Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns), Nye and Riley [funny books to read txt] 📗
- Author: Nye and Riley
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"Yes."
"Does your horoscope tell a person what to do with raspberry jelly that will not jell?"
"No, not at the present prices."
"So you predict an early marriage, with threatening[Pg 95] weather and strong prevailing easterly winds along the Gulf States?"
"Yes, sir."
"And is there no way that this early marriage may be evaded?"
"No, not unless you put it off till later in life."
"Thank you," I said, rising and looking out the window over a broad sweep of undulating alley and wind-swept roofing, "and now, how much are you out on this?"
"Sir!"
"What's the damage?"
"Oh, one dollar."
"But don't you advertise to read the past, present and future for fifty cents?"
"Well, that is where a person has had other information before in his life and has some knowledge to begin with; but where I fill up a vacant mind entirely and store it with facts of all kinds and stock it up so that it can do business for itself, I charge a dollar. I cannot thoroughly refit and refurnish a mental tenement from the ground up for fifty cents."
I do not think we have as good "Astrologists" now as we used to have. Astrologists cannot crawl under the tent and pry into the future as they could three or four thousand years ago.[Pg 96]
Mr. SilberbergI like me yet dot leedle chile
Vich climb my lap up in to-day,
Unt took my cheap cigair avay,
Unt laugh and kiss me purty whvile,—
Possescially I like dose mout'
Vich taste his moder's like—unt so,
Off my cigair it gone glean out
[Pg 97]—Yust let it go!
Vat I caire den for anyding?
Der paper schlip out fon my hand,
And all my odvairtizement stand,
Mitout new changements boddering;
I only dink—I have me dis
Von leedle boy to pet unt love
Unt play me vit, unt hug unt kiss—
Unt dot's enough!
Der plans unt pairposes I vear
Out in der vorld all fades avay;
Unt vit der beeznid of der day
I got me den no time to spare;
Der caires of trade vas caires no more—
Dem cash accounds dey dodge me by,
Unt vit my chile I roll der floor,
Unt laugh unt gry!
Ah! frient! dem childens is der ones
Dot got some happy times—you bet!—
Dot's vy ven I been grooved up yet
I vish I vould been leedle vonce!
Unt ven dot leetle roozter tries
Dem baby-tricks I used to do,
My mout it vater, unt my eyes
Dey vater too!
Unt all der summertime unt spring
Of childhood it come back to me,
So dot it vas a dream I see
Ven I yust look at anyding,
Unt ven dot leedle boy run by,
[Pg 98]I dink "dot's me," fon hour to hour
Schtill chasing yet dose butterfly
Fon flower to flower!
Oxpose I vas lots money vairt,
Mit blenty schtone-front schtore to rent
Unt mor'gages at twelf per-cent,
Unt diamonds in my ruffled shairt,—
I make a'signment of all dot,
Unt tairn it over mit a schmile,
Obber you please—but don'd forgot
I keep dot chile!
[Pg 99]
Spirits at Home
(THE FAMILY)
There was Father, and Mother, and Emmy, and Jane
And Lou, and Ellen, and John and me—
And father was killed in the war, and Lou
She died of consumption, and John did too,
And Emmy she went with the pleurisy.
(THE SPIRITS)
Father believed in 'em all his life—
But Mother, at first, she'd shake her head—
Till after the battle of Champion Hill,
When many a flag in the winder-sill
Had crape mixed in with the white and red!
I used to doubt 'em myself till then—
But me and Mother was satisfied
When Ellen she set, and Father came
And rapped "God bless you!" and Mother's name,
And "The flag's up here!" And we just all cried!
Used to come often after that,
And talk to us—just as he used to do,
Pleasantest kind! And once, for John,
He said he was "lonesome but wouldn't let on—
[Pg 100]Fear Mother would worry, and Emmy and Lou."
But Lou was the bravest girl on earth—
For all she never was hale and strong
She'd have her fun! With her voice clean lost
She'd laugh and joke us that when she crossed
To father, we'd all come taggin' along.
Died—just that way! And the raps was thick
That night, as they often since occur,
Extry loud. And when Lou got back
She said it was Father and her—and "whack!"
She tuck the table—and we knowed her!
