You will find the key under the door-mat, and you had better turn the cat
out at night when you close the office. If she does not go readily, you
can make it clearer to her mind by throwing the cancelling stamp at her.
If Deacon Hayford does not pay up his box-rent, you might as well put his
mail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk and insists on
a letter from one of his wives every day in the week, you can salute him
through the box delivery with an old Queen Anne tomahawk, which you will
find near the Etruscan water-pail. This will not in any manner surprise
either of these parties.
Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed only
with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me
personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. I
believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz: Those who
are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannot
receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, including
Sunday.
Mr. President, as an official of this Government I now retire. My term of
office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for my
eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the
heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers of
a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickening
thud.
My Mine.
I have decided to sacrifice another valuable piece of mining property this
spring. It would not be sold if I had the necessary capital to develop it.
It is a good mine, for I located it myself. I remember well the day I
climbed up on the ridge-pole of the universe and nailed my location notice
to the eaves of the sky.
It was in August that I discovered the Vanderbilt claim in a snow-storm.
It cropped out apparently a little southeast of a point where the arc of
the orbit of Venus bisects the milky way, and ran due east eighty chains,
three links and a swivel, thence south fifteen paces and a half to a blue
spot in the sky, thence proceeding west eighty chains, three links of
sausage and a half to a fixed star, thence north across the lead to place
of beginning.
The Vanderbilt set out to be a carbonate deposit, but changed its mind. I
sent a piece of the cropping to a man over in Salt Lake, who is a good
assayer and quite a scientist, if he would brace up and avoid humor. His
assay read as follows to-wit:
Salt Lake City, U.T., August 25, 1877.
Mr. Bill Nye:--Your specimen of ore No. 35832, current series, has been
submitted to assay and shows the following result:
Metal. Ounces. Value per ton.
Gold -- --
Silver -- --
Railroad iron 1 --
Pyrites of poverty 9 --
Parasites of disappointment 90 --
McVicker, Assayer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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