JAMES W. NYE.

 

            HE WAS not an Argonaut; not even a Nevada pioneer, but came by appointment as governor of Nevada when the territory was carved out of western Utah. But he would have been a marked addition, had he joined the first company of forty-niners.

            He was New York born and bred; grew up in poverty; studied law, practiced law in all the courts; was always a success, and at home among every class of people, from the fire Jackie of New York City to the President of the United States ; from Captain Jim of the Washoe Tribe to Abraham Lincoln ; and on the rostrum, from a bunch of cowboys to the Senate of the United States. He was nearly sixty years of age when he reached Nevada. He was given a public reception and when it was over the verdict was that he would do. About five feet ten inches in height and massive, weighing about 200 pounds ; small and high-born feet and hands, and with about the handsomest, most expressive face that was ever given a man.

            His eyes were coal black, but they were dancing eyes, like those of Sisyphus, and snow-white hair down upon his shoulders, like Henry Ward Beecher's. In repose his face was most striking, but the play of his features was wonderful ; every emotion found expression in his face. Had he chosen an actor's career, I am sure that he would have stood first among actors in his generation in all roles from Falstaff to Macbeth ; though he would have failed, probably, in Shylock, for when Bassanio and Antonio failed to pay, he would have hunted up the latter and said, : 'Brace up, Tony: if you need a little ready money, while I have none myself, I will send you to a man who has plenty and whom I think you can work for a loan."

            He was one of the most intense of Americans, and had the full courage of his convictions. Had trouble come in Nevada as was predicted and threatened in the early sixties, Governor Nye would have been what Governor Morton was

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in Indiana. On the rostrum he was a very glory of the earth, for he was familiar with every phase of human nature ; it was impossible to take him by surprise; it was a delight to have someone interrupt him and hear him flash back a reply that settled the question. He was making a speech in Eureka, Nevada, one night after the war closed, and reconstruction had not quite run its unfortunate course.

            He was saying that the men of the South were our brothers; that they had got off wrong; that many of them were still angry, but he was looking forward to the day which he believed was coming soon, when their old devotion would come back, and through their generous natures again fully awakened would be once more as they were at Buena Vista, when the struggle was to see which state could honor most the land which the fathers had bequeathed to us. Just then Major McCoy, who was a Mexican war veteran, but who in the great war had been so fierce a secessionist that when the confederacy collapsed he had expatriated himself and gone to Mexico to remain there some years, interrupted with the question : "Senator, if those are your sentiments, why are you so loath to giving Southern men full official recognition?"

            The old jolly look came over Nye's face, and he said: "When I was a boy I was walking one very cold winter day from Bridgeport, on Oneida Lake, to Syracuse, when, hearing sleighbells coming rapidly, I stepped out into the snow to let the sleigh pass. It proved to be a fancy New York cutter drawn by a span of perfectly matched Black Hawk horses. The trappings on the horses were silver-plated ; the cutter was filled with fine robes and was driven by a middle-aged man. As the rig flashed by me it was, to my eyes, a vision of beauty. The man saw me and as soon as he could pull up the team -the morning was frosty and the steppers were pushing the bits hard called to me to come quick and get in. I ran and climbed in, the man holding the team steady with one hand and with the other tucked me all up with one robe and then drew a second robe over my lap and I knew I had struck a bonanza. "By this time the Hawks were fairly flying you know they can only strike about a three-minute clip, but can keep

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it up all day. The man was talking low to them and I know now that they were making his arms ache. This went on for about fifteen minutes. I was snug and warm under the robes, when I looked up at the man and proposed that he give me the reins, telling him that I knew lots about horses. He glanced down at me and said : ''My boy, when you grow wise you will know more than you do now and will learn that an invitation to ride does not carry with it any obligation to let you drive." The major asked no more questions.

            Just after the war he was making a speech. The passions of all men were strung to their utmost tension in those days, and he was explaining all that was being done to reconstruct the south, when some one in the audience said, ; 'But, senator, the war is over."

            He made two strides forward on the stage and with eyes blazing, thundered : 'Yes ; but for an original unrepentant rebel there is no cure save through death; no justification save through ages of hell fire."

            But he did not mean it. Hearing that a confederate officer who was a close friend of one of his own friends, was in prison in Fort Lafayette, under a charge that, when captured, he was within the federal lines as a spy, Nye first went to President Lincoln and obtained a pardon for the man, then went up to Fort Lafayette, got the man released, advised him to quietly take the first steamer for California, then to go to Nevada : gave him a list of names of good fellows out there, put a roll of $1,200 greenbacks in his hand and bade him good-bye. He explained later that the greenbacks were worth only forty- seven cents on the dollar, so he was not out much.

            He and the late Senator Stewart were the first senators from Nevada to Washington. Nye's seat was next to that of Senator Sumner of Massachusetts.

