CHESTNUT-BURR XXXV – THE UNHAPPY HUMORIST
A Blasted Life – Regarded as a Professional – No Jog in Being "The Life of the Party" – Parents Should Discourage the First Signs of Humor in Their Children.
You are an youmorist, are you not?" queried a long-billed pelican addressing a thoughtful, mental athlete, on the Milwaukee & St. Paul road the other day.
"Yes, sir," said the sorrowful man, brushing away a tear. "I am an youmorist. I am not very much so, but still I can see that I am drifting that way. And yet I was once joyous and happy as you are. Only a few years ago, before I was exposed to this malady, I was as blithe as a speckled yearling, and recked not of aught – nor anything else, either. Now my whole life is blasted. I do not dare to eat pie or preserves, and no one tells funny stories when I am near They regard me as a professional, and when I get in sight the 'scrub nine' close up and wait for me to entertain the crowd and waddle around the ring."
"What do you mean by that?" murmured the pur-pie-nosed interrogation point.
"Mean? Why, I mean that whether I'm drawing a salary or not, I'm expected to be the 'life of the party.' I don't want to be the life of the party I want to let some one else be the life of the party. I want to get up the reputation of being as cross as a bear with a sore head. I want people to watch their children for fear I'll swallow them. I want to take my low-cut-evening-dress smile and put it in the bureau drawer, and tell the world I've got a cancer in my stomach, and the heaves and hypochondria, and a malignant case of leprosy."
"Do you mean to say that you do not feel facetious all the time, and that you get weary of being an youmorist?"
"Yes, hungry interlocutor. Yes, low-browed student, yes. I am not always tickled. Did you ever have a large, angry, and abnormally protuberent boil somewhere on your person where it seemed to be in the way? Did you ever have such a boil as a traveling companion, and then get introduced to people as an youmorist? You have not? Well, then, you do not know all there is of suffering in this sorrow-streaked world. When wealthy people die why don't they endow a cast-iron castle with a draw-bridge to it and call it the youmorists' retreat? Why don't they do some good with their money instead of fooling it away on those who are comparatively happy?"
"But how did you come to git to be an youmorist?"
"Well, I don't know. I blame my parents some. They might have prevented it if they'd taken it in time, but they didn't. They let it run on till it got established, and now it's no use to go to the Hot Springs or to the mountains, or have an operation performed. You let a man get the name of being an youmorist and he doesn't dare to register at the hotels, and he has to travel anonymously, and mark his clothes with his wife's name, or the public will lynch him if he doesn't say something youmorist.
"Where is your boy to-night?" continued the gloomy humorist. "Do you know where he is? Is he at home under your watchful eye, or is he away somewhere jailing the handles on his first little joke? Parent, beware. Teach your boy to beware. Watch him night and day, or all at once, when he is beyond your jurisdiction, he will grow pale. He will have a far-away look in his eye, and the bright, rosy lad will have become the flat-chested, joyless youmorist.
"It's hard to speak unkindly of our parents, but mingled with my own remorse I shall always murmur to myself, and ask over and over, why did not my parents rescue me while they could? Why did they allow my chubby little feet to waddle down to the dangerous ground on which the sad-eyed youmorist must forever stand?
"Partner, do not forget what I have said to-day. Whether your child be a son or daughter, it matters not. Discourage the first sign of approaching humor. It is easier to bust the backbone of the first little tender jokelet that sticks its head through the virgin soil, than it is to allow the slimy folds of your son's youmorous lecture to be wrapped about you, and to bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave."
LARAMIE'S HANDKERCHIEF
Laramie has the champion mean man. He has a Sunday handkerchief made to order with scarlet spots on it, which he sticks up to his nose just before the plate starts round, and leaves the church like a house on fire.
CHESTNUT-BURR XXXVI – THE SODA LAKES OF WYOMING
The Lakes near Sheep Mountain – Three Tons of Soda at the Centennial – A Yield of 104,544 Tons of Soda per Annum – Should Provide an Income of $1,062,864,000 per Annum.
Some days ago, in company with several other eminent men of this place, I paid a visit to the soda lakes of Wyoming, and will give a short, truthful and concise description of their general appearance.
The lake or soda beds are situated about twelve miles southwest of Laramie, in a direct line according to official survey, but the road makes a slight variation from a direct line and therefore makes the distance about fourteen miles.
In a kind of basin toward Sheep Mountain, the finest of a series of hills intervening between the broad Laramie Plains and the Snowy Range, lie these lakes, four in number, with no outlet whatever.
Just as you get plumb discouraged and have ceased to look for the lakes, they all at once lie at your feet in all their glistening, dazzling, snowy whiteness.
One of these lakes, to all appearances, is the source of water supply for the balance, and from the exterior the water is constantly crystallizing in the sun and forming a thick crust of sulphate of soda.
