Part 20

“I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than once, for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested, when one slept the other snored, if one sold a thing the other scooped the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two: between, I may say, this dynamo and this motor. Not that I mean that the one was always dynamo and the other always motor--or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain well-defined zones of activity the one _was_ always dynamo and the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions became exactly reversed. For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr. Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high, in fact an abnormally high and fine, moral sense, he had no machinery to work it within; whereas Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn’t any moral sense at all, and hasn’t yet, was equipped with all the necessary _plant_ for putting a noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms outside. In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor: Mr. Eng Nye had a stately intellect, but couldn’t make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn’t, but could. That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn’t think things himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material. Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has remained so to this day; they must travel together, conspire together, beguile together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there’s no result. I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye’s deep, and broad, and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn’t his water; it’s the other man’s, and he is only working the pump. And when Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn’t his music, but the other man’s--he is only turning the crank.

“I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will now go to the bat.”

It was a carnival of fun in every sense of the word. Bostonians will not have another such treat in this generation. It was Mark’s last appearance in Boston.

After the performance, the three invincibles went to the Press Club, where a shower of jokes, stories unpublished (and that never will be published), poems, and epigrams was poured into the Boston writers until all were full. The event is still fresh in the memory of all who have survived it. They appeared in all the large cities before great audiences, and the season was financially successful up to the middle of April.

For some weeks Mr. Riley had not been a well man, and it finally became necessary to cancel a long list of bookings. The stars returned to their homes, and settlements with disappointed committees and local managers absorbed all the profits. Pacific Coast correspondents still clamored for Nye, even if Riley were not available; so it was arranged to give Mr. Nye a musical support instead of a poet, and resume the unfinished tour. Nye was well received everywhere, and wrote back cheerful accounts of the Bill Nye troupe from “ocean to ocean.” But it had been the Nye-Riley combination that the people wanted and expected, and in every city where they had appeared together the season before they were wanted again. So we tried it once more, and in the season 1889-90 did a tremendous business in Washington and in the South. The combination was a more profitable attraction than any opera or theatrical company.

This tour ended my business relations with Bill Nye, but it did not end our love each other.

James Whitcomb Riley and Nye were a peculiar pair. They were everlastingly playing practical jokes.

I remember when we were riding together, in the smoking compartment, between Columbus and Cincinnati. Mr. Nye was a great smoker and Mr. Riley did not dislike tobacco. An old farmer came over to Mr. Nye and said:

“Are you Mr. Riley? I heard you was on the train.”

“No, I am not Mr. Riley. He is over there.”

“I knew his father, and I would like to speak with him.”

“Oh, speak with him, yes. But he is deaf, and you want to speak loud.”

So the farmer went over to him and said in a loud voice:

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Er, what?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“What did you say?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Riley, oh! yes.”

“I knew your father.”

“No bother.”

“I knew your father.”

“What?”

“I knew your father!”

“Oh, so did I.”

And in a few moments the farmer heard Nye and Riley talking in ordinary tones of voice. Imagine his chagrin!

In an article published in the Sunday newspapers, Nye paid his gentle respects to James Whitcomb Riley as his “old comrade and partner in the show business.” Remarking that some admirer gave Riley “the place left vacant by Doctor Holmes,” he suggested that “we must pause to think how different the two men were.” While the Hoosier poet could “compare with Holmes in the size of audiences, the doctor’s humor was of a more strictly Massachusetts character. He would be content with a pun or conundrum, while Riley enjoyed _practical_ humor.” He proceeded to give an example by narrating how, upon one occasion, the manager warned the hotel man that nothing “but clean shirts and farinaceous food” was to be sent up to “No. 182.” The poet, with “his keen sense of humor,” as Nye termed it, found that the room communicated with No. 180, and that the man who was domiciled there had gone out for the evening. He stepped in and “at odd times used the bell of No. 180 with great skill, thereby irritating his manager so much that he returned to New York on the following day. “Holmes,” continued Nye, “had none of this dry, crisp humor, but cared more for a subtle and delicate play upon words than for a play upon a lecture manager or a hotel proprietor.”

