M. QUAD COVERS THE LEGISLATURE:-
THE EARLY HUMOR 0F
CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS

Thesis for the Degree of M. A.
MECHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JACK BENNY GLADDEN
1972

 

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ABSTRACT

M. QUAD COVERS THE LEGISLATURE: THE EARLY
HUMOR OF CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS

BY

Jack Benny Gladden

This is a study of the manner in which Charles
Bertrand Lewis, an internationally known newspaper humorist
in the nineteenth century, went about the usually routine
business of being a Michigan legislative correspondent at

Lansing for the Detroit Free Press in 1869 and 1871. This

 

was the period before Lewis, whose pen name was M. Quad,
had begun writing humor for the Free Press on a full time
basis; but his legislative stories were filled with the
type of sketches that would later make him famous. Vir-
tually no scholarly studies of Lewis or his works have been
published. This study includes one biographical chapter
and six chapters dealing with various topics covered by
Lewis in his legislative stories. The study is based
largely on the files of the Detroit Free Press for 1869

and 1871, biographical material in magazines and books
(there are no full length biographies of Lewis), literary
histories, official government documents, and other sources

contemporary with Lewis.

Accepted by the faculty of the School of Journalism,
College of Communications Arts, Michigan State University,

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master

Director of Thesis

of Arts degree.

 

M. QUAD COVERS THE LEGISLATURE: THE EARLY

HUMOR OF CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS

BY

Jack Benny Gladden

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of Journalism

1972

Copyright by
JACK BENNY GLADDEN
1972

For my wife, who made it possible.

ii

PREFACE

In the second half of the nineteenth century in
America, the business of writing humor became so widespread
that virtually every newspaper of any size and circulation
had its own staff humorist. "Wit, and humor, and fun are
spontaneous productions in the United States, and effervesce
and bubble up like the oil-wells of Pennsylvania," a jour-
nalism historian wrote in 1873. The humorists, he said,

did not publish in specialized comic journals so much as
did their European counterparts, but in regular weekly and
daily newspapers. "Each newspaper has one or more humor-
ists," he wrote. "Some of the leading editorial articles
sparkle with wit as a duchess does with diamonds."1

Mark Twain belonged to this group of literary
comedians. So did hundreds of others of regional fame,
several of whom, in their time, gained national reputations
for themselves and their rather obscure publications. Among
the better known of this group were James M. Bailey of the

Danbury (Connecticut) News, Bob Burdette of the Burlington

 

(Iowa) Hawkeye, George W. Peck of Peck's Sun (Milwaukee),

 

 

1Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States,
From 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873),
p. 689.

 

 

iii

Jack Benny Gladden

David Ross Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby) of the Toledo Blade,

 

and Charles Bertrand Lewis (M. Quad) of the Detroit Free

 

2:22-

It is the last-named of this group who is the sub-
ject of this study. M. Quad was on the staff of the EEES
Press for twenty-two years in the latter part of the nine-
teenth century. Although he was one of the most popular
of the humorists of the day, achieving international recog-
nition for his work, he is today a forgotten man. Virtually
no scholarly study has been published that specifically
concerns Lewis or his work. His personal papers, if he
left any, have not been found.

Because of the lack of available research material
about the man himself, this study is limited largely to his
work. The first chapter, however, is biographical because
nowhere else has the information here included been as-
sembled. The remaining chapters deal with Lewis's first

major assignment at the Free Press, the coverage of the

 

Michigan legislature in 1869 and again in 1871. His method
of approaching legislative news was, as this study attempts
to point out, unique. A bibliography of Lewis's major works
has been compiled, although no claim is made that the list
is complete. No attempt was made, for instance, to locate
and include in the bibliography his writings in magazines;

inclusion of the newspaper writings was, for obvious reasons,

iv

Jack Benny Gladden

impossible. Yet it was the newsPaper writings on which
his reputation was based. A few samples of some of his
newspaper sketches have been appended to the study for the
benefit of those readers who are interested in longer ex-
amples than could be included in the text itself.

I am indebted to George A. Hough, III, and W. Cameron
Meyers, associate professors in the School of Journalism at
Michigan State University, for their assistance in the study.
Professor Hough introduced me to M. Quad and assisted and
encouraged me in planning the thesis; Professor Meyers was
a meticulous reader, an incisive critic, and a lamplighter

in the occasional academic darkness.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER Page

I. M. QUAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. POLITICS AND POLITICIANS . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
III. THE NEGRO QUESTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
IV. THE LADIES AND THE BOYS IN BLUE . . . . . . . . 51
V. PENAL REFORM AND THE "LITTLE MAN" . . . . . . . 63
VI. JUST FOR FUN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

VII. TRIALS AND ERRORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

vi

LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDICES Page
A. "THE EASY MAN" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
B. UNTITLED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
c. AN OVERSIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
D. LO! THE POOR INDIAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
E. GOV. BALDWIN'S FIRST PARDON . . . . . . . . . . 119
F. MY RURAL FRIEND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
G.UNTITLED....................122
H. WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
I. SMALL FRUITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
J. UNTITLED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

K O " THE TABLE '. O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 12 7

vii

CHAPTER I
M . QUAD

In 1881 the Detroit Free Press began publishing a
weekly edition in London, England. It was the first American
newspaper to publish in EurOpe. One of the contributors to
that paper, and one of the men whose popularity was largely
responsible for the existence of the London edition, was
M. Quad, the staff humorist.1

In 1891 M. Quad, whose real name was Charles Bertrand

Lewis, left the Free Press to go to work for the New York

 

World. The World ran a series of promotional announcements

 

in the upper right-hand "ear" (or corner) of page one telling
its readers about the coming attraction. On Sunday, May 3,
1891, Lewis's first contributions to the World occupied an
entire inside page of the newspaper. The popularity of the

humorist was so great that he reportedly joined the World

 

1"The Story of the Detroit Free Press," unsigned,
undated pamphlet in the possession of George A. Hough, III,
associate professor, School of Journalism, Michigan State
University, East Lansing. See also Winston M. Harper, "The
Story of the Detroit Free Press." Unpublished M.A. thesis,
Wayne State University, 1942, pp. 99-101, and Edmund Kirke,
"The City of the Strait," Harper's New Monthly Magazine,
August, 1886, p. 347.

 

at a salary of about $10,000 a year--a phenomenal amount for
the time.2

In 1897 a literary historian wrote that M. Quad
ranked among the top eleven humorists in the United States.3

In 1924 when Lewis died in his Brooklyn home at the
age of eighty-two, his obiturary in the World consisted of
five paragraphs on page nineteen. The story of his death
did not appear until the day following the funeral.4

Why Lewis's popularity and fame declined so greatly
before his death is as much of a mystery as is the rest of
his life. For a man who made his living by writing words
to be read by millions of people, Lewis himself remained a
shadowy figure, even to his contemporaries. If he left any
personal papers they have not been found. When he wrote
autobiographically he did so behind the mask of M. Quad, so
it is usually impossible to separate truth from fiction in

these accounts. Even his living daughter, Josie Berry Lewis

 

2A3 is true with most of the written material con-
cerning Lewis, the accounts of his salary at the World vary.
Gilbert Patten said Lewis reportedly received a saIary of
$12,000 but that he (Patten) had been told in confidence
it was $8,000. See Frank Merriwell's "Father," edited by
Harriet Hinsdale and Tony London (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 154-55. Other accounts place the

salary at $10,000. See The National C clopaedia of American

Biography (New York: James T. Wfiite & Company, 1898),‘VI,30.
3Robert Ford, American Humourists Recent and Livin

(Paisley, Scotland: Alexander Gardner, 1897), p. 155. Ford

did not specify who the other ten were.

 

 

 

 

4"Charles B. Lewis (M. Quad) Buried," New York
World, Aug. 23, 1924, p. 19.

of Hollywood, Florida, remembers little of her father and
possesses virtually nothing in the way of his personal papers.
The little that is known of his life must be pieced together
from official records and a scattering of biographical mate-
rial in which much conflicting information is presented.

Lewis was born in Liverpool, Ohio, on February 15,
1842. His father, George Lewis, a native of Connecticut,
was a carpenter. His mother, Clarissa, was a native of Ohio.
He had at least four brothers and three sisters. At some
point between 1850 and 1860 the entire family moved from
Ohio to Lansing, Michigan.5 Nothing more is known of Lewis's
years in Ohio, and little more is known of his later life in
Lansing.

A few anecdotes about his boyhood days in Lansing are
related in some county histories, but these are mostly recol-
lections of early residents and their veracity is suspect.
One such account, written in 1883 by a man who was recalling
his days as a teacher in Lansing in 1856, indicated that

Lewis's funny side showed through early in life.

 

5U. S., Department of the Interior, Census Office,
Population Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United
States: 1850, roll 709, Ohio, Medina COunty (washington,
D.C.: National Archives and Records Service, National
Archives Microfilm Publications, 1964), no. 432; U. S.,
Department of the Interior, Census Office, Population
Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States: 1860,
roll 545, Michigan, VI and VII, Huron and Ingham Counties
(Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Service,
National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1967), no. 653.

 

 

"Charley Lewis, the future famous M. Quad, kept the school in
a roar with his funny declamations," the writer recalled.6
A county historian remembered that in the 18505 Lewis
was a student in the school in Lansing. He cited a story
told by the older residents of the community to show how
Lewis "first was noticed as a humorist."
An agent for a medicine firm had decorated the
fences in the city with advertisements, as: "For your
ills take my pills," or "For chills take my remedies,"
etc. Charles procured a different kind of paint and
painted under each Sign: "Be sure you buy your coffins
of Daniel Buck."7
This sounds like something Lewis might have done, even as
an adult.
Several of the biographical sketches about Lewis,
written after he became famous, indicated that he was a
graduate of the Michigan Agricultural College, the fore-
runner of Michigan State University at East Lansing.
Formally founded in 1855 and Opened to students in 1857,

the college was the first in the nation established specif-

ically for the scientific study of agriculture and became

 

6George P. Sanford, "Reminiscential," Lansing
Journal, Feb. 22, 1883. Reprinted in Collections of the
Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan Together With
Reports of County Societies (Lansing: wynkoop Hallenbeck

Crawford‘Co., 1907), VI, 293.

7An Account of Ingham County From Its Organization,
edited by-FrankN.Turner, Vol. III ongistoric Micfiigan:
Land of the Great Lakes, Its Life, Resources, Industries,
PeOple,P61Itics, Government, Wars, Institutions, Achieve-
ments, the Press, SChools and Churches, Legendary and Pre-
HIStoric LOre (n.p., n.d.), p. 115.

 

the first of the federal land grant colleges under the Morrill
Act of 1862.8 Lewis apparently attended the college for no
more than one term. He was listed as a student in the second
term of the first school year after the college opened.9 He
would have been fifteen years old at the time. The budding
young humorist likely had no taste for an agriculturally
oriented college. About ten years later when he began
writing legislative news for the Detroit Free Press, he
included in his stories several attacks on the college. If
he were an alumnus, he felt no sense of loyalty to his alma
mater.

Exactly what Lewis did during his years in Lansing is
not clear. At some point he learned the printing trade and
seems to have worked in a newspaper office in Lansing, prob-
ably that of the Democrat. One of the earliest biographical
sketches about Lewis said that he came to Lansing when he was
only eight years old, attended the Union school, went to the
agricultural college for a year, and then went to work in the

printing office of the Lansing Democrat.lo Some of the facts

 

 

8Madison Kuhn, Michigan State: The First Hundred
Years (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1955),

pp. 1-52, passim.

9"First Annual Catalogue of the Michigan State
Agricultural College 1857" (unpublished, handwritten cata-
IOgue on file in Special Collections Room, Michigan State
University Library, East Lansing), p. [12].

