Chapter FOUR: Times (3)

It seems that some of the prospectors of the corporation, without the fear of God or the Common Council of Cummins City, had been appropriating these logs from time to time until out of a good, fair assortment there remained only a dejected little pile of "culls." The owner had watched with great annoyance the gradual disappearance of her property from day to day, and it made her lose faith in the final redemption of all mankind. She became cynical and misanthropical, lost her interest in the future, and became low spirited and unhappy.

One day, however, after this thing had proceeded about far enough she went to her trunk, and taking out the large size of navy revolver, the kind that plows up the vitals so successfully and sends so many Western men to their long home. Then she went out to where a group of men had scattered themselves out around camp to smoke.

She wasn't a large woman at all, but these men respected her. Though they were only rough miners there in the wilderness they recognized that she was a woman, and they recognized it almost at a glance, too. There she was alone among a wild group of men in the mountains, far from the protecting arm of the law and the softening influences of metropolitan life, and yet the common feeling of gallantry implanted in the masculine breast was there.

She indicated with a motion of her revolver that she desired to call the meeting to order. There seemed to be a general anxiety on the part of every man present to come to order just as soon as circumstances would permit. Then she made a short speech relative to the matter of house logs, and suggested that unless a certain number of those articles, now invisible to the naked eye, were placed at a certain point, or a certain amount of kopecks placed on file with the chairman of the meeting within a specified time, that perdition would be popping on Main Street in about two and one-half ticks of the chronometer.

There didn't seem to be any desire on the part of the meeting to amend the motion or lay it on the table. Although it was arbitrary and imperative, and although an opportunity was given for a free expression of opinion, there didn't seem to be any desire to take advantage of it.

A committee of three was appointed to carry out the suggestions of the chair, and in about half an hour, the house logs and kopecks having been placed on deposit at the places designated, the meeting broke up, subject to the call of the chairman.

It was not a very long session, but it was very harmonious--very harmonious and very orderly. There was no calling for the previous question or rising to a point of order. The pale-faced men who composed the convention did not look to the casual observers as though they had come there to raise points for debate over parliamentary practice. They kept their eye on the speaker's desk and didn't interrupt each other or struggle to see who would get the floor.

It is wonderful this inherent strength of weakness, as I might say, which enables a woman amid a throng of reckless men to command their respect and obedience sometimes where main strength and awkwardness would not avail.

THE NATIVE INBORN SHIFTLESSNESS OF THE PRAIRIE DOGS.

|I had read in my Fourth Reader about prairie dogs, and I thought, according to Washington Irving, that they knew more than a Congressman. He says a great deal about the sagacity and general mental acumen of the prairie dog, but I don't just exactly somehow seem to see where it comes in.

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.

I do not wish to say anything relative to Mr. Irving's opinion of the prairie dog which would not be perfectly respectful, for I learn with great sorrow that Mr. Irving is dead, but I do think that there is hardly an animal in the entire arcana of nature that will not beat the prairie dog two to one as a provider for his family or himself.

I have an old hen at my home here who certainly approximates very closely to my ideal of an irreclaimable fool that has grown childish with old age, and outside of the Democratic party perhaps she is entitled to distinction. But even she has lucid intervals, and she hasn't yet fallen to where she would willingly take up a home under the desert land act like a prairie dog.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

|The following answers to correspondents contain a great deal of useful information, and I publish them in order to avoid the constant annoyance of writing the same in substance to so many inquiring friends.

"Sweet Sixteen" writes from "Hold-up Hollow."

I am betrothed to a noble youth from Rice Lake, Minnesota, but he seems too have soured on his betroth.

"At first he seemed to love me according to Gunter, but he has grown cold. About the first of the round-up he went away, and I soon afterward heard that he was affianced to another.

"I understand that he says I am not of noble lineage enough for him. It is true. I may not be a thorough-bred, but I have a pure, loving nature, which is now running to waste. The name of my beloved is De Courtney Van D'Edbeete. He comes from the first families, and O, I love him so!

"Can you tell me what to do?

"Sweet Sixteen."

Answer.--Yes, I can tell you what to do. I have been there some, too. If you will only do as I tell you, you are safe.

You must win him back. I think you can easily do so.

Select a base-ball club of about the weight you can handle easily, and then go to him and win him back.

You are too prone to give up easily. Do not be discouraged.

All will yet be well.

He may think now that you are not of noble blood but you can make him change his mind. Go to him with the love light in your eye and put a triangular head on him with your base-ball club, and tell him that he does not understand the cravings of your nature. Drive him into the ground and sit down on him, and then tell him that you are nothing but a poor, friendless girl, and need some one to cling to. Then you can cling to him. All depends upon how successful you are as a clinger.

