0249
"Well, confound it, you can discharge me if you want to, but what was a man to do? Would you have me march around three times when my military pants were coming off, and I knew it? Military pride, pomp, parade, and circumstance, are all right; but it can be overdone. A military squadron, detachment, or whatever it is, can make more of a parade, under certain circumstances, than is advertised. I didn't want to give people more show than they paid for, and I ask you to put yourself in my place. When a man is paid three dollars a week to play a Roman soldier, would you have him play the Greek slave? No, sir; I guess I know what I'm hired to play, and I'm going to play it. When you want me to play Adam in the Garden of Eden, just give me my fig leaf and salary enough to make it interesting, and I will try and properly interpret the character for you, or refund the money at the door."
DEAR, mellow-voiced, starry-eyed reader, did you ever see something about "the decline of American humor?" Well, we got a gob of American humor, yesterday, written by a yahoo with pale pink hair, which was entitled "Marriage in Mormondom on the Tontine Plan." Well, we declined it. Decline of American humor.Sabe?
THE Chicago custom house and post office, built from designs by Oscar Wild, and other delirum tremens artists, is getting wiggly, and bids fair to some day fall down and scrunch about 500 United States employes into the great billowy sea of the eternal hence. It is a sick looking structure, with little gothic warts on top, and red window sashes, and little half-grown smoke houses sprouting out of it in different places. It is grand, gloomy and peculiar, and looks as though it might be cursed with an inward pain.
WE are indebted to Fred J. Prouting, correspondent of the foreign and British newspaper press, for a copy of the LondonDailyof the 9th inst., containing the following editorial notice:
"If ever celebrity were attained unexpectedly, most assuredly it was that thrust upon Bill Nye by Truthful James. It is just possible, however, that the innumerable readers of Mr. Bret Harte's 'Heathen Chinee' may have imagined Bill Nye and Ah Sin to be purely mythical personages. So far as the former is concerned, any such conclusion now appears to have been erroneous. Bill Nye is no more a phantom than any other journalist, although the name of the organ which he 'runs' savors more of fiction than of fact. But there is no doubt about the matter, for the Washington correspondent of the New YorkTribunetelegraphed on the 29th instant, that Bill Nye had accepted a post under the government. He has lately been domiciled in Laramie City, Wyoming territory, and is editor of The Daily Boomerang. In reference to Acting-Postmaster-Gen. Hatton's appointment of him as postmaster at Laramie City, the opponent of Ah Sin writes an extremely humorous letter, 'extending' his thanks, and advising his chief of his opinion that his 'appointment is a triumph of eternal truth over error and wrong.' Nye continues: 'It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection. I don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom.' In this quiet strain of banter, Bill Nye continues to the end of his letter, which suggests the opinion that whatever the official qualifications of the new postmaster may be, the inhabitants of Laramie City must have a very readable newspaper in The Daily Boomerang."
While thanking our London contemporary for its gentle and harmless remarks, we desire to correct an erroneous impression that the seems to have as to our general style: The British press has in some way arrived at the conclusion that the editor of this fashion-guide and mental lighthouse on the rocky shores of time (terms cash), is a party with wild tangled hair, and an like a tongue of flame.
That is not the case, and therefore our English co-worker in the great field of journalism is, no doubt, laboring under a popular misapprehension. Could the editor of theNewslook in upon us as we pull down tome after tome of forgotten lore in our study; or, with a glad smile, glance hurriedly over the postal card in transit through our postoffice, he would see, not as he supposes, a wild and cruel slayer of his fellow men, but a thoughtful, scholarly and choice fragment of modern architecture, with lines of care about the firmly chiseled mouth, and with the subdued and chastened air of a man who has run for the legislature and failed to get there, Eli.
The LondonNewsis an older paper than ours, and we therefore recognize the value of its kind notice.The Boomerangis a young paper, and has therefore only begun fairly to do much damage as a national misfortune, but the time is not far distant, when, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, we propose to search out suffering humanity and make death easier and more desirable, by introducing this choice malady.
Regarding the postoffice, we wish to state that we shall aim to make it a great financial success, and furnish mail at all times to all who desire it, whether they have any or not. We shall be pretty busy, of course, attending to the office during the day, and writing scathing editorials during the night, but we will try to snatch a moment now and then to write a few letters for those who have been inquiring sadly and hopelessly for letters during the past ten years. It is, indeed, a dark and dreary world to the man who has looked in at the same general delivery window nine times a day for ten years, and yet never received a letter, nor even a confidential postal card from a commercial man, stating that on the 5th of the following month he would strike the town with a new and attractive line of samples.
