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
They are a good style of conveyance in some respects. For instance, if a
man has a car-load of wheat that he wants to run into St. Paul with and
sell, he can have it attached to the mixed train, and then he can get
into the coach and go along with it, and attend to it personally. But
where a man's time is worth $9 a moment, as mine is, it is annoying.
At first I couldn't get accustomed to it. I couldn't overcome my inertia
when the car started or stopped, and it kept me worn out all the time
apologizing to a corpulent old lady in the third seat from me. Had I
been given a little time to select a lady whose lap I would prefer to
sit down in, there were a dozen perhaps in the car more desirable than
this old lady, but in the hurry and agitation I always seemed to select
her.
Finally the conductor said that kind of business had gone far enough,
and he tied me into my seat with a shawl-strap.
The train was very long, and when it got under full head-, way it was
almost impossible to stop it at the various stations. We either stopped
out in the country prematurely or passed the station at the rate of nine
miles a minute, and then repented and came back. I was struck with the
similarity of the first five or six towns on the line and spoke of it to
a friend who accompanied me.
It seemed to me that Clarksville, Mapleton, Eldorado Junction, Pine
Grove and Brookville had been planned by the same architect, but
my friend only laughed and showed me that we had been switched and
side-tracked for two or three hours at the first-named place.
We stopped in the woods once and I went out after butternuts.
It was a lovely autumn day, and after the thick nutritious air of the
car, it was paradise to get out into the forest, where the fresh, sweet
odor of the falling leaves was everywhere, and the hush of nature's
annual funeral checked the thoughtless word and noisy laughter of the
invader.
I wandered on, thinking of the brevity and comparative unimportance of
our human life. How short the race we run, and how unsatisfactory our
achievements at last. How like the leaves of the forest we spring forth
in the early summer of our existence, nod pleasantly to our fellows a
few brief mornings, and then die.
Thoughtlessly and aimlessly I had wandered on until I came to a large
butternut, which I climbed with the old and almost forgotten enthusiasm
of boyhood. At the top I tried some of my old and difficult tricks, and
just as the train moved silently away I was going through the difficult
and dangerous act of hanging to the upper limb of a butternut tree
by the seat of the pants, and waiting patiently for the bough or the
cassimere to yield and let the artist down into the arena by force of
gravitation.
Dear reader, did you ever go through this thrilling experience? Did
you ever feel the utter insecurity and maddening uncertainty which it
yields? If not, then these lines are not to you?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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