Part 19

His fun is contagious. Socially he is one of the most entertaining of men, with a good story apropos of nearly everything. He tells in his own most humorous way one instance of the Chicago reporter’s impudence and enterprise. One night he had been in bed in the Grand Pacific Hotel perhaps an hour or so when there came a very decided rapping at his chamber door.

“Who’s there?” called Max O’Rell.

“A reporter,” came the answer.

“Well, I can’t see you now. I’m in bed.”

The Frenchman heard his door being pushed open, and the chair which he had placed against it tumbled over. Some one advanced into the room, struck a match, and proceeded to light the gas.

“Well, well! What’ll you have, sir, what’ll you have?” cried Max O’Rell, indignant at this cool intruder.

The reporter tossed the match into the fireplace, and throwing himself into a chair, said:

“What’ll I have? Oh, I’ll have a whiskey cocktail.”

He wrote a book entitled “America as Seen through French Spectacles.” If he had not written that book he would have been still more popular with the lyceum. He made a trip through Australia and wrote another book which the Australians didn’t like. Had he possessed Mark Twain’s sagacity, sincerity, and love of his fellow-man, and had he seen things from their favorable point of view instead of from their objectionable side, he might certainly get as much fun out of it and his popularity would have continued. He left a riley wake clear around the world, whereas the American humorist made friends of all who met or heard or read him. I am very fond of Max O’Rell. At the same time, it is impossible to enjoy all his eccentricities. But I made allowance for all of his peculiarities, and my heart went out in sympathy for him when he was obliged to cut short his last tour and return to London because of ill health.

He is the heroic mirth provoker of his time--unlike any other humorous lecturer. His audiences are kept in convulsions of laughter from beginning to end. Occasionally one thinks he has found a let-up and that he is going to have a rest, when all of a sudden he is struck in another funny spot, and things go on that way until he has finished. I never could understand why he should not be one of the greatest natural platform attractions in the world, for I have never known a man to give an audience more delight.

In his “Brother Jonathan and His Continent” he says: “Major Pond was the only man I met in America who was not a colonel.”

* * * * *

BILL NYE was an editor when I first met him, and as I had been a printer, of course I felt akin to him. I had formed an attachment for him that made me wish to know him, so when I found myself in Laramie, on a return trip from California, I improved the opportunity to make his acquaintance. The trains from East and West across the continent met at Laramie, and made a stop of one hour, and Laramie was a lively city during that time.

I used my dinner hour to call on William. I asked a man to direct me to Bill Nye’s office, and he replied, “Just over that livery stable,” pointing across the way. I started across the street. Just over the road doorway of the stable hung a sign painted in black letters on a plain board:

“LARAMIE BOOMERANG

Walk Down the Alley Twist the Gray Mule’s Tail _Take the Elevator Immediately_.”

I went into the sanctum and found Nye writing at a plain table at the far side of the room, quite unaware of my presence. From photographs and descriptions I knew him by his back, and at once exclaimed:

“Hello, Bill!”

Nye rose from his seat and replied smilingly: “Hello, Jim! I guess this is Jim Pond. How are you, Major?”

I told him people were reading and talking of him all over the country, and that I believed he could make money lecturing. He replied that he had never given the matter a thought, and was trying to earn a living with his pen and through the Laramie postmastership, to which he had just been appointed.

From that time on Bill Nye and I were close friends. When he came East to live, and purchased his Staten Island home, our wives and children became friends also, and we knew and loved one another, and that love never lost any of its ardor.

I did not see Nye again until about 1886. I was looking out of my office window in the Everett House in New York, and noticed a tall, straight, slim, fair-haired man, in a slouch hat, whose countenance wore an expression of inquiry, and who seemed to be trying to find the entrance to my place. We recognized “ourselves,” and I beckoned to him, and told him to come around to the front door and have a bell-boy show him to my rooms. I added that there was no sign, or mule’s tail to twist, or elevator to take.

Bill came in and stared about at the pictures of great men and women on the walls as if he were a fresh, unsophisticated country boy--and so he was so far as experience was concerned. He told me that he had been engaged on the staff of the New York _World_ and was going to move to New York. The hardest part was to accustom himself to the politics of _The World_, but he said he supposed he could become used to that as soon as he became acclimated.