We should early learn to find put such suffering as that, and if we are in the postoffice department we may be the means of much good by putting new envelopes on our own dunning letters and mailing them to the suffering and distressed. Let us, in our abundance, remember those who have not been dunned for many a weary year. It will do them good, and we will not feel the loss.
THEY say that Brigham Young's grave is looking as bare and desolate as a boulevard now. At first, while her grief was fresh, his widow used to march out there five abreast, and just naturally deluge the grave with scalding tears, and at that time the green grass grew luxuriantly, and the pig-weed waved in the soft summer air; but as she learned to control her emotions, the humidity of the atmosphere disappeared, and grief's grand irrigation failed to give down. We should learn from this that the man who flatters himself that in marrying a whole precinct during life, he is piling up for the future a large invoice of ungovernable woe, is liable to get left. The prophet's tomb looks to-day like a deserted buffalo wallow, while his widow has dried her tears, and is trying to make a mash on the Utah commission. Such is life in the far west, and such the fitting resting place of a red-headed old galvanized prophet, who marries a squint-eyed fly-up-the-creek, and afterward gets a special revelation requiring him to marry a female mass-meeting. Let us be thankful for what we have, instead of yearning for a great wealth of wife. Then the life insurance will not have to be scattered so, and our friends will be spared the humiliating spectacle of a bereft and sorrowing herd of widow, turned loose by the cold hand of death to monkey o'er our tomb.
THIS county has had two hemp carnivals during the past few weeks, and it begins to look like old times again. In each case the murder was unprovoked, and the victim a quiet gentleman. That is why there was a popular feeling against the murderer, and a spontaneous ropestretching benefit as a result. While we deplore the existence of a state of affairs that would warrant these little expressions of feeling, we cannot come right out and condemn the exercises which followed.
The more we read the political record of the candidate for office, as set forth in opposing journals, the more we feel that there are already few enough good men in this country, so that we do not care to spare any of them. If, therefore, the mischievous bad man is permitted to thin them out this way, the day is not distant when we won't have good men enough to run the newspapers, to say nothing of other avocations.
We know that eastern people will speak of us as a ferocious tribe on the Wyoming reservation, but we desire to call the attention of our more law-abiding brethren to the fact that there has been in the past year a lynching in almost every state in the Union, to say nothing of several hundred cases where there should have been. Do you suppose Wyoming young ladies would consent to play the waltz known as "Under the Elms," composed by Walter Malley, if Walter had been as frolicsome here as he was down on the Atlantic coast? Scarcely. We may be the creatures of impulse here, but not that kind of impulse.
Minneapolis hung a man during the past year, and so did Bloomington and other high-toned towns, and shall we, because we are poor and lonely, be denied this poor boon? We hope not. Because we have left the East and moved out here to make some money and build up a new country, shall we be refused the privileges we would have enjoyed if we had remained in the states. We trow not.
A telegraph pole with a remains hanging on it is not a cheerful sight, but it has a tendency to annoy and mentally disturb those who contemplate the violent death of some good man. It unnerves the brave assassin and makes him restless and apprehensive. Death is always depressing, but it is doubly so when it has that purple and suffocated appearance which is noticeable in the features of the early fall fruit of the telegraph pole. Lately, we will state, however, the telegraph pole has fallen into disfavor, and is not much used, owing to a rumor which gained circulation some time ago, to the effect that Jay Gould intended to charge the vigilance committee rent.
ANUDE colored woman, as wild as a gorilla, startling the people of the Marvel section of Missouri. She has been seen several times, and the last time threw a young lady, who was horseback riding, into hysteria, and with a grunt—not unlike that of a wild hog—jumped up and ran into the forest. At the time of her discovery she was burrowing into the side of the road, catching and eating crawfish, which she ate claws, hide and all. She is very black, and foams at the mouth when angry, like a wild animal at bay. She is probably a colored Greek slave in search of an umbrella and the remainder of her wardrobe. Still, she may be a brunette society belle, who went in swimming where a mud-turtle caught her by the pink toe, and the nervous shock has unsettled her mind.
