Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1881 — The Fly. [ARTICLE]

The Fly.

Bill Nye’s Boomerang. Muoh has been said of the fly of the period, hut few write about him who are bald-headed. Hence we say a word. It is of no use any more to deny the horrible truth. Although ns beautiful as a peri in other ways, our tiesses on top have seccnmbed to the inclemency of the weather and our massive brow is slowly creeping over toward the back of our neck. Nature makes all things even. If a man be possessed of such ravishing beauty and such winning ways that his power might become dangerous, she makes him bald-headed. That is our tlx. When we have our hat off and go chasing down the street with that camel glide of ours every one asks who that noble-looking Apollo with the deep and melancholy eye is,, but when we are at the office, with our hat hung up on the French walnut sideboard, and the sun comes softly in through the rosewood shutters and lights up the shellac polish on our Intellectual dome, wo are not so pretty. Then it is that the fly with gentle tread and seductive song, comes and prospects around on our bump of selfesteem, and tickles us and makes us mad. When we get where forbearance ceases to be a virtue, we haul' of and bit the place where he was, while he goes over to the inkstand and snlokers at us. After he has waded around in the carmine ink a while he goes back to the bump of spirituality and makes some red marks over it. Having laid off his claim under the new mining law, he proceeds to sink it. If we write anything bitter these days; if we say aught of our fellow man that is disagreeable or unjust, and for which we afterward get licked, it is because at times we get exasperated and are not responsible. If the fly were large and weighed 200 pounds and came in here and told Jia if we didn’t take back what we had said about him, he would knock out the window with our remains and let u-i fall 100 feet into the busy street, it wouldn’t worry us so much, because then we could strangle him with one hand while we wroteacolumn editorial with the other. We do that frequently. But a little fragile insect with no home and no parents, aud'only four or five million brothers and sisters, gains our confidence and (Jien tickles our scalp till we have to write with a sheet of tar roofing over our head. Then he cornea in and helps us read our proof. We don’t want him tb help, but he insists on making corrections and putting punctuations in the wrong place, and putting full stops whers they knock the sense all out of the paragraph. If the fly could be removed from our pathway we would march along on our journey to the tomb in a way that would be the envy and admiration of the civilized world. As it is we feel that we are not making a very handsome record.