The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and
Yarns), by Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley

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Title: Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)

Author: Bill Nye
James Whitcomb Riley

Release Date: September 29, 2009 [EBook #30131]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

NYE AND RILEY'S

Wit and Humor

(Poems and Yarns)

BY

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY & BILL NYE

Illustrated

BY BARON DE GRIMM, E. ZIMMERMAN,
WALT McDOUGALL, AND OTHERS

THOMPSON & THOMAS,
CHICAGO.

COPYRIGHT 1900,
BY
THOMPSON & THOMAS.

COPYRIGHT 1905,
BY
THOMPSON & THOMAS.

Biographical

Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who
knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend.

He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine.
Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin,
where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After
receiving a meager schooling, he entered a lawyer's office, where most
of his work consisted in sweeping the office and running errands. In his
idle moments the lawyer's library was at his service. Of this crude and
desultory reading he afterward wrote:

"I could read the same passage to-day that I did yesterday and it would
seem as fresh at the second reading as it did at the first. On the
following day I could read it again and it would seem as new and
mysterious as it did on the preceding day."

At the age of twenty-five, he was teaching a district school in Polk
County, Wisconsin, at thirty dollars a month. In 1877 he was justice of
the peace in Laramie. Of that experience he wrote:

"It was really pathetic to see the poor little miserable booth where I
sat and waited with numb fingers for business. But I did not see the
pathos which clung