Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor Part 11

Excuse me for not writing before. I did not wish to write you until I could do so in a bright and cheery manner, and for some weeks I have been the hot-bed of twenty-one Early Rose boils. It was extremely humorous without being funny. My enemies gloated over me in ghoulish glee.

I see by a recent statement in the press that your road has greatly increased in business. Do you feel the need of an employe? Any light employment that will be honorable without involving too much perspiration would be acceptable.

I am traveling about a good deal these days, and if I can do you any good as an agent or in referring to your smooth road-bed and the magnificent scenery along your line, I would be glad to regard that in the light of employment. Everywhere I go I hear your road very highly spoken of.

Yours truly,

BILL NYE.

I shall write to some more roads in a few weeks. It seems to me there ought to be work for a man who is able and willing to be an employe.

That Night

[Ill.u.s.tration]

You and I, and that night, with its perfume and glory!-- The scent of the locusts--the light of the moon; And the violin weaving the waltzers a story, Enmes.h.i.+ng their feet in the weft of the tune, Till their shadows uncertain, Reeled round on the curtain, While under the trellis we drank in the June.

Soaked through with the midnight, the cedars were sleeping.

Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart leaping Forever, forever burst, full with delight; And its lisp on my spirit Fell faint as that near it Whose love like a lily bloomed out in the night.

O your glove was an odorous sachet of blisses!

The breath of your fan was a breeze from Cathay!

And the rose at your throat was a nest of spi'led kisses!-- And the music!--in fancy I hear it to-day, As I sit here, confessing Our secret, and blessing My rival who found us, and waltzed you away.

The Truth about Methuselah

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We first met Methuselah in the capacity of a son. At the age of sixty-five Enoch arose one night and telephoned his family physician to come over and a.s.sist him in meeting Methuselah.

Day at last dawned on Enoch's happy home, and its first red rays lit up the still redder surface of the little stranger. For three hundred years Enoch and Methuselah jogged along together in the capacity of father and son. Then Enoch was suddenly cut down. It was at this time that little Methuselah 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 Enoch, with no inherited disease, should be shuffled off at the age of three hundred and sixty-five years. But the doctor said to Methuselah: "My son, you are indeed fatherless. I have done all I could, but it is useless. I have told Enoch many a time that if he went in swimming before the ice went out of the creek it would finally down him, but he thought he knew better than I did. He was a headstrong man, Enoch 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 Aleck is his."

Methuselah now cast about him for some occupation which would take up his attention and a.s.suage his wild, pa.s.sionate 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 coa.r.s.e, rough world. Possibly he learned the use of 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 Methuselah came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

Methuselah succeeded in cording 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 yard and looked at Methuselah, and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his scythe, and went away whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for nearly ten centuries, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the general wreck of men and nations.

Even as the young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and pa.s.seth by on the other side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-gla.s.s and his overworked hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin of hair around the base of it, mowed all around Methuselah and then pa.s.sed on.

Methuselah decorated the graves of those who perished in a dozen different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over nine hundred years of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting places and offer his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage his grandchildren to go. Then Methuselah would sit around Noah's front steps, and smoke and criticise the conduct of the war, also the conduct of the enemy.

It is said of Methuselah that he never was the same man after his son Lamech died. He was greatly attached to Lamech, and, when he woke up one night to find his son purple in the face with membraneous croup, he could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy who had just rounded the glorious morn of his 777th year had never occurred to him. But death loves a s.h.i.+ning mark, and he garnered little Lammie and left Methuselah to mourn for a couple of centuries.

Methuselah finally got so that he couldn't sleep any later than 4 o'clock in the morning, and he didn't see how any one else could. The 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, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large slick-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 he said he had no doubt that sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah pa.s.sed 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 Methuselah should have tampered with tobacco when he knew that 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, and called it Methuselah's addition. He came out in spring regularly for nine hundred years after he got too old to work out his poll-tax on the road, and put in his time telling the rising generation how to make a good road. Meantime other old people, who were almost one hundred years of age, moved away and went West where they would attract attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting old around where Methuselah was, and being ordered about and scolded and kept in the background by him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 Methuselah will be on the evergreen sh.o.r.e when he gets there, with all his ripe experience and his habits of early rising."

And the next morning after the funeral Methuselah's family did not get out of bed till nearly 9 o'clock.

A Black Hills Episode

A little, warty, dried-up sort O' lookin' chap 'at hadn't ort A ben a-usin' round no bar, With gents like us a-drinkin' thar!

And that idee occurred to me The livin' minit 'at I see The little cuss elbowin' in To humor his besettin' sin.

There 're nothin' small in me at all, But when I heer the rooster call For shugar and a spoon, I says: "Jest got in from the States, I guess."

He never 'peared as if he heerd, But stood thar, wipin' uv his beard, And smilin' to hisself as if I'd been a-givin' him a stiff.

And I-says-I, a edgin' by The bantam, and a-gazin' high Above his plug--says I: "I knowed A little feller onc't 'at blowed Around like you, and tuck his drinks With shugar in--and _his_ folks thinks He's dead now--'cause we boxed and sent The sc.r.a.ps back to the Settlement!"

The boys tells me, 'at got to see His _modus operandum_, he Jest 'peared to come onjointed-like Afore he ever struck a strike!

And I'll admit, the way he fit Wuz dazzlin'--what I see uv hit; And squarin' things up fair and fine, Says I: "A little 'shug' in mine!"

The Rossville Lecture Course

ROSSVILLE, Mich., March, '87.

Folks up here at Rossville got up a lectur'-course; All the leadin' citizens they wus out in force; Met and talked at Williamses, and 'greed to meet agin, And helt another corkus when the next reports wuz in; Met agin at Samuelses; and met agin at Moore's, And Johnts he put the shutters up and jest barred the doors!-- And yit, I'll jest be dagg-don'd! ef didn't take a week 'Fore we'd settled where to write to git a man to speak!