AN exchange says that Mrs. Melville has become deranged through excess of joy over the unexpected return of her husband. Another one says that it is thought that Lieutenant Melville is off his basement as a result of exposure to the vigorous and bracing air of the north pole. Still another says that Mr. Melville was always mean and hateful toward his wife, and that when he was at home, she had to do her own washing and wind the clock herself. From the different stories now floating about relative to the Melville family, we are led to believe that he is a kind and considerate husband, pleasant and good-natured toward his wife—while asleep; and that she is a kind, beautiful and accomplished wife—when she is sober. How many of our best wives are falling victims to the alcoholic habit recently! How sad to think that, as husbands, we will soon be left to wait and watch and vigil through the long, weary night for that one to return who promised us on the nuptial day that she would protect and love us. Ah, what a silent, but seductive foe to the husband is rum! How it creeps into the home circle and snatches the wife in the full blush and bloom of womanhood, while the pale, sad-eyed husband sits at the sewing machine and barely makes enough to keep the little ones from want.
No one can fully realize, but he who has been there, so to speak, the terrible shock that Mr. Melville received on the first evening that his wife came staggering home. No one can tell how the pain froze his throbbing gizzard, or how he shuddered in the darkness, and filled the pillow-sham full of sobs when he first knew that she had got it up her nose. Ah, what a picture of woe we see before us. There in the solemn night, robed in? long, plainly constructed garment of pure white, buttoned at the throat in a negligent manner, stands Mr. Melville with his bare, tall brow glistening in the flickering rays of a kerosene lamp, which he holds in his hand, while on the front porch stands the wife who a few years ago promised to defend and protect him. She is a little unsteady on her feet, and her hat is out of plumb. She tries to be facetious, and asks him if that is where Mr. Melville lives. He looks at her coldly and says it is, but unfortunately it is not an inebriate's home and refuge for the budge demolisher. Then he bursts into tears, and his sobs shake the entire ranch. But we draw a curtain over the scene.
A year later he may be discovered about two miles southwest of the north pole. Cool, but happy. He is trying to forget his woe. He smells like sperm-oil and looks like a bald-headed sausage, but the woe of drink is forgotten.'
How sad that he has returned and suffered again. What a mistake that he did not remain where, instead of his wife's coolness, he would have had only that of nature to contend against.
THEY have successfully set a boy's broken neck, in Connecticut, and now it looks as though the only way to kill a man is to take him about 200 miles from any physician, and run him through a Hoe Perfecting Press. If this thing continues, they will some day put some electricity into Pharaoh's daughter and engage her as a ballet-dancer, along with other tender pullets of her own age.
WE are indebted to Elder Wilkins, of Logan, Utah, first-assistant-general-tooly-muck-a-hi Z. C. M. I. and Z. W. of T. U. O. M. and B. company, and president of the cache stake of Zion, constituting last in the quorum of seventies, for the late edition of the Mormon Guide and Hand Book of the Endowment House. It is a very pleasant work to read, and makes the whole endowment scheme as clear to the average mind as though he had been through it personally.
Pictures of the endowment chemiloon and Z. C. M. I. bib are given to show the novice exactly how they appear to the unclothed and unregenerate vision. The convert, it seems, first goes to the desk, on entering, and registers. Then she leaves her every-day clothes in the baggage room and gets a check for them. The next thing on the programme is a bath, called the farewell bath, because it is the last one taken by the endowment victim.
The convert is then anointed with machine oil from a cow's horn, after which she is named something, supposed to be the celestial cognomen. Then comes the endowment robe, which is a combination arrangement that don't look pretty. After that, the apprentice to polygamy goes into an impromptu garden of Eden, where the apple business is gone through with. A thick-necked path-master from Logan takes the character of Adam, and a pale-haired livery stable keeper from Salt Lake acts as the ruler of the universe. This is not making light of a sacred subject. It is just the simple, plain, horrible truth.
0265
The creation of the world is thus gone through with by these blatant priests of Latter Day bogus sanctity, and the exercises are continued after this fashion through all their disgusting details. We have no time or inclination to enlarge upon them. Truth is sometimes nauseating, especially while discussing the Mormon problem.
If Brigham Young had lived, he would have helped out his church by a revelation that would have knocked the daylights out of polygamy; but as it is now, John Taylor, with his characteristic stubborness, will not attend to it, his revelation machine being somewhat out of whack, as Oscar Wilde would say, so that the anointing with the so-called sanctified lubricant will continue till the United States sits down on the whole grand farce.