After a pleasant chat we dined together at Moretti’s. Nye asked if he would be expected to learn to eat macaroni like some of our Bohemian neighbors. This was his first Italian dinner; it was all of great interest to him, all new, and he saw it from the standpoint of an inexperienced youth.

I told him that now he was coming East to live I would make some money for him in the lyceum. He seemed doubtful, but said he would try it.

His first lecture under my auspices was given in Bridgeport, Conn. A certain organization (the Y. M. C. A.) in that place seemed to think the name of Bill Nye would draw, and engaged to pay him $150; so Bill was fitted out with his contract, and went to Bridgeport. The committee met him, and were very polite.

The contract read: “In consideration for said lecture the party of the first part agrees to pay to the party of the second part (Mr. Nye) $150 in currency on the evening of the lecture, before eight o’clock.”

Mr. Nye was on hand before the appointed time. A little after eight o’clock the president of the organization said:

“Mr. Nye, we are ready. Will you please follow me to the stage?”

Nothing was said about payment.

Mr. Nye said he was ready, but that he must return to New York as soon as the lecture was over, and added that he hoped he would not be detained. The president made no response, but walked on, followed by Bill. The Opera House was crowded, and the president remarked to the speaker of the evening that it was the largest house they remembered having on an opening night.

At the close of the lecture no one came to Mr. Nye to offer payment, and he was obliged to hint to the president that there was a little matter of business that had been forgotten.

“Oh, yes,” returned the president; “come with me to the box-office.”

“It’s twenty minutes to ten,” said Nye, “and I must catch the ten o’clock train.”

When they reached the box-office, the treasurer, who was counting the receipts of the evening, said:

“Mr. Nye, shall we settle with you or with Major Pond?”

“I have a copy of the contract, the same that you are holding in your hand, which reads ‘Settlement to be made in currency with party of the second part before eight o’clock.’”

“Oh, how much is it?”

“One hundred and fifty dollars in currency,” said Nye.

“One hundred and fifty dollars! Why, who ever heard of so much money for only an hour’s talk?”

“Did you lose any money on the venture?” asked William.

“Oh, no. The house was full; but we don’t think you ought to exact such an exorbitant sum for an hour’s talk.”

“Gentlemen, I must catch that train in ten minutes. Will you kindly settle with me?”

“You will take our check, won’t you, Mr. Nye?” asked the treasurer.

“Yes, if the contract says so. How does it read?” asked Mr. Nye, with impatience.

“It does read currency. You won’t take less than $150?”

Mr. Nye said nothing, and the treasurer counted out the money, for which Nye signed a receipt. Then he said:

“Gentlemen, I suppose you delayed this payment and decoyed me in here for the purpose of making me angry, thinking that when you gave me this money I would fling it back in your faces in a mad fit. You are mistaken. I’m a good-tempered man.”

Mr. Nye, like every one human who attempts to make a whole evening of fun, found lecturing irksome. The audience would fairly bubble over with laughter until every fun-liking muscle of their faces relaxed and left one sombre, wet-blanket expression all over the assembly; and there they had to sit, and the humorist had to proceed to the end of the programme without a response. It was the same with Mark Twain until he took a running mate and interspersed pathos by introducing George W. Cable, and by means of a varied programme achieved the greatest success ever known in the way of a platform entertainment.

* * * * *

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY’S recitals of his own pathetic and humorous dialect poems have touched the tender chords in the hearts of the people, and they have vibrated in sympathy with the joys of his creations. His name is one of the best-loved household words in our cultivated American homes. A popular poet is not always a popular reader of his own poems, but Mr. Riley is fully as effective with his voice as with his pen. He is our American Burns.

After he had acquired fame as a very successful reader of his poems, Mr. Nye thought that by combining with him they might be as successful as some others. So Riley was approached, and the result was a combination of humor and pathos for the season of 1888-9. Riley came to New York, and the arrangements were perfected in my office. Nye and I were to be owners of the combination, and Riley, who always declared, “I’m no business man,” was to receive $500 a week and his hotel and travelling expenses.

