Chapter IV: Part 4

|N. W. P., writes:--"I am a young man twenty-five years old. I am in love with a young lady of seventeen. Her mind being very different from mine, I have not told her of my love, nor asked to call on her. I thought her so giddy that she did not want any steady company. She is a great lover of amusement. She is a perfect lady in her deportment, although she is more like a child of fourteen than a young lady of seventeen. I think she is very pretty, but she seems to enjoy flirting to the greatest extent. One evening at a party I asked her to promenade with me, and she would not do it. I then asked her to allow me to bring her refreshments, which she would not do. I then asked her to let me take her home when she was ready to go, and the answer was, 'No, I will not do any such thing,' and turning round she left me. I have met her several times since. She always bows to me. Everywhere she meets me she recognizes me pleasantly. How, did I do wrong in asking her those privileges at the party, I having no introduction to her? I am still in love with her."

After she had refused to promenade with you, and had declined to permit you to bring her refreshments, it was pressing matters rather too far for you to ask her to allow you to accompany her home "whenever she was ready to go." Still, as she treats you kindly whenever you meet, it is evident that you did not offend her very deeply. Perhaps she sees that you love her, and does not wish to discourage you.

You were, no doubt, a little previous in trying to get acquainted with the young lady. She may be giddy, but she has just about sized you up in shape, and no doubt, if you keep on trying to love her without her knowledge or consent, she will hit you with something, and put a Swiss sunset over your eye. Do not yearn to win her affections all at once. Give her twenty or thirty years in which to see your merits. You will have more to entitle you to her respect by that time, no doubt. During that time you may rise to be president and win a deathless name.

The main thing you have to look out for now, however, is to restrain yourself from marrying people who do not want to marry you. That style of freshness will, in thirty or forty years, wear away. If it does not, probably the vigorous big brother of some young lady of seventeen, will consign you to the silent tomb. Do not try to promenade with a young lady unless she gives her consent. Do not marry anyone against her wishes. Give the girl a chance. She will appreciate it, and even though she may not marry you, she will permit you to sit on the fence and watch her when she goes to marry some one else. Do not be despondent. Be courageous, and some day, perhaps, you will get there. At present the horizon is a little bit foggy.

As you say, she may be so giddy that she doesn't want steady company. There is a glimmer of hope in that. She may be waiting till she gets over the agony and annoyance of teething before she looks seriously into the matters of matrimony. If that should turn out to be the case we are not surprised. Give her a chance to grow up, and in the meantime, go and learn the organ grinder's profession and fix yourself so that you can provide for a family. Sometimes a girl only seventeen years old is able to discern that a young intellectual giant like you is not going to make a dazzling success of life as a husband. Brace up and try to forget your sorrow, N. W. P., and you may be happy yet.

THE GOOD TIME COMING.

|ANGORA cloth is a Parisian novelty. Shaggy woolen goods are all the rage, and this Angora cloth is a perfect type of shaggy materials. It is a soft, downy article, like the fur of an Angora cat. Very showy toilets are of Angora cloth, trimmed with velvet applique work to form passementerie.

Angora cloth may be fashionable, but the odor of the Angora goat is losing favor. A herd of these goats crossed the Sierra Nevadas during the autumn, and as soon as they got over the range, we knew it at Laramie just as well as we knew of the earthquake shock on the 7th instant.

The Angora goat is very quiet in other respects; but as a fragrant shrub, he certainly demands attention. A little band of Angora goats has been quartered in Laramie City lately, and though they have been well behaved, they have made them have opened the casement to let in the glorious air of heaven. In letting in the glorious air of heaven, we have in several instances let in a good deal of the mohair industry and some seductive fragrance.

There is a glowing prospect that within the next year a bone fertilizer mill, a soap emporium and a glue factory will have been started here; and now, with the Angora goat looming up in the distance with his molasses-candy horns, his erect, but tremulous and undecided tail piercing the atmosphere, and the seductive odor peculiar to this fowl, we feel that life in Wyoming will not, after all, be a hollow mockery. Heretofore we have been compelled to worry along with polygamy and the odor of the alkali flat; but times are changing now, and we will one day have all the wonderful and complicated smells of Chicago at our door. Then will the desert indeed blossom as the rose, and the mountain lion and "Billy the Kid" will lie down together.

MANIA FOR MARKING CLOTHES.

|THE most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel to a Boomekang man, "was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon river. He was also reserved and taciturn among the miners, and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most thoughtful man about other people's comfort I ever knew.

"I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed.

"He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three shots through the valise.

"After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked a man's clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they had no insanity experts at Leadville in those days, they thought the most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then send the brain to New York in a baking powder can.

"So they hung him one night to the bough of a sighing mountain pine.

