Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1913-01-31
Creator of Mr.. Bowser, the
Arizona Kicker and Broth
er Gardner, of the
Lime Kiln Club.
From the philadelphia Public Ledger.

y 'AA WI VhGt III uttS] Younger
people set their watches by YOU. And
it's surely an asset to be 40 years old
and yet so sunny that Others stop their
tasks when you put i'm an appearance
IN order to smile and be sunny With
You. And it's surely something To he
90 Years old and famous. and Vet so
modest that, when YOU are cornered
photographer. everybody around re-
marks: "Look at him. Wouldn't YOU
think he was going to be shot"
1T is with that sort of punctuali,y
and sunniness and %diffidence that the
American humorist. &. 3. Lewis. known
from the Atlantic to the Pacific under
his pen name of m. Quad" will round
out his 10Th year e Thursday.
M. Quad" holds the record in Amer
lea and all other lands for steady pro
duction of humorous copy" 1t is now
neariN half Il century & that he start
I'D in as Il funny man on the Detroit
Free Press. For I've 20 years he has
turned out, once 4 week without ii
single hiatus. his disquisitions ON the
Other creations of his-Brothcr Gard
ner and h Lime Kiln club. the Ari-
IONA Kicker. Old Pap Pinkham. the
Jericho Postmaster. UncleEli-arc sym
dictated at monthly intervals. or per
haps every six weeks to papers all over
the country. III they aren't. there is
sure TO be "a ''holler" from somewhere
and MI. Lewis attention is called tn it
10y the syndicate people, and once more
he recounts the exploits of whichever
n of his characters he has been ne
giectlnS, to the end that the llollercl'S
wrath may be drowned i'm chuckles.
For the past 20 years or so Mir. Lewis
has made his home i'm BROOKLYN. Before
that he worked - Years on the Detroit
LVs.I kDNsnS ~, In, IF .t:.
Brother Gardner and other NOW re-
nowned mythical folk made their first
bow tn the reading public. Every Fri
day. rain or shine the aged humorist
makes his appearance at the syndi-
cate office at exactly 1 O'Clock. With a
wad OF copy" under his arm-hr still
writes as much as 10000 words IL week
gets his weekly heck. and starts
back on his long journey to Brooklyn.
He is so SHY that AT first he would
scarcely say anything beyond "ilow-
de-do' to any n i'm the office.
Blu gradually he earned that all in
the place were his friends. so he opened
up and began telling yarns of how he
invented his characters. and how he
ground out his copy and "a far cry
from humor) what war is like. For
IN. Quad" was i'm the civil war from
start to finish. as soldier and newspa-
per correspondent. and say Gettysburg
and most of the other big battle fought
in the east.
Ne was waylaid last week when he
made his weekly trip to New York by
a Ledger reporter i'm that city and
backed into a chair by the interviewer
from the Ledger and urged to talk
about himself and his work. And in
spite of his %diffidence and the fact that
a photographer was known to he HOY
tring In the offing ready to snap him
ar fh{ IA rlioSt pNnccil,lN ,,,,a, %l,.
kindly old hlfnorist did as he was
asked and gradually warmed up So To
his subject that he forgot both his
shyness and the imminent camera.
He harked back to the DAYS when
he was u printer in Lansing, Mich. do
Ing all his work on an old hand press,
long enough to tell how he came TO
adopt his pen name.
An "em quad" be it known. is the
term used by printers to denote the
blank space between the period AT tho
end of N sentence and the capital let
ter at the beginning of the next. or else
the blank q before the start of cacn
p~aragraph. The term looked good to
Lewis for u pen name. just as the
words Mark Twain used by Missis-
sippi pilots, attracted Samuel l.. Glenn
ems and supplied him with his world
tamou pseudOnwm.
But Lewis didn't begin to append
M. Quad" to the humorous skits tina
We're to make him also amo,ls until
after the civil war. though he obtained
his baptism of ink in the war by act
ing as a correspondent to ewspaper
1t was in the los that he began to
be known as the Detroit Free Press
star llumorist. One by one he created
the characters With which his name
had become identified. and one by one
they We're taken into the hearts of the
newspapers readers.
The first funny thing l wrote which
really attracted attention. he told the
Ledger man. was about Il char who
came to Detroit and advertised himself
ms the inventor of a wonderful kind of
tireproof paint. lie %placarded the city
with descriptions of his paint, and to
show how great it was he covered a
freight car with a coat OF ii.
Well. that night the freight car
burned UP. 1 wrote about tin Il HUI
morous way. | gueSS-and 1t was copied
i'll {; lot of other papers. That was my
beginning"
A curious thing about Mr.. Lewis is
that fOr some time he tried to keep to
himself, as far as possible, the fact
AIRY.
"One of the first groups of charac-
ters | made up he said. was Brother
Gardner and his negro associates of
the Lime Kiln club. The character OF
Brother Gardner was based to a small
extent on an old negro who used To
frequent the market in Detroit With a
dog and a. w~hitewash pail, looking for
n job. That Niger. two other niggers.
and the dog We're the only real basis of
the Lime Kiln club.
We'll, letters soon began to pour into
the Free Press office asking where
Paradise hall was-that being the name
I had given to the clubs meeting
place.
Soon, too, people began to come into
the office, asking to be taken to Para
disc hall.
Now. I didn't like to tell them.
somehow, there was nc such place. SO
1 UNnld come out and see them and