The Arkansaw traveler., 1882-12-10
Josh Billings.
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 Weekly an interesting account of one of the noted characters of ocr day. a mod efn edition of Posr Richard, with various improvements. We abridge the follow ing biographical notes:
 Josh Billings was born in Lanesboro, Berkshire county, Mass. sixiy-three years ago. Both his grandfather and father were members of congress His name is Henry W. Shaw. His father was an in innate friend of Henry Clay, and his po- lisicai manager in New England. Josh once asked me to introduce him to Wen dell Phillips, to get has advice about pulp fishing the correspondence between Clay and his father. Phillips advised him to publish. Josh says that he never dared enter the political arena, because his grandfather and father had Jeff such pure records in 1t, His father added farming to politics. or politics 10 farming, l have forgotten which was horse and which cart with him.
 Josh went to school until he was four teen, when he started out on his own hook for the west. He spent the next twenty i've years of his life mostly out west. He turned his hand 10 everything. but for tune turned its back on him. Most of what know abou, Mir Shaw's life up to the age of forty-five did not learn from him, ba, chiefly from his friends. One of them wrote that Josh " lrst opened a country store, keeping a stock of goods more remarkable for its variety than riches, including grindstones. needles. scythes, cathartic pills, calico. cheap con dictionaries. jewsharps, breast-pumps, and IuJube paste. In year or So he closed the establishment, but not with the sher- ii $ assistance. Then he took farm on credit without gaining any credi, by farming, and was obliged at the end of the third season to discontinue the noble occupation for lack of money to carry 1t on. Next he hired himself out to drive cattle, and, having driven himself into rags and semi-starvation. he determined to change his element. Having obtained the place of master on a small steamboat on the Missouri. he nayigated the river for two years, having in that time sunk three vessels and lost. according to his own calculation, $500 or Sio,ooo. which was all the more deplorable as he had no money to begin with. How he made the loss he could never explain. except on paper, and his arithmetic IS so abstruse as to be unintelligible to the common mind. Teaching was his next enterprise, and such was his success that at the close of the third term three of the pupils were sent to the county lunatic asylum and the remainder were pronounced deserving of the honor, with little more encourage ment. Having convinced himself of his capacity as a public instructor. he de- cidcd to open bank-not with jimmy and outsider, as man Of genius would have done-and he opened one. But havln. neither capital nor credit he sus- pended indefinitely after the second week and published a sta,emen,-his assets and liabilities being represented by-o.
 once showed this account to Josh. His eyes ,winkled as he read it, and then he said there was good deal of truth in II. His steamboat enterprise was con fined to the Ohio river. no, the Missouri. It was undertaken al the instance of New York spectators. by whom he was sent to open mine in Western Virginia. He bought steamboat at httsburg. and 1t took him three months to get it to Charles town. Na.-the town made famous many years afterward as the scene of john Browns execution. His steamer piled between Charles,own and Gallipolis until the company became bankrupt. In the the course of his western w2nderings Josh found himself in California in iSio-he was one ofApur oldest and best-but he did not s0 on the coast for any length of time.
 He married a; the age of twenty-seven, when on a visi; to his father in Massa- chusetts. At the age of forty he moved east in order to educate'his two daughters He found good schools a; poughkcepsie. on the Hudson and settled there. As he had no regular profession. he took up the trades of auc,ioneer and dealer in real es- late. He had daobled in both these call ings in the west. He had great sue cess as an auciioneer in loushkeepsie but as the town Is a small one. his profes- sional income was not very large. Hi, humor made him great favori,e with the Toedlcs family.
 There WAS iitiic nine by seven daily paper published in loughkecpsic The editor called an Mr. shaw one day and sad ,ha; the man who could talk as well as he could ,alk ought to be able 10 write well. and he wanted him to contribute something to his paper. Mr. Shaw told him that he had never written a line for publication in his life. But the notion pleased him. he though, over il. and then wrote a series of between twenty and thir- ,y of the short peices that have made his name a household word in America since then. For six months he contributed his contributions every week. Nobody no- ticed them outside of poughkeepsie. One day Mir. shaw read one of the essays oi Aremus Ward on subject tha, he had treated in one of his short essays. He read it ove<,and over again and the more he read il the less he understood why Aremus Wards Writings should be pop ular and his pieces had fallen still-born from the press. 'Is it the bad spelling ? he asked himself He made up his mind ,ha, it was the bad spelling and nothing else that lent wings to Artemus Wards nu,i,us and made him famous. ana is was his own loyalty to Webs,er's Unabridged that had weighted his humor down and kept his name in obscurity. So he took