Burdette says of his life from this time forward: “After a while I started a paper of my own--the Peoria Review. I ran it two years. It was a comforting sort of a paper. It brought to me a few cares but no uncertainty. I knew every Monday morning that on the next Saturday night I would not have money enough to pay the hands. During my career as editor of that wretched sheet it never disappointed me in that particular--not once. Finally the sheriff took me into partnership, and there was a glorious increase of activity. He was an enterprising man, very. He realized more in an hour than I had done in two years. Presently the partnership dissolved, and I looked around for something to do. I thought I would try and get on the Burlington Hawkeye. It was a sober, staid old paper, financially solid. I was young and active. Thought I, ‘I think I can do that paper good. If I can get on the staff I am sure it will do me good. Well, I was thinking of going over there when one day its manager, Mr. Wheeler, came to see me, and offered me the position of city editor and reporter. 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. She was a frail and delicate young lady, and on visiting her one afternoon, Robert was met at the door by her friends, who announced that she was lying at the point of death. The situation was a grave one, but in fifteen minutes’ time he had procured a marriage license from the county clerk’s office, and Miss Garrett became Mrs. Robert J. Burdette at a time when her responses could only be made by a slight motion of the eyes and a faint pressure of the hand. But little hope was entertained for her life, but she passed the ordeal, and after some length of time rallied sufficiently to go with her husband on a short bridal tour to their quiet home in a neighboring street, in Peoria. Mrs. Burdette has been an invalid all her life, and the genial humorist has been a patient attendant and companion for her in her dreary hours of life. The major portion of the rollicking humor that Burdette produces, is written at the bed side of his invalid wife.