Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns). Riley James Whitcomb
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We are yet.
He ought to have something to read that will distract his attention. This book is designed for him. Also for people who would like to travel but cannot get away from home. Of course, people who do travel will find nothing objectionable in the book, but our plan is to issue a book worth about $9, charging only fifty cents for it, and then see to it that no time-tables or maps which will never return after they have been pulled out once, shall creep in among its pages.
It is the design of the authors to issue this guide annually unless prohibited by law, and to be the pioneers establishing a book which shall be designed solely for the use of anybody who desires to subscribe for it.
P. S. – The authors desire to express their thanks to Mr. Riley for the poetry and to Mr. Nye for the prose which have been used in this book.
Where He First Met His Parents
Last week I visited my birthplace in the State of Maine. I waited thirty years for the public to visit it, and as there didn't seem to be much of a rush this spring, I thought I would go and visit it myself. I was telling a friend the other day that the public did not seem to manifest the interest in my birthplace that I thought it ought to, and he said I ought not to mind that. "Just wait," said he, "till the people of the United States have an opportunity to visit your tomb, and you will be surprised to see how they will run excursion trains up there to Moosehead lake, or wherever you plant yourself. It will be a perfect picnic. Your hold on the American people, William, is wonderful, but your death would seem to assure it, and kind of crystallize the affection now existing, but still in a nebulous and gummy state."
A man ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaintance sprang up which has ripened in later years into mutual respect and esteem. It was there that what might be termed a casual meeting took place, that has, under the alchemy of resist-less years, turned to golden links, forming a pleasant but powerful bond of union between my parents and myself. For that reason, I hope that I may be spared to my parents for many years to come.
Many memories now cluster about that old home, as I have said. There is, also, other bric-a-brac which has accumulated since I was born there. I took a small stone from the front yard as a kind of memento of the occasion and the place. I do not think it has been detected yet. There was another stone in the yard, so it may be weeks before any one finds out that I took one of them.
How humble the home, and yet what a lesson it should teach the boys of America! Here, amid the barren and inhospitable waste of rocks and cold, the last place in the world that a great man would naturally select to be born in, began the life of one who, by his own unaided effort, in after years rose to the proud height of postmaster at Laramie City, Wy. T., and with an estimate of the future that seemed almost prophetic, resigned before he could be characterized as an offensive partisan.
Here on the banks of the raging Piscataquis, where winter lingers in the lap of spring till it occasions a good deal of talk, there began a career which has been the wonder and admiration of every vigilance committee west of the turbulent Missouri.
There on that spot, with no inheritance but a predisposition to baldness and a bitter hatred of rum; with no personal property but a misfit suspender and a stone-bruise, began a life history which has never ceased to be a warning to people who have sold goods on credit.
It should teach the youth of our great broad land what glorious possibilities may lie concealed in the rough and tough bosom of the reluctant present. It shows how steady perseverance and a good appetite will always win in the end. It teaches us that wealth is not indispensable, and that if we live as we should, draw out of politics at the proper time, and die a few days before the public absolutely demand it, the matter of our birthplace will not be considered.
Still, my birthplace is all right as a birthplace. It was a good, quiet place in which to be born. All the old neighbors said that Shirley was a very quiet place up to the time I was born there, and when I took my parents by the hand and gently led them away in the spring of '53, saying, "Parents, this is no place for us," it again became quiet.
It is the only birthplace I have, however, and I hope that all the readers of this sketch will feel perfectly free to go there any time and visit it and carry their dinner as I did. Extravagant cordiality and overflowing hospitality have always kept my birthplace back.
Never Talk Back
Never talk back! sich things is ripperhensible;
feller only "corks" hisse'f that jaws a man that's hot;
In a quarrel, of you'll only keep your mouth shet and act sensible,
The man that does the talkin'll git worsted every shot!
Never talk back to a feller that's abusin' you —
Jest let him carry on, and rip, and cuss and swear;
And when he finds his lyin' and his dammin's jest amusin' you,
You've gut him clean kaflummixed, and you want to hold him there!
Never talk back, and wake up the whole community,
And call a man a liar, over law, or Politics, —
You can lift and land him furder and with gracefuller impunity
With one good jolt of silence than a half a dozen kicks!
The Gruesome Ballad of Mr. Squincher
"Ki-yi!" said Mr. Squincher,
As in contemplative pose,
He stood before the looking-glass
And burnished up his nose,
And brushed the dandruff from a span-
Spick-splinter suit of clothes, —
"Why, bless you, Mr. Squincher,
You're as handsome as a rose!"
"There are some," continued Squincher,
As he raised upon his toes
To catch his full reflection,
And the fascinating bows
That graced his legs, – "I reckon
There are some folks never knows
How beautiful is human legs
In pantaloons like those!"
"But ah!" sighed Mr. Squincher,
As a ghastly phantom 'rose
And leered above his shoulder
Like the deadliest of foes, —
With fleshless arms and fingers,
And a skull, with glistening rows
Of teeth that crunched and gritted, —
"It's my tailor, I suppose!"
They found him in the morning —
So the mystic legend goes —
With the placid face still smiling
In its statuesque repose; —
With a lily in his left hand,
And in his right a rose,
With their fragrance curling upward
Through a nimbus 'round his nose.
Anecdotes of Jay Gould
Facial Neuralgia is what is keeping Jay Gould back this summer and preventing him from making as much money as he would otherwise. With good health and his present methods of doing business Mr. Gould could in a few years be beyond the reach of want, but he is up so much nights with his face that he has to keep one gas-jet burning all the time. Besides he has cabled once to Dr. Brown-Sequard