Bill Nye's Cordwood-Bill Nye

0:00CHAPTER I. CHAPTER I. Bill Nye on the Cow Industry. A cowboy college needed to educate young men to this profession. No one can go through the wide territory of Montana today without being strongly impressed with the wonderful growth of the great cattle growing and grazing industry of that territory. And yet Montana is but the northern extremity of the great grazing belt, which lies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, extending from the British possessions on the north to the Mexican border on the south, extending eastward to, as far as the arable lands of Dakota,

1:01Nebraska, and Kansas. Montana at this season of the year is the paradise of the sleek, high-headed two-year-old Texan steer, with his tail over the dashboard, as well as the stock yearling, born on the range beneath the glorious mountain sky, and under the auspices of Roundup No. 21. I do not say this to advertise the stock-growing business because it is already advertised too much anyway. So many millionaires have been made with free grass and the early rising, automatic brandy-garn, that every man in the United States who has a cow that can stand the journey seems to be about to take her west, and embark in business as a cattle king. But let me warn the amateur cow-man that in the great grazing region it takes a good many acres of thin grass to maintain the adult

2:04steer in affluence for twelve months, and the great pastures at the base of the mountains are being pretty well tested. Moreover, I believe that these great conventions of cattlemen, where free grass and easily acquired fortunes are naturally advertised, will tend to overstock the ranges at last, and founder the goose that now lays the golden egg. This of course is really none of my business, but if I didn't now and then refer to matters that do not concern me, I would be regarded as reticent. My intention, however, in approaching the great cow industry, which, by the way, is anything but an industry, being in fact more like a seductive manner whereby a promissory note acquires two percent per month, without even stopping to spit on its hands, was to refer incidentally to the proposition of an English friend of mine. This friend, seeing at once the great magnitude of the cow industry and the necessity for more and more cowboys, has suggested the idea of establishing a cowboys college

3:10or training school, or self-made young men who desire to become accomplished. The average Englishman, well most always, think of something that nobody else would naturally think of. Now, our cattlemen would have gone on for years with this great steer in Poreum, without thinking of establishing an institution, where a poor boy might go and learn to rope a four-year-old in such a way as to throw him on his stomach with a sickening thud. The young Maverick's effunt could take a kindergarten course in the study of cow brands. Here a wide field opens up to the scholar. The adult steer, in the great realm of beef, is now a walking Chinese washbill, a Hindu poem in the original junk shop alphabet. A four-legged Greek inscription punctuated with Jim Jams. A stenographer's notes of a riot a bird's eye view of a premature explosion in a hardware store. The cowboy who can at once grapple

4:10with the great problem of where to put the steer with B-bar B on left shoulder. Key circle G, a left side, heart D-heart, unright hip, left ear crop, waddle T-waddle, and seven hands round the dash B- dash unright shoulder vented, waddle und do lap vented, and PDQ, COD, and NG vented on right side, keeping track of transfers, range and post office of last owner, has certainly got a future, which lies mostly ahead of him. But now that the idea has been turned loose, I shall look forward to the time when wealthy men, who have been in the habit of dying and leaving their money to other institutions, will meet with a change of heart and begin to end down the Cowboys College and the Maverick Hotbed of Bronco Sciences. We live in an age of rapid advancement in all branches of learning, and people who do not rise early in the morning

5:12will not retain their position in the procession. I look forward with confidence to the day when no cowboy will undertake to ride the range without a diploma. Educated labor is what we need, Cowboys, who can tell you in scientific terms. Why it is always the biggest steer that eats pigeon weed in the spring, and why he should swell up and bust on a rising Chicago market. I hope that the day is not far distant when in the holster of a cowboy will find the Iliad, instead of the Kiliad, the unabridged dictionary instead of Mr. Remington's great work on homicide. As it is now on the ranges you might ride till your Mexican saddle ached before you would find a cowboy who carries a dictionary with him. With that reason, the language used on the general roundup is at times chromatically incorrect, and many of our leading Cowboys spell caviar'd with a K. A college for riding, roping, branding, cutting out, corralling, loading, and unloading,

6:15and handling cattle generally would be a great boon to our young men who are at present groping in dark and pitiful ignorance of the habits of the untutored cowl. Let the young man first learn how to sit up three nights in succession through a bad march snowstorm and hold her to rest this cattle. Let him then ride through the hot sun and alkali dust a week or two, subsisting on a chunk of disagreeable side pork, just large enough debate a trap. Then let his horse fall on him, an injurious constitution and preamble. All these things would give the cow student an idea of how to ride the range. The amateur who has never tried to ride a skittish and sulky range has still a great deal to learn. Perhaps I have said too much on this subject, but when I get thoroughly awakened on this great porterhouse stake problem, I'm apt to carry the matter too far. Overheard in Dooddom,

7:21Why, Othah, what makes you a hand twimbled so? End of Chapter 1, Recording by John Brandon Chapter 2, Bill Nye's Cordwood This is a Libravox recording, all Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, recording by John Brandon. Bill Nye's Cordwood by Bill Nye, Chapter 2, a new biography of Galileo. Some hitherto unpublished facts about the queer old Italian, his remarkable inventions and discoveries, his books. Bill Nye. Galilei, commonly called Galileo, was born at Pisa on the 14th day of February 1564. He was a man who discovered some of the fundamental principles, underlying the movements, habits,

8:21and personal peculiarities of the earth. He discovered things with marvelous fluency. Ornus, he was at a time when the rotary motion of the earth was still in its infancy, an astronomy taught only in a crude way. Galileo started into make a few discoveries, and advanced some theories of which he was very fond. He was the son of a musician, and learned to play several instruments himself, but not in such a ways to arouse the jealousy of the great musicians of his day. They came and heard him play a few selections, and then went home, contented with their own music. Galileo played for several years in the band at Pisa, and people who heard him said that his manner of gazing out over the Pisa on hills, with a faraway look at his eye after playing a selection, while he gently upended his alto horn and worked the mud valve as it poured out about a pint of moist melody that had accumulated in

9:23the flus of the instrument, was simply grand. At the age of 20 Galileo began to discover. His first discoveries were, of course, clumsy and poorly made, but very soon he began to turn out a neat and durable discovery that would stand for years. It was at this time that Galileo noticed the swinging of a lamp in a church, and observing that the oscillations were of equal duration. He inferred that this principle might be utilized in the exact measurement of time. From this little accident years after came the clock, one of the most useful of man's dumb friends, and yet there are people who will read this little incident, and still hesitate about going to church. Galileo also invented the thermometer, the microscope, and the proportional compass. He seemed to invent things not for the money to be obtained in that way, but solely for the joy of

10:24being first on the ground. He was a man of advantageous and perseverance. He was also very fair in his treatment of other inventors, though he did not personally invent the rotary motion of the earth, he hardly endorsed it and said it was a good thing. He also came out in a card in which he said that he believed it to be a good thing, and that he hoped someday to see it applied to other planets. He was also the inventor of a telescope that had a magnifying power of thirty times. He presented this to the Venetian Senate, and it was used in making appropriations for river and harbor improvements. By telescopic investigation Galileo discovered the presence of microbes in the moon, but was unable to do anything for it. I have spoken of Mr. Galileo all the way through this article informally, calling him by his first name. But I feel so thoroughly acquainted with him,

11:26though there was such a striking difference in our ages, that I am almost justified in using his given name while talking of him. Galileo also sat up nights and visited with Venus through a long telescope which he had made himself from an old bamboo fishing rod. But astronomy is a very intervening branch of science. Galileo frequently came down to breakfast with red heavy eyes, eyes that were swollen full of unshed tears. Still he persevered. Day after day he worked in toiled. Year after year he went on with his task. Till he had worked out in his own mind the satellites of Jupiter and placed a small tin tag on each one so that he would know it readily when he saw it again. Then he began to look up Saturn's rings and investigate the freckles on the sun. He did not stop at trifles but went bravely on till

12:30everybody came for miles to look at him and get him to write something funny in their albums. It was not an unusual thing for Galileo to get up in the morning after a weary some night with a fretful newborn star to find his front yard full of photograph albums. Some of them were little red albums with floral decorations on them, while others were the large plush and alligator albums of the affluent. Some were new and had the price tag still on them, while others were old, foundered albums, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the title page. Paul came with a request for Galileo to write a little witty characteristic sentiment in them. Galileo was the author of the hydrostatic paradox and other sketches. He was a great reader and a fluent penman. One time he was absent from home

13:32lecturing in Venice for the benefit of the United Aggregation of Mutual Admires and did not return for two weeks. So that when he got back he found the front room full of photograph albums. It is said that he here demonstrated his great fluency and readiness as a thinker and writer. He waited through the entire lot in two days with only two men from West Beza to assist him. Galileo came out of it fresh and youthful, and the following night he was closeted all night with another inventor, a wicker-covered microscope, and a blown a sandwich. The investigations were carried on for two weeks after which Galileo went out to the inebriate asylum and discovered some new styles of reptiles. Galileo was the author of a little work called I Discarsi a Demostrazzione Mathematicae and Taurus Adüe Mouaveci and Z. It was an neat little book of about medium height and sold well

14:37on the trains, where the Paisan newsboys on the cars were very affable as they are now. And when they came and leaned an armful of these books on a passenger's leg and poured a long tail into his ear about the wonderful beauty of the work and then pulled in the name of the book from the rear of the last car, where it had been hanging on behind, the passenger would most always buy it, and enough of the name to wrap it up in. He also discovered the isochronism of the pendulum. He saw that the pendulum at certain seasons of the year looked yellow under the eyes, and that it drooped and did not enter into its work with the old zest. He began to study the case with the aid of his new bamboo telescope and wicker-covered microscope. As a result, in ten days he had the pendulum on his feet again. Galileo was inclined to be liberal in his

15:37religious views, and more especially in the matter of the scriptures, claiming that there were passages in the Bible which did not literally mean what the translators said they did. This was where Galileo missed it. So long as he discovered stars and isochronisms and such things as that he succeeded. But when he began to fool with other people's religious beliefs he got into trouble. He was forced to fly from Pisa, we are told by the historian, and we are assured at the same time that Galileo, who had always been far, far ahead of all competitors and other things, was equally successful as a flair. Galileo received but sixty scudi per year for his salary at Pisa, and a part of that he took in town orders, worth only sixty cents on the scudi.

17:03Chapter 3. Mathusola. A recent biographical notice of this grand old man, a slave to tobacco, Bill Nye. I have just been reading James Wickham Raleigh's response to the old man at the annual dinner of the Indianapolis Literary Club, and his reference to Mathusola has awakened in my mind many recollections and reminiscences of that grand old man. We first met Mathusola in the capacity of a son at the age of sixty-five. Enok arose one night and telephoned his family physician to come over and a system in meeting Mathusola. Day at last dawned upon Enok's happy home, and its first red rays lit up the still redder surface of the little stranger. For three hundred years Enok and Mathusola jogged along together in the capacity of father and son. Then Enok was suddenly cut down.

18:09It was at this time that little Mathusola first realized what it was to be an orphan. He could not at first realize that his father was dead. He could not understand why Enok with no inherited disease should be shuffled out at the age of three hundred sixty-five years. But the doctor said to Mathusola, my son, you are indeed fatherless. I have done all I could, but it is useless. I have told Enok many a time that if he went in swimming before the ice was out of the creek, it would finally down him. But he thought he knew better than I did. He was a headstrong man, Enok was. He sneered at me and alluded to me as a fresh young Gosling, because he was three hundred years older than I was. He has received the reward of the willful, and verily the doom of the smart Alec is his. Mathusola now cast about him for

19:11some occupation which would take up his attention and assuage his wild passionate grief over the loss of his father. He entered into the walks of men and learned their ways. It was at this time that he learned the pernicious habit of using tobacco. We cannot wonder at it when we remember that he was now fatherless. He was at the mercy of the course rough world. Possibly he learned to use tobacco when he went away to attend business college after the death of his father. Be that as it may, the noxious weed certainly hastened his death. For six hundred years after this, we find him a corpse. Death is ever a surprise, even at the end of a long illness and after a ripe old age. To those who are near it seems abrupt. So to his grandchildren some of whom survived him, his children having died of old age, the death of Mathusola came like a thunderbolt from a clear

20:16sky. Mathusola succeeded in courting up more of a record such as it was than any other man of whom history informs us. Time, the tomb builder, and amateur mower, came and leaned over the front fence and looked at Mathusola and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his side. And what a way whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for nearly ten centuries, while Mathusola continued to stand out amid the general wreck of men and nations. Even as the young strong mower going forth with his mower to mow spareth the tall and dignified drab hornet's nests, and passeth by on the other side, so time with his water-berry hourglass and his overworked hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers and his high-sleaked home of thought, with its gray lambrakin of hair around the base of it, mowed all around Mathusola, and then passed on. Mathusola decorated the graves

21:23of those who perished in a dozen different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over 900 years of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting place and offer his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage his grandchildren to go. Then Mathusola would sit around no-as-steps and smoke and criticize the conduct of a war, also the conduct of the enemy. It is sad of Mathusola that he never was the same man after his son, Lemic, died. He was greatly attached to Lemic. And when he woke up one night to find his son, Purple, in the face with membranous croop, he could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy who had just rounded the glorious mourn of his 777th year had never occurred to him, but death loves a shining mark, and he garnered little lami and left Mathusola to moan, and mourn on for a couple of more

22:28centuries without him. Mathusola finally got so that he couldn't sleep after four o'clock in the morning and he didn't see how anyone else could. He older he got, and the less valuable his time became, the earlier he would rise, so that he could get an early start. As the centuries filed slowly by Mathusola, God where all he had to do was to shuffle into his loose-fitting clothes, and rest his gums on the top of a large, sleek-headed cane, and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and extricate himself from his clothes again and retire. He rose earlier and earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks sleeping away the best of the day, and said he had no doubt that sleeping and snoring until breakfast time helped to carry off lamb. But one day, all father-time came along with a new sithe, and he drew the wetstone across at a few times and rolled the sleeves of his redflannel undergarment up over

23:34his warty elbows, and Mr. Mathusola passed on to that undiscovered country with a ripe experience, and a long-clean record. We can almost fancy how the physicians, who had disagreed about his case all the way through, came and insisted on a post-mortem examination to prove which was right, and what was really the matter with him. We can imagine how people went by shaking their heads and regretting that Mathusola should have tampered with tobacco when he knew it affected his heart. But he is gone. He lived to see his own promissory notes rise, flourish, acquire interest, pine away at last, and finally outlaw. He acquired a large farm in the very heart of the county seat and refused to move or to plot it, and called it Mathusola's addition. He came out in spring regularly for 900 years after he got too old to work out his poll-tacks on the road, and put in his

24:39time telling the rising generation how to make a good road. Meantime, other old people, who were almost a hundred years of age moved away in Went West, where they would attract attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting old around where Mathusola was, and being ordered about and scolded and kept in the background by him. So when at last he died people sighed and said, well, it was better for him to die before he got childish. It was best that he should die at a time when he knew it all. We can't help thinking what an acquisition Mathusola will be on the evergreen shore when he gets there, with all his ripe experience and habits of early rising. And the next morning after the funeral Mathusola's family did not get out of bed, till nine o'clock.

26:04Chapter 4 Notes on some spring styles. The ladies favorite bonnet and hosiery, the small dog, worn in shades to match the costume, prevailing fashions for gentlemen. Bill Nye. It is customary at this season of the year to poke fun at the good clothes of our friends and well-wishers, the ladies. But it occurs to me that this spring there is a very small field for the witty and sarcastic critic of female attire. There has not been a time since I first began to make a study of this branch of science when the ladies seem to have manifested better taste or sounder judgment in the matter of dress. Even bonnet seemed to be less grotesque this season than here to for, although the high startled bonnet, the bonnet that may be characterized as the excelsior bonnet, is still retained by some. Though how it is retained has always been a mystery to me.

