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

the same old dandelion root that I've been using for twenty years, and I believe when you've tried a thing and proved it's good, you ortent to change off.

I tried to get your mother to take a dost of it last week for the pain in her side. Fixed up a two-[Pg 74]quart jug of it for her, but she can't bear the smell of gin so I had to take it myself. Dandelion is a great purifier of the blood, Henry. Some days after I've been taking this dandelion root for an hour or two I feel as if my blood was pretty near pure enough. I feel like a new man.

You know I wrote you last winter, Henry, that I was going to buy some new-fangled hens in the spring and go into the egg business. Well, I sent east in March for a couple of fowls, one of each sect. They came at $9 per pair over and above railroad charges, which was some $4.35 more on top of that.

I thought that as soon as the hen got here and got her things off and got rested she would proceed to lay some of these here high-priced eggs which we read of in the Poultry-Keepers' Guide and American Eggist. But she seemed pensive, and when I tried to get acquainted with her she would cluck in a croupy tone of voice and go away.

The rooster was no doubt a fine-looking brute when he was shipped, but when he got here he strolled around with a preoccupied air and seemed to feel above us. He was a poker-dot rooster, with gray mane and tail, and he was no doubt refined, but I did not think he should feel above his business, for we are only plain people who are accustomed to the self-made American hen. He seemed[Pg 75] bored all the time, and I could see by the way he acted that he pined to be back in Fremont, O., having his picture taken for the Poultry-Keepers' Guide and American Eggist. He still yearned for approbation. He was used to being made of, as your mother says, and it galled him to enter into our plain, humdrum home life.

I never saw such a haughty rooster in my life. Actually, when I got out to feed him in the morning he would give me a cold, arrogant look that hurt my feelings. I know I'm not what you would call an educated man nor a polished man, though I claim to have a son that is both of said things, but I hate to have a rooster crow over me because he has had better advantages and better breeding than I have. So there was no love lost between us, as you can see.

Directly I noticed that the hen began to have spells of vertigo. She would be standing in a corner of the hen retreat, reverting to her joyous childhood at Fremont, O., when all at once she would "fall senseless to the earth and there lie prone upon the sward," to use the words of a great writer whose address has been mislaid. She would remain in this comytoes condition for between five minutes, perhaps. Then she would rally a little, slowly pry open her large, mournful eyes, and seem to murmur "Where am I?"[Pg 76]

I could see that she was evading the egg issue in every way and ignoring the great object for which she was created. With the ability to lay eggs worth from $4 to $5.75 per dozen delivered on the cars, I could plainly see that she proposed to roll up this great talent in a napkin and play the invalid act. I do not disguise the fact, Henry, that I was mad. I made a large rectangular affidavit in the inner temple of the horse-barn that this poker-dot hen should never live to say that I had sent her to the seashore for her health when she was eminently fitted by nature to please the public with her lay.

I therefore gave her two weeks to decide on whether she would contribute a few of her meritorious articles or insert herself into a chicken pie.

She still continued haughty to the last moment. So did her pardner. We therefore treated ourselves to a $9 dinner in April.

I then got some expensive eggs from the effete east. They were not robust eggs. They were layed during a time of great depression, I judge. So they were that way themselves also. They came by express, and were injured while being transferred at Chicago. No one has travelled over that line of railroad since.

I do not say that the eggs were bad, but I say that their instincts and their inner life wasn't[Pg 77] what they ort to have been.

In early May I bought one of these inkybaters that does the work of ten setting hens. I hoped to head off the hen so far as possible, simply purchasing her literary efforts and editing them to suit myself. I cannot endure the society of a low-bred hen, and a refined hen seems to look down on me, and so I thought if I could get one of those ottymatic inkybaters I could have the whole process under my own control, and if the blooded hens wanted to go to the sanitarium and sit around there with their hands in their pockets while the great hungry world of traffic clamored for more spring chickens fried in butter they might do so and be doggoned.

Thereupon I bought one of the medium size, two story hatchers and loaded it with eggs. In my dreams I could see a long procession of fuzzy little chickens marching out of my little inkybater arm in arm, every day or two, while my bank account swelled up like a deceased horse.

I was dreaming one of these dreams night before last at midnight's holy hour when I was rudely awakened by a gallon of cold water in one of my ears. I arose in the darkness and received a squirt of cold water through the window from our ever-watchful and courageous fire department. I opened the casement for the purpose of thanking[Pg 78] them for this little demonstration, wholly unsolicited on my part, when I discovered the hennery was in flames.

I went down to assist the department, forgetting to put on my pantaloons as is my custom out of deference to the usages of good society. We saved the other buildings, but the hatchery is a mass of smoldering ruins. So am I.

