Part 3

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.”