27:08Perhaps it holds its place in society by means of a long black pin which apparently passes through the brain of the wearer. Black hosiery continues to be very popular, I'm informed. Sometimes it is worn clocked, and then again it is worn crocked. The crockless black stocking is gaining in favor in our best circles, and pleased to note, nothing looks more mortified than a foot that has been inside of a crockable stocking all through a long hot summer day. I am very glad to notice that the effort made a few years ago by a French reformer to abolish the stocking on the ground of unhealthfulness has met with well-merited failure. The custom of wearing hosiery is one that does great credit to the spirit of American progress, which cannot be thwarted by the puny hand of foreign interference or despotic intervention. Street costumes of handsomely fitting and unobtrusive

28:10shades of soft and comfortable goods will be generally in favor and the beautiful and symmetrical American arm, with a neatly fitting sleeve on the outside of it, who gladden the hearts of the casual spectator once more. The lady with the acute elbow and the italicized clavicle will make a strong effort this season to abolish the close fitting and extremely attractive sleeve, but it will be futile. The small dog will be worn this season in shades to match the costume. For dark and brown combinations in street dresses, the blackened tan dog will be very much in favor, while the blackened drab pug will be affected by those wearing those shades in dress. Small pugs that are warranted not to bag at the knees are commanding a good price. Spit stogs to match links and fox trimmed garments, or spring wraps, are now being sprinkled with camphor and laid aside for

29:13the summer. Coach dogs of the spotted variety will be worn with polka dot costumes. Tall willowy hounds, with wire tails, will be much affected by slender young ladies and hydrophobia. Antique dogs with weak eyes, asthma, and an air of langer will be used to great deal this season to decorate lawns and railroad crossings. Young dogs that are just budding into dog hood will be noticed through the spring months trying their new teeth on the light spring pantaloons of male pedestrians. Styles in gentleman's clothing have not materially changed. Lavender pantaloons, with an air of settled melancholy and benzene, are now making their appearance, and young men trying to eradicate the droop in the knees of last summer's garment, may be seen in their luxurious apartments most any comm spring evening. An old nail brush with a solution of ammonia and press a gasset will

30:20remove traces of custard pie from light shades in pantaloons. This preparation will also remove the pantaloons. The umbrella will be worn over the shoulder, and in the eye of the passing pedestrian, very much as usual on pleasant days, and left behind the door in a dark closet on rainy days. Gentlemen will wear one pocket hankerchief in the side pocket, with a corner gently emerging, and another in the hip pocket, as they did last season, the former for decorative purposes and the latter for business. This is a wise provision and never fails to elicit favorable comment. The custom of wearing a few kernels of roasted coffee, or a dozen cloves in the little cigarette pocket of the cutaway coat will still continue, and the supply will be replenished between the acts as here to for. Straw hats will be chased down the streets, the spring by the same gentleman who

31:25chase them last spring, and in some instances the same hats will be used. Shade trees will be worn a little lower this summer, and will therefore succeed in wiping off a larger crop of plug hats. It is hoped. Lin-in dusters, with the pockets carefully sotered together, have not yet made their appearance. CHAPTER V. A Bill Nies Cardwood This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librevox.org, recording by Phil Schampff. Bill Nies Cardwood and by Bill Nye, hunting in Ictio-Saurus. The victims of a practical joke tramp five days along Bitter Creek in search of an animal that had been dead five thousand years.

32:27Several years ago I had the pleasure of joining a party about to start out along the banks of Bitter Creek on hunting expedition. The leader of the party was a young man who had recently escaped from college with a large amount of knowledge which he desired to experiment with on the people of the far west. He had heard that there was an Ictio-Saurus up somewhere along the west side of Bitter Creek, and he wanted us to go along and help him find it. I had been in the west some eight or nine years then, and I had never seen an Ictio-Saurus myself, but I thought the young man must know his business, so I got out my Winchester and went along with the group. We tramped over the pale, ashy glaring, staring stretch of desolation, through burning quivering days of monotony and sagebrush and alkali water and aching eyes, and parched in bleeding lips and nostrils, cut through and eaten by the sharp alkaliene air. Mentally depressed and physically worn out, but cheered on and

33:29braced up by the light and joyous manner of the ever-hopeful James Trilobite Eaton of Concord. James Trilobite Eaton of Concord never moaned, never gigged back or shed a hot, remorseful tear in this powdery, hungry waste of grey-parched ruin. No regret came forth from his lips in the midst of this mighty cemetery, this ghastly potter's field for all that nature had ever reared that was too poor to bear its own funeral expenses. Now and then, a lean, soiled grey coyote without sufficient moral courage to look a dead mule in the hind foot, slipped across the horizon like a dirty phantom and faded into the hot and tremulous atmosphere. We scorn such game as that and trudged on, cheered by the hope that seemed to spring eternal in the breast of James Trilobite Eaton of Concord. Four days we've wallowed through the unchanging desolation, four nights we went through the

34:30motions of slumbering on the arid bosom of the wasted earth. On the fifth day, James Trilobite Eaton said we were now getting near the point where we would find what we sought. On we pressed through the keen rough blades of the seldom-bunch grass over the shifting yellow sand and the greenish grey of the badland soil, which never does anything but sit around through the accumulating centuries and hold the world together, a kind of powdery poison that delights to creep into the nostrils of the pilgrim and steal away his brains, or when moistened by a little snow to accumulate around the feet of the pilgrim or on the feet of the pilgrim's mule, till he has the most of the unsurveyed forty on each foot, and the casual observer is cheered by the novel sight of one homestead striving to jump another. Toward evening, James Trilobite Eaton gave a wild shriek of joy and ran to us from the bed of an old creek where he had found an ick theosaurus.

35:33The animal was dead, not only that, but it had been dead a long, long time. James Milton Sherrod said that, if a college education was of no more use to amend than that, he for one, allowed that his boy would have to grope through life with an academic education and very little of it. I uncocked my gun and went back to camp, a satir and madder man, and though years have come and gone, I am still irritable when I think of the five days we tramped along bitter creek, searching for an animal that was no longer alive, and our guide knew it before he started. I ventured to say to Jay Trilobite Eaton that night, as we sat together in the gloaming, discussing whether he should be taken home with us in the capacity of a guide or as remains, that it seemed to me a man ought to have better sense than to wear his young life away, trying to have fun with his superiors in that way. Why, believe it all, says James,

36:36what did you expect? You ought to know yourself that that animal is extinct. Extinct, says James Milton Sherrod in shrill angry tones. I should say he was extinct. That's what we're kicking about. What galled me was that you should have waited until the old cuss was extinct before you come to us like a man and told us about it. You pulled us through the sand for a week and blistered our heels and condemned near kill us, and all the time you know that the blame-brood is laying there in the hot sun, and getting more and more stink every minute. Fun is fun, and I like a little nonsense now and then, and just as well as you do, but I'll be eternally banished to bitter creek if I think you'd square or right or white to play it on your friends this kind of way. You claim that the animal's been dead going on five thousand years or some such thing as that, and try to get out of it that way. But long as you knew it, and we didn't, it shows that you're a low cuss not to speak of it. What difference does it make

37:41to us, I see, whether this brute was or was not dead, and swelled up like a pison steer long before nor got his zoological shoulder-gatherer? We didn't know it. We haven't seen the salt-like papers for weeks. You use your education to fool people with. My opinion is that the day is not far distant when you will wake up and find yourself in the bottom of an untimely grave. You bring us a hundred and fifty miles to look at an old bone pile, all tramped into the ground, and then say the animal is extinct. That's a great way to talk to an old man like me, a man old enough to be your grandfather. Probably you calculated that it is a rare treat for an old timer like me to wallert through from green river to the Yellowstone, and then hear a young kangaroo with a mothy nibrow under his nose burst forth into a rollicking laugh and say that the animal we've been trailing for five days is extinct. I just want to say to you, James Trialabite Eaton, and I say it for your good, and I say it

38:46with no prejudice against you, for I want to see you succeed, that if this ever happens again, and you are the party to blame, you will wake up with a wild start on the fall orn day and find yourself a good dealix, hinker, then this here old busted lizard is. End of chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Bill Nies Courtwood This is a liberal vox recording. All liberal vox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org, recording by Yeh'er. Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nies, chapter 6. True merit rewarded, style of school literature known 30 years ago. One of Bill Nies' selections written by himself arranged with special reference to the matter of choice delicate and difficult words. One day, as George Oswald was going to his tasks,

39:49and while passing through the wood, he spied a tall man approaching in an opposite direction along the highway. Ah, thought George in a low mellow tone of voice. Whom have we here? Good morning, my fine fellow, exclaim the stranger pleasantly. Do you reside in this locality? Indeed I do, retorted George, cheerily dropping his cap. In the under cottage near the Glen, my widowed mother and her 13 children dwell with me. And how did your papa die? Ask the man, as he thoughtfully stood on the other foot a while. Alas, sir, said the George, as a large hot tear stole down his pale cheek and fell with a loud report on the warty surface of his bare foot. He was lost at sea in a bitter gale. The good ship founded two years ago lost Christmas tide, and father was founded at the same time. No one knew of the loss of the ship and that the crew was drowned until the next spring, and it was then too late. And what is your age, my fine fellow?

40:50Quote the stranger. If I live until next October, said the boy, in a declampatory tone of voice suitable for a second reader, I will be seven years of age. A large family of children, and who provides for your mother and her large family of children, query the man. Indeed, I do, sir, reply to George in his shrill tone. I toil oh so hard, sir, for we are very, very poor, and since my elder sister, Anne, was married and brought as husband home to live with us, I have to toil more seriously than here to for. And by what means do you obtain a livelihood? Exclaimed the man in slowly measured and grammatical words. By deking wells, kind sir, replies George, picking up a tide and, as he spoke, and stroking it on the back. I have a good education, and so I am enabled to dig wells as well as a man. I do this daytime and take a washing at night. In this way, I am enabled to maintain our family

41:52in a precarious manner. But oh, sir, should my other sisters marry, I see that some of my brothers in law would have to suffer. You are indeed brave lad, exclaim the stranger, as you repress the smile. And do you not at times become very wary and wish for other ways of passing your time? Indeed, I do, sir, said the lad. I would feign run and romp and be gay like other boys, but I must engage in constant manual exercise, or we will have no bread to eat, and I have not seen a pie since Papa perished in the moist and moaning sea. Saved from a hurried grave. And what if I were to tell you that your Papa did not perish at sea but was saved from a hurried grave? Ask the stranger, in pleasing tones. Ah, sir, exclaim George, in a gentile manner, again doffing his cap. I'm too polite to tell you what I would say, and besides, sir, you are much larger than I am. But my brave lad said the man in low musical tones. Do you not know me, George? Oh, George! I must say, reply to George,

42:59that you have the advantage of me. Willst, I have met you before. I cannot at this moment place you, sir. My son, oh, my son, murmured the man, at the same time taking a large strawberry mark out of the valley and showing it to the lad. Do you not recognise your parent on your father's side when our good ship went to the bottom, all perished saved me. I swam several miles through the billows, and at last utterly exhausted gave up all hopes of life. Suddenly a bright idea came to me, and I walked out of the sea and rested myself. And now my brave boy, exclaim the man with great glee, see what I have brought for you. It was about the work of a moment to unclassp from a shawl strap, which he held in his hand and presented to George's astonished gaze, a large 40 cent watermelon, which he had worked with him from the orient. Ah, said George, this is indeed a glad surprise. I bade, how can I ever repay you? Bill Nye in Boston Globe.

44:03End of chapter 6. Recording by E.L. Chapter 7 of Bill Nye's Court Wood This is a Libravox Recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Bill Nye's Court Wood by Bill Nye. Chapter 7. Bill Nye condoles with Cleveland. Surprise expressed that the president should take a mother-in-law into his cabinet, and add housekeeping to his other agony. Hudson was Concent, June 3, 1886. The honorable Grover Cleveland, Washington, DC. My dear sir, you have now assumed a new duty in taking upon yourself an additional responsibility, not content with the great weight of national affair sufficient to crush any other pack of derm. You have cheerfully and almost gleefully become a married man. While I cannot agree with you politically Grover, I am forced to admire your

45:09courage. This morning a new life opens out to you, the life of a married man. It is indeed a humiliating situation. To be a president of the United States, the roused about of a free people is a trying situation. But to be a newly married president, married in the full glare of official life, with the eye of a divided constituency upon you, is to place yourself where nerve is absolutely essential. I too am married, but not under such trying circumstances. Others have been married and still lived, but it is remained for you, Mr. President, young as you are, to pose as a newly wedded president and to take your new mother-in-law into the cabinet with you. For this reason I say freely that to walk a slack rope across the moist brow of Niagara, and carry a nervous man in a wheelbarrow sinks into a mere commonplace. Daniel, playing tag with a denful of half-starved lions, becomes a historic cipher, and the Hebrew children,

46:10sitting on a rosy bed of red-hot clinkers in the fiery furnace, are almost forgotten. With a large wad of civil service wedged in among your back teeth, a larger fragment perhaps than you were prepared to masticate when you bit it off, with an agonized southern democracy in a clamorous northern constituency, with disappointment poorly concealed among your friends and hilarity openly expressed by your enemies, with the snarl of the vanquished Mr. Davis, who is at one time a sort of president himself, as he rolls up future majorities for your foes, with a lot of sharp-wooded journalists walking all over you every 24 hours and climbing up your stalwart frame with their telegraph repair boots on. I am surprised, Grover. Honestly, is between man and man, that you should have tried to add housekeeping to all this other agony. Had you been young and tender under the wings I might have understood it. But you must admit, in the quiet and sanctity of your own home, Grover, that you are no gausling. You have arrived at

47:13man's estate. You have climbed the barbed wire fence which separates the fluff and bloom and blossom and bumblebees of impetuous youth, from the yellow fields and shadowy orchards of middle life. You now stand in the full glare of life's meridian. You are entering upon a new experience. Possibly you think that because you are president the annoyance is peculiar to the life of a new green groom will not reach you. Do not fool yourself in this matter. Others have made the same mistake. Position, wealth and fame cannot shut out the awkward and trying circumstances, which attend the married man even as the sparks are prone to fly upward. It will seem odd to you at first, Mr. President, after the affairs of the nation have been put aside for the day and the government fireproof safe locked up for the night, to go up to your bootwar and converse with a bride with one corner of her mouth full of pins. A man may write a pretty fair message to Congress, one that will be accepted and printed all over the country, and yet he may not be fitted to hold

48:15a conversation with one corner of a woman's mouth while the other is filled with pins. To some men it is given to be greatest statesman, while to others it is given to be fluent conversation lists under these circumstances. Mr. President, I may be taking a great liberty and writing to you and touching upon your private affairs, but I noticed that everybody else was doing it and so I have nerve myself up to write you, having once been a married man myself, though not as I said under the same circumstances. When I was married I was only a plain justice of the peace, plotting quietly along and striving to do my duty. You was then the sheriff of your county. Little did we think in those days that now you would be a freshly married president, and I the author of several pieces which have been printed in the papers. Little did we think then when I was a justice of the peace in Wyoming, and you a sheriff in New York, that today your Timothy Lone would be kicked all the pieces by your admiring constituents,

49:16while I would be known and loved wherever the English language is tampered with. So we have risen together. You to a point from which you may be easily observed and flayed alive by the newspapers, while I am the same pleasant, unassuming, gentlemanly friend of the poor that I was when only a justice of the peace and comparatively unknown. I cannot close this letter without expressing a wish that your married life may be a joyous one, as the paper at Laramie has said, and that no cloud may ever come to mar the horizon of your wedded bliss. This sentence is not my own. I copy it verbatim from a wedding notice of my own written by a Western journalist who is now at the old woman's home. Mr. President, I hope you will not feel that I have been too forward in writing to you personally over my own name. I mean to do what is best for you. You can truly say that all I have ever done in this way has been for your good. I speak in a plain way sometimes, but I don't beat about the bush. I see that you do not want to have any engrossed bills sent to you for a couple of weeks. That's the way I was. I told all my

50:22creditors 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 popper stream, a rich gold claim of mine on elk mountain. It is a very rich claim that 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 here to for. Bill Nye. P.S. I send you today a card receiver. It looks like

51:32silver. 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. Be in. End of Section 7. Recording by Philip Goole Chapter 8 of Bill Nye's Cordwood This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by Tom Pant. Bill Nye's Cordwood by Bill Nye. No doubt as to his condition.