Advertising methods were next discussed. Something unique must be thought out. I suggested a short biographical sketch of each one. Mr. Riley said, “Bill, you write my autobiography, and I’ll write yours.” This was agreed upon, and the manuscript was put into my hands the next day.

Finally, the programme had to be decided upon, and in another twenty-four hours that was mapped out. After it was finished and ready to send out I had the first copy framed, with a nice mat around it. When the mat was brought in, Riley asked me to let him see it. He took a pen, and in about an hour had decorated it with pen drawings worthy of an artist. It still hangs in my office.

* * * * *

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BILL NYE

_Written by Himself_

_Through James Whitcomb Riley_

Edgar Wilson Nye was born in Maine, in 1850, August 25th, but at two years of age he took his parents by the hand, and,

telling them that Piscataquis County was no place for them, he boldly struck out for St. Croix County, Wis., where the hardy young pioneer soon made a home for his parents. The first year he drove the Indians out of the St. Croix Valley, and suggested to the Northwestern Railroad that it would be a good idea to build to St. Paul as soon as the company could get a grant which would pay them two or three times the cost of construction. The following year he adopted trousers, and made $175 from the sale of wolf scalps. He also cleared twenty-seven acres of land, and raised some watermelons. In 1854 he established and endowed a district school in Pleasant Valley. It was at this time that he began to turn his attention to the abolition of slavery in the South, and to write articles for the press, signed Veritas, in which he advocated the war in 1860, or as soon as the Government could get around to it.

In 1865 he graduated from the farm and began the study of the law. He did not advance very rapidly in this profession, failing several times in his examination, and giving bonds for his appearance at the next term of court. He was, however, a close student of political economy, and studied personal economy at the same time, till he found that he could easily live on ten cents a day and his relatives.

Mr. Nye then began to look about him for a new country to build up and foster, and, as Wisconsin had grown to be so thickly settled in the northwestern part of the State that neighbors were frequently found less than five miles apart, he broke loose from all restraint and took emigrant rates for Cheyenne, Wyo. Here he engaged board at the Inter-Ocean Hotel, and began to look about him for a position in a bank. Not succeeding in this, he tried the law and journalism. He did not succeed in getting a job for some time, but finally was hired as associate editor and janitor of the Laramie _Sentinel_. The salary was small, but Mr Nye’s latitude great, and he was permitted to write anything that he thought would please the people, whether it was news or not.

By and by he had won every heart by his gentle, patient poverty and his delightful parsimony in regard to facts. With a hectic imagination and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper he scarcely cared through the livelong day whether school kept or not.

Thus he rose to Justice of the Peace, and finally to an income reported very large to everybody but the assessor.

He is the father of several very beautiful children by his first wife, who is still living. She is a Chicago girl, and loves her husband far more than he deserves. He is pleasant to the outside world, but a perfect brute in his home. He early learned that, in order to win the love of his wife, he should be erratic, and kick the stove over on the children when he came home. He therefore asserts himself in this way, and the family love and respect him, being awed by his greatness and gentle barbarism.

He eats plain food with both hands, conversing all the time pleasantly with any one who may be visiting at the house. If his children do not behave, he kicks them from beneath the table till they roar with pain, as he chats on with the guests with a bright and everflowing stream of _bons mots_ which please and delight those who visit him to such a degree that they forget that they have had hardly anything to eat.

In conclusion, Mr. Nye is in every respect a lovely character. He feared that injustice might be done him, however, in this sketch, and so he has written it himself.

* * * * *

It is scarcely necessary to say that before these “autobiographies” were written the humorists exchanged life stories and personal data; and in writing the sketches they adhered to the essential facts with reasonable fidelity. The idea proved a happy thought, and there was much comment upon it at the time. Of the two biographies, the one by Mr. Nye was conceded to have the keener edge.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

_Written by Himself_

_Through Edgar Wilson Nye_

The unhappy subject of this sketch was born so long ago that he persists in never referring to the date. Citizens of his native town of Greenfield, Ind., while warmly welcoming his advent, were no less anxious some few years ago to “speed the parting guest.” It seems, in fact, that, the better they came to know him, the more resigned they were to give him up. He was ill-starred from the very cradle, it appears. One day, while but a toddler, he climbed, unseen, to an open window where some potted flowers were ranged, and while leaning from his high chair far out, to catch some dainty, gilded butterfly, perchance, he lost his footing, and, with a piercing shriek, fell headlong to the gravelled walk below; and when, an instant later, the affrighted parents picked him up, he was--a poet.

