Cordwood Part 1

Cordwood.

by Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye.

BILL NYE ON THE COW INDUSTRY.

A COWBOY COLLEGE NEEDED TO EDUCATE YOUNG MEN TO THIS PROFESSION.

No one can go through the wide territory of Montana to-day without being strongly impressed with the wonderful growth of the great cattle growing and grazing industry of that territory. And yet Montana is but the northern extremity of the great grazing belt which lies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, extending from the British possessions on the north to the Mexican border on the south, extending eastward, too, as far as the arable lands of Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

Montana, at this season of the year, is the paradise of the sleek, high-headed, 2-year-old Texan steer, with his tail over the dashboard, as well as the stock yearling, born on the range, beneath the glorious mountain sky and under the auspices of roundup No. 21.

I do not say this to advertise the stock growing business, because it is already advertised too much, anyway. So many millionaires have been made with "free gra.s.s" and the early-rising, automatic branding iron that every man in the United States who has a cow that can stand the journey seems to be about to take her west and embark in business as a cattle king.

But let me warn the amateur cow man that in the great grazing regions it takes a good many acres of thin gra.s.s to maintain the adult steer in affluence for twelve months, and the great pastures at the base of the mountains are being pretty well tested. Moreover, I believe that these great conventions of cattlemen, where free gra.s.s and easily acquired fortunes are naturally advertised, will tend to overstock the ranges at last and founder the goose that now lays the golden egg. This, of course, is really none of my business, but if I didn't now and then refer to matters that do not concern me I would be regarded as reticent.

My intention, however, in approaching the great cow industry, which, by the way, is anything but an industry, being in fact more like the seductive manner whereby a promissory note acquires 2 per cent. per month without even stopping to spit on its hands, was to refer incidentally to the proposition of an English friend of mine. This friend, seeing at once the great magnitude of the cow industry and the necessity for more and more cowboys, has suggested the idea of establis.h.i.+ng a cowboys' college, or training school, for self-made young men who desire to become accomplished. The average Englishman will most always think of something that n.o.body else would naturally think of.

Now, our cattleman would have gone on for years with his great steer emporium without thinking of establis.h.i.+ng an inst.i.tution where a poor boy might go and learn to rope a 4-year-old in such a way as to throw him on his stomach with a sickening thud.

The young Maverick savant could take a kindergarten course in the study of cow brands. Here a wide field opens up to the scholar. The adult steer in the great realm of beef is now a walking Chinese wash bill, a Hindoo poem in the original junk shop alphabet, a four-legged Greek inscription, punctuated with jim-jams, a stenographer's notes of a riot, a bird's-eye view of a premature explosion in a hardware store.

The cowboy who can at once grapple with the great problem of where to put the steer with "B bar B" on left shoulder, "Key circle G" on left side, "Heart D Heart" on right hip, left ear crop, wattle te wattle, and seven hands round with "Dash B Dash" on right shoulder "vented," wattle on dew lap vented, and "P. D. Q.," "C. O. D.," and "N. G." vented on right side, keeping track of transfers, range and post-office of last owner, has certainly got a future, which lies mostly ahead of him.

But now that the idea has been turned loose, I shall look forward to the time when wealthy men who have been in the habit of dying and leaving their money to other inst.i.tutions, will meet with a change of heart, and begin to endow the cowboys' college, and the Maverick hotbed of broncho sciences.

We live in an age of rapid advancement in all branches of learning, and people who do not rise early in the morning will not retain their position in the procession. I look forward with confidence to the day when no cowboy will undertake to ride the range without a diploma.

Educated labor is what we need. Cowboys who can tell you in scientific terms why it is always the biggest steer that eats "pigeon weed" in the spring and why he should swell up and bust on a rising Chicago market.

I hope that the day is not far distant when in the holster of the cowboy we will find the Iliad instead of the killiad, the unabridged dictionary instead of Mr. Remington's great work on homicide. As it is now on the ranges you might ride till your Mexican saddle ached before you would find a cowboy who carries a dictionary with him. For that reason the language used on the general roundup is at times grammatically incorrect, and many of our leading cowboys spell "cavvy-yard" with a "k."

