Chapter III (4)

Mr. Nye, like every one human who attempts to make a whole evening of fun, found lecturing irksome. The audience would fairly bubble over with laughter until every fun-liking muscle of their faces relaxed and left one sombre, wet-blanket expression all over the assembly; and there they had to sit, and the humorist had to proceed to the end of the programme without a response. It was the same with Mark Twain until he took a running mate and interspersed pathos by introducing George W. Cable, and by means of a varied programme achieved the greatest success ever known in the way of a platform entertainment.

* * * * *

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY’S recitals of his own pathetic and humorous dialect poems have touched the tender chords in the hearts of the people, and they have vibrated in sympathy with the joys of his creations. His name is one of the best-loved household words in our cultivated American homes. A popular poet is not always a popular reader of his own poems, but Mr. Riley is fully as effective with his voice as with his pen. He is our American Burns.

After he had acquired fame as a very successful reader of his poems, Mr. Nye thought that by combining with him they might be as successful as some others. So Riley was approached, and the result was a combination of humor and pathos for the season of 1888-9. Riley came to New York, and the arrangements were perfected in my office. Nye and I were to be owners of the combination, and Riley, who always declared, “I’m no business man,” was to receive $500 a week and his hotel and travelling expenses.

Advertising methods were next discussed. Something unique must be thought out. I suggested a short biographical sketch of each one. Mr. Riley said, “Bill, you write my autobiography, and I’ll write yours.” This was agreed upon, and the manuscript was put into my hands the next day.

Finally, the programme had to be decided upon, and in another twenty-four hours that was mapped out. After it was finished and ready to send out I had the first copy framed, with a nice mat around it. When the mat was brought in, Riley asked me to let him see it. He took a pen, and in about an hour had decorated it with pen drawings worthy of an artist. It still hangs in my office.

* * * * *

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BILL NYE

_Written by Himself_

_Through James Whitcomb Riley_

Edgar Wilson Nye was born in Maine, in 1850, August 25th, but at two years of age he took his parents by the hand, and,

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.

He eats plain food with both hands, conversing all the time pleasantly with any one who may be visiting at the house. If his children do not behave, he kicks them from beneath the table till they roar with pain, as he chats on with the guests with a bright and everflowing stream of _bons mots_ which please and delight those who visit him to such a degree that they forget that they have had hardly anything to eat.

In conclusion, Mr. Nye is in every respect a lovely character. He feared that injustice might be done him, however, in this sketch, and so he has written it himself.

* * * * *

It is scarcely necessary to say that before these “autobiographies” were written the humorists exchanged life stories and personal data; and in writing the sketches they adhered to the essential facts with reasonable fidelity. The idea proved a happy thought, and there was much comment upon it at the time. Of the two biographies, the one by Mr. Nye was conceded to have the keener edge.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

_Written by Himself_

_Through Edgar Wilson Nye_

The unhappy subject of this sketch was born so long ago that he persists in never referring to the date. Citizens of his native town of Greenfield, Ind., while warmly welcoming his advent, were no less anxious some few years ago to “speed the parting guest.” It seems, in fact, that, the better they came to know him, the more resigned they were to give him up. He was ill-starred from the very cradle, it appears. One day, while but a toddler, he climbed, unseen, to an open window where some potted flowers were ranged, and while leaning from his high chair far out, to catch some dainty, gilded butterfly, perchance, he lost his footing, and, with a piercing shriek, fell headlong to the gravelled walk below; and when, an instant later, the affrighted parents picked him up, he was--a poet.

