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BILL NYE'S

CORDWOOD

COPYRIGHT. 1887

    CHICAGO:
    RHODES & MCCLURE PUBLISHING CO.
    1887.

[Illustration: Bill Nye]


    Transcriber's note:

    There was no Contents list in the original, one has been placed in
    this ebook for ease of navigation.


  Bill Nye on the Cow Industry.
  A New Biography of Galileo.
  Methuselah.
  Notes on Some Spring Styles.
  Hunting an Ichthyosaurus.
  True Merit Rewarded.
  Bill Nye condoles with Cleveland.
  No Doubt as to His Condition.
  Cyclones.
  The Earth.
  Francisco Pizarro's Career.
  Bill Nye "Incubates."
  Bill Nye on Tobacco.--A Discourager of Cannibalism.
  Bill Nye's Arctic-le.
  Bill Nye's Answers to Correspondents.
  Bill Nye Preparing A Political Speech in Advance for a Time of Need.
  Bill Nye on Railroads.
  Bill Nye's Letter.
  Favored a Higher Fine.
  How Bill Nye Failed to Make the Amende Honorable--A Pathetic Incident.
  Seeing a Saw Mill.
  How A Chinaman Rides the Untamed Broncho.
  Bill Nye Wants to Know How to Preserve Game.
  Bill Nye Attends Booth's "Hamlet."
  Bill Nye's Advice
  A Would-be Hostelry.
  Bill Nye's Hornets.
  A Tragedy.
  The Bronco Cow.
  Autumn Thoughts.
  Bill Nye's Advice Bag.
  Mr. Sweeney's Cat.
  Bill Nye's Letter.
  Declined with Thanks.


BILL NYE'S

CORDWOOD.




BILL NYE ON THE COW INDUSTRY.

A COWBOY COLLEGE NEEDED TO EDUCATE YOUNG MEN TO THIS PROFESSION.


No one can go through the wide territory of Montana to-day without being
strongly impressed with the wonderful growth of the great cattle growing
and grazing industry of that territory. And yet Montana is but the
northern extremity of the great grazing belt which lies at the foot of
the Rocky Mountains, extending from the British possessions on the north
to the Mexican border on the south, extending eastward, too, as far as
the arable lands of Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

Montana, at this season of the year, is the paradise of the sleek,
high-headed, 2-year-old Texan steer, with his tail over the dashboard,
as well as the stock yearling, born on the range, beneath the glorious
mountain sky and under the auspices of roundup No. 21.

I do not say this to advertise the stock growing business, because it is
already advertised too much, anyway. So many millionaires have been
made with "free grass" and the early-rising, automatic branding iron
that every man in the United States who has a cow that can stand the
journey seems to be about to take her west and embark in business as a
cattle king.

But let me warn the amateur cow man that in the great grazing regions it
takes a good many acres of thin grass to maintain the adult steer in
affluence for twelve months, and the great pastures at the base of the
mountains are being pretty well tested. Moreover, I believe that these
great conventions of cattlemen, where free grass and easily acquired
fortunes are naturally advertised, will tend to overstock the ranges at
last and founder the goose that now lays the golden egg. This, of
course, is really none of my business, but if I didn't now and then
refer to matters that do not concern me I would be regarded as reticent.

My intention, however, in approaching the great cow industry, which, by
the way, is anything but an industry, being in fact more like the
seductive manner whereby a promissory note acquires 2 per cent. per
month without even stopping to spit on its hands, was to refer
incidentally to the proposition of an English friend of mine. This
friend, seeing at once the great magnitude of the cow industry and the
necessity for more and more cowboys, has suggested the idea of
establishing a cowboys' college, or training school, for self-made young
men who desire to become accomplished. The average Englishman will most
always think of something that nobody else would naturally think of.
Now, our cattleman would have gone on for years with his great steer
emporium without thinking of establishing an institution where a poor
boy might go and learn to rope a 4-year-old in such a way as to throw
him on his stomach with a sickening thud.

The young Maverick savant could take a kindergarten course in the study
of cow brands. Here a wide field opens up to the scholar. The adult
steer in the great realm of beef is now a walking Chinese wash bill, a
Hindoo poem in the original junk shop alphabet, a four-legged Greek
inscription, punctuated with jim-jams, a stenographer's notes of a riot,
a bird's-eye view of a premature explosion in a hardware store.

The cowboy who can at once grapple with the great problem of where to
put the steer with "B bar B" on left shoulder, "