A college for riding, roping, branding, cutting out, corralling, loading and unloading, and handling cattle generally, would be a great boon to our young men, who are at present groping in dark and pitiable ignorance of the habits of the untutored cow. Let the young man first learn how to sit up three nights in succession, through a bad March snow storm and "hold" a herd of restless cattle. Let him then ride through the hot sun and alkali dust a week or two, subsisting on a chunk of disagreeable side pork just large enough to bait a trap. Then let his horse fall on him and injure his const.i.tution and preamble. All these things would give the cow student an idea of how to ride the range. The amateur who has never tried to ride a skittish and sulky range has still a great deal to learn.

Perhaps I have said too much on this subject, but when I get thoroughly awakened on this great porterhouse steak problem I am apt to carry the matter too far.

OVERHEARD IN DUDEDOM.

"Why, Awthaw, what makes youah hand twemble so?"

A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO.

SOME HERETOFORE UNPUBLISHED FACTS ABOUT THE QUEER OLD ITALIAN--HIS REMARKABLE INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES--HIS BOOKS.

BILL NYE.

Galilei, commonly called Galileo, was born at Pisa on the 14th day February, 1564. He was a man who discovered some of the fundamental principles underlying the movements, habits, and personal peculiarities of the earth. He discovered things with marvelous fluency. Born as he was, at a time when the rotary motion of the earth was still in its infancy and astronomy taught only in a crude way, Galileo started in to make a few discoveries and advance some theories of which he was very fond.

He was the son of a musician and learned to play several instruments himself, but not in such a way as to arouse the jealousy of the great musicians of his day. They came and heard him play a few selections and then they went home contented with their own music. Galileo played for several years in the band at Pisa, and people who heard him said that his manner of gazing out over the Pisan hills with a far-away look in his eye after playing a selection, while he gently upended his alto horn and worked the mud-valve as it poured out about a pint of moist melody that had acc.u.mulated in the flues of the instrument, was simply grand.

At the age of 20 Galileo began to discover. His first discoveries were, of course, clumsy and poorly made, but very soon he began to turn out a neat and durable discovery that would stand for years.

It was at this time that Galileo noticed the swinging of a lamp in a church, and, observing that the oscillations were of equal duration, he inferred that this principle might be utilized in the exact measurement of time. From this little accident, years after, came the clock, one of the most useful of man's dumb friends. And yet there are people who will read this little incident and still hesitate about going to church.

Galileo also invented the thermometer, the microscope, and the proportional compa.s.s. He seemed to invent things, not for the money to be obtained in that way, but solely for the joy of being first on the ground. He was a man of infinite genius and perseverance. He was also very fair in his treatment of other inventors. Though he did not personally invent the rotary motion of the earth, he heartily indorsed it and said it was a good thing. He also came out in a card in which he said that he believed it to be a good thing, and that he hoped some day to see it applied to the other planets.

He was also the inventor of a telescope that had a magnifying power of thirty times. He presented this to the Venetian senate, and it was used in making appropriations for river and harbor improvements.

By telescopic investigation Galileo discovered the presence of microbes in the moon, but was unable to do anything for it. I have spoken of Mr.

Galileo all the way through this article informally, calling him by his first name, but I feel so thoroughly acquainted with him, though there was such a striking difference in our ages, that I am almost justified in using his given name while talking of him.

Galileo also sat up nights and visited with Venus through a long telescope which he had made himself from an old bamboo fis.h.i.+ng-rod.

But astronomy is a very enervating branch of science. Galileo frequently came down to breakfast with red, heavy eyes; eyes that were swollen full of unshed tears. Still he persevered. Day after day he worked and toiled. Year after year he went on with his task till he had worked out in his own mind the satellites of Jupiter and placed a small tin tag on each one, so that he would know it readily when he saw it again. Then he began to look up Saturn's rings and investigate the freckles on the sun.

He did not stop at trifles, but went bravely on till everybody came for miles to look at him and get him to write something funny in their alb.u.ms. It was not an unusual thing for Galileo to get up in the morning, after a wearisome night with a fretful new-born star, to find his front yard full of autograph alb.u.ms. Some of them were little red alb.u.ms with floral decorations on them, while others were the large plush and alligator alb.u.ms of the affluent. Some were new and had the price-mark still on them, while others were old, foundered alb.u.ms, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the t.i.tle-page. All came with a request for Galileo "to write a little, witty, characteristic sentiment in them."

