Part 6

This has suggested to our mind the practicability of cultivating the chewing-gum plant. We advance this thought with some timidity, knowing that our enemies will use all these novel and untried ideas against us in a presidential campaign; but the good of the country is what we are after and we do not want to be misunderstood.

Chewing-gum is rapidly advancing in price, and the demand is far beyond the supply. The call for gum is co-extensive with the onward move of education. They may be said to go hand in hand. Wherever institutions of learning are found, there you will see the tall, graceful form of the chewing-gum tree rising toward heaven with its branches extending toward all humanity.

Here, in Wyoming, we could easily propagate this plant. It is hardy and don't seem to care whether winter lingers in the lap of spring or not. We have the figures, also, to substantiate this article. We will figure on the basis of twenty boxes of gum to the plant--and this is a very low estimate, indeed--then the plants may easily be three feet apart. This would be 3,097,600 plants to the acre, or 61,952,000 boxes, containing 100 chews in each box, or 6,195,200,000 chews to the acre. We have a million acres that could be used in this way, which would yield in a good year 6,195,200,000,000,000 chews at one cent each.

The reader will see at a glance that this is no wild romantic notion on our part, but a terrible reality. Wyoming could easily supply the present demand and wag the jaws of nations yet unborn. It makes us tired to think of it.

Of course, anything like this will meet with strong opposition on the part of those who have no faith in enterprises, but let a joint stock company be formed with sufficient capital to purchase the tools and gum seed, and we will be responsible for the result. Very likely the ordinary spruce gum (made of lard and resin) would be best as an experiment, after which the prize-package gum plant could be tried.

These experiments could be followed up with a trial of the gum drop, gum overshoe, gum arabic and other varieties of gum. Doctor Hayford would be a good man to take hold of this. Col. Donnellan says, however, that he don't think it is practical. No use of enlarging on this subject--it will never be tried. Probably the town is full of people who are willing to chew the gum, but wouldn't raise a hand toward starting a gum orchard. We are sick and tired of pointing out different avenues to wealth only to be laughed at and ridiculed.

WE HAVE REASONED IT OUT.

|A HOME magazine comes to us this week, in which we find the following, connected with a society article. After alluding to the young men of the nineteenth century, and their peculiarities, it continues: "In fact, many of the more fashionable strains are all black, except the distinctive white feet and snout, so noticeable at this epoch in our history."

This, it would seem, will make a radical change in the prevailing young man. With white feet and white snout, the masher must also be black aside from those features. This will add the charm of extreme novelty to our social gatherings, and furnish sufficient excuse for a man like us, with blonde rind and strawberry blonde feet, staying at home, with the ban of society and a loose smoking jacket on him.

Farther on, this peculiar essay says: "He is noted for his wonderfully fine blood, the bone is fine, the hair thin, the carcass long but broad, straight and deep-sided, with smooth skin, susceptible to no mange or other skin diseases."

We almost busted our capacity trying to figure out this startler in the fashion line, and wore ourself down to a mere geometrical line in our endeavor to fathom this thing when, yesterday, in reading an article in the same paper entitled, "The Berkshire Hog," we discovered that the sentences above referred to had evidently been omitted by the foreman, and put in the society article. It is unnecessary to state that a blessed calm has settled down in the heart of this end of _The Boomerang_. Time, at last, makes all things size up in proper shape. Blessed be the time which matures the human mind and the promissory note.

CARVING SCHOOLS.

|THEY are agitating the matter of instituting carving schools in the east, so that the rising generation will be able to pass down through the corridors of time without its lap full of dressing and its bosom laden with gravy and remorse. The students at this school will wear barbed-wire masks while practicing. These masks will be similar to those worn by German students, who slice each other up while obtaining an education.

DIGNITY.

|COLONEL INGERSOLL said, at Omaha the other day, that he hated a dignified man and that he never knew one who had a particle of sense; that such men never learned, and were constantly forgetting something.

