The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-03-01
THE ENFANT TERRIBLE.
Billy Nye's Ideas Concerning Young
Ideas.


Children and fools tell the truth"
have heard, and certainly children have
faculty of working the truth IN at the
wrong tine. Truth is good thing
its place. But the great harm comes
from using it at an inopportune time.
l am the only and original father of one
of the class of children who are loqua-
cious and truthful in way that makes
the parent heart bleed sometimes. II
this little incident did not happen to
make me its victim, would scorn to
it, for people ought not to make them
selves or their children too conspicuous
ly smart in print.
Guests were invited to dinner, and
while in my baronial hall the welkin
rang and the cold baked bean was pass
ed around amid joyous laughter and
witty remarks rang out on the warm
air-while the gorgeous fiagons and
glittering cut-glass and silver of a
neighbor shone respondent beneath the
mellow hight of the chandelier and can
delabra, the humble writer of these
lines, as the host, would ever and anon
make brilliant remark which would
be received with wild and tumultuous
applause,
If a guest sought to evade his duty as
an applauder, or to come in on time
with his or her welcome plaudlt, that
guest was marked by the eagle eye OF
the carvist, and he was given the neck
of the turkey and the wing OF the duck
as a mark of respect.
Habitual guests at my house have
learned this, and when l ladle out the
gravy and Jew de spirit, as A. Ward
called, they know that they can take
their choice between boisterous laughter
and starvation. In this way the meal
passes off with much eclat. For each
slash of the carving-knife there is a
suitable joke, and those who have been
in the habit of eating at my table are
aware that there is proper moment
for mirth, just as there is for napkins,
flnger-bowls or coffee.
/ do this partly because 1 want to
draw attention from my carving. NY
carving is like my dancing. 1t is not
conventional. tits extremely original,
bold and audacious. l try to intro
duce joints where nature did not in
tend to have them, and 1 seek to make
shortcuts across fowl in way that is
productive only of chagrin, vexatiou.
and fragments of hen. Man is a weak,
fallible creature, and he ought not to
seek to monkey with the anatomy of a
fowl or to improvise joints and apertures
where they do not belong; for at such
time as you think not a knife will slip.
and it will tip over the celery-glass and
NIL the bosom of warm personal friend
with gravy.
To attract attention and keep up the
spirits of the company, therefore, I
make it kind of business, as it were,
to I'LL the air with harmless amusement
at the same time that l shed stuffing
through the atmosphere and mutilate
the bosom of the hen. This gives me
an opportunity, occasionally, to gather
up the sage, bread-crunbs and giZzards
out OF my lap, and return them to the
platter without exciting remark.
a lew weeks ago, On an occasion of
this kind, cousin of mine, young
lawyer connected with the Omaha
road, young man of good parts, and
whose business it is to stand between
the Omaha road and substantial justice
at so much a year and travelling ex-
penses, was present.
had just said something smart to
keep the company good-natuned while
l asked young lady at the other end
OF the table to please return the duck
which l had inadvertently presented to
her with the carving-fork stuck in it.
Everyone was laughing joyously and
trying to conceal it by putting their
napkins in their mouths, when NV
cousin turned to my little daughter and
said
Bessie, haven'tyo got afunny papa,
though Pr
Yes, indeed" said the ungrateful.
unfilial and irreverent heir apparent to
a great name: you better believe he's
funny-when we have company"
And yet people wonder why am not
the same genial host that l use to be,
and why the children do not eat at the
first table, and why there is a sound of
kicking against the door of an adioin-
ing room, and the occasional wall of a
hungry child as the meal progresses.
Eli Perkins once told me that he was
teaching his little girl to tell the truth.
| asked him who he employed to attend
to the lrksome task, and whether he was
not rash to take up branch of the
science for which there was getting to
be so little use.
1t is said that truth is mighty and
VIII prevail. 1t is certainly mighty in
the mouth of child Still, we may
always expect more or less of it from
until they get to moving in
good society and learn better.
BILL NYE.