            They became warm personal friends, for as Nye said : "Sumner meant well, even if he did not know much." He said when he first took his seat, Sumner looked down upon him from an infinite height and said, with all dignity : "Good morning. Senator Nye." "Good morning," Senator Sumner," was the reply. In the course of a few days Sumner began to relax

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and one morning said: "Good morning, Mr. Nye." And Nye, responding, said: "Good morning, Mr. Sumner." "After about a month," said Nye, "I went in one morning and Sumner said : 'Good morning, James," and I said : 'Charlie, my boy, how are you?'

            The second year Nye was in the Senate a furious debate was sprung on some question of the management of the war, and one senator grossly criticised President Lincoln. When the speech was finished, Nye sprang to his feet, and for twenty minutes held the Senate spellbound. The burden of the speech was to picture the mighty burdens under which the patient president was staggering and the cowardice of senators who, in such a crisis, instead of holding up his hands, would add to these burdens. Nye had a private key to a side-door in the White House, and went there nights to "swap stories" with Lincoln.

            Nye received a letter one day, informing him that a brigade of New York soldiers, stationed at some point in Arkansas or Missouri, had been overlooked and were suffering for food and clothing. Next morning he called at the war office and sent in his card to Secretary Stanton. He told me that he wrote under his name -- the only time he ever did it in his life -- : 'U. S. Senator." He was shown in. Stanton was standing behind a little counter, and as Nye approached, Stanton said curtly: "What can I do for you, sir?" Nye presented the letter and asked the secretary to read it. Stanton glanced over it hastily, and pushing it back, said sharply: : 'I have no time for these little things." 'Will you please take the time, sir?" said Nye. Then Stanton said hotly : : 'Do you know who you are talking to, sir?" Nye stepped up close to the counter and, holding out one finger, said : 'You will change that tone of yours right quick or you will know very soon who you are talking to." "Then," said Nye, "we glared at each other for a second or two, and then Stanton opened a little door in the counter and said politely : "Walk in, Senator Nye,' and we had everything fixed in five minutes." He added : "Something about the incident seemed to please the clerks within hearing a good deal."

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            One day in the Senate Sumner made one of his mean speeches, asserting that no great race had ever sprung from below latitude 37.40. As Sumner sat down Nye arose, and, being instantly recognized, explained that he would take but a moment of the time of the Senate, that he desired only to call attention to the unfortunate fact that the learned senator from Massachusetts had not lived prior to the coming of our Savior, because, had he done so, when the Messiah came to give instructions to his disciples he would have said: "Go ye forth and preach the gospel to all peoples, nations and tongues, north of 37.40," and sat down.

            Sumner turned to him and said : 'There is no argument in that." To which Nye responded : "Of course not. There was not a trace of sense in what you said."

            Nye had the scriptures at his finger ends. In the hot campaign of 1868 the national committees sent Nye up to a town in Connecticut to make a Republican speech. He reached the place about noon. The local committee met and welcomed him, but explained that it would be useless to try to have a political meeting, that the whole region thereabouts had gone wild over a religious revival, that they were holding services day and night and that the work of grace was doing wonders.

            Nye told them that he was glad of it, that he did not want to make a political speech, but would like to attend their afternoon meeting, adding that while not a member of any church, he had a Christian mother, and if he might be allowed to speak for a few minutes he believed he might interest the children.

            This was hailed with delight, and when the great congregation had assembled in a grove in the open air, the head deacon explained to the audience that a rare treat was in store for them, that the great "gray eagle, Senator Nye" of Nevada was present; that while not a professed Christian he was brought up under Christian auspices and had kindly consented to address the congregation. Nye was then presented and turned that sovereign face of his upon the audience. His own account was like this :

            "I looked them over a minute and they became very still.

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Then, as impressively as I could, I repeated the twenty-third Psalm, beginning, 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.' Then I gave them a few flirts from Job and a couple of rib-roasters from Isaiah, and in fifteen minutes I was giving them as robust a Republican speech as they ever heard. I held them for two hours, and when I closed I noticed an old girl who was sitting in the front row wiping her eyes, and could not help hearing her say : 'The gentleman may not be a professor, but nothing can convince me that he is not full of saving grace.'

            It was a custom in mining towns for merchants to keep donkeys, so when an outside miner bought a bill of goods, they were packed on a donkey, the miner led him to his cabin, unloaded the pack and turned the donkey loose. The wise creature would at once return to town.

            Nye was speaking in Austin, Nevada, one of those matchless Nevada summer nights, and everybody was out to hear him. He had hardly got under way when a donkey started around the crowd on a fast trot, braying as though his heart was breaking. It seemed as though he would never stop, and when he did, the echoes came back almost as distinct and loud from old Mount Toyabe, and, of course, the audience was convulsed. It was ten minutes before the tumult w r as settled. Then Nye, stretching out his hand, said : "Ladies and gentlemen, that does not disturb me in the least. I have never tried to make a Republican speech in Nevada that the opposition have not trotted out their best speakers to try and down me."

