(BILL NYE.)
MONG those who have shaken the sides of the fun-loving citizens of the United States and many in the old world with genuine wit and droll humor, our familiar and purely American “Bill Nye” must be numbered.
Edgar Wilson Nye was a born “funny man” whose humor was as irrepressible as his disposition to breathe air. The very face of the man, while far from being homely, as is frequently judged from comic pictures of him, was enough to provoke the risibility of the most sedate and unsmiling citizens in any community. When Mr. Nye walked out on the platform to exhibit in his plain manner a few samples of his “Baled Hay,” or offer what he was pleased to term a few “Remarks,” or to narrate one or more of the tales told by those famous creatures of his imagination known as “The Forty Liars,”—before a word was uttered an infectious smile often grew into a roaring laugh.
Edgar Wilson Nye was born at Shirley, Maine, 1850. His parents removed to Wisconsin, and thence to Wyoming Territory when he was but a boy, and he grew up amid the hardships and humorous aspects of frontier life, which he has so amusingly woven into the warp and the woof of his early “yarns.” Mr. Nye studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1876; but practiced his profession only one year. Afterwards he reported for the newspapers, and, in 1878, began to write regularly a weekly humorous letter for the Sunday papers in the West. This he continued to do for several years, receiving good compensation therefor, and his reputation as a humorous writer grew steadily and rapidly.
In 1884, Mr. Nye came to New York and organized the Nye Trust, or Syndicate, through which a weekly letter from him should simultaneously appear in the journals of the principal cities of the Union. This increased his fame; and during the later years of his life he was engaged much of his time on the lecture platform, sometimes alone, and sometimes in company with other prominent authors. He and the poet, James Whitcomb Riley, did considerable touring together and were enthusiastically welcomed wherever they went, the people invariably turning out in large numbers to enjoy a feast of fun and good feeling which this pair of prominent and typical Westerners never failed to treat them to.
Among the most humorous of Mr. Nye’s recent writings were his famous letters from Buck’s Shoals, North Carolina, where, in his imagination, he established himself as a southern farmer, and dealt out his rural philosophy and comments on current events to the delight, not only of the farmers—many of whom imagined that he was really one of them—but of every class of readers throughout the country.
In 1894 Mr. Nye turned his attention to another branch of humor, and brought out “Bill Nye’s History of the United States.” The drollery and humor of this work is unsurpassed—the interest and delight of the reader being greatly enhanced by the fact that he followed the chronological thread of the real historic narrative on which he pours the sidelights of his side-splitting humor. The success of this book was so great that Mr. Nye was preparing to go abroad to write humorous histories of England and other European countries when he suddenly died in 1896, in the 47th year of his age.
After his death Mrs. Nye went abroad, stopping in Berlin for the education of her children. The royalty on “Bill Nye’s” books brings an ample support for his family.