FAMOUS

FUNNY FELLOWS

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL

SKETCHES OF AMERICAN HUMORISTS

BY
WILL M. CLEMENS

CLEVELAND, OHIO
WILLIAM W. WILLIAMS
1882

Copyright, 1882.
By Will M. Clemens.
All rights reserved.

[Pg 7]

The rollicking newspaper humor of the day is of modern origin. It is even yet young in years. Humorists and newspaper wits were once—say a score of years ago—considered a rarity in America. At that time humor of the day meant the productions of a very few—Mark Twain, Joe Neal, Artemus Ward, Major Jones, and one or two others. To-day it means a certain jeu d’esprit that can readily be discovered in almost every first-class newspaper extant. In fact, every American journal of any prominence possesses its salaried paragrapher, who is required to produce, at stipulated intervals, a certain quantity of original humor, whether or no the said paragrapher be in a humorous mood.

A paragrapher is a writer of paragraphs, and paragraphs, in an American newspaper, are commonly[Pg 8] understood to be short, concise, spicy and readable gems of wit and humor. In undertaking to present, in printed form, brief biographical sketches relative to the life, character, and works of representative American humorists, I entered into the work with the idea of entertaining and pleasing the American public at large, and not with the intent of delighting the individual humorist.

The volume that I offer to the reading public is the work of two years, or at least a portion of that time. When I first began on the work I wrote to Mark Twain, asking for a brief introduction, thinking that such an acquisition to the book, coming from such a source, would be highly valuable. At the time of receiving my letter the genial humorist was busily engaged putting the finishing touches to his Tramp Abroad, and he, as a result, cruelly—I will not say wantonly—cut me off with a shilling. However, I give Twain’s reply to my communication, for, notwithstanding its briefness, the epistle contains at least one small grain of that peculiar wit for which the funny man of Hartford is noted. Here it is:

[Pg 9]

There being such a vast field from which to select the titles to these sketches, I have, perhaps, unintentionally omitted or neglected a certain few of the great and growing circle of funny men. I have also omitted, intentionally, such humorists as Irving, Bret Harte, and others of a like stamp, who do not, in any sense, belong to the class of newspaper humorists.

W. M. C.

Cleveland, Ohio, 1882

Routledge, in his Men of the Time, says that Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the nom de plume of Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Monroe county, Missouri, November 30, 1835. During the last ten years newspaper reports have made Mark Twain the native of a dozen different localities. According to these reports Mark has been born in Adair county, Kentucky; in Fentress county, Tennessee; in Hannibal, Missouri; and in various other places. However, it is proper for me to state that Mark was born in but one place, and all at one time. Routledge is evidently correct as to both time and place.

The parents of Mark Twain were married in Kentucky and lived for some years in that State. His mother states that he was always an incorrigible boy, filled with roving imaginations from his very earliest age, and could never be persuaded or forced to attend to his books and study, as other boys did. He lost his father at the age of twelve, and soon after left school for good.[Pg 12] When about fifteen years of age, Mark came into the house one day and asked his mother for five dollars. On being questioned as to what he wanted with it, he said he wanted it to start out traveling with. He failed to obtain the five dollars, but he assured his mother that he would go all the same, and he really went, nor did the old lady ever set eyes on him again until he had become a man. Starting out on his travels he learned the printing business, and supported himself by working at the case.

Clemens was but seventeen when he resolved to become a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river. He learned the river in due time from St. Louis to New Orleans, a distance of 1,375 miles, and followed the occupation of pilot until he was twenty-four years old. In 1861 an elder brother was appointed Lieutenant-governor of Nevada Territory. He offered Mark the position of private secretary, and the young man deserted the river and went West. After a few months he abandoned the life of a private secretary, and started out to seek a fortune in the mines. In this he was unsuccessful, although at one time, for the space of a few minutes, Mark owned the famous Comstock lode, and was worth millions. He found all this out after he sold the claim.

After this, Clemens became a reporter and correspondent,[Pg 13] writing to the Territorial Enterprise and other papers, and occasionally doing work at the case. He wrote at times over the nom de plume of Mark Twain, a title he adopted from his experiences as a pilot. It was during these years, between 1862 and 1866, that Mark perpetrated many broad and practical jokes, using his journalistic position as a channel. These publications gave him considerable notoriety in the West, and especially on the Pacific coast. For several years he was local editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, but in 1864 he removed to San Francisco, where he was offered a good position on a paper there. In 1865 he went to the Sandwich Islands, to write up the sugar plantations. His letters were very readable and were published mostly in the Sacramento Union. All this time Mark was struggling with legitimate literary work, and published occasional sketches in literary weeklies, which were widely copied. On his return from Hawaii he lectured for a short time in California and Nevada. Some of his sketches having attracted attention in the East, Mark sailed for New York in the early part of 1867, and published a small volume of sketches, entitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras, and Other Sketches. The book sold well in the United States, and was afterwards republished in England. Nearly all[Pg 14] the sketches that appeared in the book had previously been published in the San Francisco papers.

In 1868, Mr. Clemens formed one of a party who sailed in the steamship Quaker City, for an extended excursion to Palestine and the Holy Land. He went in the capacity of a newspaper correspondent as well as for pleasure, and wrote interesting letters while abroad to the California papers. Returning to America he gathered his letters together and re-wrote them in book form, which he called Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim’s Progress. The work was very funny, yet notwithstanding the rollicking satire, and laugh-provoking character of the book, the author met with the greatest difficulty in getting it published. He sent his manuscript to the leading publishers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and they all refused it. Mark’s literary vanity was sorely wounded, and he was about determined to throw his book into the fire when a literary friend, Albert D. Richardson, now deceased, to whom he handed the manuscript, pronounced it very clever and offered to take it with him to Hartford, Connecticut, where was located the American Publishing Company, a firm that had issued several books for Richardson. After much talk and discussion among the directors of the[Pg 15] publishing company, the book was finally issued. Its success was extraordinary, and since its publication over 200,000 copies of the book have been sold. The publishing company cleared $75,000 by the venture.

In 1869 Twain tried journalism for a time in Buffalo, where he held an editorial position on a daily paper. While there he fell in love with a young lady, a sister of “Dan”—made famous in Innocents Abroad—but her father, a gentleman of wealth and position, looked unfavorably upon his daughter’s alliance with a Bohemian literary character.

“I like you,” he said to Mark, “but what do I know of your antecedents? Who is there to answer for you, anyhow?”

After reflecting a few moments, Mark thought some of his old California friends would speak a good word for him. The prospective father-in-law wrote letters of inquiry to several residents of San Francisco, to whom Clemens referred him, and with one exception, the letters denounced him bitterly, especially deriding his capacity for becoming a good husband. Mark sat besides his fiancee when the letters were read aloud by the old gentleman. There was a dreadful silence for a moment, and then Mark stammered: “Well, that’s pretty rough on a fellow, anyhow?”

[Pg 16]

His betrothed came to the rescue however, and overturned the mass of testimony against him by saying, “I’ll risk you, anyhow.”

The terrible father-in-law lived in Elmira, New York, and there Mark was married. He had told his friends in the newspaper office at Buffalo, to select him a suite of rooms in a first-class boarding house in the city, and to have a carriage at the depot to meet the bride and groom. Mark knew they would do it, and gave himself no more anxiety about it. When he reached Buffalo, he found a handsome carriage, a beautiful span of horses and a driver in livery. They drove him up to a handsome house on an aristocratic street, and as the door was opened, there were the parents of the bride to welcome them home. The old folks had arrived on the quiet by a special train. After Mark had gone through the house and examined its elegant finishings, he was notified officially that he had been driven by his own coachman, in his own carriage, to his own house. They say tears came to his wonderfully dark and piercing eyes, and that all he could say was “Well, this is a first-class swindle.”

Not long after his marriage, Mark settled down in Hartford, and invested capital in insurance companies there. His second book, Roughing It, appeared in 1871, and had almost as large a sale[Pg 17] as its predecessor. He visited England a few months later, and arranged for the publication of his works there in four volumes. On his return he issued his third book, in partnership with Charles Dudley Warner, which was styled The Gilded Age. This was followed by the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book for boys, in 1876. These books all commanded an immense sale, and several editions have been exhausted. The American Publishing Company of Hartford represented these works in this country, Chatto & Windus published them in England, and Mark’s continental publisher was Tauchnitz of Leipzig.

April 11, 1878, Mark Twain sailed for Europe on the steamship Holsatia. He was accompanied by his family, and after drifting about for some months on foreign shores, settled down to spend the summer in Germany. In 1879 he returned to his home in Hartford, and after several months of work produced another book, A Tramp Abroad. This work had a ready and a very large sale, and has become quite popular. In 1881 he issued another book through a Boston house, The Prince and Pauper. This also has had a large sale in this and other countries.

Among his other accomplishments Clemens is a politician, and has done good service on the stump for the Republican party. For all this he[Pg 18] is the proud possessor of the title of Honorable.

Many of the most ludicrous scenes in the works of Mark Twain are taken from life. The steamboat scene in the adventures of Colonel Sellers, was witnessed by him when a young man. His adventure with a dead man was in his father’s office in Missouri. His description of the horror creeping over him, as he saw a ghastly hand lying in the moonlight; how he tried to shut his eyes and tried to count, and opened them in time to see the dead man lying on the floor stiff and stark, with a ghastly wound in his side, and lastly how he beat a terrified retreat through the window, carrying the sash with him, is vividly remembered by every reader of The Gilded Age. The whole thing transpired just as Mark recorded it—the man was killed in a street fight almost in front of Mr. Clemens’ door, was taken in there while a post mortem examination was held, and there left until the next morning. During the night Mark came in, and the scene he described was really enacted.

The Clemens mansion in Hartford is a model of architectural beauty, and is elegantly finished in the interior. In the library, over the large fire-place, is a brass plate with the inscription in old English text: “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.” Mark does not use the library for his study, but does nearly all his writing in the[Pg 19] billiard room at the top of the house. It is a long room, with sloping sides, is light and airy, and very quiet. In this room Mark writes at a plain table, with his reference books lying scattered about him. He makes it an invariable rule to do a certain amount of literary work every day, and his working hours are made continuous by his not taking a mid-day meal. He destroys much manuscript, and it is said he rewrote five hundred pages of one of his popular books. Mark is an industrious worker, and continues his labors the year round. In summer he retreats to his villa on the Hudson, or to a little cottage in the mountains near Elmira, New York. There he finds the most quiet solitude, and there he works undisturbed. Mark is fond of his home life, and of his three beautiful children. He has achieved a notable success as a lecturer, both in this country and in England.

The humor of Mark Twain is never forced. It bubbles up of its own accord, and is always fresh. In his recent books he shows less of genuine wit than in his earlier works perhaps, but yet his writings are always readable. He sent me, not long since, a printed slip of his biography, taken from Men of the Time, and on the margins of this appeared the following bon mot:

[Pg 20]

There is a popular feeling abroad in the land to the effect that Mark Twain is a very funny man, and that he is seldom sober. This is a grave mistake. Mr. Clemens is by nature a very serious, thoughtful man. True he seldom writes that which is not humorous, but occasionally he pens a very careful, serious communication, like the following for instance, which he addressed to a young friend of mine:

[Pg 21]

A writer in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, not many years since, as follows: “There have been moments in the lives of various kind hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were up before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before those honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held had lapsed, and how void of guile he was in any direction, and all with that inimitable drawl, that perplexed countenance, and the peculiar scraping back of the left foot, like a boy speaking his first piece at school. It is but fair to say that the fun Mark mixed up for citizens in those days, was not altogether appreciated in the midst of it, for some one, touched too sharply, surge bat amari aliquid, and Mark had another denouncer joined to the wounded throng. . . . . . He is keenly sensitive to sympathy or criticism, and relates, as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life, a six hours’ ride across England, his fellow traveler an Englishman, who, shortly after they started, drew forth the first volume of the English[Pg 22] edition of Innocents Abroad from his pocket, and calmly perused it from beginning to end without a smile. Then he drew forth the second volume and read it as solemnly as the first. Mark says he thought he should die, yet John Bull was probably enjoying it after his own undemonstrative style.”

In another instance the same writer says of Mark Twain: “This literary wag has performed some services which entitle him to the gratitude of his generation. He has run the traditional Sunday-school book boy through his literary mangle and turned him out washed and ironed into a proper state of flatness and collapse. That whining, canting, early-dying anæmic creature was the nauseating model held up to the full-blooded mischievous lads of by-gone years as worthy their imitation. He poured his religious hypocrisy over every honest pleasure a boy had. He whined his lachrymose warnings on every playground. He vexed their lives. So, when Mark grew old enough he went gunning for him, and lo, wherever his soul may be, the skin of the strumous young pietist is now neatly tacked up to view on the Sunday-school door of to-day as a warning, and the lads of to-day see no particular charm in a priggish, hydropathical existence.”