10Richard H. Titherington, "Charles B. Lewis:
'M. Quad' of the Detroit Free Press," Golden Argosy,

Jan. 8, 1887, p. 88.

in the article are inaccurate, but the sequence of events
probably is correct.

One curious contradiction in the early records is to
be found in the census taker's report for 1860 in which
Lewis, who was nineteen at the time, was listed as an appren-

11 Nowhere else is this occupation

tice to a chair maker.
mentioned. It could have been true, the census taker could
have made a mistake, or it could have been another one of
Lewis's jokes.

Early in June, 1861, shortly after the outbreak of
the Civil War, Lewis, still nineteen, began an adventure
that in later years would be the basis of a book and would
furnish material for many sketches and articles. He en-
listed in the army. On June 10 he was enrolled as a private
in Company G, Third Regiment, Michigan Infantry, at Grand

Rapids.12 He had enlisted for three years, but in less than

two months he was a civilian again. On August 1 the young

 

11U. S., Department of the Interior, Census Office,
Population Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United
States: 1860, roll 545, Michigan, VI and VII, Huron and
Ingham—COunties (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and
Records Service, National Archives Microfilm Publications,
1967), no. 653.

12Lewis's military records are available from the
General Services Administration, National Archives and
Records Service, Washington, D.C. Citations to these
records will hereafter be noted as "Military records,"
followed by the title of the Specific document (if avail-
able), the form number (if available) and the date on which
the document was completed. See "Company Muster-in Roll,"
form 356b, June 10, 1861.

 

private was discharged for disability due to chronic rheuma-
tism. It isn't known if Lewis saw any fighting during this
period, or how far he actually got into the battle areas.
His records indicate only that the examination and discharge
took place at the camp of the third regiment, but the loca-
tion of the camp was not given.13

At the time of his enlistment, Lewis listed his
occupation as "printer" and his place of residence as
Lansing. Apparently he returned to Lansing following his
discharge. Whether he continued work as a printer is not
known, but he probably did.

In October, just over two months from the time of
his release from the army, he acquired a bride. The young
printer-veteran was married to Jennie B. Narmore on
October 17. They were married in Roxand, Michigan, a small
town in Eaton County, by a justice of the peace. The
couple apparently returned to Lansing and on September 10,
1863, Mrs. Lewis gave birth to a daughter who was named
Katy, or Katie B.l4

Two years later Lewis, recovered from his rheumatism,

re-enlisted in the army. On February 17, 1865, he enlisted

 

l3Military record. "Certificate of Disability for
Discharge," July 31, 1861. See also "Company Muster Roll,"
form 358, Aug. 1, 1861.

14Military record. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of
Pensions, form 3-389, March 30, 1915.

at Jackson, Michigan, as a private in the Sixth Michigan
Cavalry, for a period of one year. He was transferred a few
months later to the First Michigan Veteran Cavalry and served
the duration of his enlistment with that outfit. He was
honorably discharged on February 17, 1866, at Fort Leaven-

worth, Kansas.15

Nothing is known of Lewis's personal record

as a soldier or of the type of activities he participated in.

Following his discharge he again returned to Lansing. On

May 17, 1867, another child was born, a son, Arthur 3.16
Lewis's activities during the next two years are dif-

ficult to follow. At some point in his early career he

seems to have worked as a printer for the Jacksonian, at

 

Pontiac, Michigan. Most of the early biographical sketches
mention this paper in connection with one of Lewis's most
famous sketches. Specific details of the story vary con-
siderably from article to article, but apparently after his
second discharge from the army he was offered a job on the

Maysville (Kentucky) Bulletin. Enroute to Maysville, Lewis

 

was traveling on a steamboat through Ohio when the boiler

of the boat exploded and he, along with most of the other

 

15Military record. "Volunteer Enlistment," Feb. 17,
1865. See also letter, George E. Downey, comptroller of the
Treasury Dept., to the Commission of Pensions, May 27, 1915,
GSA Archives and Records Service.

16Military record. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of
Pensions, form 3-389, March 30, 1915.

passengers who were not killed, was seriously injured. He
was taken to a hospital in Cincinnati where he recovered.
Some time after this incident (most accounts say

while he was working on the Jacksonian) Lewis wrote an

 

account of the experience. His article, "How it Feels to
be Blown Up," was a humorous version of the explosion and
of Lewis's "business aloft." It isn't clear where the arti-

cle was first published, but the editors of the Detroit Free

 

Press reportedly saw it, liked it, picked it up for their

own newspaper according to the privileges of the "exchange

17 and, according to some of the accounts, offered

18

system,"
the author a job. It seems doubtful that the editors of

the Free Press sought Lewis out and offered him a job based

 

on one such article. It is possible, however, that when he
applied for a job at that newspaper he was remembered because
of the article.

Some accounts say that it was this article to which

Lewis first affixed the signature "M. Quad." That may or

 

17Before the existence of wire services and press
associations, newspapers exchanged by mail copies of their
newspapers with other newspapers throughout the country.
Each newspaper was free to clip and reprint stories from
other newspapers. '

18Most of the articles about Lewis tell some version
of this story. See Titherington, "Charles B. Lewis," p. 88;
"Charles B. Lewis (M. Quad), a Sketch," Critical Review,
February, 1893, pp. 52-53. The sketch, or at’Ieast a version
of it, is the first sketch in Lewis's book, Quad's Odds under
the title "Up Among the Splinters."

10

may not be true, but he acquired the pen name before he began
working for the Free Press. His own explanation of how he
came to choose the name appeared in two slightly different
versions. In 1897 he reportedly said that he first used the
name in signing the "Blown Up" article. "It was the first
thing that popped into my brain," he said.
An em quad, you know, is the metal Space a printer puts
between the period and the first letter of the following
word. I might just as well have signed myself Italics,
Roman, Small Caps, or any other printer's term, but M.
Quad struck me first and has stuck by me ever since.19
A few years later he gave a slightly different ex-
planation. "In those days," he said,
when all type was set by hand, we started each para-
graph with what we called an em quad to give it an
indention. It was the basis of all type measurement
in those days, just as it is now. The name had a
fascination for me and when I began to write I adopted
it as a pen name. . . ."20
In any event, whether the choice was made on the Spur
of the moment or after a period of study, the name was a term
that Lewis learned at the printer's case.
Lewis became the legislative correspondent for the
Free Press in 1869. His specific status or title is unclear.

Because of a series of fires at various times in its early

years of publication, the Free Press has no personnel records

 

19Quoted in Author's Readings, compiled by Art Young
(2nd ed.: New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1897),
p. 195.

20Quoted in "M. Quad Comes Back With a Little Piece
for 'The Sun,'" New York Sun, Nov. 12, 1916, n.p.

 

ll

dating back to this period. Some of Lewis's stories from
Lansing bore the credit line "From our own correSpondent";
others appeared under the line "From our own reporter."
But there seemed to be no particular significance to the
distinction between correspondent and reporter. Whether
Lewis was a full-time regular employee or a special corre-
spondent employed specifically to cover the legislature is
not clear. He listed his place of residence as Lansing in
the official legislative manual for 1869 and as Detroit in

21

the manual for 1871. The Detroit City Directory for 1870-

71 contains a residence listing for Lewis at 344 Third Street.
His occupation in that directory was given as a reporter for

the Free Press.22

 

Lewis covered the legislature for the Free Press in

 

1869 and again in 1871. Because of the nature of his stories
written during this period, it is almost impossible to pin-
point any specific time at which he began writing humor for
the newspaper. Humor was a part of all his writing. But

after the close of the 1869 session, he began writing a

 

21Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State
of Michigan. 1869-70, prepared by D. C. Henderson (Lansing:
W. S. *George & Co., 1869), p. 117. Also Manual for the Use
of the Legislature of the State of Michigan. 1871-72, pre-
pared by S. D. Bingham (Lansing: W. S. George & Co., 1871),
p. 123.

 

22City Directory of the Inhabitants, Business Firms,
Incorporated Companies7'Etc., of the City of;Detro1t for
~1870-7IBTDetroit: Charles F. Clark & Co., 1870), p. 297.

12

number of purely humorous articles for the Free Press. The

 

articles dealt with a multiplicity of subjects and took a
variety of literary forms.

Late in 1869 two of Lewis's contributions were pub-
lished as letters to the editor.23 The other humorous
sketches, both before and after these letters, were simply
signed articles. These articles, or columns, continued at
irregular intervals throughout the rest of 1869. By Novem-
ber the humorous contributions of M. Quad had become more or
less regular Sunday features of the newspaper. Occasionally
Lewis's pen name was included in the headline, as in the case
of the article that appeared on December 5, "What M. Quad

24 Then came the two letters to

Thinks of Operatic Music."
the editor. On January 16, 1870, Lewis's article was car-
ried under the headline "M. Quad's Epistle."25 From that
point on the "Epistle" became a standing feature of the
Sunday edition.

Most of the early biographical sketches about Lewis
indicate that he wrote the police news for the Free Press

during his early years at the newspaper. No specific records

are available to substantiate this assertion, but on

 

23Detroit Free Press, Dec. 15, 1869, p. 3, and
Dec. 19, 1869, p. 3.

24Ibid., p. 3.

25Ibid., p. 4.

13

January 6, 1870, a story in the Free Press told of a presenta-

 

tion, which had taken place at the central station (the
police station), and at which M. Quad made the presentation

speech.26

The ceremony was all a joke, but the story indi—
cated that Lewis was known around the central station.
About a month later, on February 8, the first of

what was to become a unique series of articles in the Free

 

Prg g appeared at the top of page one. Under a two-deck
headline, "Crimes and Criminals/An Hour at the Central
Station Court," the story told of the activities at the
central station police court. The cases were factual, as

evidenced by a separate standing feature on page one, "The

Courts,‘ in which the disposition of all cases in each of

the city courts was given. But the style in which "An Hour
at the Central Station Court" was written was far from
standard. The first story began:

Yesterday morning, when the rOpes were stretched
across the court-room at the Central Station, and the
usual crowd of loafers had taken one side, and the
justice, reporters, policemen and prisoners the other,
there was a little pause, a stillness, and then the
trumpet-tone voice of Bijah Joy sang out for

THE WICKEDEST MAN,
who was walked out to confront the bland smile ever
resting on the countenance of Justice Stoll. He gave
his name as William, alias John, alias Henry, alias
Billy Powers, and he was giving several other "aIIases"
when the fore-finger of the law pointed full in his
eye as an injunction that he might rest his mouth right
there. Saturday night Officer Henkel found him near the
Central depot, stripped to the bluff, [sic] and dying
to step on some individual among the crowd who had

 

26"A Presentation," ibid.. Jan- 6. 1870: P- 1-

14

gathered round. He soon got up in the world--up at the
Central Station, but he had to be knocked down two or
three times on the route to keep his enthusiasm within
proper limits. His case was called, and his chances for
a "fifty" looked as bright as a roll of red flannel,
when a legal shyster gave him the wink, he demanded a
jury, and was sent back to wait until this morning. A
case is already pending against him in the Recorder's
Court, and between the two, he will have to "git or
dangle!"

Such treatment of police news was not original with
Lewis. The practice had been started years earlier by the

London Morning Herald and had been picked up by some news-
27

 

papers in the United States, notably the New York Sun.

 

But the concept was new to Detroit and the central station
court series became so popular that a few years after it

was started, a staged burlesque of one of the court sessions,
in which the real judge played himself, was produced for the
benefit of an orphan asylum.28 Just how popular the series
was outside of Detroit is not clear, but certainly it marked
Lewis's real beginnings as a humorist.29

From this point on Lewis grew in popularity, and as

his popularity grew the circulation of the Free Press began

 

to increase correspondingly. Because of the lack of

 

27Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History:

 

1690-1960 (3rd ed.: New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), p. 223.

