Bill Nye's Cordwood by Bill Nye (free ebook reader for ipad txt) 📗
- Author: Bill Nye
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Slipperyelmhurst, Hudson, Wis., Oct. 6.—To the Editor: Might I ask, through the column of your justly celebrated paper, if any one will give me the requisite information regarding the care of game during the winter?[Pg 120]
My preserves are located on my estate here at Slipperyelmhurst, 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 scalp my fox and poach the eggs of my pheasants.
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 Slipperyelmhurst 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 his 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 can-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 sportsmen from New York had tried to hunt him for several seasons, but with indifferent 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[Pg 121] 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 I 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 active, 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 Martelle, in Pierce county, Wisconsin, he early evinced a strong love for sport. 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 attend school, but just barely robust enough to drag himself away to a distance of fourteen 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 afield day after day and drown out the gopher, while other boys were compelled to gopher an education, was his chief delight.[Pg 122]
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 pickerel hook so as to produce the best and most pleasing effects. Such is the description of a man who, by his own unaided exertions, has risen to the proud position of earth-stopper on my estate.
He is ignorant of the care of wild game, however, and says he has never preserved any. We want to know whether it would be best to sprinkle our fox with camphor and put him down cellar 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 milk-man. 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 Isosceles, because he is one kind 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[Pg 123] 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 ripped open by a barbed-wire fence while in full chase, and then not know which digestive organ should go back first, or when they have all been replaced.
So far as Isosceles is concerned, I remember thinking at the time that we must have put back inside of his 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 of the fox-hunters in Cook county who may have had a similar experience.
[Pg 124]
Bill Nye Attends Booth's "Hamlet."Last evening I went to hear Mr. Edwin 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 Ophelia's 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 in 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 Hollenden 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, accompanied 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[Pg 125] his Danish prevarications on him I fully expected him to pull a card out of his pocket and present it to his royal tallness, on which might be 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, water-proof 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 is using the same hair in "Hamlet" that he did twenty 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 getting as high as $2 apiece for tickets to his performances. He was encored by the audience several times last night, but refrained from repeating the play, fearing that it would make it late for those who had to go back to Belladonna, O., after the close of the entertainment.
Toward the end of the play a little rough on rats gets into the elderberry wine and the royal family drink it, after which there is considerable excitement, and a man with a good, reliable stomach-pump would have all he could do. Several of the royal family curl up and perish.[Pg 126]
They do not die in the house.
During an interview between Hamlet and his mother an old gentleman who has the honor to be Ophelia's father hides behind a picket fence, so as to overhear the conversation. He gets excited and says something in a low, gutteral tone of voice, whereupon Hamlet runs his sword through the picket fence in such a way as to bore a large hole into the old man, who then dies.
I have heard a great many people speak the piece beginning—
To be or not to be,
but Mr. Booth does it better than any one I have ever heard. I once heard an elocutionist—kind of a smart Alickutionist as my friend The Hoosier 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 socked 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 teaming 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 clinched teeth and snorted it through his ripe, red nose, wailed it up into the ceiling, and bleated it down the aisles, rolled it over and over against the rafters of his re[Pg 127]verberating 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 "pastern jints" like a man who is about to set a refractory brake 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 instead of doing it to introduce a set of health-lift gestures and a hoarse, baritone snort.
A head of dank hair, a low, mellow, union-depot tone of voice, and a dark-blue, three sheet poster will not make a successful Hamlet, and blessed be the man who knows this without experimenting on the people till he has bunions on his immortal soul. I have sent a note to Mr. Booth this morning asking him to call at my room, No. 6-5/8, and saying that I would give him my idea about the drama from a purely unpartisan standpoint, but it is raining so fast now that I fear he will not be able to come.[Pg 128]
Bill Nye's AdviceTO A YOUTH ABOUT DRUGS AND WRITING.
Mr. Bill Nye, Hudson, Wis.—Dear Sir: I hope you will pardon me for addressing you on a matter of pure business, but I have 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 have 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 he were to go to Kansas to enter the
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