Samuel Langhorne Clemens is in the high tide[Pg 23] of his success. He is yet a young man, as far as the literary life goes. Outside of his book making, he has given the fun-loving public some admirable things in the way of wit and humor through the pages of the leading magazines. The originality of his writings in the past is retained in his work of the present, and he gives promise of many original things in the future. He has a liking for the monotonous labor of literary work, his health is as yet unimpaired, he has been fortunate in love and in financial affairs, is consequently happy, and will yet give to the world of letters many quaint, bright, and original ideas. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are without a doubt the two leading humorists of the present century. While we have the Artemus that was, we possess the Mark that is. He leads the van of humorists who eke out an existence in the present. He is the prince of funny men. Long live the prince.

Probably no writer in America—or out of it, for that matter—ever attained such universal notoriety, in such a brief space of time, as did that king of American humorists, Artemus Ward. His career was short but successful, and his fame will live as long as does the English language. Charles Farrar Browne was born in the hamlet of Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834, and died at Southampton, England, March 6, 1867. After graduating from the free village school at Waterford he sought and obtained employment in a printing office. As a printer’s apprentice he traveled throughout the New England States, stopping for a brief period at one place and then another. Finally Charles settled down in Boston, where he obtained employment as compositor in the office of a weekly paper. He soon after began to compose comic stories and essays for different periodicals, which met with medium success.

Browne remained there but a short time, however, being of a roving disposition, and a few[Pg 25] months later he gave up his idea of settling in Boston and left for the West, with but one suit of clothes (those were on his back) and with a few cents in his pocket. He obtained work as local reporter on papers in Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio, and finally brought up at Cleveland in 1857, in which city he obtained a situation as reporter on the morning Plain Dealer. His old associates in Cleveland tell me that Browne at this time was considered one of the characters of the town. His dress was always shabby and scant; his habits irregular, and his general appearance that of a country “greenhorn.” He delighted in wearing on his head a large crowned slouch hat, and his pantaloons were as a rule nearly a foot too short for him. Being tall, slim, and bony, his appearance in those days as he slouched along the streets of Cleveland in search of items could not have been very prepossessing, to say the least. “He was then,” says a well known humorist, “a mild-mannered, sunny-tempered young fellow of twenty-three, who delighted in witty anecdotes, and told droll stories in an inimitable way.”

Despite his looks, Browne was a brilliant and ready writer. He became involved in numerous journalistic quarrels, and his cutting remarks and timely rebukes to his contemporaries soon made known the fact that he could not be mastered.

[Pg 26]

A. Miner Griswold, the Cincinnati humorist, tells the following story of Browne at that time: “The first night of our acquaintance he took me to a school exhibition on Cleveland heights, and his whispered comments upon the performance amused me greatly. They gave a portion of the play of Rolla: ‘How now, Gomez, what bringest thou?’ Gomez: ‘On yonder mountain we surprised an old Peruvian.’ Said Brown in a whisper, ‘They knew him by his bark, a small bundle of which you perceive he carries on his shoulder.’ There have been many Peruvian bark jokes since, but that was then fresh to me—too fresh, perhaps. But one finds plenty of funny people at twenty-two, and I little dreamed that my entertainer, the green young man by the name of Browne, was destined to make the whole world laugh, and weep, too, when it heard of his death. It did occur to me as we drove back in the buggy that my new friend was the least bit eccentric. After riding along in silence for a time he suddenly declared that he liked me, and asked me if I had any objections to one embrace. Then he attempted to throw his arms around me, but owing to the darkness, I suppose, he embraced a new plug hat that I wore, and when he let go it was crushed into a shapeless mass. He apologized profusely when he discovered what he had done,[Pg 27] appeared to give way to a momentary burst of tears, and then said that Shakespeare wouldn’t have succeeded as a local editor, because he hadn’t the necessary fancy and imagination.

“Barring an unreasonable desire to drive off the canal bridge into the water, which I prevailed upon him to relinquish with some difficulty, we reached the city without further incident. His humorous account of the school exhibition in the next day’s paper confirmed me in the impression that the young man by the name of Browne possessed a rare streak of original humor.”

The following autumn Browne published his first “Artemus Ward” letter that was extensively copied, an account of the Atlantic cable celebration in Baldwinsville; followed soon after by the Free Lovers of Berlin Heights, and later his letters from “Artemus Ward, showman,” appeared, which attracted general attention.

In the early part of 1860, Browne surrendered his position as city editor of the Plain Dealer, and left Cleveland for New York. In the metropolis he was engaged as a contributor to Vanity Fair, a comic weekly paper that had but recently been established. Vanity Fair was a success for a time, but it was not lasting. Some months after his arrival in New York, Browne was offered the position as editor of the publication, and after[Pg 28] some hesitancy, he accepted. The paper suspended soon after, and the young humorist was thrown upon his own resources once again. Several positions were offered him on various New York journals, but he concluded to give up journalism for a time and turn his attention to lecturing.

His first lecture, which was of a humorous nature, was delivered in New York city, December 23, 1861, and was well received. As a lecturer he was at once acknowledged as a success, and immediately delivered his mirth provoking orations in various parts of the country. In 1862 he published his first book, entitled Artemus Ward, His Book. In 1863 he paid a visit to the Pacific coast, making an overland trip, visiting Salt Lake city, and addressing large audiences wherever he stopped.

Returning to New York city in 1864, he opened his illustrated lectures on California and Utah with immense success. About this time his other books, Artemus Ward Among the Mormons, and Ward Among the Fenians, appeared. In 1866 he was prevailed upon by his friends to visit England, where he became a regular contributor to Punch, and gave his lecture on the Mormons, in the British metropolis. But while he was convulsing all London with laughter he was fast falling a victim to[Pg 29] consumption, and becoming worse he went to Guernsey in 1867 for the benefit of his health. He became no better, and when he was just about preparing to return to America, he died at Southampton, March 6, 1867. By his will, after providing for his mother, leaving legacies to his friends, and his library of valuable books to a school-boy friend in his native village, he left the bulk of his property in trust to Horace Greeley for the purpose of founding an asylum for printers.

Mark Twain, in a private letter to a friend in Tennessee, says of Artemus Ward:

“He was one of the kindest and gentlest of men, and the hold he took on the English people surpasses imagination. Artemus Ward once said to me gravely, almost sadly:

“‘Clemens, I have done too much fooling, too much trifling; I am going to write something that will live.”

“‘Well, what for instance?

“In the same grave way, he said:

“‘A lie.’

“It was an admirable surprise. I was just ready to cry; he was becoming pathetic.”

There have been hundreds of stories of Artemus Ward going the rounds of the American press during the past twenty years. A few of them are[Pg 30] founded on facts, some of them are good, but many, I am sorry to say, are base fabrications. This is not the case, however, with the little reminder that certain residents of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, are wont to tell. Ward was advertised to deliver his famous lecture on the Mormons, in the town hall, at Pottstown, during the winter of one of the earlier years of the war. Much curiosity was excited by the announcement of his coming, and there was every reason to expect that the hall would be crowded on the evening of the lecture. A fierce snow storm raged all day, however, and the night was wild and stormy. When the lecturer was driven to the hall, he found waiting for him only five men, who had defied the storm. Advancing to the stage, and beckoning with the finger, as to a single individual, Artemus said, in an ordinary conversational tone:

“Come up closer.”

Not knowing precisely what to do, the audience of five compromised with their embarrassment by doing nothing. Artemus changed his tone to that used by one who wished to coax, and said:

“Please come up closer, and be sociable. I want to speak to you about a little matter I have thought of.”

The audience, thus being persuaded, came up a little closer, and the humorist said:

[Pg 31]

“I move that we don’t have any lecture here this evening, and I propose instead that we adjourn to the restaurant beneath and have a good time.”

Ward then put the motion, voted on it himself, declared it carried, and, to give no opportunity for an appeal from the chair, at once led the way to the restaurant. There he introduced himself to his intended auditors, and spent several hours in their company, richly compensating them for disappointment in the matter of the lecture, by the wit and humor of the stories that he told. That was how Artemus Ward lectured in Pottstown.

Glancing hurriedly through Ward’s volume of sketches, I find none more amusing than his description of

THE CENSUS.

Browne had few if any enemies, and hosts of friends. Everyone with whom he became acquainted became his friend. He was as genial as he was humorous, and his former companions who are yet alive look back upon the time when Artemus Ward, the king of American humorists, took their proffered hand and shook it warmly in his original and friendly way.

On the eastern shore of Maryland is situated a town known to the post-office authorities as Berlin. It was in Berlin in the warm month of July, 1841, that Charles Heber Clark, “Max Adeler,” first saw the light of day.

His father was a clergyman in the Episcopal church, but this appeared to have little effect on Charles, who, like all bad boys, grew up to make fun of everybody and everything. He was sent to Georgetown, District of Columbia, early in life, being shipped by express and labeled “handle with care.” He attended school for a brief period, learning but little, and jumped into the mercantile world by moving his linen to Philadelphia.

The mercantile business appeared to agree with his constitution until 1865, when he bethought himself that he had been sent into this wicked world for the express purpose of becoming a journalist. He subsequently began his editorial career on the Philadelphia Enquirer during that[Pg 35] same year. Clark made rapid advancement in journalism, and in 1867 became one of the editors of the Evening Bulletin, of which paper he is at present one of the proprietors.

It was soon after Clark entered upon his editorial duties at the Bulletin office that the droll humor of his pen began to attract general attention. His most amusing articles were written in the intervals of his private life, and the more serious daily newspaper work to which he devoted himself. He is not, and never was, a paragrapher, but has thrown out to the world his droll and grotesque humor in the form of narratives. His fun is of the most rollicking kind, and ranks him along with Mark Twain and Artemus Ward. Three volumes of humor have appeared from his pen.

His best known books are Out of the Hurly Burly, and Elbow Room. These works appeared several years ago simultaneously in this country and in England. The sales were large, and over five thousand copies of Elbow Room were sold in London within a month after its publication. Both books have been issued in Canada, where the piratical publishers sold them by the thousand.

His latest work, issued quite early in 1882, entitled The Fortunate Island and Other Stories, is meeting with a wide sale. It is destined to become very popular. Mr. Clark is fond of his[Pg 36] home and family. His residence is located in a remote but beautiful suburb of Philadelphia, where he hopes to live to a ripe old age. Mr. Clark is an excellent musician, and for a number of years he acted in the capacity of organist for one of the Quaker City churches.

Besides his book-making Mr. Clark still retains a firm hold on journalism. He takes a leading interest in his paper, the Bulletin, and writes the dramatic criticisms and a portion of the editorials. He also edits the humorous department of Our Continent, a well-known literary weekly, published in Philadelphia.

As a writer and composer of obituary verse Max Adeler has probably no equal, unless it be another, older, and more prominent Philadelphia journalist—Childs, of the Ledger. The following rare exotics are selected from Out of the Hurly Burly:

Of another little youngster, just departed, Max warbles:

[Pg 37]

In another instance, Adeler gets off the following horrible concoction:

Then, I am pleased to give another choice selection from Clark’s wonderful storehouse:

The same volume contains an admirable bit of drollery in the following take-off on art criticism:

Adeler has given the public an admirable satire in his

The Detroit Weekly Free Press is a famous American newspaper. For a decade it has amused and instructed a hundred thousand families in the United States and Canada, yet prior to 1870 the paper was almost unknown outside the limits of the City of the Straits. The humorous column of the Free Press and the witty descriptive articles printed over the signature of “M. Quad,” explains the secret of the success of this popular Detroit newspaper.

Charles B. Lewis, who is the proprietor of that typographical nom de plume “M. Quad,” began writing for the Free Press as far back as 1870, and since that time the success of the paper has been almost phenomenal. The Detroit Free Press has not only attained an immense circulation in this country, but has carried its success across the Atlantic, where in the great English metropolis a weekly edition of the Detroit Free Press is issued for the amusement and gratification of all English-reading Europe.

[Pg 42]

The life of M. Quad has been a most romantic one, and if properly told would fill a volume. He is now over fifty years of age, and is a native of East Liverpool, Ohio. At the early age of fourteen, Lewis became “printers’ devil” in the office of the Lansing (Michigan) Journal. At the breaking out of the war he enlisted in a Michigan regiment and served both in cavalry and infantry, winning many laurels on the field of battle. After the war he went West and tried Indian fighting for a time. Winning a lieutenantcy he retired and entered journalism. In 1868 he came near being killed by being blown up on the steamer Magnolia, on the Ohio river. When he came down he was dragged out on the shore by an old woman, who laid him out unconscious, among the dead and wounded on the beach. He was taken for a dead negro and was carted away to the morgue for burial.

He revived after a time, his wounds were dressed and he recovered in a few days. Afterwards he wrote a humorous account of the explosion, which was in a vein so irresistibly funny that it started him on the road to fame. In 1870 he finally settled down as a humorous writer on the Detroit Free Press, with which journal he has been connected ever since.

