Part 1

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 771 Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

The Humor of “Bill” Nye

Edited, with an Introduction, by John W. Gunn

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1924 Haldeman-Julius Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE HUMOR OF “BILL” NYE

INTRODUCTION

The first book I remember (excepting several Dickens novels, flotsam of an abandoned attic library) is a cheap, ill-favored, coarsely printed volume of “Bill” Nye’s sketches, elegantly entitled _Baled Hay_. I discovered it in a corner of the village postoffice, where there were a couple of shelves of nondescript books--cheap in every sense: in price, binding and contents--which served as the sole local excuse for a bookstore. This copy of “Bill” Nye is the link between my boyish and my mature reading. Nye is the one author whom I enjoy to this day in precisely the same spirit and to the same degree that I enjoyed him as a boy. This fact indicates his limitation and his peculiar appeal. He is limited to a crude, obvious, undeveloped humor; and his appeal is to the undiscriminating childlike mirth in a man. He is juvenile in essence, in subject, in manner. I might say that “Bill” Nye was funny to me in the same way that almost any trifling break in the monotony of the schoolroom was funny--a suddenly overturned chair, a spilled bottle of ink, or an egregious blunder in recitation.

Perhaps this is not an adequate explanation. It is not every schoolboy that responds to the boisterous fun of “Bill” Nye. They prefer, as in later life, something with plenty of action--_Peck’s Bad Boy_, for example or the misadventures of Mr. Bowser (wasn’t this the name?). Yet I say it is to the boy in man, to the uncouth comic spirit that lurks in every age of man, that “Bill” Nye appeals. One enjoys him in the mood of a boy released from school, or, better still, in the spirit of spring-time truancy. What a book like _Treasure Island_ is to the sense of adventure, what fairy tales are to the sense of wonder, “Bill” Nye is to the sense of humor. The enjoyment of “Bill” Nye is not found in the intellectual glow of satire, in the keen smile of wit, in the subtle thrill of epigram or paradox, but in the loud laughter of the commonest of comic things. For this reason I find in him a speedy and unfailing escape from melancholy thoughts. No matter how jaded one’s spirits, how deeply plunged in gloom, Nye’s grimacing, cavorting absurdities will surely produce the usual number of laughs. There is not demanded any delicate receptive mood, any particular conjunction of happy spirits. He is as gratuitously and independently ludicrous and laughable as a circus clown.

One could not call “Bill” Nye subtle--heavens! no--but his humor is often artificial, in that it depends not absolutely upon incidents that in themselves are humorous, but upon an odd, perverse, irrational use of words. He tells somewhere of a would-be author, who fondly anticipated, when his work should be finished, a crowd of publishers “trampling the daisies” in the front yard. After wearily writing “Finis,” he looked out of the window and was “surprised by the abrupt and pronounced manner in which they were not there.” This is absurd enough, in all conscience; and because it is absurd--unexpectedly and unreasonably absurd--I, for one, find it laughable. And who can resist a chuckle at this sort of expression: “the low rumble of the throbbing Boston brain dimly heard in the distance”? Writing of taxidermy, on which he gravely pretends to be an authority, he refers to “upholstered beasts.” Again, we have this phrase: “the still, white features of a soup-bone that has outlived its usefulness.” And this: “the death-rattle of a bathtub.” He declares that he is willing to “sit up all night to doubt” the theory of eternal damnation. Writing of the stern and hidebound Puritans who settled on the “stern and rockbound” coast of New England, he defines religious freedom as “the art of giving intolerance a little more room.” I am grateful for every blow, however light, at Puritanism and intolerance. Whether it be Voltaire or “Bill” Nye (a sufficiently grotesque comparison!) there is relish in the ironic or humorous view of the atrabilious Cotton Mathers of this world. I quote another of Nye’s amusing references to the Puritans: “Among the Puritans there were several who had enlarged consciences, and who desired to take in extra work for others who had no consciences and were busy in the fields.” The dreary economic background that perhaps had much to do with the narrowness of outlook that distinguished the Puritans is succinctly described by Nye: “The people were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should give them strength to dig for clams again.” There is shrewdness, too, in this observation on the Civil War: “Most great wars are arranged by people who stay at home and sell groceries to the widow and orphan and old maids at one hundred per cent advance.”

The best of “Bill” Nye, to my notion, are his humorous historical sketches--pseudo-historical, indeed, but frequently affording glimpses of the truth that are not to be found in the sober accepted chronicles. The quality of this phase of his humor is, I think, simply explained. It consists of an irreverence that is, at bottom, touched with skepticism. Hero-worship, if it is a more or less universal instinct of human nature, is a rather stiff and uncomfortable and trying exercise. It is, too, an overestimated and overworked instinct, that has been too persistently and prodigiously appealed to in popular history. These “steel engravings,” plaster saints and wooden models of heroism are (certainly at times) an unlovable and tiresome company.