The letters which follow bring to me laughter, with the memory, also, of suffering which echoes behind the mirth. Nye caught the motes as they danced in the sunlight and held them up before us for common amusement. Their antics made him laugh, and he wished others to laugh also; but he kept the sunshine. Within its rays might be seen the dust and the rain; but the glow was always there. No human mote was ever hurt by impalement on his pen. Always humorous, he never failed in human kindliness. He made men laugh out of sheer sense of fun, never by a single shaft of malice. His “heart-easing mirth” was wrung quite often from personal suffering. Writing each week for a public that broadened with the enjoyment he gave, there was but little room for permanence in Nye’s works, though his books still continue to sell. He always gave a great deal of credit to Mrs. Nye for the successful management of his business affairs. Some investments caused reverses, but the result was perhaps unavoidable under general business conditions at the time. Mrs. Nye was once taken in by a real estate operator who secured confidence by assuming a religious character. Nye never ceased to joke about it. The lots were found to be under water, and the humorist suggested the use of a diving bell in locating them.

In one of the earliest of Nye’s letters he wrote: “I feel so kinky this spring that I believe that I am warranted in authorizing you to make a limited number of dates not too far from New York for my new illustrated lecture on the New South, and other things. I will accompany the lecture with my voice, and you can say with safety that it will be gently facetious and mildly instructive.--Bill Nye.”

From St. Joseph, Mo., when nearing the close of a severe but successful tour, Nye wrote that Western managers all wished to arrange business for him. “But,” he added, “I am quite doubtful whether I will make a show of myself any more. It may be gratifying to some, and surely if it be pleasant to be fêted, and fed, and wined, and dined, and fined, from one end of the country to the other, I ought to be happy. But I do not pant for that kind of joy.”

He closed as usual with merry quip and kindly humor, by requesting that his kindest regards and deepest sympathies be given to Miss Glass (my secretary). “What a noble, self-sacrificing girl she is! to sit there day after day surrounded by such unpleasant associations, and printing stuff that ought to go into the waste-basket, yet never murmuring nor repining.”

From Iowa City, early in the following year, he wrote:

“I wish a good many times that I had you along to jump on various people with your ponderous weight and make them tired. More especially the fresh young man and the autograph fiend. The other night at Mankato we had the house stuffed full and the stage crowded with people. Then I had to hold an autograph recital after the show. It was a great success. Here I am slowly freezing to death as I write these lines. I am in room No. 6⅝. The stove is a boy’s size holding a pint of soft coal. The bed has no sheets or pillow slips, but the chambermaid who comes in every spring--into the room, I mean--says they expect some sheets some time to-day, and tells me that no expense will be spared to make the hotel a success.

“It is a great pleasure to get your letters when I land at a lonesome hotel which smells like the Dead Past and--cabbage.”

In a letter written from _The World_ office to me, in California, in June, 1888, Mr. Nye says that “it is funny that a little cuss like you should make such a cavity in New York when away from it.” Telling of his remarkable success on _The World_ and the increased payment given for the funny weekly paper he furnished, he added that “J. Pulitzer pressed me to go to Europe on Saturday with him, and said we would practically own the steamer, which is true, as he draws $2,000 a day from _The World_ and is really out of the reach of want, but I was afraid he would not like me as a travelling companion, and so remained at home.... More money here just now.... Saturday, the Authors’ Club and self go up to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, to ‘Miss’ E. P. Roe, who writes pieces for the papers.”

In a letter from Staten Island, where he was residing, he rather plaintively tells how the house was struck by lightning. From Minneapolis he merrily tells of umpiring a baseball match.

Under date of September 28, 1888, he writes a letter headed “In Hospital,” closing thus: “Yours with a heart full of gratitude and a system full of drugs, paints, oil, turpentine, glass, putty, and everything usually kept in a first-class drug store.

“BILL NYE

“P.S.--Open all night.”

* * * * *

From Buffalo, without other date than Friday, 1889, he writes: “Considering the fact that I have written to you so seldom, you have been real kind to write right on. ‘God bless you,’ as the feller says, ‘for your kind but wabbly heart.’ We are at the Iroquois, because it is ‘absolutely fireproof.’ We noticed that in Lynn and Boston the absolutely fireproof buildings were a little hotter while burning, and so we have chosen one for winter use whenever we could.”

One of his letters was written at a railroad junction in Minnesota where he was waiting for the next through train to La Crosse, and had “only twenty-three and one-half hours to wait.” The railroads were then running in the interest of the “Hotel and Eating-House,” and made it a rule to avoid connections as much as possible.

* * * * *

“MY DEAR POND:

“I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork. I will call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel, because the hotel at a railroad junction is generally called the Fifth Avenue, or the Gem City House, or the Palace Hotel. Just as the fond parent of a white-eyed, two-legged freak of Nature loves to name his mentally diluted son Napoleon, and for the same reason that a prominent horse owner in Illinois last year socked my name on a tall, buckskin-colored colt that did not resemble me, intellectually or physically--a colt that did not know enough to go around a barbed-wire fence, but sought to sift himself through it into an untimely grave--so this man has named his sway-backed wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“It is different from your Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place, there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact, it is the leading industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business here, there has been no falling off at all, and the roads are forking as much to-day as they did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the first glad moment are still here to witness the operation.

“Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three people have to remain over, as we did, all night. (Luckily this happens to be an ‘open date’ for our combine.) It is at such a time the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt, is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible position of floor manager of the codfish ball. A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the rooms. All is bustle about the house. Especially the chambermaid. We are put up in the guest’s chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made up of pains and counterpanes. The light, joyous feeling which this remark may convey is wholly assumed on my part.

“The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to sleep here, and who moaned through the night, and who died while waiting for the dawn.

“This afternoon we pay our bills, as is our usual custom, and tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We leave at 2:30. Hoping the roads may continue to fork just the same as though we had remained, and that this will find you enjoying yourself, I am,

“Yours truly, “EDGAR WILSON NYE.”

* * * * *

On the back of one of his letters was a peculiarly drawn sketch of an elongated hand and an extended index finger. Below was a burlesque advertisement of a certain “Postmaster-General and dealer in gents’ fine underwear,” and a variety of funny articles. He adds, “This space reserved at reasonable rates,” and then, as I was still in England, asks me to give his regards to Stanley, with a funny addenda in messages also to “Victoria and P. Wales.”

I find a visiting-card left in my office about this period, on the back of which Mr. Nye had written: “10 P.M.--It is now too late to make more than three or four dollars at poker before quitting-time, so I will go home.

BILL.”

It must be said here that Nye was not a card-player, and this was only one of many references to things he never did.

A letter from Arden, N. C. (the town where he died), was dated “Sabbath Morning, Just After Prayers.”

“I used to keep a scrap-book in which I glued the little printed statements about my having called and subscribed for the paper, or to the effect that I had just laid a porcelain egg on the editor’s table measuring nine inches in circumference, but the book warped and the glue in it turned sour, so that when I used to give it to my guests to read while I went upstairs to dress, I noticed that they frequently opened the window and sometimes went out for more air, strolling so far away from the house that they never got back. So I don’t keep a scrap-book any more.”

Referring to his new play, “The Cadi,” he wrote:

“The prospects are fine. What the _Vampire Press_ will say no one knows, but Robson, Jefferson, among ’em, are hopeful and tickled. Let me know if you can come to the show so I can ‘avoid the rush.’”

Nye’s friendships were steadfast. He wrote once, after John Cockerill retired from the New York _World_: “The paper has wired me to ‘reconsider.’ But I would rather stick by Cockerill under all circumstances, as he has been my staunch friend always, and now I’m his’n.”

In 1892, Bill Nye was lecturing, and, as usual, quite successfully. At that time our business relations had ended, and he was under other management. He wrote to me from Chicago: “Everything is unsettled except my salary, which is paid every twenty-four hours.”

Of a former experience he remarks: “I’d have done better to put in that spring cultivating colts. However, it is none of my business this time. The ghost walks every night.” Again during this tour he says: “I would enjoy your letters more if you would not refer to Chautauqua, I have always refused to lecture in the stockades. I’ve got a trunk full of their letters now asking me to speak a few words in absolute confidence to the United States in Foley’s Grove, but I will not. I am saving my voice to cool my hot Scotches next winter.” He adds: “We had a long visit with Riley last week. We had some old-fashioned fun, and I descended for the day to the realms of Poesy, where they chew ‘star’ tobacco. Poesy is indeed a strange gift.”