AMAN is going about the streets of Laramie claiming to be John the Baptist. He has light hair and chin whiskers, is stout built and looks like a farmer. We desire to warn those of our readers who may be inclined to trust him, that he is not what he purports to be. We have taken great pains to look the matter up, and find, as a result of our research, that John the Baptist is dead.
AT the October term of the district court we shall resign the office of United States Commissioner for this judicial district, an office which we have held so long, and with such great credit to ourself. Fearing that in the hurry and rush of other business our contemporaries might overlook the matter, we have consented to mention, briefly, the fact that at the opening of court, Judge Blair will be called upon to accept the resignation of one of our most tried and true officials, who has for so long held up this corner of the great national fabric.
It has been our solemn duty to examine the greaser who sold liquor to our red brother, and filled him up with the deadly juice of the sour-mash tree. It has devolved upon us to singe the soft-eyed lad who stole baled hay from the reservation, and it has also been our glorious privilege to examine, in a preliminary manner, the absent-minded party who gathered unto himself the U. S. mule.
We have attempted to resign before, but failed. One reason was, that it was a novel proceeding in Wyoming, and no one seemed to know how to go to work at it. No one had ever resigned before, and the matter had to be hunted up and the law thoroughly understood.
The office is one of great profit, as we have said before. It brings wealth into the coffers of the U. S. Commissioner in a way that is well calculated to turn the head of most people. We have, however, succeeded in controlling ourself, and have so far suppressed that beastly pride which wealth engenders. With a salary of $7.25 per annum, and lead pencils, we have-steadily refused to go to Europe, preferring rather to plod along here in the wild west, although we may never see the beauties of a foreign shore.
Official duty was at all times weighing upon our mind like a leaden load. Oft in the stilly night we have been wakened by the oppressing thought that, perhaps at that moment, on some distant reservation, some pale-faced villain might be selling valley-tan to the gentle, untutored Indian brave, and it has tortured us and robbed us of slumber and joy. Now it is a relief to know that very soon we shall be free from this great responsibility. If an Indian gets drunk on the reservation, or a time-honored government mule is stolen, we shall not be expected to get up in the night and administer swift and terrible justice to the offender. Old-man-with-a-torpid-liver can go as drunk as he pleases on the reservation. It does not come under our jurisdiction any more. We can sleep now nights while some other man peels his coat, and acts as the United States nemesis for this diocese.
Sometime during the ensuing week we will turn over the lead pencil and the blotting paper of the office to our successor. We leave the Indian temperance movement in his hands. The United States mule, kleptomaniac also, we leave with him. With a clear conscience and an unliquidated claim against the government for $9.55, the earnings of the past two years, we turn over the office, knowing that although we have sacrificed our health, we have never evaded our duty, no matter how dangerous or disagreeable.
Yet we do not ask for any gold-headed cane as a mark of esteem on the part of the government. We have a watch that does very well for us, so that a testimonial consisting of a gold watch, costing $250, would be unnecessary. Any little trinket of that kind would, of course, show how ready the department of justice is to appreciate the work of an efficient officer, but we do not look for it, nor ask it. A thoroughly fumigated and disinfected conscience is all we want. That is enough for us. Do not call out the band. Just let us retire from the office quietly and unostentatiously. As regards the United States Commissionership, we retire to private life. In the bosom of our family we will forget the turbulent voyage of official life through which we have passed, and as we monkey with the children around our hearthstone, we will shut our eyes to the official suffering that is going on on all around us.
AN amateur scientist sends us a long article written with a purple pencil on both sides of twelve sheets of legal cap, and entitled "Poisons and Their Anecdotes."
Will the soft-eyed mullet-head please call and get it, also a lick over the eye with a hot stove leg, and greatly oblige the weary throbbing brain that, moulds the scientific course of this paper?
THE party, consisting of Governor Hale and wife, Secretary Morgan and wife, President Slack, of the "Wyoming Press Association, and wife, Mr. Baird and myself, started out of Laramie, about 8:30 last evening, and excurted along over the hill with some hesitation, arriving here this morning at four o'clock. The engine at first slipped an eccentric on Dale Creek bridge, and we remained there some time, delayed but happy. Then, as the night wore away and the gray dawn came down over the broad and mellow sweep of plain to the eastward, an engine ahead of us on a freight train blew off her monkey-wrench, and we were delayed in the neighborhood of Hazzard several more hours. Hazzard is a thriving town on the eastern slope of the mountains, with glorious possibilities for a town site. With gas and waterworks and a city debt of $200,000, Hazzard will some day attract notice from the civilized world. If her vast deposits of sand and alkali could be brought to the notice of capital, Hazzard would some day take rank with such cities as Wilcox and Tie City.
