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The Complete Works of Josh Billings

      BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

      ADAPTED FROM THE LONDON EDITION

      In the United States of America a “show” is the generic name comprising every description of entertainment, being equally applied to an equestrian performance, a dramatic company, an operatic concert, a political oration, or a lecture on the geology of the oil district of Pennsylvania. A few years ago, when I did not know America quite so well as I do now, I was asked by Mr. Barnum to meet him on a matter of business at his celebrated Museum on Broadway. Every one who has visited New York and called in at that strangely-jumbled exhibition, will remember a small room on the first landing, with “Mr. Barnum – Private” painted on the door. I don’t know whether any show-case in the Museum was as attractive to the crowds of country visitors as that little room proved to be. Though privacy was written on the post, publicity was ever peeping in at the door. Shrewd, astute, and rusé as Barnum is, none knew better than he that the greatest object of interest in the Museum was himself. Hence he arranged to have his private room immediately in front of the public staircase, with the door always a little open, to pique curiosity, unless really important business required absolute seclusion. In this room, or rather in this glass-case, for its three sides were of glass, like the cases containing the wax-figures and the stuffed animals, Barnum and I met. He conversed about different speculations he had on hand, and various ideas which he wished to carry out. Some of them were very characteristic of the man and his spirit of enterprise. One, was to organize an expedition to the mouth of Davis’s Straits at the proper season, select a very large iceberg, bring it down in the tow of two or three steamers to New York Bay, put a floating fence around it, exhibit the iceberg at twenty-five cents admission, and realize a large profit by making and vending sherry cobblers with ice from the real iceberg! Another idea suggested by the man of many shows was to get the American Minister at the Court of Constantinople to apply to the Sultan for a firman to permit Barnum or his agent to visit the mosque at Hebron, traditionally asserted to be built over the Cave of Machpelah, in which the remains of the patriarchs were buried. “If we could only get the remains of Abraham and bring them to New York!” exclaimed the deus ex machinâ of the Museum, rubbing his hands with delight at the ingenuity of the thought. Then, after a moment’s reflection, and knowing me to be well acquainted with England, he remarked, inquiringly, “What do you think of Spurgeon for a show? Could he be got over here?” To me unused as I then was to American can manners, the association of a clergyman with Bartlemy Fair and Barnum’s Museum seemed ludicrously incongruous. Subsequently my experience taught me to believe that some of the preachers of the United States look at their position from the same point of view as did Mr. Barnum in wishing to speculate in Spurgeon.

      A “showman,” as well as an author, Josh Billings is now regarded in the cities of the Union. In England we would style him a facetious lecturer, but the lecturing business in America is carried out with all the arts, formulæ and appurtenances of showmanship. There are the large posters, the puff advertisements, the agent in advance, and the lithographs plain or colored, all brought into requisition. It is quite true that if Charles Dickens visited Manchester or Birmingham to read “Doctor Marigold” or “The Christmas Carol,” he also had his agent and his yellow window-bills with the black and red printing; but the window-bill is limited to a size and is printed in a style fitting to the superior class of entertainment; while, in America, the posters of the popular lecturer are as showy and as exciting as those of Van Amburgh with his wild beasts, or the Hanlon Brothers with their feats on the trapeze. Quaintness, however, is an essential requisite in the placard of the facetious lecturer. Artemus Ward used to announce in large letters on the walls that he would “Speak a Piece” at a certain place and on a certain date. Josh Billings announces in a still more mystic manner, strongly reminding the observer of Ruskin’s bizarre, grotesque, enigmatical titles. I have before me, as I write, a printed notice which reads thus: —

“ALLYN HALL, HARTFORDJOSH BILLINGS,On the 7th,With hisHOBBY HORSE.”

      The reader who is anxious to know what Josh Billings means by an advertisement so eccentric in its character can have his curiosity satisfied by turning to page 404 of this work. The chapter is headed “How to pick out a good Horse,” and the caption is assuredly none the more inappropriate or infelicitous than are the titular conundrums of the “Seven Lamps of Architecture,” “Unto this Last,” or “A Crown of Wild Olives.” John Ruskin and Josh Billings understand with equal clearness the value of a title which shall arrest attention by not being too easy of comprehension.

      I first heard of Josh Billings several years ago when crossing the Isthmus of Panama by that remarkable railway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When Nuñez de Balboa in the olden time had his first peep of the Pacific, and beheld the ocean which no European had before seen, from an eminence which is now a station of the railway, he little thought that in a few centuries hence the steam engine would haul thousands upon thousands of Christians up to the same summit, and allow them to enjoy the same sight at so many American dollars each. Terribly prosaic is this earth becoming! And, despite Schiller and Coleridge, it is scarcely Jupiter who “brings whate’er is good,” or Venus “who brings everything that’s fair.” A locomotive or a steamboat will bring or take you to both; and a railway it was which brought me to know of Josh Billings. The incident was simply this:

      Midway on the Panama railway there is a station at which travellers alight while the engineer looks after his supply of wood and water. A beautifully picturesque station it is, looking from it along the road which you have come, or adown that portion of the railway track which you have to go – a luxuriance of tropical vegetation meets the eye, overpowering the mind with the wild profusion of its beauty. Nature seems to revel in a wealth of verdure. Palms, bananas, and trees innumerable of every graceful form tower upwards to the unclouded sky, or arch over the flower-garnished earth. The trunk of each is invisible; for creeping plants of the most delicate growth entwine around the wood, hang in loops from the boughs, connect tree to tree with a lace-work of exquisite elegance and sun-dyed brilliancy, and sway in wreaths of natural arabesque to and fro in the fragrant, moist, and enervating air. The station lies back from the road, and, if I remember rightly, is thatched with palm leaves. As I alighted at it, groups of native New-Grenadians clustered around me, the younger ones being almost in a state of nudity. Some offered me oranges, some bananas, some milk in a green-glass bottle, and one of them wished me to buy a monkey. Pushing through them, I made my way for the station, the sultry atmosphere having rendered me languid and a gentle stimulus being desirable. I expected to find the refreshment department in the care of a native, or, at any rate, of a Spaniard; but the ubiquitous Yankee was master of the premises, and a forlorn ague-stricken, quinine-and-calomel-looking master he seemed to be. His whiskey was something not to be forgotten; nor were his dogs, half a dozen of which were running about the place, the greatest burlesques of the race canine I had hitherto seen. They were all lean, hungry, and wolfish-eyed. Their tails drooped mournfully, as if the seething heat had melted the sinews and softened the bones; they whined peevishly, but bark there was none – their owner required it all to keep the ague away. I had drunk my whiskey, become Christian in my feelings, and was silently pitying the poor animals, when the proprietor of the miserable dog-flesh, stationing himself beside me, and placing his hands on his hips, sententiously observed, —

      “Them critturs are the pride of the Isthmus. They’re a pair of the most elegant puppies in this State. Nary one of ’em would flunk out before any dog.”

      “They look very cowardly about the tail,” I remarked.

      “That’s the way of dogs’ tails on the Isthmus,” was his response. “Do you know what Josh Billings says about dogs’ tails?”

      I frankly confessed that I did not; adding, that I was profoundly ignorant of Josh Billings, and pleasantly intimating that I supposed him to be one of the guards on the line.

      “I guess you haven’t read the papers lately,” continued my new acquaintance, as though pitying my ignorance. “Josh Billings knows that there are some dogs’ tails which can’t be got to curl no ways, and some which will, and you can’t stop ’em. He says, that if you bathe a curly-tailed dog’s tail in oil and bind it in splints, you cannot get the crook out of it; and Josh, who says a sight of good things,

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