Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

by Bill Nye

So I went out with a brother of mine who could be depended upon. I took along my old pocket-knife that I have had for fifteen years, and which has received the silver medal, sweepstakes prize and handicap silver service in a score of go-as-you-please melon-plugging matches for the championship of the known world.

But we were not very fortunate. The world is growing cynical and fast losing faith in mankind, I fear. People have quit putting their money into savings banks and are beginning to plant their watermelons in new and obscure places. Just as the casual observer learns the position of an eligible melon patch the proprietor changes the combination on him.

I found multitudinous changes among old friends and associates when I got home, and was struck with the ceaseless work of time's effacing fingers, but nowhere did I find such cause for sorrow and regret as in the falling off and change of base which I found in the matter of melon cultivation.

We were exposed to the night air until past 1 o'clock, coming home tired and disappointed with three small ones apiece, which we hid in the hay-mow, according to a time-honored custom in the family, and retired.

The next day we both made a noble resolution to discard this unfortunate habit which we had contracted, partly because we were old enough to know better, and partly because we had in the hurry and precipitation of the evening previous, stolen and carried four miles a half dozen melons of the citron variety, that tasted like a premature pumpkin and smelled like cod liver oil and convalescent glue.

I had also lost my revolver. When I go out nights I always go armed, and for that reason I have gained the unenviable reputation of being a bold, bad man. Many people think that I am thirsting for the lives of my fellow-men and feel low-spirited and wretched unless I am shooting large, irregular holes through the human family, but this is not true.

I never killed any one in my life, unless death was richly merited. I have never taken a human life that society was not made better and safer by the act.

This revolver was the same one that I used four years ago when I shot at a burglar in Laramie. He was endeavoring, at the dead hour of midnight, to get into the window, and I feared that his intentions were not honorable. He knew that I was alone in the house, my wife having gone away on a visit, and so taking advantage of her absence and my timidity, he was endeavoring to force an entrance into the house. I don't know what ever nerved me to such an act of lofty heroism, but I marched softly out of the front door with noiseless tread and shot him.

Then I went back to bed and wondered what action the authorities would take with me. Whether it would be considered justifiable homicide and I exonorated, or whether I would be held without bail to answer at the next term of court for murder. Then I wondered what I had better do with the corpse. At first I thought I would run down and notify the coroner; then I concluded to go and see the victim, and see if life were extinct. Finally I compromised the matter by falling into a troubled sleep, from which I awoke on the following morning. I went out to the place where the burglar had been shot, but he was not there. With a superhuman will-power he had dragged himself away somewhere to die. He had also destroyed all traces of blood before getting away.

This was the last of the matter till the following September, when I received this letter: