Part 7

"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regard to some things. Every feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it, even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference between a new milch cow or a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these embroidered nightshirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago. Been a toilet-soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder in the front yard, and a Southern aspect. The farm was no good. You couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits a passle of slim-tailed yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream over and tried to sell it at the new crematory while the funeral and hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read my paper and don't get left like that."

"What are the prospects for farmers in your State?"

"Well, they are pore. Never was so pore, in fact, sence I've ben there. Folks wonder why boys leaves the farm. My boys left so as to get protected, they said, and so they went into a clothing store, one of 'em, and one went into hardware, and one is talkin' protection in the Legislature this winter. They said that farmin' was gettin' to be like fishin' and huntin', well enough for a man that has means and leisure, but they couldn't make a livin' at it, they said. Another boy is in a drug store, and the man that hires him says he is a royal feller."

"Kind of a castor royal feller," I said, with a shriek of laughter.

He waited until I had laughed all I wanted to, and then he said:

"I've always hollered for high tariff in order to hyst the public debt, but now that we've got the National debt coopered I wish they'd take a little hack at mine. I've put in fifty years farmin'. I never drank licker in any form. I've worked from ten to eighteen hours a day; been economical in cloz and never went to a show more'n a dozen times in my life; raised a family and learned upwards of two hundred calves to drink out of a tin pail without blowing their vittles up my sleeve. My wife worked alongside o' me sewin' new seats on the boys' pants, skim-min' milk, and even helpin' me load hay. For forty years we toiled along together and hardly got time to look into each other's faces or dared to stop and get acquainted with each other. Then her health failed. Ketched cold in the springhouse, prob'ly skimmin' milk, and wash-in' pans, and scaldin' pails, and spankin' butter. Anyhow, she took in a long breath one day while the doctor and me was watchin' her, and she says to me, 'Henry,' says she, 'I've got a chance to rest,' and she put one tired, wore-out hand on top of the other tired, wore-out hand, and I knew she'd gone where they don't work all day and do chores all night.

"I took time to kiss her then. I'd been too busy for a good while previous to do that, and then I called in the boys. After the funeral it was too much for them to stay around and eat the kind of cookin' we had to put up with, and nobody spoke up around the house as we used to. The boys quit whistlin' around the barn, and talked kind of low to themselves about goin' to town and getting a job.

"They're all gone now, and the snow is four feet deep up there on mother's grave in the old berryin'-ground."

Then both of us looked out of the car-window quite a long while without saying anything.

"I don't blame the boys for going into something else long's other things pays better; but I say--and I say what I know--that the man who holds the prosperity of this country in his hands, the man that actually makes the money for other people to spend, the man that eats three good, simple, square meals a day and goes to bed at 9 o'clock so that future generations with good blood and cool brains can go from his farm to the Senate and Congress and the White House--he is the man that gets left at last to run his farm, with nobody to help him but a hired man and a high protective tariff. The farms in our State is mortgaged for over $700,000,000. Ten of our Western States--I see by the papers--has got about three billion and a half mortgages on their farms, and that don't count the chattel mortgages filed with the town clerks on farm machinery, stock, waggins, and even crops, by gosh! that ain't two inches high under the snow. That's what the prospect is for farms now. The Government is rich, but the men that made it, the men that fought perarie fires and perarie wolves and Injins and potato bugs and blizzards, and has paid the war debt and pensions and everything else, and hollored for the Union and the Republican party and high tariff and anything else that they was told to, is left high and dry this cold winter with a mortgage of seven billions and a half on the farms they have earned and saved a thousand times over."

"Yes; but look at the glory of sending from the farm the future President, the future Senator and the future member of Congress."

"That looks well on paper; but what does it really amount to? Soon as a farmer boy gits in a place like that he forgets the soil that produced and holds his head as high as a hollyhock. He bellers for protection to everybody but the farmer, and while he sails round in a highty-tighty room with a fire in it night and day, his father on the farm has to kindle his own fire in the morning with elm slivers, and he has to wear his son's lawn-tennis suit next to him or freeze to death, and he has to milk in an old gray shawl that has held that member of Congress since he was a baby, by gorry! and the old lady has to sojourn through the winter in the flannels that Silas wor at the rigatter before he went to Congress.

"So I say, and I think that Congress agrees with me, Damn a farmer, anyhow!"

He then went away.

A CONVENTIONAL SPEECH

|DURING the recent conventions a great many good speeches have been made which did not get into print for various reasons. Some others did not even get a hearing and still others were prepared by delegates who could not get the eye of the presiding officer.

The manuscript of the following speech bears the marks of earnest thought, and though the author did not obtain recognition on the floor of the convention I cannot bear to see an appreciative public deprived of it:

MR. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are met together here as a representation of the greatest and grandest party in the world--a party that has been first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of its countrymen, as the good book has it. We come together here to-day, Gentlemen, to perpetuate by our action the principles which won us victory at the polls and wrenched it from an irritated and disagreeable foe on many a tented field. I refer to freedom.

Our party has ever been the champion of freedom. We have made a specialty of freedom. We have ever been in the van. That's why we have been on the move. Where freedom a quarter of a century ago was but a mere name, now we have fostered it and aided it and encouraged it and made it pay.

We have emancipated a whole race, several of whom have since voted the other way. But we must not be discouraged. We are here to work. Let us do it and so advance our common cause and honor God.

But who is to be the leader? Who will be able to carry our victorious banner from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., gayly speaking pieces from the tail-gate of a train? Who is sufficiently obscure to safely make the race? (Cries of "Jeremiah M. Rusk," "Rudolph Minkins Pitler," "Blaine," "James Swartout," "John Sherman," "Charlie Kinney," &c.)

The eye of the nation is upon us. We cannot escape the awful responsibility which we have to-day assumed. With all our anxiety to please our friends we must not forget that we are here in the interests of universal freedom. Do not allow yourselves to be blinded, gentlemen, by the assurance that this is to be a businessman's campaign, a campaign in which conflicting business interests are to figure more than the late war. It is a fight involving universal freedom, as I said in our conventions four, eight and twelve years ago.

We have before us a pure and highly elocutionary platform. Let us nominate a man who will, as I may say, affilliate and amalgamate with that platform. Who is that man? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine," "Lockwood, Lockwood, Belva A. Lockwood," and general confusion, during which John A. Wise is seen to jerk loose about a nickel's worth of Billy Mahone's whiskers.)

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the convention, there has never been a more harmonious convention in the United States to my knowledge since the Sioux massacre in Minnesota. We are all here for the best good of the party and each is willing to concede something rather than create any ill-feeling. Look at Mahone for instance.

We have a good platform, now let us nominate a man whose record is in harmony with that platform. Freedom has ever been our watchword. Now that we have made the human race within our borders absolutely free, let us add to our magnificent history as a party by one crowning act. Let us fight for the Emancipation of Rum!

Rum has always been a mighty power in American politics, but it has not been absolutely free. Let us be the first to recognize it as the great corner-stone of American institutions. Let us make it free.

We have never had any Daniel Websters or Henry Clays since rum went up from 20 cents a gallon to its present price. The war tax on whiskey for over twenty years has made freedom a farce and liberty a loud and empty snort in mid-air. 'Who, then, shall be our standard-bearer as we journey onward towards victory? (Cries of "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine," and confusion.)

Gentlemen, I wish that a better and thrillinger orator had been selected in my place to name the candidate on whom alone I can unite. Soldiers, rail-splitters, statesmen, canal boys, tailors, farmers, merchants and school teachers have been Presidents of the United States, but to my knowledge no convention has ever yet named a distiller. I have the honor to-day to name a modest man for the high office of President; a man who never before allowed his name to be presented to a convention; a man who never even stated in the papers that his name would not be presented to the convention; a man who has never sought or courted publicity even in his own business; a man who has been a distiller in a quiet way for over fifteen years and yet has never even advertised in the papers; a man who has so carefully shunned the eye of the world that only two or three of us know where his place of business is; a man who has such an utter contempt for office that he has shot two Government officials who claimed to be connected with the internal revenue business; a man who can drink or let it alone, but who has aimed to divide the time up about equally between the two; a man who had absolutely nothing to do with the war, not having heard about it in time; a man who defies his culumniators or anybody else of his heft; a man who would paint the White House red; a man who takes great pleasure in being his own worst enemy. (Cries of "Name him! Name him!" Great confusion, and cries of pain from several harmonious delegates who are getting the worst of it.)

Not to take up your time, let me say in closing that the day for great men as candidates for an important office is past. Great men in a great country antagonize different factions and are then compelled to fall back on literature. What we want is an obscure and silent chump. I have found him. He has never antagonized but two men in his life and they are now voting in a better land. He is a plain man, and his career at Washington would be marked with more or less tobacco juice. For over fifteen years he has been constructing at his country seat a lurid style of whiskey known as The Essence of Crime. Quietly and unostentatiously he has fought for the emancipation of whiskey everywhere. He says that we are too prone to worry about our clothes and their cost and to give too little thought to our tax-ridden rum.

