Part 3

I send you our love and $9 in money. We will sell the other calf as soon as it is ripe. Chintz bugs are rather more robust than last year, and the mortgage on our place looks as if it might mature prematurely. We had a lecture on phrenology at the school-house Tuesday night, during which four of our this spring's roan turkies wandered so far away from home that they lost their bearings and never came back again. So good-by for this time. Your father,

Bill Nye

THE AZTEC AT HOME

|IT HAS been my good fortune within the past ten years to witness a number of the remaining landmarks left to indicate the trail of the original inhabitant of this country. It has been a pleasure, and yet a kind of sad pleasure, to examine the crumbling ruins of what was once regarded, no doubt, as the very triumph of aboriginal taste and mechanical ingenuity.

I can take but a cursory glance at these earmarks of a forgotten age, for a short treatise like this cannot embrace minute details, of course.

We are told by the historian that there were originally two distinct classes of Indians occupying the territory now embraced by the United States, viz., the village Indians or horticultural Indians, and the extremely rural Indians or nonhorticultural variety.

The village Indians or horticulturalists subsisted upon fruits and grain, ground in a crude way, while the non-horticulturalists lived on wild game, berries, acorns and pilgrims.

Of the latter class few traces remain, excepting rude arrow heads and coarse stone weapons. These articles show very little skill as a rule, the only indication of brains that I ever discovered being on a large stone hammer or Mohawk swatter, and they were not the brains of the man who made it either.

The village Indians, however, were architects from away up the gulch.

They constructed a number of architectural works of great beauty, several of which I have visited. They were once, no doubt, regarded as very desirable residences, but now, alas, they have fallen into innocuous desuetude--at least that is what it looked like to me, and the odor reminded me of innocuous desuetude in a bad state of preservation.

In New Mexico, over 300 years ago, there were built a number of pereblos or villages which still stand up, in a measure, though some of them are in a recumbent position. These pereblos or villages are formed of three or four buildings constructed in the retrousse style of architecture, and made of adobe bricks. These bricks are generally of a beautiful, soft, black and tan color, and at a distance look like the first loaf of bread baked by a young lady who has been reared in luxury but whose father has been suddenly called away to Canada. The adobe brick is said to be so indigestible, in fact, that I am confident the day is not far distant when it will be found on every hotel bill of fare in our broad sin-cursed land.

One of these dwellings was generally about 200 feet long, with no stairways in the interior, but movable ladders on the outside instead. This manner of reaching the upper floor had its advantages, and yet it was not always convenient. One feature in its favor was the isolation which a man could pull around himself by going in at the second-story window and pulling the ladder up after him, as there was no entrance to the house on the ground floor. If a man really courted retirement, and wanted to write a humorous lecture or a $2 homily, he could insert himself through the second-story window, pull in the staircase and go to work. Then no one could disturb him without bribing a hook and ladder company to come along and let him in.

But the great drawback was the annoyance incident to ascending these ladders at a late hour in the night, while under the influence of Aztec rum, a very seductive yet violently intoxicating beverage, containing about eight parts cheer to ninety-two parts inebriate.

These residences were hardly gothic in style, being extremely rectangular, with a tendency toward the more modern dry-goods box. It is believed by abler men than I am, men who could believe more in two minutes than I could believe in a lifetime if I had nothing else to do, that those houses contained about thirty-eight apartments on the first floor and nineteen on the second. These apartments were separated by some kind of cheap and transitory partition, which could not stand the climatic changes, and so has gone to decay; but these Indians were determined to have their rooms separated in some way, for they were very polite and decorous to a fault. No Aztec gentleman would emerge from his room until he had completed his toilet, if it cost him his position.

I once heard of an Aztec who lived away down in old Mexico somewhere several centuries ago and who was the pink of politeness. He wore full-dress winter and summer, the whole year round, and studied a large work on etiquette every evening. At night he would undress himself by unhooking the german-silver ring from his nose and hanging it on the back of a chair.

One night a young man from the capital, named Ozone, or something like that, a relative of the Montezumas, came over to stay a week or two with this Aztec dude. As a good joke he slipped in and nipped the nose-ring of his friend just to see if he would so far violate the proprieties as to appear at breakfast time without it.

Morning came and the dude awoke to find the bright rays of a Mexican sun streaming in through his casement. He rose, and, bathing himself in a gourd, he looked on the back of the chair for his clothing, but it was not there. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. He called for assistance, but no one came. He called again and again, louder and still more loud, but help came not. He went to the casement and looked out upon the plaza. The plaza did not turn away. A Mexican plaza is not easily dashed.