"The autopsy was, of course, crude; but they sawed open his head and scooped out the brain with a long handled spoon and sent it on to New York. By some mistake or other it got mixed up with some sample specimens of ore from 'The Brindle Tom Cat' discovery, and was sent to the assayer in New York instead of the insanity smelter and refiner, as was intended.

"The result was that the assayer wrote a very touching and grieved letter to the boys, saying that he was an old man anyway, and he wished they would consider his gray hairs and not try to palm off their old groceries on him. He might have made errors in his assays, perhaps--all men were more or less liable to mistakes--but he flattered himself that he could still distinguish between a piece of blossom rock and a can of decomposed lobster salad, even if it was in a baking-powder can. He hoped they would not try to be facetious at his expense any more, but use him as they would like to be treated themselves when they got old and began to totter down toward the silent tomb.

"This is why we never knew to a dead moral certainty, whether he was O. K. in the upper story, or not."

REGARDING THE NOSE.

|THE annals of surgery contain many cases where the nose has been cut or torn off, and being replaced has grown fast again, recovering its jeopardized functions. One of the earliest, 1680, is related by the surgeon (Fioraventi) who happened to be near by when a man's nose, having been cut off, had fallen in the sand. He remarks that he took it up, washed it, replaced it, and that it grew together.

Still, this is a little bit hazardous, and in warm weather the nose might refuse to catch on. It would be mortifying in the extreme to have the nose drop off in a dish of ice-cream at a large banquet. Not only would it be disagreeable to the owner of the nose, but to those who sat near him.

He adds the address of the owner of the repaired nose, and requests any doubter to go and examine for himself. Régnault, in the _Gazette Salutaire_, 1714, tells of a patient whose nose was bitten off by a smuggler. The owner of the nose wrapped it in a bit of cloth and sought Régnault, who, "although the part was cold, reset it, and it became attached."

This is another instance where, by being sufficiently previous, the nose was secured and handed down to future generations. Yet, as we said before, it is a little bit risky, and a nose of that character cannot be relied upon at all times. After a nose has once seceded it cannot be expected to still adhere to the old constitution with such loyalty as prior to that change.

Although these cases call for more credulity than most of us have to spare, yet later cases, published in trustworthy journals, would seem to corroborate this. In the _Clinical Annals_ and _Medical Gazette_, of Heidelberg, 1830, there are sixteen similar cases cited by the surgeon (Dr. Hofacker) who was appointed by the senate to attend the duels of the students.

It seems that during these duels it is not uncommon for a student to slice off the nose of his adversary, and lay it on the table until the duel is over. After that the surgeon puts it on with mucilage and it never misses a meal, but keeps right on growing.

The wax nose is attractive, but in a warm room it is apt to get excited and wander down into the mustache, or it may stray away under the collar, and when the proprietor goes to wipe this feature he does not wipe anything but space. A gold nose that opens on one side and is engraved, with hunter case and key wind, is attractive, especially on a bright day. The coin-silver nose is very well in its way, but rather commonplace unless designed to match the tea service and the knives and forks. In that case, good taste is repaid by admiration and pleasure on the part of the guest.

The _papier-maché_ nose is durable and less liable to become cold and disagreeable. It is also lighter and not liable to season crack.

False noses are made of _papier-maché_, leather, gold, silver and wax. These last are fitted to spectacles or springs, and are difficult to distinguish from a true nose.

Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel and wore a golden one, which he attached to his face with cement, which he always carried about.

This was a good scheme, as it found him always prepared for accidents. He could, at any moment, repair to a dressing room, or even slide into an alley where he could avoid the prying gaze of the vulgar world, and glue his nose on. Of course he ran the risk of getting it on crooked and a little out of line with his other features, but this would naturally only attract attention and fix the minds of those with whom he might be called upon to converse. A man with his nose glued on wrong side up, could hold the attention of an audience for hours, when any other man would seem tedious and uninteresting.

SOMETHING TOO MUCH OF THIS.

|THE Pawnee Republican, of the 13th, innocently and impertinently, remarks: "Fred Nye, father of Bill Aye, the humorist, is the editor of the Omaha _Republican, vice_Datus Brooks, gone to Europe."--_Omaha Herald._

Will the press of the country please provide us with a few more parents? Old Jim Nye and several other valuable fathers of ours having already clomb the golden elevator, we now feel like a comparative orphan. The time was when we could hold a reunion of our parents and have a pretty big time, but it's a mighty lonely thing to stand on the shores of time and see your parents whittled down to three or four young men no bigger than Fred Aye, of the _Republican_.

COLOR BLINDNESS.

|THE _Paper World_ says there's no use talking, the newspaper men of the press are to-day becoming more and more "color blind." In other words, they have lost that subtle flavor of description for which the public yearns. They have missed that wonderful spice and aroma of narration which is the life of all newspaper work.

We do not take this to ourself at all, but we desire before we say one word, to make a few remarks. _The Boomerang_ has been charged with erring on the other side and coloring things a little too high. Sir Garnet Wolseley, in a private letter to us during the late Egyptian assault and battery, stated that if we erred at all it was on the highly colored side.

There is an excuse for lack of spice and all that sort of thing in the newspaper world. The men who write for our dailies, as a rule, have to write about two miles per day, and they ought not to be kicked if it is not as interesting as "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or "Leaves o' Grass."

We have done some 900 miles of writing ourself during our short, sharp and decisive career, and we know what we are talking about. Those things we wrote at a time when we were spreading our graceful characters over ten acres of paper per day, were not thrilling. They did not catch the public eye, but were just naturally consigned to oblivion's bottomless maw.

Read that last sentence twice; it will do you no harm.

The public, it seems to us, has created a false standard of merit for the newspaper. People take a big daily and pay $10 per year for it because it is the biggest paper in the world, and then don't read a quarter of it. They are doing a smart thing, no doubt, but it is killing the feverish young men with throbbing brains, who are doing the work. Would you consider that a large pair of shoes or a large wife should be sought for just because you can get more material for the same price? Not much, Mary Ann!

Excellence is what we seek, not bulk. Write better things and less of them, and you will do better, and the public will be pleased to see the change.

Should anyone who reads these words be suffering from an insatiable hunger for a paper that aims at elegance of diction, high-toned logic and pink cambric sentiment, at a moderate price, he will do well to call at this office and look over our goods. Samples sent free on application, to any part of the United States or Europe. We refer to Herbert Spencer, the Laramie National Bank, and the postmaster of this city, as to our reputation for truth and veracity.

A LITTLE PREVIOUS.

|SPEAKING of elections and returns, brings back to our memory the time when it was pretty close in a certain congressional district in Wisconsin, where W. T. Price is now putting up a job on the Democrats.

In those days returns didn't come in by telegraph, but on horseback and on foot, and it was annoying to wait for figures by which to determine the result. At Hudson the politicians had made a pretty close estimate, but were waiting, one evening after election, at a saloon on Buckeye street, for something definite from Eau Claire county. The session was very dull, and to cheer up the little Spartan hand some one suggested that old Judge Wetherby ought to "set 'em up." Judge Wetherby was a staunch old Democrat and had rigidly treated himself for twenty years, and just as rigidly refused to treat anybody else. The result was that he had secured a vigorous bloom on his own nose, but had never put the glass to his neighbor's lips. He intimated on this occasion, however, that if he could get encouraging news from Eau Claire for the Democrats, he would turn loose. The party waited until midnight, and had just decided to go home, when a travel-worn horseman rode up to the door. He was very reticent, and as he was a stranger, no one seemed to want to open up a conversation with him, till at last Judge Wetherby, who couldn't keep the great question of politics out of his mind, asked him what part of the country he had come from. "Just got in from Eau Claire county," was the reply.

"How did Eau Claire county go?" was the Judge's next question. "O, I don't pay no attention to politics, but they told me it went 453 majority for the Democrats."

Thereupon the judge threw his hat in the air and for the first and last time in his life, treated the entire crowd of Republicans and Democrats alike. It was very late when he went home, also very late when he got down town the next day.

When he did come down he was surprised to find a Republican brass band out, and the news all over the city that the Republican candidate had been elected by several hundred majority. In the afternoon he learned that Hod Taylor, now clergyman to Marseilles, had hired a tramp to ride into the Buckeye saloon the previous evening and report as stated, in order to bring about a good state of feeling on the Judge's part. Judge Wetherby, since that time, is regarded as the most skeptical Democrat in that congressional district, and even if he were to be assured over and over again that his party was victorious, he would still doubt. It is such things as these that go a long way toward encouraging a feeling of distrust between the parties, and causes politicians to be looked upon with great mistrust..

Although Mr. Taylor is now in France attending to the affairs of his government, and trying to become familiar with the French language, he often pauses in his work as the memory of this little incident comes over his mind, and a hot tear falls on the report he is making out to send on to the Secretary of State at Washington. Can it be that his hard heart is at last touched with remorse?

IS DUELING MURDER?

|SOMEBODY wants to know whether dueling is murder, and we reply in clarion tones that it depends largely on how fatal it is. Dueling with monogram note paper, at a distance of 1,200 yards, is not murder.

HEAP GONE.

|ANOTHER land-mark of Laramie has gone. Another wreck has been strewn upon the sands of time. Another gay bark has gone to pieces upon the cruel rocks, and above the broken spars and jib-boom, and foretop gallant royal mainbrace, and spanker-boom euchre deck, the cold, damp tide is moaning.

We refer to L. W. Shroeder, who recently left this place incog., also in debt, largely, to various people of this gay and festive metropolis.