The father of young Riley was a lawyer of large practice, who used, in moments of deep thought, to regard this boy as the worst case he ever had. This may have been the reason that, in time, he insisted on his reading law, which the boy really tried to do; but, finding that political economy and Blackstone didn’t rhyme, he slid out of the office one hot, sultry afternoon, and ran away with a patent medicine and concert wagon, from the tail end of which he was discovered by some relatives in the next town, violently abusing a brass drum. This was a proud moment for the boy; nor did his peculiar presence of mind entirely desert him till all the country fairs were over for the season. Then, afar off, among strangers in a strange State, he thought it would be fine to make a flying visit home. But he couldn’t fly. Fortunately, in former years he had purloined some knowledge of a trade. He could paint a sign, or a house, or a tin roof--if some one else would furnish him the paint--and one of Riley’s hand-painted picket fences gave rapture to the most exacting eye. Yet, through all his stress and trial, he preserved a simple, joyous nature, together with an everwidening love of men and things in general. He made friends, and money, too--enough, at last, to gratify the highest ambition of his life, namely, to own an overcoat with fur around the tail of it. He then groped his way back home, and worked for nothing on a little country paper that did not long survive the blow. Again excusing himself, he took his sappy paragraphs and poetry to another paper and another town, and there did better till he spoiled it all by devising a Poe poem fraud, by which he lost his job; and, in disgrace and humiliation shoe-mouth deep, his feelings gave way beneath his feet, and his heart broke with a loud report. So the true poet was born.

Of the poet’s present personality we need speak but briefly. His dress is at once elegant and paid for. It is even less picturesque than all-wool. Not liking hair particularly, he wears but little, and that of the mildest shade. He is a good speaker--when spoken to--but a much better listener, and often longs to change places with his audience so that he also may retire. In his writings he probably shows at his best. He always tries to, anyway. Knowing the manifold _faux pas_ and “breaks” in this life of ours, his songs are sympathetic and sincere. Speaking coyly of himself, one day, he said: “I write from the heart; that’s one thing I like about me. I may not write a good hand, and my ‘copy’ may occasionally get mixed up with the market reports, but, all the same, what challenges my admiration is that humane peculiarity of mine--_i.e._, writing from the heart--and, therefore, _to_ the heart.”

* * * * *

The Nye-Riley combination started in Newark, N. J., November 13, 1888. It was our trial venture. I was ill and unable to be present. The receipts were light, for both men were of Western fame, and had yet to acquire reputations in the East. They found some fault because I was not present, so I got out of bed and went the following evening to Orange, N. J., where we found a very small audience, so small that Nye refused to go on, and wished to end the business then and there. It was not until after much persuasion that he consented to appear. The show was a great success “artistically,” but the box-office receipts were only fifty-four dollars.

It was not a pleasant day, for the manager, that followed. The Actors’ Fund had an entertainment in one of the theatres, and I had contributed these “Twins of Genius” as my share of the numerous attractions. They were the success of the occasion, and the newspapers so declared the next day. From that time, applications began to come in from all over the country, East, West, North, and South. The first week’s business showed a balance on the wrong side for the owners, but the “no-business man” did not show a sign of murmuring. Nye’s humorous weekly syndicate newspaper articles made him a drawing attraction, and Riley’s delightful readings of his dialect poems made the entertainment all that the public desired. I ran the show myself in Boston, securing Tremont Temple for the occasion. “Mark Twain” had come to Boston on purpose to attend the entertainment, as he had never heard these “Twins of Genius.” I caught him in the lobby of the Parker House, and told him that he must introduce them. He replied that he believed I was his mortal enemy and determined that he should never have an evening’s enjoyment in my presence. He consented, however, and conducted his brother humorist and the Hoosier poet to the platform. Mark’s presence was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body, and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ, and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the front, the silence was as impressive as the noise had been, as Mark said afterward. At that supreme moment nothing was heard but--silence! I had engaged a stenographer to take down the speech, and this is what Mark said: