Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1889 — BILL NYE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BILL NYE.

Clubb««l by a New York Ruliceman, Hi* Life I* Saved by a Silver Dollar.

VERY few cities the size of New York can produee more men whose BHfaees are made famila r to the world jfithrough the pages of ®the(illustrated papers, •■writes Bill Nve in the jßNew York World. A fgday on the liorse-ears, and elevated raßtrains will convince Mthe careful observer |Mthat New York is full SHof men who are so Wwell known that it become something of a burden to them,

and who find that they can get a good deal of seclusion by allowing themselves to be swallowed up in the great struggling tide of the metropolis. I realize this most strongly in my own case and I see it illustrated in the cases of many others. Though my face has almost become, as I may say, a household word, several bright young horses haviug been named after me, 1 can go the whole length of Broadway without affecting business in any appreciable manner. I have never drawn attention to myself on the streets of New York but once, and I do not speak of this because I feel vain about it. It was on the Bowery during a great fire last summer, when many lives were lost. I heard the shrill alarm, and having once been a fireman in Laramie City, in order to avoid being a juror, for I felt when I looked at the juror we had that I was not worthy, so of course the alarm of fire, even though conveyed by wire, stirred my young blood, and I weut along with some other gentlemen of the press, named Hastings and

Crawford. I need hardly say that the fire fiend with his forked tongue was already licking his choirs as we arrived, Inspectors Williams and Steers were there. They greeted me cordially and asked “How’s tricks?” We all codversed at some length regarding the fire, and I spoke of it several times as the fire fiend without attracting attention, but that is not strange, for both Inspector Williams and Inspector Steers afterward told me that they did not care a continental for fine wordpainting. By and by I asked Inspector Williams if there would be any need of my remaining any longer. He said he thought not, but would ask Inspector Steers. It was finally arranged that I should go if I desired much to do so. I moved quietly toward the fire lines, being deliberate in my movements, in order to avoid alarming the crowd. Just then a roundsman named O’Bourke asked me in a profane way what I was doing inside the lines, meantime helping himself to some Of the dark meat inside the sleeve of my coat. He was rough in his treatment, but I was so much the taller of the two that he could not club me, having forgotten to bring his step-ladder with him. His language was earnest and yet highly ornamented. He ’spoke in the patois of the canaille of Limerick. He now jerked me to and fro and rudely hustled me. Inspectors Steers and Williams both saw it all, as I afterward learned, but whenever I looked toward them they were earnestly looking at the fire. So were Messrs. Crawford and Hastings. I told Sig. O’Bourke that I came of a good family, and though I had been inside the lines I had not been robbing dead. But he was excited and flushed, intoxicated by his own breath, no doubt, and so he hustled me some more. The immense crowd seemed to enjoy it, and I heard a newsboy say, “lay, Billy!” I was now outside the lines, and one would have thought that the cop would have let me alone, but he kept on conversing with me till one of the newspaper men came up and talked to Don Giovani O’Rourke in a way that made my blood run cold. I then escaped, and, .though encored by three or four thousand people, I refused to go back. When I got home I found a large dent in a silver dollar In my pocket, which had in some way been struck by the policemen. It is not the first time that a dollar has sAved my life under similar circumstances. Towne —That’s too bad about Dingley, isn’t it V Browne—How ? What’s that? Towne—Joined the silent majority. Browne—What! dead? Town® —No, married.— Time. Clerk—lsn’t the price of this box of strawberries low enough for you? Customer—O, the price is low enough.* The bottom of the box isn’t, though.— New York Sun. 1

NYE AND O’ROURKE HAVE A SCUFFLE.