Still we had a good deal of fun. We heard that Whitelaw Reid, of the New York was on board, and we sent the porter into the other car after him. Mr. Reid did not behave as we thought he would at first. We had presumed that he was cold and distant in his manners, but he is not. As soon as the first embarrassment of meeting us was over, he sailed right in and did all the talking himself, just as any cultivated gentleman would. He told us all about New York politics and how he was fighting the machine, at the same time, however, casually dropping a remark or two that led us to conclude that it was only one machine that didn't want another one to win. He is a tall, rather fine-looking man, with a Grecian nose and long, dark hair, which he does up in tin foil at night. I told him that I was grieved to know that his hired man had, inadvertently no doubt, referred to me in a manner that gave the American people an idea that I was a good deal bigger man than I really was. I asked him whether he wanted to apologize then and there or be thrown over Dale Creek bridge into the rip-snorting torrent below.
He said he didn't believe that such a remark had been made, but if it had he would go home and kill the man who wrote it, if that would poultice up my wounded heart. I said it would. If he would just mail me the remains of the man who made the remark, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith, it would be all right.
We talked all night, and incurred the everlasting displeasure of a fat man from San Francisco, who told the porter he wanted his money back because he hadn't slept any all night. He seemed mad because we were having a little harmless conversation among ourselves, and when the clock in the steeple struck four he rolled over in his berth, gave a large groan and then got up and dressed. Some people are so morbidly nervous that they cannot sleep on a train, and they naturally get cross and say ungentlemanly things. This man said some things while he was dressing and buttoning his suspenders, that made my blood run cold. A man who has no better control of his temper than that, ought not to travel at all. He just simply makes a North American side-show of himself.
Cheyenne is very greatly improved since I was here last. The building up of the corner opposite the Inter Ocean hotel has added greatly to the attractiveness of the Magic City, and other work is being done which enhances the beauty of the city very much. F. E. Warren is one of the most enterprising and thoroughly vigorous western business men I ever knew. He is an anomaly, I might say. When I say he is an anomaly, I do not mean to reflect upon him in any way, though I do not know the meaning of the word. I simply mean that he is the chief grand rustle of a very rustling city.
THE candidate for county commissioner, on the Democratic ticket, of Sweetwater county, keeps a drug store, and when a little girl burned her arm against the cook stove, and her father went after a package of Russia salve, the genial Bourbon gave her a box of "Rough on Rats." What the Democratic party needs, is not so much a new platform, but a carload of assorted brains that some female seminary had left over.
Leadville, Colorado, Sept. 10.
THIS morning we rose at 4:30, and rode from Buena Vista to Leadville, arriving at the Clarendon for breakfast. Our party has been reduced in one way and another until there are only eight here to-day. Secretary Morgan and family remained at Buena Vista on account of the illness of Misa Lillie Morgan, who suffers severely from sea-sickness on the mountain railroads.
One thing I have not mentioned, and an incident certainly worthy of note, was the sudden decision of our president, E. A. Slack, on Friday, to remain at a little station on the South Parle road, above Como, while the party continued on to Buena Vista. Mr. Slack is a man of iron will and sudden impulses, as all who know him are aware. He got in a car at the station referred to, and under the impression that it belonged to our train, remained in it till he got impatient about something, and asked a man who came in with a broom, why we were making such a stop at that station. The man said that this car had been side-tracked, and the train had gone sometime ago.
Then Mr. Slack made the rash remark that he would remain there until the next train. He acts readily in an emergency, and he saw at a glance that the best thing that he could do would be to just stay there, and examine the country until he could get the next train. He telegraphed us that the fare was so high on our train that he would see if he couldn't get better rates on the following day. In the meantime, he struck Superintendent Egbert's special car, and rode around over the country till morning, while our party took in Buena Vista. The city is but two years old, but very thriving, and has 2,500 to 3,000 population. At the depot we were met by Agent Smith, of the South Park road, who had secured rooms for us at the Grand Park hotel. He had also arranged for carriages to take us out to Cottonwood Hot Springs, about six miles up Cottonwood creek, where we took supper. We found a first-class sixty-four room hotel there, with hot baths, and everything comfortable and neat. The proprietors are Messrs. Stafford and Hartenstein—the latter having been a medical student under Dr. Agnew. After a good-supper we returned to Buena Vista, where the home military company, under Captain Johnson, led by the Buena Yista band, serenaded us. I responded in a brief but telling speech, which I would give here if I had not forgotten what it was. Some of the other members of the party wanted to make the speech, but I said no, it would not be right. I was representing the president, Mr. Slack, and wearing his overcoat, and therefore it would devolve on me to make the grand opening remarks. It was the greatest effort of my life, and town lots in Buena Vista depreciated fifty per cent.