Josh Billings says that gravity is no more the sign of mental strength than a paper collar is the evidence of a shirt.

This leads us to say that the man who ranks as a dignified snoozer, and banks on winning wealth and a deathless name through this one source of strength, is in the most unenviable position of any one we know. Dignity does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty minutes, but after awhile it fails to get there. Dignity works all right in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support, will do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and the air of patronage. Colonel Ingersoll may be wrong in the matter of future punishment, but his head is pretty level on the dignity question. Dignity works all right with a man who is worth a million dollars and has some doubts about his suspenders; but the man who is to get a large sum of money before he dies, and get married and accomplish some good, must place himself before his fellow men in the attitude of one who has ideas that are not too lonely and isolated.

Let us therefore aim higher than simply to appear cold and austere. Let us study to aid in the advancement of humanity and the increase of baled information. Let us struggle to advance and improve the world, even though in doing so we may get into ungraceful positions and at times look otherwise than pretty. Thus shall we get over the ground, and though we may do it in the eccentric style of the camel, we will get there, as we said before, and we will have camped and eaten our supper while the graceful and dignified pedestrian lingers along the trail.

Works, not good clothes and dignity, are the grand hailing sign, and he who halts and refuses to jump over an obstacle because he may not do it so as to appear as graceful as a gazelle, will not arrive until the festivities are over.

A SNORT OF AGONY.

|OUR attention has been called to a remark made by the New York _Tribune_, which would intimate that the journal referred to didn't like Acting-Postmaster F. Hatton, and characterizing the editor of The Boomerang as a "journalistic pal" of General Hatton's. We certainly regret that circumstances have made it necessary for us to rebuke the _Tribune_ and speak, harshly to it. Frank Hatton may be a journalistic pal of ours. Perhaps so. We would be glad to class him as a journalistic pal of ours, even though he may not have married rich. We think just as much of General Hatton as though he had married wealthy. We can't all marry rich and travel over the country, and edit our papers vicariously. That is something that can only happen to the blessed few.

It would be nice for us to go to Europe and have our _pro tem._ editor at home working for $20 per week, and telegraphing us every few minutes to know whether he should support Cornell or Folger. The pleasure of being an editor is greatly enhanced by such privileges, and we often feel that if we could get away from the hot, close office of The Boomerang, and roam around over Scandahoovia and the Bosphorus, and mould the policy of _The Boomerang_ by telegraph, and wear a cork helmet and tight pants, we would be far happier. Still it may be that Whitelaw Reid is no happier with his high priced wife and his own record of crime, than we are in our simplicity here in the wild and rugged west, as we write little epics for our one-horse paper, and borrow tobacco of the foreman.

It is not all of life to live, nor all of death to die. We should live for a purpose, Mr. Reid, not aimlessly like a blind Indian, 200 miles from the reservation at Christmas-tide.

Now, Mr. Reid, if you will just tell Mr. Nicholson, when you get back home, that in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton he has exceeded his authority, we will feel grateful to you--and so will Mr. Hatton. If you don't do it, we shall be called upon to stop the _Tribune_, and subscribe for _Harper's Weekly_. This we should dislike to do very much, because we have taken the _Tribune_ for years. We used to take it when the editor stayed at home and wrote for it. Our father used to take the _Tribune_, too. He is the editor of the Omaha _Republican_, and needs a good New York paper, but he has quit taking the _Tribune_. He said he must withdraw his patronage from a paper that is edited by a tourist. All the Nyes will now stop taking the _Tribune_, and all subscribe for some other dreary paper. We don't know just whether it will be _Harper's Weekly_, or the _Shroud_.