52:35I hear that you have lost your father. Allow me to express my sympathy. Jack, with a sigh. Thank you. Yes, he's 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. Harry, his property was large? Jack. Yes, something like a quarter of a million. Harry, 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? Jack. No, father was quite sane when he made his will. He left everything to me. End of no doubt as to his condition. Cyclones. We were riding along on the boundary train yesterday, and someone spoke of the free and democratic way that people in this country got acquainted with each other while traveling.

53:36Didn't we go after talking about railway sociability and railway etiquette, one young man from East Jasper, who had wildly jumped and grabbed his vellies 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 had a large, corpulent gentleman, both total strangers, were thrown together while trying to jump a wash out, and an intimacy sprang up between them that had ripened into open hostility. From that, we got to talking about natural phenomena in storms. I spoke of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitterness perhaps, briefly telling my own experience in making the storm as loud and wet and violent as possible. Then a gentleman from Kansas named George L. Murdoch, 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. Murdoch states.

54:38A little cloud, no larger than a man's hand, might have been seen. It moved for the southwest gently, with its hands and its pockets for a few moments. And then Mr. Murdoch 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 muffled 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, deeds, and just as good as ever. Then a gentleman named Bean of Western Minnesota, a man he went there in an early day, in Homesteadedit when his nearest neighbor was fifty miles away, spoke of a cyclone that visited his county before the telegraph where railroad had penetrated that part of the state. Mr. Bean said it was very clear, up to the moment he noticed a cloud in the

55:42northwest, no larger than a man's hand. It soldered down in a southwesternly direction, like a cyclone that had all summer to do its chores 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 milkhouse, 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, continuing 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 headfirst through his new grindstone without entering the worms or impairing the grindstone. He would have had the grindstone photograph, 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 Lamborghini. The cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon. Its movements are so erratic and in direct violation of all known rules.

56:49Mr. Lewis 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 gerutory movement. Then appeared to be a funnel-shaped cloud which passed 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 his hands. What he noticed most carefully on the following day was the wonderful evidences of its powerful suction. Its sucked on milch-cal absolutely dry, pulled all the water out of his sys turn, and then went around to the wastewater pipe that led from the bathroom and drew a two-year-old child who was taking a bath at the time, clear it down through the two-inch wastewater pipe,

57:51a distance of 150 feet. He had two inches of pipe with him and a lock of hair from the child's head. It is such circumstances as these coming to us from the mouths of eye witnesses that leads us to explain 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, pervericates and dies. Where are our best liars today? Look for them where you will and you will find that they are passing away, and go into the cemetery and there you will find them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate their business by marking their teams with a general perverication chiseled in enduring stone. I have heard it intimated by people who seem to know what they're talking about, but truth is mighty and will prevail, but I did not see much show for

58:53her till the cyclone season is over. End of Cyclones Chapter 9 of Bill Nye's Courtwood This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libravox.org. Bill Nye's Courtwood by Bill Nye, 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 Lords and the Fulness thereof. Some men do not care who owns the Earth so long as they get the Fulness.

59:55The Earth is 500 million years of age according to Professor Proctor, but she doesn't look at to me. The Duke of our Guile maintains that she is 10 million 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

1:00:58their 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 accumulated ice, snow and the vast accumulation 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 strabbersmused and much brick-a-brack will be for soil 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 favour of my going. A great many people during the past year have written

1:01:58me and given me their consent. If I could take about 20 good picked men and go up there for the summer, instead of bringing back 20 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 24 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

1:03:05their 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 y, 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.

1:04:10The Earth is about halfway 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 glass says that he regards the Earth as perfectly solid and safe to do business on for years to come. He claims that those who maintained that the Earth's crust is only 2500 miles in thickness have not thoroughly tested the matter by a system of practical

1:05:15experiments. 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 mean diameter, being 7,899 miles, while the equatorial diameter is 7,925 and a half miles.

1:06:24The long and patient struggle of our earnest and tireless geographers and servants in past years in order to obtain these figures and have them exact, few can fully realise. The long and thankless job of measuring the diameter of the Earth, no matter what the weather might be, away from home and friends, foot sore and weary, still plotting 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

1:07:26that 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 anticipate, ours to participate, ours to precipitate. Order Volunteer, please visit LeBervox.org, recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, BC. Bill Nies Corwood by Bill Nye. Francisco Pizarro's career.

1:08:28Born in shame and reared among swine, he conquered fame and fortune in Peru with the sword, history of a self-made man. Perhaps the history of the Western Hemisphere has never furnished a more wonderful example of the self-made man than may be found in the person of Francisco Pizarro, a gentleman who came to America, about 1510, intending to grow up with the country. Mr. Pizarro was born at Truxelo, Spain, about 1471. His father was a Spanish colonial of foot, and his mother was a peasant girl who admired and respected the Dashin colonial very much, but felt that she had scruples about marriage. And so, although years afterward, Francisco tried his best to make a match between his father and mother, they were never married.

1:09:31It is said that this embittered his whole life. None but those who have experienced it can fully realize what it is to have a thankful parent. Pizarro's mother's name was Estra Madura. This was her maiden name. It was a name which seemed to harmonize well with her rich, pickled olive complexion, and so she retained it all her life. Her son did not have many early advantages, for he was neglected by his mother and allowed to grow up in a swine herd. And it is even said that he was suckled by swine in his infancy while his giddy mother joined in the mad world at the skating rink. We can hardly imagine anything more pitiful than the condition of a little child left to wrestle for nourishment among the black and tan hogs of Spain while his father played old sledge on the frontier in the regular army

1:10:38and his mother stood on her Spanish head and wrote her cigar box name in the atmosphere at the rink. Poor little Pizarro had none of the modern advantages, therefore and his education was extremely crude. The historian says that he grew up a bold ignorant and brutal man. He came to what was then called Spanish America at the age of 39 years and assisted Mr. Balboa in discovering the Pacific Ocean. Having heard of the existence of Peru with all its wealth, Pizarro secured a band of self-made men like himself and lit out for that province for the purpose of conquering it. If he liked it and bring home some solid silver teapots and gold-lined card receivers, he was engaged in gathering this line of goods and working them off on the pawnbroker for 21 years

1:11:43during which time he did not get killed but continued to enjoy a reasonable degree of health and strength. Although Peru at time was quite densely populated with an industrious and wealthy class of natives, Pizarro subdued her with 110 foot soldiers armed with old-fashioned muskets that had these full-blown barrels with muscles on them like the business end of a tuba horn, 67 mounted men and two toy cannon loaded with carpet tacks. With no education and what was still harder to bear, the inner consciousness that his parents were playing, common, everyday people, whose position in life would not advance him in the estimation of the Peruvians he battled on. His efforts were crowned with success in as much that at the close of the year 1532 peace was

1:12:48declared and he could breathe the free air once more without fear of getting a bronze arrow head mixed up with his kidneys when his back was turned. For the first time in two years, said the historian, Pizarro was able to take off his tin helmet and his sheep iron corset at night when he laid down to rest or undismade to go forth bare-headed and wearing only his crinkled sear-sucker coat and a pair of sandals at the twilight hour until midnight wander alone amid the famous Guano groves of Peru. Such is the history of a man who never even knew how to write his own name. He won fame for himself and great wealth without an education or a long dark blue lineage. Pizarro was like Job. You know we sometimes sing. Oh Job he was a fine young lad.

1:13:55Sing glory, hallelujah. His heart was good but his blood was bad. Sing glory, hallelujah. So Pizarro could not brag on his blood and his education was not classical. He could not write his name though he tried faithfully for many years. Day after day during the campaign and laid into the night when the yalard dogs of Lima came forth with their Peruvian bark, he would get his orderly surgeon to set him the copy. Paul may plant an apple-lenius water but it is God that give us the increase. Then Pizarro would bring out his writing material and his tongue and try to write but he never could do he was not a studious mind. It was more on the knockdown and drag out order.

1:14:57Pizarro was made a marquee in after years. He was also made a corpse. He acquired the latter position toward the close of his life. He at one time married the Incas daughter and found a long line of grandees, marquees and macaroni sculptures whose names may be founded on the covers of imported cigar boxes and in the topmost here of the rot iron resorts in our best penitentiaries. Pizarro lived a very busy life during the conquest. Some days killing as many as 70 and 80 Peruvians tween son and son but death at last cropped his finger at the marquee and he slapped. We all break and blow our horn here for a few brief years it is true but when the grim reaper with his new and automatic twine binder comes along he gathers us in the weak and the strong the

1:16:03ignorant and the educated the plain and the beautiful the young and the old those who have just sniffed the sweet and due late in air of life's mourning and those who are foot sore and weary and waiting all alike must bow low to the sickle that goes on cutting closer and closer to us even when we sleep had Pizarro thought more about this matter he would have been ahead today. End of chapter 10 recording by Linda Read-Nielsen Vancouver BC Chapter 11 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is the Liebervox recording all Liebervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Liebervox.org recording by LT Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nye Chapter 11 Bill Nye

1:17:12discovers he discovers a man with an idea a new plan of running a good hotel improvements for which people pay in advance the following circular from a hotel man in Kansas is going about over the country and it certainly deserves more than a passing notice I changed the name of the hotel and proprietor in order to avoid giving any free boom to a man who seems to be thoroughly self-reliant and able to take care of himself the rest of the circular is accurately copied. Kansas dear sir not having enough room under our present arrangements and wishing to make the roller-towel house the recognized headquarters for traveling men we desire to enlarge the building not having the money on hand to do so we make the following proposition if you will advance us five dollars to be used for the above purpose we will deduct that amount from your bill when stopping with us we feel assured that the traveling men appreciate our efforts to give them first class accommodations and as the above amount will be deducted from your bill when stopping with us we hope

1:18:13for a favorable reply should you not visit our town again the loan will be repaid in cash j crash towel proprietor roller-towel house here we have a man with a quiet gentlemanly way and yet with all a cool level head a man who knows when he needs more room and how best to go to work to remedy that defect mr towel sees that another row of sleeping rooms cut low in the ceiling is actually needed in fancy he already sees these rooms added to his house each has a strip of hemp carpet in front of the bed and acute little green shade over the window a shade that falls down when we try to adjust it filling the room with Kansas dust in his dreams he sees each room fitted out with one of these smooth deceptive beds that are all right until we begin to use them for sleeping purposes a bed that the tall man lies diagonally across and groans through the live long night mr towel has made a rapid calculation on the buttered side of a menu and ascertain that if one half the traveling men in the United States would kindly advance five dollars to be refunded

1:19:15in case they did not decide to make a tour to the roller-towel house and to be taken out of the bill in case they did the amount so received would not only add a row of compressed hot air bedrooms with flexible soap and a delirious looking glass but also ensure an electric button which may or may not connect with the office and over which said button the following epitaph could be erected one ring for bellboy two rings for porter three rings for ice water four rings for rough on rats five rings for borrowed money six rings for fire seven rings for hook and ladder company in fact a man could have rings on his fingers and bellboys on his toes all the time if he wanted to do so and yet there will be traveling men who will receive this kind circular and still hang back constant contact with a cold cruel world has made them cynical and they will hesitate even after mr towel has said that he will improve his house with the money and even after he is a short us that we need not visit Kansas at all if we will advance the money this shows that he is

1:20:19not altogether a heartless man mr towel may be poor but he is not without consideration for the feelings of people who loan him money for my part i fully believe that mr towel would be willing to fit up his house and put matches in each room if traveling men throughout the country would respond to his call for assistance but the trouble is that the traveling public expect a landlord to take all the risks and advance all the money this makes the matter of hotel keeping a hazardous one mr towel asked the guests to become an interested party not that he in so many words agrees to divide the profits proportionately at the end of the year with the stockholders but he is willing to make his hotel larger and if food does not come up as fast as it goes down in price i mean he will try to make all his guests feel perfectly comfortable while in his house under favorable circumstances the roller towel house would no doubt be thoroughly refitted and refurnished throughout the little writing table in each room would have its legs re glued new wicks would be inserted in the kerosene lamps the stairs would be dazzled over with soft soap and the teeth

1:21:25in the comb down in the washroom would be reset and filled numerous changes would be made in the corpse de balay also the large handed chamber made with the cow catcher teeth and the red brazil nut of hair on the back of her head would be sent down in the dining room to recite that little rhetorical burst so often rendered by the electrocutionist of the dining room the smart electrocutionist in the language of the poet beginning beef steak perks steak and cults with a falling inflection that sticks its head in the bosom of the earth and gives its tail a tremolo movement in the air on receipt of five dollars from each one of the traveling men of the union new hinges would be put into the slippery elm towels the pink soap would be re-varnished the different kinds of meat on the table will have tags on them stating in plain words what kinds of meat they are so that guests will not be forced to take the word of servant or to rely on their own judgment fresh vinegar with the sour taste to it and without microbes will be put in the croutes

1:22:25the old and useless cockroaches will be discharged and the latest and most approved adjuncts of hotel life will be adopted why then should the traveling man hesitate why should he doubt and draw back falter and shrink why should he allow pessimism and other foreign substances to get into his system and change his whole life let him remit five dollars to the roller-towel house and if this should prove a success he may assist other hotels in the same manner he would thus feel an interest in their growth and prosperity then as he became more and more forehanded he could assist the railroads the bus lines and the boot blacks barbers laundries etc in the same manner i would like to call upon the american people in the same way i would like very much to establish a nice expensive home for inebriates it would cost properly fitted up about seven hundred fifty or eight hundred thousand dollars if those who read this article will lend fifty dollars by express or draft i will take it out of their bill the first time that they stop at my new and attractive inebriate

1:23:28asylum who will be the first to contribute Boston Globe end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of bill nyes cordwood this is a lebervox recording all lebervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lebervox.org recording by LT bill nyes cordwood by bill nye chapter 12 bill nye incubates my dear son we are still pegging along here at home in the same old way your mother and me we are neither of us real well and yet i suppose we are as well as folks at our time of life could expect to be your mother has a good deal of pain on her side all the while and i'm off my feet more or less in the morning doc has fixed me up some condition powders that he says will straighten me out right away perhaps so