Lewis published Goaks and Tears in 1875,[Pg 43] which he prefaced by a “a brief biography of M. Quad, the Free Press man, written by his mother-in-law.” In this production he says of himself:

For ten years after M. Quad joined forces with the Detroit Free Press he wrote steadily for that journal, and rarely allowed an issue of the paper to be made without a humorous article from his pen. Since 1880, however, little or no humor has appeared, Mr. Lewis changing suddenly from a gay, rollicking style to descriptive sketches, thoughtful and pathetic. In 1881 he made a lengthy visit to the South and tramped over the old battlefields of the Rebellion. In the columns of the Free Press he described, in a series of weekly letters, the battles and the battlefields of the engagements with which he had been connected during the war. These letters were written under the title of Sixteen Years After, and signed by M. Quad. They have been copied extensively by the American and foreign press.

[Pg 46]

One of the raciest things that has ever appeared from the pen of Charles B. Lewis, is the following:

“Josh Billings,” the far-famed writer of Yankee proverbs, is over sixty years of age, yet hale and rather hearty. He was born in western Massachusetts, and after having a hard time of it in life, working at various times, in various places, in various states, at various occupations, he finally settled down to the peace and quiet of an author, with an occasional lecturing tour. This has been the life history of Henry W. Shaw, whose eccentric mode of spelling has made him famous. His eccentricities are not assumed and artificial, but a part of the man, and in his daily conversations he uses the same apt and peculiar similies that are characteristic of his pen productions.

In 1872, when asked by a friend to give some facts relative to his life, Josh wrote the following biography, which is very characteristic of the man:

Mr. Shaw began writing for the literary weeklies, and even now writes a half column or so of his quaint paragraphs for the New York Weekly. His almanac and other books have been published through the house of George W. Carleton, New York, and have had a wonderful sale. It is said that Josh has made at least $100,000 by his writings.[Pg 53] It has been stated that his uncouth manner of spelling was adopted, in the first instance, quite as much through fear of his ability to spell correctly, as through the wish to be odd. He avoided criticism by intentional and habitual misspelling. He is by nature a philosopher, and the experiences of his whole life are classified in his mind, as illustrations of this or that quality of human nature.

Soon after he became famous in the walks of literature, Shaw entered the lecture field. He became at once very popular, and drew large and cultured audiences in the East and West. His last lecturing tour of any length proved very profitable to him. He lectured on The Probabilities of Life, which was divided, as he says, into twenty-four chapters. The hand-bills announcing this lecture read as follows:

“Josh Billings will deliver his new, and as he calls it, serio-comic lecture, on ‘The Probabilities of Life’ (perhaps rain, perhaps not). Divided into twenty-four cantos, as follows: A Genial Overture of Remarks; the Long Branch Letter; Human Happiness as an Alternative; the Live Man, a Busy Disciple; a Second Wife, a Good Risk to Take; the Poodle with Azure Eyes; the Handsome Man, a Failure; Short Sentences, Sharp at Both Ends; the Fastidious Person, Fuss and Feathers; Patience, Slow Poison; What I Know[Pg 54] about Hotels, a Sad History; the Flea, a Brisk Package; the Domestic Man, a Necessary Evil; Answers to Correspondents; Jonah and his Whale; Marriage, a Draw Game; Mary Ann, a Modest Maiden; the Mother-in-law, one of the Luxuries; Proverbs, Truth on the Half Shell; the Mouse, a Household Hord; the Life Insurance Agent; the Caterpillar, a Slow Bug; the First Baby, too Sweet for Anything; Sayings of a promiscuous nature. And much other things.”

Shaw’s advertising dodges have all been of a funny and striking character. The following lines appeared on a postal card that was sent broadcast during the winter of 1877:

Josh is getting old, and each succeeding year his literary productions are fewer and shorter.[Pg 55] Out of the fortune he has made by his pen, only $50,000 is retained in his possession. He is an odd-looking genius, tall, stoop-shouldered, with a large head, massive face, deep-set eyes, and grizzly beard. His hair, which was formerly brown, is now an iron gray, and his stiff, drooping moustache is fast changing to the same color. He parts his hair in the middle, combs it smoothly behind his ears, allowing it to fall loosely on his neck like the locks of a school-girl.

A newspaper writer, in speaking of Josh not long since, said: “As he grows older, he seems to become more and more supremely regardless of persons, surroundings, or opinions. As he greets one with the machine like ‘How do ye do,’ or an inanimate ‘Good day,’ the impression is conveyed that he has arrived at the state of life and prosperity where he deems fate powerless to work any alteration for the worse. Billings is essentially a man to himself, taciturn and unobtrusive everywhere. He is now a willing but unattractive lecturer. He and his wife pass a quiet, relegated, but doubtless contented life, in an unpretentious dwelling in Sixty-third street, New York city, the garret of which is made to answer the combined purpose of literary sanctum and storehouse.”

Shaw has written many witty things besides his[Pg 56] quaint “Proverbs,” which made him famous. The following is an example:

To show what Josh’s Proverbs are like, I annex a few as a finale to this sketch:

Thirty-eight or forty years ago, Jay Charlton Goldsmith, of the New York Herald, was ushered into the world with little if any ceremony. He was born in a small village in eastern New York, not far from the great metropolis. Like other dutiful sons, Jay pleased his parents by attending school until he was thirteen years of age. He then entered a lawyer’s office and mingled with his legal learning the study of phonography. About this time he began acting as correspondent for the Herald from the rural district wherein he lived. At the age of sixteen he was one of the editors of the Register, a small evening paper published at Patterson, New Jersey.

The health of the young man, however, forbade his steady working in a newspaper office, and a year later he was compelled to relinquish his position. He immediately began preparations for a journey abroad, his intention being to travel two years on the continent. He changed his mind at the last moment and went to California,[Pg 59] and from there to the Sandwich Islands. During these travels he penned very creditable and quite readable letters to the Herald. He also wrote occasionally for other journals. On his return, after an absence of a year, he accepted an editorial position in the office of the Republican, at Savannah, Georgia. His health again failing him, he was driven from the South by the climate.

In 1867 he returned to New York city, where he became a reporter and occasional editorial writer for the Tribune. When Oakey Hall became mayor of New York, Goldsmith, who was a warm personal friend, became his private secretary. He retained this office for four years. Early in 1873 he succeeded Mr. E. G. Squier as editor of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. While editing this journal he wrote many critical, terse articles, which attracted general attention. His health again failing, he made a second visit to the Pacific coast two years later. About this time Goldsmith commenced writing to the Danbury News, a series of letters signed by “Jay Charlton,” which became a feature of that famous publication.

Five or six years later, finding himself greatly improved in health, he again accepted a situation on the New York Herald, and has retained it ever since. One of his duties was to write the Personal Intelligence column. He determined to[Pg 60] make it spicy, and wrote short items that could be read between bites at the breakfast table. The name of the “P. I. Man,” by which Goldsmith is so widely known, was probably derived from this fact.

He is said to be the editor of the Weekly Herald, and adds much to the character and worth of that popular edition of Bennett’s famous newspaper. Goldsmith is an odd looking, but not unhandsome genius. He wears his black hair long and it hangs down upon his neck and forehead in profusion. He possesses a poetic face, which is adorned with heavy side-whiskers.

Jay Charlton’s Hints to Farmers is one of his best efforts. It shows what horrible puns he is capable of:

The subject of this sketch, although one of the oldest of American humorists, is comparatively unknown at the present time. William Tappan Thompson was born in the village of Ravenna, Portage county, Ohio, on the 31st day of August, 1812. He came from a good family, his father being a native of Virginia, and his mother the daughter of an Irish exile. At the age of twelve years young Thompson was an orphan, and was thrown upon his own resources in the city of Philadelphia. He entered the office of the Philadelphia Chronicle, where he remained for two years working as a printer’s apprentice.

At the age of eighteen he left his newly found occupation and went to Florida with Acting-Governor Wescott as his private secretary. About the same time he began the study of law. In 1835, he was at work again as a printer, in the office of the Sentinel at Augusta, Georgia. Later on in the same year he became a volunteer with[Pg 64] the Richmond Blues and served for nearly two years in the Seminole war.

Late in the autumn of 1836 Mr. Thompson issued the first number of the Augusta Mirror, but it proved a dismal failure. It was during the Mirror trouble that the young editor became the duly wedded husband of a daughter of Joseph Carrie, a well-to-do merchant of Barnwell, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia. After the death of the Mirror, Mr. Thompson took editorial charge of the Madison Miscellany, and it was his writings for this journal that in after years made him famous as a humorist.

During his idle moments Mr. Thompson began a series of letters from “Major Joseph Jones of Pineville.” These were begun in 1842, and became very popular—so much so, in fact, that before a year had elapsed after their first appearance, they were collected in a volume and published under the title of Major Jones’ Courtship. In the preface of the book the author dedicated the work to his old commander in the Seminole war, General Duncan L. Clinch.

Edition after edition of the book was issued, and it was known in every city and town on this side of the Atlantic. Later, it was reprinted in London, where it had an enormous run for several years. A recent writer in a New Haven paper[Pg 65] says of Major Jones’ Courtship: “Its style is rollicking without grossness; piquant, yet devoid of all exaggeration. Re-reading these letters to-day, the freshness and vigor, which so charmed my youthful fancy for the grotesque in home life, are reflected from every page.”

The preface of the book was written April 10, 1843, and among other things contains the following:

After the success of Major Jones’ Courtship,[Pg 67] Mr. Thompson issued other works from time to time. Major Jones’ Sketches of Travel appeared a few years later, and was followed by The Chronicles of Pineville. Mr. Thompson also wrote a farce entitled, The Live Indian, and a dramatization of The Vicar of Wakefield. Messrs. Carey & Hart, of Philadelphia, bought the copyright of Major Jones’ Courtship in 1848, for the paltry sum of $250. In 1856 Mr. Thompson prepared for the press, Hotchkiss’ Codification of the Statute Laws of Georgia, and in 1858 became connected with the Western Continent, a weekly illustrated paper published in Baltimore.

Two years later he sold his interest in the Western Continent, and went to Savannah, where, in company with John M. Cooper, he issued the Savannah Morning News, which is now valuable newspaper property. During the Rebellion Mr. Thompson was appointed aid to Governor Brown, which position he held until the fall of Savannah. In 1877 he was a member of the Georgia Constitutional convention, which is the full extent of his political career. For the past thirty years he has been the editor of the Morning News, and has been one of the leading citizens of Savannah. His work at present is the superintendency and the occasional writing of editorials for his newspaper.[Pg 68] It is many years since he gave to the world a specimen of his old-time humor.

Since writing the above, I have been pained to learn of the sudden death of Mr. Thompson, at his home in Savannah, on the 24th day of March, 1882. His death revives the subject of his works, and his several books are to be republished in Philadelphia at an early date.

Eli Perkins is a name well known to Americans. In fact he is so well known that sundry newspaper writers, who should feel heartily ashamed of themselves for so doing, have classed Eli Perkins with Gath, Private Dalzell, George Francis Train, and other equally noted characters. The same sundry newspaper writers have stated at various times that Eli Perkins was the greatest liar in all America. This is a base falsehood, and an attack upon the name of a honorable gentleman. A liar, indeed! If the humorists of America are to be thus defiled simply because they exaggerate good stories, solely for the purpose of displaying their wit, why the occupation of humorist is valueless.

Melville D. Landon, better known as Eli Perkins, is not only a humorist, but is author, lecturer, and journalist as well. He was born in Eaton, Madison county, New York, in the year 1840. His freshman year was passed at Madison university, and in 1861 he graduated from Union college[Pg 70] under Dr. Nott, and two years later he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts. He entered journalism soon after this, and after several years of hard work he went to Europe and Asia, returning in 1868.

Eli Perkins was by nature a humorist, yet he devoted himself at first entirely to serious writings. In 1871 he issued his first book from the press of George W. Carleton, New York. It was a large volume of over six hundred pages, and was a detailed history of the Franco-Prussian war. It was a book solemn as the grave, yet full of thrilling description. It commanded a large and ready sale.

An old friend tells the following interesting anecdote of Mr. Landon at this time: “In 1872, at the age of thirty-three, a great change came over Mr. Landon. It was then for the first time that he unchecked his pen, and allowed fun and humor to creep unobstructed into his writings. The occasion was a series of letters written from Saratoga, since republished in Saratoga in 1901. These letters were written for the New York Commercial Advertiser, at the instance of Hugh J. Hastings, a veteran, fun-loving journalist. The Commercial was then almost a dead newspaper. It was never seen on the news-stands, and was only taken in a few old families, who still stuck to[Pg 71] the paper because of its antiquity, it having been established in 1794.

“Perkins appeared one day at the leading news-stand in Saratoga, and marching up with great pride, informed the newsman that he was going to write for the Commercial.

“‘For the Co— what?” asked the man.

“‘For the Co-mercial—the Commercial Advertiser.”

“‘Never heard of it, sir,” replied the newsman.

“‘Well, I am going to write for it, and I want you to order it.”

