Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

by Bill Nye

And die as I have lived—"a hard nut."

This is no time-worn simile, no hackneyed illustration or bald-headed decrepit comparison, but a new, fresh illustration that appeals to the Western character, and lifts the very soul out of the kinks, as it were.

Wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut.

Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How melodious and yet how real. None but the true poet would have thought to compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.

In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel, the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.

Now and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then a calm falls upon the scene. Anon, the driver bangs the mule that is ostensibly pulling his daylights out, but who is, in fact, humping up like an angle worm, without nulling a pound.

Then the poet comes to the close of the cowboy's career in this style:

"Do I repent?

"No—of nothing present or past;

"So skip, old preach, on gospel pap I won't be fed;