One finds a wholesome, hearty reaction from this hero-worship in “Bill” Nye’s jolly brand of history. He goes guffawing down the Hall of Fame, swatting blithely the sedate statues of the brave and good and mighty and learned. Here he is, indeed, a very schoolboy, throwing his history-book aside, and shooting paper wads at the immobile, insensibly decorous figures of Columbus and Washington and Ben Franklin and the rest. In spite of oneself, one laughs even at one’s favorite hero, and, with seeming inconsequence, regards this hero thereafter in a more human and favorable light. There is relief, there is relaxation--a healthful unbending of the faculties--in these droll, preposterous, utterly irrelevant comments. We see Columbus suffering from a period of geographical depression--nothing to discover--and being recommended to Queen Isabella as a capable man in his trade, who “is willing to let his work show for itself”; Washington as a man equally efficient in prayer and profanity, swearing with a vigor that would “break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual”; Ben Franklin as foreman, “cussing” the rival paper and yelling for more copy; Daniel Webster as “a good off-hand speaker,” who “wore the largest hat of any man then in Congress”; Noah Webster, he of the immortal dictionary, as the man who “had the best command of language of any American author prior to our day.”

Opinions may well differ regarding the humor of this sort of thing--certainly it is not profound nor subtle nor artistic humor, being more or less trifling horseplay indeed--but there is laughter in it nevertheless and it is an escape from that seriousness which often weighs too heavily on the spirit. It is good to laugh, whatever the occasion; and one who has a robust and expansive sense of humor will not fail to laugh occasionally with “Bill” Nye.

One can say, although it goes without saying, that Nye is not of the company of the world’s great humorists. One would not mention him in the same breath with Sterne, or Rabelais, or Moliere, or Dick Steele, or Oscar Wilde, or our own Mark Twain. The humor of Nye is the humor of what Nye himself called “the new and crass civilization” of his day. It is not the humor of the highest culture. It is a humor that is barely commentary--a mere pointing out of absurdities--rather than deliberately or delicately creative. “Bill” Nye is superficial; he is sophomoric; he is often somnolent; but he is funny, and indeed this word defines him exactly. He is funny rather than truly humorous in the finer sense of the word. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, “Bill” Nye grew up with the Western American frontier country, and in the midst of these raw beginnings of a new and strange and boisterously immature society, full of the most violent contrasts, he exercised his peculiar and contemporaneous humor. A very little of “Bill” Nye will suffice for the general reader. His kind of humor has its natural limits and, writing as a journalist, much of what he wrote is labored and dull. This little book contains some of the best and most characteristic of his sketches; and if it cannot quite be said that this is all of him that is worth-while or enjoyable, at least it represents the extent to which he may be read agreeably and profitably by one who desires no more than a bowing acquaintance with him; it is, truth to tell, an accurate measure of the man’s importance.

WORDS ABOUT WASHINGTON

The name of George Washington has always had about it a glamor that made him appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with large feet and a mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pumpkin pie. I use the word glamor, not so much because I know what glamor means, but because I have never used it before, and I am getting a little tired of the short, easy words I have been using so long.

George Washington’s face has beamed out upon us for many years now, on postage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze, in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the warpath and on skates, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged in prayer.

We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe that he did not breathe our air or eat American groceries. But George Washington was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study of his life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from the proud history of the Father of his Country. I say it simply that the boys of America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel so timid about trying it.

When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the lime-kiln at Mount Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to show the boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble George Washington. That was one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamed of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk, and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice. There are lawyers who play poker year after year, and get regularly skinned, because they have heard that some of the able lawyers of the past century used to come home at night with poker chips in their pockets.

Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have seen poets who relied solely on the potency of their breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever did of the statutes in such case made and provided.

George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first in war, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would be first baseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hour of the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in the hearts of his countrymen, George’s postoffice address was at once secured.

Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear that in America! It is a place where it is a positive disadvantage to be born wealthy. And yet, sometimes I wish they had experimented a little that way on me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of course, because it is too late; but it seems to me that, with my natural good sense and keen insight into human nature, I could have struggled along under the burdens and cares of wealth with great success. I do not care to die wealthy, but if I could have been born wealthy, it seems to me that I would have been tickled almost to death.

I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and to say that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong sometimes in his judgment of others, both individually and in the aggregate, but he who gets ready to be a great man will surely find the opportunity.

Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it for me, but they will never find out.

In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for three reasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his friends. Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule. Some people cannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue jackass.

Another reason why Washington is loved and honored today is that he died before we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly superior to the method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till their constituency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die.

B. FRANKLIN, DECEASED

Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of Benjamin’s parents, they would have been childless. Think of getting up in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among seventeen pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of spruce gum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window sill. And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea, and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was a printer. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the great Archimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests of freedom. It is claimed that Franklin at this time invented the deadly weapon known as the printer’s towel. He found that a common crash towel could be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony, concentrated lye, and roller composition, and that after a few years of time and perspiration it would harden so that the “Constant Reader” or “Veritas” could be stabbed with it and die soon.

Many believe that Franklin’s other scientific experiments were productive of more lasting benefits to mankind than this, but I do not agree with them.

This paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly by James and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want. Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The idea of having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to the editorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while the other was in jail. In those days you couldn’t sass the king, and then, when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his paper, and took out his ad., you couldn’t put it off on “our informant” and go right along with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscribers wondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tin dippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side.

How many of us today, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay in jail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of all our company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while a double-column ad. of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses of ferocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us?

At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went to Philadelphia and New York, where he got a chance to “sub” for a few weeks, and then got a regular “sit.” Franklin was a good printer, and finally got to be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in the composing room and spitting on the stone while he cussed the make-up and press work of the other papers. Then he would go into the editorial rooms and scare the editors to death with a wild shriek for more copy. He knew just how to conduct himself as a foreman, so that strangers would think he owned the paper.

In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. He was then regarded as a great man, and most everyone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, and spelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist in any of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him.

Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits of lightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that he would be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or odd specimens of lightning, if they would send them into the _Gazette_ office by express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklin would tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and an old fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for a mess.

In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made a good postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes in distributing their mail than there have ever been since. If a man mailed a letter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it was addressed.

Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly on business, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, and attract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask the king: “How’s trade?” Franklin never put on any frills, but he was not afraid of a crowned head. He used to say, frequently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot.

He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn’t do it. Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given it permission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquainted with a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper. They also promised him the county printing, but he said no, he would have to go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him.

Franklin wrote _Poor Richard’s Almanac_ in 1732-57, and it was republished in England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and though he lived to be quite an old man, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but an illegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, but he steadily refused to do so.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

It was a beautiful evening at the close of a warm, luscious day in old Spain. It was such an evening as one would select for trysting purposes. The honeysuckle gave out the sweet announcement of its arrival on the summer breeze, and the bulbul sang in the dark vistas of the olive trees--sang of his love and his hope, and of the victory he anticipated in the morrow’s bulbul fight, and the plaudits of the royal couple who would be there. The pink west paled away to the touch of twilight, and the soft zenith was sown with stars coming like celestial fire-flies on the breast of a mighty meadow.

Across the dusk, with bowed head, came a woman. Her air was one of proud humility. It was the air of royalty in the presence of an over-ruling power. It was Isabella. She was on her way to confession. She carried a large, beautifully bound volume containing a memorandum of her sins for the day. Ever and anon she would refer to it, but the twilight had come on so fast that she could not read it.

Reaching the confessional, she kneeled, and, by the aid of her notes, she told off to the good Father and receptacle of the queen’s trifling sins, Fernando de Talavera, how wicked she had been. When it was over and the queen had risen to go, Fernando came forth, and with a solemn obeisance said:

“May it please your Majesty, I have today received a letter from my good friend the prior of the Franciscan convent of St. Mary’s of Rabida in Andalusia. With your Majesty’s permission, I will read it to you.”

“Proceed,” exclaimed Isabella, gravely, taking a piece of crochet work from her apron and seating herself comfortably near the dim light.

“It is dated the sixth month and tenth day of the month, and reads as follows:

“‘Dear Brother: This letter will be conveyed into your hands by the bearer hereof. His name is Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, who has been living on me for two years. But he is a good man, devout and honest. He is willing to work, but I have nothing to do in his line. Times, as you know, are dull, and in his own profession nothing seems to be doing. He is by profession a discoverer. He has been successful in the work where he has had opportunities, and there has been no complaint so far on the part of those who have employed him. Everything he has ever discovered has remained that way, and he is willing to let his work show for itself. Should you be able to bring this to the notice of her Majesty, who is tender of heart, I would be most glad; and should her most gracious Majesty have any discovering to be done, or should she contemplate a change or desire to substitute another in the place of the present discoverer, she will do well to consider the qualifications of my friend. Very sincerely and fraternally thine, etc., etc.’”

The queen inquired still further regarding Columbus, and, taking the letter, asked Talavera to send him to the royal sitting room at ten o’clock the following day.

When Columbus arose the next morning he found a note from the royal confessor, and, without waiting for breakfast, for he had almost overcome the habit of eating, he reversed his cuffs, and, taking a fresh handkerchief from his valise and putting it in his pocket so that the corner would coyly stick out a little, he was soon on his way to the palace. He carried also a small globe wrapped up in a newspaper.

The interview was encouraging until the matter of money necessary for the trip was touched upon. His Majesty was called in, and spoke sadly of the public deficit. He said that there were one hundred dollars still due on his salary, and the palace had not been painted for eight years. He had taken orders on the store till he was tired of it. “Our meat bill,” said he, taking off his crown and mashing a hornet on the wall, “is sixty days overdue. We owe the hired girl for three weeks; and how are we going to get funds enough to do any discovering, when you remember that we have got to pay for an extra session this fall for the purpose of making money plenty?”

But Isabella came and sat by him in her winning way, and with the moistened corner of her handkerchief removed a spot of maple syrup from the ermine trimming of his reigning gown. She patted his hand, and, with her gentle voice, cheered him and told him that if he would economize and go without cigars or wine, in less than two hundred years he would have saved enough to fit Columbus out.