aking their work so lightly that they could regard life's
sterner phases and philosophies with a smile.

Josh Billings was one of the gentlest and loveliest of our pioneers of
laughter. The present generation is not overfamiliar even with his name,
but both the name and sayings of that quaint soul were on everybody's
lips at the time of which we are writing. His true name was Henry W.
Shaw, and he was a genuine, smiling philosopher, who might have built
up a more permanent and serious reputation had he not been induced to
disfigure his maxims with ridiculous spelling in order to popularize
them and make them bring a living price. It did not matter much with
Nasby's work. An assumed illiteracy belonged with the side of life which
he presented; but it is pathetic now to consider some of the really
masterly sayings of Josh Billings presented in that uncouth form which
was regarded as a part of humor a generation ago. Even the aphorisms
that were essentially humorous lose value in that degraded spelling.

"When a man starts down hill everything is greased for the occasion,"
could hardly be improved upon by distorted orthography, and here are a
few more gems which have survived that deadly blight.

"Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference between
vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-bug
and the lightning."

"Don't take the bull by the horns-take him by the tail; then you can let
go when you want to."

"The difficulty is not that we know so much, but that we know so much
that isn't so."

Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends. They had
themselves photographed in a group, and there was always some pleasantry
going on among them. Josh Billings once wrote on "Lekturing," and
under the head of "Rule Seven," which treated of unwisdom of inviting a
lecturer to a private house, he said:

Think of asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance. Yure good
wife has put her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun;
everything is just in the right place. Yu don't smoke in yure
house, never. Yu don't put yure feet on the center-table, yu don't
skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion: order
and ekonemy governs yure premises. But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to
be happy, or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars
worth at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all the
tender things out ov yure