Why it was done.

What this country needs, aside from a new Indian policy and a style of poison for children which will be liable to kill rats if they eat it by accident, is a Railway Guide which will be just as good two years ago as it was next spring—a Railway Guide, if you please, which shall not be cursed by a plethora of facts, or poisoned with information—a Railway Guide that shall be rich with doubts and lighted up with miserable apprehensions. In other Railway Guides, pleasing fancy, poesy and literary beauty, have been throttled at the very threshold of success, by a wild incontinence of facts, figures, asterisks and references to meal stations. For this reason a guide has been built at our own shops and on a new plan. It is the literary piece de resistance of the age in which we live. It will not permit information to creep in and mar the reader's enjoyment of the scenery. It contains no railroad map which is grossly inaccurate. It has no time-table in it which has outlived its uselessness. It does not prohibit passengers from riding on the platform while the cars are in motion. It permits every one to do just as he pleases and rather encourages him in taking that course.

The authors of this book have suffered intensely from the inordinate use of other guides, having been compelled several times to rise at 3 o'clock a. m., in order to catch a car which did not go and which would not have stopped at the station if it had gone.

They have decided, therefore, to issue a guide which will be good for one to read after one has missed one's train by reason of one's faith in other guides which we may have in one's luggage.

Let it be understood, then, that we are wholly irresponsible, and we are glad of it. We do not care who knows it. We will not even hold ourselves responsible for the pictures in this book, or the hard-boiled eggs sold at points marked as meal stations in time tables. We have gone into this thing wholly unpledged, and the man who gets up before he is awake, in order to catch any East bound, or West bound, North bound, South bound, or hide-bound train, named in this book, does himself a great wrong without in any way advancing our own interests.

The authors of this book have made railroad travel a close study. They have discovered that there has been no provision made for the man who erroneously gets into a car which is side-tracked and swept out and scrubbed by people who take in cars to scrub and laundry. He is one of the men we are striving at this moment to reach with our little volume. We have each of us been that man. We are yet.

He ought to have something to read that will distract his attention. This book is designed for him. Also for people who would like to travel but cannot get away from home. Of course, people who do travel will find nothing objectionable in the book, but our plan is to issue a book worth about $9, charging only fifty cents for it, and then see to it that no time-tables or maps which will never return after they have been pulled out once, shall creep in among its pages.

It is the design of the authors to issue this guide annually unless prohibited by law, and to be the pioneers establishing a book which shall be designed solely for the use of anybody who desires to subscribe for it.

Bill Nye.
James Whitcomb Riley.

P. S.—The authors desire to express their thanks to Mr. Riley for the poetry and to Mr. Nye for the prose which have been used in this book.

Contents

August—Riley[32]
Anecdotes of Jay Gould—Nye[23]
A Black Hills Episode—Riley[132]
A Blasted Snore—Nye[190]
A Brave Refrain—Riley[188]
A Character—Riley[142]
A Dose't of Blues—Riley[220]
A Fall Creek View of the Earthquake—Riley[30]
A Hint of Spring—Riley[168]
A Letter of Acceptance—Nye[56]
A Treat Ode—Riley[170]
Craqueodoom—Riley[81]
Curly Locks—Riley[118]
Ezra House—Riley[161]
From Delphi to Camden—Riley[75]
Good-bye or Howdy-do—Riley[195]
Healthy, but Out of the Race—Nye[101]
Her Tired Hands—Nye[152]
His Crazy Bone—Riley[89]
His Christmas Sled—Riley[150]
His First Womern—Riley[41]
How to Hunt the Fox—Nye[46]
In a Box—Riley[214]
In the Afternoon—Riley[65]
Julius Cæsar in Town—Nye[34]
Lines on Hearing a Cow Bawl—Riley[107]
Lines on Turning Over a Pass—Nye[120]
Me and Mary—Riley[109]
McFeeters' Fourth—Riley[211]
My Bachelor Chum—Riley[178]
Mr Silberberg—Riley[96]
Niagara Falls from the Nye Side—Nye[111]
Never Talk Back—Riley[20]
Oh, Wilhelmina, Come Back—Nye[165]
Our Wife—Nye[172]
Prying Open the Future—Nye[90]
Says He—Riley[204]
Seeking to Be Identified—Nye[228]
Seeking to Set the Public Right—Nye[216]
Spirits at Home—Riley[99]
Society Gurgs from Sandy Mush—Nye[197]
Sutter's Claim—Riley[226]
This Man Jones—Riley[43]
That Night—Riley[124]
The Boy Friend—Riley[54]
The Chemist of the Carolinas—Nye[82]
The Diary of Darius T Skinner—Nye[144]
The Grammatical Boy—Nye[77]
The Gruesome Ballad of Mr Squincher—Riley[21]
The Man in the Moon—Riley[148]
The Philanthropical Jay—Nye[180]
The Truth about Methuselah—Nye[126]
The Tar-heel Cow—Nye[137]
The Rise and Fall of William Johnson—Nye[66]
The Rossville Lecture Course—Riley[134]
Wanted, a Fox—Nye[222]
Where He First Met His Parents—Nye[17]
Where the Roads are Engaged in Forking—Nye[206]
While Cigarettes to Ashes Turn—Riley[201]
Why It Was Done—Nye & Riley[11]