When we went out, it was one of those dry, clear, bracing days in the month of July, in Wyoming, when the crisp air fans your cheek and fills every vein, artery and capillary and pore with a glad exhilarating sense that you are freezing to death.
Well, the day we went out to the lakes it was that way only not so much so.
It was not, therefore, difficult to imagine the broad, white crust over those lakes to be ice and snow. They are of the purest snowy white, and when cut into, the crust has that deep sea blue of ice when cut in like manner.
This crust of sulphate of soda is nearly three feet in depth and is perfectly firm, so that the heaviest loads drive over it with safety.
The water which oozes up through the crust at intervals is quite warm, being at the surface on a cool day about blood temperature, and of course at a considerable depth much higher.
In 1876 – the year which the gentle reader will call to mind as the centennial – a slight fragment of this lode, weighing over three tons, was cut in the form of a cube and sent to the Centennial, where it attracted very much attention.
Six weeks afterward the unsightly hole in the deposit at the lake was entirely filled up with a new formation.
This goes to show how inexhaustible is the mighty reservoir, and the gentle reader may give it his earnest thought as a mathematical question, what amount of this formation might be secured to the enterprising manufacturer who might see fit to purchase and develop it.
Suppose there are sixty-four tons to every 400 superficial feet, and suppose there are four lakes averaging forty acres, which is a low estimate, then we have at present on hand 17,424 tons, with a capacity to reproduce itself every two months, we will say, or at the rate of 104,544 tons per annum.
Suppose, then, we take a ten years' working test of the lakes, and we have 1,002,864 tons of soda.
This soda is not adulterated with alum or other injurious substances, and would therefore sell very rapidly.
It might be put in half-pound and pound cans which would sell at, we will say, twenty-five and fifty cents per can.
Taking the very low estimate made above, as a basis we have the neat little income of $1,062,864,000.
This is more than I am now clearing, I find, over and above expenses, and I am thinking seriously of opening up this vast avenue to wealth myself.
I would have done so long ere this, were it not that I am now developing the Boomerang mine.
This mine is named after my favorite mule, and I am very anxious that it should succeed.
I have already sunk $10 in this mine, and I cannot therefore abandon it, as the casual observer will notice, without great loss to me.
THE COSTLY WATERMELON
Once a bonanza man took out his check book and asked the market man how much he wanted for meat, and when he was told he burst into tears, and said he would have to deny himself the pleasure of a watermelon or put off going to Europe till next year.
CHESTNUT-BURR XXXVII – VIEWS OF CHICAGO
Chicago the Rival of Laramie – The Wonderful Parks – A Chicago Funeral Procession – In Search of Watermelons – Changes Amongst Old Friends – The Vitality Restoring Revolver.
Chicago, June 20, 1887.
I arrived here from the North on Tuesday evening. The demonstration was on a larger scale than I had even looked for. It was gratifying, indeed, to one who loves the spontaneous approval of his fellow-citizens. I do. The procession was very fine, consisting of 'busses, hacks, carriages, express wagons and the police, followed up by promiscuous citizens. There was a little misunderstanding about who should deliver the address of welcome. So about two hundred healthy orators, of the Denis Kearney decoction, all started in at one and the same time to give me the freedom of the city, at twenty-five cents per freedom. There is a good deal of this class of freedom now on the Chicago market.
Chicago is a thriving, enterprising town on the Lake Michigan coast. It is the county seat of Cook county, so that all the county officers live here.
If a young man with the recuisite degree of pluck and determination were to start a paper here, and could get the county printing and go without a hired girl, he could do first-rate.
Chicago is a rival of Laramie as the most desirable outfitting point for North Park. It also does some outfitting for South Park and several other parks.
Yesterday I went to South Park to drive along the boulevards and see the fountains squirt. The boulevards are now in good shape. They are about the bouliest boulevards I have seen for five years. Some days when I feel frolicsome, it seems to me as though if I couldn't have a nice large park of my own, with velvet lawns and cool retreats in it, where I could be alone and roll around over the green sward, and kick up my heels in the chastened sunlight, I would certainly bust.
South Park has an antelope, a bison, an elk and several other ferocious animals. They seem lonely, and time hangs heavy on their hands, so to speak.
Going out to the park we met a funeral procession headed by a remains. When we were coming out of the driveway on our return, we met the same procession. It had transplanted the deceased in good shape, and was racing horses on its way home through the park. The minister belonged to the same family with the United Grand Junction Ebeneezer Temperance Association, and although he was ostensibly holding on to his horse with all the reserve forces on hand, he seemed to keep the rest of the procession at a respectful distance all the way.
