BILL NYE was an editor when I first met him, and as I had been a printer, of course I felt akin to him. I had formed an attachment for him that made me wish to know him, so when I found myself in Laramie, on a return trip from California, I improved the opportunity to make his acquaintance. The trains from East and West across the continent met at Laramie, and made a stop of one hour, and Laramie was a lively city during that time. I used my dinner hour to call on William. I asked a man to direct me to Bill Nye’s office, and he replied, “Just over that livery stable,” pointing across the way. I started across the street. Just over the road doorway of the stable hung a sign painted in black letters on a plain board: “LARAMIE BOOMERANG Walk Down the Alley Twist the Gray Mule’s Tail _Take the Elevator Immediately_.” I went into the sanctum and found Nye writing at a plain table at the far side of the room, quite unaware of my presence. From photographs and descriptions I knew him by his back, and at once exclaimed: “Hello, Bill!” Nye rose from his seat and replied smilingly: “Hello, Jim! I guess this is Jim Pond. How are you, Major?” I told him people were reading and talking of him all over the country, and that I believed he could make money lecturing. He replied that he had never given the matter a thought, and was trying to earn a living with his pen and through the Laramie postmastership, to which he had just been appointed. From that time on Bill Nye and I were close friends. When he came East to live, and purchased his Staten Island home, our wives and children became friends also, and we knew and loved one another, and that love never lost any of its ardor. I did not see Nye again until about 1886. I was looking out of my office window in the Everett House in New York, and noticed a tall, straight, slim, fair-haired man, in a slouch hat, whose countenance wore an expression of inquiry, and who seemed to be trying to find the entrance to my place. We recognized “ourselves,” and I beckoned to him, and told him to come around to the front door and have a bell-boy show him to my rooms. I added that there was no sign, or mule’s tail to twist, or elevator to take. Bill came in and stared about at the pictures of great men and women on the walls as if he were a fresh, unsophisticated country boy--and so he was so far as experience was concerned. He told me that he had been engaged on the staff of the New York _World_ and was going to move to New York. The hardest part was to accustom himself to the politics of _The World_, but he said he supposed he could become used to that as soon as he became acclimated.