28"'M. Quad' Made Judge Poke Fun at Own Court,"
Detroit Free Press, Aug. 24, 1924, sec. 1, p. 14.

29Lewis included six of the central station court
sketches in Quad's Odds, published in 1875.

 

 

15

biographical information, his career from here on is difficult

to follow without making a careful study of the Free Press

 

itself in the ensuing years--a project considerably beyond
the SCOpe of this paper. At some point, not too long after
the creation of the central station court series, Lewis
began writing about the activities of Brother Gardner and
the Lime-Kiln Club. The series was based on weekly reports
of the "meetings" of the imaginary self-improvement club.
Years later Lewis recalled for a newspaper reporter the
origins of Brother Gardner.
"One of the first groups of characters I made up,"
he was reported to have said,
was Brother Gardner and his negro associates of the
Lime-Kiln Club. The character of Brother Gardner was
based to a small extent on an old negro who used to
frequent the market in Detroit with a dog and a white-
wash pail, looking for a job. He and two other negroes
and the dog were the only real basis of the Lime-Kiln
Club. 30
Many of the readers of the sketches believed the club was
real and inquired about its location.31 A biographical
sketch about Lewis that appeared in 1887 called the Lime-
Kiln Club series the "greatest of all his successes" and
said that Brother Gardner had "become a familiar character

all over the country."32

 

30Quoted in "No Age Limit for Humor," Kansas City
Star, March 8, 1924, p. [unknown].

31

 

Ibid.

32Titherington, "Charles B. Lewis," p. 88.

16

In 1872 Lewis published a book, Bugler Ben,33 which

 

seems to have been his first book-length publication. The
book must have been a paperback novel, although publication
data on the book are sketchy. Other books followed, includ-
ing a few dime novels. Most of the books were simply col-

lections of his newspaper writings.

In 1876 Lewis COpyrighted a play, "Her Next Husband."

During the next twenty-two years he wrote and copyrighted six

34

other plays, although only one, "Yakie," appears to have

been produced. "Yakie" was performed in the Detroit Opera

House in April, 1879.35 During his years at the Free Press

 

Lewis contributed to a number of magazines, including Hearth

and Home, Fireside and Friend, New York Weekly, Cleveland
36

 

Pictorial World, and Ballou's Monthly Magazine.

 

33W. J. Burke and Will D. Howe, American Authors and

Books, 1640 to the Present Day (Revised ed.; New York: Crown
Publishers, 1962), p. 431.

34Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United
States 1870_to 1916*(2 vols.; Washington, D.C.: TU. S.
Government Printing Office, 1918), II, 3223-24.

35"'Yakie'/The First Night of M. Quad's Dialect
Comedy," Detroit Free Press, April 25, 1879, p. l.

36The story persists that Lewis was a contributor to
The Carpet-Bag, a humor magazine published in Boston from 1851
to 1853. No less an authority than journalism historian
Frank Luther Mott included M. Quad in a list of contributors
to the magazine, yet Lewis was only eleven years old when
The Carpet-Bag stopped publication. See the bibliography
5T LeWiSTs works at the end of this paper for as complete
a list of Lewis's writings as the author has been able to
assemble.

 

 

 

 

 

17

When Lewis left Detroit in 1891 to go to work for

the New York World, he was a rather famous man. _The manage-

 

ment of the Free Press presented him with a diamond-studded
Masonic pin inscribed "THE DETROIT FREE PRESS to Charles B.

Lewis, April 24, 1891."37

The Wgrld greeted him with a
promotion campaign due a celebrity. Although he continued
to write until a few months before his death on August 21,
1924, his popularity seems to have declined steadily after
he arrived in New York. This portion of his life is totally
outside the context of this study and, although some re-
search has been made into his activities during these years,
the results are of such a tenuous nature as to be unsuitable
for inclusion in a scholarly work.

Suffice it to say that Lewis's wife apparently died
while he was still in Detroit. .When he got to New York,
Lewis, whose interest in play writing must have lured him to
the theater and theater people, met and married an actress,
Harriet Louise Mann. Lewis was more than twenty years older
than the young actress. He and his new wife had two
daughters, one of whom died shortly after birth. The second
daughter, Josie Berry, was reared by her mother who was

separated from Lewis while Josie was still an infant.38

 

37"Presentation to Mr. Charles B. Lewis," Detroit
Free Press, April 25, 1891, p. 5.

38 . .
Letter, JOSle Berry LerS to author, June, 1971.

 

18

Lewis was living in Brooklyn in 1924 when he died at
the age of eighty-two. A letter, signed by A. B. Lewis,
reported to the United States Bureau of Pensions "the death of
[his] father, Charles B. Lewis, who passed away at his home,
1421 57th St. . . ."39 What became of Lewis's papers and
personal possessions is not known. His daughter, Josie
Berry Lewis of Hollywood, Florida, said she did not know of
the existence of any other relatives.40

Few personal anecdotes about Lewis exist. Most of
the articles about him concern his writings. According to
the physical description he gave of himself when he filled
out his military enlistment papers, he was a small man. He
was five-feet, five or six inches tall, with grey-blue eyes,

41 He was called eccentric

auburn hair and a fair complexion.
by some early biographers and he may have been. "If there
is an odder man than he in the country," a Detroit resident
was supposed to have said, "we would like to have him sent

42

along with the circus." His "den," as Lewis referred to

his office in the Free Press building, reportedly was filled

 

with personal mementoes ranging from a piece of rope used in

 

39Letter, A. B. Lewis to U. S. Bureau of Pensions,
Aug. 25, 1924, GSA Archives and Records Service.

4OLetter, Josie Berry Lewis to author, June, 1971.

41
documents.
4

The description varies slightly in difference

2Quoted in Kirke, "The City of the Strait," p. 346.

19

a hanging to powder flasks from the Merrimac, the armored
Confederate warship. Most accounts said Lewis was quiet,
had few close friends, but was generous with those less for-
tunate than he.

One author, who knew Lewis, said that in his later
years in New York one of his delights was to do "literary
missionary work among sailors." He would fill a basket with
books of fiction, stroll along the wharves of New York
harbor and distribute the books to the sailors. Or, accord-
ing to the same author, Lewis would get on a street car and
ride until he got tired, paying no attention at all to where
he was going.43

If Lewis was a little unusual in his habits, he was
apparently well liked by his contemporaries. "He is spoken
of as odd and eccentric," another writer said after a visit
to Detroit, "and that he may be, but I incline to the opinion
that this peculiarity is due to the fact that Nature produced
him in one of her genial moods, when she would do the world
a kindly turn by bestowing upon it a gentle soul, who would
do us good by spreading for us a wholesome feast of mingled

wit and wisdom."44

 

43Author's Readings, compiled by Art Young, p. 197.

44Kirke, "The City of the Strait," p. 347.

CHAPTER II

POLITICS AND POLITICIANS

When the editors of the Free Press sent their new

 

reporter to cover the 1869 session of the state legislature,
they did not expect the session to be of particular impor-
tance. "We are not aware of any very important matters of
State policy that are to command its attention during the
session," the newspaper said in an editorial on January 6,
the day the legislature officially convened. "Its entire
political power is in the hands of the Radicals, yet it is
to be hoped that if any important question shall arise for
its consideration that the political majority will so far
forget party policy as to consider it as statesmen rather
than as partisans."

This feeling that the session would not be particu-
larly significant may have had something to do with the
decision to send a new reporter to cover it. On the other
hand Lewis, who had lived in Lansing off and on for several
years, seems to have had some experience in covering the
legislature, possibly for another newspaper. On April 4 in
a sort of wrapup story about the 1869 session, Lewis wrote:

"Two years ago, in closing up his report of the session,

20

21

your correspondent asserted. . . ." Apparently he had
covered the session for another newspaper in 1867. Although
there are noticeable differences between his stories filed
in 1871 and those filed in 1869, the earlier stories, al-
though not as well written as the later ones, are not those
of an inexperienced, insecure beginning reporter.

Lewis encountered a few problems during the period
he covered the 1869 session, but he seems to have done an
adequate if not admirable job, particularly under conditions
that must have been trying at best. In the first place the
legislature was controlled by the Radical Republicans. The

Free Press was politically Democratic; the other two Detroit

 

daily newspapers, the Post and the Advertiser & Tribune, were

 

Republican. In a period when newspapers were not just nomi-
nally, but actively, partisan, this fact alone was enough to
put frustrating stumbling blocks in the path of a Democratic
reporter attempting to cover the activities of a Republican-
controlled legislature. In the second place both the ngt.

and the Advertiser & Tribune had two reporters covering the

 

legislature, one each in the House and Senate. Lewis, who
had a permanent desk in the House chamber, was responsible

for the activities of both bodies.1

 

lManual for_the Use of the Legislature of the State
of Michigan. 1869-70, prepared by D. C. Henderson (Lansing:
W. S. George & Co., 1869), pp. 102, 117. See also the
legislative manual for 1867-68. In the past the Free Press
had used two reporters to cover the legislature, But in both
1869 and 1871 Lewis covered the sessions by himself.

 

 

22

During both the 1869 and the 1871 sessions, the £532
EEEEE followed a rather standard format in presenting legis-
lative news. Once the sessions got under way there were
daily stories in the neWSpaper except during periods of

adjournment. In 1869 the Free Press published a neWSpaper

 

seven days a week, although the Monday paper was the same as
the Sunday edition with only minor changes. The legislative
stories did not change from Sunday to Monday. In 1871 the
Monday edition was no longer being published.

During both years the legislative stories usually
ran, or at least started, on page one. The paper consisted
of four pages daily and Sunday; in 1871 a one-sheet (two
page) supplement was added to the Sunday edition. The pages
were not numbered. In both years the first item under the
headline was a list (or lists) of the legislative proceedings.
Separate lists were given for House and Senate and each list
was sub-divided into various categories that were not always
consistent from day to day. A typical breakdown of the
activities of each house included lists of petitions and
bills introduced, reports of committees, other reports, bills
passed and any special business of the day such as speeches
made, actions taken under suspension of the rules, resolu-
tions passed, and so forth. Such lists gave complete infor-
mation on the activities of each house for any given day.
Following the list of proceedings came the legislative story

itself, in which Lewis expounded on the more important actions

23

taken during the sessions. He also included numerous non-
legislative items that he found of interest. Although he
covered the more significant items in this way, he did not
have to rely on the story itself to cover the routine busi-
ness of state.

In 1869 the entire package ran under a multi-deck
headline, the first deck of which always read: "FROM
LANSING." The list of proceedings ran immediately under the
last deck of the headline. Following the list a smaller
headline, usually of several decks, introduced the story.
The same general format was used in 1871 except that the
first two decks of the main headline were "MICHIGAN/THE
LEGISLATURE." The "FROM LANSING" head followed the lists
and was published above the story.

Although the telegraph was in Operation, the main
stories were sent from Lansing to Detroit by mail train.
Brief summaries of the more important actions or some por-
tions of the lists of proceedings were filed by telegraph if
they occurred after the mail train had departed for Detroit.2

An examination of the legislative reportorial

coverage in the Free Press prior to 1869 indicates that

 

 

2In his legislative story in the Free Press of Jan.
10, 1871, Lewis said that during the previOus session a train
had left Lansing in the afternoon so that the stories about
the morning sessions could be sent by train. On Jan. 17 he
reported that a similar train would carry the reports for the
1871 legislative sessions.

 

24

only occasionally was an actual story used. On a daily
basis the newspaper had relied primarily on the list of pro-
ceedings to convey the information to its readers. Lewis,
outnumbered though he was by competing reporters and Republi-
can politicians, filed daily stories that not only covered
the high points of the legislative business but were witty
and readable as well.

