The Army Mule and Other War Sketches Part 10

"'Why, man!' cried the tailor, bristling with defensive indignation, 'what in the world have you been doing to that suit?'

"'Well,' replied Nye, in a tone of the meekest apology, 'you did not warn me and I suppose it was my fault and I ought to have known better. But since you insist, I'll tell you frankly what I did: I put it on and wore it right out in the sun!'

"The tailor saw the point and insisted upon making another suit out of cloth that was really good and would not accept pay for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONVICTING THE TAILOR.]

"Mr. Nye's sudden comments made in the midst of a lecture were often the means of bringing the house to its feet. He knew better than anybody his lack of physical ability to fill a large hall with his voice and he strained every nerve to meet it. Any extraordinary commotion in the hall discomposed him and he would wait until it subsided. It was not a pleasant thing for him to hear a voice from the back of the hall calling 'louder.' Upon such occasions he had a habit of turning the laugh upon his tormentor by elevating his voice, looking puzzled and asking what that remark was he had just heard.

"I remember one occasion in particular when we had a remarkably large hall, crowded to the walls. The entrance was at the further end of the hall, opposite the platform. Mr. Nye, as usual, opened the evening, very fearful of his ability to reach the whole throng. He had barely got started when the doors opened and a great fellow about six feet and two inches tall entered with two ladies and immediately fell into an altercation with an usher about his seats. Nye paused and the altercation could be heard all over the house, with this fellow arraigning the usher in a very loud voice. Finally it died down a bit and Nye resumed, but he was interrupted by the man, who held up his hand and cried, 'Hold on, there, I have paid for seats for this lecture and propose to hear all of it.'

"Nye replied with great composure: 'In view of the great size of the hall,' said he, 'I was about to congratulate the audience upon the foresight of the managers in securing a speaker for each end.'

"The house howled with delight and the applause beat back upon the obstreperous interrupter with such force that it drove him from the hall. After this episode Nye was always a great favorite in that city and was recalled there many times.

"Mr. Nye was a fatalist--not a complaining one, but a fatalist no less, and with considerable occasion. He was pursued by a spirit of the perverse. Unexpected, trying things were always happening that seemed especially in line to test his patience. Indeed, I was sometimes jealous of him, for these things seemed to occur with greater force and persistence to him than to me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CLOSE SHAVE.]

"I had frequently remarked upon the persistent recurrence of the number thirteen with me during one of our trips in the South, but this was one superst.i.tion at which Nye scoffed. He told me that at the next hotel we struck if I objected to being 'incarcerated' in No. 13 he would risk it once. And not long after I found myself registered for that fatal number; whereupon I promptly informed Mr. Nye that I should hold him to his promise. I remember I had a handful of mail I was very anxious to see, but I would not open it until I had got another room.

Nye declared he wanted to first size up the room he had been a.s.signed to, and went on down the hall with the landlord. He soon returned with the remark that he could not lose much and walked into the thirteen room and set his grip down, returning to where I waited in the hall outside. He had not more than got out of the door when the heavy transom fell with a crash. He was convinced that that transom had been waiting for him for years.

"Mr. Nye was an invalid, but again, as it would seem, it was the perversity of fate that made the public unwilling to believe that a humorist could ever be ill or have any reasonable excuse for breaking an engagement. He never got the benefit of the excuses made for others when they failed to appear or to write according to expectation.

"One awful winter he was compelled to quit work in the middle of the season here and go South for his health and to escape the rigors of this climate. That was the winter that quit right in the middle of its business here and struck for the South, where they had the coldest weather they had ever known prior to Mr. Nye's advent. And there, though he was nearly dead, his syndicate letters had to go on just the same; and in fancy I can see that heroic, almost dying man on the flat of his back, writing laboriously upon a scratch-pad, with the wind blowing the rag carpet on the floor up in billows. He suffered all the hardship of rigorous winter in summer quarters.

"And while thus ill word reached him of the sudden death of his father in Wisconsin, so far away that even if he had been able to make the journey it would have been a physical impossibility for him to have reached his father's house before the burial. It was a peculiarly hard blow to him, for they had been friends and chums, as well as father and son. Yet by the time the news reached him his father had been buried.

"To the last this perverse fate denied to him and his wife that one pleasure that married couples usually enjoy if they have nothing else--a wedding journey. He was very poor to begin with, but of a sanguine temperament, and at the time of his marriage goodnaturedly informed his bride fully of his circ.u.mstances. She, a brave woman and worthy partner, probably foresaw the force of the man and his coming recognition in time; at any rate she had great faith in him, and very cheerfully accepted the situation. Their wedding journey, denied them in the beginning by their poverty, was deferred from one cause and another for years, so long that they came to refer to it as to be taken upon the marriage of their eldest child, when the two couples could take the journey together.

"But Nye was yet an invalid, and one year when California had been prescribed for him, we had made a line of engagements toward the Pacific slope after the regular season. It had been arranged that Mrs.

Nye was to meet us in Kansas City and the trip from there to the coast was to be the long-deferred wedding journey. He had built great hopes upon this prospect, and in the pleasure of antic.i.p.ation had devised a dozen little schemes for the surprise and entertainment of his wife, who had already left their home, on Staten Island, to join us. She had left their four children in care of her niece, a very worthy young woman, and was somewhere on her way to Kansas City when we arrived there.

"Nye had expected to find her there, but instead he was confronted with a telegram from his Staten Island physician stating that all four of the children had been stricken with scarlet fever. Through the influence of the physician, who was a great friend of Nye, they had not been removed to the hospital, as the regulations required, but had been permitted to remain at home, with the house quarantined. During the next few hours prior to Mrs. Nye's arrival, and in all agony of suspense and apprehension, Mr. Nye busied himself with canceling all further lecture dates, and when Mrs. Nye finally arrived he broke to her the painful news of their children's illness, and took the next train back East, not knowing if their little ones would be alive to greet them when they came.

"Arriving home after that terrible journey, they found the children so ill that they could not be told of the arrival of the father and mother; and Nye, with his heart breaking, sat downstairs and wrote to the children he was not permitted to see in their rooms above, long and happy letters from California, telling them what jolly lovely times their mother and father were having in the land of flowers.

"And, therefore," said Mr. Riley, in conclusion, again fondly referring to the volume, "I am especially rejoiced to see my old comrade at his best in this last published utterance, and the book itself so befittingly presented--so handsome and so dignified a volume, that I am certain a sight of it could but have been highly gratifying to the gentle humorist himself."

RUSSEL M. SEEDS.

A Guest at the Ludlow

BY EDGAR WILSON NYE

[BILL NYE]

Go, little booklet, go!-- Bearing an honored name, 'Till everywhere that you have went, They're glad that you have came.

A volume of humorous stories and sketches, with twenty-one full page and twelve smaller designs, the latter by the author.

By arrangement with Mrs. Edgar W. Nye, The Bowen-Merrill Co. announce a volume of humorous stories by Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye), prepared for publication by him during the last months of his life, ent.i.tled

"A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW"

AND OTHER STORIES.

It is printed, bound and ill.u.s.trated in a style surpa.s.sing anything heretofore issued of Mr. Nye's in book form, and containing the famous humorist's best and most finished work. Twenty-eight stories and numerous ill.u.s.trations, including the author's introduction in fac-simile. It is the handsomest copyrighted book published this season for the price, $1.25, sent postpaid to any address on receipt of the price.

THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO., Publishers, Indianapolis and Kansas City