“‘No use, can’t sell it sir, and——’

“‘But I’ll buy it—buy all you have left,” expostulated Eli.

“‘All right,’ said the newsman, ‘then I’ll order five copies.’

“Every day after that these letters were published in the Commercial under the signature of Eli Perkins. They set Saratoga on fire. The demand for them was immense. On the street cars in New York, and on the balconies in Saratoga, people were reading the letters and asking ‘Who is Eli Perkins?’ In four weeks after the humorist commenced writing six hundred copies of the Commercial were sold in Saratoga alone.

“In a word, the articles made Eli Perkins famous. They were widely read and copied, and many of[Pg 72] them were reproduced in France and Spain. Perkins and Mark Twain were the only humorists at that time since the death of Artemus Ward, and it was no wonder that there was a demand for their writings.”

A few years later the Saratoga letters were gathered together, illustrated by Arthur Lumley, and republished in a large volume by Sheldon & Co., of New York. Still later Mr. Landon issued another book—a volume of humorous sketches—entitled Eli Perkins at Large. This production had, and yet has, an immense sale. In 1872, he entered the lecture field, and for eight or ten years he has convulsed hundreds of audiences in every part of the country, North, East, South, and West. He has also kept up his literary work, and has been corresponding regularly for the Chicago Tribune. His letters to this well known journal have been widely copied and are noted for their sparkling wit and rollicking humor.

Eli produced something intensely funny when he wrote

Another:

A distressing accident is thus chronicled:

The next morning after lecturing at Jonesville, I saw this paragraph:

Some years ago, a poem in broken German verse, overflowing with the richest of humor, appeared in a Boston paper. It was entitled Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and commanded general attention immediately upon its publication. It was copied widely and was sent on its way across the ocean, delighting hundreds on the other side of the Atlantic. The poem ran thus:

When in later years another poem, “Dot Leedle Loweeza,” a companion piece to “Leedle Yawcob Strauss,” appeared, the fame of the author, Charles Follen Adams, rose still higher. “Dot Leedle Loweeza” was equally as good as its predecessor, and concluded as follows:

There are many other poems that have been written by Mr. Adams in a manner similar to his first two efforts, which have attracted general attention. Charles Follen Adams does not follow the occupation of a journalist or literary man, but is a well known merchant of Boston. He is a genuine Yankee, and his parents come of good old Puritan stock. From his mother’s side, he is a direct descendant from Hannah Dustan, famous in the history of the Deerfield massacre. He is a man of middle age and of small stature. A friend thus describes him: “He is a dapper little gentleman, neat and natty in his personnel, just as though he had stepped from a band box, a shrewd, sharp, yet kindly face, a keen, but bright and laughing eye, which tells of a fine sense of humor, a close shaven face, with the exception of a ‘bald browed mustache,’ which gives a manly tone to the well shaped mouth and rounded chin, of medium and slender physique, he steps off with a nervy, springy walk, and a sunny smile or a genial word for his many friends and acquaintances as he passes them on the way.”

Mr. Adams lives happily with his family at No. 36 Rutland square, where he spends his leisure moments in writing for the press. He contributes[Pg 77] regularly a column of bright, witty paragraphs in the Cambridge Tribune, and occasionally writes for the Detroit Free Press, and other publications. Once in a great while he drops into poetry for the magazines.

A collection of his poems was published in book form by a Boston house, a year or two ago, under the title of “Leedle Yawcob Strauss and Other Poems.” The volume had an immense sale and is still very popular. Mr. Adams is engaged in the mercantile business on Hanover street, and will probably remain so connected with the business world for many years.

Mr. Adams does not confine his writings wholly to the German dialect. In a recent number of The Century he contributes some verses which he is pleased to call Prevalent Poetry.

After two more verses in a similar strain, Mr. Adams concludes as follows:

[Pg 78]

Before the close of the last century a famous humorist was born in the town of Buckfield, in the State of Maine. Seba Smith was his name, yet during his entire life few persons knew him by that title. Speaking of him as “Majer Jack Downing,” however, instantly recalls him to mind, and he at once becomes well known.

Seba Smith was born on the 19th day of September, 1792. As early as 1818 he graduated from Bowdoin College, and, a year or two later, settled in Portland, where, in 1820, he became the editor of the Eastern Argus. In 1830 he transferred his labors to the Portland Courier, with which journal he was connected until 1837. It was during this time that Mr. Smith wrote a series of letters for his paper. They were of a political nature, and took well with the public. They became so popular that in 1833 they were collected in a volume and published in Boston, under the caption of Life and Letters of Majer Jack Downing. The letters were humorous in the extreme,[Pg 80] and being written on prominent political subjects, they became widely popular.

In 1841, Smith issued, also through a Boston house, a poem of considerable length, entitled Powhattan. The next year the friends of Majer Jack Downing found him in New York city, where he became actively engaged in literary work. His writings continued to be popular, and his books were written in rapid succession. Away Down East, or Portraitures of Yankee Life, appeared in 1843, and in 1846, a book entitled Dewdrops of the Nineteenth Century was issued. This was followed by a work, New Elements of Geometry, and other books of a serious nature.

In 1859, towards the close of the year, Mr. Smith issued another volume of political humor, which he called My 30 Years Out of the Senate. This book had a wide reputation, and attained an immense sale. The “late unpleasantness” found Mr. Smith hard at work, although now an old man. In 1864, he issued a book entitled Majer Jack Downing of the Downingville Militia. An English edition of the work now lies before me. It was printed in Paternoster Row, London, and contains just thirty chapters. On the title page is the following:

[Pg 81]

MAJER JACK DOWNING TO LINCOLN.

One of the richest things in the book is “A. Linkin’s Proclamashin Concerning Majer Jack Downing’s Book.” This excellent “take-off” on a President’s proclamation is dated Washington, July 15, 1864, and is as follows:

The thirty letters following are all dated Washington and give a humorous account of matters political at the National capital at that time.

[Pg 83]

Miss Elizabeth Oakes, a well known writer, was married to Mr. Smith when she was sixteen years of age. She was born in Cumberland, Maine, in 1831, and was a noted novelist for upwards of twenty years. She has published in all something like fifteen different works. She issued, in 1851, a volume, Woman and Her Needs, which became quite popular.

Mr. Smith retired to private life at the close of the war, and died on the 29th of July, 1868, at his homestead in Patchogue, Rhode Island. His wife survived him and was living in North Carolina several years ago. She gave up writing ten years since.

Natives of western Pennsylvania are familiar with two very characteristic names, “Frisbee” and “Gilhooley.” A short, stout, rather good looking young man of twenty-eight or more is the father of both cognomens, and every grown up resident in smoky Pittsburgh will tell you who he is. Will W. Clark, the paragrapher of the Pittsburgh Leader, does not enjoy a national reputation, although he deserves it. His character sketches signed “Frisbee” and “Gilhooley” are choice tidbits of humor, while his “All Sorts” column in the Evening Leader is rarely dry or out of humor.

Clark was born in Pittsburgh, and will probably die there. He is married and is the happy parent of three children. Although but six years in the journalistic harness, Will is already an old hand at the business and is an accomplished reporter. He is a hard-working journalist, who looks ahead for bread and butter rather than for fame.

His humor is peculiar, and I can give no better example of it than a life of himself, written by himself, for himself. It is as follows:

[Pg 85]

The night before Christmas, 1879, witnessed the death of one of the brightest young humorists the United States has ever called her own. Of bright intellect and finished education, Irwin Russell was rapidly winning a name in American literature, when taken ill, as the result of overwork; he lingered a few days, and died Christmas Eve.

Little is known of the early days of Irwin Russell. He was born in Fort Gibson, and at an early age was left an orphan, relying on his own exertions for a livelihood. He studied law and began the practice of it in his native city, but, becoming enamored with the life of a Bohemian, he started for New Orleans in search of fame and fortune. He obtained employment at local writing in various newspaper offices, and finally found regular employment in the editorial rooms of the New Orleans Times. Then he left the South and turned up in New York city, where he struggled with fate for a time. His existence was a battle[Pg 90] with necessity from the first. It seemed that he was born unlucky. Although his prospects were always fine, he never lived to establish himself permanently anywhere. Few men ever received so many buffets from the hand of fate.

Alone and friendless in New York, young and ambitious, yet weak and moneyless, success and he were strangers. The health of the poor boy failed him, and he would have died had he remained in New York. He shipped on board of a steamer bound for the gulf, and worked his way home—not home, for he had none, but to New Orleans, where he had, at least, a few friends among the journalists of that city. He returned to work upon the Times, and published some of the daintiest bits of dialect humor ever given to the public.

By a strange coincidence his last published lines were written upon the subject of his own grave. They appeared in the New Orleans Times, December 14th, just ten days before the author gave up the struggle with fate and died.

THE CEMETERY.

The New Orleans Times, in speaking of Irwin Russell, after his death, said of him: “He was employed occasionally on this paper, and while so, wrote many a pretty little poem, and many a little catch which reveal an inner life, which hard lines hid from the view of the world. His fund of humor showed itself best in dialect writing, and some things he has written have already found permanent resting places in the compiled editions of American humorous verse.”

For several years Irwin Russell was an interesting and valued contributor to Scribner’s Monthly, and some of his poems have appeared since his death, in The Century. The productions were mostly of the negro dialect order, and occasionally they consisted of Irish sketches in verse. About the last thing published was an Irish dialect poem, entitled Larry’s on the Force, which appeared in The Century. The poem tells in the[Pg 92] fourth verse of Larry’s appearance as a policeman:

Russell’s crowning effort was a piece of dialect verse entitled The First Banjo. It appeared in Scribner’s, and is worthy of reprint here:

THE FIRST BANJO.

Mr. J. H. Williams, better known as “the Norristown Herald man,” is one of the few successful latter-day humorists. He was born in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, and after a few years of common school education, he located in Norristown, a lively town of the Keystone State, serving an apprenticeship as a printer’s devil. In 1860 he began writing for the New York Mercury over the signature of “B. Dadd.” About this time he also produced a series of letters signed “A. Ward, Jr.,” which, by the way, were excellent imitations, and were widely copied, some papers dropping the Jr. and crediting them to Artemus Ward himself. For several years Williams resided in Wilmington, Delaware, but in 1871 he returned to Norristown and became attached to the Herald. Williams is considered one of the most rollicking writers on the American press. He is still a young man and has been married for several years. He forbade my writing a biography for him and begged of me to allow him to[Pg 95] compose his own “obituary,” as he is pleased to call it. Here is what he wrote:

Albany, New York, claims Mr. James M. Bailey, of the Danbury News, as her offspring. The boyhood days of the Danbury News man were characterized by nothing unusual or exciting. At an early age he left school and sought a situation in a grocery store. As a grocer, James proved an utter failure, and without hesitation left his newly found occupation, and soon after took to the law, building air castles of a great and glorious future.

Not satisfied, however, with the fullness of his money coffers, Bailey deserted the law to seek a more profitable business. He gave up all professional desires and turned mechanic, serving two long years as a carpenter. But in 1862 the war of the Rebellion again changed his occupation, and Bailey, with all the patriotism of an American youth, enlisted as a private in the Seventh regiment of Connecticut volunteers. For three years he fought with a desperation only equalled by his desperate attempts at producing puns, in after years.

[Pg 101]

In the early part of 1866 Bailey, in company with T. Donovan, purchased the Danbury (Connecticut) Times. In 1870 the firm purchased the only opposition paper in the town, and named the result of the combination the Danbury News. In 1873 Bailey made a trip to California, and in April of the next year went to Europe, where he remained until 1875. During these travels he wrote constantly for his paper, and by so doing acquired the title of “the Danbury News Man.”

In 1873 Bailey issued, through the Boston house of Lee & Shepard, his first volume of humorous sketches, under the caption of Life in Danbury. The book had a tremendous sale for several years, and fully fifty thousand copies were sold. In the fall of the same year he produced an almanac, the first and last work of the kind he ever published.

As a lecturer Bailey has never been a great success. Perhaps if he had entered the lecture field in 1874, at which time he was far more popular than at any time during his life, he would have realized a small fortune from his lectures. But as a speaker he never made the name he has acquired through his writings. In 1877, They all Do It was issued and so well was the volume received that the Danbury News Man’s name again became a household word. Another work which[Pg 102] appeared in 1879, also became quite popular. It was entitled Mr. Phillips’ Goneness.

Bailey’s first humorous paragraph appeared in the News in 1872, and, by January of the next year, his productions were being published in almost every paper in the country. About this time a special edition of the News was issued for general circulation throughout the country. It took exceedingly well for several years, but was discontinued about two years ago. Bailey has acquired his fame and fortune through his own endeavors and struggles in the world. He is a self-made man in every respect. He is quite prepossessing in his personal appearance, his manner is dignified and pleasing, his demeanor modest and unassuming, and his countenance honest and frank. In his face there is nothing to note his humor, save the merry, bright, and unmistakable twinkle of the eye.

