"If ever celebrity were attained unexpectedly, most assuredly it was that thrust upon Bill Nye by Truthful James. It is just possible, however, that the innumerable readers of Mr. Bret Harte's 'Heathen Chinee' may have imagined Bill Nye and Ah Sin to be purely mythical personages. So far as the former is concerned, any such conclusion now appears to have been erroneous. Bill Nye is no more a phantom than any other journalist, although the name of the organ which he 'runs' savors more of fiction than of fact. But there is no doubt about the matter, for the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune telegraphed on the 29th instant, that Bill Nye had accepted a post under the government. He has lately been domiciled in Laramie City, Wyoming territory, and is editor of The Daily Boomerang. In reference to Acting-Postmaster-Gen. Hatton's appointment of him as postmaster at Laramie City, the opponent of Ah Sin writes an extremely humorous letter, 'extending' his thanks, and advising his chief of his opinion that his 'appointment is a triumph of eternal truth over error and wrong.' Nye continues: 'It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection. I don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom.' In this quiet strain of banter, Bill Nye continues to the end of his letter, which suggests the opinion that whatever the official qualifications of the new postmaster may be, the inhabitants of Laramie City must have a very readable newspaper in The Daily Boomerang."
While thanking our London contemporary for its gentle and harmless remarks, we desire to correct an erroneous impression that the seems to have as to our general style: The British press has in some way arrived at the conclusion that the editor of this fashion-guide and mental lighthouse on the rocky shores of time (terms cash), is a party with wild tangled hair, and an like a tongue of flame.
That is not the case, and therefore our English co-worker in the great field of journalism is, no doubt, laboring under a popular misapprehension. Could the editor of the News look in upon us as we pull down tome after tome of forgotten lore in our study; or, with a glad smile, glance hurriedly over the postal card in transit through our postoffice, he would see, not as he supposes, a wild and cruel slayer of his fellow men, but a thoughtful, scholarly and choice fragment of modern architecture, with lines of care about the firmly chiseled mouth, and with the subdued and chastened air of a man who has run for the legislature and failed to get there, Eli.
The London News is an older paper than ours, and we therefore recognize the value of its kind notice. The Boomerang is a young paper, and has therefore only begun fairly to do much damage as a national misfortune, but the time is not far distant, when, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, we propose to search out suffering humanity and make death easier and more desirable, by introducing this choice malady.
Regarding the postoffice, we wish to state that we shall aim to make it a great financial success, and furnish mail at all times to all who desire it, whether they have any or not. We shall be pretty busy, of course, attending to the office during the day, and writing scathing editorials during the night, but we will try to snatch a moment now and then to write a few letters for those who have been inquiring sadly and hopelessly for letters during the past ten years. It is, indeed, a dark and dreary world to the man who has looked in at the same general delivery window nine times a day for ten years, and yet never received a letter, nor even a confidential postal card from a commercial man, stating that on the 5th of the following month he would strike the town with a new and attractive line of samples.
We should early learn to find put such suffering as that, and if we are in the postoffice department we may be the means of much good by putting new envelopes on our own dunning letters and mailing them to the suffering and distressed. Let us, in our abundance, remember those who have not been dunned for many a weary year. It will do them good, and we will not feel the loss.
THEY HAVE CURBED THEIR WOE.
THEY say that Brigham Young's grave is looking as bare and desolate as a boulevard now. At first, while her grief was fresh, his widow used to march out there five abreast, and just naturally deluge the grave with scalding tears, and at that time the green grass grew luxuriantly, and the pig-weed waved in the soft summer air; but as she learned to control her emotions, the humidity of the atmosphere disappeared, and grief's grand irrigation failed to give down. We should learn from this that the man who flatters himself that in marrying a whole precinct during life, he is piling up for the future a large invoice of ungovernable woe, is liable to get left. The prophet's tomb looks to-day like a deserted buffalo wallow, while his widow has dried her tears, and is trying to make a mash on the Utah commission. Such is life in the far west, and such the fitting resting place of a red-headed old galvanized prophet, who marries a squint-eyed fly-up-the-creek, and afterward gets a special revelation requiring him to marry a female mass-meeting. Let us be thankful for what we have, instead of yearning for a great wealth of wife. Then the life insurance will not have to be scattered so, and our friends will be spared the humiliating spectacle of a bereft and sorrowing herd of widow, turned loose by the cold hand of death to monkey o'er our tomb.