We found A. D. Butler, formerly of Cheyenne, now at Buena Vista, also Tom Campbell, well known to Laramie people, doing well at the new city, and a prospective member of the Colorado legislature. George Marion, formerly of Laramie, is also at Buena Vista, engaged in the retail bridge trade. We also met Messrs. Leonard, of the and Kennedy, of theHerald, who treated us the whitest kind. Mr. Leonard and wife went with us yesterday over to Gunnison City. Billy Butler, formerly of Laramie, is now at Buena Vista, successfully engaged in mining.
Yesterday we put in the most happy day of the entire trip. Under the very kind and thoughtful guidance of Superintendent E. Wilbur, of the Gunnison division of the South Park road, we went over the mountain to Gunnison and through the wonderful Alpine tunnel, the highest railroad point in the United States, and with its approaches 2,600 feet long. When you pass through the tunnel the brakeman makes you close your window and take in your head. He does this for two reasons: first, you can't see anything if you look out, and secondly, the company don't like to hire an extra man to go through the tunnel twice a day and wipe the remains of tourists off the walls.
The newsboy told me that a tourist from Philadelphia once tried to wipe his nose on the Alpine tunnel, while the train was in motion, and when they got through into daylight, and his companions told him to take in his head, he couldn't do it—because it was half a mile behind examining the formation of the tunnel. Later, it was found that the man was dead. The passengers said that they noticed a kind of crunching noise while going through the tunnel that sounded like the smashing of false teeth, but they paid no attention to it.
Mr. Wilbur afterward told me that there had never been a passenger killed on the road, so I may have been misled by this newsboy. Still, he didn't look like a boy who would trifle with a man's feelings in that way.
However, I will leave the remainder of the Gunnison trip for another letter, as this is already too long.
YOUNG children who have to wait till older people have eaten all there is in the house, should not open the dining-room door during the meal and ask the host if he is going to eat all day. It makes the company feel ill at ease, and lays up wrath in the parents' heart.
Children should not appear displeased with the regular courses at dinner, and then fill up on pie. Eat the less expensive food first, and then organize a picnic in the preserves afterward.
Do not close out the last of your soup by taking the plate in your mouth and pouring the liquid down your childish neck. You might spill it on your bosom, and it enlarges and distorts the mouth unnecessarily.
When asked what part of the fowl you prefer, do not say you will take the part that goes over the fence last. This remark is very humorous, but the rising generation ought to originate some new table jokes that will be worthy of the age in which we live.
Children should early learn the use of the fork, and how to handle it. This knowledge can be acquired by allowing them to pry up the carpet tacks with this instrument, and other little exercises, such as the parent mind may suggest.
The child should be taught at once not to wave his bread around over the table, while in conversation, or to fill his mouth full of potatoes, and then converse in a rich tone of voice with some one out in the yard. He might get his dinner down his trochea and cause his parents great anxiety.
In picking up a plate or saucer filled with soup or with moist food, the child should be taught not to parboil his thumb in the contents of the dish, and to avoid swallowing soup bones or other indigestible debris.
Toothpicks are generally the last course, and children should not be permitted to pick their teeth and kick the table through the other exercises. While grace is being said at table, children should know that it is a breach of good breeding to smouge fruit cake just because their parents' heads are bowed down, and their attention for the moment turned in another direction. Children ought not to be permitted to find fault with the dinner, or fool with the cat while they are eating. Boys should, before going to the table, empty all the frogs and grasshoppers out of their pockets, or those insects might crawl out during the festivities, and jump into the gravy.
