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BALED HAY

By Bill Nye

A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves o' Grass."

Author of "Bill Nye and Boomerang,"

"Forty Liars and Other Lies,"

"Goose-Neck Smith,"

"How Came Your Eye
Out, and Your Nose Not Skun?" Etc., Etc., Etc.

_Heap cold day when Melican man no lite em blook_.AH SIN.

Illustrated by F. Opper, of "Puck"

Chicago. New York, San Francisco:

Belford, Clarke & Co

1884

[Illustration: cover]

[Illustration: 0007]

[Illustration: 0009]




DEDICATION.

TO MY WIFE:

Who has courteously and heroically laughed at my feeble and emaciated
jokes, even when she did not feel like it; who has again and again
started up and agitated successfully the flagging and reluctant
applause, who has courageously held my coat through this trying ordeal,
and who, even now, as I write this, is in the front yard warning people
to keep off the premises until I have another lucid interval,

This Volume is Affectionately Inscribed,

BY THE

AUTHOR.

PIAZZA TO THE THIRD VOLUME.

There can really be no excuse for this last book of trite and beautiful
sayings. I do not attempt, in any way, to palliate this great wrong. I
would not do so even if I had an idea what palliate meant.

It will, however, add one more to the series of books for which I am to
blame, and the pleasure of travel will be very much enhanced, for me, at
least.

There is one friend I always meet on the trains when I travel. He is the
news agent. He comes to me with my own books in his arms, and tells me
over and over again of their merits. He means it, too. What object could
he have in coming to me, not knowing who I am, and telling me of their
great worth? Why would he talk that way to me if he did not really feel
it?

That is one reason I travel so much. When 1 get gloomy and heartsick,
I like to get on a train and be assured once more, by a total stranger,
that my books have never been successfully imitated.

Some authors like to have a tall man, with a glazed grip-sack, and whose
breath is stronger than his intellect, selling their works; but I do not
prefer that way.

I like the candor and ingenuousness of the train-boy. He does not come
to the front door while you are at prayers, and ring the bell till the
hat-rack falls down, and then try to sell you a book containing 2,000
receipts for the blind staggers. He leans gently over you as you look
out the car window, and he puts some pecan meats in your hand, and
thus wins your trusting heart. Then he sells you a book, and takes an
interest in you.

This book will go to swell the newsboy's armful, and if there be any
excuse, under the sun, for its publication, aside from the royalty; that
is it.

I have taken great care to thoroughly eradicate anything that would have
the appearance of poetry in this work, and there is not a thought or
suggestion contained in it that would soil the most delicate fabric.

Do not read it all at once, however, in order to see whether he
married the girl or not. Take a little at a time, and it will cure
gloom on the "_similia simili-bus curanter_" principle. If you read
it all at once, and it gives you the heaves, I am glad of it, and you
deserve it. I will not bind myself to write the obituary of such people.

Hudson, Wis., Sept, 5,1883.




BALED HAY

A NOVEL NOVELETTE

|I NEVER wrote a novel, because I always thought it required more of
a mashed-rasp-berry imagination than I could muster, but I was the
business manager, once, for a year and a half, of a little two-bit
novelette that has never been published.

I now propose to publish it, because I cannot keep it to myself any
longer.

Allow me, therefore, to reminisce.

Harry Bevans was an old schoolmate of mine in the days of and although
Bevans was not his sure-enough name, it will answer for the purposes
herein set forth. At the time of which I now speak he was more bashful
than a book agent, and was trying to promote a cream- mustache
and buff "Donegals" on the side.

Suffice it to say that he was madly in love with Fanny Buttonhook, and
too bashful to say so by telephone.

Her name wasn't Buttonhook, but I will admit it for the sake of
argument. Harry lived over at Kalamazoo, we will say, and Fanny at
Oshkosh. These were not the exact names of the towns, but I desire to
bewilder the public a little in order to avoid any harassing disclosures
in the future. It is always well enough, I find, to deal gently will
those who are alive and moderately muscular.

Young Bevans was not specially afraid of old man Buttonhook, or his
wife. He didn't dread the enraged parent worth a cent. He wasn't afraid
of anybody under the cerulean dome, in fact, except Miss Buttonhook;
but when she sailed down the main street, Harry lowered his colors and
dodged into the first place he found open, whether it was a millinery
store or a livery stable.

Once, in an unguarded moment, he passed so near her that the gentle
south wind caught up the cherry ribbon that Miss Buttonhook wore at her
throat, and slapped Mr. Bevans across the cheek with it before he knew
what ailed him. There was a little vision of straw hat, brown hair,
and pink-and-white cuticle, as it were, a delicate odor of violets, the
"swish" of a summer silk, and my friend, Mr. Bevans, put his hand to his
head, like a man who has a sun-stroke, and fell into a drug store and a
state of wild mash, ruin and helpless chaos.