The first legislative story of the 1869 session

appeared in the Free Press on Monday, January 4, on an inside

 

page.3 It was a routine story, only eight lines long, and it
was signed simply "M." PrObably this was not Lewis' signa-
ture, since all the subsequent legislative stories were
signed "M. Quad." During the 1867 session the legislative
reports were signed "M." and the reporter at that time was
Stephen B. McCracken.4 Probably McCracken was with Lewis
long enough in 1869 to get him started on his new assignment

and filed this story himself.

 

3All of Lewis's stories quoted throughout this study,
unless otherwise noted, appeared in the Free Press between
Jan. 1 and April 30, 1869, or Jan. 1 and April 20, 1871.
Because of the nature-of the study specific references to
every story cited would occupy an inordinate amount of space.
Therefore no notes have been used for Lewis's own stories
that fall within this period. An effort has been made to
give the approximate, if not always the specific, date of
each story cited in the text itself.

 

4Manual Containing the Rules of the Senate & House of
Representatives of the State of Michigan, with the Joint Rules
of the Two Houses, and Other Matter (Lansing: John A. Kerr &
Co., 1867), p. 156.

25

In any case the story set the stage for Lewis' first
blast of political satire. The target was Zachariah Chandler,
the incumbent Republican senator from Michigan, who was up
for re-election.5 "The Senatorship excites but little com-
ment," the story concluded. "The general impression seems
to be that the 'Blood Letter' has the inside track."6 Two

days later, on January 6, the Free Press editorial noted that

 

there was some dissension within the Repulbican party over
Chandler and it quoted some Radical critics as calling him

"a drunkard and a debaucher" and as saying that he made
Michigan look like a "laughing stock" all over the nation.

The editorial noted sarcastically that such comments were
probably true and were all the more reason he should be re-
elected. "If he was anything else than what he is," the
editorial said, "he would not be competent to represent the
Radical party." This official stand of the newspaper may have

influenced Lewis' own comments in his legislative reports.

 

5At this time United States senators were elected by
the state legislature rather than by popular vote.

6The "Blood Letter" was a reference to Chandler. The
nickname, which seems to have been widely known, came from a
letter that Chandler had written to Governor Austin Blair in
1861 before the outbreak of the Civil War. In a postscript
to the letter, which concerned the growing antagonism between
the slave and the free states, Chandler had written: "Some
of the manufacturing states think a fight would be awful.
Without a little blood-letting, this Union will not, in my
estimation, be worth a rush." The letter was discovered and
made public in the pages of the Free Press which, under the
editorship of Wilbur F. Story, opposed a war. See Charles
Moore, Histor of Michigan (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co.,
1915), I, 414-15.

26

The current governor, Henry P. Baldwin, and Chandler
had joined forces the previous summer and there appeared
little chance Chandler would lose the election, the only
potential opposition coming from outgoing Governor Henry
Crapo.7 The last item in Lewis' first signed legislative
story, which also ran on January 6, concerned the senatorial
election.

The Lieutenant Governor's presence here has created
not a little uneasiness in the minds of Mr. Chandler's
supporters; and the friends of "Our Blair"8 cannot see
why ex—Governor Crapo should want to go to Congress.

Two or three days will be apt to settle the matter, but
the indications are that the present [sic] incumbent will
have cause to offer his tottering kingdom for a jaded
squire, if by that means he can ride triumphant from the
fray. "We shall see what we shall see."
Lewis let his prose turn a little purple. It would grow more
so as the session wore on.

The Chandler question was settled the next day when
the senator was nominated on the first ballot of the Repub-
lican caucus. Since the Republicans controlled both houses
of the legislature by large majorities, the election itself
on January 19 was a mere formality. Lewis flavored his
account of Chandler's speech to the Republican caucus with a

dash of sarcasm.

When the committee appeared escorting in the great
Zachariah, members rose, clapped their hands, and

 

7Editorial, Detroit Free Press, Jan. 8, 1869, p. 2.

8Former Governor Austin Blair, at this time a United
States Representative from Michigan.

27

exhibited much enthusiasm. . . . After an introduction
by the chairman, he [Chandler] launched out into a
speech that lasted about an hour and a half. He pro-
posed to render an account of his stewardship; and going
back twelve years, he narrated everything done by
Chandler. . . .
Lewis then listed many of the items recounted by Chandler in
his speech.' "His finis was greeted with great applause,"
Lewis noted, "and amidst the congratulations and handshakes
of his friends, Mr. Chandler and the caucus broke up."

Lewis devoted a few more paragraphs to Chandler
during the next few months, but he seems to have summed up
his feelings by his account of the actual election on
January 19. After reporting Chandler's victory, Lewis added:
"This begins the third term of our staunch old rum un
Senator." The italicized pun was a standard form of humor
of the day.

Although Chandler was the object of a few gibes from

Lewis and the Free Press, Lewis rarely singled out individ-

 

uals for criticism. Most of his barbs and satire were aimed
at politicians and lobbyists in general, or at the political
system itself. Always a supporter of the "little man,"
Lewis tried to keep a close watch on the taxpayers' money.
In his first legislative story of the 1869 session,
Lewis reported that a building had been remodeled into
a billiard hall for the use of the legislators. "'Come easy
go easy' has always characterized the financial conduct of

those who make our laws, or lobby others into making them,"

28

he wrote, "and such an establishment as the above has been
proved by time to be a matter of necessity."

Early in 1871 Lewis reiterated his belief that legis-
lators were careless in their use of the public's money.

In casting up certain figures, the other day, I
placed the current expenses of the Legislature at ten
thousand dollars. I expected that some would say that
I had placed the sum total too high, and therefore, put
everything down to the lowest notch. The real expenses
of this body are as near five hundred dollars per day as
the Speaker can figure it, and this, I believe, does not
include the cost of any of the printing. The daily
sessions are not over four hours in length, and, there-
fore, we can set the expenses down at one hundred and
twenty-five dollars per hour, which is over two dollars
per minute. So, if this gentleman speaks ten minutes,
and that one fifteen, and so on, more or less, their
words cost the Senate about two cents each, and should
be carefully considered. The clerk's call of the yeas
and nays costs five dollars, and a member disposed to
be a little dyspeptic over a measure can rise in his
seat and talk twenty dollars' worth without seeming to
use up any time at all.

The humor was low key and the "facts" no doubt exaggerated,
but he made his point.

A few weeks later Lewis reported that he had learned
of a House member who was not going to draw the five dollars
allowed each member for stationery. He said the man didn't
believe in adding to the burden of the taxpayers. Lewis said
he had asked to see the man and had "sent a boy downtown to
make arrangements for a hundred thousand photographs." But
the clerk of the House would not tell him the man's name.

"I am, however, bound to find out who the man is," he vowed,

"and shall then use his action as the foundation for a poem

which I am going to bring out in the spring."

29

Not all the misusers of public funds were legislators.
Later in the 1871 session the legislature approved the con-
struction of a new capitol. The announcement of the plans
brought job-seekers and speculators to Lansing. A few weeks
after the passage of the bill, Lewis said that everyone who
had hOped to gain monetarily by the building of the capitol
had come to Lansing. He added, in mild disgust:

Blessed be the man who wants nothing at the hands of a
legislative body! He can get up with the sun, free
from headaches, and go to bed at night without having
to reproach himself that he has told several scores of
lies since breakfast. He can keep a full, free eye,
need not make himself a dog, and the ague passes him by
on the other side.

Early in each legislative session the lawmakers set
about the task of organizing themselves into a functioning
body. In the process minor offices and jobs were sought
after and filled according to the Spoils system. If Lewis
was mildly disgusted with the "seekers of that lacteal
nourishment, usually dubbed as official 'pap'", he made use
of them as "items" for his stories. "There is no office
here in the gift of the Legislature that has not had from
two to twenty applicants," he wrote early in the 1869 session.

Even your humble and retiring correspondent, whose
countenance has not a particle of legislative look
about it, has had to stand a score of self introduc-
tions from hungry candidates, promise the position of
fireman to at least a dozen, and guarantee a messenger-
ship to boys innumerable. When asked to secure the
influence of my "brother members," I always promise,
though I regret it when I see the applicant walk off

with a countenance denoting a surety of the sought for
position.

30

Lewis frequently got into his own stories, often in
the role of a practical joker. Again in 1871 he was ap-
proached by job hunters. He said he signed all the petitions
handed to him and Spoke a good word for all who asked. The

Free Press ran a table showing the number of petitions he

 

had signed, the number he had promised to sign, etc. The
"applicants appointed owing to my influence," Lewis wrote,
totaled "000."

He wasn't particularly hard on the job seekers
though. Jobs were not particularly plentiful in the post-
war years and Lewis, who frequently sided with the "little
man" or the "underdog," saved his best (or his worst) barbs
and satire for the politicians and the political process.
He generally viewed politicians as a "do-nothing" lot, who
were taking care of themselves at public expense.

In 1871 Lewis' humor tended to be more thoughtful,
particularly when it was directed at politicians, than it
had been in 1869. There was a touch of flippancy without
much point in the earlier stories. On January 22, 1869,
Lewis reported:

In the Senate, the lawyers are too many for the
farmers, being nine to six; the merchants number five,
and there is one doctor, one clergyman and one editor;
six are unmarried. Here, as in the House, a great many
follow the occupation or profession of "Miscellaneous"--
which is generally understood to mean running for office.

In 1871 he expressed similar sentiments, but in a slightly

different way. The writing was better than it had been in

31

1869, the satire a bit more pointed and the target was en-
larged to include politicians in general. Lewis was talking
about the 1871 election of a United States senator from
Michigan:
The fight was hot and bitter all day yesterday, and will
be re-newed with ardor to-day, until the choice of the
caucus this evening sends three of the candidates to
that political bourne from whence no--. I was going to
say that no political traveler ever returned; but they
do, rising up again at the faintest smell of office,
and perfectly willing to endure it all over again, if
there be the least hope that an effort may be crowned
with success.

Lewis was convinced that politicians were hopeless
windbags. Reporting on an excursion that the 1869 legis-
lators made through the Saginaw Valley, he said that the
reporters had much to do on the trip. But if they had
participated in previous excursions, he said, they could
have "just written out the little speeches previous to
starting, and sent them in ahead, with every reason to be-
lieve they had them down correct."

When the 1871 session got under way, Lewis said the
porter had told him about a new ventilation system in the
state house that would end all long speeches. Lewis quoted
the porter:

"When a feller gets up and begins to hem, and haw,
and cough (says the porter), as they always do before
launching out with a diatribe as long as the Central
Railroad, the Speaker will wink at me, and I will just
give this 'ere cord a pull and his wind is all gone; he

can't get his mouth open again!" I don't know about the
porter; I think someone has been basely deceiving him.

32

Later in the session Lewis reported that the porter tried the
system and, sure enough, it didn't work. Near the end of the
session Lewis said that the habit of throwing books, almanacs,
apple cores and the like at other members during the pro-
ceedings was a common practice.

The other day as one of the gentlemen was making a

spirited speech, the general laws of 1867 took him in
his chest, and he sat down like a ton of lead, and the
cries of "go on!" hadn't the effect to get him up again.
Had the book hit him earlier in the session it would
have saved the public much wasted money.

But the best satire, the most devastating "put down"
of a long winded solon, came early in 1871. Lewis said that
one of the representatives had "for a long time been anxious
to get himself into THE FREE PRESS." He said he had held
out as long as possible and had decided "to swing him in."
Without naming the man, he reported that since his speech
of the previous day was the most important of the day, he
was presenting it in italics.

