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Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns), a non-fiction book by (Edgar W. Nye) Bill Nye |
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Wanted, A Fox |
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_ SLIPPERY ELMHURST,} STATEN ISLAND, July 18, 1888.} TO THE EDITOR:
You know, perhaps, that I am of English origin. Some of the best and bluest blood of the oldest and most decrepit families in England flows in my veins. There is no better blood extant. We love the exhilarating sports of our ancestors, and nothing thrills us through and through like the free chase 'cross country behind the fleeing fox. Joyously we gallop over the sward behind the yelping pack, as we clearly scent high, low, jack and the game. My ancestors are haughty English people from Piscataquis county, Maine. For centuries, our rich, warm, red blood has been mellowed by the elderberry wine and huckleberry juice of Moosehead lake; but now and then it will assert itself and mantle in the broad and indestructible cheek of our race. Ever and anon in our family you will notice the slender triangular chest, the broad and haughty sweep of abdomen, and the high, intellectual expanse of pelvic bone, which denotes the true Englishman; proud, high-spirited, soaked full of calm disdain, wearing checked pantaloons, and a soft, flabby tourist's hat that has a bow at both ends, so that a man cannot get too drunk to put it on his head wrong. I know that here is democratic America, where every man has to earn his living or marry rich, people will scorn my high-born love of the fox-chase, and speak in a slighting manner of my wild, wild yearn for the rush and scamper of the hunt. By Jove, but it is joy indeed to gallop over the sward and the cover, and the open land, the meet and the cucumber vines of the Plebian farmer, to run over the wife of the peasant and tramp her low, coarse children into the rich mould, to "sick" the hounds upon the rude rustic as he paris greens his potatoes, to pry open the jaws of the pack and return to the open-eyed peasant the quivering seat of his pantaloons, returning it to him not because it is lacking in its merit, but because it is not available. Ah, how the pulses thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold, anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated fracture of the dura mater through which the gas is gently escaping. Let others rave over the dreamy waltz and the false joys of the skating rink, but give me the maddening yelp of the pack in full cry as it chases the speckled two-year-old of the low-born rustic across the open and into the pond. Let others sing of the zephyrs that fan the white sails of their swift-flying yacht, but give me a wild gallop at the tail of my high-priced hounds and six weeks at the hospital with a fractured rib and I am proud and happy. All our family are that way. We do not care for industry for itself alone. We are too proud ever to become slaves to habits of industry. We can labor or we can let it alone. This shows our superiority as a race. We have been that way for hundreds of years. We could work in order to be sociable, but we would not allow it to sap the foundations of our whole being. I write, therefore, to learn, if possible, where I can get a good red or gray fox that will come home nights. I had a fox last season for hunting purposes, but he did not give satisfaction. He was constantly getting into the pound. I do not want an animal of that kind. I want one that I shall always know where I can put my hand upon him when I want to hunt. Nothing can be more annoying than to be compelled to go to the pound and redeem a fox, when a party is mounted and waiting to hunt him. I do not care so much for the gait of a fox, whether he lopes, trots or paces, so that his feet are sound and his wind good. I bought a light-red fox two years ago that had given perfect satisfaction the previous year, but when we got ready to hunt him he went lame in the off hind foot and crawled under a hen house back of my estate, where he remained till the hunt was over. What I want is a young, flealess fox of the dark red or iron-gray variety, that I can depend upon as a good roadster; one that will come and eat out of my hand and yearn to be loved. I would like also a tall, red horse with a sawed-off tail; one that can jump a barbed wire fence without mussing it up with fragments of his rider. Any one who may have such a horse or pipless fox will do well to communicate with me in person or by letter, enclosing references. I may be found during the summer months on my estate, spread out under a tree, engaged in thought. E. FITZWILLIAM NYE. Slipperyelmhurst, Staten Island, N. Y. IMITATED. Say! you feller! You-- The luck's dead agin it!-- Then others they worked it The last one was plucky-- Don't you strike nary lick |
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