He called till he was hoarse, but all was still in the house. Hollow echoes alone came back to him to mock him.

At night, when the rest of the household returned from a protracted picnic in the distant hills, young Ozone ascended the ladder which he carried with him in a shawl-strap, and entering the room of the Aztec dude gave him the nosering with a hearty laugh, but, alas! he was greeted with the wild, piercing shriek of a maniac robbed of his clothing; the man had suffered such mental tortures during the long, long day, that when night came, reason tottered on her throne. It is said that he never regained his faculties, but would always greet his visitors with a wild forty-cent shriek and bury his face in his hands. His friends tried to get him into society again, but he could not be prevailed upon to go. He seemed to be afraid that he would be shocked in some way, or that some one might take advantage of him and read an immoral poem to him.

IN THE SOUTH

|ASHEVILLE, N.C., December 9.--There is no place in the United States, so far as I know, where the cow is more versatile or ambidextrous, if I may be allowed the use of a term that is far above my station in life, than here in the mountains of North Carolina, where the obese 'possum and the anonymous distiller have their homes.

Not only is the Tar-heel cow the author of a pale but athletic style of butter, but in her leisure hours she aids in tilling the perpendicular farm on the hillside, or draws the products to market. In this way she contrives to put in her time to the best advantage, and when she dies, it casts a gloom over the community in which she has resided.

The life of a North Carolina cow is indeed fraught with various changes and saturated with a zeal which is praiseworthy in the extreme. From the sunny days when she gambols through the beautiful valleys, inserting her black, retrousse and perspiration-dotted nose in to the blue grass from ear to ear, until at life's close, when every part and portion of her overworked system is turned into food, raiment or overcoat buttons, the life of the Tar-heel cow is one of intense activity.

Her girlhood is short, and almost before we have deemed her emancipated from calfhood herself we find her in the capacity of a mother. With the cares of maternity other demands are quickly made upon her. She is obliged to ostracize herself from society, and enter into the prosaic details of producing small, pallid globules of butter, the very pallor of which so thoroughly belies its lusty strength.

The butter she turns out rapidly until it begins to be worth something, when she suddenly suspends publication and begins to haul wood to market. In this great work she is assisted by the pearl-gray or ecru colored jackass of the tepid South. This animal has been referred to in the newspapers throughout the country, and yet he never ceases to be an object of the greatest interest.

Jackasses in the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled to successfully salt the mines.

The burro has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make it more joyous.

Here the jackass at times becomes a coworker with the cow in hauling tobacco and other necessaries of life into town, but he goes no further in the matter of assistance. He compels her to tread the cheese press alone and contributes nothing whatever in the way of assistance for the butter industry.

The North Carolina cow is frequently seen here driven double or single by means of a small rope line attached to a tall, emaciated gentleman, who is generally clothed with the divine right of suffrage, to which he adds a small pair of ear-bods during the holidays.

The cow is attached to each shaft and a small singletree, or swingletree, by means of a broad strap harness. She also wears a breeching, in which respect she frequently has the advantage of her escort.

I think I have never witnessed a sadder sight than that of a new milch cow, torn away from home and friends and kindred dear, descending a steep, mountain road at a rapid rate and striving in her poor, weak manner to keep out of the way of a small Jackson democratic wagon loaded with a big hogshead full of tobacco. It seems to me so totally foreign to the nature of the cow to enter into the tobacco traffic, a line of business for which she can have no sympathy and in which she certainly can feel very little interest.

Tobacco of the very finest kind is produced here, and is used mainly for smoking purposes. It is the highest-priced tobacco produced in this country. A tobacco broker here yesterday showed me a large quantity of what he called export tobacco. It looks very much like other tobacco while growing.

He says that foreigners use a great deal of this kind. I am learning all about the Tobacco industry while here, and as fast as I get hold of any new facts I will communicate them to the press. The newspapers of this country have done much for me, not only by publishing many pleasant things about me, but by refraining from publishing other things about me, and so I am glad to be able, now and then, to repay this kindness by furnishing information and facts for which I have no use myself, but which may be of incalculable value to the press.

As I write these lines I am informed that the snow is twenty-six inches deep here and four feet deep at High Point in this State. People who did not bring in their pomegranates last evening are bitterly bewailing their thoughtlessness to-day.

A great many people come here from various parts of the world, for the climate. When they have remained here for one winter, however, they decide to leave it where it is.

It is said that the climate here is very much like that of Turin. But I did not intend to go to Turin even before I heard about that.