"MR. PRESIDENT--I am Opposedgto this bill. It seems

to me that I see a sCheme here. It seems to me that as
'IEw makers we had better look into this bill a little.
I am_gpposed to this bill, Mr. Chairman. I don't like

the looks of thisbill, Mr. Chairman. I Shall not vote
for this bill. I don't like its looks:1r

This is the same speech he gets off two or three

times a day, and will answer now for all the session.
Lewis felt that many of the legislators Spent more
time sitting and visiting than attending to the business of
state. He reported in 1869 that the legislative excursion

was a "complete success--that is, if it had any particular

object in view." But he noted that it was hard on the

33

taxpayers. Early in the 1871 session Lewis suggested in one
of his stories that the legislature employ a full time phy-
sician to care for its members. The reason for the sugges-
tion, he said, was that at every morning roll call he heard
it announced that some member was sick and desired a leave
of absence.

Watching one or two such cases, I have failed to see

the flush of fever, attenuated forms, hollow eyes, and

can't help but believe that there is a little attempt to

avoid the law, which does not provide for absentees

unless sick. If a good physician were "on the Spot,"

there is no knowing how many valuable lives he might

save.
About a week later Lewis reported that he could pass through
the halls and rooms outside the chambers and find members
chatting and smoking and paying no attention to what was
going on inside. Asked why he was not inside, Lewis said,
the member would say he had just stepped out for a drink of
water. Lewis suggested that two large water pipes be run
through the chambers, perforated with holes just large enough
to admit the end of a straw and that each member be provided
with straws so he could drink whenever the desire hit him.
He referred to the subject of absenteeism several more times
during the session.

Some of Lewis' sharpest jabs at the character of

politicians concerned their honesty, how well they represented
their constituents, and their ambition. In early February,

1871,Lewis reported that a bill was soon to be introduced in

the House that would "punish all public officials who

34

receive more than legal fees, or who are found to be corrupt
in their official actions!" He was almost nonplused by the
action.
If any Democrat should ask me to "hold his hat," I
should tell him to wait until I had got over my own
faintness. What's going to become of the present set
of public officials, I'd like to know, to say nothing
of the country at large.
"There are strange things, Horatio,
But stranger things can be."--Muggs.
Lewis' biting comment a week later on the relationship of the
legislator to his constituency was even more sarcastic.
It's positively wonderful how a member keeps him-
self behind the strong arm of his constituents at home.
If he wants to favor a particular bill, he does so
because his constituents favor it; if he wants to de-
feat the bill he votes "no" "because, sir, I desire to
return home to my constituents with a clear conscience
and a record of which I may not be ashamed." From the
dog bill up to a two hundred thousand dollar appropria-
tion, the cry of "constituency" can be heard, and it
means ."
Less than a week later Lewis reported that an attempt was
under way in the Senate to form a fire company composed
entirely of senators. But, he noted, "as Senator Sheley,
as well as twenty eight other members want to be chief
engineer, it is quite probable that the scheme will fall
through."

Although Lewis' humorous jabs at politicians showed
more development in 1871 than in 1869, his single best piece
of political satire--a description of a lazy politicianr-
was written in January, 1869. It was a short essay called

"The Easy Man," which Lewis included in his legislative

35

story on January 19. Although it was mostly a character
sketch--an art Lewis would later develop highly as a profes-
sional humorist--"The Easy Man" was an excellent satire on a
"do-nothing" legislator.9

While Lewis seemed to delight in poking fun at the
politicians, he took equal pleasure in satirizing the legis-
lative process itself. His stories were filled with inciden-
tal comments concerning the complex processes involved in-
getting legislation passed. Once in 1869 and again in 1871
he devoted a lengthy portion of a legislative story to a
description--once clearly satirical and once factual-~of the
process in action.

One of the functions performed by the legislature
was the passage of bills to change the names of individuals.
In 1869 Lewis reported that he was approached by a young man
who had mistaken him for a legislator. The man had to get
his name changed before his girl friend would marry him, he
said, and he asked Lewis' help. Lewis proceeded to explain
the process to the youth and the "explanation" occupied half
of a full column in the neWSpaper. First, Lewis told him, it
would cost five or ten dollars to get someone to give notice
of the introduction of the bill, then twenty dollars to get
the bill drawn up, another ten dollars to get it introduced,

a process that should take about a week. Lewis told the

 

9See Appendix A for the complete text of this sketch.

36

young man he would be able to get board and room for about
ten dollars a week while he waited on his bill to get through.
Lewis said that after the bill was introduced it would be
referred to the committee on "fisheries" whose members would
want five dollars each to consider it. He continued in this
manner, making it sound as though it would cost five or six
hundred dollars to get the bill through. Before Lewis had
finished, the youth bolted through the door and took off
running. He was not seen again.

The story, undoubtedly mostly if not entirely fiction,
is an excellent satire on the way lobbyists bribed their pet
bills through the complete legislative process. Lewis wrote
a similar item in 1871 with the singular difference that the
1871 piece was a straight explanation of how a person would
go about introducing a bill. The 1871 account was humorous,
but only because when the legislative process is explained,
step by step, it is so involved that it is humorous in itself.

In addition to the complexity of the legislative
process, Lewis found humor in the concern over the specific
wording of bills. In 1871 he reported that an hour was
spent in debate over one word in the title of a bill. He
said after the debate had continued for an hour a House mem-
ber finally had asked that no more be said because the more
that was said, the less he knew about the subject. Lewis

said he had felt that way himself but hesitated to say

37

anything. "However," he added, "now that the objection has
been removed, I shall keep watch of these know-nothing
debates."

Earlier, in 1869, Lewis had reported a debate over
a particular resolution that was better than any parody on

the subject.

In the House, a day or two since, a resolution was
offered instructing the Sergeant-at-Arms to procure two
lanterns and hang one over the front steps, and the
other at the front gate. One of the members wanted the
resolution amended so as to include a lantern at the
north gate; this amendment was then amended by pre-
scribing that the lantern should be hung "at or near
the said gate." The same amendment having—Been aaopted
to include the lantern at the front gate, and seeing
that the members were inclined to draw it fine,

Dr. Klein, of Wayne, very gravely read his written
amendment to the resolution and all the other resolu-
tions, which prescribed "that said lanterns shall be

lit at night."

Occasionally Lewis' humor was strained, such as the
time in the 1871 session when he reported that the Illinois
legislature had requested copies of some of the bills in the
Michigan legislature to consider for its own use. Lewis
commented:

There is not the slightest doubt but that this Legisla-
ture has some of the nicest bills in the pigeon-holes
that anyone ever saw, being printed from a beautiful

font of small pica type, and on a new Hoe press. Whether
there is further merit can be left to the members them-
selves to judge.

Between the 1869 and the 1871 sessions of the legisla-

ture, Lewis had begun producing two regular humor columns for

the Free Press. In these columns he had experimented with

 

poetry as a vehicle for his humor. He used a poem to sum up

38

his feelings, more or less, concerning legislatures and
legislators in general. After reporting on January 29, 1871,
that the Senate had met the previous morning but had ad-
journed because no quorum was present, Lewis wrote:

The gravest body has its little tricks,

The stillest Solon has his little plan;

And there are legal legislative "licks"

Which sure would frighten "any other man."

As a legislative reporter Lewis the budding humorist
looked at politics and politicians from a mildly sardonic
point of view. He was satirical, but rarely vitriolic.

He saw politicians as opportunists and politics as a con-
fusing and somewhat ludicrous scramble for government jobs
and money. He kept his reportorial eyes Open for the misuse
of tax dollars, for extreme unscrupulousness on the part of
legislators and politicians, and for grossly unfair use of
the political spoils system. But mostly he was on the watch
for "items," those humorous little incidents that occurred
regularly in the legislative chambers, the hallways of the
state house, or just about anywhere else. If an incident

wasn't humorous in itself, Lewis had a knack for making it

so with a certain twist of the pen.

CHAPTER III

THE NEGRO QUESTION

In the years following the Civil War, America was
generally confused in its attitudes toward the Negro. True,
the black peOple were legally "free," but they were by no
means full-fledged citizens with the same rights as the
whites. The Fourteenth Amendement, adopted in 1865, gave
the black man freedom and citizenship, but it did not give
him the privilege of the ballot, nor did it give him
"equality." An examination of the newspapers and literature
of the period indicates clearly that the whites of the day
simply did not consider the Negro their intellectual or
social equal. With few exceptions the black man, when he
appeared as the subject of an article or a story, was either
a nameless, faceless social "issue," or he was a stereotype.

It was through the medium of the Negro stereotype
that Lewis achieved not just national, but international,

recognition as a humorist. Brother Gardner's Lime-Kiln Club,

 

published in book form in 1882, was, according to one early

biographer, "the greatest of all his successes."l Lewis

 

1Richard H. Titherington, "Charles B. Lewis: 'M.
Quad' of the Detroit Free Press," Golden Argosy, Jan. 8, 1887,
p. 88.

39

40

began writing weekly reports of the meetings of the imaginary
"self-improvement" club during his early years at the Frag.
,E£§§§°2 The sketches portrayed the Negro as a stereotype

and the dialogue was written in dialect. The club member-
ship included such personalities as Giveadam Jones, Trustee
Pullback, Sir Isaac Walpole, Elder Toots and others. If by
today's standards the work seems unkind in its portrayal of
the Negro, such was not the feeling of Lewis's contemporaries.
"'Brother Gardner,'" a Harper's reporter wrote in 1886, "is

a shrewd and quaint gentleman of color, who has all the
idioms and characteristics of his race, but is not a burlesque
of our colored fellow-citizens; he handles his own people
gently, but satirizes the foibles, frailties, and weaknesses

of the whites inimitably."3

Other early accounts expressed
essentially the same sentiments.
It would be assuming too much to say that Brother

Gardner and the Lime-Kiln Club were conceived during the two

 

2Because of the dearth of critical and biographical
material about Lewis, no study has been made of the dates
during which the Lime-Kiln Club series appeared in the Free
Press. Such a separate study was outside the scope of this
thesi . However, none of the stories was found in the Free
Press during the period under study. A handbill promoting
. the London edition of the weekly Free Press, which began pub-
lication in 1881, claimed that the Lime-KiIn Club had "a
national reputation in America" at that time. See "The Story
of the Detroit Free Press," unsigned, undated pamphlet in the
possession of George A. Hough, III, associate professor,
School of Journalism, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

3Edmund Kirke, "The City of the Strait," Harper's
New Monthly Magazine, August, 1886, p. 346

41

terms that Lewis covered the legislature. There is insuf-
ficient material in the legislative stories to indicate such
a direct connection. The "Negro problem” was a major issue
in the 1869 session, however, and was not greatly diminished
as an issue in 1871. Lewis devoted considerable space in his
legislative stories of both years to items concerning the
Negro question. Some of the 1871 stories in particular are,
in their literary style, strikingly similar to the accounts
of the proceedings of the Lime-Kiln Club. Lewis made no
attempt to conceal his personal feelings in these stories,
although his attitude seems to have changed slightly between
the two sessions.

Early in 1869 the prOposed Fifteenth Amendment, by
vflnich the Negro was given the right to vote, was sent to the
states for ratification. It was approved and became effective
in.l870. A similar amendment to the Michigan Constitution
was taken under consideration early in the 1869 session. The
amendment would, among other provisions, have deleted the
vword "white" from the voting requirements clause of the con-
stitution. Lewis reported this news and, in a later story on
January 12, included an "item" that indicated his attitude
toward the Negro at that time. The humor was forced and
caustic.

As informed in my letter of Saturday, the raid upon

the word so obnoxious to the "truly loil" portion of the
Michigan public, has commenced. What is to become of

the white man, I cannot as yet predict; but I can tell
you that the black man's prospects of political freedom

42

are looking up. As most of the members are well con-
vinced that "the colored trOOps fought bravely," an
amendment to the State Constitution will be made. As
said to me by a Republican member, "The Democratic party
might as well begin to count nigger noses." Speaking of
the "shady" side of politics, reminds me of the white
barber who appeared and fixed up a neat little room here
just before the session, with the intention of "shaving"
every member who inclined to the idea that "this govern-
ment was created by white men," &c. Asking him one day
the state of trade and commerce at his establishment, he
informed me that he must soon "pull stakes," or go into
bankruptcy. He charged the same, was a better barber,
and had as neat a room as the various negroes in town,
but "lather and shave" was the least he did. "No use,"
remarked he, "a trying to run agin' 'em now, but after
they gets the suffrage they are after, there'll be
plenty of chance to strop the razor--as the white man'll
have to shave the nigger!