            Senator Nye was called upon once to address a gathering of Sunday school children. The burden of his talk was that the utmost care should be taken to see that children receive upon their plastic hearts only good impressions, so lasting were they. To accentuate his words he drew a fifty-cent piece from his pocket, held it before the children, and told them that when a small boy that silver piece had been given him by the great Daniel Webster, that foremost of statesmen.

            Then he told them that since then he had often been hungry, often cold, for in childhood he had not sufficient clothing for a New York winter ; often he had seen dainties which he

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coveted, but that nothing could ever induce him to part with that silver, for it had been held in the hand of the matchless Webster, and by that hand given to him. By this time he was overcome with emotion, and was crying, and so were half the women and children before him.

            When he finished and was retiring from the hall a friend said to him: "Senator, where did you get that half dollar?" "Got it from a bootblack this morning/' was the reply.

            He was riding on the cars in Central New York one morning when he saw an old man in another seat whose face seemed familiar. He studied the face for several minutes, when a leaf of memory turned in his brain, and, going over and sitting down by the old man, he said: "Is not your name Baxter?' The man said it was.

            "Well," said Nye, "do you remember that a little after daylight one November morning some forty-five years ago you took into your house a fourteen-year-old boy who had been walking on the tow-path of the canal all night ; took him in, gave him a hot breakfast sausage and eggs and buckwheat cakes and honey, pumpkin-pie and coffee ; how your wife gave him a pair of shoes and stockings, a muffler for his neck and mittens, and when he went away filled his pockets with Rhode Island Greening apples, doughnuts, gingerbread and cheese ?' :

            The old man said he did recall something of the kind. 'Well, I was that boy," said Nye, "and I wanted to ask if your wife was still spared to you, and if all was well with you."

            The man replied that his wife was still with him, but that he had been unfortunate : that he was forced some years before to mortgage their little farm for $800: that now, with interest, costs and lawyers' fees the debt amounted to within a few dollars of $1,400: that the sheriff would sell the place at noon that day at Little Falls : that he was on the way to see who bid it in and to see if he could get a lease from the buyer so that his wife would not be forced to give up her old home. Then the old man burst into tears. Nye told him that he was a lawyer : that he, too, was going to Little Falls, and would accompany him to the sale ; that he might help him in fixing up the papers.

            They went to the sale together. Nye found out the exact

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amount of the mortgage and costs, bid in the property, had the sheriff make out the deed in Baxter's wife's name, paid the money, placed the deed in the old man's hands and told him to go home and tell his wife that the home would always be hers. He further told him that really the money had cost him nothing, that it was a fee a client, one King Faro, had paid him for a trifling service.

            The old man was overcome and asked Nye where he could be found. Nye told him in the Senate chamber at Washington. Four weeks later the old man and his wife found him in Washington, and Nye, speaking of it, said later: "If the great bookkeeper up above saw that meeting, it's a twenty dollar piece to a ducat that, with their gratitude, he balanced a mighty tough column that he held in his ledger against me."

            But this is growing too long. With the most characteristic story of Nye ever told, we will close.

            He went to Europe one summer late in the sixties, and went as far as Constantinople. He wired the American minister there that he was coming. The minister informed the Grand Vizier that a senator of the United States would arrive in the city that evening. He informed the Sultan and the Sultan ordered a review of all the 30,000 soldiers in the city the next day in his honor those superb soldiers that stood off Skobelorff so long at Plevna, a little later. We take up the story as Nye told it : "They gave me a pure Arabian horse to ride. You should have seen him. Eyes like an eagle's, nostrils you could put your fist in, coat like velvet, and he felt under you like steel springs, but still was biddable as a great, good-natured, friendly Newfoundland dog. I rode him through the review and divided honors with the Sultan. On dismounting I could not repress my admiration for the horse. The interpreter explained what I had said to the Grand Vizier, whereupon he made a very low salaam, saying something as he bowed. The interpreter explained that his highness, the Grand Vizier, begged to be accorded the honor of presenting the horse to my excellency. I made a rapid calculation. I had not the money to pay the freight on him; I could think of no one to whom I might send for the freight money, and so I took high

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ground. I made a salaam that must have made the Grand Vizier's look like an amateur's and bade that interpreter explain to his highness how honored I would feel to receive so royal a present, but that it was against the constitution and laws of the great republic, my country, for a senator of the United States to receive any present from any foreign prince, potentate or power."

            A moment later, he said : 'Why, do you know, had I have had that freight money I would not have taken $2,000 for my chance on that horse?"

            Nye was twelve years senator from Nevada, but was defeated in the election of 1878. He left San Francisco on the steamer, apparently well, but after arriving home he was found wandering daft in the streets of Richmond, Va. He could not explain how he got there. He was taken to Bloomingdale asylum, where he died a few months later.