If a fly wades into your jelly up to his gambrels, do not mash him with your spoon before all the guests, as death is at all times depressing to those who are at dinner, and retards digestion. Take the fly out carefully, with what naturally adheres to his person, and wipe him on the table cloth. It will demonstrate your perfect command of yourself, and afford much amusement for the company. Do not stand up in your chair and try to spear a roll with your fork. It is not good manners to do so, and you might slip and bust your crust, by so doing. Say "thank you," and "much obliged," and "beg pardon," wherever you can work in these remarks, as it throws people off their guard, and gives you an opportunity to get in your work on the pastry and other bric-a-brac near you at the time.
WHEN Billy Boot was a little boy, he was of a philosophical and investigating turn of mind, and wanted to know almost everything. He also desired to know it immediately. He could not wait for time to develop his intellect, but he crowded things and wore out the patience of his father, a learned savant, who was president of a livery stable in Chicago.
One day Billy ran across the grand hailing sign, which is generally represented as a tapeworm in the beak of the American eagle, on which is inscribed "E Pluribus Unum." Billy, of course, asked his father what "E Pluribus Unum" meant. He wanted to gather in all the knowledge he could, so that when he came out west he could associate with some of our best men.
0283
"I admire your strong appetite for knowledge, Billy," said Mr. Root; "you have a morbid craving for cold hunks of ancient history and cyclopedia that does my soul good; and I am glad, too, that you come to your father to get accurate data for your collection. That is right. Your father will always lay aside his work at any time and gorge your young mind with knowledge that will be as useful to you as a farrow cow. 'E Pluri-bus Unum' is an old Greek inscription that has been handed down from generation to generation, preserved in brine, and signifies that 'the tail goes with the hide.'"
THIS is the form of the oath required of voters in Utah under the new law:
Territory of Utah, County of Salt Lake. I —————— being first duly sworn (or affirmed), depose and say that I am over twenty-one years of age, and have resided in the territory of Utah for six months, and in the precinct of ————— one month immediately preceding the date thereof, and (if a male) am a native born or naturalized (as the case may be) citizen of the United States and a tax payer in this territory. (Or, if a female) I am native born, or naturalized, or the widow or daughter (as the case may be) of a native born or naturalized citizen of the United States. And I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that I am not a bigamist or polygamist; that I am not a violater of the laws of the United States prohibiting bigamy or polygamy; that I do not live or cohabit with more than one woman in the marriage relation, nor does any relation exist between me and any woman which has been entered into or continued in violation of said laws of the United States, prohibiting bigamy or polygamy, (and if a woman) that I am not the wife of a polygamist, nor have I entered into any relation with any man in violation of the laws of the United States concerning polygamy or bigamy.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this ——— day of —————, 1882. Registration Officer ————— Precinct.
It will be seen that at the next election some of the brethren and sisters in Zion will be disfranchised unless they do some pretty tall swearing. This is a terrible state of affairs, and the whole civilized world will feel badly to know that some of our people are going to be left out in the cold, cold world with no voice and no vote just because they have been too zealous in the wedlock business.
Matrimony is a glorious thing, but it can be overdone. A man can become a victim to the nuptial habit just the same as he can the opium habit. It then assumes entire control over him, and he has to be chained up or paralyzed with a club, or he would marry all creation. This law, therefore, is salutary in its operations. It is intended as a gentle check on those who have allowed themselves to become matrimony's maniacs. If we marry one of the daughters of a family, and are happy over it, is that any reason why we should marry the other daughters and the old lady and the colored cook? We think not. It is natural for man to acquire railroads and promissory notes and houses and lands, but he should not undertake to acquire a corner on the wife trade.
Hence we say the law is just and must be permitted to take its course, even though it may disfranchise many of the most prominent pelicans of the Mormon church. Matrimony in Utah has been allowed to run riot, as it were. The cruel and relentless hand of this hydra-headed monster has been laid upon the youngest and the fairest of the Mormon people.
Matrimony has broken out there in a large family in some instances, and has not even spared the widowed and toothless mother. It generally seeks its prey among the youngest and fairest, but in Utah it has not spared even the old and the infirm. Like a cruel epidemic, it has at first raked in the blooming maidens of Mormondom and at last spotted the lantern jawed dregs of foreign female emigration. In one community, this great scourge entered and took all the women under forty-five, and then got into a block where there were nineteen old women who didn't average a tooth apiece, and swept them away like a cyclone.
People who do not know anything of this great evil, can have no knowledge of it. Those who have not investigated this question have certainly failed to look into it. We cannot find out about this question without ascertaining something of it.