Cordwood Part 3

That's the way I was. I told all my creditors to withhold their engrossed bills during my honeymoon, as I was otherwise engrossed.

This remark made me a great many friends and added to my large circle of creditors. It was afterward printed in a foreign paper and explained in a supplement of eight pages.

We are all pretty well here at home. I may go to Washington this fall if I can sell a block of stock in the Pauper's Dream, a rich gold claim of mine on Elk mountain. It is a very rich claim, but needs capital to develop it. (This remark is not original with me. I quote from an exchange.)

If I do come over to Washington do not let that make any difference in your plans. If I thought your wife would send out to the neighbors and borrow dishes and such things on my account I would not go a step.

Just stick your head out of the window and whistle as soon as the cabinet is gone and I will come up there and spend the evening.

Remember that I have not grown cold toward you just because you have married. You will find me the kind of a friend who will not desert you just when you are in trouble. Yours, as heretofore,

_Bill Nye._

P. S.--I send you to-day a card-receiver. It looks like silver. Do not let your wife bear on too hard when she polishes it. I was afraid you might try to start into keeping house without a card-receiver, so I bought this yesterday. When I got married I forgot to buy a card-receiver, and I guess we would have frozen to death before we could have purchased one, but friends were more thoughtful, and there were nine of them among the gifts. If you decide that it would not be proper for you to receive presents, you may return the card receiver to me, or put it in the cellar-way till I come over there this fall.

_B. N._

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NO DOUBT AS TO HIS CONDITION.

Harry--I hear that you have lost your father. Allow me to express my sympathy.

Jack (with a sigh)--Thank you. Yes, he has gone; but the event was expected for a long time, and the blow was consequently less severe than if it had not been looked for.

H.--His property was large?

J.--Yes; something like a quarter of a million.

H.--I heard that his intellect, owing to his illness, was somewhat feeble during his latter years. Is there any probability of the will being contested?

J.--No; father was quite sane when he made his will. He left everything to me.

CYCLONES.

We were riding along on the bounding train yesterday, and some one spoke of the free and democratic way that people in this country got acquainted with each other while traveling. Then we got to talking about railway sociability and railway etiquette, when a young man from East Jasper, who had wildly jumped and grabbed his valise every time the train hesitated, said that it was queer what railway travel would do in the way of throwing people together. He said that in Nebraska once he and a large, corpulent gentleman, both total strangers, were thrown together while trying to jump a washout, and an intimacy sprang up between them that had ripened into open hostility.

From that we got to talking about natural phenomena and storms. I spoke of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitterness, perhaps, briefly telling my own experience, and making the storm as loud and wet and violent as possible.

Then a gentleman from Kansas, named George L. Murdock, an old cattleman, was telling of a cyclone that came across his range two years ago last September. The sky was clear to begin with, and then all at once, as Mr.

Murdock states, a little cloud no larger than a man's hand might have been seen. It moved toward the southwest gently, with its hands in its pockets for a few moments, and then Mr. Murdock discovered that it was of a pale-green color, about sixteen hands high, with dark-blue mane and tail. About a mile from where he stood the cyclone, with great force, swooped down and, with a m.u.f.fled roar, swept a quarter-section of land out from under a heavy mortgage without injuring the mortgage in the least. He says that people came for miles the following day to see the mortgage, still on file at the office of the register of deeds and just as good as ever.

Then a gentleman named Bean, of western Minnesota, a man who went there in an early day and homesteaded it when his nearest neighbor was fifty miles away, spoke of a cyclone that visited his county before the telegraph or railroad had penetrated that part of the state.

Mr. Bean said it was very clear up to the moment that he noticed a cloud in the northwest no larger than a man's hand. It sauntered down in a southwesterly direction like a cyclone that had all summer to do its ch.o.r.es in. Then it gave two quick snorts and a roar, wiped out of existence all the farm buildings he had, sucked the well dry, soured all the milk in the milk house, and spread desolation all over that quarter-section. But Mr. Bean said that the most remarkable thing he remembered was this: He had dug about a pint of angle worms that morning, intending to go over to the lake toward evening and catch a few perch. But when the cyclone came it picked up those angle worms and drove them head first through his new grindstone without injuring the worms or impairing the grindstone. He would have had the grindstone photographed, he said, if the angle worms could have been kept still long enough. He said that they were driven just far enough through to hang on the other side like a lambrequin.

The cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon, its movements are so erratic, and in direct violation of all known rules.

Mr. Louis P. Barker of northern Iowa was also on the car, and he described a cyclone that he saw in the '70s along in September at the close of a hot but clear day. The first intimation that Mr. Barker had of an approaching storm was a small cloud no larger than a man's hand which he discovered moving slowly toward the southwest with a gyratory movement. It then appeared to be a funnel-shaped cloud which pa.s.sed along near the surface of the ground with its apex now and then lightly touching a barn or a well, and pulling it out by the roots. It would then bound lightly into the air and spit on its hands. What he noticed most carefully on the following day was the wonderful evidences of its powerful suction. It sucked a milch cow absolutely dry, pulled all the water out of his cistern, and then went around to the waste-water pipe that led from the bath-room and drew a 2-year-old child, who was taking a bath at the time, clear down through the two-inch waste-pipe, a distance of 150 feet. He had two inches of the pipe with him and a lock of hair from the child's head.

