“Numerous were the unavailing efforts that I made to bring Ward to a settlement. When I would commence: ‘Now, Artemus, how about that California business?’ he would interrupt--‘Oh, never mind that whipping. No hurry at all. Send it to me through the mail--or telegraph it. Let’s drink.’ “I have got even with Browne, however, in a measure--I have _engaged_ a number of agents myself.” BILL NYE. Away out in the wilds of Wyoming Territory, in the fast growing city of Laramie, dwells one of the most noted funny men of to-day. Bill Nye is a modest looking name, and at first sight looks like a _nom de plume_; yet Bill Nye is the “only and original” of that name. He is a young man, and has been in the journalistic profession only three or four years. He began work on the Laramie City Boomerang, and is at present the managing editor of that publication. The Boomerang is a newspaper of metropolitan proportions, and issues both daily and weekly editions. Bill Nye has, during the past two years, written a larger quantity and a better quality of first-class, genuine humor, than any other funny man in America. He is widely quoted, and has issued one book entitled, Bill Nye and his Mule Boomerang. This volume was issued in Chicago in 1881, and had a tremendous sale. Like others of his class, Nye is modest, and prefers to relate to the awaiting world his own misfortunes, in his own peculiar style. He writes as follows: “MY DEAR CLEMENS: I herein make a few brief statements, which you are at liberty to enlarge upon in such a way as to give my life that odor of holy calm and unblemished smirchlessness which will sound well in history. “I was born on the 25th day of August, A. D., 1850, somewhere in the State of Maine. I do not remember where. It was either along the Atlantic seaboard, or on the Kennebec river, and the exact spot has escaped my memory. As soon as I could walk I left Maine and came west, where I have been for about thirty years. “Looking over my whole eventful career, I see nothing to regret, except the fact that I was born in Maine. Probably the State of Maine regrets it as much as I do.” “My early childhood was spent in acquiring knowledge relative to the habits and movements of the bumble-bee and the water-melon. “There is nothing in particular, perhaps, to distinguish my youth from that of other eminent men. I did not study the Greek grammar by the light of a pine knot when I was a child. I did not think about it. Had I supposed that I would ever rise to the proud pinnacle of fame, I might have filled my system full of deceased languages, but as it was, I thought I was in luck to acquire sufficient education to last me from one meal to another.