It seems that the kerosene lamp which I kept burning in the inkybater for the purpose of maintaining an even temperature, and also for the purpose of showing the chickens the way to the elevator in case they should hatch out in the night, had torched up and ignited the hatchery, so to speak.

I see by my paper that we are importing 200,000,000 of hens' eggs from Europe every year. It'll be 300,000,000 next year so far as I'm concerned, Henry, and you can bet your little pleated jacket on it, too, if you want to.

To-day I send P. O. order No. 143,876 for $3.50. I agree with the bible that "the fool and his money are soon parted." Your father,

Bill Nye.

Bill Nye on Tobacco.—A Discourager of Cannibalism.

I am glad to notice a strong effort on the part of the friends of humanity to encourage those who[Pg 79] wish to quit the use of tobacco. To quit the use of this weed is one of the most agreeable methods of relaxation. I have tried it a great many times, and I can safely say that it has afforded me much solid felicity.

To violently reform and cast away the weed and at the end of a week to find a good cigar unexpectedly in the quiet, unostentatious pocket of an old vest, affords the most intense and delirious delight.

Scientists tell us that a single drop of the concentrated oil of tobacco on the tongue of an adult dog is fatal. I have no doubt about the truth or cohesive power of this statement, and for that reason I have always been opposed to the use of tobacco among dogs. Dogs should shun the concentrated oil of tobacco, especially if longevity be any object to them. Neither would I advise a man who may have canine tendencies or a strain of that blood in his veins to use the concentrated oil of tobacco as a sozodont. To those who may feel that way about tobacco I would say, shun it by all means. Shun it as you would the deadly upas tree or the still more deadly whipple tree of the topics.

In what I may say under this head please bear in mind that I do not speak of the cigarette. I am now confining my remarks entirely to the subject of tobacco.

The use of the cigarette is, in fact, beneficial in[Pg 80] in some ways, and no pest house should try to get along without it. It is said that they are very popular in the orient, especially in the lazar houses, where life would otherwise become very monotonous.

Scientists, who have been unable to successfully use tobacco and who therefore have given their whole lives and the use of their microscopes to the investigation of its horrors, say that cannibals will not eat the flesh of tobacco-using human beings. And yet we say to our missionaries: "No man can be a Christian and use tobacco."

I say, and I say it, too, with all that depth of feeling which has always characterized my earnest nature, that in this we are committing a great error.

What have the cannibals ever done for us as a people that we should avoid the use of tobacco in order to fit our flesh for their tables. In what way have they sought to ameliorate our condition in life that we should strive in death to tickle their palates.

Look at the history of the cannibal for past ages. Read carefully his record and you will see that it has been but the history of a selfish race. Cast your eye back over your shoulder for a century, and what do you find to be the condition of the cannibalists? A new missionary has landed a few weeks[Pg 81] previous perhaps. A little group is gathered about on the beach beneath a tropical tree. Representative cannibals from adjoining islands are present. The odor of sanctity pervades the air.

The chief sits beneath a new umbrella, looking at the pictures in a large concordance. A new plug hat is hanging in a tree near by.

Anon the leading citizens gather about on the ground, and we hear the chief ask his attorney-general whether he will take some of the light or some of the dark meat.

That is all.

Far away in England the paper contains the following personal:

Wanted.—A young man to go as missionary to supply vacancy in one of the cannibal islands. He must fully understand the appetites and tastes of the cannibals, must be able to reach their inner nature at once, and must not use tobacco. Applicants may communicate in person or by letter.

Is it strange that under these circumstances those who frequented the cannibal islands during the last century should have quietly accustomed themselves to the use of a peculiarly pernicious, violent, and all-pervading brand of tobacco? I think not.[Pg 82]

To me the statement that tobacco-tainted human flesh is offensive to the cannibal does not come home with crushing power.

Perhaps I do not love my fellow-man so well as the cannibal does. I know that I am selfish in this way, and if my cannibal brother desires to polish my wishbone he must take me as he finds me. I cannot abstain wholly from the use of tobacco in order to gratify the pampered tastes of one who has never gone out of his way to do me a favor.

Do I ask the cannibal to break off the pernicious use of tobacco because I dislike the flavor of it in his brisket? I will defy any respectable resident of the cannibal islands to-day to place his finger on a solitary instance where I have ever, by word or deed, intimated that he should make the slightest change in his habits on my account, unless it be that I may have suggested that a diet consisting of more anarchists and less human beings would be more productive of general and lasting good.

My own idea would be to send a class of men to these islands so thoroughly imbued