Cordwood Part 11

THE BRONCO COW.

BILL NYE UNDERTAKES TO MILK HER WHEN THE SIGN IS NOT RIGHT--DISASTROUS RESULTS.

When I was young and used to roam around over the country, gathering water-melons in the dark of the moon, I used to think I could milk anybody's cow, but I do not think so now. I do not milk a cow now unless the sign is right, and it hasn't been right for a good many years.

The last cow I tried to milk was a common cow, born in obscurity; kind of a self-made cow. I remember her brow was low, but she wore her tail high and she was haughty, oh, so haughty.

I made a common-place remark to her, one that is used in the very best of society, one that need not have given offense anywhere. I said "so"--and she "soed". Then I told her to "histe"--and she histed. But I thought she overdid it. She put too much expression in it.

Just then I heard something crash through the window of the barn and fall with a dull, sickening thud on the outside.

The neighbors came to see what it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it in getting through the window.

I asked the neighbors if the barn was still standing. They said it was.

Then I asked if the cow was injured much. They said she seemed to be quite robust. Then I requested them to go in and calm the cow a little and see if they could get my plug hat off her horns.

I am buying all my milk now of a milk-man. I select a gentle milk-man who will not kick and I feel as though I could trust him. Then if he feels as though he could trust me, it is all right.

AUTUMN THOUGHTS.

There can be nothing sadder than the solemn hush of nature that precedes the death of the year. The golden glory of autumn, with the billowy bronze and velvet azure of the skies above the royal robes of oak and maple, bespeak the closing hours of nature's teeming life and the silent farewell to humanity's gauze underwear.

Thus while nature dons her regal robe of scarlet and gold in honor of the farewell benefit to autumn, the sad-eyed poet hies away to a neighboring clothes line, and the hour of nature's grand blowout dons the flaming flannels of his friend out of respect for the hectic flush of the dying year.

Leaves have their time to fall, and so has the price of coal. And yet how sadly at variance with decaying nature is the robust coal market.

Another glorious summer with its wealth of pleasant memories is stored away among the archives of our history. Another gloomy winter is upon us. These wonderful colors that flame across the softened sky of Indian summer like the gory banner of royal conqueror, come but to warn us that in a few short weeks the water pipe will be bursted in the kitchen and the decorated washbowl be broken.

We flit through the dreamy hours of summer like swift-winged b.u.mble bees amid the honeysuckle and pumpkin blossoms, storing away, perhaps, a little glucose honey and buckwheat pancakes for the future, but all at once, like a newspaper thief in the night, the king of frost and ripe mellow chilblains is upon us, and we crouch beneath the wintry blast and hump our spinal column up into the crisp air like a Texas steer that has thoughtlessly swallowed a raw cactus.

Life is one continued round of alternative joys and sorrows. To-day we are on the top wave of prosperity and warming ourselves in the glad sunlight of plenty, and to-morrow we are cast down and depressed financially, and have to stand off the washer-woman for our clean shirt or stay at home from the opera.

The November sky already frowns down upon us, and its frozen tears begin to fall. The little birds have hushed their little lay. So has the fatigued hen. Only a little while, and the yawning chasm in the cold, calm features of the Thanksgiving turkey will be filled with voluptuous stuffing and then sewed up. The florid features of the polygamous gobbler will be wrapped in sadness, and cranberry pie will be a burden, for the veal cutlet goeth to its long home, and the ice cream freezer is broken in the woodhouse.

Oh, time! thou baldheaded pelican with the venerable corncutter and the second hand hour-gla.s.s, thou playest strange pranks upon the children of men. No one would think, to look at thy bilious countenance and store teeth, that in thy bony bosom lurked such eccentric schemes.

The chubby boy, whose danger signal hangs sadly through the lattice-work of his pants, knows that Time, who waits for no man, will one day, if we struggle heroically on, give him knowledge and suspenders, and a solid girl, and experience and soft white mustache and eventually a low grave in the valley beneath the sighing elms and the weeping willow, where, in the misty twilight of the year, noiselessly upon his breast shall fall the deaf leaf, while the silent tear of the gray autumnal sky will come and sink into the yellow gra.s.s above his head.

BILL NYE.

BILL NYE'S ADVICE BAG.

ANXIOUS QUESTIONS ANSWERED.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S CHILLING NEGLECT OF AN EDITOR DENOUNCED--THE WOMAN IN THE SLEEPING COACH--CALM REASONING DEALT OUT.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

_"Ghoulish Glee," Bucyrus, O._, writes: "For two years I have been sending a copy of my paper, the 'Palladium and Observer' to President Cleveland. Although I have criticised his administration editorially several times, I have done so with the best of motives and certainly for his good. If he was angry with me for this, he surely has never so expressed himself to me, but last August I sent him a bill for his paper covering two years and over, and he has not answered my letter up to this date. Will you answer this through the columns of the _Daily News_ telling me what I had better do, and so that others who may be in the same fix can understand what your advice would be in such a case?"