Some time ago an entertainment was given in New York, in honor of Robert J. Burdette, of the Burlington Hawkeye. To W. A. Croffut, who gave the entertainment, the Danbury News Man wrote the following letter of request:

Charles H. Smith (Bill Arp) is one of the oldest of living humorists. Under the nom de plume of Bill Arp he has given the world some very rich things in the way of humor, and the columns of the Atlanta (Georgia) Constitution, have, during the past few years, teemed with his witty, sparkling letters. Bill Arp is known all over the South, and in many of the Gulf States his reputation is equal to that of Mark Twain.

Mr. Smith lives in a retired manner at his country-seat near Cartersville, Georgia. From this rural retreat, he writes me of his life as follows:

Alphonso Miner Griswold was born near Utica, Oneida county, New York, January 26, 1834. His youth was spent in the usual way, and in 1856 he graduated at Hamilton college, with more or less honor. It was not until November, 1857, that “Gris” entered the journalistic world by accepting a position as reporter on the Buffalo Daily Times, then owned and edited by the late Henry W. Faxen. When the Times was merged into the Republic, Griswold transferred his talents to the latter sheet.

In May, 1858, Griswold began writing under the nom de plume of “The Fat Contributor.” His humor was racy and original, and he was classed among the leading fun makers of the day. He went to Detroit in the autumn of 1858, and accepted a position on the Advertiser. A year later he removed his talents to Cleveland, where he labored in the office of the Plain Dealer, published by Hon. W. W. Armstrong. He succeeded Artemus Ward as assistant editor, and during the[Pg 114] early part of the war he wrote many patriotic and ringing editorials. After a brief season on the Cleveland Leader, “Gris” removed to Cincinnati, and in 1863 became a member of the staff of the Evening Times, which position he continued to hold for nearly ten years.

In the latter part of 1872, in company with others, he began the publication of the Cincinnati Saturday Night, a journal which now enjoys a prosperous existence. He became the sole proprietor of the paper in 1874, and was for some years assisted in his labors by his wife, a lady of numerous scholarly attainments.

Griswold resides in a quiet, out-of-the-way street, just off the busy thoroughfares of the Queen City of the West, and lives in a retired, happy manner. During later years he has occasionally made a lecture tour, delivering his famous lecture, Injun Meal, and others to delighted audiences.

Artemus Ward and Griswold were the best of friends, and the “Fat Contributor” tells many anecdotes of his experience in the world alongside of Browne. Speaking of Artemus Ward, in a humorous way, Griswold once said in a humorous article:

Away out in the wilds of Wyoming Territory, in the fast growing city of Laramie, dwells one of the most noted funny men of to-day. Bill Nye is a modest looking name, and at first sight looks like a nom de plume; yet Bill Nye is the “only and original” of that name. He is a young man, and has been in the journalistic profession only three or four years. He began work on the Laramie City Boomerang, and is at present the managing editor of that publication. The Boomerang is a newspaper of metropolitan proportions, and issues both daily and weekly editions.

Bill Nye has, during the past two years, written a larger quantity and a better quality of first-class, genuine humor, than any other funny man in America. He is widely quoted, and has issued one book entitled, Bill Nye and his Mule Boomerang. This volume was issued in Chicago in 1881, and had a tremendous sale. Like others of his class, Nye is modest, and prefers to relate to the[Pg 118] awaiting world his own misfortunes, in his own peculiar style. He writes as follows:

There is no doubt that during later years Bill Nye has been more extensively copied than any other humorist of the day. Among the hundreds of good things he has produced, I select a few of the most touching and pathetic:

A series of humorous descriptive articles, known as Charcoal Sketches, appeared in 1837 in a Philadelphia newspaper. They became famous, and for years their author was noted as a leading American humorist. Joseph C. Neal, the author of the Charcoal Sketches, was born on the third day of February, 1807, in the town of Greenland, New Hampshire. His father had for many years been the principal of a popular academy in Philadelphia, but his health failing him, he was compelled to retire to a country residence at Greenland, where, along with his other duties, he officiated as pastor in the Congregational church of the village.

When the subject of this sketch was two years old his father died, and the family soon after removed to Philadelphia, and thence to Pottsville, in the same State. Mr. Neal resided here until 1831, when he settled in Philadelphia, and assumed the duties of editor of the Pennsylvanian, a journal which became very popular, and conspicuous for its influence on the political character of the State.[Pg 124] It was in the office of this journal that the elder James Gordon Bennett passed a portion of his early years in journalism.

For nearly ten years Mr. Neal devoted his talents to the Pennsylvanian, but at length his health failed him, and in 1841 he went abroad, traveling in Europe and Africa for nearly two years. In 1844 he retired from the editorial chair of the Pennsylvanian, and established in the autumn of the same year a weekly literary miscellany, under the title of Neal’s Saturday Gazette. Neal’s reputation as a writer secured for the Gazette an immediate and continued success.

Joseph C. Neal’s humorous sketches of that character for which he afterwards became distinguished, first appeared in the Pennsylvanian under the title of “City Worthies.” These sketches were reprinted and praised in hundreds of American newspapers. In 1837 he published Charcoal Sketches, or Scenes in a Metropolis. In these sketches he drew from life a class of characters peculiar to the lower classes and disreputable haunts in large cities. The appearance of the sketches in book form was hailed with delight, and several large editions were readily disposed of. The work was also republished in London under the auspices of Charles Dickens, who took a great interest in the American humorist and his works.

[Pg 125]

In 1844 Mr. Neal issued his second book, Peter Ploddy and Other Oddities, and soon after, another and newer series of Charcoal Sketches. Both of these books commanded a large and ready sale. Neal continued to edit the Saturday Gazette until July 3, 1848, when he died very suddenly at his home in Philadelphia, of a complication of diseases. His widow published a second and revised edition of his works some years after his death.

Soon after his death, R. W. Griswold, in his Prose Writers of America, said of Mr. Neal: “He writes as if he had little or no sympathy with his creations, and as if he were a calm spectator of acts and actors, whimsical or comical,—an observer rather by accident than from desire.... His style is compact and pointed, abounding in droll combinations and peculiar phrases, which have the ease and naturalness of transcripts of real conversations. He had too much good nature to be caustic, and too much refinement to be coarse. In some of his sketches he exhibits not only a happy faculty for the burlesque, and singular skill in depicting character, but a generality and heartiness of appreciation which carry the reader’s feelings along with his fancy.”

The following selection from Peter Ploddy will tend to show Mr. Neal’s peculiar style of writing:

[Pg 126]

“Before ‘John Phoenix’ there was scarcely any American humorist—not of the distinctly literary sort—with whom one could smile and keep one’s self respect,” says William Dean Howells, the novelist, in a recent magazine article. This may indeed be true, but there were others in the time of George H. Derby, better known by his nom de plume of John Phoenix, who were of the same school of humorists, yet they were far inferior as wits. Derby, had he lived, would have become perhaps one of the leading humorists of the country. As it was, he was known to the public as a humorous writer for only a few years before his death.

George H. Derby was born of poor but well educated parents in Norfolk county, Massachusetts, in 1823. Little is known of his boyhood or early life. He entered the West Point military academy while yet a youth, and graduated from that institution in 1846. The same year he became engaged in the war with Mexico and continued in the field during the larger part of the year following. He was present at the battle of[Pg 131] Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo, and was made brevet first lieutenant at the former place. He received a severe wound during the latter engagement. He remained with the regular army at the close of the war, and was sent upon various surveys and expeditions from 1847 to 1852. During the two years following the last named date, Derby was engaged on the improvement of San Diego, California, harbor, and the next year he was on the staff of the commanding general and had charge of the military roads, department of the Pacific. In 1856 he was on the coast survey, and in the two years following was light-house engineer.

While sojourning on the Pacific coast Derby first began writing for the San Francisco papers and magazines. His contributions consisted mainly of humorous sketches written under the signature of John Phoenix. These sketches attracted general attention among the Pacific States, and in 1855 were published in book form under the title of Phoenixiana, or Sketches and Burlesques. The book was well received, and ten or twelve editions were exhausted. Four years later a second volume was issued under the title of Squibob Papers. This volume also met with a large and ready sale. Early in 1861 Derby took up his residence in New York, and produced a number of humorous sketches which were never published in book form.[Pg 132] He died suddenly on the 15th of May, 1861, at the age of thirty-eight. Although young in years and not having reached the acme of his fame, his work still lives and is recognized as one of the most prominent species of American humor.

Derby’s humor is something like that of Artemus Ward, yet it is peculiarly original and is vastly different from the writings of the so-called funny men of the present day. Among the many good things from Derby’s pen are the following:

A common-sized-mustache-and-goatee young man is George W. Peck, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is rather a handsome chap, and just after he has left the barber’s chair he looks for all the world like a military officer. However, he looks like a common citizen when Saturday night comes around, and he has not been shaved for several days. Peck has attained quite a reputation as a humorist, through the columns of his paper, Peck’s Sun. Though only established, as a weekly journal with a humorous foundation, something over two years, the Sun has already a circulation of twenty thousand copies, and is rapidly increasing.

George W. Peck is a ready writer, and takes more to the narrative style than paragraphing. His paper is well liked among his fellow humorists, and is widely quoted. Peck is still a comparatively young man, and is “fair, fat, and thirty.” He is one of the few newspaper men who are bashful by nature, as the following letter plainly shows:

[Pg 135]

Here is one of Mr. Peck’s recent paragraphs:

In a recent article in the Sun, Mr. Peck discourses as follows on the

Texas is known to be the largest State in the Union, yet in all the vast territory there resides but one genuine humorist. Alexander Edwin Sweet is the proud possessor of that title. During the last few years the Texas Siftings has been universally quoted and ranked “A 1” among the funny papers of this country. It is needless to state in this connection that Alexander E. Sweet is one of the editors of Siftings.

Mr. Sweet is a Canadian by birth, an American by adoption, and a paragrapher and funny man by instinct. He was born in St. Johns, New Brunswick, March 28, 1841. His father was James R. Sweet, a well-known and prosperous merchant of that city. As early as 1849 young Sweet removed with his parents to San Antonio, Texas. His education was obtained at College Hill, Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1857 and 1858. The next year he went to Europe and entered the Polytechnic institute at Carlsruhe, Baden, Germany. Here he studied for several years, and in 1861 he fell in[Pg 139] love with a handsome German girl, and led Miss Marie Zittel to the altar.

Returning to America and to Texas in 1862, he served two years in the war as a private in company A, Thirty-third regiment of Texas cavalry, Confederate army, principally on the Rio Grande, and in the Indian nation. At the close of the war he studied law in the office of Thomas I. Devine. From the law Mr. Sweet drifted into journalism, and in 1869 became editor of the San Antonio Express. In 1871, he was appointed city attorney of San Antonio by Governor Davis. Mr. Sweet had as yet written nothing of note, but with the Herald his work became widely known. Some years ago the Herald sprang into sudden fame on account of the funny articles that appeared in it, descriptive of the ludicrous side of life in Texas. The articles were copied far and wide, and then they suddenly ceased.

Mr. Sweet transferred his labors to the Galveston News and consequently that journal sprang into popularity all over the country. He possesses that peculiar journalistic trait of carrying an entire newspaper at the end of his pen. His column of Siftings in the News were widely copied, and a New York journal in commenting upon them had this to say of the author: “Mr. Sweet’s sketches, paragraphs and bon mots are second to no living[Pg 140] writer in freshness, originality, sparkling wit, and refined humor. Mr. Sweet is far more than a humorous writer, as his brilliant editorials in the News from time to time will show.”

A year or two ago, Mr. Sweet sought a partner in the person of Mr. J. Amroy Knox, and began the publication of Texas Siftings. Mr. Knox is also well known as an author, having written for several prominent newspapers and magazines. In conjunction with Mr. Knox, Alexander E. Sweet wrote an interesting volume, which was but recently issued from the press. It is entitled Through Texas, or from the Gulf to the Rio Grande on the back of a Mexican Mustang. The book is a narrative, descriptive and humorous, and has commanded a ready sale.

Since the establishment of Texas Siftings that journal has risen rapidly into public favor, and is sold and read in every State in the union. Mr. Sweet does the larger portion of the humorous writing for the paper. The Graphic of New York published a portrait of the rollicking humorist in 1877, but time and a heavy beard have changed him so that the picture does not now resemble him. He has a pleasant home, and surrounded by his wife and five bright children, his life is a most happy one.

[Pg 141]

Many clever articles have appeared in Texas Siftings, but none more clever than the following:

The humorous writings in the Atlanta (Georgia) Constitution have made that paper famous. It has been quoted, perhaps, as much as any other daily newspaper in this country. Among those bright journalists employed upon its editorial staff, none have added more to the popularity of the Constitution than Samuel W. Small, better known to his admirers as “Old Si.”

