Perihelion Electric Light, in comparison with which the mid-day sun looks like a convalescent white bean. In brilliancy and refulgent splendor, it without doubt lays over and everlastingly knocks the socks off all other lights now in the known world.
This statement I am prepared to back up with the necessary kopecks.
The wonderful Tattooed Steer from Stinking Water. If not exactly as represented, your money will be refunded to you as you pass out the door.
This costly and truly picturesque Queen Anne Steer was secured at great cost to the management, and will positively appear every day in the regular programme, and within the mammoth pavilion. If he does not in every respect do as I advertise, and with one hand tied behind him, I will be responsible.
Before and after visiting my Mammoth Show.
The royal Mexican Plug, Billy English, and the truly remarkable mule with the genuine camel's hair tail, Winfield Scott Hancock.
These animals, with almost human intelligence, walk around the ring, stepping first on one foot and then on the other.
They have been procured at enormous expense and may be found only with my stupendous aggregation of trained animals.
They represent the perfect pyramid at each performance as represented in the above engraving.
The steer which performs upon the flying trapeze and horizontal bar.
The only steer that has ever successfully enacted the aeria-dive or eagle swoop.
The wonderful performing steer, Zazel, is the only one-horned, one-eared and bob-tailed steer ever born in captivity; This steer is found alone with Bill Nye's Great Cast-Iron Hippodrome and 27-Karat Utopian Giganticum.
I extend to the members of the press everywhere a most hearty invitation. They will be furnished with luxuriant reclining chairs, porcelain cuspidores, and gold toothpicks to pick out the fragments of lemonade from their pearly teeth.
A special clown will be devoted to the members of the press.
A guide will have charge of visiting journalists to show them the curiosities, and see that they do not forget and carry anything away.
Members of the press will be allowed to sit on the top seats and let their feet hang down.
Do not fool with the animals.
The Owltown Bunghole says: "No living man has ever heretofore dared to perform all he advertised. Bill Nye certainly has secured the most wonderful and costly galaxy of arenic talent, and the most perfect and oriental conglomeration of grand, gloomy and peculiar zoological specimens from the four corners of the globe. The editor and his nineteen children, with his wife and hired girl, were passed in yesterday by the handsome and gentlemanly, modest and lady-like proprietor of Bill Nye's ownest own and simultaneous world-renowned hippodrome and menagerie."
A report has been set in circulation, probably by some unprincipled rival showmen, to the effect that I will not exhibit with my entire show at Granite Canon, but that the main show will be divided, the famous Trakene Stallion, Boomerang, going to Greeley; the Royal Mexican Plug Billy English, going to Whiskey Flat; the Mammoth Reptilian Angleworm going to Last Chance; the famous Trick Mule, Winfield Scott Hancock, going to Tie City, while the balance of the show would appear at Granite Canon.
I pronounce this and all similar reports the most flagrant, lying canards, as I shall not only appear at Granite Canon with my entire aggregation of my own and only jam-up-and-scrumptuous show and North American Boss and Supreme Oriental and Collossal Menagerie, but at all points where I have advertised to appear. I make no show, but I can buy and sell every show on the road before breakfast, and don't you forget it.
I travel on my own special train, and regular passenger and express trains are held while I have the right of way with my elegant drawing-room and palace cars for the animals, and colossal silver chariots for the men.
I exhibit also under my acres and acres of canvas, and two-bits will admit you to all parts of the show.
Special trains will run to and from Granite Canon on the day of the show at regular rates.
Simultaneously yours,
Bill Nye.
LETTER FROM PARIS
I am going to rest myself by writing a few pages in the language spoken in the United States, for I am tired of-the infernal lingo of this God-forsaken country, and feel like talking in my own mother tongue and on some other subject than the Exposition. I have very foolishly tried to talk a little of this tongue-destroying French, but my teeth are so loose now that I am going to let them tighten up again before I try it any more.
Day before yesterday it was very warm, and I asked two or three friends to step into a big drug-store on the Rue de La Sitting Bull, to get a glass of soda. (I don't remember the names of these streets, so in some cases I give them Wyoming names.) I think the man who kept the place probably came from Canada. Most all the people in Paris are Canadians. He came forward, and had a slight attack of delirium tremens, and said:
uZe vooly voo a la boomerang?"
I patted the soda fountain and said:
"No, not so bad as that, if you please. Just squeeze a little of your truck into a tumbler, and flavor it to suit the boys. As for myself, I will take about two fingers of bug-juice in mine to sweeten my breath."
But he didn't understand me. His parents had neglected his education, no doubt, and got him a job in a drug store. So I said:
"Look here, you frog-hunting, red-headed Communist, I will give you just five minutes to fix up my beverage, and if you will put a little tangle-foot into it I will pay you; otherwise I will pick up a pound weight and paralyze you. Now, you understand. Flavor it with spirituous frumenti, old rye, benzine – bay rum – anything! Parley voo, e pluri-bus unam, sic semper go braugh! Do you understand that?"
But he didn't understand it, so I had to kill him. I am having him stuffed. The taxidermist who is doing the job lives down on the Rue de la Crazy Woman's Fork. I think that is the name of the Rue that he lives on.
Paris is quite an old town. It is older and wickeder than Cheyenne, I think, but I may be prejudiced against the place. It is very warm here this summer, and there are a good many odors that I don't know the names of. It is a great national congress of rare imported smells. I have detected and catalogued 1,350 out of a possible 1,400.
I have not enjoyed the Exposition so much as I thought I was going to; partly because it has been so infernally hot, and partly because I have been a little homesick. I was very homesick on board ship; very homesick indeed. About all the amusement that we had crossing the wide waste of waters was to go and lean over the ship's railing by the hour, and telescope the duodenum into the æsophagus. I used to stand that way and look down into the dark green depths of old ocean, and wonder what mysterious secrets were hidden beneath the green cold waves and the wide rushing waste of swirling, foamy waters. I learned to love this weird picture at last, and used to go out on deck every morning and swap my breakfast to this priceless panorama for the privilege of watching it all day.
I can't say that I hanker very much for a life on the ocean wave. I am trying to arrange it so as to go home by land. I think I can make up for the additional expense in food. I bought more condemned sustenance, and turned it over
