Jacob applied for the position, and in February, 1876, in his twenty-fifth year he had the pleasure of seeing his first communications in print. They were well done, even for an old correspondent, and later he made bold to intersperse them with jokes, and pathetic little verses. He was so satisfactory that the regular correspondent never resumed the work, and he continued with increasing reputation, until in 1880 he took up the same task for the “Clinton Democrat,” a Lock Haven paper, which is still a power in the county. About this time love had entered his life, and he married Clara Bryan, a frail, pretty girl of sixteen, of Scotch-Irish stock, the ceremony taking place September 25, 1881. But the happy romance was to be short-lived, a girl baby, whom they called Rena, was born on April 7, 1883, and the young mother’s health failed rapidly afterwards. She died on July 26, the same year, and the motherless infant followed her to the grave on October 7. Jacob Huff never spoke much of this early bereavement, but some of his verses on taking Myron, his son, by his second marriage, to the graves of the first wife and child, are as beautiful and touching as exist in our language. In 1885 that enterprising and widely-read newspaper “_Grit_,” published in Williamsport, having long noted the humor and pathos of his work, engaged him to write weekly articles. He adopted the _nom de plume_ of “Faraway Moses,” and the results were overwhelmingly successful. He was a clever artist, like so many writers, and drew the sketches each week for the illustrations. These were “worked up” by the staff illustrators and engravers, and became an important feature of the stories. Jacob Huff as a humorist was inimitable, but his immortality will rest with his serious work, his “human interest” articles. The popularity of “Faraway Moses” soon passed the bounds of the State, and his trite and witty sayings were quoted by staid farmers in their shacks in Kansas and the Dakotas. Meanwhile he established a modest “syndicate” and furnished short stories, verses, and jokes to a number of rural publications under various pen names. He conceived the idea of going West, and his travels took him into many States, where his experiences were varied, though he finally settled in Colorado. The results of this change of abode, which did not last long, found immortality in a small book of verses, published in 1895, by the Grit Company, entitled “Songs of the Desert.” Unfortunately the little book was not fully appreciated at the time, though it is destined to rank with the choicest productions of Eugene Field or James Whitcomb Riley. Meanwhile a great and ennobling influence had come to him, his romance and marriage with Charlotte Crawford, the brilliant daughter of Captain William H. and Priscilla Brown Crawford, of Chatham Run, Clinton County, who also for a short while resided in Colorado. The Crawfords were among the earliest settlers