Laramie has been the home, at various times, of some of the most classical dead-beats of modern times; but Shroeder was the noblest, the most grand and colossal of dead-beats that has ever visited our shores. Born with unusual abilities in this direction, he early learned how to enlarge and improve upon the talents thus bestowed upon him, and here in Laramie, he soon won a place at the front as a man who purchased everything and paid for nothing. He had a way of approaching the grocer and the merchant that was well calculated to deceive, and he did, in several instances, make representations, which we now learn, were false.

He was, by profession, a carpenter and joiner, having learned the art while cutting cordwood on the Missouri bottoms, near Omaha, for the Collins Brothers. Here he rapidly won his way to the front rank, by erecting some of the most commanding architectural ruins of which modern wood assassination can boast. He would take a hatchet and a buck-saw and carve out his fortune anywhere in the world, and it wouldn't cost him a cent. He filled this whole trans-Missouri country with his fame, and his promissory notes, and then skinned out and left us here to mourn.

Good-bye, Shroeder. Wherever you go, we will remember you and hope that you may succeed in piling up a monument of indebtedness as you did here. You were industrious and untiring in your efforts to become a great financial wreck, and success has crowned your efforts. We will not grudge you the glory that coagulates about your massive brow.

THE EDITORIAL LAMP.

|THERE is something unique about an editor's lamp that, enables most anyone to select it from a large number of other lamps. It is _sui generis_ and extremely original. The large metropolitan papers use gas in the editorial rooms, and make up for the loss of the kerosene lamp by furnishing their offices with some other article of furniture that is equally attractive.

_The Boomerang_ lamp, especially during the election, has had its intensity wonderfully softened and toned down through various causes. You can take most any other lamp and trim the wick so that it will burn squarely and not smoke; but the editorial lamp is peculiar in this respect. The wick gets so it will burn straight when you find that it does not burn the oil. Then you get it filled and put in a new wick. Experimenting with this you get your fingers perfumed with coal oil, and spill some in your lap. Then you turn it up so you can see, and as you get a flow of thought you look up to find that you have smutted up your chimney, and you murmur something that you are glad no one is near to hear. When our life-record is made up and handed down to posterity, if a generous people will kindly overlook the remarks we have made over our lamp, and also the little extemporaneous statements made at picnics, we will do as much for the public and make this thing as near even as possible.

DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY.

|A DEAD fisherman was taken to the San Francisco morgue the other day, with nothing by which to identify him but his fish fine. There may be features of difference between fish lines, but as a rule there is a long, tame sweep of monotony about them which confuses the authorities in tracing a man's antecedents.

THE MAROON SAUSAGE.

|THE maroon sausage will be in favor this winter, as was the case last season in our best circles. It will be caught up at the end and tied in a plain knot with strings of the same.

TESTIMONIALS OF REGARD.

|FRIDAY was a large day in the office of this paper. A delegation, consisting of Ed. Walsh and J. J. Clarke, train dispatchers of this division of the Union Pacific road, waited on the editor hereof with two tokens of their esteem. One, consisting of a bird that had been taxidermed at Wyoming station by the agent, Mr. Gulliher, the great corn-canner of the west, aided by another man who has, up to this date, evaded the authorities. As soon as he is captured, his name will be given to the public. The bird is mainly constructed on the duck plan, with web feet and spike tail. The material gave out, however, and the artist was obliged to complete the bird by putting an eagle's head on him. This gives the winged king of birds a low, squatty and plebian cast of countenance, and bothers the naturalist in determining its class and in diagnosing the case. With the piercing, keen eye of the eagle, and the huge Roman nose peculiar to that bird, coupled with the pose of the duck, we have a magnificent combination in the way of an ornithological specimen. Science would be tickled to death to wrestle with this feathered anomaly.

The eagle looks as though he would like to soar first-rate if it were not for circumstances over which he has no control, while the other portions of his person would suggest that he would be glad to paddle around an hour or two in the yielding-mud. We have placed this singular circumstance where he can look down upon us in a reproachful way, while we write abstruse articles upon the contiguity of the hence.

The same committee also presented a bottle of what purported to be ginger ale. It was wrapped up in a newspaper, and the cork was held in place by a piece of copper wire. As we do not drink anything whatever now, we presented it to the composing room, and told the boys to sail in and have a grand debauch.

Generosity is always rewarded, sooner or later. The office boy took it into the composing room and partially opened it. Then it opened itself, with a loud report that shook the dome of _The Boomerang_ office, and pied a long article on yellow fever in Texas. Almost immediately after it opened itself, it escaped into space. At least it filled the space box of one of the cases full.

There was only about a spoonful left in the bottle, and no one felt as though he wanted to rob the rest, so it stands there yet. If Mr. Gulliher could put up his goods in such shape as to avoid this high degree of effervescence, he would succeed; but in canning corn and bottling beer, he has so far put too much vigor into the goods, and when you open them, they escape almost immediately.

