TRIP TO BOSTON

WHO MARCHED IN SIXTY-ONE

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!

My Old Yaller Almanac

Hangin' on the
Kitchen Wall

I'M sort of fond of readin' one
thing and another,

So I've read promiscus like
whatever cum my way,

And many a friendly argument's cum up 'tween
me and mother,

'Bout things that I'd be readin' settin' round
a rainy day.

Sometimes it jist seemed to me thar wa'nt
no end of books,

Some made fer useful readin' and some jist
made fer looks;

But of all the different books I've read,
thar's none comes up at all

To My Old Yaller Almanac, Hangin' on
the Kitchen Wall.

I've always liked amusement, of the good
and wholesom