In your last letter you alluded to getting injured in a little “hazing scuffle with a pelican from the rural districts.” I don’t want any harm to come to you, my son, but if I went from the rural districts and another young gosling from the rural districts undertook to haze me, I would meet him when the sun goes down, and I would swat him across the back of the neck with a fence board, and then I would meander across the pit of his stomach and put a blue forget-me-not under his eye.

Your father aint much on Grecian mythology and how to get the square root of a barrel of pork, but he wouldn’t allow any educational institutions to haze him with impunity. Perhaps you remember once when you tried to haze your father a little, just to kill time, and how long it took you to recover. Anybody that goes at it right can have a good deal of fun with your father, but those who have sought to monkey with him, just to break up the monotony of life, have most always succeeded in finding what they sought.

I ain’t much of a pensman, so you will have to excuse this letter. We are all quite well, except old Fan, who has a galded shoulder, and hope this will find you enjoying the same great blessing.

Your Father.

Archimedes

Archimedes, whose given name has been accidentally torn off and swallowed up in oblivion, was born in Syracuse, 2,171 years ago last spring. He was a philosopher and mathematical expert. During his life he was never successfully stumped in figures. It ill befits me now, standing by his new-made grave, to say aught of him that is not of praise. We can only mourn his untimely death, and wonder which of our little band of great men will be the next to go.

Archimedes was the first to originate and use the word “Eureka.” It has been successfully used very much lately, and as a result we have the Eureka baking powder, the Eureka suspender, the Eureka bed-bug buster, the Eureka shirt, and the Eureka stomach bitters. Little did Archimedes wot, when he invented this term, that it would come into such general use.

Its origin has been explained before, but it would not be out of place here for me to tell it as I call it to mind now, looking back over Archie’s eventful life.

King Hiero had ordered an eighteen karat crown, size 7-1/8, and, after receiving it from the hands of the jeweler, suspected that it had been adulterated. He therefore applied to Archimedes to ascertain, if possible, whether such was the case or not. Archimedes had just got in on No. 3, two hours late, and covered with dust. He at once started for a hot and cold bath emporium on Sixteenth street, meantime wondering how the dickens he would settle that crown business.

He filled the bath-tub level full, and, piling up his raiment on the floor, jumped in. Displacing a large quantity of water, equal to his own bulk, he thereupon solved the question of specific gravity, and, forgetting his bill, forgetting his clothes, he sailed up Sixteenth street and all over Syracuse, clothed in shimmering sunlight and a plain gold ring, shouting “Eureka!” He ran head-first into a Syracuse policeman and howled “Eureka!” The policeman said: “You’ll have to excuse me; I don’t know him.” He scattered the Syracuse Normal school on its way home, and tried to board a Fifteenth street bob-tail car, yelling “Eureka!” The car-driver told him that Eureka wasn’t on the car, and referred Archimedes to a clothing store.

Everywhere he was greeted with surprise. He tried to pay his car-fare, but found that he had left his money in his other clothes.

Some thought it was the revised statute of Hercules; that he had become weary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had started out for fresh air. I give this as I remember it. The story is foundered on fact.

Archimedes once said: “Give me where I may stand, and I will move the world.” I could write it in the original Greek, but, fearing that the nonpareil delirium tremens type might get short, I give it in the English language.

It may be tardy justice to a great mathematician and scientist, but I have a few resolutions of respect which I would be very glad to get printed on this solemn occasion, and mail copies of the paper to his relatives and friends:

“WHEREAS, It has pleased an All-wise Providence to remove from our midst Archimedes, who was ever at the front in all deserving labors and enterprises; and

“WHEREAS, We can but feebly express our great sorrow in the loss of Archimedes, whose front name has escaped our memory; therefore

“Resolved, That in his death we have lost a leading citizen of Syracuse, and one who never shook his friends—never weakened or gigged back on those he loved.

“Resolved, That copies of these resolutions will be spread on the moments of the meeting of the Common Council of Syracuse, and that they be published in the Syracuse papers eodtfpdq&cod, and that marked copies of said papers be mailed to the relatives of the deceased.”