His bashfulness was not seated nor chronic. It was the varioloid, and
didn't hurt him only when Miss Buttonhook was present, or in sight. He
was polite and chatty with other girls, and even dared to be blithe and
gay sometimes, too, but when Frances loomed up in the distance, he would
climb a rail fence nine feet high to evade her.

He told me once that he wished I would erect the frame-work of a
letter to Fanny, in which he desired to ask that he might open up a
correspondence with her. He would copy and mail it, he said, and he was
sure that I, being a disinterested party, would be perfectly calm.

I wrote a letter for him, of which I was moderately proud. It would melt
the point on a lightning rod, it seemed to me, for it was just as full
of gentleness and poetic soothe as it could be, and Tupper, Webster's
Dictionary and my scrap-book had to give down first rate. Still it was
manly and square-toed. It was another man's confession, and I made it
bulge out with frankness and candor.

As luck would have it, I went over to Oshkosh about the time Harry's
prize epistle reached that metropolis, and having been a confidant
of Miss B's from early childhood, I had the pleasure of reading Bev's
letter, and advising the young lady about the correspondence.

Finally a bright thought struck her. She went over to an easy chair, and
sat down on her foot, coolly proposing that I should outline a letter
replying to Harry's, in a reserved and rather frigid manner, yet bidding
him dare to hope that if his orthography and punctuation continued
correct, he might write occasionally, though it must be considered
entirely _sub rosa_ and abnormally _entre nous_ on account of "Pa."

By the way, "Pa" was a druggist, and one of the salts of the
earth--Epsom salts, of course.

I agreed to write the letter, swore never to reveal the secret workings
of the order, the grips, explanations, passwords and signals, and then
wrote her a nice, demure, startled-fawn letter, as brief as the collar
to a party dress, and as solemn as the Declaration of Independence.

Then I said good-by, and returned to my own home, which was neither
in Kalamazoo nor Oshkosh. There I received a flat letter from 'William
Henry Bevans, inclosing one from Fanny, and asking for suggestions as
to a reply. Her letter was in Miss Buttonhook's best vein. I remember
having written it myself.

Well, to cut a long story short, every other week I wrote a letter for
Fanny, and on intervening weeks I wrote one for the lover at Kalamazoo.
By keeping copies of all letters written, I had a record showing where I
was, and avoided saying the same pleasant things twice.

Thus the short, sweet summer scooted past. The weeks were filled
with gladness, and their memory even now comes back to me, like a
wood-violet-scented vision. A wood-violet-scented vision comes high, but
it is necessary in this place.

Toward winter the correspondence grew a little tedious, owing to the
fact that I had a large, and tropical boil on the back of my neck, which
refused to declare its intentions or come to a focus for three weeks. In
looking over the letters of both lovers yesterday, I could tell by the
tone of each just where this boil began to grow up, as it were, between
two fond hearts.

This feeling grew till the middle of December, when there was a red-hot
quarrel. It was exciting and spirited, and after I had alternately
flattered myself first from Kalamazoo and then from Oshkosh, it was
a genuine luxury to have a row with myself through the medium of the
United States mails.

Then I made up and got reconciled. I thought it would be best to secure
harmony before the holidays so that Harry could go over to Oshkosh and
spend Christmas. I therefore wrote a letter for Harry in which he said
he had, no doubt, been hasty, and he was sorry. It should not occur
again. The days had been like weary ages since their quarrel, he
said--vicariously, of course--and the light had been shut out of his
erstwhile joyous life. Death would be a luxury unless she forgave him,
and Hades would be one long, sweet picnic and lawn festival unless she
blessed him with her smile.

You can judge how an old newspaper reporter, with a scarlet imagination,
would naturally dash the color into another man's picture of humility
and woe.

She replied--by proxy--that he was not to blame. It was her waspish
temper and cruel thoughtlessness. She wished he would come over and take
dinner with them on Christmas day and she would tell him how sorry she
was. When the man admits that he's a brute and the woman says she's
sorry, it behooves the eagle eye of the casual spectator to look up into
the blue sky for a quarter of an hour, till the reconciliation has had
a chance and the brute has been given time to wipe a damp sob from his
coat-collar.

I was invited to the Christmas dinner. As a successful reversible
amanuensis I thought I deserved it. I was proud and happy. I had passed
through a lover's quarrel and sailed in with whitewinged peace on time,
and now I reckoned that the second joint, with an irregular fragment
of cranberry jelly, and some of the dressing, and a little of the white
meat please, was nothing more than right.

Mr. Bevans forgot to be bashful twice during the day, and even smiled
once also. He began to get acquainted with Fanny after dinner, and
praised her beautiful letters. She blushed clear up under her "wave,"
and returned the compliment.