Later.--Mr. Reid went through here on Tuesday, and told us that he might have been wrong in referring to us as a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton, and in fact did not know that the _Tribune_ had said so. He simply told Nicholson to kind of generally go for the administration, and turn over a great man every morning with his scathing pen, and probably Nicholson had kind of run out of great men, and tackled the North American Indian fighter of _The Boomerang_. Mr. Reid also said, as he rubbed some camphor ice on his nose, and borrowed a dollar from his wife to buy his supper here, that when he got back to New York, he was going to write some pieces for the _Tribune_ himself. He was afraid he couldn't trust Nicholson, and the paper had now got where it needed an editor right by it all the time. He said also that he couldn't afford to be wakened up forty times a night to write telegrams to New York, telling the _Tribune_ who to indorse for governor. It was a nuisance, he said, to stand at the center of a way station telegraph office, in his sun-flower night shirt, and write telegrams to Nicholson, telling him who to sass the next morning. Once, he said, he telegraphed him to dismember a journalistic pal of Frank Hatton's, and the operator made a mistake. So the next morning the _Tribune_ had a regular old ring-tail peeler of an editorial, which planted one of Mr. Reid's special friends in an early grave. So we may know from this that moulding the course of a great paper by means of red messages, is fraught with some unpleasant features.

ALWAYS BOOM AT THE TOP.

|YOUNG man, do not stand lounging on the threshold of the glorious future, while the coming years are big with possibilities, but take off your coat and spit on your hands and win the wealth which the world will yield you. You may not be able to write a beautiful poem, and die of starvation; but you can go to work humbly as a porter and buy a whisk broom, and wear people's clothes out with it, and in five years you can go to Europe in your own special car. As the strawberry said to the box, "there is always room at the top."

INACCURATE.

|ONCE more has Laramie been, slandered and traduced. Once more our free and peculiar style has been spoken lightly of and our pride trailed in the dust.

Last week the _Police Gazette_, an illustrated family journal of great merit, appeared with a half page steel engraving, executed by one of the old masters, representing two Laramie girls on horseback yanking a fly drummer along the street at a gallop, because he tried to make a mash on them and they did not yearn for his love.

There are two or three little errors in the illustration, to which we desire to call the attention of the eastern reader of Michael Angelo masterpieces that appear in the Police Gazette. First, the saloon or hurdy-gurdy shown in the left foreground is not the exact representation of any building in Laramie, and the dobe pig pens and A tents of which the town seems to be composed, are not true to nature.

Again, the streets do not look like the streets of Laramie. They look more like the public thoroughfares of Tie City or Jerusalem. Then the girls do not look like Laramie girls, and we are acquainted with all the girls in town, and consider ourself a judge of those matters. The girls in this illustration look too much as though they had mingled a great deal with the people of the world. They do not have that shy, frightened and pure look that they ought to have. They appear to be that kind of girls that one finds in the crowded metropolis under the gas light, yearning to get acquainted with some one.

There are several features of the illustration which we detect as erroneous, and among the rest we might mention, casually, that the incident illustrated never occurred here at all. Aside from these little irregularities above named, the picture is no doubt a correct one. We realize fully that times get dull even in New York sometimes, and it is necessary, occasionally, to draw on the imagination, but the _Gazette_ artist ought to pick up some hard town like Cheyenne, and let us alone awhile.

THE WESTERN "CHAP."

|FEW know how voraciously we go for anything in the fashion line. Many of our exchanges are fashion magazines, and nothing is read with such avidity as these highly pictorial aggregations of literature. If there are going to be any changes in the male wardrobe this winter, it behooves us to know what they are. We intend to do so. It is our high prerogative and glorious privilege to live in a land of information. If we do not provide ourself with a few, it is our own fault. Man has spanned the ocean with an electric cable, and runs his street cars with another cable that puts people out of their misery as quick as a giant-powder caramel in a man's chest-protector, under certain circumstances. Science has done almost everything for us, except to pay our debts without leaning toward repudiation. We are making rapid strides in the line of progression. That is, the scientists are. Every little while you can hear a scientist burst a basting thread off his overalls, while making a stride.

