Bill Nye and the Snorer.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 49

Bill Nye and the Snorer.

Writes William Nye :—

"At Augusta I had a strange experience. I was given a very comfortable room at the hotel, and, having lost considerable sleep for several nights, sitting up with college boys and so forth, I read a .brief chapter from a very interesting book respecting the World's Fair and retired. Soon there came from the adjoining room a low whistle. I regarded it as a signal, and answered it as a matter of mere sport, as it were. The reply came back, along with a low gurgle like that of a baby elephant dying. It was a snore.

"Following this came a quick detonation, like the explosion of a paper bag. Then there was a snatch of song without words, and a nocturne in something or other. It was a musical snore, punctuated with the wail of a damned soul. I sat up in bed, and the materialised ghost of my departed .hair rose like new asparagus on the old site. If this were to be my last letter to my friends all the way from Edinburgh, <.ud this statement were to face me at the bar of judgment, I should still say that I never heard anything like that snore since Hellgate was blown out in New York City. I never knew a snorer with such a register as this one. He would give a little moan like a new puppy that has missed the 'maternal font by threequarters of an inch, and then he would render the Balaclava groan, winding up with the squeal of a damned soul whose tail had been caught in tho door. I have never put in such a night since I was born. The glad snort of the two-year-old colt came now and then, followed by the twitter of swallows and the cries of the wounded at the. surprise and capture of Marco Bozzaris. Then the folding bed would oreak, and I would imagine that it had closed upon the sufferer, for a stifled snort would come from the bed clothes, and death would seem to have come mercifully to lay his cold hand on the strong man in his agony.

" In the morning I got up, pale and haggard. Slowly I dressed myself and went down to breakfast. As I passed the desk I said to the clerk : ' Who was that thrice-accursed brute who slept in No. 9 last night ? ' "•Why do you ask?'

" ' Because he is dead. Died in his sins with a new-born snore on his cowardly lips. Died with a room full of echoes and throttled groans. That's why I ask. 3 " • Ah,' said he, looking at a little drawer with a string of labels on it, • you are wrong aboub that. That loom was occupied by Viola Murkins, the prima donna of the " Singed Cat " Opera Company, so-called because the girls who sing in it are so much better than they look.' "And it was so."