On Tuesday, January 26, Lewis reported at some length
on the House discussion of the amendment. Lewis said the
amendment, which was introduced by Benjamin W. Huston, Jr.,
of Tuscola County, had been nicknamed "Huston's Nigger
Clause" and was drawn up with no intention of getting any
but the Negro suffrage portion of it passed. When the House,
sitting as a committee of the whole, finally approved a
resolution to present the amendment to the electorate, there
was nothing left in it but the Negro suffrage clause. After
this action, Lewis reported, a move was made to delete the
word "male" from the voting requirements, thus giving the
vote to women also. That measure lost. Lewis commented:

When this vote was taken, although personally opposed

to either woman or Negro suffrage, I could not help
thinking how strange and inconsiderate was the action of
the majority. The very men who voted to make the idiotic,
thick-lipped African their political equals, set a strong

and heavy "no" against the attempt of intelligent, think-
ing, reasoning white women to exercise the freedom of the

ballot.

43

Lewis was not usually so charitable in his comments on women's
suffrage; but comparing women with the Negro in such a situa-
tion gave him another good "item" for his story.

On February 14 Lewis reported that the resolution had
passed the House by a vote of seventy-two to twenty-two. His
tone in writing about the measure was much more tempered than
it had been before. He did not use the word "nigger," and
he was not as open in expressing his personal opinion as he
had been in the earlier stories. He ended his report of the
action on a note of skepticism, however, and he "got" the
two Democrats who voted in favor of the resolution.

It will be endeavored to get this amendment before
the people again next spring, and it remains to be seen
whether the action of these negro-lovers will be sup-
ported by the masses. Franklin L. Smith, of Clinton
county, and Kengsley, of Washtenaw, Democrats, voted in
favor of the resolution.

Lewis was not in the habit of telling how individual members,
even Democrats, voted.

Not until March 5 did the Negro suffrage question come
up again. The legislature had under consideration the pro-
posed Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This time Lewis got a little carried away with the gravity
of the situation and his prose showed the effects of his
thinking. Under a sub-headline, "Ho! For the Negro," he
wrote that even though the last political campaign had been

filled with many promises, the Democratic press had predicted

that the Radicals would "force negro suffrage upon the

44

Northern, as it had the Southern States." But conservatives
wouldn't listen, he said, and Radicals branded the predic-
tion a "copperhead lie." Then he added:

To-day has the first step been taken necessary to
the complete fulfillment of our prophesy. In a message
to the House, the Governor recommended a prompt ratifi-
cation of the Congressional enactment, which before
another year, will give to the American-African the full
privilege of the ballot, and place him where the leaders
of the Radical party have ever sought and legislated--
on an equality with the white mechanic! Seymour, with
white men to govern; Grant, and the equality of negroes
and white mechanics. 0 temporal O mores!

The next day Lewis reported the passage of a resolu-
tion ratifying the proposed amendment. He listed the vote,

by name, of each member. On March 7 the Free Press editori-

 

ally attacked the legislature for its action in ratifying
the amendment "by a strict party vote." The editorial said
that in the spring of 1868 the peOple of Michigan had re-
'jected by a vote majority of almost 40,000 a new constitu-
tion largely because the word "white" had been stricken from
the voting requirements clause. It called the action of the
legislature "one of the most Open and direct insults ever
offered to the people of the State by any body of men, claim-
ing to act as their servants."

After that editorial neither Lewis nor the Free Press
had any more to say about Negro suffrage during the 1869
session. Early in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment went into
effect. When the 1871 Michigan legislature convened, adult

Negro males were fully qualified voters. Lewis devoted about

45

as much space to the Negro question in his 1871 stories as he
had in 1869, but his approach to the problem was different.
In the legislative stories for 1869 the Negro was a subject
of much discussion, but he never appeared in the stories as
an individual. At no time did Lewis refer to a specific
Negro person, nor is there any indication that black men
appeared in the legislative halls and chambers.

In 1871, however, the Negroes in Lewis's stories
were peOple. They talked, made demands, wrote letters and,
from a purely literary point of view, gave Lewis some of the
most lively and readable items of the entire session.
Whether his attitude underwent any significant change in the
period between the sessions is difficult to say. He seemed
to be more aware of the Negro as a person rather than as a
social or political "issue." But this was directly con-
nected with his improved writing style, which was more
anecdotal than it had been in the past. He was critical of
the treatment the Negro was receiving (or was 295 receiving)
from the Radical legislature; but this was more damnation of
the Radicals than praise for the Negro. Foreshadowing an
attitude that would prevail for another century (and is still
widespread) Lewis seemed perfectly willing to accept the
Negro as "equal" just so long as he remained "separate."

In one of the early stories in the 1871 session,

Lewis told of a Negro man who came to his office to present

a grievance. The man said he had gone to the legislature

46

and tried to get a job as fireman, doorkeeper, cloak room
attendant, porter, postmaster, or any other job he could get
but, as Lewis let the man say in a direct quotation, "I
didn't get noffin!" Lewis continued to question the man, who
gave his name as "Thormus Jackson Haynes." "Thormus" said
he had received many promises that he was the man for the
job, but when it was all over he had no job. "Whar am I
now?" Lewis said he asked. And Lewis himself added:

Yes, "whar am he," the negro, the "amendment," the

gentleman who, as a politician, overturned well laid

political plans in many a town last fall? Not a one

of them has received an office. Not one of them has

been recognized as capable Of filling the least of the

positions in the gift of the House and Senate. They

are out of the "ring" entirely, out in the cold, and

there isn't even anyone to feel bad about it--except

myself.
Lewis walked over to "Thormus," patted him on the head and
promised to publish his grievance to the world and to use
his "influence" to bring him to the attention of the next
Democratic legislature.4

That this item expressed Lewis's honest feeling

toward the Negro is difficult to believe in light of his
other writings on the subject. Lewis was sympathetic toward
the "little man," and he probably felt a certain amount of

sympathy for "Thormus." But the story seems to have been

more of an attack on the Radicals than a support of the

 

4See Appendix B for the complete text of this
anecdote.

47

Negro. From a stylistic point of view the story is remark-
able in its resemblence to the Lime-Kiln Club articles Lewis
would produce later.

A report more typical of Lewis's style appeared in

his legislative story in the Free Press of January 19. He

 

said Lansing, like Detroit, was having a little trouble over

the "colored Question."

A singing school is much excited over the attendance of
a "Samuel," who insists on mingling his bass with their
tenor, much to the disgust of half the attendance, but
upheld by the other half. The question: "Is this a
white man's singing school?" is being asked on all sides.

Lewis didn't express an Opinion in this report, but the
problem of Negroes attending white schools was the subject
of numerous petitions filed with the legislature. On
January 26 Lewis reported that several such petitions had
been filed. "The negroes of Lansing are awake to the issue,"
he wrote, "and a general petition praying that the 'rights'
of negroes may be recognized in every school district in

the State was passing about among the friends of the African
yesterday." He embellished his report slightly by telling
about a conversation he said he had engaged in.

"Can't your folks as well have separate schools,
and thus avoid the question?" I asked of a negro who
was idling around the hall in the interest of the
petition.

"Dat am not de question, sah, not at all," he
replied. "We'se bin niggers long 'nuff, an' now we'se
goin' to hab all de rights ob white folks, or else
white folks won't hab no rights left."

I tried to argue with him a little, but he was so
positive in his assertions, and kept his mouth open so
much of the time, that I could make no headway, and
finally quit.

48

Lewis was not so benevolent in his feelings here as he was
with "Thormus Jackson Haynes." But like "Thormus," this
black lobbyist, whether real or the product of Lewis's
imagination, was a living, talking, believable person.

Lewis filed four more items about the Negro question
during this session. On February 16 he told of a "smooth
toungued and well dressed negro" who appeared in the halls
of the state house and asked to have his card taken to "one
of the colored Representatives." Amid much merriment, Lewis
reported, the man was told that he was ahead of his time,
that there were no such persons in the legislature. Upon
learning this he left, Lewis said, "having no desire to
witness the legislation not now thought complete without
the presence of the tinted element."5

On February 22 Lewis filed a brief paragraph report-
ing that a Senate bill involving free schools for Detroit
"is a fine basis on which to build up hOpes that the schools
throughout the State will, by law, be opened to the admission
of negroes." He offered no comment in this report except
for his word choice: "to build up hOpes." Whether this
phrase was meant seriously or sarcastically is not clear.

But the final item on the Negro question, which was contained

in the legislative story on March 16, indicates no change at

 

5

anecdote.

See Appendix C for the complete text of this

49

all in his feelings. He reprinted what he said was a copy
of a circular that was being mailed to Negroes throughout
the state. The circular, which was filled with misspelled
words, was a plea for the Negroes' rights to attend the
public schools in the state. The letter appeared to be the
work of a most uneducated individual. After reprinting the
circular, Lewis commented:

There can be no doubt, in the mind of one perusing
the above, that the "right" spoken of would be of con-
siderable benefit to the writer of the circular, whether
he believes it or not; but there are some, nay, several,
doubts as to the "resultes of the combined efforts."
Every member would willingly see the negro well taken-
care of in the matter of schools, but there are many who
do not believe that it is necessary for one to sit be-
tween two white children in order to pursue his lessons.

Lewis added a brief paragraph immediately following this item
which concerned the standard legislative practice of opening
each session with a prayer or brief ceremony by a local
minister.

Touching this subject reminds me of the negro parson
in this city, who was to be invited to take his turn in
House and Senate, but who never was honored with such a

notice, owing to the absence of mind of the Clerk and
Secretary.

Lewis must have written this last item with tongue in cheek.
The most significant characteristic about the Negro,
as he appeared in Lewis's legislative stories, is not the
fact that he was presented in a condescending way or that
Lewis's personal feelings showed through. What is signifi-
cant is the different approach Lewis took to his representa-

tion<mfthe Negro in the two years. He went from a legislative

50

and a political problem without life in 1869 to a colorful,
vibrant living character in 1871. There is no way to state
positively that the characters Lewis portrayed in his 1871
legislative stories are the direct ancestors of his more
famous characters in the Lime-Kiln Club series. But the

similarities between them are too strong to be overlooked.

CHAPTER IV

THE LADIES AND THE BOYS IN BLUE

Two significant social issues facing the Michigan
legislature in 1869 and 1871 were the dual questions of civil
and social rights for both Negroes and women. If Negroes got
official freedom and citizenship in 1865, and the black man
the right to vote in 1870, women of whatever color or race
were not so fortunate. Not until 1920 did American women
gain the right to vote, and there are those who would argue
that full freedom and citizenship for women are yet to be
granted. But to say that white women, even after 1870, had
fewer rights than black men would not be true.

To the American male in the post-Civil War period,
the most immediate problem to be faced was not the status
of women but the status of the Negro. The war hadn't been
fought over women's rights. In 1869 and 1871 most American
men, Lewis included, were not paying too much serious atten-
tion to the growing women's suffrage movement. But the
protestations from a few leaders of the movement were be-
coming too loud to be ignored completely.

Early in 1869, while the question of Negro suffrage

was being discussed, Lewis reported that a petition had been

51

52

introduced seeking to give women the vote through a state
constitutional amendment. He said, however, that the Negro
had priority in the eyes of the Republican legislators and
it was unlikely that any action would be taken in behalf of
the petition. "The petition will probably be placed REESE
the table," he added. Whether the petition went under the
table or elsewhere, it was not brought up again. A few more
weak attempts were made to gain women the vote during this
session, but they got nowhere in the legislature and re-
ceived little attention in Lewis's stories.