1:24:30doc is straight now to good many people in his time i wish i had as many dollars as he has straighten out people most every spring i've had to take a little dandelion root limbered up with gin but this year that didn't seem to get there as the boys say i fixed up a dose of it and took it day and night for a week till i wore that old dandelion root clear down to skin and bone but in ten days my appetite was worse than ever and i had a head on me like a two-year-old cult dandelion root never served me that way before and your mother thinks that the goodness is all out of it maybe it's the same old dandelion root i've been using for 20 years and i believe that when you've tried a thing and it's proved good you order to change off i try to get your mother to take a dose of it last week for the pain on her side fixed up a two-quart jug of it for but she can't bear the smell of gin so i had to take it myself dandelion is a great purifier of the blood henry some days after i've been taking this dandelion root for an hour or two i feel as if my blood was pretty near pure enough feel like a new man you know i wrote your last winner henry that i was

1:25:32going to buy some newfangled hands in the spring and get into the egg business well i sent east in march for a couple of fouls one of each sect they came at nine dollars per pair over and above railroad charges which was some four thirty five more on top of that i thought that as soon as the hand got here and got a things off and got rested she would proceed to lay some of these here high priced eggs which we read about in the poultry keepers guide in american egust but she's seen pensive and when i tried to get acquainted with her she would clock in a croopy toned voice and go away the rooster was no doubt a fine looking brute when he was shipped but when he got here he strolled around with a preoccupied air and seemed to feel above us he was a poker dot rooster with gray mane and tail and he was no doubt refined but i did not think he should feel above his business for we are only plain people who are accustomed to the self made american hen he seen bored all the time and i could see by the way he acted that he pined to be back in freemont oh having his picture taken for the poultry keepers guide and american egust he still yearned for approbation he was used to

1:26:36be made of as your mother says and it galled him to enter into our plain humdrum home life i never saw such a haughty rooster in my life actually when i got out to feed him in the morning he would give me a cold arrogant look that hurt my feelings i know i'm not what you would call an educated man nor a polished man though i claimed to have a son that is both of said things but i hate to have a rooster crow over me because he has had better advantages and better breeding than i have so there was no love lost between us as you can see directly i noticed that the hen began to have spells a vertigo she would be standing in the corner of the hen retreat reverting to her joyous childhood at freemont oh when all at once she would false senseless to the earth and their life prone upon the sword to use the words of a great writer whose address has been mislead she would remain in this komi toks condition for between five minutes perhaps then she would rally a little slowly pry open her large mournful eyes and seem to murmur where am i

1:27:37i could see that she was evading the egg issue in every way and ignoring the great object for which she was created with the ability to lay eggs from worth four dollars to five seventy five per dozen delivered on the cars i could plainly see that she proposed a roll up this great talent in an napkin and play the invalid act i do not disguise the fact henry that i was mad i made a large rectangular affidavit in the inner temple of the horse barn that this poker dot hen should never live to say that i had sent her to the seashore for her health when she was eminently fitted by nature to please the public with her lay i therefore gave her two weeks to decide on whether she would contribute a few of her meritorious articles or insert herself into a chicken pie she still continued haughty to the last moment so did her partner we therefore treated ourselves to a nine dollar dinner in april i then got some expensive eggs from the affid east they were not robust eggs they were laid during a time of great depression i judge so they were that way themselves

1:28:37also they came by express some were injured while being transferred at chakago no one has traveled over that line of railroad since i do not say that the eggs were bad but i say that their instincts in their inner life wasn't what they ought to have been in early may i bought one of these incubators that does the work of ten certain hands i hope to head off the hand so far as possible simply purchasing her literary efforts and editing them to suit myself i cannot endure the society of low bread hand and a refined hand seems to look down on me and so i thought if i could just get one of them automatic incubators i can have the whole process under my own control and if the blooded hands want to go to the sanitarium and sit around there with their hands in their pockets while the great hungry world of traffic clamor from most bring chickens fried in butter they might do so and be dog-gone there upon i bought one of the medium-sized two story hatchers and loaded it with eggs in my dreams i could see a long procession of fuzzy little chickens marching out of my little

1:29:38incubator arm and arm every day or two while my bank account swelled up like a deceased horse i was dreaming one of these dreams night before last at midnight's holy hour when i was rudely awakened by a gallon of cold water in one of my ears i arose in the darkness and received a squirt of cold water through the window from out ever watchful and courageous fire department i opened the easement for the purpose of thanking them for this little demonstration holy unsolicited on my part when i discovered the hennery was in flames i went down to assist the department forgetting to put on my pantaloons as is my custom out of deference to the usages of good society we saved the other buildings but the hatchery is a mass of smoldering ruins so am i it seems that the kerosene lamp which i kept burning in the incubator for the purpose of maintaining an even temperature and also for the purpose of showing the chickens the weight of the elevator in case they should hatch out in the night had torched up and ignited the hatchery so to speak i see by my paper that we are importing 200 million of hands eggs from Europe every year

1:30:41it'll be 300 million next year so far i'm concerned henry and you can bet your little pleated jacket on it too if you want to today i send p o order number 143876 for three dollars and 50 cents i agree with the bible that the fool and his money are soon parted your father bill nine end of chapter 12 chapter 13 of bill nigh's cordwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org bill nigh's cordwood by bill nigh chapter 13 bill nigh on tobacco a discourager of cannibalism i'm glad to notice a strong effort on the part of the friends of humanity to encourage those who wish to quit the use of tobacco to quit the use of this weed is one of the most agreeable methods

1:31:46of relaxation i have tried it a great many times and i can safely say that it has afforded me much solid felicity divinely reform and cast away the weed and at the end of a week to find a good cigar unexpectedly in the quiet unostentatious pocket of an old vest affords the most intense and delirious delight scientist tell us that a single drop of the concentrated oil of tobacco on the tongue of an adult dog is fatal i have no doubt about the truth or cohesive power of this statement and for that reason i have always been opposed to the use of tobacco among dogs dog should shun the concentrated oil of tobacco especially flangevity be any object to them neither would i advise a man who may have canine tendencies or a strain of that blood in his veins to use the concentrated oil of tobacco as a sawzadont to those who may feel that way about tobacco i would say shun it by all means shun it as you would the deadly upestry or the still more deadly wipple tree of the tropics

1:32:53and what i may say under this head please bear in mind i do not speak of the cigarette i'm now confining my remarks entirely to the subject of tobacco the use of the cigarette is in fact beneficial in some ways and no pest house should try to get along without it it is said that they are very popular in the orient especially in the lasar houses where life would otherwise become very monotonous scientists who have been unable to successfully use tobacco and who therefore have given their whole lives and the use of their microscopes to the investigation of its horrors say that cannibals will not eat the flesh of tobacco using human beings and yet we say to our missionaries no man can be a Christian and use tobacco i say and i say it to with all that depth of feeling which is always characterized my earnest nature that in this we are committing a great error what have the cannibals ever done for us as a people that we should avoid the use of tobacco in order to fit our flesh for their tables in what way have they sought to ameliorate

1:33:56our condition in life that we should strive in death to tickle their pallets look at the history of the cannibal for past ages read carefully his record and you will see that it has been but the history of a selfish race cast your eye back over your shoulder for a century and what do you find to be the condition of the cannibalists a new missionary has landed a few weeks previous perhaps a little group is gathered about on the beach beneath the tropical tree representative cannibals from a joining islands or present the odor of sanctity pervades the air the chief sits beneath a new umbrella looking at the pictures in a large concordance a new plug head is hanging in a tree nearby a non-leading citizens gather about on the ground and we hear the chief ask his attorney general whether he will take some of the light or some of the dark meat that is all far away in England the paper contains the following personal wanted a young man to go as missionary to supply vacancy

1:34:59in one of the cannibal islands he must fully understand the appetites and tastes of the cannibals must be able to reach their inner nature at once and must not use tobacco applicants may communicate in person or by letter is it strange that under those circumstances those who frequented the cannibal islands during the last century should have quietly accustomed themselves to the use of a peculiarly pernicious violent and all-pervading brand of tobacco I think not to me the statement that tobacco tainted human flesh is offensive to the cannibal does not come home with crushing power perhaps I do not love my fellow-man so well as the cannibal does I know that I am selfish in this way and if my cannibal brother desires to polish my wishbone he must take me as he finds me I cannot abstain wholly from the use of tobacco in order to gratify the pampered tastes of one who has never gone out of his way to do me a favor do I ask the cannibal to break off the pernicious use of tobacco because I dislike the flavor of it

1:36:04in his brisket I will defy any respectable resident of the cannibal islands today to place his finger on a solitary instance where I have ever by word or deed intimated that he should make the slightest change in his habits on my account unless it be that I may have suggested that a diet consisting of more anarchists and less human beings would be more productive of general and lasting good my own idea would be to send a class of men to these islands so thoroughly imbued with their great object and the oil of tobacco that the great Caucasian chowder of those regions would be followed by such weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and such remorse and repentance and gastric upheavals that it would be as unsafe to eat a missionary in the cannibal islands as it is to eat ice cream in the United States today end of chapter 13 recording by Philip Gould chapter 14 of Bill Nye's Court Wood this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are

1:37:12in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org recording by the Ndmry Nielsen Vancouver BC Bill Nye's Court Wood by Bill Nye Bill Nye's Arctic Lee the excitement consequent upon the anticipated departure of Mr. Gilder for the North Pole has recently awakened in the bosom of the American people a new interest in what I made term that great terror incognita if I may be pardoned for using a phrase from my own mother tongue let us for a moment look back across the bleak waste of years and see what wonderful progress has been made in the discovery of the pole we may then ask ourselves who will be the first to tack this location notice on the nod and season crack surface of the pole itself and what will

1:38:20he do with it after he has filed upon it Iceland I presume was discovered about 860 AD or 1026 years ago but the stampede to Iceland has always been under control and you can get quarter lots in the most desirable cities of Iceland and wear a long rickety name with links in it like a rosewood sausage today at a low price mad doder a Norwegian Viking discovered Iceland AD 860 but he did not live to meet lieutenant Greeley or any of our most celebrated northern tourists why mad doder earn to go north and discover a colder country than his own why he should seek to wet his feet and get icicles down his back in order to bring to light more snow banks

1:39:22and chill beans I cannot at this time understand why should a robust and prosperous Viking roam around in the cold trying to nose out more frostbitten Eskommaks when he could remain at home and fight but I leave this to the thinking bind let the thinking mind grapple with it it has no charms for me moreover I haven't that kind of a mind ockther another Norwegian gentleman sailed around north cape and crossed the Arctic Circle in 890 AD but he crossed it in the night and didn't notice it at the time two or three years later Eric the Red took a large snow shovel and discovered the east coast of Greenland Eric the Red was a northman and he flourished about the nice century and before the war he sailed around in that country for several years drinking bay rum and bearers oil and having

1:40:29a good time he wore fur under clothes all the time winter and summer and invaded the pole for a long time Eric also established a settlement on the southeast coast of Greenland in about latitude 60 degrees north these people remain here for some time sub-existing on shrimp salad sea moss Farina and needs foot oil but finally they became so bored with the quiet country life and the backward springs that they removed from there to a land that is fair than day to use the words of another they removed during the holidays leaving their axle grease and all they held dear including their remains from that on down to 1380 we hear or read varying and disconnected accounts of people who have been up that way acquired a large red chabain made

1:41:34an observation and died representatives from almost every quarter of the globe have been to the far north eaten their little hunch of jerked polar bear and then the polar bear has eaten his little hunch of jerked explorer and so the good work went on the polar bear with his wonderful retentive faculties has succeeded in retaining his great secret regarding the pole together with the man who came there to find about it so up to 1380 a large number of nameless explorers went to the celebrated watering place shot a few pemican ate a jerked whale shuddered a couple times and died it has been the history of Arctic exploration from the earliest ages men have taken their lives and a few donuts in their hands wandered away into the uncertain light of the frozen north

1:42:39made a few observations to each other regarding the backward spring and then cached their skeletons forever in 1380 two Italians named Lem took a load of sunkiss bananas and made a voyage to the extreme north but the historian says that the accounts are so conflicting and as the stories told by the two brothers did not agree and neither ever told it the same on two separate occasions the history of their voyage is not used very much years ruled on boys continued to go to school and see in their geographies enticing pictures of men in expensive furcoding running sharp iron spears and dangerous stab knives into ferocious white bears and snorting around on lake cakes of cold ice and having a good time these inspired the growing youth to rise up and do likewise

1:43:45so every nation near the sun has contributed its assortment of choice white skeletons and second hand clothes to the remorseless ma of the hungry and ravenous north and still the great poll continued to squeak on through days that were six months long and nights that made breakfast seem almost useless in 1477 Columbus went up that way but did not succeed in starving to death he got a bird's eye view of a large deposit of dark blue ice got hungry and came home during the 50th and 16th centuries the northern nations of Europe and especially the Dutch kept the discovery business red hot but they did not get any fragments of the true poll the maritime nations of Europe together with other foreign powers dynasties and human beings for some time

1:44:48had spells of visiting the polar seas and neglecting to come back it was the custom then as it is now to go 20 rods farther than any other man had ever been eat a deviled bootleg cropped and perish thousands of the best and brightest minds of all ages have yielded to this wild desire to live on sperm oil pain killer and jerked walrus keep a little blue diary for 13 weeks and then feed it to a tall white bear with red gums that is not all millions of gallons of whiskey are sent to these frozen countries and used by the explorer in treating the untudered as squimbocks who are not and never will be voters it seems to me utterly ill-avise and shamefully idiotic

1:45:49end of chapter 14 recording by Lindemry Nielsen Vancouver BC chapter 15 of Bill Nye's Court Wood this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org Bill Nye's Court Wood by Bill Nye chapter 15 Bill Nye's answers to correspondence capitalist will you kindly furnish your address once more you must either stop moving about so or leave someone at home to represent you nothing is more humiliating to a literary man of keen sensibilities than to draw its side and have the draft return with the memorandum on the back in pencil gone to the white mountains or gone to Lake Elmo on another bridal tour or gone to Bayfield to be absent several years or gone to Minnetonka to wait till the clouds roll by

1:46:54searcher Peru Illinois cum granosalis was the motto of the ancients and was written in blue letters at the base of the shield on a field emerald supported by a cucumber recumbent the author is unknown sqg McGree's prairie Iowa asks do you know of any place where a young man can get a good living that depends on what you call a good living sqg if your stomach would not revolt at plain fair such as poor people use come up and stop at our house a while we don't live high but we aim to echo an existence as it were coming abide with us sqg here is where the prince of whales comes when he gets weary of being air apparently to the throne here is where Burke comes when he stood a long time first on one leg and then on the other waiting for his mother to evacuate said throne he bids dull care be gone and clothing himself in some of my own gaudy finery he threads a

1:47:54small limbric book through the vitals of a long-waisted worm as we highest to the bosky dale where the plash of the pleasant voiced brook replies to the turtle dives moan there were the pale green plush of the moss on the big flat rocks deadens the footfall of whales in me where the tip of the long willow bow monkeys with the stream forever where neither powers nor principalities nor things present or things to come can imbiter us we sit there young Regina in me and we live more happy years and twenty minutes than a man generally lives all his whole life socked up against a hard throne with the eagle eye of a warning constituency on him it's a good place to come sqg quiet but restful full of balm for the wounded spirit and close up to nature's great North American heart that's the idea perhaps I do not size you up accurately sqg you may be a man who does not pant for the silvin shade very likely you are a seaside resortist and do not care for pants

1:48:59but I simply say to you that if you are a worthy young man weary with life's great battles beaten back perhaps and wounded with your neck knocked crooked like a tom tit that has run against a telegraph wire in the night come up here into northern Wisconsin where the butternut gleams in the autumn sunshine and the ax health has her home come where the sky is a dark and glorious blue in the town a magnificent red come where the coral cranberry nestles in the green heart of the yielding and the sandhill crane stands idly on the segy brim of the lonely lake through all the long idle day with his hands in the tail pockets of his tan colored coat trying to remember what he did with his handkerchief come up here sqg and be my amannuensis I want a man to go with me on a little private excursion from the Dallas of the St. Croix to the Sioux St. Marie I want him to go with me and act as my private secretary and carry my canoe for me the salary would be small the first year