I see at a glance that De Courtney needs to be flattened out a few times. Do not kill him, but bring him so near to the New Jerusalem that he can see the dome of the court house, and he will gradually come back to you and love you, and your life will be one long golden dream of never-fading joy, and De Courtney will wring out the colored clothes for you and help you do the washing, and he will stay at home evenings and take care of the children while you go to prayer meeting, and he will not murmur when you work off an inexpensive meal of cold rice and fricasseed codfish on him.

If he gets to feeling independent, and puts on the old air of defiance, you can diet him on cold mush and mackerel till he will not feel so robust, and then you can reason with him again, and while he is recovering you can take your baseball club and your noble self-sacrificing love, and win him back some more.

"Lalla Rookh" writes from Waukegan, Illinois, as follows to wit:

"My classmates and I have had quite a serious discussion recently, on several questions of table etiquette, and we have finally agreed to leave the matter with you.

"First--If one is asked to say grace at the table, and does not wish to do so, or is not familiar with the forms, what should he do?

"Second--If one has anything in his mouth, or gets any foreign substance like a piece of bone or a seed in his mouth, how should he remove it, and what is the proper thing to do with it?

"Third--Would you kindly add a few general rules of table etiquette, which would be useful to the many admirers of your classic style?"

Answer--It would be hazardous for a gentleman unaccustomed to asking grace at the table to attempt it, unless he be a naturally fluent extemporeaneous speaker.

It is more difficult for one unacquainted with it, than to address a Sabbath school, or write a letter accepting the nomination for President.

It is, therefore, preferable to say in a few terse remarks that you are profoundly grateful for the high compliment, but that your health will not admit of its acceptance.

Second--Care should be used while at table not to get large foreign substances like hair-pins, soup-bones, or clothespins into the mouth with food, as it naturally requires some little _sang froid_ and tact to remove them. One accustomed to the mysteries of parlor-magic may slide the articles into his sleeve while coughing, and thence into the coat pocket of his host, thus easily getting himself out of an unpleasant situation, and at the same time producing roars of laughter at the expense of the host.

If, however, you are not familiar with sleight of hand, you may take in a full breath, and expel the object across the room under the whatnot, where it will not be discovered until you have gone away.

I will add a few general rules for table etiquette, which I have learned by actual experience to be of untold benefit to the active society man.

First--It is proper to take the last of anything on the plate if it comes to you, instead of declining it. It is supposed that there is more in the house, or if not, the host may go down town and get some. Do not, therefore, decline anything because it is the last on the dish, unless it looks as though it wouldn't suit you.

Second--If by mistake you get your spoon in the gravy so far that the handle is more or less sticky, do not get ill-tempered or show your displeasure, but draw it through your mouth two or three times, laughing a merry laugh all the time. Do not attempt to polish it off with your handkerchief. It might spoil your handkerchief.

Third--In drinking wine at table do not hang your eyes out on your cheek, or drink too fast and get it up your nose.

Do not drain your glass perfectly dry and then try to draw in what atmosphere there is in the room. This is not only vulgar, but it tends to cast large chunks of three-cornered gloom over the guests.

When you have drained your glass, do not bang it violently on the table and ask your host "how much he is out." This gives too much of the air of wild, unfettered freedom, and the unrestrained hilarity of the free-lunch.

Fourth--When you get anything in your mouth that is too hot, do not get mad and swear, because the other guests will only laugh at you, but remove the morsel calmly and tell the waiter to put it on ice a little while for you.

Fifth--When your coffee is out and you desire more, do not pound on your cup with your spoon, but be gentle and ladylike in your demeanor, telling some fresh little anecdote to please the guests, looking yearningly toward the coffee urn all the while.

Sixth--If you have to leave the table as soon as you are through, do not jump up suddenly and upset the table, but make an original and spicy remark about "having to eat and run like a beggar," and this will create such a hearty laugh over your sally of wit that you can slip out, select the best hat in the hall, and be half way home before the company can restrain its mirth.

There are some more good rules that I have on hand, not only relative to the table, but the ball-room, the parlor, the croquet lawn, the train, the church, and, in fact, almost everywhere that the society man might be placed. These I will give the public from time to time, as the growing demand seems to dictate.

THE SECRET OF GARFIELD'S ELECTION.

Headquarters in the Field,}

September 19, 1880.}

|As I start for Chicago to-morrow I take this opportunity to write.