The father of young Riley was a lawyer of large practice, who used, in moments of deep thought, to regard this boy as the worst case he ever had. This may have been the reason that, in time, he insisted on his reading law, which the boy really tried to do; but, finding that political economy and Blackstone didn’t rhyme, he slid out of the office one hot, sultry afternoon, and ran away with a patent medicine and concert wagon, from the tail end of which he was discovered by some relatives in the next town, violently abusing a brass drum. This was a proud moment for the boy; nor did his peculiar presence of mind entirely desert him till all the country fairs were over for the season. Then, afar off, among strangers in a strange State, he thought it would be fine to make a flying visit home. But he couldn’t fly. Fortunately, in former years he had purloined some knowledge of a trade. He could paint a sign, or a house, or a tin roof--if some one else would furnish him the paint--and one of Riley’s hand-painted picket fences gave rapture to the most exacting eye. Yet, through all his stress and trial, he preserved a simple, joyous nature, together with an everwidening love of men and things in general. He made friends, and money, too--enough, at last, to gratify the highest ambition of his life, namely, to own an overcoat with fur around the tail of it. He then groped his way back home, and worked for nothing on a little country paper that did not long survive the blow. Again excusing himself, he took his sappy paragraphs and poetry to another paper and another town, and there did better till he spoiled it all by devising a Poe poem fraud, by which he lost his job; and, in disgrace and humiliation shoe-mouth deep, his feelings gave way beneath his feet, and his heart broke with a loud report. So the true poet was born.

Of the poet’s present personality we need speak but briefly. His dress is at once elegant and paid for. It is even less picturesque than all-wool. Not liking hair particularly, he wears but little, and that of the mildest shade. He is a good speaker--when spoken to--but a much better listener, and often longs to change places with his audience so that he also may retire. In his writings he probably shows at his best. He always tries to, anyway. Knowing the manifold _faux pas_ and “breaks” in this life of ours, his songs are sympathetic and sincere. Speaking coyly of himself, one day, he said: “I write from the heart; that’s one thing I like about me. I may not write a good hand, and my ‘copy’ may occasionally get mixed up with the market reports, but, all the same, what challenges my admiration is that humane peculiarity of mine--_i.e._, writing from the heart--and, therefore, _to_ the heart.”

* * * * *

The Nye-Riley combination started in Newark, N. J., November 13, 1888. It was our trial venture. I was ill and unable to be present. The receipts were light, for both men were of Western fame, and had yet to acquire reputations in the East. They found some fault because I was not present, so I got out of bed and went the following evening to Orange, N. J., where we found a very small audience, so small that Nye refused to go on, and wished to end the business then and there. It was not until after much persuasion that he consented to appear. The show was a great success “artistically,” but the box-office receipts were only fifty-four dollars.

It was not a pleasant day, for the manager, that followed. The Actors’ Fund had an entertainment in one of the theatres, and I had contributed these “Twins of Genius” as my share of the numerous attractions. They were the success of the occasion, and the newspapers so declared the next day. From that time, applications began to come in from all over the country, East, West, North, and South. The first week’s business showed a balance on the wrong side for the owners, but the “no-business man” did not show a sign of murmuring. Nye’s humorous weekly syndicate newspaper articles made him a drawing attraction, and Riley’s delightful readings of his dialect poems made the entertainment all that the public desired. I ran the show myself in Boston, securing Tremont Temple for the occasion. “Mark Twain” had come to Boston on purpose to attend the entertainment, as he had never heard these “Twins of Genius.” I caught him in the lobby of the Parker House, and told him that he must introduce them. He replied that he believed I was his mortal enemy and determined that he should never have an evening’s enjoyment in my presence. He consented, however, and conducted his brother humorist and the Hoosier poet to the platform. Mark’s presence was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body, and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ, and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the front, the silence was as impressive as the noise had been, as Mark said afterward. At that supreme moment nothing was heard but--silence! I had engaged a stenographer to take down the speech, and this is what Mark said:

“I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than once, for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested, when one slept the other snored, if one sold a thing the other scooped the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two: between, I may say, this dynamo and this motor. Not that I mean that the one was always dynamo and the other always motor--or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain well-defined zones of activity the one _was_ always dynamo and the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions became exactly reversed. For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr. Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high, in fact an abnormally high and fine, moral sense, he had no machinery to work it within; whereas Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn’t any moral sense at all, and hasn’t yet, was equipped with all the necessary _plant_ for putting a noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms outside. In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor: Mr. Eng Nye had a stately intellect, but couldn’t make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn’t, but could. That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn’t think things himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material. Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has remained so to this day; they must travel together, conspire together, beguile together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there’s no result. I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye’s deep, and broad, and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn’t his water; it’s the other man’s, and he is only working the pump. And when Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn’t his music, but the other man’s--he is only turning the crank.