In 1871, however, with the question of Negro suf-
frage resolved, women began receiving more attention in their
quest for the ballot. In Michigan the high point of the
movement in 1871 was a women's convention in Lansing and a
visit by the women to the legislature. The leader of the
convention and the visit was Susan B. Anthony herself, the
pioneer leader in the movement for more rights for women.

Even before news of the convention was announced,
Lewis had begun writing about the movement. "I suppose I
can be allowed to hold my own ideas on the subject of women's
rights," he wrote on January 10. "If so, I have a word or
two to say right here to the ladies." He then said that
two years earlier the legislature had appointed a woman,
Mrs. A. H. Tenny, as state librarian. Lewis said she had

done an excellent job in the position and that he personally

53

had.visited the State Library and had found it in good condi-
tion. Then he added the moral to his story:

I don't think the lady would have gained a lot of
public respect by tearing around the country as a
public lecturer for the last two years, abusing the
male sex, the scriptures, the statutes, and the world
in general, but, as the official selected to care for
the State Library, with its thousands of volumes, its
valuable relics, its relics of the sword and the pen,
she has filled the position to the satisfaction of
every member that has yet dropped into the place.

The story had nothing to do with the current legis-
Jlative business, but it indicated the general growing
cnoncern with the question of women's rights. A few days
ljater Lewis found another story to tell, this one more
typical of his humorous outlook on such matters.

Since I last spoke about female rights, I have
discovered the subject for another word. One of the
town barbers has a "female chair," managed by a young
lady of fifteen, and she is said to wield the razor
as scientifically as any other barber in the city,
and it is also said that a great many gentlemen don't
like the fit of the other chairs in the shop, but wait
long and patiently to get this particular one, because
"it fits the back and shoulders so nicely," you know.

"The angels in hOOp skirts" were planning to attempt

tn: gain suffrage through a bill or a constitutional amend-
Inent, Lewis reported on January 25. He said he had seen
cowmmnications from some of the leaders of the movement.
'The tone in which the story was written was significant:
Lewis simply didn't take the women seriously. He wrote:

I have seen a petition drawn up by Susan B. Anthony,
and it commences with a whereas as long as my thumb, and
it goes on to relate the noble influence that such a

bill will have upon large women--I mean women at large
all over our beautiful State. Little women with curls,

54

stately women with long trails, angular old maids with
false teeth, are all to be included in the bill. Heaven
bless the creatures! Let 'em gather together, sign and
send in these petitions by the thousands. Let the voice
of Anthony roll over the State until the pines of the
north bend over and murmur gently to the scrub oaks of
the Indiana border. Let the pen of Dickinson throw red
hot ink at the head of every member, until they shall
cry aloud: "That's enough, old gal--here's your bill!"
He then told of a bill being drafted by a member of the legis-
lature, a portion of which provided "that every female thus
exercising the privilege which has pertained to the male sex
alone from time immemorial shall don the dress befitting the
change."

A few days later, on February 9, Lewis reported that
petitions were circulating in the legislature and in LanSing
for the enactment of women's suffrage. But he said that it
was extremely unlikely that such a bill would be drafted,
especially since Anna Dickinson was to lecture that night on
the subject of "man's rights." He said the lecture at least
acknowledged that men, as well as women, had some rights and
that the lecture would only "stimulate a desire to keep them."

On March 2 Lewis reported that the "State Convention
of females" was to get underway the following day. Even in
his one paragraph report he could not resist some mild
sarcasm. "There is no great excitement visible at this
writing," he said, "and none of the citizens [has] purchased

any new clothes to meet the occasion." If no excitement was

visible at that writing, it arrived before the next story was

55

filed. The women, led by Miss Anthony, converged on the
legislature--and on Lewis.

"For an hour previous to the call to order this
morning," he reported on March 3, "the hall was thronged with
ladies, some particularly good looking, others particularly
homely, but all smiling, nodding, hand-shaking and pleading
with the members in favor of woman's rights." He said the
press came in for its share of the encounter and he included

a table in his story giving his own "statistics":

Number of handshakes -------------------- 15
Number of smiles ------------------------ 22
Smiles back ----------------------------- 21
Opinions asked -------------------------- 24
Opinions rendered ----------------------- 24
Number of ugly females ------------------ 30
Number of handsome ones ----------------- 2

If the last two lines of his "statistics" were not particu-
larly pleasing to some of the women who were present, they
were genuine pleasantries compared with some of the comments
he would have later.

The most interesting part of this story, however,
concerned Lewis's personal encounter with Susan B. Anthony.
He related the incident under a separate sub-headline, "Susan
B." The humorous account lends itself more to reproduction
than description:

Susan B. Anthony was among the number, and she took
occasion to say that THE FREE PRESS was the only daily
paper in Detroit which had properly appreciated her, or
which had touched upon the subject of woman's rights
with anything like strict impartiality. Some of the

ladies may have a curiosity to know how the introduction
was effected. Well, it was like this:-

56

Susan--"Are you THE FREE PRESS reporter?"

(LooEing to see if she had a club) "I am."

Susan--"Then let me introduce myself to you as Miss

Susan Bertha Anthony, of Massachusetts.

(Blushing very red) "I h-hope you have--have no

designs against my--my charac--against me."

Susan--"None whatever, I assure you."

Both extend right hands.

Both squeeze.

Both blush and squeeze harder.

Both enter into conversation, during which the

fact is develOped that I always favored woman's
rights, and that I always shall.

Several things about this item are interesting. In
the first place Lewis made himself and not Miss Anthony the
brunt-of the humor. Anyone who had read Lewis's legislative
stories knew that he had never favored women's rights and
probably never would; so the last sentence can be accepted
as a sarcastic lie, with the joke being on Lewis. But the
tone of the story is one of amiability. It sounds as
though, despite the tongue-in-cheek final sentenCe, Lewis
and Miss Anthony parted on friendly terms. Yet subsequent
stories written by Lewis indicate that his attitude toward
the movement (not toward Miss Anthony herself) changed from
one of amusement to one of bitter disgust. Finally, a ques-
tion is raised because Lewis quoted the woman as identifying
herself as "Susan Bertha Anthony," but the "B." stood for
"Brownell." Lewis could simply have been confused by the
excitement of the morning, or he could have misunderstood,
or he could have thought the "B" stood for "Bertha." Or,
the most troubling possibility of all, he could have made up

the whole incident.

57

At any rate he included two more items about the
women in this same story. Immediately following the Anthony
story he included a one-sentence paragraph under the sub-
heading, "Appropriate."

The clergyman who made the morning prayer took

his text with especial reference to the Convention,

and read about "tale bearers," "busy bodies," "foolish

virgins," and so forth, causing a smile all over the

House.
In the final item of this story, Lewis reported that little
had been done at the convention itself except to get organ-
ized. He said the result of the convention would be the
organization of several Sorosisl societies in the area and
an attempt to get suffrage legislation through the legisla-
ture.

The next day Lewis included in his legislative story
a short report about the convention. He said the convention
was still under way but that not much was taking place. The
carnival atmosphere caused by the invasion of the legisla-
ture seemed to have worn off. Lewis ended the item on an
almost bitter note.

. . . the speeches made yesterday were the same stereo-
typed ones which have been uttered and published a
dozen times in Detroit and other cities. The end will
come to-day, and the delegates will go home feeling
that they have accomplished--what? About half the

delegates were men--a class of she-he's, only distin-
guishable by their pantaloons.

 

1The Sorosis society was the first women's club
organized in the United States.

58

It was four days before Lewis mentioned the convention
again. On March 8 he reported that everyone connected with
the convention was thought to have left town, but "one of
'em" had suddenly appeared in the lobby of the house chamber
the previous morning and had begun "pounding woman's rights
into a member's ear." He continued:

Thinking that it might be well to give her views to the
public--nothing having been said about woman's rights
lately--I edged up and softly inquired the particulars.
She wouldn't give me the first one; all that I could
get her to say was she "had a mission," and that she
could work it out independently of THE FREE PRESS
reporter or any other man.

Until the convention got under way, Lewis had treated
the subject of women's rights rather lightly. He had joked,
made sly remarks, and generally had fun with the subject.

The encounter with Miss Anthony, assuming it really occurred,
gave him an "item" with an almost guaranteed readership, and
he handled it well. But by March 10 he had grown weary of
the movement. The tone of his article that day was somber.
"If the phrase 'played out' signifies run to death, gone up,
defunct, smashed, busted, and-so-forth," he wrote, "I want
to apply it to the whole subject of woman's rights, as here
conducted." Then he outlined the activities of the past
month.
First there was a lecture, then a State Convention, and
then another lecture, then a petition, then another
lecture, then an invasion of the building, then two
lectures, then a lobby, and last night there was another
lecture, admission fifty cents. If any member ever had

any idea of voting for the "right," they have had so
much cause to be disgusted that not a single individual

 

59

can be found to refer to the subject without a
"squeamish" feeling. If one or two more "he-shes"
will come along and advertise other lectures, the
whole thing will wind itself up and dump itself into
the Washington avenue mud.

Except for two more rather minor references to the
movement, that rather biting item ended Lewis's coverage of
women's rights. He had started out treating the topic like
a sweet, fluffy tidbit; he ended with a sour taste in his
mouth. But if Lewis had slightly mixed feelings about the
status of women, he almost never varied in his attitude
toward soldiers and veterans. In his eyes veterans of any
war deserved the special admiration and consideration of the
rest of the populace. A Union veteran himself, he was as
sympathetic toward the Rebel veterans as toward his own
comrades in blue. Soldiers were soldiers, regardless of
the color of the uniform. Interestingly, there was little
humor in the stories he wrote about soldiers and veterans.

During the two years in which he covered the legisla-
ture Lewis reported on several bills introduced for the
payment of bonuses to veterans. In every case he reported
either without comment or with a favorable comment on the
bill.

Early in each session, during the organization period
when the political jobs were being awarded by benevolent
legislators, Lewis verbally slapped the hands of the solons

for their neglect of the soldier. On January 12, 1869, he

reported that a house concurrent resolution to appoint a

60

former soldier as postmaster had been amended in the senate
by inserting another name in place of that of the soldier.
"In the strife for this minor office," Lewis wrote, "occurred
a rare chance for discerning the real respect and gratitude
borne to soldiers by the radical party." The veteran, Lewis
said, was a poor man with a large family to support; the other
man was the son of the Lansing postmaster who was, according
to Lewis, wealthy. But when the vote was taken, the rich
man's son got the job and the veteran was "sent about his
business." Lewis was clearly indignant about the situation
and devoted considerable Space to telling the story.

He recalled the situation early in the 1871 session.
"Two years ago I chronicled the fact that the claims of
several soldiers were ignored in the rush for minor offices
in the legislative body," he wrote on January 7. "I am
really sorry to have to go over the same ground again, and
to have to add more to it." He then told of a one-armed
veteran who had sought a particular office but who did not
get it; and of a crippled veteran who had a state job but
lost it when he Opposed the re-election of the representative
from his district. He said that one or two other former
soldiers wanted minor offices but didn't get them. Then he
added a personal comment. "Well, well, I am sorry for the
poor fellows," he wrote, "and hOpe from my heart that if the
'old party' ever gets in power again, it will recognize the

claims and privileges of the soldier first of all."