In another letter he apologized for the smallness of the paper by saying:

“This paper belongs to Mrs. Nye, and the envelope belongs to a man who wanted an autograph. So, you see, I am getting economical. It has a stamp.”

Here is a letter which he illustrated in a humorous fashion:

* * * * *

“ARDEN, N. C., May 23, 1895.

“MY DEAR JUNIUS BRUTUS POND:

“There’s no use talking, with all your faults I enjoy the sight of your wild, unlicensed penmanship. ‘Another season of pleasure and amusement stares us in the face,’ as you so truly, so succinctly, and so merrily say! Oh, it is fun to be merry all the time at so much per pop, is it not?

“Merrily yours, “LITTLE BILLIE NYE.”

“P.S.--We have just merrily passed through diphtheria, but all is serene again.”

* * * * *

In another letter of a near-by date he wrote: “Tell Mark Twain that if he had not possessed the fatal gift of humor he might now be President of the United States, and if I could have had my way he should have been, anyway.

“Mr. Depew told me that Garfield admitted to him many years ago that he (Garfield) was naturally a humorist, but had smothered the low, coarse impulse to be amusing in order that he might forward his political ambitions. And what was the result? He went down to his grave full of laudable puns, but Mark Twain will live forever in the glad hearts of a billion people, and with all due respect to Max O’Rell, who, on rather small capital, has realized under your able management many a good American dollar, I am glad that the sage of Hartford spoke up to him.

“Foreigners who come here and buy large fur overcoats and live on lobster à la Newburg for the first time, should not go home and speak lightly of our morals, either in France or England.”

A characteristic letter came to me from Buck Shoals, Arden, N. C., under date of July 4, 1894:

* * * * *

“DEAR JAMESIE:

“Your note of the 28th of June struck my thirsty soul like a drop of dew on the back of a somewhat feverish, warty toad, and so now on this our country’s glorious natal day I take in hand to acknowledge receipt of same.

“If ever a feller had his heartstrings strained to their utmost limit for eight consecutive weeks, I have.

“Mrs. Nye was for some days halting between life and death, and lost her big baby boy after all; then Bess came home from school with fever, and both she and her mother are barely out of the woods now.

“In the midst of it all our house caught fire one fine night when I had gone to bed more dead than alive, but we cut open the wall and got at it with our amateur fire brigade before the whole structure had begun to blaze.

“However, all is well now, and both the invalids will recover fully, directly. The insurance company paid up promptly, and once more I breathe a full, delicious breath of ‘this justly celebrated climate.’

“I did not write anything so all-fired mirthful during those weeks, but got through somehow, having five weeks ahead on the Sunday-letter job. I’m real tickled to know that you like the history, and you will be glad to know that she has an ever-increasing sale, one book seeming to call for another, as Uncle Sydney would put it. I shall look forward with joy to your forthcoming book, for I feel no little pride in my autograph collection of Hoosier poetry.

“Poor old Burbank [at one time Mr. Nye’s “running-mate”], I was about to say, but why should I say that when he is taking a grand old rest after a rather thorny trip? There never lived a more unselfish gentleman than he. He was not brilliant as an originator, perhaps, but he honestly admitted it, and used to the utmost and best all the powers that God gave him. There are mighty few comrades who can go through dark alleys and dangerous stage entrances that are kept locked against the lecturer and only open to the call of the felonious loafer who comes to shift your scenery--only a few comrades, I say, who can go through frosty towns and bitter weather cheerily, as he did--noble old man. And there’s no such test on earth to try a feller’s mettle, is there? I think it’s a good idea to reform and abandon such a life before the hearse is actually at the door waiting for one. I am cheerily preparing to say farewell to these triumphal tours which wreck both soul and body at so much a pair. But I must close and relight my punk. Good-by, old man, and ‘take keer o’ yourself.’ Write to me whenever you are tempted to disobey your physician, and I will promptly respond.

“Yours ever, BILL”

* * * * *