The trip so far has been one continuous ovation. I have been swinging round the circle, leaving the flag and the constitution with the people, and living out of a valise--and my friends--till I begin to yearn for home. It has been my fortune to run into several Garfield meetings during the time that I have been here, and to make short but telling speeches for the Republican candidates. As one of the local papers very truthfully said:

"Mr. Nye certainly reaches the very core of the subject matter in his admirable campaign speeches this fall. His commanding appearance and wild, peculiar beauty win the attention of the audience even before he says one word, and when speaking his air of candor and searching truth secures the earnest and prayerful consideration of those before him. He seems to supply a want long felt, and in case of Garfield's election we have no hesitation in saying that it will be due largely to the scorching truths and heaven-born genius of this remarkable man."

It is a novel sensation indeed, after five years of silent suffering in Wyoming, disfranchised and helpless, to mingle in the campaign and give free utterance to the blood-curdling truths that have for years been bottled up in these brain. Perhaps the people here do not deserve it, but they need purification through suffering.

I have one Garfield speech that I have used here a number of times with telling effect, and which I shall turn over to the State Central Committee when I go West.

By taking out the front breadths, turning the overskirt and revising the peroration, it will wear till November easily. I would insert it in this letter only for the fact that it seems rather tame in print, owing to the absence of gestures.

In my public speaking most everyone who is near me seems to be forcibly struck with my gestures. Hear what the press says. The Minneapolis _Tribune_, speaking of my wonderful effort, concludes as follows:

"Perhaps the most potent weapon of this campaign is the soothing, poetical style of gesture owned and operated by William Nye. In his speech last evening before the Young Men's Republican club, those who were on the fence were harassed with soul-destroying doubts as to which was most to be feared, the success of an unprincipled Democracy or the frolicsome gestures of the speaker. The general feeling at the close of the speech seemed to be that Minneapolis had never listened to a speech so rich with wild, impetuous and death-dealing gesticulations before."

The Stillwater _Lumberman_ says:

"The speech last evening was noticeable for its grandeur of conception and the picturesque grace of its calisthentics. The speaker seemed to be largely made up of massive brow and limbs. When he rose and with easy grace unrolled his speech and untangled his legs, a general smile seemed to ripple the faces of the immense audience, but when he took a drink of water and began to make his new style of gesture, the mirthful manifestations gave place to a horrible apprehension of danger. Toward the close of the speech when Mr. Nye got warmed up to his work, and seemed to be lost in a wilderness of dissolving limbs, the police interfered and prevented the sacrifice of human life."

The Clear Lake _News_ of the 17th says:

"One of the distinguishing features of the meeting held here on Wednesday evening, under the management of the Temple of Honor, was a short speech on temperance by Bill Nye, of Wyoming.

"His work in the line of temperance seems to have been mainly that of furnishing the horrible examples, so that young men might avoid the demon of rum.

"After the speaker got well under way and began to emphasize his language with some gestures that he has imported at great expense for his own use, the congregation seemed at a loss whether it would be best as a matter of safety to flee from intemperance or the death-dealing gestures of the speaker.

"Mr. Nye to-day gave bonds in the sum of $500 to keep the peace, shipped his gestures to Chicago, and will leave on the first south-bound train."

PERILS OF THE BUTTERNUT PICKER.

|Speaking of trains reminds me that I have been scooting around the country lately on mixed and accommodation trains.

They are a good style of conveyance in some respects. For instance, if a man has a car-load of wheat that he wants to run into St. Paul with and sell, he can have it attached to the mixed train, and then he can get into the coach and go along with it, and attend to it personally. But where a man's time is worth $9 a moment, as mine is, it is annoying.

At first I couldn't get accustomed to it. I couldn't overcome my inertia when the car started or stopped, and it kept me worn out all the time apologizing to a corpulent old lady in the third seat from me. Had I been given a little time to select a lady whose lap I would prefer to sit down in, there were a dozen perhaps in the car more desirable than this old lady, but in the hurry and agitation I always seemed to select her.

Finally the conductor said that kind of business had gone far enough, and he tied me into my seat with a shawl-strap.

The train was very long, and when it got under full head-, way it was almost impossible to stop it at the various stations. We either stopped out in the country prematurely or passed the station at the rate of nine miles a minute, and then repented and came back. I was struck with the similarity of the first five or six towns on the line and spoke of it to a friend who accompanied me.

It seemed to me that Clarksville, Mapleton, Eldorado Junction, Pine Grove and Brookville had been planned by the same architect, but my friend only laughed and showed me that we had been switched and side-tracked for two or three hours at the first-named place.

We stopped in the woods once and I went out after butternuts.

It was a lovely autumn day, and after the thick nutritious air of the car, it was paradise to get out into the forest, where the fresh, sweet odor of the falling leaves was everywhere, and the hush of nature's annual funeral checked the thoughtless word and noisy laughter of the invader.

I wandered on, thinking of the brevity and comparative unimportance of our human life. How short the race we run, and how unsatisfactory our achievements at last. How like the leaves of the forest we spring forth in the early summer of our existence, nod pleasantly to our fellows a few brief mornings, and then die.

Thoughtlessly and aimlessly I had wandered on until I came to a large butternut, which I climbed with the old and almost forgotten enthusiasm of boyhood. At the top I tried some of my old and difficult tricks, and just as the train moved silently away I was going through the difficult and dangerous act of hanging to the upper limb of a butternut tree by the seat of the pants, and waiting patiently for the bough or the cassimere to yield and let the artist down into the arena by force of gravitation.

Dear reader, did you ever go through this thrilling experience? Did you ever feel the utter insecurity and maddening uncertainty which it yields? If not, then these lines are not to you?

Gently the tree swayed to and fro with the motion of the autumn breeze. Sadly the pines were sighing like lost souls, and the dead leaves fell softly to the ground, like the footfalls of departed spirits. I began to wish that I could fall softly to the ground like the footfalls of departed spirits, too.

I began to get bored and unhappy after awhile. My feet and hands hung in a cluster, and the position seemed strained and unnatural. I began to yearn for society, and the comforts of a home. I mentally calculated the distance I would have to fall, and wondered which of my bones I would shatter the most, and what the doctor's bill would be.

All at once I heard what seemed like a sound of smothered laughter. It was no doubt nothing but a sound which my fevered imagination had conjured up, aided by the torrent of blood that rushed to my head and thumped so loudly in my ears, but it maddened me, and I summoned all my strength in the mighty struggle to free myself. Finally, there was a short, sharp crash, and I felt myself rapidly descending through space. I fancied that I was an acrobat, and had fallen from the center pole that holds up the sky. I thought I lay in the dust and sawdust of the ring in a shapeless mass; and over all, and above all, there was the maddening sensation that my wardrobe was not complete. In my tortured imagination I could hear demoniac laughter, and occasional words of derision. They became more pronounced and distinct at last, and I fancied I heard one of these grinning imps saying:

"How peaceful he looks, and how young and fair. See how carelessly he has inserted his nose in the moist earth. He must have suffered a good deal through life, and yet his face is calm and happy in its expression. His general appearance is that of perfect rest, and the glad fruition of every hope.

"Let us go up into the tree and get the rest of his remains, and send them all home together."

This last speaker reminded me of the conductor, and the similarity struck me even in my trance. Slowly I opened my eyes. It was he. I almost wished that the fall had killed me. I did not fall from the tree to be humorous, but if I had I should have considered it the crowning triumph of an eventful career.

Most everyone from the train was there, and several from the nearest towns along the line. I bowed my thanks in silence, and backed over to the car. I got aboard and sat down. I found that I attracted less attention when I was sitting down, and I never cared so little for public notice in my life as I did that day.

It seems that the train had gone away some distance, but when it got by itself it remembered that I was not on board, and the peanut boy remembered seeing me get off at this point. So, as the train was already two weeks and four days behind, the conductor decided to go back. He says now that he does not regret it. He says that the life of a conductor at the best has but few bright spots in it, and the oases along the desert which he treads are widely separated, but he told me with tears in his eyes that Providence had made me the humble instrument for great good, and he felt grateful to me.

When he breaks out into a glad ripple of childish laughter now without any apparent cause, he takes a piece of checked cassimere out of his pocket and explains how he got it, and tells the whole story to his friends, so there are a great many people along that line of travel who know me by reputation although they have never seen me.

A WORD OR TWO ABOUT THE SWALLOW.

|Lately I have made some valuable discoveries relative to ornithology, and I will give some of them to the public, for I love to shed information right and left, like a Normal school.

When the soft south wind began to kiss our cheeks, and the horse-radish and North Park prospector began to start, the swift-winged swallows drew near to my picturesque home on East Fifth street, and I hoped with a great, anxious, throbbing hope, that they would build beneath the Gothic eaves of my $200 ranche.

I would take my guitar at the sunset hour, and sit at my door in a camp-chair, with the fading glory of the dying day bathing me in a flood of golden light, and touching up my chubby form, and I would warble, "When Sparrows Build," an old solo in J, which seems to fit my voice, and the swallows would flit around me on tireless wing, and squeak, and sling mud over me till the cows came home.

This thing had gone on for several days, and the little mud houses under the eaves were pretty near ready, and in the meantime the spring bed bug had come with his fragrant breath, and turpentine, and quicksilver, and lime, and aquafortis, and giant-powder, and a feather, has made my home a howling wilderness, that smelled like a city drug store.