Please send my paper to the same address, and if some one who knows a good remedy for chilblains will contribute it to the Sabbath Globe, I shall watch for it with great interest. Yours as here 2 4.

Bill N ye.

P.S.--I should have said relative to the cows of this State that if the owners would work their butter more and their cows less, they would confer a great boon on the consumer of both. B. N.

IN THE PARK

|TO the general public I may say that I violate no confidence in saying that spring is the most joyful season of the year. But June is also a good month. Well has the poet ejaculated, "And what is so rare as a day in June?" though I have seen days in March that were so rare that they were almost raw. This is not a weather report; however. I started out to state that Central Park just now is looking its very best, and opens up with the prospects of doing a good business this season. A ride through the Park just now is a delight to one who loves to commune with nature, especially human nature.

The nobility of New York now turns out to get the glorious air and ventilate its crest. I saw several hundred crests and coats-of-arms the other day in an hour's time, and it was rather a poor day, too, for a great many of our best people are just changing from their spring to their light, summer coats-of-arms.

One of the best crests I saw was a nice, large, red crest, about the size of an adult rhubarb pie, with a two-year-old Durham unicorn above it, bearing in his talons the unique maxim, "_Sans culottes, sans snockemonthegob, sans ery sipelas est_."

And how true this is, too, in a great many cases.

Another very handsome crest on the carriage of the van Studentickels consisted of a towel-rack penchant, with cockroach regardant, holding in his beak a large red tape-worm on which was inscribed: "_Spirituous frumenti, cum homo to-morrow_."

Many of the crests contained terse Latin mottoes, taken from the inscriptions on peppermint conversation candies, and were quite cute. A coat-of-arms, consisting of a small Limburger cheese couchant, above which stood a large can of chloride of potash, on which was inscribed the words, "Miss, may I see you home?" I thought very taking and just mysterious enough to make it exciting.

Some day I am going to get myself a crest. I am only waiting for something to put it on. It will consist of a monkey with his eye knocked out and a bright green parrot with his tail pulled off, and over this the simple remark: "We have had a high old time," or words to that effect.

Not so many equestrians were out as usual on the day I visited the park, but those who were out afforded the observer a beautiful view of the park between their persons and the saddle. The equestriennes were more numerous, and one or two especially were as beautiful as anything that nature ever turned out. One young woman, in a neat-fitting plug hat, looked to me like a peri. It has been a good while now since I saw a peri, but I have always heard them very highly spoken of, and I hope she will not be offended when she reads these lines and finds that I regard her in that light.

Carriage-horses are dressing about as they did last season, except that pon-pon tails are more worn, especially at the end. Neck-yokes are cut low this year so as to show the shoulders of the wearer, and horses in mourning wear their tails at half-mast.

The porous plastron is not in favor this year, but many horses who interfere are wearing life-preservers over the fetlock, and sometimes a small chest-protector of russet leather over the joint, according to the taste of the wearer.

Polka-dot or half-mourning dogs are much affected by people who are beginning to get the upper hand of their grief. Much taste is shown in the selection of dogs for the coming season, and many owners chain their coachman to the dog, so that if any one were to come and try to abduct the dog the coachman could bite him and drive him away. A good coachman to take care of a watch-dog is almost invaluable.

A custom of taking the butler along in the seat with the coachman is growing in favor for two reasons: First, it shows that you have a butler, and, second, you know that while he is out with you he is not putting paste in the place of your diamonds at home. So I had almost said that it paste to do this.

The automatic or jointless footman is still popular, and a young man who has a good turning-lathe leg and an air of impenetrable gloom can get a job most any time.

Many New York gentlemen who are fond of driving take their grooms out to Central Park every afternoon for an airing. This is a wise provision, for those who have associated much with grooms will agree with me that a little airing now and then is just what they need.

There ought to be a book of park etiquette printed soon, however, for the guidance of its patrons. In the first place, it should be considered.

Autre for a gentleman to hire a coupe by the hour in order to recover from alcoholic prostration, and then sleep up and down the drive with his feet out the window. It is not respectful, and besides that the blood is liable to all rush to his head.

Drunken cab-drivers, too, should not be permitted to drive in the park, for only a little while ago one of them is said to have fallen from his high perch and injured his crest.

A park policeman should be specially detailed as a breath tester to stand at each entrance and smell the breath of all drivers and other patrons of the park. Let us enforce the law.

But the most curious feature about the exhibition afternoon spin in the Park is the great prevalence of mourning symbols. Almost, if not quite, one-third of the carriages one meets is decorated with black in every possible way, till sometimes it looks like a runaway funeral procession.