It is such circ.u.mstances as these, coming to us from the mouths of eye-witnesses, that leads us to exclaim: How prolific is nature and how wonderful are all her works--including poor, weak man! Man, who comes into the world clothed in a little brief authority, perhaps, and nothing else to speak of. He rises up in the morning, prevaricates, and dies.

Where are our best liars to-day? Look for them where you will and you will find that they are pa.s.sing away. Go into the cemetery and there you will find them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate their business by marking their tombs with a gentle prevarication, chiseled in enduring stone.

I have heard it intimated by people who seemed to know what they were talking about that truth is mighty and will prevail, but I do not see much show for her till the cyclone season is over.

THE EARTH.

The earth is that body in the solar system which most of my readers now reside upon, and which some of them, I regret to say, modestly desire to own and control, forgetting that the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. Some men do not care who owns the earth so long as they get the fullness.

The earth is 500,000,000 years of age, according to Prof. Proctor, but she doesn't look it to me. The Duke of Argyll maintains that she is 10,000,000 years old last August, but what does an ordinary duke know about these things? So far as I am concerned I will put Proctor's memory against that of any low-priced duke that I have ever seen.

Newton claimed that the earth would gradually dry up and become porous, and that water would at last become a curiosity. Many believe this and are rapidly preparing their systems by a rigid course of treatment, so that they can live for years without the use of water internally or externally.

Other scientists who have sat up nights to monkey with the solar system, and thereby shattered their nervous systems, claim that the earth is getting top-heavy at the north pole, and that one of these days while we are thinking of something else, the great weight of acc.u.mmulated ice, snow, and the vast acc.u.mmulation of second-hand arctic relief expeditions, will jerk the earth out of its present position with so much spontaneity, and in such an extremely forthwith manner, that many people will be permanently strabismused and much bric-a-brac will be for sale at a great sacrifice. This may or may not be true. I have not been up in the arctic regions to investigate its truth or falsity, though there seems to be a growing sentiment throughout the country in favor of my going. A great many people during the past year have written me and given me their consent.

If I could take about twenty good, picked men, and go up there for the summer, instead of bringing back twenty picked men, I wouldn't mind the trip, and I feel that we really ought to have a larger colony on ice in that region than we now have.

The earth is composed of land and water. Some of the water has large chunks of ice in it. The earth revolves around its own axle once in twenty-four hours, though it seems to revolve faster than that, and to wobble a good deal during the holidays. Nothing tickles the earth more than to confuse a man when he is coming home late at night, and then to rise up suddenly and hit him in the back with a town lot. People who think there is no fun or relaxation among the heavenly bodies certainly have not studied their habits. Even the moon is a humorist.

A friend of mine, who was returning late at night from a regular meeting of the Society for the Amelioration of the Hot Scotch, said that the earth rose up suddenly in front of him, and hit him with a right of way, and as he was about to rise up again he was stunned by a terrific blow between the shoulder blades with an old land grant that he thought had lapsed years ago. When he staggered to his feet he found that the moon, in order to add to his confusion, had gone down in front of him, and risen again behind him, with her thumb on her nose.

So I say, without fear of successful contradiction, that if you do not think that planets and orbs and one thing and another have fun on the quiet you are grossly ignorant of their habits.

The earth is about half way between Mercury and Saturn in the matter of density. Mercury is of about the specific gravity of iron, while that of Saturn corresponds with that of cork in the matter of density and specific gravity. The earth, of course, does not compare with Mercury in the matter of solidity, yet it is amply firm for all practical purposes.

A negro who fell out of the tower of a twelve-story building while trying to clean the upper window by drinking a quart of alcohol and then breathing hard on the gla.s.s, says that he regards the earth as perfectly solid, and safe to do business on for years to come. He claims that those who maintain that the earth's crust is only 2,500 miles in thickness have not thoroughly tested the matter by a system of practical experiments.

The poles of the earth are merely imaginary. I hate to print this statement in a large paper in such a way as to injure the reputation of great writers on this subject who still cling to the theory that the earth revolves upon large poles, and that the aurora borealis is but the reflection from a hot box at the north pole, but I am here to tell the truth, and if my readers think it disagreeable to read the truth, what must be my anguish who have to tell it? The mean diameter of the earth is 7,916 English statute miles, but the actual diameter from pole to pole is a still meaner diameter, being 7,899 miles, while the equatorial diameter is 7,925-1/2 miles.

The long and patient struggle of our earnest and tireless geographers and savants in past years in order to obtain these figures and have them exact, few can fully realize. The long and thankless job of measuring the diameter of the earth, no matter what the weather might be, away from home and friends, footsore and weary, still plodding on, fatigued but determined to know the mean diameter of the earth, even if it took a leg, measuring on for thousands of weary miles, and getting farther and farther away from home, and then forgetting, perhaps, how many thousand miles they had gone, and being compelled to go back and measure it over again while their noses got red and their fingers were benumbed. These, fellow-citizens, are a few of the sacrifices that science has made on our behalf in order that we may not grow up in ignorance. These are a few of the blessed privileges which, along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are ours--ours to antic.i.p.ate, ours to partic.i.p.ate, ours to precipitate.

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FRANCISCO PIZARRO'S CAREER.