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.

CONTENTS.

FAMOUS FUNNY FELLOWS.

INTRODUCTION.

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 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:

“Hartford, Conn., Nov. 18, 1879.

“Will M. Clemens:

“My Dear Friend—Your letter received. Lord bless your heart! I would like ever so much to comply with your request, but I am thrashing away at my new book, and am afraid that I should not find time to write my own epitaph in case I was suddenly called for.

‘Wishing you and your book well, believe me,

Yours truly,

Samuel L. Clemens.”

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

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.

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. 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, 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 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 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?”

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 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 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 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:

“My Dear Clemens:

“I haven’t any humorous biography—the facts don’t admit of it. I had this sketch from Men of the Time printed on slips to enable me to study my history at my leisure. S. L. Clemens.”

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:

“Hartford, January 16, 1881.

“My Dear Boy:—How can I advise another man wisely, out of such a capital as a life filled with mistakes? Advise him how to avoid the like? No—for opportunities to make the same mistakes do not happen to any two men. Your own experiences may possibly teach you, but another man’s can’t. I do not know anything for a person to do but just peg along, doing the things that offer, and regretting them the next day. It is my way, and everybody’s.

“Truly yours,

S. L. Clemens.”

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 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 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.

CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE.

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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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:

“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.

The sences taker in our town being taken sick, he deppertised me to go out for him one day, and as he was too ill to give me information how to perceed, I was consekently compelled to go it blind. Sittin’ down by the roadside I draw’d up the follerin’ list of questions, which I proposed to ax the people I visited:

Wat’s your age?

Whar’ was you born?

Air you married, and if so, how do you like it?

How many children hav’ you, and do they sufficiently resemble you so as to proclood the possibility of their belongin’ to any of your nabers?

Did you ever have the measles, and if so, how many?

Hav’ you a twin brother several years older than yourself?

How many parents have you?

Do you read Watt’s Hymns reg’lar?

Do you use bought’n tabacker?

Wat’s your fitin’ weight?

Air you troubled with biles?

How does your meresham culler?

State whether you air blind, deaf, idiotic, or got the heaves?

Do you know any Opry singers, and if so how much do they owe you?

What’s the average of virtoo in the Ery canawl?

If four barrels of emtin’s pored onto a barn floor will kiver it, how many plase can Dion Boucicault write in a year?

Is beans a reg’lar article of diet in your family?

How many chickens hav’ you, on foot and in the shell?

Air you aware that Injiany whisky is used in New York shootin’ galrys insted of pistols, and that it shoots furthest?

Was you ever at Niagry Falls?

Was you ever in the penitentiary?

State how much pork, impendin’ crysis, Dutch cheese, poplar survinity, standard poetry, children’s strainers, slave code, catnip, red flannel, ancient history, pickled tomatoes, old junk, perfoomery, coal ile, liberty, hoopskirts, etc., have you got on hand?

But it didn’t work. I got into a row at the first house I stopt at, with some old maids. Disbelievin’ the answers they give in regard to their ages I endeavored to open their mouths and look at their teeth, same as they do with horses, but they floo into a violent rage and tackled me with brooms and sich. Takin’ the sences requires experience, like as any other bizness.

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.

CHARLES HEBER CLARK.

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 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 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:

“Four doctors tackled Johnny Smith—

They blistered and they bled him;

With squills and anti-bilious pills

And ipecac they fed him.

“They stirred him up with calomel

And tried to move his liver;

But all in vain—his little soul

Was wafted o’er the river.”

Of another little youngster, just departed, Max warbles:

“Little Alexander’s dead;

Jam him in a coffin;

Don’t have as good a chance

For a funeral often.

“Rush his body right around

To the cemetery,

Drop him in the sepulchre

With his uncle Jerry.”

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

“O! bury Bartholomew out in the woods,

In a beautiful hole in the ground,

Where the bumble-bees buzz and the woodpeckers sing,

And the straddle-bugs tumble around;

So that in winter, when the snow and the slush

Have covered his last little bed,

His brother Artemas can go out with Jane

And visit the place with his sled.”

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

“The death angel smote Alexander McGlue,

And gave him protracted repose;

He wore a checked shirt and number nine shoe,

And he had a pink wart on his nose.

