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.