Famous funny fellows : $b Brief biographical sketches of American humoristsClemens, William Montgomery
History
Famous funny fellows : $b Brief biographical sketches of American humorists
Clemens, William Montgomery
American wit and humor -- History and criticism; Humorists, American -- Biography
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. He gives his whole day to these. He writes
his editorials at night after he has gone to bed.
The editor is never so happy as when he is writing complimentary
notices. For ten cents worth of presents he will gladly give ten
dollars worth of advertising--all on account of the pleasure it gives
him to write, you know, children. 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.
By all means, children, be editors. Of course, it would be better if
you could be hod-carriers or dray horses, but, as that is impossible,
by all means be editors.
EUGENE FIELD.
One of the most clever of Western humorists is Eugene Field. He is a
native of Missouri, having been born in St. Louis, September 2, 1850.
His mother died when he was but six years of age, and he was sent, with
a younger brother, to Amherst, Massachusetts, and placed under the care
of his cousin, Miss French. He was fitted for college by the Rev. James
Tufts, of Monson, and entered Williams college in 1868. Upon the death
of his father, in 1869, he returned to the West, and has since then
made his home on the western side of the Mississippi. He left the State
University of Missouri at the close of his junior year, and went to
Europe, where he remained for seven months.
In 1873 Mr. Field became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal,
of which paper Stanley Huntley (now of the Brooklyn Eagle) was then
city editor. He changed his location soon after to St. Joseph, where
for eighteen months he was associate editor of the St. Joseph Gazette.
He then moved to Kansas City, where, for a period of twenty months, he
acted as managing editor of the Daily Times. He was with the St. Louis
Times-Journal during its best days, and was twice elected poet of the
Missouri Press Association. He is, at the present writing, managing
editor of the Denver Tribune. He has been married eight years and is
the father of four living children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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