Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-02-27
THE TOPICAL TALKER.
Phil WEIGH Threw Jokes Mt Death-A Little
Light Gossip of the Day.

Light Gossip of the Day.
In the death Of Philip n. Welch, the country
has lost one of its most original and entertain
ing humorists. His name is not as well known
to most people as his jests were, for be did not
sign all he wrote. Only small number of his
friends are aware that his latter years, and
those in which the best work of his life has been
done, were shadowed by the dread specter of
cancer. Three or four years ago he was told
by the greatest cancer specialist in New York
City that his case was incurable and that he
must not expect to live more than few years
at most.
Yet he kept cheerfully at his tasks writing
continuously of the brighter side of life, COM
pounding food for laughter, throwing jokes
into deaths face, and never allowing the pain
incidental to the advance of the disease con-
quer his will. His wife, of whom those who
knew her speak in glowing terms, aided him
In his determination to keep his doom out of
mind. She is also a literary laborer, and the
evidences of the assistance she gave her hus-
band are most prominent in that delightful
portfolio of sketches of society," which, in con-
junction with Charles Jay Taylor, he gave us
under the title of the 1.-THE Tailormade Girl"
-
Mr.. WEIGH submitted to several operations,
but the cancer continued to eat its way into the
tongue, and the end came on Sunday last.
Until DAY or SO before his death his mind was
actively employed. When he could write no
longer he dictated the creatures of his humor-
Gus fancy to lis wife 1t may be said that he
died with joke on his lips.
Only last week very amusing description of
a man in doubt over transferring his home from
Harlem to Brooklyn appeared in Puck. 1t was
gayer and more daring in its humor than most
of Mr.. Welch's work. Nobody would have
guessed twas written by aman who was dying
and who knew he was dying.
Such triumph of mind over matter, oftthe
incorruptible soul over the corruptiDle body
are by no means rare in the lives of literary
men.
To judge from the various newspaper reports
anent Mrs. Frank Leslie's sale of her weekly to
w. ]. Arkell, proprietor of Judge, the estima'
BILE authoress and publisher has given rather
contradictory reasons for getting rid of the
most important of her publications. To oDe
reporter she said that the Weekly being in
some sense newspaper could be run better by
a man, able, as she expressed it, ito touch ell
bows with the world, " and that she felt unequal
to the task because she was woman.
In another interview Mrs. Leslie said that the
height of her ambition was to own and edit a
great daily newspaper. 1t will be recognized
haps Mrs. Leslie doesn't know herself what she
is going to do; SO much is possible to woman
of beauty, brains and a big bank account.
sxH
NOT all the bad weather in the world is con-
centrated at Pittsburg. A correspondent writes
from London that delicious mixture of win
ter weather has been their experience lately.
One day heavy snow storm ragged all day, and
the London streets were temporarily made i'm
passable by eight inches to two feet of snow
The next day the mercury rose and rain came
lashing down, converting the snow. with the
magic London only knows, into a sort of black
soup that made pedestrians long for stills.
-.
GENTLEMAN requests me to ask some of
Pittsburgs elder inhabitants to settle the date
of the transfer of President Harrison's body
from the Congressional Cemetery at Washing
ton, where it was temporarily inferred after his
death, to its final resting place at North Bend.
My correspondent assures me that he is pretty
positive that he saw the coffin containing
President Harrison's body carried down to the
steamer at the Monongahela wharf some time in
lS4l-the year of Harrison's death-or very
early in 1872
The biographical records, as far as can now
be learned, seem to agree that the reinterment
took place several years later.