Humorous Exploits of Old-time Editor.
For a short time immediately preceding the Civil War, Henry Faxon, who, according to William Lightfoot Vischer, was the “father of American newspaper humor,” was a special writer on the Louisville Journal. Afterward he went from Louisville to Columbia, Tenn., and was the editor there, for perhaps a year or so, of a weekly newspaper; but he really belonged to Buffalo, N. Y.
Henry Faxon, familiarly called Hank, was a man of innumerable accomplishments. He could speak many tongues. He was an excellent electrician, a brilliant musician, had a rich singing voice, and frequently delighted his company with songs that he sang to his own accompaniment on the piano. He was a fine draftsman and cartoonist, and often made pictures with his pencil that were full of fun.
In newspaper work he wrote with a humor that has never been excelled, and in a broad, exaggerated style, which was not widely appreciated in his day. Indeed, he was the originator of that class of newspaper humor, and a brilliant poet withal.
It was Faxon who caused Blondin to achieve the first great performance in rope walking that gave that artist a world-wide fame in—and on—his particular line. Faxon induced Blondin to walk across Niagara River at the falls the first time the rope walker attempted that seemingly perilous feat, which he performed so many times afterward.
Faxon was the editor of a little newspaper at Buffalo at the time under consideration—the summer of 1859. A circus had stranded in Buffalo, and with it was this Frenchman, Emile Gravelot Blondin, who came to this country in 1855. He was part owner of the broken circus. Faxon took a fancy to Blondin, or, at any rate, sympathized with him in his distress, and, after serious discussion of the proposed thrilling feat, Faxon agreed to supply the paraphernalia, at the cost of several hundred dollars, and Blondin declared he was ready to perform it, which he did for the first time on June 30, 1859, later doing that same act with a man strapped on his back, and again with a wheelbarrow, stove, and cooking utensils, with which he cooked a meal when halfway over the rope.
The thing was widely advertised; great excursions went to see it. Blondin’s fame and fortune were made.
Faxon was happiest when doing something to relieve the distress of another, and he was moreover greatly given to practical joking. These two characteristics in him produced a hoax that became famous at the time.
A little south of Buffalo is a beautiful sheet of water called Silver Lake, and it had some mysteries about it. In its center was a deep place that soundings could not measure. Its waters were cold as ice, and there were no fish or other living creatures in it. On its banks a man[{63}] had built a fine hotel, hoping to make it an attractive resort, but guests were few and tribulation plenty. Bankruptcy threatened, and the landlord told his troubles to Faxon, who had run down there for a few days’ rest.
Faxon fixed up a plan to fill the hotel. Faxon went back to Buffalo and secured the services of another genius—a mechanical genius—a young German, whose only wealth was his ingenuity and a little tinsmithery. Faxon told him what he wanted. The German jumped at the idea.