1:50:01but you would have a good deal of fun most anyone can have fun with me we would go mostly for relaxation and to build up our systems my system is pretty well built up but it would be a pleasure to me to watch you build yours up what I need is a private secretary to go with me and take down little thinklets that I may have thought you would have nothing to carry but the canoe a small tent my gun and a time-writer I would carry the field glass I always carry the field glass because something might happen to it one time in amannuensis who went with me insisted on carrying the field glass and the second day he lost the cork out of it so we had to come back and make a new observation before we could start you would be welcome sqg welcome here in the fastness of the forest welcome where the resinous air of the spruce and the tamarack would kiss your wane cheek welcome to the rocky shores of the grand old fresh water monarch the champion heavyweight of all the great lakes welcome to the hazy lazy days of our long voluptuous autumn the twilight of the

1:51:07closing year welcome to the shade of the elms where the sunshine sneaks in on tiptoe and fronlicks with the dew in the daisies welcome to the somber depths of the ever regretful and repentant pines whose venerable heads are first to greet the day and whose heaving bosoms hold the night come over sqg be my stenographer and I will show you where a friend of mine is concealed a watermelon patch in the very heart of his cornfield come over and we will show him how concealment like a worm may feed upon his damaged fruit till then sqg ta ta in the section 15 recording by thalab gul chapter 16 of bill nys cordwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org bill nys cordwood by bill

1:52:139 chapter 16 bill nys preparing a political speech in advance for a time of need september 1 i have just been preparing a speech for tomorrow evening at our convention it is a good speech and will take well it is also sincere i will give the outlines of the speech here so that in case i should die or slip up on a stenographer the basis of my remarks may not perish fellow citizens you have seen fit to re nominate me for the office which i have held one term already vis member of congress from this district as you are aware i am a self-made man i have carved out my own career from the ground up as i may say till today i am your nominee for the second time what we want these days is not so much men of marked ability as candidates but available careful and judicious men we are too apt to strive for the nomination of

1:53:14brilliant men of pronounced opinions when we must need men who can be easily elected of what avail is a man of genius and education in robust brains and earnest convictions if we cannot elect him he is simply a sounding brass and a tinkling symbol therefore i would say to the youth of america could they stand before me today do not strive too hard or strain yourselves by endeavoring to attain some object after you are elected to office let your earnest convictions remain dormant should a man have convictions these days let him reserve them for his use in his own family they are not necessary in politics if a member of congress must have a conviction and earnestly feels as though he could not possibly get along another day without it let him go to the grand jury and make a clean breast of it i may say fellow citizens without egotism that i have been judicious both in the heat of the campaign in the halls of legislation i have done nothing

1:54:15that could disrupt the party or weaken our vote in this district it is better to do nothing than to do things that will be injurious to the interests of the majority what do you care gentleman for what i said or did in our great session of last winter so long as i came home to you with a solidified vote for this fall so long as i have not trodden on the toes of the irish the german the scandinavian the prohibitionist the female suffragist the anti-mormon or the international copyright crank let us be frank with each other fellow citizens do you ask me on my return to you how many speeches my private secretary and the public printer attached my name to or how many packages of flyblown turnip seed i sent to you during the last two years no you ask yourself how is the vote of our party this fall is compared with two years ago and i answered that not a vote has been misled or a ballad erased i have done nothing and said nothing that a carping constituency

1:55:17could get hold of though i was never in congress before old members envied me the long blank evasive and irreproachable record i have made no man can say that even under the stimulating influence of the wine cup i have given utterance in the last two years to anything that could be distorted into an opinion and so today i come back to you and find my party harmonious while others return to their homes to be greeted by a disrupted constituency over whose ruins the ever-alert adversary clambers to success so i say to you tonight mr. president and gentleman of the convention let us leave to the newspapers the expression of what we call earnest convictions convictions that arise up in after years to belt us across the face and eyes let in judicious young men talk about that kind of groceries but the wary self-made politician who succeeds does not do that way it seems odd to me that young men will go on year after year trying to

1:56:19attain distinction by giving utterance to opinions when they can see for themselves that we do not want such men for any place whatever from juremon to congressman if you examine my record for the last session for instance you will not find that i spent the day pounding my desk with an autograph album and filling the air with violent utterances pro or con and then set up nights to get myself interviewed by the disturbing elements of the press no sir i am not a disturbor a radical or a disruptor at washington i am a healer and at home in my ward i am also a healer what america wants today is not so much a larger number of highbrowd men who will get up on their hind feeding call on heaven to paralyze their right arms before they will do a wrong act or ask to have their tongues nailed to the rich poll of their mouths rather than utter a false or dangerous doctrine that was customary when the country was new and infested with bears when men carried their

1:57:22guns to church with them and drank bay rum as a beverage these remarks made good pieces for boys to speak but they will not do now what this country needs is a congress about as equally balanced as possible politically so that when one sidewalks up and smells of an appropriation the other can growl in a low tone of voice from december till dog days in this way by a pleasing system of post pwnments previous questions points of order reference to committees laying on the table and general oblivion a great deal may be evaded and people at home who do not closely read and remember the congressional record will not know who was to blame judicious inertness and a gentle air of evasion will do much to prevent party dissension i have done that way and i look for the same old majority that we had at the former election often wonder if daniel webster would have the nerve to get up and talk as freely about things now as he used to when politics had not

1:58:24reached the present state of perfection we often hear people ask why we haven't got any websters in congress now i can tell you they are sat down on long before they get that far along they are not encouraged to say radical things and split up the vote i will now close thanking you for your kind performance i will ever strive i'll representing you in congress to retain my following and never by word or deed endeavor to win fame and applause there at the expense of votes at home i care not to be involved in the school speakers and declaimers of future ages provided my tombstone shall bear upon it the simple poetic refrain he got there end of chapter 16 recording by philip gould chapter 17 of bill nyes cordwood this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in

1:59:27the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org recording by bruska chock bill nyes cordwood by bill nye bill nye on railroads perhaps there is nothing in the line of discovery and improvement that has shown more marked progress in the last century than the railway and its different auxiliaries when we remember that much less than a century has passed since the first patent for a locomotive to move upon a track was issued where now we have everything that heart can wish and in fact live better on the road than we do at home with both 36 hours between New York and Minneapolis and a gorgeous parlor bedroom and dining room between main and Oregon with nothing missing that may go to make life a rich blessing we are compelled to express our wonder and admiration to peter kufr is largely

2:00:29due the boom given to railway business he having constructed the first locomotive had been made in this country and put it on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad the first train never operated must have been a grand site first came the locomotive a large babcock fire extinguisher on trucks with a smoke stack like a full blown speaking tube with a frill around the top the engineer at his post in a plug hat with an umbrella over his head and his hand on the throttle borrowing a chew up tobacco now and then of the farmers who passed him on their way to town near him stood the fireman now and then bringing in an arm full of wood from the fields through which he passed and turning the damper in the smoke stack every little while so it would draw now and then he would go forward and put a poor grind on a hot box or pound on the cylinder head to warn people off the track next comes the tender loaded with nice white birch wood an economical style of fuel because

2:01:31its bark may be easily burned off while the wood itself will remain unhingered besides a firewood we find on the tender a barrel of rainwater and a tall blonde jar with wicker work around which contains a small sprig of tansy immersed in four gallons of new England rum this the engineer has brought with him for use in case of accident he is now engaged in preparing for the accident in advance next comes a front breakman in a plug hat about two sizes to large for him he also wears a long-waisted frock coat with a bustle to it and a tall shirt collar with a table spread tie the ends of which flutter galey in the morning breeze as the train pauses at the first station he takes a hammer out of the toolbox and nails on the tire of the four wheel of his coach the engineer gets down with a long oil can and puts a little sewing machine oil on the pitman he then wipes it off with his sleeve it is now discovered that the rear coach containing a number of directors and

2:02:36the division superintendent is missing the conductor goes to the rear of the last coach and finds at the string by which the director's car was attached is broken and that the grade being pretty steep the directors and one breakman have no doubt gone back to the starting place but the conductor is cool he removes his bell crowned plug hat and taking out his orders and time card he finds at the track is clear and looking at a large valuable water-bury watch presented to him by a widow whose husband was run over and killed by the train he sees he can still make the next station in time for dinner he hires a livery team to go back after the director's coach and calling all aboard he swings lightly up on the moving train it is now ten o'clock and nineteen weary miles still stretch out between him and the dinner station to add to the horrors of the situation the front breakman discovers that a very thirsty boy in the immigrant car has been

2:03:36drinking from the water supply tank on the tender and there is not enough left to carry the train through much time is consumed in filling the barrel again at a spring near the track but the conductor finds a spotter on the train and gets him to do it he also induces him to cut some more wood and clean out the ashes the engineer then pulls out a drawhead and begins to make up time in twenty minutes he has made up an hour's time though two miles of hoopire and are torn from the track behind him he sails into the eating station on time and while the master mechanic takes several of the coach wheels over to the machine shop to soak he eats a horrid lunch the breakman here gets his tin lanterns ready for the night run and fills two of them with red oil to be used on the rear coach the fireman puts a fresh bacon rind on the eccentric stuff some more cotton batting around the axles puts a new linchpin in the hind wheels sweep the apple

2:04:37peelings out of the smoking car and he is ready then comes the conductor with his plug hat full of excursion tickets orders passes and time checks he looks at his waterberry watch waves his hand and calls all aboard again it is upgrade however and for two miles the spotter has to push behind with all his might before the conductor will allow him to get on and ride thus begin the history of a gigantic enterprise which has grown till it is a comfort a convenience a luxury and yet a necessity it has built up and beautified the desert it has crept beneath the broad river scale the snowy mountain and hung by iron arms from the cannon and the precipice carrying the young two new lands and reuniting those long separated it has taken the hopeless to lands of new hope it has evaded the solitude of the wilderness spite down valuable land grants killed cheap cattle

2:05:41and then paid a high price for them whoop through valleys snorted over lofty peaks crept through long dark tunnels turning the bright glare of day suddenly upon those who thought the tunnel was two miles long roar through the night and glittered through the day bringing a light the groom to his beautiful bride and the weeping prodigal to the musk-grown grave of his mother you are indeed a heartless soulless corporation and yet you are very essential in our business end of Bill Nye on Railroads Chapter 18 of Bill Nye's Codewood this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org recording by Bruce Cachock Bill Nye's Codewood by Bill Nye Bill Nye's letter

2:06:47how old Brindle met her death with a train a quaint a pistle in which the humorist gives his experience with railroad officials how he secured pay for a cow dear Henry your letter stating that you had just succeeded in running your face for a new curriculum is at hand and contents noted as the fellow said when I wrote to him two years ago and told him that his cussed railroad had mashed old Brind you remember that just as you entered on what you called your junior year old Brind remained out all night and your mother and me took our coffee milkless in the morning well I went down to the pound to see if she had registered there but she hadn't been stopping there the night clerk said he maintained however that number two ought eight as he called it had come in half an hour late with a cow's head on the pilot and Brindle hair on the running gears of the tender so I went over to the station and found Brind's head there where upon I went

2:07:49down the track in search of her though I feared it would be futile as you once said about administering a half soul to your summer pantaloons well I was right about it Henry if I'd been in the futile business for years I couldn't have been more so than I was on this occasion the old cow was dead and so identified with the right of way that her own mother would not have known her I spoke to the conductor about it and he said it wasn't on his run and for me to see the other conductor time I found him he was on another road and killed in a collision with a lumber train then I wrote to the general traffic manager using great care to spell all the words as near right as possible and he didn't reply at all his hired man wrote me however with a printing press that my letter had been received and contents duly noted in reply would say that the general traffic manager was then attending a tripartite reunion at Chicago at which meeting the subject of cows would come up he said that there had been such competition between the Milwaukee the north

2:08:52western and the rock island in the matter of prices paid for shattered cows that farmers got to dragging their debilitated stock on the track at night and selling it to the roads after which they would retire from business on their ill-gotten gains when the general traffic manager got back I went in to see him he was very pleasant with me but said he had nothing to do with the dead cow industry go to the auditor or the general solicitor said he they run the morgue but they were both away attending a large Easter in mass meeting of auditors and general solicitors were they were discussing the practicality of a new garnishy proof pay car that some party had patented they said so I went home and wrote to the auditor a nice long fluent letter in relation to the cow and her merits I told him that it wasn't the intrinsic value of the cow that I cared about in trinzig value was a term that I found in one of your letters and liked very much I wrote him that

2:09:53old brain was an heirloom and a noble brute I said among other things that she had never been antagonistic to railroads she had rather favored them also that her habits and tastes were simple and that she had never aspired to rise above her station in life and why she should rise higher than the station when she was injured I could not understand I told him what a good milkster she was and also that she came up every night as regular as an ametic I then wrote my name with a little ornamental squirm to it at a post script in which I said that you was now in your junior year and I thought that about seventy five dollars would be a fair quotation on such a cow as I had feebly described and said goodbye to him hoping he would remit at a prior date if possible I got a letter after a while stating that my favor of the twenty fifth alt or prox or something of that nature had been duly received and contents noted this was no surprise to me because that is too often the sad fate of a letter in fact the same thing had happened to the other one I had previously

2:10:58sent I was mad and wrote to the president of the company stating in crisp language that if his company would pay more cash for cows and do less in the noting and contents business he would be more apt to endear himself to those who reside along his line and who had their horses scared to death twice a day by his arrogant and bettering beza-mob destruction if you will deal more in scuds and lessen stenography and monkey business says I enclosing you will warm yourself into the hearts of the plain people otherwise I says we will arise in our might and walk I then in a humorsome way marked it dictated letter and sent it away I got it back in the face by way of the dead letter office where they know me I'll bet they had a good laugh over it for they opened it and read it what it was there I wouldn't be surprised if every man in congress had a good hearty laugh over that letter congressman enjoy a good thing once in a while Henry the ain't so dumb as

2:12:03they look but I finally got my pay for old brin to make a long story short they cut me down some on the price but I finally got my money no railroad company can run over a cow of mine and mix her up with a truss all three quarters of a mile long without paying for it and favors received and contents duly noted don't go with your father bill nigh and of bill nigh's letter have all brindle met her death with a train chapter 19 of bill nigh's cordwood this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Bruce Cachock bill nigh's cordwood by bill nigh bill nigh attends a western theater

2:13:04and sees a remarkable shooting of fray those who are troublesome times indeed when we were trying to settle up the new world and a few other matters at the same time little do the soft-eyed sons of prosperity understand today as they walk the paved streets of the west under the cold litter of the electric light surrounded by all that can go to make life sweet and desirable that not many years ago on that same ground their fathers fought the ontotard savage by night and chased the bounding buffalo by day all all is changed time in his restless and resisteless flight has filed away those early years in the county clerk's office and these times are not the old times with the march of civilization i noticed that it is safer for a man to attend a theater and in the early days of the wild and woolly west time has made it easier for one to go to the opera and bring his

2:14:04daylights home with him than it used to be it seems but a few short years since my roommate came home one night with a long red furrow plowed along the top of his head where some gentleman at the theater had shot him by mistake my roommate said that a tall man had objected to the pianist and suggested that he was playing pianissimo when he should have played fortissimo and trouble grew out of this which had ended in the death of the pianist and the injury of several disinterested spectators and yet the excitement of knowing that you might be killed at any moment made the theater more attractive and instead of scaring men away it rather induced patronage of course it prevented the attendance of ladies who were at all timid but it did not cause any falling off in the receipts some thought it aided a good deal especially where the show itself didn't have much blood in it the belly union was a pretty fair sample of the theater in those days it was a low wooden structure with a perpetual band on the outside that played gay and festive circus tunes

