if I earned the money myself.
Sawing wood used to be a favorite pastime with boys twenty years ago. I remember the first money I ever earned was by sawing wood. My brother and myself were to receive $5 for sawing five cords of wood. We allowed the job to stand, however, until the weather got quite warm, and then we decided to hire a foreigner who came along that way one glorious summer day when all nature seemed tickled and we knew that the fish would be apt to bite. So we hired the foreigner, and while he sawed, we would bet with him on various “dead sure things” until he got the wood sawed, when he went away owing us fifty cents.
We had a neighbor who was very wealthy. He noticed that we boys earned our own spending money, and he yearned to have his son try to ditto. So he told the boy that he was going away for a few weeks and that he would give him $2 per cord, or double price, to saw the wood. He wanted to teach the boy to earn and appreciate his money. So, when the old man went away, the boy secured a colored man to do the job at $1 per cord, by which process the youth made $10. This he judiciously invested in clothes, meeting his father at the train in a new summer suit and a speckled cane. The old man said he could see by the sparkle in the boy’s clear, honest eyes, that healthful exercise was what boys needed.
When I was a boy I frequently acquired large sums of money by carrying coal up two flights of stairs for wealthy people who were too fat to do it themselves. This money I invested from time to time in side shows and other zoological attractions.
One day I saw a coal cart back up and unload itself on the walk in such a way as to indicate that the coal would have to be manually elevated inside the building. I waited till I nearly froze to death, for the owner to come along and solicit my aid. Finally he came. He smelled strong of carbolic acid, and I afterward learned that he was a physician and surgeon.
We haggled over the price for some time, as I had to carry the coal up two flights in an old waste paper basket and it was quite a task. Finally we agreed. I proceeded with the work. About dusk I went up the last flight of stairs with the last load. My feet seemed to weigh about nineteen pounds apiece and my face was very sombre.
In the gloaming I saw my employer. He was writing a prescription by the dim, uncertain light. He told me to put the last basketful in the little closet off the hall and then come and get my pay. I took the coal into the closet, but I do not know what I did with it. As I opened the door and stepped in, a tall skeleton got down off the nail and embraced me like a prodigal son. It fell on my neck and draped itself all over me. Its glittering phalanges entered the bosom of my gingham shirt and rested lightly on the pit of my stomach. I could feel the pelvis bone in the small of my back. The room was dark, but I did not light the gas. Whether it was the skeleton of a lady or gentleman, I never knew; but I thought, for the sake of my good name, I would not remain. My good name and a strong yearning for home were all that I had at that time.
So I went home. Afterwards, I learned that this physician got all his coal carried up stairs for nothing in this way, and he had tried to get rooms two flights further up in the building, so that the boys would have further to fall when they made their egress.
About Portraits
Hudson, Wis., August 25, 1885.
Hon. William F. Vilas, Postmaster-General, Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir,—For some time I have been thinking of writing to you and asking you how you were getting along with your department since I left it. I did not wish to write you for the purpose of currying favor with an administration against which I squandered a ballot last fall. Neither do I desire to convey the impression that I would like to open a correspondence with you for the purpose of killing time. If you ever feel like sitting down and answering this letter in an off-hand way it would please me very much, but do not put yourself out to do so. I wanted to ask you, however, how you like the pictures of yourself recently published by the patent insides. That was my principal object in writing. Having seen you before this great calamity befell you, I wanted to inquire whether you had really changed so much. As I remember your face, it was rather unusually intellectual and attractive for a great man. Great men are very rarely pretty. I guess that, aside from yourself, myself, and Mr. Evarts, there is hardly an eminent man in the country who would be considered handsome. But the engraver has done you a great injustice, or else you have sadly changed since I saw you. It hardly seems possible that your nose has drifted around to leeward and swelled up at the end, as the engraver would have us believe. I do not believe that in a few short months the look of firmness and conscious rectitude that I noticed could have changed to that of indecision and vacuity which we see in some of your late portraits as printed.
I saw one yesterday, with your name attached to it, and it made my heart ache for your family. As a resident in your State I felt humiliated. Two of Wisconsin’s ablest men have been thus slaughtered by the rude broad-axe of the engraver. Last fall, Senator Spooner, who is also a man with a first-class head and face, was libeled in this same reckless way. It makes me mad, and in that way impairs my usefulness. I am not a good citizen, husband or father when I am mad. I am a perfect simoom of wrath at such times, and I am not responsible for what I do.
Nothing can arouse the indignation of your friends, regardless of party, so much as the thought that while you are working so hard in the postoffice at Washington with your coat off, collecting box rent and making up the Western mail, the remorseless engraver and electrotyper are seeking to down you by making pictures of you in which you appear either as a dude or a tough.
While I have not the pleasure of being a member of your party, having belonged to what has been sneeringly alluded to as the g.o.p., I cannot refrain from expressing my sympathy at this time. Though we may have differed heretofore upon important questions of political economy, I cannot exult over these portraits. Others may gloat over these efforts to injure you, but I do not. I am not much of a gloater, anyhow.
I leave those to gloat who are in the gloat business.
Still, it is one of the drawbacks incident to greatness. We struggle hard through life that we may win the confidence of our fellow-men, only at last to have pictures of ourselves printed and distributed where they will injure us.
I desire to add before closing this letter, Mr. Vilas, that with those who are acquainted with you and know your sterling worth, these portraits will make no difference. We will not allow them to influence us socially or politically. What the effect may be upon offensive partisans who are total strangers to you, I do not know.
My theory in relation to these cuts is, that they are combined and interchangeable, so that, with slight modifications, they are used for all great men. The cut, with the extras that go with it, consists of one head with hair (front view), one bald head (front view), one head with hair (side view), one bald head (side view), one pair eyes (with glasses), one pair eyes (plain), one Roman nose, one Grecian nose, one turn-up nose, one set whiskers (full), one moustache, one pair side-whiskers, one chin, one set large ears, one set medium ears, one set small ears, one set shoulders, with collar and necktie for above, one monkey-wrench, one set quoins, one galley, one oil can, one screwdriver. These different features are then arranged so that a great variety of clergymen, murderers, senators, embezzlers, artists, dynamiters, humorists, arsonists, larcenists, poets, statesmen, base ball players, rinkists, pianists, capitalists, bigamists and sluggists are easily represented. No newspaper office should be without them. They are very simple, and any child can easily learn to operate it. They are invaluable in all cases, for no one knows at what moment a revolting crime may be committed by a comparatively unknown man, whose portrait you wish to give, and in this age of rapid political transformations, presentations and combinations, no enterprising paper should delay the acquisition of a combined portrait for the use of its readers.
Hoping that you are well, and that you will at once proceed to let no guilty man escape, I remain, yours truly,
Bill Nye.
The
