Show ASHEVILLE ECHOES I i Bill Nye Relates How Things Are Moving f VANCE ON THE HOLY LAND a 1 A Few Society ItemsThe Great and Only Eller and Other Great Men Nyo Has Met IFor Tnc SUNDAY HERALD By special arrangement r ar-rangement with the author ASHEVILLE C Jan 201S92 This has been a very gentle and balmy winter for the native tar heeler as well as the Cape Cod asthmatic and bronchial wheezer from tho frozen homo of the abolitionist t who may have been spending the season r here Tropical growths are getting along first rate here if kept indoors and such subtropical I s tropical vegetation as the John pine the t jonquil and tbo horseradish are growing in the open air Senator Zebulon B Vance has returned from the Holy Land with a new story I picked up on the Sea of Galilee It is a corker Senator Vance is looking well and returns re-turns to his tenatorial labors with renewed re-newed vigor and a traveled air which weN we-N ortl1 Carolina people alone lack to makeup make-up shine Ho says that Bayreuth is pronounced Byrolt Senator Vance was there during the Wagner imbroglio I do not know what an imbroglio is but I think it was that He told several stories illustrative of American Amer-ican humor while at Byroit and as I understood un-derstood it interspersed between the Wagner Wag-ner selections They were not well received re-ceived He told an anecdote of exGovernor Hoards of Wisconsin regarding an experience exper-ience ho had while in the army After a forced march of eight weeks during which tho brigade did not touch food being anxious anx-ious to close the war they camped one night at a crossroad where it was found that in an old deserted tobacco warehouse there wore secreted three barrels of sparkling spark-ling homemade Dent corn Heidsick grown on the place I i e J L r THE COLORED PARADE The boys tried to get at it but the elk core saw at once that there would not be more than enough for themselves and so placed a guard over the liquor In the night tho boys got into the basement of the warehouse with eight clean washtubs and an auger and in the morning it was found that two of the barrels were empty and most of the brigade full The following night after apollinaris and family prayers it was resolved to try and get the other barrel in ordor to soothe that vague unrest and one thing and another an-other which one feels after an undue indulgence indul-gence in spirituous vinous malt or fermented fer-mented liquors They did not know that the guard had put the third barrel on two sawhorses a loot above their augers utmost ut-most scope All night theybored holes into the nocturnal bosom of the scooting hours all unmindful that the guard slept by tho barrel in a new place on the floor Toward morning Governor Hoard took the auger with a heavy heart and bored anew a-new hole in the bosom of the night He did not strike what he sought but there was a wild shriek from above and when the governor pulled the auger out he found on it the fragment of a gray army shirt and a birthmark Leaving tho eight new tubs whore they were also over 400003 new auger holes that had never been used they all went away Senator Vance told it better than I have but when ho got through the German friend of Vogner said Urn yah I Vot kain of a story vas date That is a humorous story That is American humor No my frain oxcobso me Dot was not yoomar dot vos a tam lie Senator Vance will during this session move the passage of an act authorizing the city of New York to buy the street bonds of the city of Asheville The city has been authorized of course some time ago to sell but Now York has not bought tho bonds no doubt feeling some hesitation without congressional authority but this will be soon remedied by act of the national legis aturo and all will be well The colored people of Asheville each year celebrate on the 1st of January their emancipation eman-cipation from slavery They parade on the street in strange costumes and many of them improve their appearance br wearing false faces of a repulsive oharac terThis year the procession was quite large and embraced many of our taut tonncst colored col-ored people Mr Plum Levi the barber of tho old school who shaved me five years ago and etlll points with pride to THE GORY TOWEL WHICH lIE USED OK ME was in the procession He wore a pink mask and a mantle made of two large perforated per-forated rubber doormats His feet were incased in easy and commodious slipppers each made from the pelt of a dead colt Floatsam Garside wore a navy blue domino dom-ino with knitted hood and blue soldier pants He was the life of the procession and almost everything did WHS mirthful He is a great reader always abreast of the times and may be often found reading the Asheville Citizen till after 10 oclock at night Miss Pearl Backus of Coxsackie N Y is paying a visit to former Blue Ruin friends and took part in the parade She is yet in her teens but has the wonderful gift of being able to cook for her employers employ-ers family and have enough left over each meal for an aged mother who has been again recently blessed with twins It is a joy indeed to the kind old heart of Pearls widowed mother to know in her declining years that her daughter will look out for her Filial love among people of moderate means is always a grateful sight She wore a fur trimmed street dress like one her mistress at Coxsackie wore just before be-fore Pearl left there r r r I had occasion to meet my friend Mr Franz Eber of the Lilliputan company a abort time ago He is about the size of the dividend hung on the Christmas treo for me this year by Russell Sage and yet Is twentythree of age a good comedian and pleasing after dinner speaker He has the air though of a successful actor and the amount of dignity he has considering the small place he has to drape it over makes me laugh for I am a great band to notice things that make a deep impression im-pression on me He did not seem to unbend I thought So much as he ought considering that crowned heads have rested on this bosom such as it is and that dynasties have staid all night at our house After I had gone the owner of the theatre thea-tre said to him reproachfully That was Mr Nye the groat American I humorous writer Mr Eber Did you understand un-derstand the name fully when I introduced you oulYes said Mr Ebor with a rising Inflection Section as he sat down on the chimey of a footlight I ting I haff heered