It is equally true that we are marching rapidly along in the line of fashion. Change, unceasing change, is the war cry, and he who undertakes to go through the winter with the stage costumes of the previous winter, will find, as Voltaire once said, that it is a cold day.

We look with great concern upon the rapid changes which a few weeks have made. The full voluptuous swell and broad cincha of the chaparajo have given place to the tight pantaletts with feathers on them, conveying the idea that they cannot be removed until death, or an earthquake shall occur..

"Chaps," as they are vulgarly called, deserve more than a passing notice. They are made of leather with fronts of dog-skin with the hair on. The inside breadths are of calf or sheep-skin, made plain, but trimmed down the side seam with buckskin bugles and oil-tanned bric-a-brac of the time of Michael Angelo Kelley. On the front are plain pockets used for holding the ball programme and the "pop." The pop is a little design in nickel and steel, which is often used as an inhaler. It clears out the head, and leaves the nasal passages and phrenological chart out on the sidewalk, where pure air is abundant. "Chaps" are rather attractive while the wearer is on horseback, or walking toward you, but when he chasses and "all waltz to places," you discern that the seat of the garment has been postponed _sine die_. This, at first, induces a pang in the breast of the beholder. Later, however, you become accustomed to the barren and perhaps even stern demeanor of the wearer. You gradually gain control of yourself and master your raging desire to rush up and pin the garment together. The dance goes on. The _elite_ take an adult's dose of ice-cream and other refreshments; the leader of the mad waltz glides down the hall with his mediæval "chaps," swishing along as he sails; the violin gives a last shriek; the superior fiddle rips the robe of night wide open, with a parting bzzzzt; the mad frolic is over, and $5 have gone into the dim and unfrequented freight depot of the frog-pond-environed past.

AN INCIDENT OF THE CAMPAIGN.

|COLONEL THOMAS JUNIUS DAYTON entered the democratic headquarters on Second street, a few nights ago, having been largely engaged, previously, in talking over the political situation, with sugar in it. The first person he saw on entering, was an individual in the back part of the room, writing.

Colonel Dayton ordered him out.

The man would not go, maintaining that he had a right to meet together in democratic headquarters as often as he desired. The Colonel still insisted that he was an outsider and could have nothing in common with the patriotic band of bourbons whose stamping ground he had thus entered.

Finally the excitement became so great that a man was called in to umpire the game and sponge off the hostiles, but before blood was shed a peacemaker asked Colonel Dayton what the matter was with him.

"This man is a Democrat. I've known him for years. What's the reason you don't want him in here?"

"That's all right," said the Colonel, with his eyes starting from their sockets with indignation, "you people can be easily fooled. I cannot. I know him to be a spy in our camp. I have smelled his breath and find he is not up in the Ohio degree. I have also discovered him to be able to read and write. He cannot answer a single democratic test. He is a bogus bourbon, and my sentiments are that he should be gently but firmly fired. If the band will play something in D that is kind of tremulous, I will take off my coat and throw the gentleman over into a vacant lot. I think I know a Democrat when I see him. Perhaps you do not. He cannot respond to a single grand hailing sign. He hasn't the cancelled internal revenue stamp on his nose, and his breath lacks that spicy election odor which we know so well. Away with him! Fling his palpitating remains over the drawbridge and walk on him. Spread him out on the ramparts and jam him into the culverin. Those are my sentiments. We want no electroplate Democrats here. This is the stronghold of the highly aesthetic and excessively _bon-ton_, Andrew Jackson peeler, and if justice cannot be done to this usurper by the party, I shall have to go out and get an infirm hoe handle and administer about $9 worth of rebuke myself."

He went out after the hoe handle, and while absent, the stranger said he didn't want to be the cause of any ill feeling, or to stand in the way of the prosperity of his party, so he would not remain. He put on his hat and stole out into the night, a quiet martyr to the blind rage of Colonel Dayton, and has not since been seen.