But it didn't kill the bugs. It pleased them. They called a meeting and tendered me a vote of thanks for the kind attentions with which they had been received. They ate all these diabolical drugs, not only on regular days, but right along through Lent.

I got mad and resolved to insure the house and burn it down. One evening I felt sad and worn, and was trying to solace myself by trilling a few snatches from Mendelssohn's "Wail," written in the key of G for a baritone voice. A neighbor came along and stopped to lean over the gate, and drink in the flood of melody which I was spilling out on the evening air. When I got through and stopped to tune my guitar anew, and scratch a warm place on my arm, he asked if I were not afraid that those swallows would bring bed bugs to the house.

I had heard that before, but I thought it was a campaign lie. I acted on the suggestion, however, and taking a long pole from behind the door, where I keep it for pictorial Bible men, I knocked down a 'dobe cottage, and proceeded to examine it.

It was level full of imported Merino and Cotswold and Southdown and Early Rose and Duchess of Oldenburg and twenty-ounce Pippins and Seek-no-further bed bugs. There were bed bugs in modest gray ulsters and bed bugs in dregs of wine and old gold, bed bugs in ashes of roses and beg bugs in elephants' breath, bed bugs with their night clothes on and in morning wrappers, bed bugs that were just going on the night shift, and bed bugs that had been at work all day and were just going to bed.

I killed all I could and then drove the rest into a pan of coal oil. When one undertook to get out of the pan I shot him. This conflict lasted several days. I neglected my other business and omitted morning prayers until there was a great calm and the swift-winged swallows homeward flew. When these feathered songsters come around my humble cot another spring they will meet with a cold, unwelcome reception. I shall not even ask them to take off their things.

I have formed the idea somehow from watching the eccentric nervous flight of the swallow, that when he makes one of those swift flank movements with the speed of chain lightning he must be acting from the impulse of a large, earnest, triangular bed bug of the boarding house variety. I may be wrong, but I have given this matter a good deal of attention, and whether this theory be correct or not I do not care. It is good enough for me.

LAUGHING SAM.

|During the past week I have experienced the pleasure of an acquaintance with Laughing Sam, a character well known throughout the West. Samuel Thompson was introduced to me on Tuesday last, and, although he has a look of subdued pain and half concealed anguish, I soon found that he was capable of exhibiting the most wild and ungovernable mirth.

Laughing Sam is employed by Surveyor Downey, and the latter has often told me how he wished that I could employ Sam by the month to laugh at what I might write, so that I could be encouraged.

After the formalities of an introduction were over, we began to tell anecdotes in order to get Sam into a cheerful frame of mind. When one would get tired and lay off for a rest, some other one would come forward to the bat and tell some more humorous tales. But Sam had evidently heard all these anecdotes, and looked disgusted and fatigued and bored.

Downey whispered to me that it wouldn't do; we must have something entirely different, and that I had better fix up one of those custom-made lies of mine, such as we used to tell at the boarding house in '75.

I did so with some hesitation, but Sam kindly gave me his attention and cheered me with an occasional pleased grunt. Then I threw my whole soul into it. I put in all the pathos of which I am capable at certain parts, and then where it was grand and terrific I got up and sawed the air, and where it was ludicrous I enlarged upon it till Sam's eye began to glisten.

By-and-by the fountains of the great deep opened, and Sam lay on the floor a quivering mass. Sometimes we thought he was dead, but then one leg would fly through the air and he would give a wild whoop of pain. Then, in a lucid moment, he would try to get up, but he would fall back again, and his lips would spasmodically relax and contract, and the air would be filled with a wild mixture of yells and whoops and gurgles and contortions.

It was not what was said that made him laugh, but it was because his time had come to indulge in a little mirth. I tried the same story afterward on an ordinary laughter, and when I got through he was bathed in tears. So it wasn't the story.

When Laughing Sam looks at his watch and sees that a large amount of mirthfulness is due he calmly puts away anything that may be near him of a fragile nature and proceeds to laugh in a way that shakes the stars loose in the firmament and disarranges the entire planetary world.

This fall he has an engagement to laugh for Eli Perkins during the lecture season. Eli is to give him half the proceeds of the lectures and Sam has got to laugh whether he feels like it or not.

THE CALAMITY JANE CONSOLIDATED.

|I have one claim--at least myself and two or three other capitalists have--which has shown itself to be very rich, but it is not for sale. We are sinking on it now. We set a force of men at work on it two weeks ago consisting of genial cuss from Bitter Creek. He dug a few hours in a vertical direction, when overworked nature yielded and he went to sleep.

I discharged the entire gang. Shortly after that at a great expense we secured a day shift by the name of O'Toole. He is Greek I think.

He is still at work, though he found it very difficult to use the long handle shovel at first. He insisted on pouring the dirt down the back of his neck and then climbing out of the shaft with it and undressing himself with a gentle repose of manner which indicated that he had perfect command of himself and knew that his time was going right on all the same.

Still there are drawbacks about this style of mining. The work does not progress as rapidly as the present rush and hurry and turmoil of the American people seem to demand.

Two weeks ago the perilous undertaking of sinking this shaft to a depth of ten feet in a perpendicular direction was begun, and although we have shipped several mule loads of the choicest grub, consisting of bacon in large packages done up in corn-colored overshirts and XXX Nebraska flour, yet the top of Mr. O'Tool's head is visible to the naked eye from a considerable distance as he stands in the shaft.

Occasionally the Count De O'Toole fancies that he has been bitten by a tarantula, and the stockholders of the Calamity Jane Consolidated have to ship a large lunch basket with a willow cover to it and a cork in the top in order to counteract the poison that is rankling in his system.

THE NOCTURNAL COW.

|With the opening up of my spring movements in the agricultural line comes the cow.

Laramie has about seven cows that annoy me a good deal. They work me up so that I lose my equanimity. I have mentioned this matter before, but this spring the trouble seems to have assumed some new features. The prevailing cow for this season seems to be a seal-brown cow with a stub tail, which is arranged as a night-key. She wears it banged.

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.

It was a lovely sight. At the head of the procession there was a seal-brown cow with a tail like the handle on a pump, and standing at an angle of forty-five degrees.

That was the cow.

Following at a rapid gait was a bewitching picture of alabaster limbs and Gothic joints and Wamsutta muslin night robe.

That was me.

The queen of night withdrew behind a cloud.

The vision seemed to break her all up.

Bye-and-bye there was a crash, and the seal-brown cow went home carrying the garden gate with her as a kind of keepsake. She had a plenty of garden gates at home in her collection, but she had none of that particular pattern. So she wore it home around her neck.

The writer of these lines then carefully brushed the sand off his feet with a pillow sham and retired to rest.

When the bright May morn was ushered in upon the busy world the radish and squash bed had melted into chaos and there only remained some sticks of stove wood and the tracks of a cow, interspersed with the dainty little footprints of some Peri or other who evidently stepped about four yards at a lick, and could wear a number nine shoe if necessary.

Yesterday morning it was very cold, and when I went out to feed my royal self-acting hen, I found this same cow wedged into the hen coop. O, blessed opportunity! O, thrice blessed and long-sought revenge!

Now I had her where she could not back out, and I secured a large picket from the fence, and took my coat off, and breathed in a full breath. I did not want to kill her, I simply wanted to make her wish that she had died of membranous croup when she was young.

While I was spitting on my hands she seemed to catch my idea, but she saw how hopeless was her position. I brought down the picket with the condensed strength and eagerness and wrath of two long, suffering years. It struck the corner of the hen-house. There was a deafening crash and then all was still, save the low, rippling laugh of the cow, as she stood in the alley and encouraged me while I nailed up the hen-house again.

Looking back over my whole life, it seems to me that it is strewn with nothing but the rugged ruins of my busted anticipations.

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.

Water won't hurt anyone of course if care is used not to forget and drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty about facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross eyed woman that unnerves me and paralyzes me.

Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected where leaden rain and iron hail are thickest, as I would be in my own office writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I hate to be drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dry land and have my dying gaze rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a narrow-gauge mule into convulsions and make him hate himself to death.

A WAIL.

_To the Editor of the Bass Drum_:

I appeal to the charity of more favored sisters of the east, who live in an atmosphere of music to throw a crumb of comfort to one who lives in the wilderness and has, in the past ten years, heard positively no music.

I want a list of contralto songs for the voice, compass two octaves G, in bass clef to G, above the line, treble. I should also like a list of piano solos, third or fourth grade, the Trauemerei order of music preferred. I will make any compensation desired, and forever bless my friends in need. No Name.

It is pretty sad to suffer along for ten years and not hear any music. It must seem dull and quiet, especially to one who has lived in an atmosphere of music. Ten years with no one at hand to churn up the atmosphere occasionally with something extending "from G in bass clef to G above the line treble" is a long while. But here in the "wilderness" we have to squeeze along the best way we can. We can't go and hear Ole Bull every two weeks here. Sitting Bull is about as near as we can approximate to the Bull family. It is pretty tough, and there is no denying it.

