The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-06-08
The Funniest Men That Euer Liued Intimate Sketches Worlds Greatest Humorist Eccenc
 ties Their Folies and Their Fobes
NO. SELL WYE
Rv ROLLIN LYNDE HARTT


 the best fun, really, was not the fly. It was the marble brow. Bald as an Eas- ter egg, Bill gloried in his badness ana in everything else pertaining to Bill. When he raved over the may waltz and his joy therein, he could say:
 Nature intended that I should glide IT. the mazy. Tall, lithe bald headed, genial Timber in the extreme. suave, soulful, frol- icsome at times, yet dignitied and re served toward strangers, light on the foot-on my own foot, I mean-gentie as a woman at times, yet irr1SlstlDle as tornado when insulted by one smaller, I am particularly fitted to shine III SO ciety. Those who have observed my pol- ished brow, when under a strong electrlc light, say they never saw man shine so in society as I do
 And I think he had his badness in mind when he declared with enthusiasm, q have many beautiful pictures-of my self"
 We are all more or less stuck on our selves, secretly. When you hear that MISS Susie Jones is a man-hater, you lnstlhce- ively exclaim, inside, Wait till she sees me!' And when you carol sweet baliaos in the bathtub it is not because you are a freak, it is because you are like the rest of us; every man believes hlmseiI an unappreciated Caruso. But, while we forgive these swelled heads of ours or even decline to own up to the sWellins, we laugh at the swelled heads of others. For example:
 Not long ago I trained around at night with a genius who had been training around for ceverai hours before l joined him. I won't say he was "an lighted up. Neither shall I call him brilliantly illuminated. But he was at least cosey- And in that enraptured mood he had the frankness to say, 'Roliin, do you real ize what you and I have got to do? We've got to set the standards TOT Amer ican literature
 Funny? He was the funniest creature alive that night--a regular Bill Wye, only with this difference You always Knew that Bill was sham2ling. However, Bill shamming came wondrously close to whar | Chuck Connors, arbiter of taste to the Bowery called de real t'ing"-so close, in fact, that you laughed with Bill as we'll as at him. Just for a josh, so to speak, Bill took for his golden text the moto of the American people-to-wit; There's no money in modesty."
 When Bill Wye revisited his birth place in Shirley, Maine, he tore his hair because, although he had waited 30 years for the public to visit 1t, there "didn't seem to be much of rush." And yet he was glad he came.
 "What memories cluster about that old house." he cried. 'There was the place where I first met my parents. l hope that may be spared to my par ents for many years" Perhaps you have heard of the man who regularly celebrated his birthday by sending a telegram of congratulation to his mother It might have been Bill.
 Bill began his education in log schoolhouse. Why? He tells us; "Finding that other great men had done that way" says he. T began early to look around for log school house." Later on he was sent to a military school. That" he explains 'is where I got the fine military learning and stately carriage I still wear"
 At 25 he turned schoolmaster in Wisconsin Short months his salary came to all of dollar day. Long months it didn't. And the year " found him in Wyoming. a justice or the peace at Laramie, where he to ok to writing funny letters for the Chey- enne Sun and presently landed Job on the Laramie Sentinel and won every heart by his delightful parsi- mony with regard to facts. Sa1c Bill, "I can write up things that never occurred with masterly and graphic hand Then, if they occur, l am grate- full"
 And soon came Bill's first triumph ant onslaught on national fame. He somehow got appointed postmaster at Laramie and wrote his famous letter of acceptance, which, though formally addressed to the Postmaster General, went everywhere. It was in the na- ture of a pat on the back for the ai- ministration in praise of its good sense in appointing Bill. victory of eternal righteousness over error ana wrong, he called it. Quoth he. Tt IS one of the epochs, l may say, in the nations onward march toward po- litical purity and perfection. l don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has so thoroughly impressed me with its wis dom"
 It was at about this time that he started paper of his own, up over a livery stable, and gave his establish menl an air of unexpected grandeur by posting notice down below, "Twist the gray mules tail and take the elevator" but the east had now got wind of Bill, and it snatched him out of Laramie with commendable promptness and set him up in business in New York as a professional news paper humorist, and stuffed J/ney down him and went wild over his jokes
 Now if Bill had really possessed the swelled head he laid claim to, this would have been his finish. As it was he kept his hair on Gan extraor- dinary feat. considering the total and amazing hairlessness of his "marbei brow'') and polished his jokes till they