way he
always signed his writings, and "Bunner" was his name to his friends,
and even to his wife. He was born in Oswego, New York, August 3, 1855.
His parents soon moved to New York City, and Bunner was educated in the
public schools there. Then he became a clerk in a business house, but
this did not satisfy him, and he began to write for newspapers, finally
getting a position on the _Arcadian_, a short-lived journal. In 1877 the
publishers of _Puck_, a humorous weekly printed in the German language,
decided to issue an edition in English, and made Bunner assistant
editor. It was a happy choice. He soon became editor-in-chief, and under
his direction the paper became not only the best humorous journal of its
time, but a powerful influence in politics as well. Bunner wrote not
only editorials, humorous verse, short stories, and titles for pictures,
but often suggested the cartoons, which were an important feature of the
paper.

Outside the office he was a delightful conversationalist. His friends
Brander Matthews, Lawrence Hutton and others speak of his ready wit, his
kindness of heart, and his wonderfully varied store of information. He
was a constant reader, and a good memory enabled him to retain what he
read. It is said that one could hardly name a poem that he had not read,
and it was odds but that he could quote its best lines. Next to reading,
his chief pleasure was in wandering about odd corners of the city,
especially the foreign quarters. He knew all the queer little
restaurants and queer little shops in these places.

His first literary work of note was a volume of poems, happily entitled
_Airs from Arcady_. It contains verses both grave and gay: one of the
cleverest is called "Home, Sweet Home, with Variations." He writes the
poem first in the style of Swinburne, then of Bret Harte, then of Austin
Dobson, then of Oliver Goldsmith and finally of Walt Whitman. The book
also showed his skill in the use of French forms of verse, as in this
dainty triolet:

A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE

A pitcher of mignonette
In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot--yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement--
The pitcher of mignonette
In the tenement's highest casement.

The last poem in the book, called "To Her," was addressed to Miss Alice
Learned, whom he married soon after, and to whom