“I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will now go to the bat.”

It was a carnival of fun in every sense of the word. Bostonians will not have another such treat in this generation. It was Mark’s last appearance in Boston.

After the performance, the three invincibles went to the Press Club, where a shower of jokes, stories unpublished (and that never will be published), poems, and epigrams was poured into the Boston writers until all were full. The event is still fresh in the memory of all who have survived it. They appeared in all the large cities before great audiences, and the season was financially successful up to the middle of April.

For some weeks Mr. Riley had not been a well man, and it finally became necessary to cancel a long list of bookings. The stars returned to their homes, and settlements with disappointed committees and local managers absorbed all the profits. Pacific Coast correspondents still clamored for Nye, even if Riley were not available; so it was arranged to give Mr. Nye a musical support instead of a poet, and resume the unfinished tour. Nye was well received everywhere, and wrote back cheerful accounts of the Bill Nye troupe from “ocean to ocean.” But it had been the Nye-Riley combination that the people wanted and expected, and in every city where they had appeared together the season before they were wanted again. So we tried it once more, and in the season 1889-90 did a tremendous business in Washington and in the South. The combination was a more profitable attraction than any opera or theatrical company.

This tour ended my business relations with Bill Nye, but it did not end our love each other.

James Whitcomb Riley and Nye were a peculiar pair. They were everlastingly playing practical jokes.

I remember when we were riding together, in the smoking compartment, between Columbus and Cincinnati. Mr. Nye was a great smoker and Mr. Riley did not dislike tobacco. An old farmer came over to Mr. Nye and said:

“Are you Mr. Riley? I heard you was on the train.”

“No, I am not Mr. Riley. He is over there.”

“I knew his father, and I would like to speak with him.”

“Oh, speak with him, yes. But he is deaf, and you want to speak loud.”

So the farmer went over to him and said in a loud voice:

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Er, what?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“What did you say?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Riley, oh! yes.”

“I knew your father.”

“No bother.”

“I knew your father.”

“What?”

“I knew your father!”

“Oh, so did I.”

And in a few moments the farmer heard Nye and Riley talking in ordinary tones of voice. Imagine his chagrin!

In an article published in the Sunday newspapers, Nye paid his gentle respects to James Whitcomb Riley as his “old comrade and partner in the show business.” Remarking that some admirer gave Riley “the place left vacant by Doctor Holmes,” he suggested that “we must pause to think how different the two men were.” While the Hoosier poet could “compare with Holmes in the size of audiences, the doctor’s humor was of a more strictly Massachusetts character. He would be content with a pun or conundrum, while Riley enjoyed _practical_ humor.” He proceeded to give an example by narrating how, upon one occasion, the manager warned the hotel man that nothing “but clean shirts and farinaceous food” was to be sent up to “No. 182.” The poet, with “his keen sense of humor,” as Nye termed it, found that the room communicated with No. 180, and that the man who was domiciled there had gone out for the evening. He stepped in and “at odd times used the bell of No. 180 with great skill, thereby irritating his manager so much that he returned to New York on the following day. “Holmes,” continued Nye, “had none of this dry, crisp humor, but cared more for a subtle and delicate play upon words than for a play upon a lecture manager or a hotel proprietor.”

The letters which follow bring to me laughter, with the memory, also, of suffering which echoes behind the mirth. Nye caught the motes as they danced in the sunlight and held them up before us for common amusement. Their antics made him laugh, and he wished others to laugh also; but he kept the sunshine. Within its rays might be seen the dust and the rain; but the glow was always there. No human mote was ever hurt by impalement on his pen. Always humorous, he never failed in human kindliness. He made men laugh out of sheer sense of fun, never by a single shaft of malice. His “heart-easing mirth” was wrung quite often from personal suffering. Writing each week for a public that broadened with the enjoyment he gave, there was but little room for permanence in Nye’s works, though his books still continue to sell. He always gave a great deal of credit to Mrs. Nye for the successful management of his business affairs. Some investments caused reverses, but the result was perhaps unavoidable under general business conditions at the time. Mrs. Nye was once taken in by a real estate operator who secured confidence by assuming a religious character. Nye never ceased to joke about it. The lots were found to be under water, and the humorist suggested the use of a diving bell in locating them.

