Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1885-03-04
Bill Nye's Letter to the President
Elect


Elect.
DEAR SrR.-The painful duty OF
turning over to you the administra-
ton of these United States and the
key to the front door Of the White
House has been assigned to me. You
will find the key hanging inside the
storm-door and the cistern pole up
stairs in the hay-mow of the barn.
1t is expected that you will make
such changes in your Cabinet and
other furniture rs you may see fit.
The asparagus bed, however, will need
a little top-dressing in the spring, and
you can do as you see fit about putting
pillow-shams on the pie-plant bed.
In your attitude toward foreign pow
ers you will, of course, have your own
ideas, and a suggestion from me at
this time would be entirely out Of
place. Govern the people with firm
yet gentle hand, and put little rat
poison down cellar where it will do
the most good.
have made great many sugges-
tions to the outgoing administration
relative to the transfer of the Indian
Bureau from the Department of the
Interior to that of the Sweet Bye and
Bye. The Indian, l may say, has
been great source Of annoyance to
me, several of their number having
jumped one of my most valuable
mining claims OH White river. Still
| do not complain of that. This
mine, however, l am convinced would
be a good paying property if properly
worked, and should you at any time
wish to take the regular army and
such other help as you may need and
recapture it from our red brother, I
would be glad to give you a controll-
ing interest in it.
You will observe, on taking pos
session of the administration, that the
navy is little bit weather beaten and
wormy. l would suggest that it be
newly painted in the spring. If it
had been my good fortune to receive
majority of the suffrages of the peo-
pie for the Office which you now hold,
l should have painted the navy red.
Still that need not influence you in
the course which you see fit to adopt.
You will find all papers in their ap-
propriate pigeon holes, and a small
jar of cucumber pickles down cellar,
which were left over, and to which
you will be perfectly welcome. The
asperities and heart burnings that
were the immediate result of hot
and unusually bitter campaign, are
now all buried. Take these pickles
and use them as if they were your
own. They are none too good for
you. You deserve them. We may
differ politically, but that need not
interfere with our warm, personal
friendship.
You will also find half ton of
coal left over, and an old AK in the
wood-shed, which man from Ohio
left with us to have ground. Of
course you do not make business of
receiving presents, but you cannot re-
fuse to receive these as slight testi-
monial of regard, and not in the ma
ture of a bribe.
There are many affairs of great mo-
ment which l have not enumerated in
this brief letter, because l felt some
little delicacy and timidity about ap-
pearing to be dictatorial or officious
about a matter wherein the public
might charge me with interference.
hope you will receive the forego-
ing in friendly spirit, and whatever
your convictions may be upon great
questions of national interest, either
foreign or domestic, that you will not
undertake to blow out the gas on re-
firing, and that you will in other ways
realize the fond anticipations which
are now cherished on your behalf by
mighty people whose aggregated eye
is now OH to you.
BILL NYE.
p. S.-You will be a little surpris-
ed, no doubt, to find no soap in the
laundry or bathrooms. 1t probably
got into the campaign in some way
ooJ xvoc ohenrkoI II NJ