Bill Nye
Bill Nye's Sparks
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066183370
Table of Contents
A PATENT ORATORICAL STEAM ORGANETTE FOR RAILWAY STUMPING
LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD.
WHILE YOU WAIT!
THE COUPON LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
THE GREAT WESTERN CLAIRVOYANT,
BELOVED DAUGHTER OF
GERALD AND VASELINE TUBBS,
DIED MARCH 27,1888.
SHE CAUGHT COLD IN HER FRONT NAME.
SPEECH OF RED SHIRT, THE FIGHTING CHIEF OF THE SIOUX NATION
BIOGRAPHICAL
Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend.
He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine. Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After receiving a meager schooling, he entered a lawyer's office where most of his work consisted in sweeping the office and running errands. In his idle moments the lawyer's library was at his service. Of this crude and desultory reading he afterward wrote:
"I could read the same passage today that I did yesterday and it would seem as fresh at the second reading as it did at the first. On the following day I could read it again and it would seem as new and mysterious as it did on the preceding day."
At the age of twenty-five, he was teaching a district school in Polk County, Wisconsin, at thirty dollars a month. In 1877 he was justice of the peace in Laramie. Of that experience he wrote:
"It was really pathetic to see the poor little miserable booth where I sat and waited with numb fingers for business. But I did not see the pathos which clung to every cobweb and darkened the rattling casement. Possibly I did not know enough. I forgot to say the office was not a salaried one, but solely dependent upon fees. So while I was called Judge Nye and frequently mentioned in the papers with consideration, I was out of coal half the time, and once could not mail my letters for three weeks because I did not have the necessary postage."
He wrote some letters to the Cheyenne Sun and soon made such a reputation for himself that he was able to obtain a position on the Laramie Sentinel. Of this experience he wrote:
"The salary was small, but the latitude was great, and I was permitted to write anything that I thought would please the people, whether it was news or not. By and by I had won every heart by my patient poverty and my delightful