WHY DO THEY DO IT?

|BEN HILL, died, after suffering intolerable anguish from a tobacco cancer, caused by excessive smoking. The consumers of the western-made cigar are now and then getting a nice little dose of leprosy from the Chinese constructed cigars of San Francisco, and yet people go right on inviting the most horrible diseases known to science, by smoking, and smoking to excess. Why do they do it? It is one of those deep, dark mysteries that nothing but death can unravel. We cannot fathom it, that's certain. (Give us a light, please.)

TWO STYLES.

|ONE of the peculiarities of correspondence is witnessed at this office every day, to which we desire to call the attention of our growing girls and boys, who ought to know that there is a long way and a short way of saying things on paper; a right way and a wrong way to express thoughts on a postal card, just as there is in conversation. We all admire the business man who is terse and to the point, and we dislike the man who hangs on to the door knob as though life was a never-ending summer dream, and refuses to say good-bye. It's so with correspondence. In touching upon the letters received at this office, we refer to a car load received at this office during the past year, relating to sample copies. Still they are a good specimen of the different styles of doing the same thing.

For instance, here is a line which tells the story in brief, without wearing out your eyes and days by ponderous phrases and useless verbiage. "Useless verbiage and frothy surplusage" is a synonym which we discovered in '75, while excavating for the purpose of laying the foundations of our imposing residence up the gulch. Persons using the same will please fork over ten per cent of the gross receipts:

_"Bangor, Maine, 11-10-82._

_"Find 10c for which send sample copy Boomerang to above address. Yours, etc.,_

_"Thomas Billings."_

Some would have said "please" find inclosed ten cents. That is not absolutely necessary. If you put ten cents in the letter that covers all seeming lack of politeness and it's all right. If, however, you are out of a job, and have nothing else to do but to write for sample copies of papers, and wait for the department at Washington to allow you a pension, you might say, "Please find inclosed," etc., otherwise the ten cents will make it all right.

Here's another style, which evinces a peculiarity we do not admire. It bespeaks the man who thinks that life and its associations are given us in order to wear out the time, waiting patiently meanwhile for Gabriel to render his little overture.

It occurs to us that life is real, life is earnest, and so forth. We cannot sit here in the gathering gloom and read four pages of a letter, which only expresses what ought to have been expressed in four lines. We feel that we are here to do the greatest good to the greatest-number, and we dislike the correspondent who hangs on to the literary door knob, so to speak, and absorbs our time, which is worth $5.35 per hour.

Here we go--

"New Centreville, Wis., Nov. 8, 1882.

"Mr. William Nye, esq., Laramie City, Wyoming:

"Dear Sir:--I have often saw in our home papers little pieces cut out of your paper The Larmy Boomerang, yet I have never saw the paper itself. I hardly pick up a paper, from the Fireside. Friend to the Christian at Work, that I do not see something or a nother from your faseshus pen and credited to _The Boomerang_. I have asked our bookstore for a copy of the paper, and he said go to grass, there wasn't no such perioddickle in existence. He is a liar; but I did not tell him so because I am just recovering from a case of that kind now, which swelled both eyes shet and placed me under the doctor's care.

"It was the result of a campaign lie, and at this moment I do not remember whether it was the other man or me which told it. Things got confused and I am not clear on the matter now.

"I send ten cents in postage stamps, hoping you will favor me with a speciment copy of _The Boomerang_ and I may suscribe. I send postage stamps because they are more convenient to me, and I suppose that you can use them all right as you must have a good deal of writing to do. I intend to read the paper thorrow and give my folks the benefit also. I love to read humerrus pieces to my children and my wife and hear their gurgly laugh well up like a bobollink's. I now take an estern paper which is gloomy in its tendencies, and I call it the Morg. It looks at the dark side of life and costs $3 a year and postage.

"So send the speciment if you please and I will probbly suscribe for The Boomerang, as I have saw a good many extrax from it in our papers here and I have not as yet saw your paper."

GOSHALLHEMLOCK SALVE.