Why people should come to Central Park to advertise their woe by means of long black mourning tassels at their horses' heads and a draped driver with broad bands of bombazine concealing the russet tops of his boots, sometimes dressed in black throughout, is more than I can understand.

The honest, earnest and genuine affection of a good woman for a worthy man, alive or dead, is too sacred to treat lightly and the love that survives the wreck and ruin of gathering years has inspired more than one man to deeds of daring whereby he has won everlasting renown, but the woe that is divided up among the servants and shared in by the horses is not in good taste, it is not in good order and there are flies on it.

It is like saying to the world come and see how I suffer. It is parading your sore toe in Central Park, where people with sore toes are not supposed to congregate. It is like a widow wailing her woe through the "Want" column of a healthy morning paper. It is, in effect, saying to Christendom, come and hear me snort and see me paw up the ground in my paroxysms of wild and uncontrollable anguish. My grief is of such a penetrating nature and of that searching variety that it has broken out at the barn, and even the horses that I bought two weeks after the funeral, with a part of the life insurance money, have gone into mourning, and the coachman who got here day before yesterday from Liverpool has tied himself up in black bombazine and takes special delight in advertising our sorrow.

I do not believe that it will always be popular to wear mourning for our friends unless we feel a little doubtful about where they went.

Black is offensive to the eye, offensive to the nose, and it makes your flesh crêpe to touch it. Will the proofreader please deal gently with the above joke and I will do as much for him sometime.

Henry Ward Beecher had the right idea of the way to treat death, and when at last it came his turn to die his home and his church both seemed to say: "The great preacher is gone, but there is nothing about the change that is sad."

There is something the matter with grief that works itself up into black rosettes and long black banners that sweep the ground and shut out the sky and look like despair and feel like the season-cracked back of a warty dragon.

But wealth has its little eccentricities and we must bear with them. But he alone is indeed rich who is content and who does not look under the bed every night for an indictment. Look at poor old Mr. Sharp, with his stock of Aldermen depreciating on his hands--men for whom he paid a big price only a few years ago and who would not attract attention now on a ten-cent counter, while he don't feel very well himself.

No, I would not swap places with J. Sharp and ride through Central Park behind a pair of rip, snorting horses, with mourning rosettes on their heads, and feel that I must hurry back to help select an unprejudiced jury. I would rather hang on to the brow of a Broadway car till I got to Fifty-second street, and then stroll over to the menagerie and feed red pepper to the Sacred Cow and have a good, plain, quiet time than to wear fine clothes and be wealthy and hate myself all the time. I believe that I am happier in my untroubled, dreamless sleep on my quiet couch, which draws a salary during the daytime as an upright piano; happier browsing about at a different restaurant each day, so that the waiters will not get well acquainted with me and expect me to give them the money that I am saving up to go to Europe with; happier, I say, to be thus tossed about on the bosom of the great, heaving human tide than to have forty or fifty millions of dollars concealed about my person that I cannot remember how I obtained.

I dislike notoriety, and nothing irritates me more than the coarse curiosity of people who ride at night in the elevated trains and peer idly into my room as I toil over my sewing or go gayly about humming a simple air as I prepare the evening meal over my cute little portable oil stove, and though I have not courted this interest on the part of the people, and though I would prefer to live less in the eye of the public, I feel that, occupying the position I do, I cannot expect to wholly consult my own wishes in the matter, and I am content to live quietly and enjoy good health rather than wear good clothes and feel rocky all the time.

I would rather have a healthy alimentary

Than he garnished all over with passementerie.

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD.

|WHEN Patrick Henry put his old cast-iron spectacles on the top of his head and whooped for liberty, he did not know that some day we would have more of it than we knew what to do with. He little dreamed that the time would come when we would have more liberty than we could pay for. When Mr. Henry sawed the air and shouted for liberty or death, I do not believe that he knew the time would one day come when Liberty would stand knee deep in the mud of Bedloe's Island and yearn for a solid place to stand upon.

It seems to me that we have too much liberty in this country in some ways. We have more liberty than we have money. We guarantee that every man in America shall fill himself up full of liberty at our expense, and the less of an American he is the more liberty he can have. If he desires to enjoy himself, all he needs is a slight foreign accent and a willingness to mix up with politics as soon as he can get his baggage off the steamer. The more I study American institutions the more I regret that I was not born a foreigner, so that I could have something to say about the management of our great land. If I could not be a foreigner, I believe I would prefer to be a Mormon or an Indian not taxed.