2:15:09early and often inside you could poison your soul at the bar and see the show at one and the same price of admission in a joining room silent men joined the hosts of feral and the timid tenderfoot gambled or the green i visited this place of amusement one evening in the capacity of a reporter for the paper i would not admit this even at this late day only that it has been overlooked in mr. townmage since and if he could go through such an ordeal in the interests of humanity i might be forgiven for going there professionally to write up the show for our amusement column the program was quite varied negro minstrelsy slight of hand or prebuve high tragedy and that oriental style of quadriol called the cancan if by sluggish memory be not at fault form the principal attractions of the evening at about ten thirty or eleven o'clock the cancan was produced upon the stage in the midst of it a tall man rose up at the back of the hall and

2:16:10came firmly down the aisle with a larger industry vulver in his right hand he was a powerfully built man with a dyed moustache and wicked eye on each side of his thin red nose he threw up the revolver with a little click that sounded very loud to me for he had stopped right behind me and rested his left hand on my shoulder as he gazed over on the stage i could distinctly hear his breath come and go for it was a very loud breath with the older avaniens and emigrant whiskey upon it the orchestra paused in the middle of a snort and the man whose duty it was to swallow the clarionette pulled seven or eight inches of the instrument out of his face and looked wildly around the gentleman who had been agitating the feelings of the base file laid it down on the side crawled in behind it and spread a sheet of music over his head the stage manager came forward to the footlights and inquired what was wanted the tall man with a self-cocking credentials answered simply by dashety blank to blank blank and back again i want my wife the manager stepped back into the

2:17:16wings for a moment and when he came forward he also had a large musical instrument such as Mr. Remington used to make before he went into the typewriter business i can still remember how large the hole in the barrel looked to me and how i wished that i had gone to the meeting of the literary club that evening as i had at first intended to do literature was reading more in my line than the drama i still thought that it was not too late perhaps and so i rose and went out quietly so was not to disturb anyone and as i went down the aisle the tall man and the stage manager exchanged regrets i looked back in time to see the tall man fall in the aisles with his face in the sawdust and his hand over his breast then i went out of the theater in a nameless sort of way taking a northeasterly direction as the crow flies i do not think i ran over a mile or two in this way before i discovered that i was going directly away from home i rested a while and then returned on the street i met the stage manager and the tall dark man just as they were coming

2:18:20out of the moss and get saloon they said they were very sorry to notice that i got up and came away at a point in the program where they had introduced what they had regarded as the best feature of the show this incident had a great deal to do with turning my attention in the direction of literature instead of the drama but i am glad to notice that many of the horrors of the drama are being gradually eliminated as the country gets more thickly settled and the gory tragedy of a few years ago is gradually giving place to the refining influences of the tin soldier and a ragbaby and of bill nye attends a western theater and sees a remarkable shooting afray chapter number 20 of bill nye's corwood this is a lebervox recording all lebervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lebervox.org

2:19:24recording by lindy reenielson thank youver bc bill nye's corwood by bill nye favored a higher fine the boy who made a dollar by a whipping will tailor the son of the present american console at marseille was a good deal like other boys while at school in his old home in Hudson Wisconsin one day he called his father into the library and said pa i don't like to tell you but the teacher and i have had trouble what's the matter now well i caught one of the deaths a little with my knife and the teacher says i've got to pay one dollar or take a lickin well why don't you take the lickin and say nothing more about it i can stand considerable physical pain as long as it visits our family in that form of course it is not

2:20:29pleasant to be flogged but you have broken a rule of the school and i guess you'll have to stand it i presume that the teacher will in wrath remember mercy and avoid disabling you so that you can't get your coat on anymore but pa i feel mighty bad over it already and if you would pay my fine i'd never do it again a dollar isn't much to you pa but it's a heap to a boy who hasn't a cent if i could make a dollar as easily as you can pa i'd never met my little boy get flogged that way to save a dollar if i had a little fella that got lick because i didn't put up for him i'd hate the sight of money always i'd feel as if every dollar i had in my pocket have been taken out of my little kids back well now i'll tell you what i'll do i'll give you a dollar to save you

2:21:36from punishment this time but if anything of this kind ever occurs again i'll hold you while the teacher licks you and then i'll get the teacher to hold you while i lick you that's the way i feel about it if you want to go around whittling up our educational institutions you can do so but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself i don't propose to buy any more damage furniture you probably grasp my meaning do you not i send you to school to acquire an education not to acquire liabilities so that you can come around and make an assessment on me i feel a great interest in you willy but i do not feel as though it should be an accessible interest i want to go on of course and improve the property but when i pay my dues on it i want to know that it goes

2:22:41toward development work i don't want my assessments to go toward the purchase of a school desk with american hydrocafix carved on it i hope you will bear this in mind my son and beware it will be greatly to your interest to beware if i were in your place i would put a large portion of my time in to beware business the boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school and no more was ever said about the matter until mr. Taylor learned casually several months later that the Spartan youth had received the walloping and filed away the one dollar for future reference the boy was afterward heard to say that he favored a much higher fine in cases of that kind one whipping was sufficient he said but he favored a fine of five dollars it ought to be severe enough

2:23:41to make it an object in of chapter 20 recording by lindem reneelson thank you ver bc chapter number 21 of bill nice cordwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by lindem reneelson thank you ver bc bill nice cordwood by bill nigh how bill nigh failed to make the amend honorable apathetic incident it is rather interesting to watch the manner by which old customs have been slightly changed and handed down from age to age peculiarities of old traditions still linger among us and are

2:24:44forked over to posterity like a rapid jawed teapot or a long time mortgage no one can explain it but the facts still remains patent that some of the oddities of our ancestors continue to appear from time to time clothed in the changing costumes of the profiling fashions along with these choice antiquities and carrying the not brown flavor of the dead and relentless original amend in which the offender appeared in public quote only in a cotton flannel shirt and with a rope around his neck as an evidence of a former recantation down to this day when sometimes the pale editor in a stick full of type admits that his informant was an error the amend honorable has marched along with the easy tread of time the blue eyed molder of public opinion

2:25:48with one suspender hanging down at his side and writing on a sheet of news copy paper has a more extensive costume perhaps than the old time offender who bowed in the dust in the midst of the great populace and with a halter under his ear admitted his offense but he does not feel any more cheerful over it i have been called several times to make the amend honorable and i admit that it is not an occasion of much mirth and mariamont people who come into the editorial office to invest in a retraction are generally healthy and have a stiff reserved manner that no cheerfulness or hospitality can soften i remember an incident of this kind which occurred last summer in my office while i was writing something scheming a large man with an air a profound

2:26:51perspiration about him and a plat final shirt stepped into the middle of the room and breathed in all the air that i was not using he said he would give me four minutes in which to retract and pulled out a watch by which to ascertain the exact time i asked him if he would not allow me a moment or two to step over to a telegraph office to wire my parents of my awful death he said i could walk out that door when i walked over his dead body then i waited a long time till he told me my time was up and asked me what i was waiting for i told him i was waiting for him to die so that i could walk over his dead body how could i walk over a corpse until life was extinct he stood and looked at me at first in astonishment afterward in pity finally tears

2:27:57both up in his eyes and plowed their way down his broad and grimy face then he said i need not fear him you were safe said he a youth who is so patient and cheerful as you are one who would wait for a healthy man to die so you could meander over his pulseless remnants ought not to die a violent death a soft eyed syraf like you who is no more conversant with the ways of the world than that ought to be put in a glass vial of alcohol and preserved i came up here to kill you and throw you into the rainwater barrel but now i know what a patient disposition you have i shudder to think of the crime i was about to commit end of chapter 21 recording by lindon renielson van kuver bc

2:29:04chapter number 22 of bill nice courtwood this is a lebervox recording all lebervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lebervox.org recording by lindon renielson van kuver bc bill nice courtwood by bill nigh seeing a sawmill i have just returned from a little trip up from the north was constant railway where i went to catch a string of clothfish and anything else that might be contagious northern was constant is the place where they yank a big wet log into a mill and turn it into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay car the log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs while it is

2:30:06being worked into lumber these iron dogs are not like those we see on the front steps of a brown stone front occasionally they are another breed of dogs the managing editor of the mill lays out the log in his mind and works it into dimension stuff shingles bolts slabs and jing's two by fours two by eights two by sixes etc so as to use the goods to the best advantage just as a woman takes a dress pattern and cuts it so she won't have to piece the front breaths and will still have enough left to make a pollonase for last summer's gown i stood there for a long time watching the various saws and listening to the monstrous growl and wishing that i had been born a successful timber thief instead of a poor boy without a reg to my back at one of these mills not long ago a man backed up

2:31:13to get away from the carriage and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was revolving at the rate of about two hundred times a minute the saw took a large chew of tobacco from the plug he had in his pistol pocket and then began on him but there's no use going into the details such things are not cheerful they gathered him up out of the sawdust and put him in a nail and carried him away but he did not speak again life was quite extinct whether it was the nervous shock that killed him or the concussion of the cold saw against his liver that killed him no one ever knew the mill shut down a couple of hours so that the head sawr could file his saw and then work was resumed once more we should learn from this never to lean on the balsaw when it moved itself

2:32:18alright end of chapter 22 recording by Linda Marine Nielsen thank you for bc chapter number 23 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is a Libra Vox recording all Libra Vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit thebervox.org recording by Linda Marine Nielsen Vancouver BC Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nye how a Chinaman rides the untamed Bronco a Chinaman does not grab the bit of a Bronco and gain it around till the noble beasts can see thirteen new and peculiar kinds of fireworks or kick him in the stomach or knock his ribs loose or swear at him until the ferniment gets loose and

2:33:24begins to roll together like a scroll but he gets on the wrong side and slides into the saddle and smiles and says something like what a guinea hen would say if she got excited and tried to repeat one of bejorns gin bejornsons poms backward in his native tongue at first the Bronco seems temporarily rattled but by and by he shoots all thwart the sunny sky like a thing of life and comes down with his legs in a cluster like a bunch of asparagus this will throw a Chinaman's liver into the northwest corner of his throat and his upper left hand doodosimal into the middle of next week but he doesn't complain he opens his mouth and breathes in all of the atmosphere the rest of the universe can spare and tickles the Bronco on the

2:34:27starboard corner with his cork sole the mirth provoking movement throws the Bronco into the wildest hysterics and for some minutes the spectator doesn't see anything very distinctly the automoblite seems fraught with blonde Bronco and pale blue shirt tail and Chinaman moving in an irregular orbit and occasionally throwing off meteoric articles of apparel and prehistoric chunks of ingenious profanity of the vintage of Confucius when the sky clears up a little the Chinaman's hair is down and in wild profusion about his olive features his shirt flap is very much frayed like an American flag that is snapped in the breeze for 13 weeks he finds also that he has telescope his final column and jammed two ribs

2:35:31through the right superior duplex has two or three vertebrae floating about through his system that he doesn't know what to do with in fact the Chinaman is a robust ruin while the Bronco is still in a good state of preservation now the Bronco humps his back up into a circumambent atmosphere and when he wants by sex the earth's orbit and jabs his feet into the trembling earth a shapeless mass of broketed silk and coarse black hair and taper nails and celestial shirt tails and ulong profanity and disorganized Chinese remains comes down apparently from the new Jerusalem and the coroner goes out on the street to get six good men and a chemist and they analyze the collection they report that the deceased has come to his death by reasons of concussion

2:36:36induced by a ride from the outer battlements of the sweet by and by end of chapter 23 recording by Linda Marine Nielsen van Kuver BC chapter 24 of Bill Nye's Courtwood this is a Libravox recording all the Bravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org recording by the end of marine Nielsen van Kuver BC Bill Nye's Courtwood by Bill Nye Bill Nye wants to know how to preserve game slippery almerst Hudson Wisconsin October 6 to the editor might I ask through the column of

2:37:39your justly celebrated paper if anyone will give me the requisite information regarding the care of game during the winter my preserves are located on my estate here at slippery almerst and while I am absent lecturing in the winter in answer to the loud calls of the public I am afraid that my game may not have the proper care and that unscrupulous people may sculpt my fox and poach the eggs of my fesence besides I am rather ignorant of the care of game and I would like to be able to instruct my game keeper when I go away as to his duties the game keeper at slippery almerst is what might be called a self-made game keeper he never had any instruction in his profession aside from a slight amount of training in high low jack therefore he has won

2:38:42his way unassisted to the position he now occupies what I wish most of all is to understand the methods of preserving game during the winter so that when it is scarce in the spring I can take a count opener and astonish people with my own preserves my fox succeeded in getting through the summer in fine form I got him from Long Island where the sportsman from New York had tried to hunt him for several seasons but within different success he was not well broken in the first place I presume and the noise of the hounds and domesticated Englishmen in full cry no doubt frightened him he is still timid and more or less afraid of the cars he shies too when I lead him past an imitation Englishman he is in good health this fall however and as I got him at a low price

2:39:47I am greatly pleased very likely the reason he did not give good satisfaction in New York was that those who used him did not employ a good earth stopper much depends on this man of what use is an act of robust and well broken fox well started if he be permitted to get back into his hole I have employed as an earth stopper a gentleman who saws my wood during the winter and who assists us in fox hunting in the hunting season born in a quiet little rural village called Martell in Pierce County Wisconsin he early invents a strong love for the board day after day he would abstain from going to school that he might go forth into the woods and study the habits of the chipmunk for five years his health was impaired to such a degree that he was not well enough to safely

2:40:51attend school but just barely robust enough to drag himself away to a distance of 14 miles where he could snare suckers and try to regain his health to climb a lightning rod and skin off the copper wire for snaring purposes with him was but the work of a moment to go joyously a field day after day and drawn out the gofer while other boys were compelled to gofer and education was his chief delight as a result of this course he is not a close student of books but he can skin a squirrel without the slightest embarrassment and you could wake him up suddenly out of a profound slumber and ascertain from him exactly what the best method is for draping a frog over a picker all hook so as to produce the best and most pleasing effects such is the description of a man

2:41:56who by his own unadded exertions has risen to the proud position of earth stopper on my estate he is ignorant of the care of wild game however and since he has never preserved any we want to know whether it would be best to sprinkle our fox with camphor and put him down seller or let him run in the henhouse during the winter would your readers please say also if any of them have had any experience in fox hunting what is the best treatment for a horse which has injured himself on a barbed wire fence while in rapid pursuit of the fox I have a fine fox hunter that I bought two years ago from a milkman this horse was quite high spirited and while the hounds were in full cry one day I had to take a barbed wire fence with him this horse which I call isocles because he is one

2:43:03kind of a triangle went over the fence in such a manner as to catch the pit of his stomach on the barbed wire and expose his interior department and its methods to the casual spectator we put back all the stomachs we thought he was entitled to but he has not done well since that and I have often thought that possibly we did not succeed in returning all his works how many stomachs has the adult horse I am utterly and sadly ignorant in these matters and I yearn for light I certainly favor a more thorough knowledge of animal anatomy on the part of our school children every child should know how many stomachs, bowels and gizzards there are in the fully equipped cow or horse nothing is more embarrassing to the true sportsman than to see his favorite horse

