Of the proprietor of the Sentinel he wrote:
"I don't know whether he got into the penitentiary or the Greenback party. At any rate he was the wickedest man in Wyoming. Still, he was warm-hearted and generous to a fault. He was more generous to a fault than to anything else—more especially his own faults. He gave me twelve dollars a week to edit the paper—local, telegraph, selections, religious, sporting, political, fashions, and obituary. He said twelve dollars was too much, but if I would jerk the press occasionally and take care of his children he would try to stand it. You can't mix politics and measles. I saw that I would have to draw the line at measles. So one day I drew my princely salary and quit, having acquired a style of fearless and independent journalism which I still retain. I can write up things that never occurred with a masterly and graphic hand. Then, if they occur, I am grateful; if not, I bow to the inevitable and smother my chagrin."
In the midst of a wrangle in politics he was appointed postmaster of his town and his letter of acceptance, addressed to the Postmaster-General at Washington, was the first of his writings to attract national attention.
He said that, in his opinion, his being selected for the office was a triumph of eternal right over error and wrong. "It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the nation's onward march toward political purity and perfection," he wrote. "I don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its wisdom."
Shortly after he became postmaster he started the Boomerang. The first office of the paper was over a livery stable and Nye put up a sign instructing callers to "twist the tail of the gray mule and take the elevator."
He at once became famous and was soon brought to New York, at a salary that seemed fabulous to him. His place among the humorists of the world was thenceforth assured.
He died February 22,1896, at his home in North Carolina, surrounded by his family.
James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, was for many years a close personal friend of the dead humorist. When informed of Nye's death, he said: "Especially favored, as for years I have been, with close personal acquaintance and association with Mr. Nye, his going away fills me with selfishness of grief that finds a mute rebuke in my every memory of him. He was unselfish wholly, and I am broken-hearted, recalling the always patient strength and gentleness of this true man, the unfailing hope and cheer and faith of his child-heart, his noble and heroic life, and pure devotion to his home his deep affections, constant dreams, plans and realizations. I cannot doubt but that somehow, somewhere, he continues cheerily on in the unbroken exercise of these same capacities."
Mr. Riley recently wrote the following sonnet:
O William, in thy blithe companionship