“No doubt he is happier dwelling in space

Over there on the evergreen shore.

His friends are informed that his funeral takes place

Precisely at quarter past four.”

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

ART NEWS.

We have received from the eminent sculptor, Mr. Felix Mullins, of Wilmington, a comic bas relief, designed for an ornamental fireboard. It represents an Irishman in his night-shirt running away with the little god Cupid, while the Irishman’s sweetheart demurely hangs her head in the corner. Every true work of art tells its own story; and we understand, as soon as we glance at this, that our Irish friend has been coquetted with by the fair one, and is pretending to transfer his love to other quarters. There is a lurking smile on the Irishman’s lips, which expresses his mischievous intentions perfectly. We think it would have been better to have clothed him in something else than a night-shirt, and to have smoothed down his hair. We have placed this chef d’œuvre upon a shelf in our office, where it will undoubtedly be admired by our friends when they call. We are glad to encourage such progress in Delaware art.

Adeler has given the public an admirable satire in his

IMPROVED CONGRESSIONAL RECORD.

If Congress resolve to act upon the suggestion of Senator Miller that the Congressional Record be issued as a weekly and sent to every family in the country, some modification ought to be made in the contents of the Record. The paper is much too heavy and dismal in its present condition to be welcomed in the ordinary American household. Perhaps it might have a puzzle department, and if so one of the first puzzles could take the shape of an inquiry how it happens that so many Congressmen get rich on a salary of five thousand a year. The department of answers to correspondents could be enriched with references to letters from office seekers, and the department of Household Economy could contain explanations of how the members frank their shirts home through the post-office so as to get them in the family wash. As for the general contents, describing the business proceedings in the Senate and the House, we recommend that these should be put in the form of verse. We should treat them, say, something in this fashion:

Mr. Hill

Introduced a bill

To give John Smith a pension;

Mr. Bayard

Talked himself tired,

But said nothing worthy of mention.

This would be succinct, musical, and a degree impressive. The youngest reader could grasp the meaning of it, and it could be easily committed to memory. Or a scene in the House might be depicted in such terms as these:

A very able speech was made by Cox, of Minnesota,

Respecting the necessity of protecting the black voter,

’Twas indignantly responded to by Smith, of Alabama,

Whose abominable talk was silenced by the Speaker’s hammer.

Then Atkinson, of Kansas, rose to make an explanation,

But was pulled down by a colleague in a state of indignation.

And Mr. Alexander, in a speech about insurance,

Taxed the patience of his hearers pretty nearly past endurance,

After which Judge Whittaker denounced the reciprocity

Treaty with Hawaii as a scandalous monstrosity.

*****

Of course versification of the Congressional Record would require the services of a poet laureate of rather unusual powers. If Congress shall accept seriously the suggestions which we make with an earnest desire to promote the public interest, we shall venture to recommend the selection of the Sweet Singer of Michigan as the first occupant of the laureate’s office.”

CHARLES B. LEWIS.

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.

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, 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:

BIOGRAPHY OF M. QUAD.

There was nothing remarkable about his babyhood except his red hair and the great quantity of soothing syrup necessary to keep him toned down.

He was born of humble parents. His father had never been on a jury, delivered a Fourth of July oration, or been sued for slander, and his mother had never rescued anybody from drowning, or delivered a lecture on woman’s rights.

He never had any brothers or sisters. He might have had in due time, but his midnight howls wore his mother out when he was two years old, and she went to join the angels and left him to howl it out.

His father was accidentally shot while courting a second wife, and the boy kicked the clothes off the bed to find himself an orphan.

He was the sole heir to all the property, and the property consisted of a wheelbarrow, a toothbrush, and one or two other things. The boy’s uncle swooped down on the estate, stole everything but the debt it was owing, and the orphan was given a grand bounce into the cold and heartless world.

But little is known of his boyhood. He probably had patches before and behind, like other orphans; wept over the grave of his mother in his sad moments, and crawled under the circus canvas in his hours of sunshine. Nothing in his demeanor attracted the attention of John Jacob Astor or Commodore Vanderbilt, and consequently he had more cuffs than fat clerkships.