John and Emmy, in five years more,
Both had went.—And it seemed like fate!—
For the old home it burnt down,—but Jane
And me and Ellen we built again
The new house, here, on the old estate.
And a happier family I don't know
Of anywheres—unless its them—
Father, with all his love for Lou,
And her there with him, and healthy, too,
And laughin', with John and little Em.
And, first we moved in the new house here,
They all dropped in for a long pow-wow.
"We like your buildin', of course," Lou said,—
"But wouldn't swop with you to save your head—
For we live in the ghost of the old house, now!"
[Pg 101]
In an interview which I have just had with myself, I have positively stated, and now repeat, that at neither the St. Louis nor Chicago Convention will my name be presented as a candidate.
But my health is bully.
We are upon the threshold of a most bitter and acrimonious fight. Great wisdom and foresight are needed at this hour, and the true patriot will forget himself and his own interests in his great yearning for the good of his common country and the success of his party. What we need at this time is a leader whose name will not be presented at the convention but whose health is good.
No one has a fuller or better conception of the great duties of the hour than I. How clearly to my mind are the duties of the American citizen outlined to-day![Pg 102] I have never seen with clearer, keener vision the great needs of my country, and my pores have never been more open. Four years ago I was in some doubt relative to certain important questions which now are clearly and satisfactorily settled in my mind. I hesitated then where now I am fully established, and my tongue was coated in the morning when I arose, whereas now I bound lightly from bed, kick out a window, climb to the roof by means of the fire-escape and there rehearse speeches which I will make this fall in case it should be discovered at either of the conventions that my name alone can heal the rupture in the party and prevent its works from falling out.
I think my voice is better also that it was either four, eight, twelve or sixteen years ago, and it does not tire me so much to think of things to say from the tail-gate of a train as it did when I first began to refrain from presenting my name to conventions.
According to my notion, our candidate should be a plain man, a magnetic but hairless patriot, who should be suddenly thought of by a majority of the convention and nominated by acclamation. He should not be a hide-bound politician, but on the contrary he should be greatly startled, while down cellar sprouting potatoes, to learn that he has been nominated. That's the kind of man who always surprises everybody with his sagacity when an emergency arises.
In going down my cellar stairs the committee will do well to avoid stepping on a large and venomous dog who sleeps on the top stair. Or I will tie him in the barn if I can be informed when I am liable to be startled.
I have always thought that the neatest method of[Pg 103] calling a man to public life was the one adopted some years since in the case of Cincinnatus. He was one day breaking a pair of nervous red steers in the north field. It was a hot day in July, and he was trying to summer fallow a piece of ground where the jimson weeds grew seven feet high. The plough would not scour, and the steers had turned the yoke twice on him. Cincinnatus had hung his toga on a tamarac pole to strike a furrow by, and hadn't succeeded in getting the plough in more than twice in going across. Dressing as he did in the Roman costume of 458 B. C., the blackberry vines had scratched his massive legs till they were a sight to behold. He had scourged Old Bright and twisted the tail of Bolly till he was sick at heart. All through the long afternoon, wearing a hot, rusty helmet with rabbit-skin ear tabs he had toiled on, when suddenly a majority of the Roman voters climbed over the fence and asked him to become dictator in place of Spurious Melius.[Pg 104]
Putting on his toga and buckling an old hame strap around his loins he said: "Gentlemen, if you will wait till I go to the house and get some vaseline on my limbs I will do your dictating for you as low as you have ever had it done." He then left his team standing in the furrow while he served his country in an official capacity for a little over twenty-nine years, after which he went back and resumed his farming.
Though 2,300 years have since passed away and his[Pg 105]torians have been busy with that epoch ever since, no one has yet discovered the methods by which Cincinnatus organized and executed this, the most successful "People's Movement" of which we are informed.
The great trouble with the modern boom is that it is too precocious. It knows more before it gets its clothes on than the nurse, the physician and its parents. It then dies before the sap starts in the maple forests.
My object in writing this letter is largely to tone down and keep in check any popular movement in my behalf until the weather in more settled. A season-cracked boom is a thing I despise.
I inclose my picture, however, which shows that I am so healthy that it keeps me awake nights. I go about the house singing all the time and playing pranks on my grandparents.
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