ir:--Do you not desire an employe on your charming road? I do not
know what it is to be an employe, for I was never in that condition, but
I pant to be one now.

Of course I am ignorant of the duties of an employe, but I have always
been a warm friend of your road and rejoiced in its success. How are
your folks?

Yours truly,

COL. BILL NYE.

Day before yesterday I received the following note from General St.
John, printed on a purple typewriter:

CHICAGO, Feb. 13, 1887.

Col. Bill Nye, Asheville, N. C.

Sir:--My folks are quite well.

Yours truly,

E. ST. JOHN.

I also wrote to Gen. A. V. H. Carpenter, of the Milwaukee road, at the
same time, for we had corresponded some back and forth in the happy
past. I wrote in about the following terms:

ASHEVILLE, N. C., Feb. 10, 1887.

A. V. H. Carpenter, G. P. A. C., M. & St. P. R'y,
Milwaukee, Wis.

Dear Sir:--How are you fixed for employes this spring?

I feel like doing something of that kind and could give you some good
endorsements from prominent people both at home and abroad.

What does an employe have to do?

If I can help your justly celebrated road any here in the South do not
hesitate about mentioning it.

I am still quite lame in my left leg, which was broken in the cyclone,
and cannot walk without great pain.

Yours with kindest regards,

BILL NYE.

I have just received the following reply from Mr. Carpenter:

MILWAUKEE, Wis., Feb. 14, 1887.

Bill Nye, Esq., Asheville, N. C.

Dear Sir:--You are too late. As I write this letter, there is a string
of men extending from my office door clear down to the Soldiers' Home.
All of them want to be employes. This crowd embraces the Senate and
House of Representatives of the Wisconsin Legislature, State officials,
judges, journalists, jurors, justices of the peace, orphans, overseers
of highways, fish commissioners, pugilists, widows of pugilists,
unidentified orphans of pugilists, etc., etc., and they are all just
about as well qualified to be employes as you are.

I suppose you would poultice a hot box with pounded ice, and so would
they.

I am sorry to hear about your lame leg. The surgeon of our road says
perhaps you do not use it enough.

Yours for the thorough enforcement of law,

A. V. H. CARPENTER. Per G.

Not having written to Mr. Hughitt of the Northwestern road for a long
time, and fearing that he might thin