Then, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, here in the full glare of public approval, feeling that the name I am about to pronounce will in a few moments flash across a mighty continent and greet the moist and moaning news editor, the grimy peasant, the pussy banker and the streaked tennis player; that the name I now nourish in my panting brain will soon be taken up on willing tongues and borne across the union, rising and saluting the hot blue dome of heaven, pulsating across the ocean, rocking the beautifully upholstered thrones of the Old World and calling forth a dark blue torrent of profanity from the offices of the illustrated papers, none of which will be provided with his portrait, I desire to name Mr. Clem Beasly, of Arkansaw, a man who has spent his best years manufacturing man's greatest enemy. I hurrah for him and holler for him, and love him for the (hic) enemy he has made.

A PLEA FOR ONE IN ADVERSITY

|I LEARN with much sadness that Mr. William H. Vanderbilt's once princely fortune has shrivelled down to $150,000,000. This piece of information comes to me like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. Once petted, fondled and caressed, William H. Vanderbilt shorn of his wealth, and resting upon no foundation but his sterling integrity, must struggle along with the rest of us.

It would be but truth to say that Mr. Vanderbilt will receive very little sympathy from the world now in the days of his adversity and penury when the wolf is at his door. There are many of his former friends who will say that William could economize and struggle along on $150,000,000, but let them try it once and see how they would like it themselves; $150,000,000, with no salary outside of that amount, will not last forever.

A poor man might pinch along in such a case if he could get something to do, but we must remember that Mr. Vanderbilt has always lived in comparatively comfortable circumstances. His hands, therefore, are tender and his stomach juts out into the autumn air. He will, therefore, find it hard at first to husk corn and dig potatoes. When he stoops over a sawbuck around New York this winter his stomach will be in the way and his vest will no doubt split open on the back. All these things will annoy the spoiled child of luxury, and his broad features will be covered with sadness. They will, at least, if there is sadness enough in the country to do it.

The fall of William 'H. Vanderbilt and his headlong plunge from the proud eminence to which his means had elevated him downward to the cringing poverty of $150,000,000 should be a sad warning to us all. This fate may fall to any of us. Oh, let us be prepared when the summons comes. For one I believe I am ready. Should the dread news come to me to-morrow that such a fate had befallen me, I would nerve myself up to it and meet it like a man. With the ruin of my former fortune I would buy me a crust of bread and some pie, and then I would take the balance and go over into Canada and there I would establish a home for friendless bank cashiers who are now there, several hundred of them, all alone and with no one to love them.

All kinds of charitable institutions, costing many thousands of dollars, are built in America from year to year for the comfort of homeless and friendless women and children, but man is left out in the cold. Why is this thus. Lots of people in Canada, of course, are doing their best to make it cheerful and sunny for our lovely cashiers there, but still it is not home. As a gentleman once said in my hearing, "There is no place like home." And he was right.

In conclusion, I do not know what to say, unless it be to appeal to the newspaper men of the country in Mr. Vanderbilt's behalf. While he was wealthy he was proud and arrogant. He said, "Let the newspapers be blankety blanked to blank," or words to that effect, but we do not care for that. Let us forget all that and remember that his sad fate may some day be our own. In our affluence let us not lose sight of the fact that Van is suffering. Let us procure a place for him on some good paper. His grammar and spelling are a little bit rickety but he could begin as janitor and gradually work his way up. Parties having clothing or funds which they feel like giving may forward the same to me at Hudson, Wis., postpaid, and if the clothes do not fit Van they may possibly fit me.

New York, Oct. 7,1883.

Bill Nye.

P.S,--Oct. 30.--Since issuing the above I have received several consignments of clothes for the suffering, also one sack of corn-meal and a ham. Let the good work go on, for it is far more blessed to give than to receive, I am told; and as Jay Gould said when, as a boy, he gave the wormy half of an apple to his dear teacher, "Half is better than the hole."

THE RHUBARB-PIE

|IN June the medicated tropical fruit known as the rhubarb-pie is in full bloom. The farmer goes forth into his garden to find out where the coy, old setting hen is hiding from the vulgar gaze, and he discovers that his pie-plant is ripe. He then forms a syndicate with his wife for the purpose of publishing the seditious and rebellious pie.

It is singular that the War Department has never looked into the scheme for fighting the Indians with rhubarb-pie, instead of the regular army. One-half the army could then put in its time court-martialing the other half, and all would be well.

Rhubarb undoubtedly has its place in the _materia medica_, but when it sneaks into the pie of commerce it is out of place. Castor-oil, and capsicum, and dynamite, and chloroform, and porous-plasters, and arsenic, all have their uses in one way or another, but they would not presume to enter into the composition of a pie.

They know it would not be tolerated. But rhubarb, elated with its success as a drug, forgets its humble origin and aspires to become au article of diet.