In one of the earliest of Nye’s letters he wrote: “I feel so kinky this spring that I believe that I am warranted in authorizing you to make a limited number of dates not too far from New York for my new illustrated lecture on the New South, and other things. I will accompany the lecture with my voice, and you can say with safety that it will be gently facetious and mildly instructive.--Bill Nye.”

From St. Joseph, Mo., when nearing the close of a severe but successful tour, Nye wrote that Western managers all wished to arrange business for him. “But,” he added, “I am quite doubtful whether I will make a show of myself any more. It may be gratifying to some, and surely if it be pleasant to be fêted, and fed, and wined, and dined, and fined, from one end of the country to the other, I ought to be happy. But I do not pant for that kind of joy.”

He closed as usual with merry quip and kindly humor, by requesting that his kindest regards and deepest sympathies be given to Miss Glass (my secretary). “What a noble, self-sacrificing girl she is! to sit there day after day surrounded by such unpleasant associations, and printing stuff that ought to go into the waste-basket, yet never murmuring nor repining.”

From Iowa City, early in the following year, he wrote:

“I wish a good many times that I had you along to jump on various people with your ponderous weight and make them tired. More especially the fresh young man and the autograph fiend. The other night at Mankato we had the house stuffed full and the stage crowded with people. Then I had to hold an autograph recital after the show. It was a great success. Here I am slowly freezing to death as I write these lines. I am in room No. 6⅝. The stove is a boy’s size holding a pint of soft coal. The bed has no sheets or pillow slips, but the chambermaid who comes in every spring--into the room, I mean--says they expect some sheets some time to-day, and tells me that no expense will be spared to make the hotel a success.

“It is a great pleasure to get your letters when I land at a lonesome hotel which smells like the Dead Past and--cabbage.”

In a letter written from _The World_ office to me, in California, in June, 1888, Mr. Nye says that “it is funny that a little cuss like you should make such a cavity in New York when away from it.” Telling of his remarkable success on _The World_ and the increased payment given for the funny weekly paper he furnished, he added that “J. Pulitzer pressed me to go to Europe on Saturday with him, and said we would practically own the steamer, which is true, as he draws $2,000 a day from _The World_ and is really out of the reach of want, but I was afraid he would not like me as a travelling companion, and so remained at home.... More money here just now.... Saturday, the Authors’ Club and self go up to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, to ‘Miss’ E. P. Roe, who writes pieces for the papers.”

In a letter from Staten Island, where he was residing, he rather plaintively tells how the house was struck by lightning. From Minneapolis he merrily tells of umpiring a baseball match.

Under date of September 28, 1888, he writes a letter headed “In Hospital,” closing thus: “Yours with a heart full of gratitude and a system full of drugs, paints, oil, turpentine, glass, putty, and everything usually kept in a first-class drug store.

“BILL NYE

“P.S.--Open all night.”

* * * * *

From Buffalo, without other date than Friday, 1889, he writes: “Considering the fact that I have written to you so seldom, you have been real kind to write right on. ‘God bless you,’ as the feller says, ‘for your kind but wabbly heart.’ We are at the Iroquois, because it is ‘absolutely fireproof.’ We noticed that in Lynn and Boston the absolutely fireproof buildings were a little hotter while burning, and so we have chosen one for winter use whenever we could.”

One of his letters was written at a railroad junction in Minnesota where he was waiting for the next through train to La Crosse, and had “only twenty-three and one-half hours to wait.” The railroads were then running in the interest of the “Hotel and Eating-House,” and made it a rule to avoid connections as much as possible.

* * * * *

“MY DEAR POND:

“I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork. I will call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel, because the hotel at a railroad junction is generally called the Fifth Avenue, or the Gem City House, or the Palace Hotel. Just as the fond parent of a white-eyed, two-legged freak of Nature loves to name his mentally diluted son Napoleon, and for the same reason that a prominent horse owner in Illinois last year socked my name on a tall, buckskin-colored colt that did not resemble me, intellectually or physically--a colt that did not know enough to go around a barbed-wire fence, but sought to sift himself through it into an untimely grave--so this man has named his sway-backed wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“It is different from your Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place, there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact, it is the leading industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business here, there has been no falling off at all, and the roads are forking as much to-day as they did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the first glad moment are still here to witness the operation.

“Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three people have to remain over, as we did, all night. (Luckily this happens to be an ‘open date’ for our combine.) It is at such a time the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt, is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible position of floor manager of the codfish ball. A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the rooms. All is bustle about the house. Especially the chambermaid. We are put up in the guest’s chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made up of pains and counterpanes. The light, joyous feeling which this remark may convey is wholly assumed on my part.

“The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to sleep here, and who moaned through the night, and who died while waiting for the dawn.

“This afternoon we pay our bills, as is our usual custom, and tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We leave at 2:30. Hoping the roads may continue to fork just the same as though we had remained, and that this will find you enjoying yourself, I am,

“Yours truly, “EDGAR WILSON NYE.”

* * * * *

On the back of one of his letters was a peculiarly drawn sketch of an elongated hand and an extended index finger. Below was a burlesque advertisement of a certain “Postmaster-General and dealer in gents’ fine underwear,” and a variety of funny articles. He adds, “This space reserved at reasonable rates,” and then, as I was still in England, asks me to give his regards to Stanley, with a funny addenda in messages also to “Victoria and P. Wales.”

I find a visiting-card left in my office about this period, on the back of which Mr. Nye had written: “10 P.M.--It is now too late to make more than three or four dollars at poker before quitting-time, so I will go home.

BILL.”

It must be said here that Nye was not a card-player, and this was only one of many references to things he never did.

A letter from Arden, N. C. (the town where he died), was dated “Sabbath Morning, Just After Prayers.”

“I used to keep a scrap-book in which I glued the little printed statements about my having called and subscribed for the paper, or to the effect that I had just laid a porcelain egg on the editor’s table measuring nine inches in circumference, but the book warped and the glue in it turned sour, so that when I used to give it to my guests to read while I went upstairs to dress, I noticed that they frequently opened the window and sometimes went out for more air, strolling so far away from the house that they never got back. So I don’t keep a scrap-book any more.”

Referring to his new play, “The Cadi,” he wrote:

“The prospects are fine. What the _Vampire Press_ will say no one knows, but Robson, Jefferson, among ’em, are hopeful and tickled. Let me know if you can come to the show so I can ‘avoid the rush.’”

Nye’s friendships were steadfast. He wrote once, after John Cockerill retired from the New York _World_: “The paper has wired me to ‘reconsider.’ But I would rather stick by Cockerill under all circumstances, as he has been my staunch friend always, and now I’m his’n.”

In 1892, Bill Nye was lecturing, and, as usual, quite successfully. At that time our business relations had ended, and he was under other management. He wrote to me from Chicago: “Everything is unsettled except my salary, which is paid every twenty-four hours.”

Of a former experience he remarks: “I’d have done better to put in that spring cultivating colts. However, it is none of my business this time. The ghost walks every night.” Again during this tour he says: “I would enjoy your letters more if you would not refer to Chautauqua, I have always refused to lecture in the stockades. I’ve got a trunk full of their letters now asking me to speak a few words in absolute confidence to the United States in Foley’s Grove, but I will not. I am saving my voice to cool my hot Scotches next winter.” He adds: “We had a long visit with Riley last week. We had some old-fashioned fun, and I descended for the day to the realms of Poesy, where they chew ‘star’ tobacco. Poesy is indeed a strange gift.”

In another letter he apologized for the smallness of the paper by saying:

“This paper belongs to Mrs. Nye, and the envelope belongs to a man who wanted an autograph. So, you see, I am getting economical. It has a stamp.”

Here is a letter which he illustrated in a humorous fashion:

* * * * *

“ARDEN, N. C., May 23, 1895.

“MY DEAR JUNIUS BRUTUS POND:

“There’s no use talking, with all your faults I enjoy the sight of your wild, unlicensed penmanship. ‘Another season of pleasure and amusement stares us in the face,’ as you so truly, so succinctly, and so merrily say! Oh, it is fun to be merry all the time at so much per pop, is it not?