While we are grateful for the kind and thoughtful spirit shown, we regret that we were unable to test the merits of the beverage without collecting it from the sky, where it now is.

It looks to us as though some day Mr. Gulliher, while engaged in canning and bottling some of his gaseous goods, would be lifted over into the middle of the holidays, and we warn him against being too reckless, or he will certainly meander through the atmosphere sometime, and the place that knew him once will know him no more forever.

About two o'clock the following special was received:

[Special to the Boomerang.]

"[D. H. acct. charity.]

"Wyoming, October 27.

"Dear Bill Nye:

"We made the run from Laramie to Wyoming in one hour. Gulliher says, do not open that bottle; it might go off. He sent you the wrong bottle by mistake. It is a preparation for annihilating tramps, and produces instant dissolution. We, after careful inquiry and rigid investigation, find that the bird is filled with dynamite, nitroglycerine, etc.--in fact is an 'infernal machine,' and is set to go off at 3:30 this P.M."

THE CHINESE COMPOSITOR

|THE Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do, but must walk from one case to another constantly, as the characters needed cover such a large number, that they cannot be put into anything like the space used in the English newspaper office. In setting up an ordinary piece of manuscript, the Chinese printer will waltz up and down the room for a few moments, and then go down stairs for a line of lower case. Then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story after some caps, and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of astonishers.

The successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very intelligent, but he must be a good pedestrian. He may work and walk around over the building all day to set up a stick full, and then half the people in this county couldn't read it, after all.

"Clarke, Potter and Walsh."

SNOWED UNDER

|WE have met the enemy, and we are his'n.

We have made our remarks, and we are now ready to listen to the gentleman from New York. We could have dug out, perhaps, and explained about New York, but when almost every state in the Union rose up and made certain statements yesterday, we found that the job of explaining this matter thoroughly, would be wearisome and require a great deal of time.

We do not blame the Democracy for this. We are a little surprised, however, and grieved. It will interfere with our wardrobe this winter. With an overcoat on Wyoming, a plug hat on Iowa, a pair of pantaloons on Pennsylvania, and boots on the general result, it looks now as though we would probably go through the winter wrapped in a bed-quilt, and profound meditation.

We intended to publish an extra this morning, but the news was of such a character, that we thought we would get along without it. What was the use of publishing an extra with a Republican majority only in Red Buttes.

The cause of this great Democratic freshet in New York yesterday--but why go into details, we all have an idea why it was so. The number of votes would seem to indicate that there was a tendency toward Democracy throughout the State.

Now, in Pennsylvania, if you will look over the returns carefully--but why should we take up your valuable time offering an explanation of a political matter of the past.

Under the circumstances some would go and yield to the soothing influences of the maddening bowl, but we do not advise that. It would only furnish temporary relief, and the recoil would be unpleasant.

We resume our arduous duties with a feeling of extreme _ennui_, and with that sense of surprise and astonishment that a man does who has had a large brick block fall on him when he was not expecting it. Although we feel a little lonely to-day--having met but a few Republicans on the street, who were obliged to come out and do their marketing--we still hope for the future.

The grand old Republican party--

But that's what we said last week. It sounds hollow now and meaningless, somehow, because our voice is a little hoarse, and we are snowed under so deep that it is difficult for us to enunciate.

Now about those bets. If the parties to whom we owe bets--and we owe most everybody--will just agree to take the stakes, and not go into details; not stop to ask us about the state of our mind, and talk about how it was done, we don't care. We don't wish to have this thing explained at all. We are not of an inquiring turn of mind. Just plain facts are good enough for us, without any harrowing details. In the meantime we are going to work to earn some more money to bet on the next election. Judge Folger, and others, come over and see us when you have time, and we will talk this matter over. Mr. B. Butler, we wish we had your longevity. With a robust constitution, we find that most any man can wear out cruel fate and get there at last. We do not feel so angry as we do grieved and surprised. We are pained to see the American people thus betray our confidence, and throw a large wardrobe into the hands of the relentless foe.

ROUGH ON OSCAR.

|SOMEBODY shook a log-cabin bed-quilt at Oscar Wilde, when he was in this country, and it knocked him so crazy for two days, that a man had to lead him around town by a bed-cord to prevent him from butting his head against a lump of oat-meal mush, and scattering his brains all over the Union.

THE POSTAL CARD.

|NO one denies that the postal card is a great thing, and yet it makes most people mad to get one This is because we naturally feel sensitive about having our correspondence open to the eye of the postmaster and postal clerk. Yet they do not read them. Postal employés hate a postal card as cordially as anyone else. If they were banished and had nothing to read but a package of postal cards, or a foreign book of statistics, they would read the statistics. This wild hunger for postal cards on the part of postmasters is all a myth. When the writer don't care who sees his message, that knocks the curiosity out of those who handle those messages. A man who would read a postal card without being compelled to by some stringent statute, must be a little deranged. When you receive one, you say, "Here's a message of so little importance that the writer didn't care who saw it. I don't care much for it, myself." Then you look it over and lay it away and forget it. Do you think that the postmaster is going to wear out his young life in devouring literature that the sendee don't feel proud of when he receives it? Hay, nay.