off him I do not say this hurt Eber for he is too great a man to be hurt by newspaper criti cism but why in heavens name cannot people of prominence get along smoothly together I think we should stand by each other Ten years ago I met the two headed girl for tho first time and while the meeting meet-ing was not effusive it was cordial I have also met the Prince of Wales and Sitting Sit-ting Bull and there was no coldness no i professional jealousy between us r r I rr rj1 Y p er1 F I I i 1 q r MEETING THE GREAT EBEn I also once met Joseph Cook who was on his way to his regular work repairing and editing some of the works of God and von ho was kindly and almost sweet tome So I say that people of prominence should lay into one anothers hands r r r r c Reminiscences of Senator Plumb are so plenty since his death that I venture to call up one of the incidents of his early experience perience We had been running around ocr the capitol looking at whatever was curious in the way of memoranda sent into in-to Congress by tho Presidents like appointments pointments etcsome in pencil on manilla paper containing a whole cabinet perhaps mt as informal as u list of vegetanles for your cook to order for over Sunday then others would be stiff and formal like George Washington engaged in taking the thirtythird degree in Masonry We had looked over and commented on all these things swapped Zion mots with Senator In galls greatly to our own advantage for Senator Plumb was never remarkable for his repartee and as a bright and ready bon motter I could never make wages being slow of thought and possessing rather a 1 profound mindnot of course the profundity fundity noticed in fresh young newly matriculated ass hood but a depth which is lowly stirred shadowed over with an earnest gloom Wo then went up into the gallery and for and hour or two forgot our own greatness the Senate chamber faded away on the drowsy buzzing wings of the motion to refer to the committee on rules the hot Turkish bath air which is used to sprout the senatorial thought lulled us to half forgetfulness for-getfulness and hushed the pop cf the committees com-mittees report For the time we were back again in the far west with widening miles between us and the chaste reflno mont of Senator Hoar with billowing breezy states between us and the classic Hiscock the deep appealing ayes of Cameron Came-ron and the Roman noes of Edmunds we were again sitting astride the wapsy cayuse or returning hurriedly to camp where kind hands again pulled out the arrow of the savage and told us how the place looked to one who could got around there and see for himself How kind hands could tell this to one I leave the ready and versatile reader to figure out We used to make our writing ink in the early days where J lived u said Mr Plumb of maple bark which was boiled down till it was a little redder than umbrella juice and a little thicker than stump water It looked badly but it was a peri compared com-pared to the way it smelled It smelled like the deluge at low tide New York when it is opening up a subway on a hot day shows great possibilities but it cannot get in the little trills and throbs of measly and antique stench that this homemade and fermented ink did Once I went over to try a case before a poor white justice of the peace over thirty miles away He was a plain uneducated man who used his tongue in writing and breathed heavily like a mush kettle while thinking Opposed to me as counsel was a man who had been admitted to the bar I had not He was rather pompous and hated to try a case before a country justice but he had to do it He was hot and cross and while he was making his argument one of the children got an acorn up its nose and we had to stop and bore it out with the iron worm on an old ramrod That made counsel mad and while he was making a dilatory motion the square picked a brier out of the palm of his hand vith a Barlow knife and overruled it Then counsel got so hot that he forgot himself and said things to the court which ought to have remained forever unsaid After that THE COURT GOT ANGRY and threatened to commit counsel for contempt con-tempt Counsel allowed that the court did not know enough to draw the mittimus All right I will show you says the court and thereupon he bit off a piece of tobacco about the size of a prajerbook and took down a large fat volume of forms for justices of the peace weighing about nine pounds and smelling of pork and gravy and childhood He wrote on and on till dinner time I Then he glared at the man he was engaged in committing and ate the undemonstrative corn dodger with him meantime I didnt mind the bitterness bet len the court and counsel for it was all good for my side After dinner the squire rolled up one corner of the oilcloth table cloth and went on with the mittimus All that afternoon with bulging eye and wet brow while opposing counsel sat and smoked under the cool shadow of the cottonwood tho broiling gentleman on tho superheated woolsack painfully wrote on Toward twilight as the frogs in the follow smote the soft and echoless gloaming gloam-ing with their metal song the court closed with the final whereof fail not at your peril and the commitment was duly drawn Looking over earnestly at it and leaning on the shoulder of the court I can still seethe see-the calm pale face of counsel as he looked searchingly over the still wet and fragrant document Then firmly and deftly upsetting the big quart ink bottle over the mighty legal masterpiece and thereby turning loose upon the horrified night a fragrance so able BO durable and so pronounced that you could tie horses to it he said There you overgrown mushratl I You shapeless paunch of justice without its brains you overgrown and fungus error on the face of nature you old he mud hen of the swamps you malarial old intellectual intellect-ual wart on the brow of creation by the time you can go down on the bottoms and gather your maple bark and bring it home and boil it and put the caustic fragrance into it for another quart of ink I will be in another country and by tho time you can draw another mittimus will bo in most any other state which I may select I now bid you adieu Cauliflower AM rev ° ir old Polypus on tho membrane of nature na-ture blight upon tho great job of creation farewell He then kicked the old mother dog across the kitchen and strode fiercely down the child bordered pathway |