“Merrily yours, “LITTLE BILLIE NYE.”

“P.S.--We have just merrily passed through diphtheria, but all is serene again.”

* * * * *

In another letter of a near-by date he wrote: “Tell Mark Twain that if he had not possessed the fatal gift of humor he might now be President of the United States, and if I could have had my way he should have been, anyway.

“Mr. Depew told me that Garfield admitted to him many years ago that he (Garfield) was naturally a humorist, but had smothered the low, coarse impulse to be amusing in order that he might forward his political ambitions. And what was the result? He went down to his grave full of laudable puns, but Mark Twain will live forever in the glad hearts of a billion people, and with all due respect to Max O’Rell, who, on rather small capital, has realized under your able management many a good American dollar, I am glad that the sage of Hartford spoke up to him.

“Foreigners who come here and buy large fur overcoats and live on lobster à la Newburg for the first time, should not go home and speak lightly of our morals, either in France or England.”

A characteristic letter came to me from Buck Shoals, Arden, N. C., under date of July 4, 1894:

* * * * *

“DEAR JAMESIE:

“Your note of the 28th of June struck my thirsty soul like a drop of dew on the back of a somewhat feverish, warty toad, and so now on this our country’s glorious natal day I take in hand to acknowledge receipt of same.

“If ever a feller had his heartstrings strained to their utmost limit for eight consecutive weeks, I have.

“Mrs. Nye was for some days halting between life and death, and lost her big baby boy after all; then Bess came home from school with fever, and both she and her mother are barely out of the woods now.

“In the midst of it all our house caught fire one fine night when I had gone to bed more dead than alive, but we cut open the wall and got at it with our amateur fire brigade before the whole structure had begun to blaze.

“However, all is well now, and both the invalids will recover fully, directly. The insurance company paid up promptly, and once more I breathe a full, delicious breath of ‘this justly celebrated climate.’

“I did not write anything so all-fired mirthful during those weeks, but got through somehow, having five weeks ahead on the Sunday-letter job. I’m real tickled to know that you like the history, and you will be glad to know that she has an ever-increasing sale, one book seeming to call for another, as Uncle Sydney would put it. I shall look forward with joy to your forthcoming book, for I feel no little pride in my autograph collection of Hoosier poetry.

“Poor old Burbank [at one time Mr. Nye’s “running-mate”], I was about to say, but why should I say that when he is taking a grand old rest after a rather thorny trip? There never lived a more unselfish gentleman than he. He was not brilliant as an originator, perhaps, but he honestly admitted it, and used to the utmost and best all the powers that God gave him. There are mighty few comrades who can go through dark alleys and dangerous stage entrances that are kept locked against the lecturer and only open to the call of the felonious loafer who comes to shift your scenery--only a few comrades, I say, who can go through frosty towns and bitter weather cheerily, as he did--noble old man. And there’s no such test on earth to try a feller’s mettle, is there? I think it’s a good idea to reform and abandon such a life before the hearse is actually at the door waiting for one. I am cheerily preparing to say farewell to these triumphal tours which wreck both soul and body at so much a pair. But I must close and relight my punk. Good-by, old man, and ‘take keer o’ yourself.’ Write to me whenever you are tempted to disobey your physician, and I will promptly respond.

“Yours ever, BILL”

* * * * *

The personality of the professional humorist is often of a very different sort from that which those who know him only through his merry-making would naturally picture. The history of one and another shows that they have turned their bright side to the world, have laughed and joked, and have so bubbled over with humor that they seem to have no serious side--all this with a background of physical disease, or a personal sorrow, that made mental depression inevitable, and to be constantly fought against.

Bill Nye, with whom the public smiled for so many years, kept alive his quaint humor in the face of bodily disability under which men of less courage would have succumbed at once.

He had a happy spirit, a genuine humor, which can ill be spared. He said no ill-natured or malicious thing in all his writings, and, for one so quick to discover shams, this one fact speaks volumes for the sweetness of his soul.