At the age of fifteen he was invited to go up in a balloon.

He didn’t go.

When he was seventeen he decided to become a pirate, and all the captains of the Erie canal discouraged him.

At eighteen he was in the legislature—sat there and heard a speech and then left with the other spectators.

At twenty he was foreman of a fire company, but was impeached because he couldn’t “holler” as loudly as “No. 7.”

He had just reached his majority when he led a rich and beautiful girl to the altar—and handed her over to the bridegroom. He commenced in that year to be a “head-writer” on newspapers. Was almost daily informed that his proper sphere was acting governor of a state, or in commanding armies, but he stuck to journalistic work.

He was funny from the start, but it took eighteen years to make people believe it. He has had many wives, and is the father of scores of happy children. He has had the cholera and small-pox, written articles varying from astronomy to the best manner of curing hams, been wrecked, shot, assassinated, and banished, and is to-day hale, hearty, and bald-headed.

All reports about a steamboat blowing him up are canards. He blew the boat up.

For further particulars see circulars.

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.

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

NEW YEAR’S ADDRESS.

Once more the whirligig of time has yanked an old year out, and a new one in.

Glad on’t.

If there is anything lonesome and monotonous, it is last year. The old year had a few charms, but the new one promises to give them half a mile the start, and then go under the string first.

And yet one feels a trifle sad to part with the old year, when he comes to think it over. As memory’s bob-tail car pulls us down the long lane of the past, one looks out of the window at the well-remembered objects of former days, and his heart saddens.

Where’s the fat girl who rested her head on your bosom when the old year was new? Gone—yes, gone—slid out to take charge of the snake-cage in a traveling museum of natural wonders, and your wounded heart sorrowfully but vainly calls,—

“Come back, fat girl—come back?”

Where’s the alligator boots which sat around the festive board last new year’s day? Where’s the silk umbrella you left on the doorstep this morning?

Where’s the ton of coal and the jar of country butter you laid in about that time? Where’s the plumber who agreed to “come right up,” and thaw that water-pipe out? The sad wind sighing through the treeless leaves, solemnly puckers its mouth, and sadly answers,—

“Gone up!”

One by one they have fallen beside the curbstone of life’s dreary highway, have been swept over and almost forgotten, while you and I have been spared to put up the stoves another time, and to have the landlord raise the rent on us—drat him! It makes one feel sad, especially the rent business.

Farewell, old year! If you go west to grow up with the country, or go south to run a steamboat, we hope you’ll be honest, seek respectable company, and make your daily life a striking example for, and a terrible warning to, the man who goes around playing the string game on unsuspecting people.

Welcome, new year! Howdy? If convenient, give us some new clothes, a few thousand in cash, and a race-horse, and prove by your actions that you mean to do the right thing by a fellow. Give us some strawberry weather this month, wollop the pesky Indians into behaving themselves, and make it uncomfortable for grasshoppers and potato-bugs. Be around with some decent weather when a fellow wants to go fishing, and let ’er rain to kill when the women go out to exhibit their new bonnets. Do the fair thing by all of us, including New Jersey, and we won’t stand by and see you abused.

HENRY W. SHAW.

“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:

“I was born in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, during the nineteenth century, of highly respectable parents, and owe what little success I have obtained to the wisdom of my father and the piety of my mother. At the fragrant age of fifteen I set my face westward and followed it until I stood on the banks of the wide Missouri, without any plans for life, and but little better in feelings than a cheerful vagrant. For twenty-five years the various wanderings of a border life made me acquainted with scenes and experiences better calculated to cut the character sharp, than to refine it, and if I escaped without scars, it was simply because the susceptibility of my nature looked upon most things in this life as simply a joke.

“In common with most all Americans who have to push early, to test their own wings, I engaged in all the usual enterprises of a frontiersman, having been at times a land hunter, farmer, drover, steamboat captain, auctioneer, politician, and even pioneer, for I partially organized an enterprise, as early as 1835, to cross the Rocky mountains. This last named enterprise was a profound failure, but its inception and preliminary arrangements afforded me one of the choicest relics of my early adventures, and that in three letters, now in my possession, written to me personally by Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and Martin Van Buren, recommending me and the undertaking to the kind care and patronage of all people and all nations.