During our official experience we have been placed where we could have read postal cards time and again, and no one but the All-seeing Eye would have detected it; but we have controlled ourself and closed our eyes to the written message, refusing to take advantage of the confidence reposed in us by our government, and those who thus trusted us with their secrets. All over our great land every moment of the day or night these little cards are being silently scattered, breathing loving words inscribed with a hard lead pencil, and shedding information upon sundered hearts, and they are as safe as though they had never been breathed.

They are safer, in most instances, because they cannot be read by anybody in the whole world.

That is why it irritates us to have some one open up a conversation by saying, "You remember what that fellow wrote me from Cheyenne on that postal card of the 25th, and how he rounded me up for not sending him those goods?" Now we can't keep all those things in our head. It requires too much of a strain to do it on the salary we receive. A man with a very large salary and a tenacious memory might keep run of the postal correspondence in a small office, but we cannot do it. We are not accustomed to it, and it rattles and excites us.

A CARD.

|I HAVE just received a letter from my friend, Bill Nye, of The Laramie City Boomerang, wherein he informs me that he is engaged to the beautiful and accomplished Lydia E. Pinkham, of "Vegetable Compounds" fame, and that the wedding will take place on next Christmas. To be sure, I am expected at the wedding, and I'll be on hand, if I can secure a clean shirt by that time, and the roads ain't too bad. But I'm somewhat at a loss what to get as a suitable present, as Bill informs me in a postscript to his letter, that gifts of bibles, albums, nickel-plated pickle dishes, chromos with frames, and the like, will not be in order, as it is utterly impossible to pawn articles of this kind in Laramie City.--_The Bohemian_.

We are sorry that the above letter, which we dashed off in a careless moment, has been placed before the public, as later developments have entirely changed the aspect of the matter; the engagement between ourself and Lydia having been rudely broken by the young lady herself. She has returned the solitaire filled ring, and henceforth we can be nothing more to each other than friends. The promise which bade fair to yield so much joy in the future has been ruthlessly yanked asunder, and two young hearts must bleed through the coming years. Far be it from us to say aught that would reflect upon the record of Miss Pinkham.

It would only imperil her chances in the future, and deny her the sweet satisfaction of gathering in another guileless sucker like us. The truth, however, cannot be evaded, that Lydia is no longer young. She is now in the sere and yellow leaf. The gurgle of girlhood, and the romping careless grace of her childhood, are matters of ancient history alone.

We might go on and tell how one thing brought on another, till the quarrel occurred, and hot words and an assault and battery led to this estrangement, but we will not do it. It would be wrong for a great, strong man to take advantage of his strength and the public press, to speak disparagingly of a young thing like Lyd. No matter how unreasonably she may have treated us, we are dumb and silent on this point. Journalists who have been invited, and have purchased costly wedding presents, may ship the presents _by_ express, prepaid, and we will accept them, and struggle along with our first great heart trouble, while Lydia goes on in her mad career.

WHY WE ARE NOT GAY.

|IT was the policy of this paper, from its inception, whatever that is, to frown upon and discourage fraud wherever the latter has shown its hideous front. In doing so, we have simply done our duty, and our reward has been great, partially in the shape of money, and partially in the shape of conscious rectitude and new subscribers.

We shall continue this course until we are able to take a trip to Europe, or until some large man comes into the office with a masked battery and blows us out through the window into the mellow haze of an eternal summer time.

We have been waiting until the present time for about 100,000 shade trees in this town to grow, and as they seem to be a little reluctant about doing so, and the season being now far advanced, we feel safe in saying that they are dead. They were purchased a year ago of a nursery that purported to be O. K., and up to that time no one had ever breathed a word against it. Now, however, unless those trees are replaced, we shall be compelled to publish the name of that nursery in large, glaring type, to the world. The trees looked a little under the weather when they arrived, but we thought we could bring them out by nursing them. They stood up in the spring breeze like a seed wart, however, and refused to leave. They are still obstinate. The agent concluded to leave, but the trees did not. We feel hurt about it, because people come here from a distance and laugh at our hoe-handle forest. They speak jeeringly of our wilderness of deceased elms, and sneer at our defunct magnolias. We hate to cast a reflection on the house, but we also dislike to be played for Chinamen when we are no such thing.

We prefer to sit in the shade of the luxuriant telegraph pole, and stroll at set of sun amid the umbrageous shadows of the barbed wire fence, through which the sunlight glints and glitters to and fro.

