and comforting to put your hand on the top of your head and feel that it is still on deck, and, although wealth may not come pouring in upon you in such an irresistible torrent as you may desire, you know that if you can get enough to eat from day to day, and dodge the Vigilance Committee and the celluloid pie, you are comparatively safe.
Besides all this, I am afraid I am not in proper spiritual shape to go among the Indians., Suppose that on some softened, mellow, autumnal day they were all clustered about me with the bacon grease and war paint on every childlike countenance, and while I stood there in the midst of all the autumn splendor with the woods clothed in all the gorgeous apparel of the deceased year, telling them of the beauties of industry, and peace, and the glad unfettered life of the buckwheat promoter, or while I read a passage of Scripture to them and was explaining it, and they were looking up into my face with their great fawnlike eyes, all at once one of them should playfully shoot my wife – all the wife I had, too – or my hired girl! The chances are about even that I would throw down the Bible and fly into an ungovernable rage and swear, and be just as harsh, and rude, and unreasonable as I could be. Then, after I had hammered the immortal soul out of the entire tribe, and my wrath had spent itself, I would probably bitterly regret it all.
O it's of no use. I can't accept the position. I've been in the habit of swearing at the spring poet and the "constant reader" too long, and I know just as well as any one how it unfits me for every walk of life that requires meekness and gentle Christian forbearance.
THE PICNIC SNOOZER'S LAMENT
Gently lay aside the picnic,
For its usefulness is o'er,
And the winter style of misery
Stands and knocks upon your door.
Lariat the lonely oyster
Drifting on some foreign shore;
Zion needs him in her business —
She can use him o'er and o'er.
Bring along the lonely oyster,
With the winter style of gloom,
And the supper for the pastor,
With its victims for the tomb.
Cast the pudding for the pastor,
With its double iron door;
It will gather in the pastor
For the bright and shining shore.
Put away the little picnic
Till the coming of the spring;
Useless now the swaying hammock
And the idle picnic swing.
Put away the pickled spider
And the cold-pressed picnic fly,
And the decorated trousers
With their wealth of custard pie.
BILLIOUS NYE AND BOOMERANG IN THE GOLD MINES
Whenever the cares of life weigh too heavily upon me, and the ennui which comes to those who have more wealth than they know what to do with settles down upon me, and I get weary of civilization, I like to load up my narrow-gauge mule Boomerang and take a trip into the mountains. I call my mule Boomerang because I never know where he is going to strike. He is a perpetual surprise to me in this respect. A protracted acquaintance with him, however, has taught me to stand in front of him when I address him, for the recoil of Boomerang is very disastrous. Boomerang is very much below the medium height, with a sad, faraway look in his eye. He has an expression of woe and disappointment and gloom, because life has been to him a series of blasted hopes and shattered ambitions.
In his youth he yearned to be the trick-mule of a circus, and though he fitted himself for that profession, he finds himself in the decline of life with his bright anticipations nothing but a vast and robust ruin. About all the relaxation he has is to induce some trusting stranger to caress his favorite chilblain, and then he kicks the confiding stranger so high that he can count the lamp-posts on the streets of the New Jerusalem. When Boomerang and I visit a mining camp the supplies of giant powder and other combustibles are removed to some old shaft and placed under a strong guard. In one or two instances where this precaution was not taken the site of the camp is now a desolate, barren waste, occupied by the prairie-dog and the jack-rabbit. When Boomerang finds a nitro-glycerine can in the heart of a flourishing camp, and has room to throw himself, he can arrange a larger engagement for the coroner than any mule I ever saw.
There is a new camp in the valley of the Big Laramie River, near the dividing line between Wyoming and Colorado. A few weeks ago the murmur of the rapid river down the canon and the cheerful solo of the cayote alone were heard. Now several hundred anxious excited miners are prospecting for gold, and the tent-town grows apace. Up and down the sides of the river and over the side of the mountain every little way a notice greets the eye announcing that "the undersigned claim 1,500 feet in length by 300 feet in width upon" the lode known as the Pauper's Dream, or the Blue Tail Fly, or the Blind Tom, or the Captain Kidd, or the Pigeon-Toed Pete, with all the dips, spurs, angles, gold and silver bearing rock or earth therein contained.
I have a claim further on in the North Park of Colorado. I have always felt a little delicate about working it, because heretofore several gentlemen from the Ute reservation on White River have claimed it. They are the same parties who got into a little difficulty with Agent Meeker and killed him. Of course these parties are not bona fide citizens of the United States, and therefore cannot hold my claim under the mining law; but I have not as yet raised the point with them. Whenever they would go over into the park for rest and recreation, I would respect their feelings and withdraw. I didn't know but they might have some private business which they did not wish me to overhear, so I came away.
Once I came away in the night. It is cooler travelling in the night, and does not attract so much attention. Last summer Antelope and his band came over into the park and told the miners that he would give them "one sleep" to get out of there. I told him that I didn't care much for sleep anyhow, and I would struggle along somehow till I got home. I told him that my constitution would stand it first-rate without rest, and I felt as though my business in town might be suffering in my absence. So I went home. The mine is there yet, but I would sell it very reasonably – very reasonably indeed. I do not apprehend any trouble from the Indians, but I have lost my interest in mines to some extent, The Indians are not all treacherous and bloodthirsty as some would suppose. Only the live ones are that way. Wooden Indians are also to be relied upon.
In digging an irrigating ditch on the Laramie Plains, last summer, the skeleton of an Indian chief was plowed up. I went to look at him. He had, no doubt, been dead many years; but in the dry alkaline divide, at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, his skull had been preserved pretty well. I took it in my hand and looked it over and shook the sand out of it, and convinced myself that life was extinct. An Indian is not always dead when he has that appearance. I always feel a little timid till I see his scapula, and ribs, and shin bones mixed up so that Gabriel would rather arrange a 15 puzzle than to fix up an Indian out of the wreck. Then I have the most child-like faith and confidence in him. When some avenging fate overtakes a Ute and knocks him into pi, and thus makes a Piute out of him, and flattens him out like a postage stamp, and pulverizes him, and runs him over the amalgator, and assays him so that he lies in the retort like a seidlitz powder, then I feel that I can trust him. I do not care then how much the cold world may scoff at him. Prior to that I am very reserved and very reticent.
That is why I presented my mine to the Ute nation as a slight token of my respect and esteem. Then I went away. I did not hurry much, but I had every inducement and encouragement to reach home at the earliest possible moment, and the result was very gratifying. Very much so, indeed. I left my gun and ammunition, but it did not matter. It wasn't a very good gun anyhow. I do not need it. Any one going into the park this summer can have it. It is standing behind