Small was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1851, and spent his youth in that city and vicinity. In 1861 he removed to Georgia with his parents. Here he divided his time in going to school and loafing around the depots and railroad tracks. In 1865 he lived in New Orleans, and four years later he graduated from the high school in that city. After his graduation, Samuel was sent by his parents to Henry college, in Virginia, and he graduated from that institution in 1871. He then returned to Nashville, began the study of law, and was admitted to the bar by the supreme court of Tennessee in 1872.

[Pg 144]

Mr. Small failed to adopt the law as his profession and turned his entire attention to journalism. He first became a reporter on the Nashville Republican Banner, but soon after removed to Greenville, Tennessee where he edited a weekly paper, and acted as private secretary to ex-President Johnson for nearly two years. The year 1874 found him in Houston, Texas, still in the newspaper business. After laboring on nearly all the journals of Houston, he returned to Georgia in May, 1875. It was in this month that he became connected with the Atlanta Constitution, in whose columns his humorous writings first came under public notice.

The humor of Old Si, his nom de plume, began by his writing short and spicy paragraphs as coming from an aged negro. These grew into larger paragraphs, and gradually into lengthy articles, which were widely copied. Mr. Small is an expert stenographer and reports the official proceedings of the circuit court of Atlanta. He was connected with the Constitution, and was one of that journal’s most valued writers, up to March, 1882, when he became sole editor and proprietor of a prosperous weekly paper in Florida.

In his Florida venture, the Jacksonville Union, Old Si appears as brilliant as ever, as the annexed selection will show:

[Pg 145]

Frederick Hudson, in his History of Journalism in America, credits the Boston Post with having originated the column of funny paragraphs which are now seen in nearly all the leading newspapers of the United States. The All Sorts column of the Post was started when that paper first appeared, over half a century ago. It was in this department that Mrs. Partington and her son Ike were first introduced to the humor-loving public, and scores of writers have sent forth their wit, during the fifty years past, through this same medium.

George F. Babbit began writing the All Sorts for the Post seven or eight years ago, but relinquished the position a few years later. Babbitt was a graduate of Harvard college, and his witticisms in the Post were of a very brilliant character. The present “funny man” of the Post is Charles Hoyt, better known to his Boston friends as Charley Hoyt.

A well-known Boston journalist in a recent article says of him: “He is a well-proportioned[Pg 147] man, lithe, active, and nervy in physique, a broad forehead, an open face on which candor is written in every feature, bright, restless eyes, firm mouth and chin, a clear, ruddy complexion, and a voice not loud or strident but clear as a bell in its enunciation. His column of All Sorts in the Post is a fine example of conscientious paragraphing, where neither time nor diverse labor interfere to distract or hurry the writer. It is enjoyed by thousands every day, who laugh at his quaint conceits and genuine wit.”

Hoyt is a native of Vermont, and comes of good, old Puritan stock. In early youth he held a public office, being page in the State Senate. In this school his intellect was sharpened, and his naturally retentive memory gathered together and carried away much which has been useful in later years. His knowledge of, and acquaintance with, public men, is wide and varied. In his personal address he is both pleasing and attractive. These are both admirable points in his favor, considering that he is a bachelor, and young at that.

Hoyt’s Ragbag stories are very entertaining:

The New York Daily News, like all other first-class journals, possesses its paragrapher. In the person of Henry Clay Lukens, the News has for many years had a valuable contributor, and one of the best humorous writers in America. Under the name of Erratic Enrique, he has written early and late, noon, morning, and night, and, in fact, about all the time.

Lukens is of Dutch ancestry. He was born in Germantown, near Philadelphia, on the 18th day of August, 1838. His first newspaper enterprise was a monthly publication issued in his native city, during the winter of 1857. For this paper, George Alfred Townsend wrote some of his first articles. Lukens worked at his journalistic profession for many years in different States in the Union.

In 1874 he went to South America, where he remained as a traveling correspondent for nearly two years. While there he wrote interesting letters to the Danbury News and the St. John (New Brunswick) Torch, under the quaint pseudonym of Erratic Enrique. He also wrote for[Pg 151] various other American journals under the same name.

It was not until March, 1877, that Henry Clay Lukens settled down to steady work on a daily newspaper. He then associated himself with the sprightly little News, with which paper he has ever since been connected. He originated a column of humor called Pith and Point, which has brought both the paper and himself into prominence. It is said he has not missed a week’s labor since his first day’s connection with the News. He is one of the few hard-worked city journalists.

Early in 1881, he began a series of articles, entitled Sanctum Sketches, in Hubbard’s Advertiser, of New Haven, Connecticut. In this series of articles he produced the biographies of six or eight well known paragraphers. He is also a regular contributor to several weekly and monthly periodicals.

Lukens is quite inclined to poetry, and at times jingles some very clever and witty rhymes. The following is from his pen:

ESPRIT MALIN.

[Pg 154]

A country newspaper rarely makes its mark in the journalistic world, and especially a paper printed in such an obscure village as is Whitehall, New York. The Whitehall Times, however, is one of the few exceptions, and, although a country newspaper, has been quoted in every paper of any note in the land.

William Albert Wilkins, the editor and proprietor of the Times, and the one man who has made that journal famous, was born on the 26th day of March, 1840, in the village of Cherry Valley, Otsego county, New York. At the age of ten he removed with his parents to Cohoes, in the same State, where he attended a common district school for several years. He entered business as office boy in the village post-office. From this position he was elevated to a travelling salesman, doing business for a firm in Albany. A year later, however, he settled down to real life as a retail clothing merchant at Whitehall. In this pursuit Wilkins was quite successful, and for eleven years he continued in the business.

[Pg 155]

Wilkins says that the first important discovery of his life was when he embarked in the printing business. “Then,” says he, “it was easier to convince nine-tenths of the human family that the inhabitants of the infernal regions employ their time skating on real ice ponds, than it is to convince them that they cannot conduct a live newspaper. While a merchant in the town of Whitehall, Mr. Wilkins began writing—along in the fall of 1869—several humorous communications for the Weekly Times, the very paper which he afterwards owned. His articles were signed “Hiram Green, esquire, Lait justiss of the Peece.” His sketches were bright and original, and after doing all he could to supply the crusty Whitehallites with humor, he began a series of letters in the Troy Budget, which he continued for several years.

In 1870 what appeared as his guiding star shone over his horizon. A new comic weekly paper had just been introduced to the residents of New York. It was known as Punchinello, and its publisher made William Albert Wilkins, of Whitehall, a handsome offer to assume the editorial chair. Wilkins was not long in making a decision whether to accept the offer or no. In an evil moment he bade good-bye to the clothing business and hied himself to New York. His salary and the paper ended their existence in five months’ time, and[Pg 156] the Whitehall merchant was cast adrift in the great metropolis. He remained in New York and was employed with a leading wholesale clothing house until April, 1873. During his sojourn in the city he wrote regularly for the Tribune, Sun, and Mail, as well as doing occasional work for the Brooklyn Eagle, Albany Argus, and several of the many weekly journals published in Gotham.

In the early May days of 1874 Wilkins returned to Whitehall, and his first love, the Times, became his property. Since that time he has been its editor and proprietor, and has made for it a name that takes first rank among the newspapers of America made famous by their humorous paragraphs.

Mr. Wilkins has a wife, two children, and a charming home. Of his family he says: “None of my relatives have ever been hung, but once a brother-in-law came near going to Congress. My war record is good—as during the rebellion I did not have a hand in the public treasury, but a second cousin of my wife sent a substitute, who by jumping bounties like a true patriot, covered the family with glory enough to reach me.”

As a politician, Mr. Wilkins succeeded through the aid of his paper and his friends, in holding one office, three times being collector of canal tolls at the port of Whitehall, during the years 1874, 1875,[Pg 157] and 1878. He is a very small man, being something like five feet four inches in height. He possesses a pleasant cheery face, and adorns the lower portion of it with a moustache of a heavy and a beard of a light growth. His literary work has of late years been devoted almost exclusively to the Times. Recently he has essayed domestic sketches, stories of the home circle, and romantic tales of travel and adventure.

A New York humorist says admiringly of Wilkins: “He is a trump card in the fraternity he adorns. Never a stone has he laid in the path of an earnest fellow laborer. Meet him when you will and where you will, there is the same cordial impressment, the same hand-grip that goes straight to your marrow of susceptibility. It has been my lot to meet him when conviviality held full sway, and again when family affliction had tightly drawn the chords of sympathy; but the same gentle spirit was the thrall. The world is better for such lives; better for the kindly sentiments that emanate from minds charged less with self-opinion than liberal thoughts of and for mankind; better for the outflow of their broad religion, and safer because it is a religion of impulse, a creed born of sentiment and fostered by philanthrophy.”

Wilkins’ admirable essay on Father Adam is[Pg 158] undoubtedly the best thing he has written. It was originally published in the Whitehall Times in 1879, and is as follows:

             { wore tight boots.
             {     { corns.
             { had { shirts with buttons off.
             {     { holes in his stockings.
             {     { holes in his pockets.
  Adam never { wore patched pantaloons.
             { spilt ice cream on his lavender pants.
             { pawned his ulster.
             { pulled down his vest.
             { burst his suspender buttons.
             { paid $2 per day for washing.
             { owed his tailor.

             {      { corsets.
             {      { striped stockings.
             { wore { rats.
             {      { mice.
             {      { frizzes.
   Eve never { was bothered to find a dressmaker.
             { found fault with her milliner.
             { gossiped with her next door neighbor.
             { went to church and made fun of a
               rival’s new bonnet.
             { had beaux from church.

                           { dressmakers’ }
                           { milliners’   }
                           { shoemakers’  }
  When he did not have any { hosiery      } bills to 
                           { jewelry      }    pay.
                           { false hair   }
                           { ribbon       }
                           { taffy        }

“Carl Pretzel” is a name generally known throughout the West and Northwest. It is the literary sobriquet of Mr. Charles H. Harris, of Chicago, Illinois. He was born in the city of Rochester, New York, on the 20th day of May, 1841. His father was a well-known politician of the Empire State, and Charles, having a living example of the New York State politician constantly before him, resolved at an early age not to enter politics—at least not in New York State. After receiving a common-school education, and passing his early youth at home, Mr. Harris went to New York city in 1862. He was accompanied by other youngsters of his native town.

Harris shipped as a landsman in the navy, and soon after was transferred to the navy yard at Washington, where, in a few months after his arrival, he received the appointment of captain’s clerk. He was promoted to the position of pay-master’s clerk, and did service on the Potomac river during his one year term of enlistment.[Pg 162] After the war he came home, and after remaining a very short time in Rochester, he set out to seek his fortune.

The oil fever having broken out at this time, Harris was one of the first to become afflicted. He started for Pennsylvania, and became interested in oil wells and oil territory. To use his own words, “he made a barrel of money, and left it there, it being too cumbersome to carry home.” In speaking of himself, Harris says: “In 1866 I was notified that an appointment awaited me in Wyoming Territory, that of Secretary of the Territory. I started at once to grasp the prize. Arriving in Chicago, I learned that my next friend, who had been nominated for Governor of the Territory, did not have friends enough in the Senate to ratify his nomination, consequently his failure to secure the Governorship settled me.”

Harris was left in Chicago like a stranded ship. He embarked into journalism soon after his arrival, and began inflicting the public with “Pretzelisms,” by “Carl Pretzel.” These consisted of short and witty paragraphs in broken German dialect. They took well, and Harris has made a national reputation through them. He says: “I began the ‘Pretzelisms’ to get even with the world, and I will not let up on them.”

For a number of years Mr. Harris has issued[Pg 163] his annual almanac, which has commanded a large and ready sale. A few years ago he issued his first book, “My Book of Expressions,” which has had a wide circulation. It contained only articles in the Dutch dialect. The Almanac for 1882, written by Mr. Harris, is overflowing with his peculiar humor, and another large volume, “My Book of Parodies,” will soon appear.

“Carl Pretzel,” outside of his book work, is a thorough and hard-working journalist. He is at present engaged in editing and publishing a weekly newspaper at 119 Clark street, Chicago. “The National Weekly is eight years old,” says Harris in a private letter, “and is a healthy, growing enterprise.”

Here is one of Carl’s best small efforts:

“Uncle Remus” is a well-known character throughout the South, and his fame has even found its way northward. “Uncle Remus” is the literary nickname adopted by Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, a well-known journalist of the South. He was born in Eatonton, Georgia, on the 8th of December, 1846. At a very early age he was taken out of school, and placed at work as “printer’s devil” in the office of a country newspaper.

Charles Pilsbury, in a recent article, says of Harris: “He must have had access to many books, and those of the best sort, and he mastered them thoroughly. One can readily imagine him pursuing his studies in some shady nook in the summer time, and in the winter evenings by the blaze of pine knots or the modest tallow dip. It was in these days and evenings, we may be sure, that he obtained the insight into negro character, which has enabled him to portray in ‘Uncle Remus,’ the ante bellum negro.”

