



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive












BILL NYE'S CHESTNUTS OLD AND NEW

With New Illustrations From Original Sketches, Photographs, Memoranda,
and Authentic Sources, by Williams, Opper, and Hopkins.

NEW YORK

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY

1888


[Illustration: 0001]

[Illustration: 0006]

[Illustration: 0007]




CHESTNUTS OLD AND NEW.




<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>. I.--THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON PUZZLE WRESTLED WITH
CONSCIENTIOUSLY.

_Why Bill favors the Claims of Bill Shakespeare--His Handwriting
skillfully touched upon--Its Likeness to Horace Greeley's--Difference
between Shakespeare and Bacon--A kind Lift for the Yeomanry._

|Trusting that it will not in any way impair the sale of Mr. Donnelly's
book, I desire to offer here a few words in favor of the theory that
William Shakespeare wrote his own works and thought his own thinks. The
time has fully arrived when we humorists ought to stand by each other.

I do not undertake to stand up for the personal character of
Shakespeare, but I say that he wrote good pieces, and I don't care who
knows it. It is doubtless true that at the age of eighteen he married a
woman eight years his senior, and that children began to cluster about
their hearthstone in a way that would have made a man in a New York flat
commit suicide. Three little children within fourteen months, including
twins, came to the humble home of the great Bard, and he began to go
out and climb upon the haymow to do his writing. Sometimes he would stay
away from home for two or three weeks at a time, fearing that