary to explain who I am and to help identify myself in case I should come home to my room intoxicated some night and blow out the gas.
"The reason I am here is that last summer while whacking bulls, which is really my business, I grub-staked Alonzo McReddy and forgot about it till I got back and the boys told me that Lon had struck a First National bank in the shape of the Sarah Waters claim. He was then very low with mountain fever and so nobody felt like jumping the claim. Saturday afternoon Alonzo passed away and left me the Sarah Waters. That's the only sad thing about the whole business now. I am raised from bull-whacking to affluence, but Alonzo is not here. How we would take in the town together if he'd lived, for the Sarah Waters was enough to make us both well fixed.
"I can imagine Lon's look of surprise and pride as he looks over the outer battlements of the New Jerusalem and watches me paint the town. Little did Lon think when I pulled out across the flat with my whiskers full of alkali dust and my cuticle full of raw agency whisky, that inside of a year I would be a nabob, wearing biled shirts every single day of my life, and clothes made specially for me.
"Life is full of sudden turns, and no one knows here in America where he'll be in two weeks from now. I may be back there associating with greasers[Pg 146] again as of yore and skinning the same bulls that I have heretofore skun.
"Last evening I went to see 'The Mikado,' a kind of singing theater and Chinese walk-around. It is what I would call no good. It is acted out by different people who claim they are Chinamen, I reckon. They teeter around on the stage and sing in the English language, but their clothes are peculiar. A homely man, who played that he was the lord high executioner and chairman of the vigilance committee, wore a pair of wide, bandana pants, which came off during the first act. He was cool and collected, though, and so caught them before it was everlastingly too late. He held them on by one hand while he sang the rest of his piece, and when he left the stage the audience heartlessly whooped for him to come back.
"'The Mikado' is not funny or instructive as a general thing, but last night it was accidently facetious. It has too much singing and not enough vocal music about it. There is also an overplus of conversation through the thing that seems like talking at a mark for $2 a week. It may be owing to my simple ways, but 'The Mikado' is too rich for my blood.
"We live well here at the Fifth Avenue. The man that owns the place puts two silver forks and a clean tablecloth on my table every day, and the young fellows that pass the grub around are so well dressed that it seems sassy and presumptions for me to bother them by asking them to bring me stuff when I'd just as soon go and get it myself and nothing else in the world to do.
"I told the waiter at my table yesterday that when[Pg 147] he got time I wished he would come up to my room and we could have a game of old sledge. He is a nice young man, and puts himself out a good deal to make me comfortable.
"I found something yesterday at the table that bothered me. It was a new kind of a silver dingus, with two handles to it, for getting a lump of sugar into your tea. I saw right away that it was for that, but when I took the two handles in my hand like a nut cracker and tried to scoop up a lump of sugar with it
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