Speaking about crumbs of comfort, however, if "No Name" will drop around to the _Bass Drum_ office, say about 12:30 to-morrow, we will attend to the crumb business. We do not, as a general rule, warble much, but if she will come around at that hour we will trill two or three little olios for "one who lives in the wilderness, and has in the past ten years heard positively no music." If we had known that she was starving along that way without five cents' worth of music to lay her jaw to, we would have hunted her up and given her a blast or two. There's nothing mean about us. We may be rough and perhaps impulsive at times, but we will never hush our merry lay so long as anybody is suffering. Always come right to us when hungry for music.

THE GREAT, HORRID MAN RECEIVETH NEW YEAR CALLS.

In my Boudoir, Dec. 20, 1879.

|New Year's Day will be Leap Year, and the ladies want to make calls.

The masculine man will, therefore, have to receive. Some of us will club together at private houses and receive, while others will "hire a hall" and sling a great deal of agony, no doubt. I shall be at home to some extent. I shall wear my organdy, looped up with demi-overskirt of the same, and three-ply lambrequins of Swiss, with corded edges and button-holes of elephant's breath cut plain. My panier is down at the machine shop now and will be done in a few days. I shall be assisted by Superintendent Dickinson and First Assistant Postmaster General Spalding of the Laramie post-office department, and the grand difficulty will no doubt occur at the residence of the latter.

Mr. Dickinson will wear a lavender _moire antique_ with all wool underclothes. The costume will be draped on the side with bevel pinions, and looped back with English button-holes, and cut low in the neck.

Mr. Spalding will wear a cream-colored walking suit with train No. 4. He will also wear buttons with buttonholes to match. Sleeves cut Princesse, with polished elbows of same. Boots plain with cranberry sauce. Brocaded silk overskirt, with lemon sauce. Fifty-three button kids, fastening to the suspenders, open back, with Italian dressing.

I give these notes to the reporter in advance, because women are so apt to get these things all mixed up. After we have spent so much time constructing an elaborate wardrobe, we do not wish the journals of the Territory to come out the next day, and make each one of us appear like "a perfect dud." Our table will also look the nicest of any in town. We have designed it ourselves. We have arranged the hose so that we can play it on the dishes after we have used them, and save splashing around in hot water between meals. We intend to feed the first three or four delegations without doing any work on the dishes. After that we will of course have to turn on the hose. Visitors will be made to feel perfectly at home. Callers will be required not to spit on the floor. Parties making calls will not be allowed to throw peanut shells in the card-receiver, or leave their muddy articles on the piano. Callers will please remain seated while the frigid sustenance is circulated. No standing callers allowed. Standing collars are going out of style anyhow.

JUST THE THING.

Office of The Twilight Bumble Bee.

We have just received a copy of the Nebraska _Staats Zeitung-Tribune_ a nice little eight page German paper, published at Grand Island, Nebraska. We have not read it all through yet, but it is a mighty good paper. We do not understand much German. We are a little rusty. "Zwei glass lager" is about all the German we know, and that isn't very pure.

But this paper we like. There is a tone about it that seems to indicate a lofty conception of true journalism. A noble ambition to cope with vice and the prevailing errors of the day, and to conquer ignorance and wrong. As we said before, there are a great many things in the paper which we fail to quite "catch on" to, owing to our ignorance of the German language, but there is a picture of a cook stove on the eighth page that is first-rate. It is in the English language. There is also a picture of a wind mill, in fractured English, on the same page. It is very correct in its sentiment, and we endorse it.

In conclusion we will say that from what we have seen of this paper, we are prepared to say that it meets a want long felt. It is pure in tone, noble in politics, fearless in its attack upon the popular shortcomings of the day, and well deserving of the hearty approval of the public.

THANKS.

|M. E. Post, M. C., of Cheyenne, will please accept our thanks for an indestructible pumpkin pie, presented on the 9th inst. It is the most durable pie that we ever wrestled with. Probably it was not picked early enough and got too ripe. It is the first genuine cane-bottomed pie, with patent dust damper and nickle-plated movement that we have tasted since we came west. He says it was raised on the Laramie plains. If this be true, we have opened up before us another resource of which we may be justly proud. We have valuable marble quarries, but marble may be cracked and broken. We also have mountains of iron and leads of valuable quartz, but all these must yield to the superior strength of man. This style of pie, however, will defy the power of mortal ingenuity, and withstand the effacing finger of time. Men may come and men may go but this pie will last forever. We make bold to say that when Gabriel sounds the proclamation that time is no more, this blasted pie will stand up without a blush and say: "Here, Gabriel, is where you get your nice, fresh pie, and don't you forget it, either."

