Bill Nye and Boomerang: Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary GemsNye, Bill
General
Bill Nye and Boomerang: Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems
Nye, Bill
American wit and humor
|The varied classes of tourists passing over the Union Pacific Railroad,
representing as they do all classes of humanity, seem to call for a
brief notice from the nimble pen of a great man.
During my short but eventful life I have given a large portion of my
time to studying human nature. Studying human nature and rustling for
grub, as the Psalmist has it, have occupied my time ever since I arrived
at man's estate.
There is one style of tourist which I am more particularly devoted to,
perhaps, than any other. It is the young man who is in search of health
for his invalid mustache. Only last week I saw one of these gentle
youths who was going to try sea air and California fruit to see if he
couldn't rescue his consumptive mustache from the jaws of death.
When he got off here and took the poor thing out to where it could look
about and see the green plains and snow-capped mountains, I felt sorry
for him. It is hard for one to be a successful tourist with a pale
invalid along with him night and day, and I could imagine how that
young man would have to get up nights when his mustache got restless and
needed fresh air or wanted to take its tonic.
It was certainly the most gentle, retiring, modest mustache I ever saw.
It didn't seem to care for anything only to be loved.
Every little while the youth would reach up to where it was and feel
around nervously to see if it had climbed the golden stairs or was still
on deck.
It was not a heavy mustache at all. It was about as voluptuous as a
buffalo gnat's eye-brow.
I never saw a mustache before that brought the scalding tears to my eyes
like that one. I thought how lonely the young man would be when it had
glided up the flume and left him in this cold, uncharitable world with
nothing to love and cling to but an earnest and unhappy boil on the back
of his neck that wouldn't come to a focus.
Sometimes I go down to the train to see some fair young girl who is on
the overland trip. But I am not always gratified.
A short time ago I went over, feeling as though I would like to see a
fair young creature full of life and joy and with the light of a joyous
future shining in her lustrous eyes.
It didn't seem to be her train. It was the day that a woman was on
board with a Russia iron alapaca dress and white eyes. She was from
Winnipewankiegingersuappetymagoggery, Maine.
She had a little sore-eyed boy with cream-colored hair and freckles on
his face as large as a veal cutlet.
The boy would occasionally walk along the platform with his fore finger
rammed into his mouth and hooked around his wisdom tooth. He would walk
along looking up into the sky, and running into everybody and falling
over the baggage truck till his mother got quite irritated, and I told
the boy that the future looked dark for him unless he braced up and
stopped pulverizing people's corns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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