Bill Nye's Cordwood by Bill Nye (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

wilderness, spiked down valuable land-grants,[Pg 101] killed cheap cattle and then paid a high price for them, whooped 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, roared through the night and glittered through the day, bringing alike the groom to his beautiful bride and the weeping prodigal to the moss-grown grave of his mother.

You are indeed a heartless, soulless corporation, and yet you are very essential in our business.

Bill Nye's Letter.

HOW OLD BRINDLE MET HER DEATH WITH A TRAIN.

A QUAINT EPISTLE, 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 feller said when I wrote to him two years ago and told him that his cussed railroad had mashed old Brin. You remember that just as you entered on what you called your junior year, old Brin remained out all night, and your mother and me took our coffee milkless in the morning.[Pg 102]

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-aught-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 runnin' gears of the tender.

So I went over to the station and found Brin's head there, whereupon I went down the track in search of her, though I feared it would be futile, as you once said about administering a half sole 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[Pg 103] 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 Northwestern 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 Eastern mass meeting of auditors and general solicitors, where they where discussing the practicability of a new garnishee-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. Intrinsic value is a term that I found in one of your letters and liked very much. I wrote him that old Brin was an heir-loom and a noble brute. I said among other things that she had never been antagonistic to railroads. She had rather favored them; also[Pg 104] 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 emetic.

I then wrote my name with a little ornamental squirm to it, added a postscript 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 good-by to him, hoping he would remit at a prior date if possible.

I got a letter after awhile, stating that my favor of the 25th ult. 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 sent.

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 bellering besom of[Pg 105] destruction. "If you will deal more in scads and less in stenography and monkey business," says I, in closing, "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 while it was there. I wouldn't be surprised if every man in Congress had a good hearty laugh over that letter. Congressmen enjoy a good thing once in a while, Henry. They ain't so dumb as they 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 trestle three-quarters of a mile long, without paying for it, and favors received and contents duly noted don't go with

Your father,
Bill Nye.