2:44:05ripped open by a barbed wire fence well in full chase and then not know which digestive organ should go back first or when they have all been replaced so far isocles is concerned I remember thinking at the time that we must have put back inside of a system about twice as much digestive apparatus as he had before as my earth stopper said that we had given that horse enough for a four horse team and yet he is ill I would like to hear from any fox hunters in Cook County who may have had a similar experience end of chapter 24 recording by Lindemry Nielsen Vancouver BC chapter 25 of Bill Nye's Courtwood this is a Liebervox recording all Liebervox recordings are

2:45:12in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Liebervox.org recording by Lindemry Nielsen Vancouver BC Bill Nye's Courtwood by Bill Nye Bill Nye attends Booth's Hamlet last evening I went to hear Mr. Edward and Booth in Hamlet I had read the play before but it was better as he gave it I think the play of Hamlet is not catchy and there is a noticeable lack of local gags in it a gentleman who stood up behind me and leaned against his breath all the evening said that he thought a failure singing was too disconnected he is a keen observer and has seen a great many plays he went out frequently between the acts and always came back

2:46:16in better spirits he noticed that I wept a little in one or two places and said that if I thought that was affecting I ought to see only a farmer's daughter he drives a bus for the Holden hotel here and has seen a great deal of life still he talked freely with me through the evening and told me what was coming next he is a great admirer of the drama and night after night he may be seen in the foyer a company only by his breath there is considerable discussion among critics as to whether Hamlet was really insane or not but I think that he assumed it in order to throw the prosecution off the track for he was a very smart man and when his uncle tried to work off some of his Danish provocations on him I fully expected him to pull a card out of his pocket

2:47:25and present it to his royal tallness on which might have seen the legend I am something of a liar myself but I am glad he did not for it would have seemed out of character in a play like that Mr. Booth wore a dark waterproof cloak all the evening and a sword with which he frequently killed people he was dressed in black throughout with hair of the same shade he was using the same hair in Hamlet that he did 20 years ago though he uses less of it he wears black knickerbockers and long black crockless stockings Mr. Booth is doing well in the acting business frequently as high as two dollars a piece for tickets to his performances he was on court by the audience several times last night but refrain from repeating the play fearing that it would make it late for

2:48:28those who had to go back to Beledona oh after the close of the entertainment toward the end of the play a little rough on rats gets into the Alderbury wine and the royal family drink it after which there is considerable excitement and a man with a good reliable stomach pump would have had all he could do several of the royal family curl up and perish they do not die in the house during an interview between Hamlet and his mother an old gentleman who has the honor to be a filial father hides behind a picket fence so as to overhear the conversation he gets excited and says something in a low guttural tone a voice whereupon Hamlet runs his sword through the picket fence in such a way as to bore a large hole in the old man who then dies I have heard

2:49:30a great many people speak the peace beginning to be or not to be but booth does it better than anyone I have ever heard I once heard an elocushioness kind of a smart Alec Cushioness as my friend the hosier poet would say this man recited to be or not to be in a manner which he said had frequently brought tears to eyes unused to weep he recited it with his right hand sucked into his bosom up to the elbow and his fair hair tossed about over his brow his teeming brain which claimed to be kind of a four horse teeming brain as it were seemed to be on fire and to all appearances he was indeed mad so were the people who listened to him he hissed it through his clenched teeth and snorted it through his right red nose

2:50:36wailed it up into the ceiling and bleated it down the aisles rolled it over and over against the rafters of his reverberating mouth handed it out in big capsules or hissed it through his puckered atomizer of a mouth wailed and bellowed like a wild and maddened tailless steer in fly time darted across the stage like a headless hen ripped the gentle atmosphere into shreds with his guinea hen voluntary bowed to us and teetered off the stage Mr. Booth does not hoist his shoulders and settle back on his pasturned chins like a man who is about to set a refractory break on a coal car neither does he immerse his right arm in his bosom up to the second joint he seems to have the idea that Hamlet spoke these lines mostly because he felt like saying something

2:51:43instead of doing it to introduce a set of health lift gestures and a horse baritone snout a head of dank hair a low mellowed union depot tone of voice and a dark blue three sheet poster will not make a successful hamlet and bless be the man who knows this without experimenting on the people till he has bunions on his immortal soul i sent a note to Mr. Booth this morning asking him to call at my room number six five eights and saying that i would give him my idea about the drama from a purely unpartisan standpoint but it is reigning so fast now that i fear he will not be able to come end of chapter 25 recording by lindem reneelson thank you for bc

2:52:44chapter 26 of bill nice cordwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org bill nice cordwood by bill nigh chapter 26 bill nice advice to a youth about drugs and writing mr. bill nigh hudson was constant dear sir i hope you will pardon me for addressing you on a matter of pure business but i've heard that you are not averse to going out of your way to do a favor now and then to those who are sincere and appreciative i've learned from a friend that you have been around all over the west and so i have taken the liberty of writing you to ask what you think would be the chances of success for a young man if you were to go to kansas to enter the drug business i am a practical young drugist twenty three years of age and have some money a few hundred dollars

2:53:48with which to go into business would you advise kansas or calorado is a good part of the west for that business i have also written some for the press but with little success i enclose you a few slips cut from the papers in which these articles originally appeared i send stamp for reply and hope you will answer me even though your time may be taken up pretty well by other matters respectfully yours eight-off jane's lock box 604 hudson was constant october the first mr eight-off jane's lock box 604 dear sir your favor of late date is at hand and i take pleasure in writing this dictated letter to you using the columns of the chicago daily news as a delicate way of reaching you i will take the liberty of replying to your last question first if you pardon me and i say you would do better no doubt at once in a financial way to go on with your drug business then to monkey with literature in the first place your style of composition is like the present

2:54:53style of dress among men it is absolutely correct and therefore it is absolutely like that of nine men out of every ten we meet your style of writing has a mustache on it where's a three-button cutaway of some scotch mixture carries a cane and wears a straight stand-up collar and scarf it is so correct and so exactly in conformity with the prevailing style of composition and your thoughts are expressed so thoroughly like other people's methods of dressing up their sentences and sandpapering the soul out of what they say that i honestly think you would succeed better by trying to subsist upon the quick sales and small profits which the drug trade insures now let us consider the question of location seriously you ought to look over the ground yourself but as you have asked me to give you my best judgment on the question of preference is between Kansas and Colorado i will say without hesitation that if you mean by the drug business the sale of

2:55:56sure enough drugs medicines paints oils glass putty toilet articles and prescriptions carefully compounded i would not go to Kansas at this time if you would like to go to a flourishing country and put out a big bass wood mortar in front of your shop in order to sell the tincture of damn nation throughout bleeding Kansas now is your golden opportunity now is the accepted time if it is the great big burning desire of your heart to go into a town of two thousand people and open the thirteenth drugstore in order that you may stand behind a tall black walnut prescription case day in and day out with a graduate in one hand and a babcock fire extinguisher in the other filling orders for whiskey made of stump water and the juice of future punishment you will do well to go to Kansas it is a temperate state and no saloons are allowed there all is quiet and orderly in the drug business is a great success you can run a dummy drugstore there with two dozen

2:57:00jury old glass bottles on the shelves punctuated by the hand of time in the Kansas fly of the period and with the prohibitory law at your back and a tall red barrel in the backroom filled with a mixture that will burn great holes into nature's heart and make the cemetery blossom as the rose and in a few years you can sell enough of this justly celebrated preparation for household, scientific and experimental purposes only to fill your flabby pockets with wealth and paint the pure air of Kansas a bright and inflammatory red if you sincerely and earnestly yearn for a field where you may go forth and garner and honest harvest from the legitimate effort of an upright soda fountain and free an open sale of slippery elmen its unadulterated condition I would go to some state where I would not have to enter into competition with a style of pharmacy that has the unholy instincts and ambitions of a blind pig I would not go into the field where red eyed ruin simply waited for a prescription blank not necessarily for publication

2:58:03but simply as a guarantee of good faith in order that it may be bound forth from behind this prescription case and populate the poor houses and the poppers nettle grown addition to the silent city of the dead the great question of how best to down the demon rum is before the American people and it will not be put aside until it is settled but while this is being attended to Mr. Jains I would start a drugstore farther away from the center of conflict and go on joyously sacrificing expensive tinctures compounds and syrups at bedrock prices go on Mr. Jains dealing out to the yearning panting public drugs paints oils glass putty varnish patent medicines and prescriptions carefully compounded with none to molester make afraid but shun oh shun the wild eyed pharmacopia that contains not but the festering fluid so popular in Kansas a compound that holds crime and solution and ruin and bulk that shrivels up a man's gastric

2:59:08economy and seers great ragged holes into his immortal soul take this advice home to your heart and you will ever command the hearted cooperation of yours for health as the late Lydia E. Pinkham so succinctly said bill nigh in the section 26 recording by Philip Gould chapter 27 of Bill Nye's cordward this is a Libra box recording all Libra box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org Bill Nye's cordward by Bill Nye a would be host or e Bill Nye stops at a place where two roads fork his mournful pilgrimage through desolate wilds in company with the soulful hosier poet

3:00:15a tale of gloom without a ray of hope we are moving a belt over the country James Whittcomn Riley and I in the capacity of a moral and spectacular show I attend to the spectacular part of the business that is more in my line I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork I will call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel because the hotel at a railroad junction is generally called the Fifth Avenue or the Gem City House or the Palace Hotel I stopped at an in some years since called the Palace and I can truly say that if it had ever been a Palace it was very much run down when I visited it just as the fond parents of a white eye two leg freak of nature loves to name

3:01:20his mentally diluted son Napoleon and for the same reason that a prominent wholesomea in Illinois last year socked my name on a tall buckskin coloured cult that did not resemble me intellectually or physically a cult that did not know enough to go around a barbed wire fence but sought to sift himself through it into an untimely grave so this man has named his swaybacked wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel it is different from the Fifth Avenue in many ways in the first place there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood as I said before this is where to railroad fork in fact that is the leading industry here the growth of the town is naturally slow but it is a healthy growth

3:02:22there is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild cat speculation in the advancement of this place and while there has been no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business there has been no falling off at all and these roads are forking as much today as they did before the war while the same three men who were present for the first glad moment are still here to witness its operation sometimes a train is derailed as the papers call it until or three people have to remain over as we did all night it is at such a time that the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement a large codfish with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible position of floor manager of the

3:03:26codfish ball a pale chambermaid wearing a black jersey with large paws in it through which she is gently percolating it goes joyously up the stairs to make the little post office lock box rooms looked ten times worse than they ever did before she wore balls a low refrain as she nimbley knocks loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the rooms all is bustle about the house especially the chambermaid we were put into the guest chamber here it has two atrophied beds made up of pains and counter pains this last remark conveys to the reader the presence of a light joyous feeling which is wholly assumed on my part the door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off in order to let the coroner in

3:04:34last night i could imagine that i was in the act of meeting personally the famous people who have tried to sleep here and who moaned through the night and who died while waiting for the dawn i had no doubt in the world but there is quite a good sized delegation from this hotel of guess who hesitated about committing suicide because they feared to tread the sidewalks of perdition but who became desperate at last and resolved to take their chances and they have never had any cause to regret it we washed our hands on dawn op soap wipe them on a slippery alm court plaster that had made quite a reputation for itself under the non-duplume of towel tried to warm ourselves at a pocket ink stand stove that gave out heat like a dark lantern and had a

3:05:37deformed elbow at the back of it the chambermaid is very versatile and waits on the table while not engaged in agitating the overworked mattresses and puny pillows upstairs in this way she imparts the odor of ride pork to the pillowcases and caracene to the pie she has a wild nervous and apprehensive look in her eye as though she feared that some herculean guest might seize her in his great strong arms and bear her away to a justice of the peace and marry her she certainly cannot fully realise how thoroughly secure she is from such a calamity she is just as safe as she was 40 years ago when she promised her aged mother that she would never elope with anyone still she is sociable

3:06:39at times and converses freely with me at the table as she leans over my shoulder pencifully brushing the crumbs into my lap with a general utility towel which accompanies her in her various rambles through the house and she asks which we would rather have tea or eggs this afternoon we will pay our bill in accordance with a lifelong custom of ours and go away to permeate the busy haunts of men it will be sad to tear ourselves away from the fifth avenue hotel at this place still there is no great loss without some small gain and at our next hotel we may not have to chop our own wood and bring it upstairs when we want to rest the landlord of a hotel who goes away to a political meeting and leaves his guest to chop their

3:07:43own wood and then charges them full price for the rent of a boisteress and tempest or sped will never endear himself to those with whom he is thrown in contact we leave at 2.30 this afternoon hoping that the two railroads may continue to fork here just the same as though we had remained end of chapter 27 chapter 28 of Bill Nies' Court Wood this is a liberal vox recording all liberal vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liberalvox.org Bill Nies' Court Wood by Bill Nies chapter 28 Bill Nies' Hornets last fall I desired to add to my rare collection of large hornets nest I had an in balm tarantula in her porcelain line nest

3:08:48and I desired to add to these the gray and airy home of the hornet I procured one of the large size after cold weather and hung it in my cabinet by a string I forgot about it until this spring when warm weather came something reminded me of it I think it was a hornet he jogged my memory in some way and called my attention to it memory is not located where I thought it was it seemed as though whenever he touched me he awakened a memory a warm memory with a red place all around it then some more hornets came and began to rake up old personalities I remember that one of them lit on my upper lip he thought it was a rose bud when he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb I wrapped a wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling so that I could go through the folding doors until my wife about it hornets lit all over me and walked around on my person I did not dare to scrape them off because they are so sensitive you have to be very

3:09:53guarded in your conduct toward a hornet I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering honey and june bugs from the bosom of a rose years ago I stirred him up with a club more as a practical joke than anything else and he came and lit on my sunny hair that was when I wore my own hair and he walked around through my gleaming tresses quite a while making tracks as large as a watermelon all over my head if he hadn't run out of tracks my head would have looked like a load of summer squashes I remember I had to thump my head against the smokehouse in order to smash him and I had to comb him out with a fine comb and wear a waste paper basket two weeks for a hat much has been said of the hornet but he has an odd quaint way after all that is forever new end of chapter 28 recording by Philip Gould

3:10:53chapter 29 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is a liberal box recording all liberal box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liberalvox.org Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nies a tragedy out where the blue waves come and go out where the zephyr's kiss the strand down where the damp tides up and flow where the ocean monkeys with the sand William the hungry Russell's first meal slim William the eldest gathers the eel up where the johnny jump up smile up where the green hills meet the sky where up from her window for many a mile she watches the blue sea dimpling lie the wife of the ealist with visage grim sits in the gloaming and watches for him down in the moist and moaning sea down where the day can never come with staring eyes that can

3:11:59never see and lips that will ever continue dumb with eels in his breast and a large wet wave William is filling a watery grave up where the catnip is breathing hard up where the tansies flexed with dew where the vest per soft as the onion peels wakens the echoes the twilight through the new maid widow still watches the shore and sits there and waits as i said before they come and tell her the pitiful tale with trembling voice and tear dim dye they watch her cheek gross lately pale yet wonder at the calm reply all our tears are but idle gentlemen go bring in the eels and set him again end of a tragedy chapter 30 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in

3:13:03the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nye the branco cow Bill Nye undertakes to milk her when this sign is not right disastrous results when i was shown and used to roam around over the country gathering watermelons 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

3:14:05i made a commonplace 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 sewed then i told her to hissed and she hissed 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 offer horns i am buying all my milk now

3:15:06the milkman i select a gentle milkman 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 end of the bronco cow chapter 31 of bill nice cordwood this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org bill nice cordwood by bill nine 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 the billowy bronze and velvet azure of the skies above the royal robes of oak and maple bespeak the closing hours of natures

