Bill Nye's Cordwood

by Bill Nye

Slipperyelmhurst, Hudson, Wis.—To the Allied Powers, care of Lord Salisbury. Gentlemen: Your favor of recent date regarding my acceptance of the Bulgarian throne, which is now vacant and for rent, in which note you tender me the use of said throne for one year, with the privilege of three, is at hand. You also state that the Allied Powers are not favorable to Prince Nicholas and that you would prefer a dark horse. Looking over the entire list of obscure men, it would seem you have been unable to fix upon a man who has made a better showing in this line than I have.

While I thank you for this kind offer of a throne that has, as you state, been newly refitted and refurnished throughout, I must decline it for reasons which I will try to give in my own rough, unpolished way.

In the first place I read in the dispatches to-day that Russia is mobilizing her troops, and I do not want anything to do with a country that will treat its soldiers in that way. Troops have certain rights as well as those who have sought the pleasanter walks of peace.

That is not all. I do not care to enter into a squabble in which I am not interested. Neither do I care to go to Bulgaria in the capacity of a carpet-bag monarch from the ten-cent counter, wearing a boiler-iron overcoat by day and a stab-proof corset at night. I have always been in favor of Bulgaria's selection of a monarch viva voce or vox populi, whichever you think would look the best in print.

I hate to see a monarch in hot water all the time and threatening to abdicate. Supposing he does abdicate, what good will that do, when he leaves a widow with nothing but a second-hand throne and a crown two sizes too small for his successor? I have always said, and I still say, that nothing can be more pitiful than the sight of a lovely queen whose husband, in a wild frenzy of remorse, has abdicated himself.

Nothing, I repeat, can be sadder than this picture of a deserted queen, left high and dry, without means, forced at last to go to the pawnbrokers with a little plated, fluted crown with rabbit-skin ear-tabs on it!

We are prone to believe that a monarch has nothing to do but issue a ukase or a mandamus and that he will then have all the funds he wants; but such is not the case. Lots of our most successful monarchs are liable to be overtaken any year by a long, cold winter and found as late as Christmas reigning in their summer scepters.

I am inclined also to hesitate about accepting the Bulgarian throne for another reason—I do not care to be deposed when I want to do something else. I have had my deposition taken several times and it did not look like me either time.

I think that you monarchs ought to stand by each other more. If you would form a society of free and independent monarchs there in Europe, where you are so plenty, you could have a good time and every little while you could raise your salaries if you worked it right.

Now you pull and haul each other all the time and keep yourselves in hot water day and night. That's no way for a dynasty any more than any one else. It impairs your usefulness and fills our telegraphic columns full of names that we can not pronounce. Every little while we have to pay the operator at this end of the cable ten dollars for writing in a rapid, flowing hand that "meanwhile Russia will continue to disregard the acts of the Sobranje."