Stop his paper. By all means deprive him of the paper. You should have done so before. Then you will feel perfectly free to criticise his administration to the bitter end.

Nothing startles a president any more than to shut off a paper that he has become attached to. Mr. Cleveland will go out and paw around in the wet gra.s.s in front of the white house, and finally he will go in, wondering what has become of the Palladium and Observer. In a week or two he will remit and tell you to continue sending the paper. Do not criticise his administration too severely till you see whether he is going to remit or not.

_Early Rose, Mankato, Minn._, writes: "Is it proper to mark pa.s.sages in a book of poems loaned to one by a young man in whom one feels an interest, or should one be content with simply expressing one's admiration of certain pa.s.sages in the book?"

I think the latter plan would be preferable, Rose. I am sure that young ladies make a great mistake when they mark the earnest and impa.s.sioned pa.s.sages in a book of poems belonging to another. I once loaned a book of poems written by a gentleman named Swinburne. In this book Mr.

Swinburne had several times expressed himself as being violently in love with all the works of nature, especially those people who differed with him in the matter of s.e.x. He wrote so fluently and so earnestly regarding the matter of love that I loaned the book to a young lady, hoping that she would take this as a vicarious expression of my sentiments. It was a costly book, and so when it came back with Mr.

Swinburne's sentiments emphasized by means of a blue pencil, and his earnest thoughts underscored with a crochet hook, punctuated with tears, and stabbed with a hair-pin, I regretted it very much. I was led to believe, also, by rereading the book, that she was in the habit of perusing it at the breakfast table, and that she was a victim of the omelet habit.

Do not mark a borrowed book unless you have more friends than you can avail yourself of.

_Savant, Tailholt, Ind._: You can get Indian arrow-heads now almost anywhere except on the frontier. A good hand-made Indian arrow head is now made in Connecticut, and the prices are not exorbitant. I believe that if you can get manufacturers' rates, delivered on board the cars at New Haven, you can secure enough Indian arrow-heads for $25 to fresco the sides of a house. See that the name of the manufacturer is burned in the shank of each.

You will have no more trouble in securing Indian skulls. The manufacture of Indian skulls has not arrived at that degree of perfection which we hope for it in the future. You can get an Indian skull made of celluloid now that looks quite nice and ghastly, or you can secure a bear's nose made of hard rubber, with pores in it and little drops of perspiration standing out on it. These noses have been used with great success in securing bounty in the New England states, and several counties in Maine have a large stock of rubber bear noses on which they have paid large bounties, and which they would now sell at a great sacrifice.

Aztec pottery excavated from old mounds in the southwest can now be purchased in any large city or made to order at the leading potteries of the country.

_Niagarn Plummer, Tutewler's Crossing, Tenn._, asks: "Is it proper to use the following expression, which was made in our colored debating society three weeks ago? If you will answer this inquiry you will confer a blessing on two young ladies who's got a bet up on the question. The expression we agree was as follows:

'He's ent.i.tled to pay me for them pair of license.'

"I claim that the word 'them' should be 'those,' while my friend Miss Bonesette Jackson says that the sentence is correct. Which is incorrect?"

Where both have done so well it is hard to say which is the more incorrect. I will withhold my opinion till your debating society puts in an evening devoted to the discussion of this question. Please let me know when it will occur, as I would like to be there.

_Etiquette, Chicago, Ill._, asks: "Will you answer through the columns of the _Daily News_ what remedy you would prescribe for the great nuisance while traveling of being compelled to wait all the forenoon for the female fiend who monopolizes one end of the sleeping car half of the time and the other end of the car the other half. I am a lady, and nothing tends to discourage my efforts in trying to continue such like this constant contact with the average female brute who bolts herself into the ladies' dressing room in a sleeper and remains there all the forenoon calcimining her purple nose and striving to beautify her chaotic features. Do tell us what you would suggest."

That is a question I have been called upon to settle before, but I am still worrying over it. I do not think we ought to fritter away our time on the tariff and other remote matters until we have, once for all, met and settled this vital question which lies so near to every heart.

I have seen a large woman take her teeth in one hand and a shawl-strap full of hair in the other and adjourn to the ladies' dressing room at Camp Douglas and finally emerge therefrom, with a smooch of prepared chalk over each eye, at Winona. All that time half a dozen ladies in the car gnawed their under lips and tried to look happy. I have known a timid young lady to lose her breakfast because this same ogress, with bristles along the back of her neck, as usual moved into the dressing-room and lived there till the train reached its destination and the dining-car was detached.

Some day this dressing-room will be made on the plan of a large concertina, operated by means of clockwork, and after this venerable hyena has laundered herself and primped and beautified and upholstered herself and waxed her mustache, and insulted the plate-gla.s.s mirror for an hour or two by constantly compelling it to reflect her features, the walls of the apartment will gradually approach each other, and when that woman is removed she will look like the battle of Gettysburg.