EXPLORERS, TRAVELLERS,

AND

WAR CORRESPONDENTS

HENRY M. STANLEY was engaged by me in the summer of 1886, while travelling in England with Henry Ward Beecher. I was asked if I did not want Henry M. Stanley in America. I replied that Mr. Stanley had once made the attempt, and had been a most dismal failure. A day or two later, when I mentioned this circumstance to Mr. Beecher, he replied: “Get Stanley if you can. He is one of the greatest men we have. I have been reading ‘Through the Dark Continent’; it is a great book. He is doing good work for civilization. He is clean.”

I arranged then to call upon Mr. Stanley at his apartments in New Bond Street and learn what his ideas were in regard to revisiting the United States. There I saw him for the first time, and found a very quiet, unassuming little man with dark hair and penetrating light blue eyes, reticent, but very pleasant. He allowed me to do the talking.

I related what I had heard Mr. Beecher say of him, and saw at once that it pleased him. It was about one o’clock. I asked him if he had lunched; he had not, so I invited him to the Café Royal, where we lunched together.

At luncheon I tried to entertain him with conversation, telling of America and the changes that had taken place during his absence. He listened attentively, but made no response; finally, in order to get him to speak, I began to put questions to him about Africa and its people. I then discovered that I had found and touched the proper key, and he was soon relating to me wonderful accounts of his adventures. When we came to separate, I remarked that there was a great American comedian playing at the Gaiety Theatre, and asked if he would not like to see and hear him. He replied that he would be delighted, so the appointment was made, and we occupied a box at the Gaiety together that evening in company with a young English friend of mine. Mr. Stanley seemed to enjoy the play very much, paying the closest attention until the curtain dropped.

We parted at Charing Cross, Stanley saying, “Good-night; I am indebted to you for a very enjoyable evening,” and started home. I don’t know why, but as he turned the first corner I hurried after him. I have never told this before, and I cannot tell now why it was that I could not help following him. But he had produced a most remarkable impression upon me. I kept saying to myself: “That is Stanley! Stanley, the wonderful explorer! What a life he has had! How I should like to have shared with him his hazardous adventures! How I should like to serve such a man!”

The next morning I received the following letter from Mr. Stanley, which he must have written and mailed to me on his return from the theatre:

* * * * *

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“I am willing to go to America and deliver fifty lectures for you, beginning November 29th next, six lectures a week, you paying me $100 a lecture and my travelling expenses from the date of the first lecture to the close of the tour, settlements to be made weekly. In case I am recalled by the King of the Belgians, I am to be allowed to return without let or hindrance. If this proposition meets your views, you may sign and return a copy of this letter, which I send in duplicate.

“Yours very truly,

“HENRY M. STANLEY.”

* * * * *

I at once signed a duplicate copy of the letter, and then cabled to America that I had secured Stanley for a lecture tour. I returned home in October, and found a number of letters and inquiries relating to the lectures.

When Mr. Stanley arrived in America, November 27, 1886, I had rented Chickering Hall, New York, for the first lecture of the tour. I secured Henry Ward Beecher to present Mr. Stanley, who had been interviewed fully by the reporters on his arrival. There were columns about him in all the newspapers in New York and adjoining cities.

The evening came, but tickets had gone slowly. Mr. Beecher introduced Mr. Stanley in a brief description of his remarkable career, paying a handsome tribute to his work for usefulness to mankind, and then followed the lecture entitled “Through the Dark Continent.” It was descriptive of his many adventures in Central Africa, and proved to be thrilling and interesting in the extreme.

Mr. Beecher had prophesied correctly.

