Year: 1875

His First Start in Life--His Success Due

 to being Blown Up on n Steamboat.

 Charles B. Lewis, the Detroit Free Press humorist, is about thirty three years of age. His native place is Liver pool, Mendina county, Ono, about twenty five miles from Cleveland. His father was farmer, afterward coun- try merchant. Young Lewis learned the printing business, and after the war he obtained a situation on a Kentucky paper, and set out for Cincinnati in the Magnolia.

 Soon after the steamer started from her wharf Lewis retired to change his room the Magnolia blew up, and Lewis, of his retirement as to remove his clothes, was surprised to find himself moving skyward with a velocity that would have been creditable to shell from mortar. The boat was about two hundred feet from the Ohio shore. Lewis came down so near to it that Q woman who stood on the bank seized his hair and dragged him from the water. He had hole in the back of his head which had been made by bolt head with which his own head had come in contact, and what the mortified spectators thought were brains oozed from the hole. Picked up for dead he was loaded with other dead and wound cd on tug for Cincinnati. His body was grimy with coal dust and burns. It was taken for that of colored man, and thrown into the dead cart and carried to the hospital preliminary to burial. After it had lain with the others for three or four hours, some horror hunter, whose fancy led him to a closer inspec- tion of the dead, announced to the less inquisitive bystanders: "Look a'here. This colored mans got white mans hair." ....

 Then they dragged Lewis from the pile, tried little soap and water on him, and found white man. So they washed him all over, and he speedily rose to the dignity of separate bed in an hospital ward. The supposed corpse few hours after they had scrubbed it up changed into Q live man, or, rather, half live man, for consciousness did not return for a long time. Then every body took an interest in him, and the doctor gave him the most careful atten- tion, seeming to consider 1t point of personal honor to beat death in the struggle. The Cincinnati reporters de- scribed him, and that brought relatives and friends. He lowered for many days between life and death, and so nicely balanced was the scale that breath might have blown him either way. On the fourteenth day he grievously affront- ed everybody but the doctor by comir g regularly to life. He awoke out of a curious dream, in which he thought he was on steamboat that carried travel ing circus. He had seat on the back claimed to be a fine specimen, but Lewis 1t was dead; stuffed rhinoceros made of leather and sticks, and Q gross impo- sition on the public. Rubbing the beasts back in further investigation he awoke to find himself surrounded by an admiring throng of men and women, who welcomed him back to life. For weeks it was believed he would lose one of his eyes, but it was saved. It was forty days before he could walk, and his legs still show the marks of the explosion. He had started from Lan- sing with two suits of clothes and ninety dollars. He was naked when blown up, and ring he wore was stolen before he reached the hospital. The only thing he recovered of his original outfit was his Sunday coat, which was fished out of the river with it's tails blown off. :.

 Lewis wrote on account of this trip for the Detroit Free Press, and it was so humorous that he was at once en- gagged upon that paper, where he con tinues to be funny, and all the papers copy his funny things. In manner, MT. Lewis is, gentle, kindly, and pleasant. He has wife and two children.