AN ANTI-MORMON TOWN.

|A Mormon missionary turned himself loose in Rawlins the other night and attempted to proselyte the good people into getting another invoice of wives to assist in taking off the chill of the approaching winter; but there was a feeling in the audience that the man who represented the church of the Latter Day Saints was a little off in addressing them, so they went to a dealer in old and rare antiquities and purchased some eggs that had a smell which is peculiar to eggs that have yielded to the infirmities of age.

The Rawlins people raised the windows on the sides of the building and broke eleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many hens were not feeling well; they broke them against the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets overleven and one-half dozen out of a possible twelve dozen of these eggs, which had been coined in the year of the great crash. It was the year when so many hens were not feeling well; they broke them against the brass collar button of the orator, and they ran down in graceful little brooklets and rivulets and squiblets and driblets over his white lawn tie and boiled shirt.

Rawlins is not strictly a Mormon town, and the lecturer who took some clothes through in a valise the other day bound for Evanston, where he could get them washed, was arrested by a New York detective who was sure he had at last caught the man who had Stewart's body.

A CHRISTMAS RIDE IN JULY.

|I've just returned from a long ride to the Soda Lakes.

The ride reminded me of a tour I took in July from Laramie over to Cheyenne, two years, ago. We had experienced the pleasure of riding over the mountain, on the Union Pacific train, and had held our breath while crossing Dale Creek bridge, and viewed with wonder the broken billows of granite, lying here and there at the tip-top of the mighty divide. But some one had said that it was nothing compared with the mirth-provoking trip by carriage across the mountains, over a fine wagon road to Cheyenne.

In the morning I nearly melted riding up the sandy canyon, and took off my coat and gliding pleasantly along-alternately sang one or two low throbs of melody, and alternately swore about the extreme heat.

When we got nearly to the top, I thought it didn't look well for a man to whom the American people look for so much in the future, to be riding along the public highway without his coat, so I put it on. At the top of the mountain I put on a linen duster and gloves. Shortly after that I put on my overshoes and a sealskin cap. Later, I put on my buffalo overcoat, and got out and ran behind the carriage to keep warm.

When I got to Cheyenne, the Doctor looked me over and said that he could save my feet because they had so much vitality, and were in such a good state of preservation; but my ears--my pride and glory--the ears that I had defended through the newspapers for years, and had stood up for when all about was dark--they had to go.

That is, part of them had to go, and there was enough left to hear with; but the ornamental scallops and box plaiting, and frills, the wainscoating, and royal Corinthian entablatures had to go.

EXAMINING THE BRAND ON A FROZEN STEER.

|A stock owner went out the other day over the divide to see how his cattle were standing the rigorous weather, and found a large, fine steer in his last long sleep. The stockman had to roll him over to see the brand, and he has regretted his curiosity ever since. He told me that the brand looked to him like a Roman candle making about 2,000 revolutions per moment, and with 187 more prismatic colors than he thought were in existence. Sometimes a steer is not dead but in a cold, sleepy stupor which precedes death, and when stirred up a little and irritated because he cannot die without turning over and showing his brand, he musters his remaining strength and kicks the inquisitive-stockman so high that he can see and recognize the features of departed friends. That was the way it happened on this occasion. The stockman fell in the branches of a pine tree on Jack Creek, not dead but very thoughtful. He said he was near enough to hear the rush of wings, and was just going to register and engage a room in the New Jerusalem when he returned to consciousness.

ONION PEELIN'S.

|The Chinese agriculturalist does his hair up in a French twist because he don't want to have his cue cumber the ground.

Almost every day there is a new liver pad or lung pad or kidney pad, but in its way nothing has succeeded in giving instant relief like the Leadville foot pad.

A man can scratch his back against a hat rack or a whatnot for a year or two, and attribute it to buckwheat cakes, but after he has gone on this way for about seven years, the public and his friends begin to lose faith in him.

A handsome competence is in store for the man who will invent a neat, durable and portable pie opener that will successfully reach the true inwardness of the average box-toed, Bessemer steel, gooseberry pie which the hired girl casts in her kitchen foundry.

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.

Putting up stovepipe is easy enough, if you only go at it right. In the morning, breakfast on some light, nutritious diet, and drink too cups of hot coffee. After which put on a suit of old clothes--or new ones if you can get them on time--put on an old pair of buckskin gloves, and when every thing is ripe for the fatal blow, go and get a good hardware man who understands his business. If this rule be strictly adhered to, the gorgeous eighteen-karat-stem-winding profanity of the present day may be very largely diminished, and the world made better.