telling them that Piscataquis County was no place for them, he boldly
struck out for St. Croix County, Wis., where the hardy young pioneer
soon made a home for his parents. The first year he drove the Indians
out of the St. Croix Valley, and suggested to the Northwestern Railroad
that it would be a good idea to build to St. Paul as soon as the company
could get a grant which would pay them two or three times the cost of
construction. The following year he adopted trousers, and made $175 from
the sale of wolf scalps. He also cleared twenty-seven acres of land, and
raised some watermelons. In 1854 he established and endowed a district
school in Pleasant Valley. It was at this time that he began to turn his
attention to the abolition of slavery in the South, and to write
articles for the press, signed Veritas, in which he advocated the war in
1860, or as soon as the Government could get around to it.
In 1865 he graduated from the farm and began the study of the law. He
did not advance very rapidly in this profession, failing several times
in his examination, and giving bonds for his appearance at the next term
of court. He was, however, a close student of political economy, and
studied personal economy at the same time, till he found that he could
easily live on ten cents a day and his relatives.
Mr. Nye then began to look about him for a new country to build up and
foster, and, as Wisconsin had grown to be so thickly settled in the
northwestern part of the State that neighbors were frequently found less
than five miles apart, he broke loose from all restraint and took
emigrant rates for Cheyenne, Wyo. Here he engaged board at the
Inter-Ocean Hotel, and began to look about him for a position in a bank.
Not succeeding in this, he tried the law and journalism. He did not
succeed in getting a job for some time, but finally was hired as
associate editor and janitor of the Laramie _Sentinel_. The salary was
small, but Mr Nye’s latitude great, and he was permitted to write
anything that he thought would please the people, whether it was news or
not.
By and by he had won every heart by his gentle, patient poverty and his
delightful parsimony in regard to facts. With a hectic imagination and
an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper he scarcely cared
through the livelong day whether school kept or not.
Thus he rose to Justice of the Peace, and finally to an income reported
very large to everybody but the assessor.
He is the father of several very beautiful children by his first wife,
who is still living. She is a Chicago girl, and loves her husband far
more than he deserves. He is pleasant to the outside world, but a
perfect brute in his home. He early learned that, in order to win the
love of his wife, he should be erratic, and kick the stove over on the
children when he came home. He therefore asserts himself in this way,
and the family love and respect him, being awed by his greatness and
gentle barbarism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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