"BILL NYE" IN ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2082, 18 January 1894, Page 42

"BILL NYE" IN ENGLAND.

Mr Edgar Willson Nye makes probably tho largest literary income in the world. He has ma.de large sums by lecturing tours all over the Union, in partnership with the poet, James Whitcomb Biley, and his serial rights alone bring him a fixed sum of lOOOdol (a little over £200) a week— £lo,B33 63 8d a year, reckoning the dollar at 4s 2d. In spite of his immense serial popularity, he has published very few books, and those for the most part gleanings from The Boomerang (the paper he founded in Laramie City, Wyoming) and the journals to which be makes his weekly contributions.

In person Mr Nye is tall, broad, but not stout, clean-shaven, and very bald, with lightish hair. He speaks in a low, distinct voicej and when he is on the platform puts on a strong Yankee drawl. Ho was borne in Maine 43 years ago, but has spent most of his time in the West. Until recently he lived on Staten Island, N.Y., but he now has a house in New York itself. Mr Nye is over in England for a holiday, having just finished a " History of the United States," which is being brought out by Lippincott, of Philadelphia.

At the Authors' Club dinner in London recently some one made bold to ask Mr Nye if be were the identical " Bill " referred to iv Bret Harte's famous poem, "The Heathen Chinee." " I can hardly lay claim to such antiquity," replied Mr Nye. " I was a boy when the poem was written." But he went on to say that he had asked Bret Harte himself whether the Bill Nye mentioned in the poem was a real individual or not, and that

the poet had replied, " Yes, though his proper name was Jem, not Bill." In his opening speech Mr Nye asserted that he had all his journalistic life been trying to live dd?rn the name of Bill Wye, but had not succeeded. The most screamingly funny oE Mr Nye's stories was about a dog he once had named " Entomologist " — at a time when he had acquired sufficient poverty to own one — and his voracious appetite. This dog came to an untimely end by eating tip a lot of plaster-of-Parig images tie found at a street cornfcr, whipb he mistook for blanc-mange. He died the same night in spite of every attention from his master, who preserves a memento of him .on his writing table in the shape of a paper weight, which bears the inscription : " Entomologist, view of his interior taken by himself." The quiet, droll way in which this story was told was inimitable. ... "Bill Nfre" was not joking when hesaidthat he was a Frenchman himself by extraction; His father's first ancestor in America really was French, and spelt hid name Ney, and his mother's family, the Lorings, who aie numerous in New England, were originally Lorraihes. Corrupted French names are very common in New England, as, indeed, are corrupted names generally. Even Malony has become Meloney.

John Greenleaf Whittier had a strong strain of French blood in his veins. He told Mr Douglas Sladen, who was on a visit to him at his winter home, Oak Knoll, Danvers, Massachusetts, that his Greenleaf ancestors were Feuilleverts, and that the name had quite recently been translated, in obedience to a Quaker feeling that using the French form was an affectation.

The latest anecdote about " Bill Nye " is that, wishing to make " copy " out of that wonderful creature, the English gentleman's gentleman, he hired one, and treated him as a guest, taking him about everywhere with him, except to tho clubs and private houses to which he was invited. We look forward with interest to reading Mr Nye's impressions of " Jeames. rt