It was about the most cheerful funeral I ever saw, with the officiating minister leading down the homestretch and the hearse at a Maud S. gait rattling along at his heels, followed by the bereaved family coming down the quarter-stretch in '45. It reconciled me a great deal to death to see this. If I could be positively certain that my friends and acquaintances would take it that easy I could die happy, but I know they won't. I have seemed to work my way into the affections of those who come in contact with me from day to day, so that when I die I know just how it will be. There will be one of the wildest panics ever known in the history of civilized nations. Groceries and all kinds of provisions will depreciate in value fifty per cent, and watermelons will be almost a drug on the market.
Allow me to digress for a moment. Watermelons are very high at Laramie, and there is the standing joke that for three years I haven't had sufficient decision of character and spinal column to make up my mind whether I would build or buy a watermelon. Here watermelons are more plentiful. They grow low down on the branches of the melon trees, so that on a still evening one can easily knock them off with a club. So easy in fact is that feat that I could hardly restrain myself from taking a little stroll one pleasant evening to pick one or two luscious specimens from the heavy laden boughs. So strong was this feeling at least that I could not overcome it without an unusual strain, and my physicians tell me not to do anything that will overtax my moral nature. They are afraid that something would break and tear the whole vast fabric of integrity from its foundation.
So I went out with a brother of mine who could be depended upon. I took along my old pocket-knife that I have had for fifteen years, and which has received the silver medal, sweepstakes prize and handicap silver service in a score of go-as-you-please melon-plugging matches for the championship of the known world.
But we were not very fortunate. The world is growing cynical and fast losing faith in mankind, I fear. People have quit putting their money into savings banks and are beginning to plant their watermelons in new and obscure places. Just as the casual observer learns the position of an eligible melon patch the proprietor changes the combination on him.
I found multitudinous changes among old friends and associates when I got home, and was struck with the ceaseless work of time's effacing fingers, but nowhere did I find such cause for sorrow and regret as in the falling off and change of base which I found in the matter of melon cultivation.
We were exposed to the night air until past 1 o'clock, coming home tired and disappointed with three small ones apiece, which we hid in the hay-mow, according to a time-honored custom in the family, and retired.
The next day we both made a noble resolution to discard this unfortunate habit which we had contracted, partly because we were old enough to know better, and partly because we had in the hurry and precipitation of the evening previous, stolen and carried four miles a half dozen melons of the citron variety, that tasted like a premature pumpkin and smelled like cod liver oil and convalescent glue.
I had also lost my revolver. When I go out nights I always go armed, and for that reason I have gained the unenviable reputation of being a bold, bad man. Many people think that I am thirsting for the lives of my fellow-men and feel low-spirited and wretched unless I am shooting large, irregular holes through the human family, but this is not true.
I never killed any one in my life, unless death was richly merited. I have never taken a human life that society was not made better and safer by the act.
This revolver was the same one that I used four years ago when I shot at a burglar in Laramie. He was endeavoring, at the dead hour of midnight, to get into the window, and I feared that his intentions were not honorable. He knew that I was alone in the house, my wife having gone away on a visit, and so taking advantage of her absence and my timidity, he was endeavoring to force an entrance into the house. I don't know what ever nerved me to such an act of lofty heroism, but I marched softly out of the front door with noiseless tread and shot him.
Then I went back to bed and wondered what action the authorities would take with me. Whether it would be considered justifiable homicide and I exonorated, or whether I would be held without bail to answer at the next term of court for murder. Then I wondered what I had better do with the corpse. At first I thought I would run down and notify the coroner; then I concluded to go and see the victim, and see if life were extinct. Finally I compromised the matter by falling into a troubled sleep, from which I awoke on the following morning. I went out to the place where the burglar had been shot, but he was not there. With a superhuman will-power he had dragged himself away somewhere to die. He had also destroyed all traces of blood before getting away.
This was the last of the matter till the following September, when I received this letter:
Omaha.
Dear Sir: – You doubtless think that I harbor ill-will and bitterness toward you because you shot me last summer, but such is not the case. I write to express my gratitude and everlasting friendship.
For years I had been an invalid, and last summer owing to my weak and helpless condition and consequent loss of employment, I became deranged. That accounts for my wild and insane idea that your residence was the abode of wealth and affluence.
It was the delirium that precedes death. Ah, my benefactor, my noble deliverer from death, how shall I tell you of my never-ending gratitude?
How like an angel of mercy you stood up before me that night in your robe de nuit and shot me!
How like a blessed seraph you looked at me, with your polished joints glittering in the flash and dazzle of your peerless beauty!
I have been rapidly gaining ever since in weight and strength. I am now married and happy, and I cheerfully point you out to my friends as the one who, by your health-promoting markmanship and vitality-restoring revolver, brought me back from death to hope, health and happiness.
Yours truly,
The-Man-You-Shot.
Since then I have called that revolver my Great Health Invigorator and Blood Purifier.
CHESTNUT-BURR XXXVIII – A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
An Important Movement. – The Requirements of a True Journalist. – Hold He Should be Educated. – The Journalist at the Age of 95.