That was natural. When he praised her letters I did not wonder, and
when she praised his I admitted that she was eminently correct. I never
witnessed better taste on the part of two young and trusting hearts.

After Christmas I thought they would both feel like buying a manual and
doing their own writing, but they did not dare to do so evidently. They
seemed to be afraid the change would be detected, so I piloted them into
the middle of the succeeding fall, and then introduced the crisis into
both their lives.

It was a success.

I felt about as well as though I were to be cut down myself, and married
off in the very prime of life. Fanny wore the usual clothing adopted
by young ladies who are about to be sacrificed to a great horrid man. I
cannot give the exact description of her trousseau, but she looked like
a hazel-eyed angel, with a freckle on the bridge of her nose. The
groom looked a little scared, and moved his gloved hands as though they
weighed twenty-one pounds apiece.

However, it's all over now. I was up there recently to see them. They
are quite happy. Not too happy, but just happy enough. They call their
oldest son Birdie. I wanted them to call him William, but they were
headstrong and named him Birdie. That wounded my pride, and so I called
him Earlie Birdie.




GREELEY AID RUM.

|WHEN I visit Greeley I am asked over and over again as to the practical
workings of woman suffrage in Wyoming, and when I go back to Wyoming I
am asked how prohibition works practically in Greeley, Col. By telling
varied and pleasing lies about both I manage to have a good deal of fun,
and also keep the two elements on the anxious seat.

There are two sides to both questions, and some day when I get time
and have convalesced a little more, I am going to write a large book
relating to these two matters. At present I just want to say a word
about the colony which bears the name of the Tribune philosopher, and
nestles so lovingly at the chilly feet of the Rocky mountains. As I
write, Greeley is apparently an oasis in the desert. It looks like
a fertile island dropped down from heaven in a boundless stretch of
buffalo grass, sage hens and cunning little prairie dogs. And yet you
could not come here as a stranger, and within the colonial barbed wire
fence, procure a bite of cold rum if you were President of the United
States, with a rattlesnake bite as large as an Easter egg concealed
about your person. You can, however, become acquainted, if you are of a
social nature and keep your eyes open.

I do not say this because I have been thirsty these few past weeks and
just dropped on the game, as Aristotle would say, but just to prove that
men are like boys, and when you tell them they can't have any particular
thing, that is the thing they are apt to desire with a feverish yearn.
That is why the thirstful man in Maine drinks from the gas fixture; why
the Kansas drinkist gets his out of a rain-water barrel, and why other
miracles too numerous to mention are performed.

Whisky is more bulky and annoying to carry about in the coat-tail
pocket than a plug of tobacco, but there have been cases where it was
successfully done. I was shown yesterday a little corner that would hold
six or eight bushels. It was in the wash-room of a hotel, and was about
half full. So were the men who came there, for before night the entire
place was filled with empty whisky bottles of every size, shape and
smell. The little fat bottle with the odor of gin and livery stable was
there, and the large flat bottle that you get at Evans, four miles away,
generally filled with something that tastes like tincture of capsicum,
spirits of ammonia and lingering death, is also represented in this
great congress of cosmopolitan bottles sucked dry and the cork gnawed
half up.

When I came to Greeley, I was still following the course of treatment
prescribed by my Laramie City physician, and with the rest, I was
required to force down three adult doses of brandy per day. He used
to taste the prescription at times to see if it had been properly
compounded. Shortly after my arrival here I ran out of this remedy
and asked a friend to go and get the bottle refilled. He was a man not
familiar with Greeley in its moisture-producing capacity, and he was
unable to procure the vile demon in the town for love or wealth. The
druggist even did not keep it, and although he met crowds of men with
tears in their eyes and breath like a veteran bung-starter, he had to
go to Evans for the required opiate. This I use externally, now, on the
vagrant dog who comes to me to be fondled and who goes away with his
hair off. Central Colorado is full of partially bald dogs who have wiped
their wet, cold noses on me, not wisely but too well.




ABOUT SAW MILLS.

River Falls, Wis., May 80.

|I HAVE just returned from a trip up the North Wisconsin railway, where
I went to catch a string of codfish, and anything else that might be
contagious. The trip was a pleasant one and productive of great good in
many ways. I am hardening myself to railway traveling, like Timberline
Jones' man, so that I can stand the return journey to Laramie in July.

Northern Wisconsin is the place where the "foreign lumber" comes from
which we use in Laramie in the erection of our palatial residences. I
visited the mill last week that furnished the lumber used in the Oasis
hotel at Greeley. They yank a big wet log into that mill and turn it
into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay
car. The log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs while it is
being worked into lumber. These iron dogs are not like those