Nothing saddens us like death in any form, and 100,000 dead trees scattered through the city, sticking their limbs up into the atmosphere like a variety actress, bears down upon us with the leaden weight of an ever-present gloom.

SCIENTIFIC.

|THE Boomerang reporter, sent ont to find the North Pole, eighteen months ago, has just been heard from. An exploring party recently found portions of his remains in latitude 4-11-44, longitude sou'est by sou' from the pole, and near the remains the following fragment of a diary:

July 1,1881.--Have just been out searching for a sunstroke and signs of a thaw. Saw nothing but ice floe and snow as far as the eye could reach. Think we will have snow this evening unless the wind changes.

July 2.--Spent the forenoon exploring to the northwest for right of way for a new equatorial and North Pole railroad that I think would be of immense value to commerce. The grade is easy, and the expense would be slight. Ate my last dog to-day. Had intended him for the 4th, but got too hungry, and ate him raw with vinegar; I wish I was at home eating Boomerang paste.

July 3.--We had quite a frost last night, and it looks this morning as though the corn and small fruits must have suffered. It is now two weeks since the last of the crew died and left me alone. Ate the leather ends of my suspenders to-day for dinner. I did not need the suspenders, anyway, for by tightening up my pants I find they will stay on all right, and I don't look for any ladies to call, so that even if my pants came off by some oversight or other, nobody would be shocked.

July 4.--Saved up some tar roofing and a bottle of mucilage for my Fourth of July dinner, and gorged myself to-day. The exercises were very poorly attended and the celebration rather a failure. It is clouding up in the west, and I'm afraid we're going to have snow. Seems to me we're having an all-fired late spring here this year.

July 5.--Didn't drink a drop yesterday. It was the quietest Fourth I ever put in. I never felt so little remorse over the way I celebrated as I do to-day. I didn't do a thing yesterday that I was ashamed of except to eat the remainder of a box of shoe blacking for supper. To-day I ate my last boot-heel, stewed. Looks as though we might have a hard winter.

July 6.--Feel a little apprehension about something to eat. My credit is all right here, but there is no competition, and prices are therefore very high. Ice, however, is still firm. This would be a good ice-cream country if there were any demand, but the country is so sparsely settled that a man feels as lonesome here as a green-backer at a presidential election. Ate a pound of cotton waste soaked in machine oil, to-day. There is nothing left for to-morrow but ice-water and an old pocket-book for dinner. Looks as though we might have snow.

July 7.--This is a good, cool place to spend the summer if provisions were more plenty. I am wearing a seal-skin undershirt with three woolen overshirts and two bear-skin vests, to-day, and when the dew begins to fall, I have to put on my buffalo ulster to keep off the night air. I wish I was home. It seems pretty lonesome here since the other boys died. I do not know what I will get for dinner to-morrow, unless the neighbors bring in something. A big bear is coming down the hatchway, as I write. I wish I could eat him. It would be the first square meal for two months. It is, however, a little mixed whether I will eat him or he eat me. It will be a cold day for me if he----------

Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and from the chewed up appearance of the book, we are led to entertain a horrible fear as to his safety.

THE REVELATION RACKET IN UTAH.

|OUR esteemed and extremely connubial contemporary, the _Deseret News_, says in a recent editorial:

"The Latter day Saints will rejoice to learn that the' vacancies which have existed in the quorums of the twelve apostles and the first seven presidents of seventies are now filled. During the conference recently held, Elder Abram H. Cannon was unanimously chosen to be one of the first seven presidents of seventies, and he was ordained to that office on Monday, October 9th. Subsequently, the Lord, by revelation through His servant, Prest. John Taylor, designated by name, Brothers George Teasdale and Heber J. Grant, to be ordained to the apostleship, and Brother Seymour B. Young to fill the remaining vacancy in the presidency of the seventies. These brethren were ordained on Monday, October 16th, the two apostles, under the hands of the first presidency and twelve, and the other under the hands of the twelve and the presidency of the seventies."

Now, that's a convenient system of politics and civil service. When there is a vacancy, the president, John Taylor, goes into his closet and has a revelation which settles it all right. If the man appointed vicariously by the Lord is not in every way satisfactory, he may be discharged by the same process. Instead, therefore, of being required to rally a large force of his friends to aid him in getting an appointment, the aspirant arranges solely with the party who runs the revelation business. It will be seen at a glance, therefore, that the man who can get the job of revelating in Zion, has it pretty much his own way. We would not care who made the laws of Utah if we could do its revelating at so much per revelate.

Think of the power it gives a man in a community of blind believers. Imagine, if you please, the glorious possibilities in store for the man who can successfully reveal the word of the Lord in an easy, extemporaneous manner on five minutes notice.