Where He First Met His Parents

Last week I visited my birthplace in the State of Maine. I waited thirty years for the public to visit it, and as there didn't seem to be much of a rush this spring, I thought I would go and visit it myself. I was telling a friend the other day that the public did not seem to manifest the interest in my birthplace that I thought it ought to, and he said I ought not to mind that. "Just wait," said he, "till the people of the United States have an opportunity to visit your tomb, and you will be surprised to see how they will run excursion trains up there to Moosehead lake, or wherever you plant yourself. It will be a perfect picnic. Your hold on the American people, William, is wonderful, but your death would seem to assure it, and kind of crystallize the affection now existing, but still in a nebulous and gummy state."

A man ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaintance sprang up which has ripened in later years into mutual respect and esteem. It was there that what might be termed a casual meeting took place, that has, under the alchemy of resist-less years, turned to golden links, forming a pleasant but powerful bond of union between my parents and myself. For that reason, I hope that I may be spared to my parents for many years to come.

Many memories now cluster about that old home, as I have said. There is, also, other bric-a-brac which has accumulated since I was born there. I took a small stone from the front yard as a kind of memento of the occasion and the place. I do not think it has been detected yet. There was another stone in the yard, so it may be weeks before any one finds out that I took one of them.

How humble the home, and yet what a lesson it should teach the boys of America! Here, amid the barren and inhospitable waste of rocks and cold, the last place in the world that a great man would naturally select to be born in, began the life of one who, by his own unaided effort, in after years rose to the proud height of postmaster at Laramie City, Wy. T., and with an estimate of the future that seemed almost prophetic, resigned before he could be characterized as an offensive partisan.

Here on the banks of the raging Piscataquis, where winter lingers in the lap of spring till it occasions a good deal of talk, there began a career which has been the wonder and admiration of every vigilance committee west of the turbulent Missouri.

There on that spot, with no inheritance but a predisposition to baldness and a bitter hatred of rum; with no personal property but a misfit suspender and a stone-bruise, began a life history which has never ceased to be a warning to people who have sold goods on credit.

It should teach the youth of our great broad land what glorious possibilities may lie concealed in the rough and tough bosom of the reluctant present. It shows how steady perseverance and a good appetite will always win in the end. It teaches us that wealth is not indispensable, and that if we live as we should, draw out of politics at the proper time, and die a few days before the public absolutely demand it, the matter of our birthplace will not be considered.

Still, my birthplace is all right as a birthplace. It was a good, quiet place in which to be born. All the old neighbors said that Shirley was a very quiet place up to the time I was born there, and when I took my parents by the hand and gently led them away in the spring of '53, saying, "Parents, this is no place for us," it again became quiet.

It is the only birthplace I have, however, and I hope that all the readers of this sketch will feel perfectly free to go there any time and visit it and carry their dinner as I did. Extravagant cordiality and overflowing hospitality have always kept my birthplace back.