In 1866 Mr. Harris became connected with a[Pg 166] publishing house at New Orleans, and he had plenty of spare time to devote to literature. He has written a good deal for southern periodicals, during the last five years; essays, sketches and lyrics have appeared from his pen that would have done honor to older heads. In January, 1867, he published in the New Orleans Times, a poem entitled The Sea Wind, which has been greatly admired.

He returned to Eatonton, Georgia, in May, 1867, where he wrote many articles in both prose and verse. In 1868 Mr. Harris was in Forsythe, Georgia, still bent on following literature as a profession. In June of the same year he was working at the case, and thought some of going to New York, to seek his fortune and a name. About this time he received the promise of an editorial position on a paper about to be established at Savannah, Georgia; and on the 12th of July he writes to a friend that he “thinks he was cut out for a paragraphing journalist.”

His newspaper promise failed to realize anything for him, however, and in October he was still at the case in a country newspaper office, longing for journalistic life in a great city. Two years later we find his hopes realized, and Mr. Harris became the associate editor of the Savannah Morning News. He worked hard, and soon[Pg 167] placed his name high in rank among Georgia journalists.

After six years of work on the Morning News, Harris purchased an interest in the Atlanta Constitution, and immediately joined its editorial staff. It was in the columns of the Constitution that Uncle Remus and his quaint humor first appeared. From this time forward his success has been rapid, and he has placed his name in the front rank among American humorists. Last year Mr. Harris published his first book, Uncle Remus; His Songs and Sayings. The work took wonderfully well with the public and has had an immense sale.

Of the later works of Uncle Remus, the following are very popular:

A PLANTATION BALLAD.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

“David Ross Locke, an American satirist,” says the American Encyclopedia, yet Locke is a newspaper humorist of the modern school. True, he does not subject himself to the painful necessity of forcing humorous paragraphs into the world, neither is he given to punning. Yet throughout his writing is easily distinguished a dry, uncertain, yet entertaining humor.

David Ross Locke was born in Broome county, New York, in or near the village of Vestal, on the 20th day of September, 1833. After a common school education, lasting but a year or two, young Locke, in 1844, or when he was but eleven years of age, became apprenticed to a printer in Cortland, a few miles distant from Vestal. Learning his trade, he sought out, Bohemian-like, to seek his fortune. He drifted around the country, North and South, varying the occupation with which he earned his daily bread. At different times he acted in the capacity of compositor, reporter and general writer for various newspapers and magazines.

[Pg 171]

It was in 1852 that young Locke settled down for the first time, at Plymouth, Ohio, where he became connected with the Advertiser, a weekly village newspaper, with a few hundreds circulation. Locke afterwards removed his talents to the Herald, at Mansfield, Ohio; then he drifted into the offices of the Journal at Bucyrus, Bellefontaine Republican, and the Jeffersonian, a prosperous weekly published at Findlay. It was during his connection with the last named paper that Locke wrote for the Journal, an article signed by the “Rev. Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby.” The letter purported to have come from an ignorant and penniless bourbon Democrat, who resided in Kentucky. This character was apparently devoted entirely to free whisky, perpetual slavery, and a position as post-master. The letter was dated “Confederit Cross Roads,” and soon after its appearance created considerable comment.

Not long after the appearance of the first Nasby letter, Locke changed his location once more, and turned up in the office of the Blade, at Toledo. Here he came to stay. He has stayed there ever since; has grown up with the Blade, and now owns and controls the paper. The “Nasby” letters have made both the Blade and Locke famous all over the country. In a private letter to the writer, Nasby says: “I have kept up the letters ever[Pg 172] since 1860, for which I ask forgiveness.” At the close of the war Locke, like others of his class, entered the lecture field for a short time, and lectured in nearly all the Northern States. His first volume of letters appeared in 1865, in Cincinnati, under the title of Divers Views, Etc. In 1867 appeared another volume of Nasby letters, published in Boston, under the title of Swingin’ Round the Cirkle.” In 1868, appeared a third volume, Ekkoes From Kentucky, and, in 1874, a Boston house published his Morals of Abou ben Adhem. This was followed by A Paper City, published by Lee & Shepard, Boston, and Hannah Jane, a poem. This last-named work has had a large sale, and is quite popular. Of this work a leading critic said: “It is certainly one of the best things the Rev. P. V. Nasby ever produced. It has the extraordinary attraction of being in popular and excellent verse. It is real life, and true nature. It touches a chord that will vibrate everywhere; a subject near the heart of many, and in the experience of all. It touches it with honesty, frankness, and self-condemnation, that stings with conviction while it thrills with admiration.” One is fully convinced of these facts after a careful perusal of Hannah Jane. The following is a fragment from the poem:

[Pg 173]

In 1881 Mr. Locke, with his eldest son, sailed for Europe, where they travelled for nearly a year. On his return he began a series of papers in the Toledo Blade, entitled “Nasby in Exile.” These letters were afterwards, in 1882, published in book form by the Locke Publishing Co., of Toledo, under the same title. The work is principally descriptive of travel in Ireland, England and on the Continent. Locke is the author of two plays, “Inflation” and “Widow Bedott.” The last named has proved very successful, financially and otherwise.

“Nasby” was married to a very estimable lady, upwards of twenty-six years ago, and is the proud father of three children. He lives in a quiet, but elegant manner in the city of Toledo, and is considerably engrossed with the business interests of the city. Under his able management the weekly Toledo Blade has become one of the leading family papers of the country, and circulates in every State and Territory of the Union. Locke[Pg 174] writes solely for his paper, even his most successful books being made up of material taken from the columns of the Toledo newspaper.

The famous funny man of the Burlington, Iowa, Hawkeye, was born at Greensboro, Pennsylvania, on the 30th of July, 1844. At the early age of seven months he went West with his parents, to grow up with the country. They settled in Peoria, Illinois, where at the age of eighteen Robert enlisted as a private, in 1862, in the Forty-seventh Illinois Infantry. He served through the war as a private, was present at the siege of Vicksburg, and was a member of the famous Red River expedition. He showed himself to be a brave and fearless man on various occasions, especially at the battle of Corinth.

Robert J. Burdette, at the close of the war found life’s struggle rather severe. He was the oldest son of a family of nine, and aided them as best he could. In after years he made the remark: “As the oldest son I saw it was my duty to help pull the others through.” His facilities for acquiring an academic education were limited, and his ambition to enter college has never been gratified.[Pg 176] While on a visit to New York he penned several letters from that city to the Peoria Transcript, and the publication of these letters betrayed his natural inclination for the journalistic life. Upon his return to Peoria he secured a position as proofreader on the Transcript. In the meantime he wrote numerous sketches for the different New York magazines, but few of which were published or even accepted.

Burdette says of his life from this time forward: “After a while I started a paper of my own—the Peoria Review. I ran it two years. It was a comforting sort of a paper. It brought to me a few cares but no uncertainty. I knew every Monday morning that on the next Saturday night I would not have money enough to pay the hands. During my career as editor of that wretched sheet it never disappointed me in that particular—not once. Finally the sheriff took me into partnership, and there was a glorious increase of activity. He was an enterprising man, very. He realized more in an hour than I had done in two years. Presently the partnership dissolved, and I looked around for something to do. I thought I would try and get on the Burlington Hawkeye. It was a sober, staid old paper, financially solid. I was young and active. Thought I, ‘I think I can do that paper good. If I can get on the staff I am[Pg 177] sure it will do me good. Well, I was thinking of going over there when one day its manager, Mr. Wheeler, came to see me, and offered me the position of city editor and reporter. Well, if I live ten thousand years it will not be long enough time for me to be sufficiently thankful that I accepted the offer, and, besides that, I am very proud of the fact that they sent for me. It gave me an independence of personal satisfaction that I have never recovered from. I don’t try to be funny in my writings. I have an idea, occasionally, and when I get it loose people laugh. Then I review the remark and shake it out to find the fun. My perception of a joke is not hung on a hair trigger.”

In 1870, Mr. Burdette became affianced to Miss Carrie Garrett, of Peoria, Illinois. She was a frail and delicate young lady, and on visiting her one afternoon, Robert was met at the door by her friends, who announced that she was lying at the point of death. The situation was a grave one, but in fifteen minutes’ time he had procured a marriage license from the county clerk’s office, and Miss Garrett became Mrs. Robert J. Burdette at a time when her responses could only be made by a slight motion of the eyes and a faint pressure of the hand. But little hope was entertained for her life, but she passed the ordeal, and after some length of time rallied sufficiently to go with her husband[Pg 178] on a short bridal tour to their quiet home in a neighboring street, in Peoria. Mrs. Burdette has been an invalid all her life, and the genial humorist has been a patient attendant and companion for her in her dreary hours of life. The major portion of the rollicking humor that Burdette produces, is written at the bed side of his invalid wife.

It was soon after his marriage, when he was doing editorial work on the Peoria Transcript, that Burdette began his humorous writing. He tells of it in his own words as follows: “When I was on the Transcript, I would try to think of something pleasant to tell the folks when I went home at night—something that would make a tea-table lively. And when nothing of a funny nature occurred, I would make up something, such as one of the burlesques concerning the Middle Rib Family. They seemed to be enjoyed around the tea-table, and finally Mrs. Burdette urged me to write them up. I told her that they would sound as flat as dish-water in print—that it was nothing but tea-table chatter, and that she must not be so highly impressed by my nonsense. But she persisted, and so I would occasionally write in a light vein for the Transcript. The sketches seemed to take, and then I plunged into deep water.” Afterwards Burdette said of his humor: “You see, I don’t know how I do say things people think[Pg 179] funny, and sometimes I am in a state of mind bordering on insanity to know why people think they are so. I certainly had no school except the wide world, from which to learn the lesson of fun; and, now I come to think of it, perhaps the page was the most instructive that could have been placed before me.”

From 1874 to the date of his joining the editorial corps of the Burlington Hawkeye, Mr. Burdette rose rapidly as a humorist, and after his writings and the Hawkeye both had become famous, he entered the lecture field. His first lecture was decided upon and written by the promptings of his wife. This little episode Robert tells as follows: “One day when she was lying helpless, she said she believed that I could write a lecture and deliver it successfully, and so she sat me down to write that lecture; and from time to time I rebelled with tears and groans and prayers. I told her that I was too little, that I had no voice, that I couldn’t write a funny lecture, anyhow. She kept me at it, and in due time we had a lecture on our hands:—‘The Rise and Fall of the Mustache.’ That was all right enough; now how to get the audience. I thought I would try it first at Keokuk. If I delivered it first in Burlington, even though it were tame, tamer, tamest, I thought they might pat me on the back. But[Pg 180] Keokuk hated Burlington. I thought that if it was flat the Keokuk folks would tell me so. Mrs. Burdette said that, as she was responsible for that lecture, she was going to hear it first delivered. So I carried her aboard the cars. We went down to Keokuk, and they pronounced it good.”

The whole of the United States have since agreed with Keokuk. Burdette has lectured in about every State in the Union to delighted audiences. Taking his age into consideration, Mr. Burdette is very youthful in appearance. He is short in stature, easy in manner, and affable in conversation. He has a low, broad forehead, a black mustache, rounded chin, and dark, yet bright, penetrating eyes. When writing at any considerable length, he scarcely ever has a definite plan for his effusion, and lets it take its own free way from the point of his pen. He has written much in verse and prose, but his humorous descriptions and pen pictures of those he meets in every-day life, are the most readable of his productions. It is natural for him to be funny, and in speaking of the most common-place things he expresses himself in the most humorous way.

Burdette has published two books: The Rise and Fall of the Mustache, and Hawkeye Glances, both volumes commanding a large sale. He has written much for the literary weeklies, and his pen[Pg 181] is never idle. Among his attempts and successes in poetry nothing equals his touching tribute to

WILHELMJ.

Among the thousand and one “good things” that Burdette has given us, none contains more of his genuine, characteristic humor than his

The subject of this sketch is a resident of New Orleans. His entire life, almost, has been spent there. His name,—that of Aby,—is an uncommon one and a short one, and with the short, very short, surname of Joe prefixed, makes the whole an extraordinary short name. Joe C. Aby has written much in the way of humor, under the rather curious name of “Hoffenstein.” The larger portion of his productions have appeared in the way of sketches, in the columns of that well known Southern newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Democrat.

Joe C. Aby was born on the 23d day of July, 1858, and is consequently one of the youngest of our American humorists. According to his own story, he was in boyhood “a tame sort of individual. I was not vicious, nor was I given to saying smart things, for the reason that my father, whose kindly hand is now still in death, had a habit of hovering around the rear portion of my anatomy with a strap, in order to impress upon my tender[Pg 184] mind the fact that it was not becoming in a small boy to get ‘too big for his old clothes.’ His theory was, that the seat of a boy’s pants was the proper medium through which to reach the mind, and the demonstrations of his theory were invariably successful.