3:16:07teaming 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 hides away to a neighboring clothesline 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 is 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 winters upon us these wonderful colors have flame across the softened sky of indian summer like the gory banner of royal conquer come but to warn us that in a few short weeks the water pipe will be bursted

3:17:09in the kitchen and the decorated wash bowl be broken we flip through the dreamy hours of summer like swift winged bumblebees amid the honey suckle 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 chill blades is upon us and we crouch beneath the wintry blast and hump our spinal column up into the crisp bear like a Texas steer that has thought of sleigh swallowed a raw cactus life is one continued round of alternate joys and sorrows today we are in the top wave of prosperity and warming ourselves in the glad sunlight of plenty and tomorrow we are cast down and depressed financially and have to stand off the wash woman for our clean shirt or stay at home from the opera the november sky already frowns down upon us

3:18:13and its frozen tears begin to fall the little birds have hushed their little lay so has the fatigue can 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 polygamus gobler 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 bald headed pelican with a venerable corn cutter in the second hand hour glass thou play a strange pranks upon the children of men no one would think to look at thy billows countenance and store teeth that in thibony bosom lurks such eccentric schemes chubby boy whose danger signal hangs sadly through the lattice work

3:19:14of 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 in soft white moustache and eventually a low grave in the valley beneath the sying elms and the weeping willow where in the misty twilight of the year noisiously upon his breasts shall fall the dead leaf while the silent tear of the gray autumnal sky will come and sink into the yellow grass above his head bill nigh end of autumn thoughts chapter 32 of bill nigh's cordwood this is a lebervox recording all lebervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lebervox.org

3:20:16recording by LT bill nigh's cordwood by bill nigh chapter 32 bill nigh's advice bag anxious questions answered president cleveland's chilling neglect of an editor denounced the woman in the sleeping coach calm reasoning delt out answers to correspondence ghoulish glee boussirus o rights for two years i have been sending a copy of my paper the palladium and observer to president cleveland although i have criticized 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 the 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 response stop his paper by all means

3:21:23to pry them of the paper you should have done so before then you will feel perfectly free to criticize 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 grass 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 criticize his administration too severely till you see whether or not he's going to remit early row is mancaito minnesota rights is it proper to mark passages in a book of poems loan 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 passages in the book response i think the latter plan would be preferable rose i'm sure that young ladies make a great mistake when they mark the earnest and impassioned passages in a book of poems belonging to another i once loaned a book of poems written by a

3:22:24gentleman named swinburn in this book mr swinburn 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 sex he wrote so fluently and 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 swinburned sentiments emphasized by means of a blue pencil and his earnest thoughts underscored with a crochet hook punctuated with tears and stabbed with a hairpin 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 tale hold indiana you can get indian arrowheads now almost everywhere except on the frontier a good handmade indian arrowhead is now made in Connecticut and the prices are not exorbitant

3:23:26i believe that if you can get manufacturers rates delivered on board the cars at new haven you can secure enough indian arrowheads for twenty five dollars to fresco the sides of a house see that the name of the manufacturer is burned in the shank of each response you will have no more trouble in securing indian skulls the manufacturer 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 bears know as 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 main 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 as tech pottery excavated from old mountains in the southwest can now be purchased in any large city or made to order at the leading potteries of the country now agon plumber to tulores crossing tenisee

3:24:27asks 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 agreed upon was as follows he's entitled to pay me for them pair of license i claim that the word them should be those while my friend miss bonnissette jackson says that the sentence is correct which is incorrect response 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 elanoi 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 the time and the other end of

3:25:30the car the other half i am a lady and nothing tends to discourage my efforts and 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 calcimiting her purple nose and striving to beautify her chaotic features do tell us what you would suggest response 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 a journey to the ladies dressing room at camp Douglas and finally emerge there from with a smooch of prepared chalk over each eye at winona all that time half a dozen ladies in the car nod their underlips and tried to look happy i have known a timid young lady to lose her breakfast because this

3:26:31same ogres 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 someday 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 glass 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 end of chapter 32 chapter 33 of bill nys cordwood this is the lebevox recording all lebevox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lebevox.org recording by LT

3:27:32bill nys cordwood by bill nys chapter 33 mr. swiney's cat robert ormsby swiney is a drugest of st paul and though a recent chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of a sure enough king and though there is mighty good purple royal blood in his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to earn their salary he goes right on with his regular business selling drugs at the great sacrifice which drugists will make sometimes in order to place their goods within the reach of all as soon as i learned that mr. swiney had barely escaped being a crowned head i got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up and told him that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible and that as it hadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally wear it out he's a mighty pleasant man anyhow and you could have just as much fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in his veins you would be with him for days on a fishing trip and never notice it at all but i was going to speak more in particular of

3:28:34mr. swiney's cat mr. swiney had a large cat named dr. marry walker of which he was very fond dr. marry walker remained at the drugstore all the time and was known all over st paul as a quiet and reserved cat if dr. marry walker took in the town after office hours nobody seemed to know anything about it she would be around bright and cheerful the next morning and attend to her duties at the store just as though nothing would ever had ever happened one day last summer mr. swiney left a large plate of fly paper with water on it in the window hoping to gather in a few courts of flies in a deceased state dr. marry walker used to go to this window during the afternoon and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasant memories of her past life that afternoon she thought she would call up some more memories so she went over on the counter and from there jumped down on the window sill landing with all four feet in the plate of fly paper at first she regarded it as a joke and treated the matter very lightly but later on she observed that the fly

3:29:34paper stuck to her feet with great tenacity of purpose those who have never seen the look of surprise and deep sorrow that a cat wears when she finds herself glued to a hole she'd a fly paper cannot fully appreciate the way dr. marry walker felt she did not dash wildly through a hundred and fifty dollar plate glass window as some cats would have done she controlled herself and acted in the coolest manner though you could have seen that mentally she suffered intensely she sat down a moment to more fully outline a plan for the future in doing so she made a great mistake the gesture resulted in gluing the fly paper to her person in such a way that the edd turned up behind her in the most abrupt manner and caused her great inconvenience someone at that time laughed in a course on heartless way and I wish you could have seen the look of pain that dr. marry walker gave him when she went away she did not go around the prescription case as the rest of us did but strolled through the middle of it and sew on out through the glass door at the rear of the store we did not see her go through the glass door but we found pieces of fly paper

3:30:35and fur on the ragged edges of a large aperture in the glass and we kind of jumped at the conclusion that dr. marry walker had taken that direction and retiring from the room dr. marry walker never returned to Saint Paul and her exact whereabouts are not known though every effort was made to find her fragments of fly paper and brindle hair were found as far west as the Yellowstone National Park and as far north as the British line but the dr. herself was not found my own theory is that if she turned her bow to the west so as to catch the strong easterly gal on her quarter with the sail she had set and her tail pointing directly toward the zenith the chances for dr. marry walker's immediate return are extremely slim end of chapter 33 chapter 34 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org

3:31:37recording by LT Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nies chapter 34 Bill Nies Letter the humorous rights from his winter resort and his usually happy vein on various topics ashville north carolina as soon as i saw on the papers that my health was failing i decided to wing my way south for the winter so i closed up my establishment at slippery elmhurst told the game keeper not to monkey with the preserves and came here where i am now writing at first it seems odd to me that i should be writing from here where i am now but the more i think it over the better i am reconciled to it for what better place can a man select from which to write a letter than the point where he is located at the time ashville is an enterprising cosmopolitan city of six or seven thousand people and a visiting population during the season of sixty thousand more it is situated in the picturesque valley of the french brood and between the blue ridge and the aligainees ashville is the metropolis of western north carolina and has no competition nearer the noxville

3:32:41tenisee one hundred and sixty miles away and in fact not competing in any way with ashville for it is in another county altogether this region of country is from two thousand to seven thousand feet above sea level and is in fact a mountain region with a southern exposure strange stories are told here of people who came five ten twenty or more years ago with the view of dying here but who afterward decided to live on and they are living yet one man who was a survivor of the samsou philistine war if i'm not mistaken came here at last from the mouth of the amazon full of malaria he had been kind of down in the mouth of the amazon for some years and they say his liver looked like a rubber dormat and his skin was like the cover of a sun-kissed ham he picked up his spirits here and recovered his youth and though he was very old when he came he's still older now and is in pretty good health i went to see him the other day he's so old there is moss on the north side of him and here a glyphix on his feet when i made some facetious remarks to him and told him a story i had recently acquired

3:33:45he brightened up a good deal and emitted a dry cackling laugh like a xylophone and said that he believed he enjoyed that story just as well as he did when they used to tell it in the rifle pits in front of troy he said he liked ashville very much indeed ashville is called the switzerland of america it has been my blessed privilege during the past 20 years to view nearly all the switzerland of america that are here but this is fully the equal if not the superior of any of them you can climb to the top of bow catcher mountain to see a beautiful sight in any direction and on most any day of the year everywhere the eye rests on a broad sweep of dark blue climate up in the gorges under the whispering pines along the roeder dendron bordered margins of the swan anora or the french brood out through the gap and down the thousand mountain brooks you will find enough climate in 20 minutes to last a week the chief products of western north carolina are smoking tobacco and climate if you do not like the climate you can keep yourself to the smoking tobacco here you will find old mr. ozone with his coat off and a feather duster in his hand prepared

3:34:49to dust the cobwebs from the catacombs of the asthmatic or the consumptive there is enough climate wasted here every year to supply a city the size of chicago moreover there is now a handsome hotel here called the battery park that has been full ever since it was built and you can get good saddle horses carriages or donkeys at a reasonable rate in town the donkey is quite a feature of this country as he is apt to be in all mountain countries in fact i have never associated with the more genial urbane or refined donkey than we have here he is generally a soft mouse color about nine hands high and delights in making small elongated footprints on the sands of time this small animal of the mountains is frequently accompanied by a robust but poorly modulated voice it is very pathetic and generally needs a little oil on it the north carolina donkey like the Colorado borough lives to a great age he then dies ashrill has splendid water works supplying first class water to those who wish to use this popular fluid electric lights all over the city a street

3:35:52railway organized with its money put up to construct it next summer first class churches schools and colleges well supplied markets with moderate prices and lots of genuine attractions beside the climate fuel and whiskey are about the same as they are in chicago so a man need not suffer here provided he has a moderate income the sportsman may sport here with impunity and the angler may also try angular relaxation moonshine whiskey is also produced here in the mountains though in a crude way and very quietly none of the moonshineers advertise much in the papers they do not care for a big run of trade but seem content to remain an obscurity sometimes however their work attracts the attention of prominent people who come out and call on them with shotguns and regrets then the moonshineer does his distillery up in a napkin and goes away in the primeval forest some years ago a party of revenue officers hunted out one of these amateur distillers and chased him up the side of the mountain where they surrounded and captured him with his distillery on his back like a babcock fire extinguisher and still warm the officer in his report of capture

3:36:58referred to it as a still hunt whereupon his commission was promptly revoked the man who tries to have any fun with the present administration must have his resignation where he can put his hand on it at a moment's warning end of chapter 34 chapter 35 of Bill Nies Courtwood this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org Bill Nies Courtwood by Bill Nies chapter 35 declined with thanks Bill Nies politely refuses the job of King of Bulgaria he gives his reasons for the declination and throws in chunks of heavyweight advice advisability of forming a royal trades union Bill Nies has furnished to the world the following copy of a cable dispatch just forwarded to the allied powers of Europe slippery almerced

3:38:04Hudson Wisconsin to the allied powers care of Lord Salisbury gentlemen your favor of recent date regarding my acceptance of the Bulgarian throne which is now vacant and for rent in which note you tender me the use of said throne for one year with the privilege of three is at hand you also state that the allied powers are not favorable to Prince Nicholas and that you would prefer a dark horse looking over the entire list of obscure men it would seem you have been unable to fix upon a man who has made a better showing in this line than I have while I thank you for this kind offer of a throne that has as you state been newly refitted and refurnished throughout I must decline it for reasons which I will try to give in my own rough unpolished way in the first place I read in the dispatches today that Russia is mobilizing her troops and I do not want anything to do with a country that will treat its soldiers in that way troops have

3:39:04certain rights as well as those who have sought the pleasant or walks of peace that is not all I do not care to enter into a squabble in which I am not interested neither do I care to go to Bulgaria in the capacity of a carpet bag monarch from the Tencent counter wearing a boiler iron overcoat by day and a stab-proof corset at night I have always been in favor of Bulgaria's selection of a monarch Viva Vocchi or Vox Populi whichever you think would look the best in print I hate to see a monarch in hot water all the time and threatening to abdicate supposing he does abdicate what good will that do when he leaves a widow with nothing but a second hand thrown in a crown two sizes too small for his successor I have always said and I still say that nothing can be more pitiful than the sight of a lovely queen whose husband in a wild frenzy of remorse has abdicated himself nothing

3:40:06I repeat can be sadder than this picture of a deserted queen left high and dry without means forced at last to go to the pawnbrokers with a little plated fluted crown with rabbit skin ear tabs on it we are prone to believe that a monarch has nothing to do but issue a you cause or a mandamus and that he will then have all the funds he wants but such is not the case lots of our most successful monarchs are liable to be overtaken any year by a long cold winter and found his latest Christmas reigning in their summer sectors I'm inclined also to hesitate about accepting the Bulgarian throne for another reason I do not care to be deposed when I want to do something else I have had my deposition taken several times and it did not look like me either time I think that you monarchs ought to stand by each other more if you would form a society of free and independent monarchs there in Europe where you are so plenty you could have a good time

3:41:07and every little while you could raise your salaries if you worked it right now you pull and haul each other all the time and keep yourselves in hot water day and night that's no way for a dynasty any more than for anyone else it impairs your usefulness and fills our telegraphic columns full of names that we cannot pronounce every little while we have to pay the operator at this end of the cable ten dollars for writing in a rapid flowing hand that meanwhile Russia will continue to disregard the acts of the sobranyye why should a great country like Russia go about trying to make trouble with a low price sobranyye I think that a closer alliance of crowned heads whose interests are identical would certainly relieve the monotony of many a long tedious reign if I were to accept the throne of Bulgaria which is not likely so long as my good right arm can still jerk a fluent crosscut saw in the English tongue I would form a syndicate of monarchs with grips

3:42:08passwords explanations and signals every scepter would have a contrato whistle in the body and which could be used as a sign of distress while the other end could have a cork in it and then steering a tottering dynasty down through the dim vista of crumbling centuries would not be so as it now is as it is now three or four allied powers ask a man to leave his business and squad on a cold hard throne for a mere pitons and then just as he begins to let his wisters grow and learns to dodge a big porcelain bomb those same allied powers jump on top of him all sprout aloud and ask him for his deposition that is no way to treat an amateur monarch who is trying to do right you can see that unless you stand by each other the thrones of europe will soon be empty and every two dollar a day hotel in america will have an heir apparently to the throne for a head waiter with a cornette put on his clothes with a rubber stamp and a loaded scepter up his sleeve

3:43:11if you want to rear your children to love and respect the monarchy industry you must afford them better protection i say this is a man who may not live to be over one hundred years of age and with my feet thus settling into the boggy shores of time let me beg of you monarchs and mon archeses to make your calling an honorable one teach your children and their children to respect the business by which their parents are in their bread show them it is honorable to empire a country if they do it right teach them that to do right is better than to fraudulently turn a jack from the bottom of the pack teach them it is better to be a popular straight out and out artisan king who is sincere about it then to be a monarch dares not leave his throne night or day for fear that somebody will put a number of bombs under it or criticize him in the papers end of chapter 35 end of bill nice court would by bill nigh recording by filip gould