A number of friends having personally asked me to express an opinion upon the matter of an established school of journalism, as spoken of by ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., and many more through the West, who are strangers to me personally, having written me to give my views upon the subject. I have consented in so far that I will undertake a simple synopsis of what the course should embrace.
I most heartily indorse the movement, if it may be called such at this early stage. Knowing a little of the intricacies of this branch of the profession, I am going to state fully my belief as to its importance, and the necessity for a thorough training upon it. We meet almost everywhere newspaper men who are totally unfitted for the high office of public educators through the all-powerful press. The woods is full of them. We know that not one out of a thousand of those who are to-day classed as journalists is fit for that position.
I know that to be the case, because people tell me so. I cannot call to mind to-day, in all my wide journalistic acquaintance, a solitary man who has not been pronounced an ass by one or more of my fellow-men. This is indeed a terrible state of affairs.
In many instances these harsh criticisms are made by those who do not know, without submitting themselves to a tremendous mental strain, the difference between a "lower case" q and the old Calvinistic doctrine of unanimous damnation, but that makes no difference; the true journalist should strive to please the masses. He should make his whole life a study of human nature and an earnest effort to serve the great reading world collectively and individually.
This requires a man, of course, with similar characteristics and the same general information possessed by the Almighty, but who would be willing to work at a much more moderate salary.
The reader will instantly see how difficult it is to obtain this class of men. Outside of the mental giant who writes these lines and two or three others, perhaps —
But never mind. I leave a grateful world to say that, while I map out a plan for the ambitious young journalist who might be entering upon the broad arena of newspaperdom, and preparing himself at a regularly established school for that purpose.
Let the first two years be devoted to meditation and prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise and consequent profanity which in a few years he may experience when he finds in his boss editorial that God is spelled with a little g, and the peroration of the article has been taken out and carefully locked up between a death notice and the announcement of the birth of a cross-eyed infant.
The ensuing five years should be spent in becoming familiar with the surprising and mirth-provoking orthography of the English language.
Then would follow three years devoted to practice with dumb bells, sand bags and slung shots, in order to become an athlete. I have found in my own journalistic history more cause for regret over my neglect of this branch than any other. I am a pretty good runner, but aside from that I regret to say that as an athlete I am not a dazzling success.
The above course of intermediate training would fit the student to enter upon the regular curriculum.
Then set aside ten years for learning the typographical art perfectly, so that when visitors wish to look at the composing room, and ask the editor to explain the use of the "hell box," he will not have to blush and tell a gauzy lie about its being a composing-stick. Let the young journalist study the mysteries of type setting, distributing, press work, galleys, italic, shooting-sticks, type lice and other mechanical implements of the printer's department.
Five years should be spent in learning to properly read and correct proof, as well as how to mark it on the margin like a Chinese map of the Gunnison country.
At least fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of American politics and the whole civil service. This time could be extended five years with great profit to the careful student who wishes, of course, to know thoroughly the names and records of all public men, together with the relative political strength of each party.
He should then take a medical course and learn how to bind up contusions, apply arnica, court plaster or bandages, plug up bullet holes and prospect through the human system for buck shot. The reason of this course, which should embrace five years of close study, is apparent to the thinking mind.
Ten years should then be devoted to the study of law. No thorough metropolitan editor wants to enter upon his profession without knowing the difference between a writ of mandamus and other styles of profanity. He should thoroughly understand the entire system of American jurisprudence.
The student will by this time begin to see what is required of him and will enter with greater zeal upon his adopted profession.
He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years. He can then write a telling editorial on the great question of What We Shall Do To Be Saved without mixing up Calvin and Tom Paine with Judas Iscariot and Ben Butler.
The closing ten years of the regular course might be profitably used in learning a practical knowledge of cutting cord wood, baking beans, making shirts, lecturing, turning double handsprings, preaching the gospel, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour in hot weather, learning the art of scissors grinding, punctuation, capitalization, prosody, plain sewing, music, dancing, sculping, etiquette, how to win the affections of the opposite sex, the ten commandments, every man his own teacher on the violin, croquet, rules of the prize ring, parlor magic, civil engineering, decorative art, calsomining, bicycling, baseball, hydraulics, botany, poker, calisthenics, high-low-jack, international law, faro, rhetoric, fifteen-ball pool, drawing and painting, mule skinning, vocal music, horsemanship, plastering, bull whacking, etc., etc., etc.
At the age of 95 the student will have lost that wild, reckless and impulsive style so common among younger and less experienced journalists. He will emerge from the school with a light heart and a knowledge-box loaded up to the muzzle with the most useful information.
The heyday and spring-time of life will, of course, be past, but the graduate will have nothing to worry him any more, except the horrible question which is ever rising up before the journalist, as to whether he shall put his money into government four per cents or purchase real estate in some growing town.