“My school life was not at all remarkable, or different from that of the average urchin. It consisted of thrashings, which I received from the pedagogue for not knowing my lessons. He was a man who clung to the motto: ‘Hit for the basement, let the rod fall where it may;’ but even while he was doing so, I felt that there was a destiny that would model my end, despite his efforts to hammer it out of shape. At the age of fourteen years I entered a collegiate institute, but at sixteen, my career there was abruptly terminated by the right boot of the principal, who foolishly believed that a student deserved immediate expulsion, who was bold enough to attempt to punch the head of a German professor. After my hasty exit from college, I migrated to Texas for the benefit of my health.

“For seven or eight years I lived among the cattle ranches in the southwestern portion of the Lone Star State. While in Texas I drifted around promiscuously from one kind of business to another, until a position was offered me, as a reporter,[Pg 185] on the local staff of the Houston Daily Post—a journalistic venture which has since proved a success, and is now a leading paper in Texas. I made my appearance as a journalist with the first issue of the paper. During my sojourn on the staff of the paper, I dabbled somewhat in humorous writing, which attracted some attention. Finally, I received an offer from the New Orleans Times to join its staff of writers. This offer I accepted at once, and returned to my native city. I remained with the Times until its consolidation with the New Orleans Democrat was effected, when I was offered a position on the local staff of the hyphenated journal—The Times-Democrat. This offer I also accepted, and have since served that paper.”

Under the nom de plume of “Hoffenstein,” Mr. Aby has written much that is not only funny, but ridiculously so. His Hoffenstein sketches in the Times-Democrat have won for him a national reputation, and his writings are reproduced in papers in various parts of the country. He is a young man, unmarried, handsome and dignified. A volume of the Hoffenstein sketches has been issued by a New York publishing house, and has been flattered by a ready sale.

One of the most popular of these sketches is the following

[Pg 186]

The subject of this sketch is known but little, although his humor has acquired fame widespread and universal. Edward E. Edwards is the paragrapher and “funny man” of the Boston Transcript. This journal has become famous for its bright and racy column of “Facts and Fancies,” and for the hundreds of sparkling humorous sketches that have appeared in its columns during a great number of years.

Edward E. Edwards, the life of the journal, is a New Englander. Born and reared in the vicinity of the great metropolis of culture, Edwards has become one of the institutions of Boston. While yet a youth he entered into the employ of the Transcript, in the capacity of assistant in the mailing-room in the basement. He worked steadily; and gradually, as he became a man, ascended in the business he had chosen, step by step, until he now holds a remunerative position in the editorial rooms on the fifth floor of the Transcript building.

Edwards is the fortunate possessor of a vein of[Pg 190] humor of very peculiar composition, and he occupies in the world of wit a field entirely his own. The column of bright paragraphs published under the caption of Facts and Fancies has long been one of the leading features of the Boston Transcript, and is widely quoted. Edwards has made his most happy hits, however, in his descriptive sketches, lectures to the young, etc., that have appeared in his paper. These have been more widely copied, perhaps, than any one class of humorous sketches that have appeared in this country during the last decade. Their author is a small man, of good appearance, weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, and is about six and thirty years of age.

As a fair specimen of the humor that springs from the pen of Edwards, I annex the following discourse to little children on

One of the most clever of Western humorists is Eugene Field. He is a native of Missouri, having been born in St. Louis, September 2, 1850. His mother died when he was but six years of age, and he was sent, with a younger brother, to Amherst, Massachusetts, and placed under the care of his cousin, Miss French. He was fitted for college by the Rev. James Tufts, of Monson, and entered Williams college in 1868. Upon the death of his father, in 1869, he returned to the West, and has since then made his home on the western side of the Mississippi. He left the State University of Missouri at the close of his junior year, and went to Europe, where he remained for seven months.

In 1873 Mr. Field became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal, of which paper Stanley Huntley (now of the Brooklyn Eagle) was then city editor. He changed his location soon after to St. Joseph, where for eighteen months he was associate editor of the St. Joseph Gazette.[Pg 194] He then moved to Kansas City, where, for a period of twenty months, he acted as managing editor of the Daily Times. He was with the St. Louis Times-Journal during its best days, and was twice elected poet of the Missouri Press Association. He is, at the present writing, managing editor of the Denver Tribune. He has been married eight years and is the father of four living children.

It was in 1878 that Mr. Field first began writing verse, and, for a young poet, his productions were highly complimented. His first effort was a little poem of ten stanzas, which was printed in a St. Louis paper. It was entitled:

THE CHRISTMAS TREASURES.

Other efforts in a similar vein followed, of which the following is a fair sample:

THE PRAYER.

His work in a lighter vein is fairly represented by the following:

THE SAME DEAR HAND.

Then again in the following:

THE WARRIOR.

In October, 1881, Mr. Field commenced the publication of the Denver Tribune Primer, which he abandoned as soon as it began to be generally imitated. Samples of his primer style are appended:

Eugene Field has written a number of stories, all of a sombre nature. He has at various times been solicited to contribute to Eastern publications, but has steadily declined to do so.

“Mr. and Mrs. Spoopendyke” are well-known characters. The exceedingly funny descriptions of the home life of Spoopendyke and his better-half, that first appeared in the columns of the Daily Eagle, of Brooklyn, New York, in 1881, have been reproduced in thousands of newspapers in this country, and in Europe. They are written in a style highly original, and occupy a field entirely their own.

Mr. Stanley Huntley, the author of these lively sketches, is a resident of Brooklyn, and has for years occupied a prominent position in the editorial rooms of the Daily Eagle. He is a born journalist, and has been engaged on many newspapers in both the East and West. For many years he was city editor of the St. Louis Evening Journal, and has also held positions on other St. Louis papers. It was not until 1881, early in the year, that Mr. Huntley’s humorous writings began to attract the attention of the public. They were so original, so brilliantly witty, and such oddities in[Pg 201] themselves, that the Brooklyn Eagle became famous through their publication. Spoopendyke at once sprang into popular favor, and the name was known in every city and village in the country.

During this season of popularity, Mr. Huntley gathered together his best sketches, and brought them out in book form through the New York publishing house of W. B. Smith & Company. The book sold with a rapidity that was simply wonderful, and under the simple title of Spoopendyke, over 300,000 copies of the work were manufactured and disposed of within three months after its first appearance. Several revised and enlarged editions have since been published.

Mr. Huntley is of middle age, of lively temperament, pleasing manners, and is kind and sympathetic. He has been married for a number of years to a handsome and highly cultured lady, and lives with happy surroundings in a retired street in Brooklyn. Early in 1882, he was compelled, by serious illness, to cease his labors for a number of months.

It is extremely difficult to determine which is his best production. The Spoopendyke sketches are all good. Here is a fair specimen of them:

The following excellent satire on the current juvenile literature of the day, was originally published in the columns of the Brooklyn Eagle:

[Pg 204]

There are hundreds of humorists in America who are comparatively unknown—humorists who are intensely funny, but who do not know it; persons who write one or two good things and then cease to write; journalists of the staid, old school, who once in a decade or so say something really witty. During the last ten years I have endeavored to accumulate a portion of the many stray bits of fun that have appeared in the American newspapers from time to time.

As an example I quote the following from an unknown humorist: “The editor of a mining camp newspaper went to Denver to hear Emma Abbott sing, and in a review of the opera said: ‘As a singer she can just wallop the hose off anything that ever wagged a jaw on the boards. From her clear, bird-like upper-notes, she would canter away down on the base racket and then cushion back to a sort of spiritual treble, which made every man in the audience imagine every hair on his head was the golden string of a celestial harp,[Pg 208] over which angelic fingers were sweeping in the inspiring old tune, Sallie Put the Kettle on. Here she would rest awhile, trilling like an enchanted bird, and hop in among the upper notes again with a get-up-and-git vivacity that jingled the glass pendants on the chandeliers, and elicited a whoop of pleasure from every galoot in the mob. In the last act she made a neat play, and worked in that famous kiss of hers on Castle. He had her in his arms with her head lying on his shoulder, and her eyes shooting red-hot streaks of galvanized love right into his. All at once her lips began to twitch coaxingly and get into position, and when he tumbled to her racket, he drawed her up easy like, shut his eyes, and then her ripe, luscious lips glewed themselves to his and a thrill of pleasure nabbed hold of him, and shook him till the audience could almost hear his toenails grind against his boots. Then she shut her eyes and pushed harder and dash—O, Moley Hoses!—the smack that followed started the stitching in every masculine heart in the house.”

A Montana editor writes as follows of a hated rival:—“The blear-eyed picture of melancholy and imbecility who has ravaged his exchanges to fill up The Insect during the past year, and the cheerful looking corpse who has acted lately as[Pg 209] his man Friday, and who is a tenderfoot, equally soft at both ends, will doubtless paralyze everybody to-day with his thunderbolts of choice sarcasm and polite invective. The intelligibility of their phillippics, however, will depend largely on whether they could borrow that dictionary or not, their vocabulary being painfully abridged if left to their own resources.”

The editor of the Solid Muldoon, a weekly journal published at Ouray, Colorado, thus vaunted his own paper: “It is the most powerful antidote for meanness and kindred diseases, ever offered to a suffering community. Elder Ripley, who hasn’t told the truth in thirty-two years, feels better, and he has only been on our list two months. Captain Stanley, who hasn’t tasted water for thirteen years, can now look at a brooklet without serious results. Ed Snydom, who has been troubled with his spine ever since the Ute outbreak, put out a large washing Monday. Jim Vance, who came to this country with an Arkansas record, now moves in the first society. O, it is a perfect balsam; two-fifty per annum. One annum contains fifty-two doses.”

An editor in Texas gives the following figures from a statistical memorandum of his life:

[Pg 210]

The following cheerful valedictory of an editor was printed in the Asheville, North Carolina, Journal: “In this issue of the paper I offer my house and lot for sale. My object is to quit the country—possibly for the country’s good. For the past nine years I have endeavored to make a livelihood here at the newspaper business, and at this writing I am a good breathing representation of the Genius of Famine, or an allegory of Ireland[Pg 211] during the potato rot. The day star of my prosperity has gone down behind a dark cloud of unpaid and uncancelled obligations. As a dernier resort, I propose to cast my lot among the Mongolians of the Pacific coast, and with this view my leisure moments are devoted to deciphering the hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest, while I patiently await the advent of a purchaser.”

The following criticism of the acting of Mary Anderson was written by a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, journalist: “Mary is about six feet in height when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage, and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine; and then she would put on a dying look, and a wild, scared, desperate expression, so you want to rush out after a doctor. She has lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows; when she contracts them, she looks so thin that her back bone can be traced with the naked eye; but when she inflates them, her dress fits her like paper on the wall.”

[Pg 212]

Thomas Snell Weaver, the funny man of the New Haven, Connecticut, Register, is one of the coming humorists of the day. He is widely quoted. The following is from his writings:

“There was an extra air of refinement about the front parlor. The storks on a shingle and the Egyptian figures on panels had all been removed to the back parlor to make room for the super-æstheticism of the aureolan glory of the sunflower and the drooping grace of the lily embroidered on bannerets and hung in fitting corners of the grand old room. In this room they sat, and quietly enjoyed each other’s presence, bound together by ties yet undiscovered.

“‘Angela’ said he, ‘I think it is four years this very night since we gazed into the firelight together.’

“‘So long, Mr. Thistlewaite?’ said she tremulously, and in expectant mood.

“‘Now, I should think that after so long a time—it occurs to me to say—or rather to ask—why wouldn’t it be well—to call me “George” hereafter?’

“‘Oh, is that all?’ she said. The harpstrings of her expectancy had just been struck with a chord, but alas! the matrimonial overture was not then to be played. The whole orchestra was out of tune for her for the next six weeks.

[Pg 213]

Mr. H. T. White, a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, is also designed to make his mark in the world as a humorist. His style is peculiar, as the following selection will no doubt show:

“‘Do not go, darling’—and as she spoke the words—spoke them in low, tender tones, that thrilled him from mail-truck to keelsom—Gwendolen Mahaffey laid her soft, white cheek on Plutarch Riordan’s shoulder, and gave him a look with her lustrous, dove-like eyes that would make your head swim.

“‘I cannot stay,’ he replied, kissing the peachy red lips as he spoke, and feeling wistfully in his overcoat pocket for a plug of tobacco, ‘I must go now right away.’

“But the girl placed her arms around his neck—arms whose soft, rounded curves and pink-tinted skin would have made an anchorite throw up his job, and pleaded with him to stay a little longer.

“‘I cannot,’ he again said, looking at her tenderly.

“‘Cannot?’ repeated the girl, a shade of anger tinging the tone in which the words were uttered. ‘And pray, sir, what is it that so imperatively calls you hence?’

“‘Bending over her with a careless grace that artfully concealed the slight bagginess at the knees[Pg 214] of his pants, Plutarch said, in low, bitter tones that were terrible in their intensity:

“‘I have broken my suspenders!’”

H. C. Dodge, as a writer of humorous and witty verse, has few equals in America. His style is somewhat like that of the late lamented Tom Hood. One of Mr. Dodge’s productions is entitled

CONTRARY MAN.