“If I may be said to ever have commenced a literary career it certainly was much later in life than most men commit the folly, for I had passed forty-five years before I ever wrote a line for the publick eye. What little reputation I may have made, has been accomplished within the last nine years, and I consider that I owe all this little to the kindness of the world at large, who, while they have discovered but little wit, or even humor, in what I have written, have done me the credit to acknowledge that my productions have been free from malice. I pin all my faith, hope, and charity upon this one impulse of my nature, and that is, if I could have my way, there would be a smile continually on the face of every human being on God’s footstool, and this smile should ever and anon widen into a broad grin.

“I have not the inclination to go into an extended account of the trials and failures that I have met with since I first put on the cap and bells, but I can assure you that I would not contend with them again for what little glory and stamps they have won for me. I have written two books, but my pet is Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Almanac, which has been issued for the last three years, the annual sale of which has exceeded one hundred thousand copies. This little waif will soon make its appearance for 1873, and I hope to make it a welcome guest for many years to come.

“My lectures, if they can be called lectures, are three in number, rejoicing under the very familiar titles of Milk, What I Know About Hotels, and the Pensive Cockroach. In this last discourse, a large invoice of reptiles, beasts, and fishes are handled, without mercy, commencing with the dreamy cockroach and touching lightly at times the cunning of the fox, the strange uncertainty of the flea, and the wondrous hypocracy of the cat.

“Please excuse, my dear sirs, in this hasty sketch what may appear not to be true, for he who writes about himself is in great danger of telling too much, or too little. My only apology for this monograph is, that it has been written at your request.

“Yours calmly,

Josh Billings.”

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. 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 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.

AN ADVERTISEMENT BY JOSH BILLINGS.

I kan sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars, a pallas, a sweet and pensive retirement, located on the virgin banks of the Hudson, kontaining 85 acres. The land is luxuriously divided by the hand of natur and art, into pastor and tillage, into plain and deklivity, into stern abruptness and the dallianse ov moss-tufted medder; streams of sparkling gladness (thick with trout) danse through this wilderness of buty, tow the low musik of the kricket and grasshopper. The evergreen sighs az the evening zephir flits through its shadowy buzzum, and the aspen trembles like the love-smitten hart of a damsell. Fruits of the tropicks, in golden buty, melt on the bows, and the bees go heavy and sweet from the fields to their garnering hives. The stables are worthy of the steeds of Nimrod or the studs of Akilles, and its henery was bilt expressly for the birds of paradice; while somber in the distance, like the cave of a hermit, glimpses are caught ov the dog-house. Here poets have come and warbled their laze, here sculpters have cut, here painters hav robbed the scene of dreamy landskapes, and here the philosopher diskovered the stun which made him the alkimist ov natur. As the young moon hangs like a curting ov silver from the blue breast of the ski, an angel may be seen each night dansing with golden tip-toes on the grass. (N. B.—The angel goes with the place.)

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

PROVERBS.

Thare haz been menny a hero born, lived and died unknown, just for the want ov an opportunity.

Thare ain’t nothing that will sho the virtues and vices of a man in so vivid a light as profuse prosperity.

It is a good deal ov a bore to have others luv us more than we luv them.

Mi dear boy, allwuss keep sumthing in reserve. The man who can jump six inches further than he ever haz jumpt, iz a hard customer to beat.

Thare ain’t nothing on arth that will take the starch so klean out ov us, as to git kaught bi the phellow we are trying to ketch.

JAY CHARLTON GOLDSMITH.

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, 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 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:

HINTS TO FARMERS.

Early Rose potatoes should be planted early. It is not called Early because it grows on rose bushes, but because it gets up at five o’clock in the morning. Do not make the mistake of peeling these potatoes before planting. The potato is to be eaten whole. Mashed potatoes should be sown broadcast.

The string bean is the best bean for growing on strings. One string will do for ten beans. Some of the high strung beans need poles. These may be pulled up and taken on fishing excursions, and be returned with the line attached. The best strings for these beans are B strings.