At the third lecture, given in New Haven, it became evident that Mr. Stanley would be a success. Mr. Beecher had been right. The next lecture was at Hartford. I could not get a hall or opera house, so I rented Unity Church. Here in Hartford Mr. Stanley was the guest of his friend S. L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”), who presided and introduced the explorer in a characteristic address of welcome to his city and his fireside. After the lecture, returning to Mr. Clemens’s home, I invited “Mark” to go to Boston with us on the following day and introduce Stanley, where I was sure of a great crowd. “Mark” said the only objection to accepting such an invitation was the “taking a feller so unawares, with no possible time to prepare a suitable, impromptu, extemporaneous speech for so important an occasion.” Mr. Stanley seemed pleased with the suggestion, and as the two men were great friends, the arrangement was made. As “Mark,” Stanley, and I spent the time together after the Hartford lecture, each apparently unmindful of the coming event of the evening, the following introductory speech by Mark on that occasion will give an idea of his resources in an emergency. The humorist and the explorer walked on to the platform simultaneously--a combination such as a Boston audience has rarely met. “Mark” stepped to the front and introduced his friend as follows:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: If any should ask, Why is it that you are here as introducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to be around and was asked to perform this function. I was quite willing to do so, and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to introduce so illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

“No, I won’t do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he didn’t need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South American continent, and he couldn’t get by it. He’d got to discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of Africa as big as the United States.

“It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of Mr. Stanley’s character, and that is his indestructible Americanism--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted American citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned heads of Europe; who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon him. And yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and greet him, ‘Well done,’ through the Congress of the United States, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. He is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on earth--institutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.”

After this Boston triumph, applications by telegraph and mail came pouring in from all parts of the country. Stanley saw that he was a success, and seemed pleased that his manager was on the winning side. He suggested that I might as well lay my season out for one hundred lectures, instead of fifty (singular, too, he did not suggest a rise in his fee), and so we agreed, and I hurried back to New York to complete the bookings for one hundred nights. Of course, in our contract, Mr. Stanley had stipulated that in case he was recalled by the King of Belgium, he was to be allowed to return without let or hindrance, but that was not expected.

Mr. Stanley was delivering his tenth lecture in Amherst, Mass., on Saturday evening, November 11th. I was in my office in New York writing letters. It was ten o’clock in the evening when I received the following telegram:

* * * * *

“AMHERST, MASS., November 11, 1886.

“J. B. POND, EVERETT HOUSE, NEW YORK.

“Must stop lecturing. Recalled. Sail Wednesday at 4 A.M.

“HENRY M. STANLEY.”

* * * * *

All my hopes dashed to the ground in a moment! It was not the first disappointment in my life, however. I turned out my lights and retired, to try to rest and think. Stanley certainly would and must go, and no power on earth could prevent that. I determined to meet him cordially on his arrival, and to lend him all the aid in my power toward getting away on so short a notice.

The next morning (Sunday, November 12th), about 6 o’clock, Mr. Stanley arrived, and came immediately to my room in my hotel to tell me that it required every moment of his time to get ready and sail Wednesday morning by steamship _Eidler_ at four o’clock. His decorations and valuable presents from Queen Victoria and other monarchs were at a jeweller’s on exhibition. He asked me to collect them personally, as he had a great deal to do. He had accepted a commission to go back to Africa at once, heading an expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha; there was no time to lose, for he must equip the expedition in the shortest possible time, as many lives were at stake.

Early in the forenoon people began to call. There were representatives of the manufacturers of firearms and every sort of equipment necessary for the work.

That evening, after a long day of consultations and dictations of correspondence in preparation for his hurried departure, after we had dined together, Mr. Stanley sat down in my office for about two hours, smoking vigorously and uttering not a word. I knew he was undergoing a severe mental struggle. He realized the hazardous risk he was taking, the deprivation and suffering incumbent on such an expedition, with the chances, even the most favorable to be considered, against losing not only his own life, but the lives of many others. He finally spoke to me of the singular business he had been engaged in during the day--that of examining and getting information as to which were the most effective firearms for the destruction of human life.

As his and my experience in the Indian country had been somewhat similar, he asked me if I did not think, after all, that if we had pursued wholly peaceful tactics with the Indians our Government would have been more successful with them. He was considering whether it was not best to undertake this mission across Africa with an unarmed company rather than to have the appearance of a body of armed invaders. So far as the natives were concerned, he had no misgivings, but the army of slave-hunting Arabs under the leadership of Tippoo Tib were dangerous foes and must be resisted. I discovered in Mr. Stanley that night a good man, with a brave, sympathetic, tender heart. I know I felt a deep sympathy and love for him and confidence in him that has lasted ever since, and will last while I live.