Now the pumpkin knows its place. You never knew of a pumpkin trying to monkey with science. The pumpkin knows that it was born to bury itself in the bosom of the pumpkin-pie. It does not therefore, go about the country claiming to be a remedy for spavin.

Supposing that the gory, yet toothsome steak, that grows on the back of the twenty-one-year-old steer's neck, should claim for itself that it could go into a drug-store and cure rheumatism and heartburn. Wouldn't every one say that it was out of place and uncalled for? Certainly. The back of the tough old steer's neck knows that it is destined for the mince-pie, and nature did not intend otherwise. So also with the vulcanized gristle, and arctic overshoe heel, and the shoe-string, and the white button, and all those elements that go to make up the mince-pie. They do not try to make medicines and cordials and anodynes of themselves. Rhubarb is the only thing that successfully holds its place with the apothecary, and yet draws a salary in the pie business.

I do not know how others may look at this matter, but I do not think it is right. Still you find this medicated pie in the social circle everywhere. We guard our homes with the strictest surveillance in other matters, and yet we allow the low, vulgar pie-plant-pie to creep into our houses and into our hearts. That is, it creeps into our hearts figuratively speaking. The heart is not, as a matter of fact, one of the digestive organs, but I use the term just as all poets do under like circumstances.

Many, however, will always continue to use the rhubarb-pie, and for those I give below a receipt which has stood the test of years,--one which results in a pie that frosts and sudden atmospheric changes cannot injure.

None but the youngest rhubarb should be used in making pies. Go out and kill your rhubarb with a club, taking care not to kill the old and tough variety. Give it a chance to repent. Remove the skin carefully, and take out the digestive economy of the plant. Be specially careful to get off the "fuzzy" coating, as rhubarb-pies with hair on are not in such favor as they were when the country was new. Now put in the basement of cement and throw on your rhubarb. Flavor with linseed-oil, and hammer out the top crust until it is moderately thin. Then solder on the cover and drill holes for the copper rivets. Having headed the rivets in place, nail on zinc monogram, and kiln-dry the pie slowly. When it is cooled, put on two coats of metallic paint, and adjust the time-lock. After you find that the pie is impervious to the action of chilled steel or acids, remove and feed it to the man who cheerfully pays for his whiskey and steals his newspaper.

A COUNTRY FIRE

|LAST night I was awakened by the cry of fire. It was a loud, hoarse cry, such as a large, adult man might emit from his window on the night air. The town was not large, and the fire-department, I had been told, was not so effective as it should have been.

For that reason I arose and carefully dressed myself in order to assist, if possible. I carefully lowered myself from my room by means of a staircase which I found concealed in a dark and mysterious corner of the passage.

On the streets all was confusion. The hoarse cry of fire had been taken up by others, passed around from one to another, till it had swollen into a dull roar. The cry of fire in a small town is always a grand sight.

All along the street in front of Mr. Pendergast's roller rink the blanched faces of the people could be seen. Men were hurrying to and fro, knocking the by-standers over in their frantic attempts to get somewhere else. With great foresight Mr. Pendergast, who had that day finished painting his roller rink a dull-roan color, removed from the building the large card which bore the legend

FRESH PAINT!

so that those who were so disposed might feel perfectly free to lean up against the rink and watch the progress of the flames.

Anon the bright glare of the devouring element might have been seen bursting through the casement of Mr. Cicero Williams' residence, facing on the alley west of Mr. Pendergast's rink. Across the street the spectator whose early education had not been neglected could distinctly read the sign of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Alonzo Burlingame, which was lit up by the red glare of the flames so that the letters stood out plain as follows:

ALONZO BURLINGAME,

Dealer in Soft and Hard Coal, Ice-Cream, Wood, Lime.

Cement, Perfumery, Nails, Putty, Spectacles, and Horse

Radish.

Chocolate Caramels and Tar Roofing.

Gas-Pitting and Undertaking in All Its Branches.

Hides, Tallow and Maple Syrup.

Fine Gold Jewelry, Silverware and Salt.

Glue, Codfish and Gent's Neckwear.

Undertaker and Confectioner.

}}"Diseases of Horses and Children a Specialty."

John White, Ptr.

The flames spread rapidly, until they threat ened the Palace rink of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Pendergast, whose genial and urbane manner has endeared him to all.

With a degree of forethought worthy of a better cause, Mr. Leroy W. Butts suggested the propriety of calling out the hook and ladder company, an organization of which every one seemed to be justly proud. Some delay ensued in trying to find the janitor of Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company No. 1's building, but at last he was secured, and after he had gone home for the key, Mr. Butts ran swiftly down the street to awake the foreman, but after he had dressed himself and inquired anxiously about the fire, he said that he was not foreman of the company since the 2d of April.