The Champion of England peas were named after Tom Sayers, the great prize fighter. These peas do not need any pods on them. We have planted them for many years without pods on them. One great advantage of the Champion of England peas is that they spar for themselves. Tom Sayers got away with two quarts of them once, but he trusted too much to his own ability. You cannot handle the Champion of England without gloves. In selecting ground for them it is best to have the sun in their eyes. They can stand a good deal of rough weather, but have been known to yield to a knock-down blow. Peas should never be eaten with a knife, because they roll off. It is best to pour them into a funnel.

Oats should not be planted wild. Still we have known oats sown wild to produce a larger crop than the tame oats. Many of them are sown by moonlight and some by gas-light, but it is sometimes worse for the man who raises them than for the oats themselves. The best place to sow oats is in doors by a nice fire, and with a little sprinkling of cold water. Whiskey is a destroyer of the crop, and although very good for harrowing in, induces a growth of weeds. In Scotland the oats are fed to men, and in England to horses; so that a famous Scotchman said that nowhere could such horses be found in the world as in England, and nowhere such men as in Scotland. This is the reason why, on the borders, inns are sometimes called oatells. Oats are very heating, and many a Scotchman who eats them is compelled to come up to the scratch. Thus arises also that famous expression “hot Scotch,” which refers to a Highlander who has had too many oats. They warm him up.

Do not fail to raise sheep. The proportion should be three dogs to one sheep. They will make it lively for the sheep. When you go wool-gathering take your dinner with you, for you may get lost. Lambs are best cooked a lamb mode. Chinamen eat rice with mutton. Hence their knives and forks are called chop sticks. Thus a Chinaman will say, “Lamby hard to bleat.” Lambs are best when they begin to gamble—you bet—on the green. It is funny, but Lamb’s finest work was on pigs. Yet, vice versa, we have seen pigs getting in their best work on lamb and peas.

WILLIAM TAPPAN THOMPSON.

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 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 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:

“It’s a great deal easier to write a heap of nonsense than it is to put a good face on it after its rit—and I don’t know when I’ve had a job that puzzled me so much how to begin it. I’ve looked over a whole heap of books to see how other writers done, but they all seemed to be about the same thing. They all feel a monstrous desire to benefit the public one way or other; some is anxious to tell all they know about certain matters, just for the good of the public, some has been swaded by friends to give the book to the public, and others have been induced to publish their ritens just for the benefit of future generations,—but not one of ’em ever had an idea to make a cent for themselves! Now, none of these excuses don’t zactly meet my case. I don’t spose the public—cept it is them as is courtin—will be much benefited by readin my letters—I’m sure Mr. Thompson wouldn’t went to all the expense just to please his friends, and for my part I’m perfectly willin to let posterity write their own books. So I don’t see any other way than to jest come rite out with the naked truth—and that is, that my book was made just a purpose to sell and make money. Ther ain’t a single lie in the book, and I’m termined ther sha’n’t be none in the preface.

“I hain’t got no very grate opinion of myself, but I’ve always tried to live honest, and what little character I is got I want to keep. When Mr. Thompson just writ me word, he was gwine to put my letters in a book, I felt sort o’ skeered, for fear them bominable criticks might take hold of it, and tare it all to flinders—as they always nabs a’most every thing that’s got a kiver on; but, when I come to think, there were two ways of gettin into the field—under and over the fence. Well, the criticks is like a pretty considerable high fence round the public taste, and books get into the world of letters jest as a boy does in a pertater patch—some over, and some under. Now and then one gets hung, and the way it gets peppered is distressin—but them that gets in under the fence is jest as safe as them that gits in over. Seein as I is perfectly satisfied with the under route, I don’t think the criticks will tackle my book—if they does, all I can say is, I give ’em joy with their small potaters.”

After the success of Major Jones’ Courtship, 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. 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.

MELVILLE D. LANDON.

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 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 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 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

ELI PERKINS ON AMERICAN BULLS.

Punctuation makes a great many bulls in this country. The other day I picked up a newspaper in Wisconsin full of curious things. I enclose a few specimens:

“The procession at Judge Orton’s funeral was very fine and nearly two miles in length as was the beautiful prayer of the Rev. Dr. Swing from Chicago.”

Another:

“A cow was struck by lightning on Saturday belonging to Dr. Hammond who had a beautiful spotted calf only four days old.”