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 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 Billings and the Young Man. Young man, don’t kry for spilt milk, but pik up yure pail and milking stool, and go for the next cow. Yures affekshionately, Josh Billings. For sale or To Let. Price Neat, But Not Gaudy. Contemplating a trip to California during the winter of 1877, I will read my old and venerable lecture, ‘MILK,’ before any association who may desire to hear it. The ‘Milk’ in this lecture is condensed, and will keep sweet in any climate.
“Your cheerful friend,
Josh Billings.”
Josh is getting old, and each succeeding year his literary productions are fewer and shorter. 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 quaint “Proverbs,” which made him famous. The following is an example:
THE HEIGHT OF SUBLIMITY.