Galileo was the author of the hydrostatic paradox and other sketches. He was a great reader and a fluent penman. One time he was absent from home, lecturing in Venice for the benefit of the United Aggregation of Mutual Admirers, and did not return for two weeks, so that when he got back he found the front room full of autograph alb.u.ms. It is said that he here demonstrated his great fluency and readiness as a thinker and writer. He waded through the entire lot in two days with only two men from West Pisa to a.s.sist him. Galileo came out of it fresh and youthful, and the following night he was closeted all night with another inventor, a wicker-covered microscope, and a bologna sausage. The investigations were carried on for two weeks, after which Galileo went out to the inebriate asylum and discovered some new styles of reptiles.

Galileo was the author of a little work called "I Discarsi e Dimas-Trazioni Matematiche Intorus a Due Muove Scienze." It was a neat little book, of about the medium height, and sold well on the trains, for the Pisan newsboys on the cars were very affable, as they are now, and when they came and leaned an armful of these books on a pa.s.senger's leg and poured a long tale into his ear about the wonderful beauty of the work and then pulled in the name of the book from the rear of the last car, where it had been hanging on behind, the pa.s.senger would most always buy it and enough of the name to wrap it up in.

He also discovered the isochronism of the pendulum. He saw that the pendulum at certain seasons of the year looked yellow under the eyes, and that it drooped and did not enter into its work with the old zest.

He began to study the case with the aid of his new bamboo telescope and wicker-covered microscope. As a result, in ten days he had the pendulum on its feet again.

Galileo was inclined to be liberal in his religious views, and more especially in the matter of the scriptures, claiming that there were pa.s.sages in the bible which did not literally mean what the translator said they did. This was where Galileo missed it. So long as he discovered stars and isochronisms and such things as that he succeeded, but when he began to fool with other people's religious beliefs he got into trouble. He was forced to fly from Pisa, we are told by the historian, and we are a.s.sured at the same time that Galileo, who had always been far, far ahead of all compet.i.tors in other things, was equally successful as a fleer.

Galileo received but 60 scudi per year for his salary at Pisa, and a part of that he took in town orders, worth only 60 cents on the scudi.

METHUSELAH.

A RECENT BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THIS GRAND OLD MAN--A SLAVE TO TOBACCO.

BILL NYE.

I have just been reading James Whitcomb Riley's response to "the old man" at the annual dinner of the Indianapolis Literary club, and his reference to Methuselah has awakened in my mind many recollections and reminiscences of that grand old man. We first met Methuselah in the capacity of a son. At the age of 65, Enoch arose one night and telephoned his family physician to come over and a.s.sist him in meeting Methuselah. Day at last dawned upon Enoch's happy home, and its first red rays lit up the still redder surface of the little stranger. For three hundred years Enoch and Methuselah jogged along together in the capacity of father and son. Then Enoch was suddenly cut down. It was at this time that little Methuselah first realized what it was to be an orphan. He could not at first realize that his father was dead. He could not understand why Enoch, with no inherited disease, should be shuffled out at the age of 365 years. But the doctor said to Methuselah: "My son, you are indeed fatherless. I have done all I could, but it is useless. I had told Enoch many a time that if he went in swimming before the ice was out of the creek it would finally down him, but he thought he knew better than I did. He was a headstrong man, Enoch was. He sneered at me and alluded to me as a fresh young gosling, because he was 300 years older than I was. He has received the reward of the willful, and verily the doom of the smart Aleck is his."

Methuselah now cast about him for some occupation which would take up his attention and a.s.suage his wild, pa.s.sionate grief over the loss of his father. He entered into the walks of men and learned their ways. It was at this time that he learned the pernicious habit of using tobacco.

We can not wonder at it when we remember that he was now fatherless. He was at the mercy of the coa.r.s.e, rough world. Possibly he learned to use tobacco when he went away to attend business college after the death of his father. Be that as it may, the noxious weed certainly hastened his death, for 600 years after this we find him a corpse!

Death is ever a surprise, even at the end of a long illness and after a ripe old age. To those who are near it seems abrupt; so to his grand-children some of whom survived him, his children having died of old age, the death of Methuselah came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

Methuselah succeeded in cording up more of a record such as it was, than any other man of whom history informs us. Time, the tomb-builder and amateur mower, came and leaned over the front fence and looked at Methuselah, and ran his thumb over the jagged edge of his scythe, and went away whistling a low refrain. He kept up this refrain business for nearly ten centuries, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the general wreck of men and nations.