This prerogative does not confine itself to politics alone. The impromptu revelator of the Jordan has revelations when he wants to evade the payment of a bill. He gets a divine order also if he desires to marry a beautiful maid or seal the new school ma'am to himself. He has a leverage which he can bring to bear upon the people of his diocese at all times, even more potent than the press, and it does not possess the drawbacks that a newspaper does. You can run an aggressive paper if you want to in this country, and up to the time of the funeral you have a pretty active and enjoyable time, but after the grave has been filled up with the clods of the valley and your widow has drawn her insurance, you naturally ask, "What is the advantage to be gained by this fearless style of journalism?"

Still, even the inspired racket has its drawbacks. Last year, a little incident occurred in a Mormon family down in southern Utah, which weighed about nine pounds, and when the _ex officio_ husband, who had been absent two years, returned, he acted kind of wild and surprised, somehow, and as he went through the daily round of his work he could be seen counting his fingers back and forth and looking at the almanac, and adding up little amounts on the side of the barn with a piece of red chalk.

Finally, one of the inspired mob of that part of the vineyard thought it was about time to get a revelation and go down there, so he did so. He sailed up to the _de facto_ husband and _quasi_ parent and solemnly straightened up some little irregularities as to dates, but the revelation was received with disdain, and the revelator was sent home in an old ore sack and buried in a peach basket.

Sometimes there is, even in Utah, a manifestation of such irreverence and open hostility to the church that it makes us shudder.

SAGE BRUSH TONIC.

|WE have a scheme on hand which we believe will be even more remunerative than the newspaper business, if successfully carried out. It is to construct a national remedy and joy-to-the-world tonic, composed of the carefully expressed juice of our Rocky mountain tropical herb, known as the sage brush. Sage brush is known to possess wonderful medicinal properties. It is bitter enough to act as a tonic and to convey the idea of great strength. Our idea would be to have our portrait on each bottle, to attract attention and aid in effecting a cure. We have noticed that the homeliest men succeed best as patent medicine inventors, and this would be right in our hand.

The tonic could be erected at a cost of three cents per bottle, delivered on the cars here, and after we got fairly to going we might probably reduce even that price. At one dollar per bottle, we could realize a living profit, and still do mankind a favor and turn loose a boon to suffering humanity. It will make the hair grow, as everyone knows, and it will stir up a torpid liver equally well. It just loves to get after anything that is dormant. It might even help the Democratic party, if it had a chance.

Our plan would be to advertise liberally, for we know the advantages of judicious advertising. Only last week a man on South C street had three cows to sell, which fact he set forth in this paper at the usual rates. Before he went to bed that evening the cows were sold and people were filing in the front gate like a row of men at the general delivery of the postoffice. The next morning a large mob of people was found camped out in front of the house, and the railroad was giving excursion rates to those who wanted to come in from the country to buy these cows that had been sold the day before.

We just quote this to show how advertising stirs the mighty deep and wakes people up. We would make propositions to our brethren of the press by which they could make some money out of the ad, too, instead of telling them to put it in the middle of the telegraph page, surrounded by pure reading matter, daily and weekly till forbid and pay when we get ready.

Publishers will find that we are not that kind of people. We shall aim to do the square thing, and will throw in an electrotype, showing us just discovering the sage brush, and exclaiming "Eureka," while we prance around like a Zulu on the war path. Underneath this we will write, "Yours for Health," or words to that effect, and everything will be pleasant and nice.

The Sage Brush Tonic will be made of two grades, one will be for prohibition states and the other for states where prohibition is not in general use. The prohibition tonic will contain, in addition to the sage brush, a small amount of tansy and Jamaica ginger, to give it a bead and prevent it from fermenting. A trial bottle will be sent to subscribers of this paper, also a fitting little poem to be read at the funeral. We will also publish death notice of those using the tonic, at one-half rates.

LAME FROM HIS BERTH.

|A SAD-EYED man, the other night, fell out of his bed into the aisle of a Pullman car and skinned his knee. He now claims that he was lame from his berth. When he passes Carbon he will be hung by request.

THE PUBLIC PRINTER.

VERY few of the great mass of humanity know who makes the beautiful public document, with its plain, black binding and wealth of statistics. Few stop to think that hidden away from the great work-a-day world, with eyelids heavy and red, and with finger-nails black with antimony, toiling on at his case hour after hour, the public printer, during the sessions of Congress, is setting up the thrilling chapters of the Congressional Record, and between times yanking the Washington press backward and forward, with his suspenders hanging down, as he prints this beautiful sea-side library of song.

We are too prone to read that which gives us pleasure without thought of the labor necessary to its creation. We glide gaily through the Congressional Record, pleased with its more attractive features, viz: its ayes and noes--little recking that Sterling P. Rounds, the public printer, stands in the subdued gaslight with his stick half full, trying to decipher the manuscript of some reticent representative, whose speech was yesterday delivered to the janitor as he polished the porcelain cuspidor of Congress.