To the President-Elect

Dear Sir.—The painful duty of turning over to you the administration of these United States and the key to the front door of the White House has been assigned to me. You will find the key hanging inside the storm-door, and the cistern-pole up stairs in the haymow of the barn. I have made a great many suggestions to the outgoing administration relative to the transfer of the Indian bureau from the department of the Interior to that of the sweet by-and-by. The Indian, I may say, has been a great source of annoyance to me, several of their number having jumped one of my most valuable mining claims on White river. Still, I do not complain of that. This mine, however, I am convinced would be a good paying property if properly worked, and should you at any time wish to take the regular army and such other help as you may need and re-capture it from our red brothers, I would be glad to give you a controlling interest in it.

You will find all papers in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and a small jar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which you will be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that were the immediate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are now all buried. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your own. They are none too good for you. You deserve them. We may differ politically, but that need not interfere with our warm personal friendship.

You will observe on taking possession of the administration, that the navy is a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that it be newly painted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to receive a majority of the suffrages of the people for the office which you now hold, I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not influence you in the course which you may see fit to adopt.

There are many affairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in this brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity about appearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein the public might charge me with interference.

I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whatever your convictions may be upon great questions of national interest, either foreign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out the gas on retiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond anticipations which are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people whose aggregated eye is now on to you.

Bill Nye.

P.S.—You will be a little surprised, no doubt, to find no soap in the laundry or bath-rooms. It probably got into the campaign in some way and was absorbed.

B.N.

Anatomy

The word anatomy is derived from two Greek spatters and three polywogs, which, when translated, signify “up through” and “to cut,” so that anatomy actually, when translated from the original wappy-jawed Greek, means to cut up through. That is no doubt the reason why the medical student proceeds to cut up through the entire course.

Anatomy is so called because its best results are obtained from the cutting or dissecting of organism. For that reason there is a growing demand in the neighborhood of the medical college for good second-hand organisms. Parties having well preserved organisms that they are not actually using, will do well to call at the side door of the medical college after 10 P.M.

The branch of the comparative anatomy which seeks to trace the unities of plan which are exhibited in diverse organisms, and which discovers, as far as may be, the principles which govern the growth and development of organized bodies, and which finds functional analogies and structural homologies, is denominated philosophical or transcendental anatomy. (This statement, though strictly true, is not original with me.)

Careful study of the human organism after death, shows traces of functional analogies and structural homologies in people who were supposed to have been in perfect health all their lives Probably many of those we meet in the daily walks of life, many, too, who wear a smile and outwardly seem happy, have either one or both of these things. A man may live a false life and deceive his most intimate friends in the matter of anatomical analogies or homologies, but he cannot conceal it from the eagle eye of the medical student. The ambitious medical student makes a specialty of true inwardness.

The study of the structure of animals is called zootomy. The attempt to study the anatomical structure of the grizzly bear from the inside has not been crowned with success. When the anatomizer and the bear have been thrown together casually, it has generally been a struggle between the two organisms to see which would make a study of the structure of the other. Zootomy and moral suasion are not homogeneous, analogous, nor indigenous.

Vegetable anatomy is called phytonomy, sometimes. But it would not be safe to address a vigorous man by that epithet. We may call a vegetable that, however, and be safe.

Human anatomy is that branch of anatomy which enters into the description of the structure and geographical distribution of the elements of a human being. It also applies to the structure of the microbe that crawls out of jail every four years just long enough to whip his wife, vote and go back again.

Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical. Those terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals, specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, but really mean something else. I would explain here what they actually do mean if I had more room and knew enough to do it.

Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, into fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles, angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or department of the interior, and so on.

People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomy on subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but they are productive of insomnia, so I will not give them.

I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have not been there since. When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it in the dissecting-room of a large and flourishing medical college does not occur to me.

I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no hesitation about mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting up other nationalities. I should always fear, while pursuing my studies, that I might be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do that. I should like to do anything that would advance the cause of science, but I should not want to form the habit of dissecting people, lest some day I might be called upon to dissect a friend for whom I had a great attachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me.