Little is known of the early days of Irwin Russell. He was born in Fort Gibson, and at an early age was left an orphan, relying on his own exertions for a livelihood. He studied law and began the practice of it in his native city, but, becoming enamored with the life of a Bohemian, he started for New Orleans in search of fame and fortune. He obtained employment at local writing in various newspaper offices, and finally found regular employment in the editorial rooms of the New Orleans Times. Then he left the South and turned up in New York city, where he struggled with fate for a time. His existence was a battle with necessity from the first. It seemed that he was born unlucky. Although his prospects were always fine, he never lived to establish himself permanently anywhere. 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. By a strange coincidence his last published lines were written upon the subject of his own grave. They appeared in the New Orleans Times, December 14th, just ten days before the author gave up the struggle with fate and died. THE CEMETERY. “I stand within this solemn place, And think of days gone by-- I think of many an old-time face, Here’s where those faces lie, “I think of when, what time God please, The hour shall came to me, That covered with the clay, like these, My face shall masked be. “No marble monument shall rise Above that grave of mine-- No loving friends will wipe their eyes When life I shall resign. “But when I leave my life--have left My every present care-- I’ll find a home of care bereft; My friends are living there. The New Orleans Times, in speaking of Irwin Russell, after his death, said of him: “He was employed occasionally on this paper, and while so, wrote many a pretty little poem, and many a little catch which reveal an inner life, which hard lines hid from the view of the world. His fund of humor showed itself best in dialect writing, and some things he has written have already found permanent resting places in the compiled editions of American humorous verse.”