Life Sketch of Author
THE author was born in Virginia, on a little patch of land, so poor
we had to fertilize it to make brick. Our family, while having cast
their fortunes with the South, was not a family ruined by the war; we
did not have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I
secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home,
or rather home left me—things just petered out. I was slush cook on an
Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the knobs
of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M. K.
& T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first
appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, and
have since then chopped cord wood, worked in a coal mine, made cross
ties (and walked them), worked on a farm, taught a district school (made
love to the big girls), run a
threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have
been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also
a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on
the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo
Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque
and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine
shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the
chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in
a box car one night, and a swell hotel the next; have been a traveling
salesman (could spin as many yarns as any of them). For the past four
years have made the Uncle Josh stories for the talking machine. The Lord
only knows what next!
