William Montgomery Clemens

“ There is no doubt that during later years Bill Nye has been more extensively copied than any other humorist of the day. Among the hundreds of good things he has produced, I select a few of the most touching and pathetic:
THE ENGLISH JOKE.
The average English joke has its peculiarities. A sort of mellow distance, a kind of chastened reluctance, a coy and timid, yet trusting, though [Pg 121] evanescent intangibility which softly lingers in the troubled air, and lulls the tired senses to dreamy rest, like the subdued murmur of a hoarse jackass about nine miles up the gulch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ Burdette is very youthful in appearance. He is short in stature, easy in manner, and affable in conversation. He has a low, broad forehead, a black mustache, rounded chin, and dark, yet bright, penetrating eyes. When writing at any considerable length, he scarcely ever has a definite plan for his effusion, and lets it take its own free way from the point of his pen. He has written much in verse and prose, but his humorous descriptions and pen pictures of those he meets in every-day life, are the most readable of his productions. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 loves to write neat little speeches and bright, witty poems for people without brains, who wish to speak in public. It is so easy to do this that he is sometimes quite miserable when an hour or two passes without an opportunity to do something of the kind.
The editor dines at all the hotels free, he travels free, theaters open wide their doors to him, the tailor clothes him gratis, his butcher and grocer furnish him with food without money and without price. In short, his every want is provided for. He spends his princely salary in building churches and school-houses in foreign lands. ”

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

“ The editor’s hardest task is to dispose of his time. It is a monotonous life, indeed, were it not for the kindness of the few hundred people who call upon him every day, to enliven his dull life with stories of their grievances, of their new enterprises and with antediluvian anecdotes. ”

“ As I said before, the people don’t know I’m a humorist, but that is due to their lack of appreciation, and is no fault of mine. I have written some of the most exquisitely all-but funny things I ever saw, and I am now engaged on a series of important jokes for an almanac. I have a wife, three children, and an occasional dose of dyspepsia.
“I do not intend to retire from business for some time. The newspaper business is easy, and especially easy is the task of running the funny end of it. A fellow has merely to be funny when he feels sad, and to grind out humorous items every day in the year. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ When you grow up to be men and women, children, remember this, and spend all the time you can in the sanctum of the editor. He loves company so much, you know, and sometimes he has to sit silent alone for a whole half minute. Is it not too bad? The business of the editor is to entertain itinerant lecturers, book canvassers, exchange fiends, and other philanthropists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since that time he has been its editor and proprietor, and has made for it a name that takes first rank among the newspapers of America made famous by their humorous paragraphs.
Mr. Wilkins has a wife, two children, and a charming home. Of his family he says: “None of my relatives have ever been hung, but once a brother-in-law came near going to Congress. My war record is good—as during the rebellion I did not have a hand in the public treasury, but a second cousin of my wife sent a substitute, who by jumping bounties like a true patriot, covered the family with glory enough to reach me.” ”

“ Clemens:
“A man’s biography auto always be written by himself. A disinterested party is liable to omit some of the facts. A personal history should above all things be truthful—devoid of fulsomeness, and embrace all the important events of its subject’s life, good or bad. Too many biographers lie like a patent medicine advertisement. ”

“ A country newspaper rarely makes its mark in the journalistic world, and especially a paper printed in such an obscure village as is Whitehall, New York. The Whitehall Times, however, is one of the few exceptions, and, although a country newspaper, has been quoted in every paper of any note in the land.
William Albert Wilkins, the editor and proprietor of the Times, and the one man who has made that journal famous, was born on the 26th day of March, 1840, in the village of Cherry Valley, Otsego county, New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Detroit Free Press has not only attained an immense circulation in this country, but has carried its success across the Atlantic, where in the great English metropolis a weekly edition of the Detroit Free Press is issued for the amusement and gratification of all English-reading Europe.
[Pg 42]
The life of M. Quad has been a most romantic one, and if properly told would fill a volume. He is now over fifty years of age, and is a native of East Liverpool, Ohio. At the early age of fourteen, Lewis became “printers’ devil” in the office of the Lansing (Michigan) Journal. ”

“ His mind is so biased by long thinking in a certain direction, that he dislikes very much to look upon both sides of a question. Therefore, if you value your safety, never approach him with manuscript written on both sides of your paper. Let me say right here, children, that a good deal of sheer nonsense has been written about the editor. He uses his shears only when composing an entirely original article. He usually writes with his pen, but his most cutting articles are the product of his shears.
The editor would make a good public speaker but for his propensity for clipping words. ”

“ Mary is about six feet in height when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage, and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine ”

“ My journalistic career has been short, but full of interest. Though only covering a space of three or four years, it has been rich in amusement and gory personal encounter.
“The West is well known as the home of fearless and deadly journalism. It brings out all there is in a man and throws him upon his own resources. It also throws him down stairs if he is not constantly on his guard.
“I am an attorney by profession and a newspaper man by force of circumstances. I am married and have been for five years. ”

“ When they are wanted for a scene in the Roman forum, they get on the red night-gowns and walk around toeing in, and walking knock-kneed, making the sickest lot of Roman citizens that ever robbed a hen roost. It is a singular coincidence that a supe always has a black patch on the seat of a pair of gray pants. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ Well, if I live ten thousand years it will not be long enough time for me to be sufficiently thankful that I accepted the offer, and, besides that, I am very proud of the fact that they sent for me. It gave me an independence of personal satisfaction that I have never recovered from. I don’t try to be funny in my writings. I have an idea, occasionally, and when I get it loose people laugh. Then I review the remark and shake it out to find the fun. My perception of a joke is not hung on a hair trigger.”
In 1870, Mr. Burdette became affianced to Miss Carrie Garrett, of Peoria, Illinois. ”

“ He is a hard-working journalist, who looks ahead for bread and butter rather than for fame.
His humor is peculiar, and I can give no better example of it than a life of himself, written by himself, for himself. It is as follows:
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“My Dear Clemens:
“My biography is not a particularly interesting chapter, and is in fact the romance of a poor young man. Still I think I am a humorist. Away down in the innermost recesses of my system I feel I am a humorist, but by some unfortunate combination of circumstances the public has never tumbled to the fact, with the proper precision and accuracy ”