61

Lewis's lack of ill will toward the Confederate
veterans prompted an emotional report of a committee hearing
early in 1869. A previous legislature had approved a resolu-
tion whereby the state of Michigan agreed to contribute four
thousand dollars to the construction of Antietam Cemetery,
the national cemetery at Sharpsburg, Maryland, established
after the Civil War. All that remained for the 1869 session
to do was to authoriZe the state treasurer to send the money
to the prOper source. But a controversy developed when it
was learned that both Union and Confederate soldiers would
be buried in the cemetery.' Lewis's report of the discussion
included the following paragraph:

Mr. Swift, of Wayne, took occasion to say that he

agreed with a certain Senator, and felt that he "was
not only willing that Confederate dead should be buried
in Antietam Cemetery but live rebels also." Mr. Swift
is a specimen brick of that section of patriots who
were perfectly willing their sons should remain at home,
and also themselves, and read of wounds and bullets.
And the majority of the men who object to laying the
remains of a dead Confederate soldier in the same come
mon resting place with those of a Union soldier, have
served their country just about as much as Mr. Swift.
Soldiers neither talk nor feel thus.

Probably Lewis felt that the war and everything con-
nected with it was just too serious to joke about. Only
once did he let a little frivolity slip into a story con-
cerning veterans, and then he used the humor to lead into
a serious thought. Late in January, 1871, he reported that

the legislature had been asked to pass a bill authorizing

the coining of fifty silver metals, to be valued at ten

62

dollars each, to be conferred on ex-soldiers who had "distin-
guished themselves by gallant action during the late war."
Lewis commented:
Leaving out the five hundred dollars expense, I think
the idea a good one, and speak for half the medals
for my own bosom. The rest of the soldiers who distin-
guished themselves can be content with neWSpaper para-
graphs and additional State bounties. All of our

WOlverines behaved so well under fire that it would
be invidious to select any fifty men for their daring

deeds.

Near the end of the 1871 session, he included an item in his
story that summed up his attitude toward soldiers and vet-
erans. On March 29 he reported the discussion of a plan

to build a state school for indigent children. He said of
the two hundred children who would be wards of the school,
about fifty were the children of dead soldiers. "Too much
cannot be said in praise of our brave boys in blue, living
or dead," he wrote, "and the State cannot be too charitable
to the fatherless and orphaned children of the men sleeping

their last sleep along the banks of the blue Potomac and the

troubled Mississippi."

CHAPTER V
PENAL REFORM AND THE "LITTLE MAN"

The student attempting to analyze Lewis's own beliefs
and attitudes as revealed in his writings in the Free Press
must keep in mind one literary historian's observation that
Mark Twain "like all good humorists . . . was a royal liar."l
Lewis was precisely that. Yet there were times, especially
in his news stories, when one gets the feeling he was embar-
rassingly honest. He was a backer of the little man, the
undistinguished private citizen who, in attempting to make
democracy work, often finds himself engaged in battling
bureaucracy. But he didn't always back the little man for
the right reason.

In February, 1871, after reporting on a controversy
in the legislature concerning the state board of health,
Lewis commented: "To one who hasn't been sick a day in six-
teen years . . . this . . . fight is of interest only so far
as the general individual desire to encourage the under dog

in a fight." That may not have been the best reason for

 

1Clarence Gohdes, "The Later Nineteenth Century,"
part III of The_Literature of the American People, an~
Historical and Critical Survey, edited by Arthur Hobson Quinn
TNew York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1951), p. 716.

63

.—

64

supporting the underdog, but it wasn't the worst. The very
next day, however, Lewis reported that a Gratiot County man
had arrived in Lansing to press his claim against the state
for seventeen dollars. He told why he supported the man's
claim:
He has already been up to see me, and I encouraged him
all I could, because, if there is one thing more than
another which I like, it's to see a man "going" for
the State of Michigan. It's apt to produce a lively
fight, and furnishes the basis for good items.
Lewis was always on the lookout for "good items." Whether
his backing of the little man was benevolent or selfish, it
furnished him a large supply of such items, especially during
the 1871 session.

It was in 1869, though, in March, that Lewis pro-
duced one of his first sentimental sketches which, maudlin
though it was, must have been moving to Free Press readers.2
The sketch told of a man who had been convicted of forgery
and sentenced to prison for five years. While in prison he
was stricken with consumption. His father, "an elderly man,
looks tinged with that peculiar gray which denotes that

mental grief has hastened the mark of time, eyes downcast,

countenance ridged with those heavy wrinkles and furrows

 

2The line between humor and tragedy is a fine one,
both genres having many of the same elements simply presented
differently or in different contexts. Many of the nineteenth
century humorists, Lewis included, produced melancholy,
overly sentimental sketches at the same time as they were
producing their broadest comedy.

65

that burdens of care and sorrow, more than age, place there,"
visited the legislature to seek his son's release. As Lewis
described the case: "An inmate of a felon's cell, a viper at
his Vitals, cast out by all but his kindred, he felt that he
must go home to die." Lewis got rather carried away with his
prose, but the story had a more or less happy ending. The
man was pardoned--the first pardon to be issued by Governor
Henry P. Baldwin. And Lewis had himself an excellent
"item."3

The entire question of the little man and the penal
system provided Lewis with a continuing story throughout
both sessions of the legislature. The story began in 1869
with an account of a man who had been imprisoned for, as
Lewis described it, "a murder that he never even had read
of prior to his arrest for the horrible crime." Lewis re-
ported on February 16 that the man, Edward Murphy, had
appeared before a legislative committee and was the subject
of a resolution to recompense him for his false imprison-
ment. The brief item formed the lead of Lewis's legislative
story that day.

Murphy's name was not mentioned again until the last
day of the session. The manner in which the case was handled
drew a bitter reaction from Lewis. At four-thirty in the

afternoon of the final day, he reported, a joint resolution

 

3See Appendix E for the complete text.

66

was presented in the house which would have required the
state to pay Murphy three hundred dollars as soon as the
resolution passed and two hundred and fifty dollars every
subsequent January 1 until the resolution was repealed.
Lewis wrote:

It had passed the Senate, but before any action could

be taken by the House on the report of the committee,

members commenced shoving in resolutions of thanks to

the firemen and messenger boys, and one member had a

State Swamp Land Road bill to pull through, and so

Edward Murphy was left lying on the table. Nobody

cared to assist his case; Murphy had no rich friends

to come up here, and consequently no "enthusiasm"

could be started. If he had lobbied to the amount

of $10, his case would have been made a special order.

On January 12, 1871, Lewis reported that the Reformed

Dutch Church of Muskegon had introduced a memorial into the
legislature seeking to have a law enacted making the crime
of murder punishable by the death penalty.4 He reported
the item without personal comment. But later in the same
story he devoted a long paragraph to a retelling of Murphy's
case. Although he never mentioned Murphy by name in the
account, he said he was back to try again. "The case is
certainly a remarkable one," Lewis wrote, "and I have no
doubt that money will be voted toward some less worthy
objects than compensating a citizen for several years' close

confinement given him through mistake." He then referred to

the memorial mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

 

4There was no law in Michigan providing for capital
punishment.

67

This very case seems to be one of the strongest proofs
in the world why the prayer of the petitioners should
not be granted. Had the gallows been the doom of the
prisoner, he would have been swung off, and his corpse
mouldered to dust, before the proofs came which declared
him innocent.
A few days later Lewis reported the introduction of a peti-
tion, apparently from the same church, to make the crime of
murder punishable by hanging. He said other such petitions
had been introduced and apparently the members of the com-
mittee to which such petitions were referred were favorable
to such a bill if the prisoner were given a choice between
hanging and life in prison. "They believe it a matter of
considerable importance to the criminal himself," Lewis
added wryly, "whether he shall be hung or shut up, and are
willing to give him Hobson's choice about it." Lewis's
personal ideas were starting to Show: he was a backer of

the little man and he opposed capital punishment.

In early February, according to a Free Press story

 

that apparently was not written by Lewis, the Joint Com-
mittee on Penal and Reformation Institutions visited the
Detroit House of Correction. One of the main ideas of the
committee, according to the story, was "the organization of
an intermediate prison--something that [was] neither a reform
school nor a penitentiary--where persons convicted of mis-
demeanors and the lighter felonies, persons whose reformation
might possibly be effected without the severest and most dis-

graceful punishment, [could] be confined." The story also

68

said that the committee was considering "indeterminate sen-
tences," i.e., a system whereby instead of being sentenced
to prison-for a specific period of time a prisoner would be
incarcerated until a "board of guardians" determined that
he was ready to be returned to society.5
On February 11 Lewis reported from Lansing that the
Murphy case was "to be taken as a precedent for a bill which
[would] secure recompense and indemnification to all innocent
persons hereafter unjustly imprisoned." He said he didn't
know the details, but he knew the bill was being drafted.
Later that month Lewis devoted a long section in one of his
legislative stories to a full account of Murphy's case from
the murder in 1851 of a ship owner in Mackinaw Harbor to
Murphy's supposedly false arrest in 1860 until his pardon
a few years later. It was a long and involved story.
Lewis included in his legislative story of February 15

a long paragraph under the sub-headline "Capital Punishment."
He began with a rather sarcastic description of the sensa-
tion that one is said to experience while being hanged.
Then he added:

There is very little profit in hanging a criminal. He

may leave some mementoes that will sell for something,

or a confession that will net the publisher enough for

a suit of clothes. But, as a general thing, the crimi-

nal can't be afterwards contracted out to make wagons,

pitchforks or cigars, and is looked upon as a dead
loss. All of which is a prelude to saying that the

 

5"House of Corrections," Detroit Free Press, Feb. 3:
1871. p- 1-

69

committee to whom the various petitions have been

referred on the subject of capital punishment will,

in time, report a bill, but recommend that it do not

pass, and the bill will be laid upon the table to

come up nevermore during this session.
In the same story Lewis reported that a bill would be intro-
duced which would give to the prisoners themselves a certain
amount of the money that was earned by the sale of products
made by the prisoners. The money would go to them to send
home to their families. "There is not only charity toward
a fellow being in the idea," Lewis said, "but there is
humanity toward his innocent relatives in the measure." He
also reported that failing to get a bill to enact capital
punishment "without modification," some people were attempt-
ing to get a bill that would give judges the power to order
a man either jailed or hanged if his sentence exceeded
twenty years. Lewis said if such power were given to judges
"hanging [would] be as scarce as now."

Although Lewis had not specifically mentioned it in
his story, a bill to establish a system of indeterminate
sentences had been introduced in.the legislature. The bill
'would have allowed a prisoner to be returned to society when
there appeared to the board of guardians "a strong or rea-
sonable probability that any ward [possessed] a sincere

purpose to become a good citizen, and the requisite moral

power and self control to live at liberty without violating

70

law. . . ."6 On February 16 the Free Press ran a scathing

 

editorial denouncing the bill. It called it "uptopian" and
"impracticable" and said it was "one of the greatest out-
rages ever attempted to be perpetrated on therpeople."7

Lewis himself had not yet referred specifically to
the indeterminate sentence concept, so it is impossible to
say what his views were prior to this editorial. Considering
his views on capital punishment and the idea of allowing
prisoners to keep a certain amount of the money they earned
for the prison, however, he would have favored indeterminate
sentences, it seems logical to assume. But for some reason
after the appearance of the editorial, Lewis's legislative
stories contained no more items relating to capital punish-
ment or to prison reform. Even his outspoken views on the
Murphy case appear to have been tempered somewhat. He wrote
four subsequent stories that were more or less critical of
the indeterminate sentence bill, but the stories were not
written with Lewis's usual flair for verbal attack.

The first story, on February 21, was brief and not
very expressive of Lewis's own feelings. He said two even-
ings had been set aside by the legislature to hear lectures
by proponents of indeterminate sentences. Lewis said it

‘would take a lot of work to convince the legislature to

 

6Quoted in Detroit Free Press, Feb. 16, 1871, p. 2.

7Ibid., p. 2.

71

adopt such a policy. "Dozens scout the idea as absurd," he
wrote, "where one has an idea that 'it mighE possibly' reform
the offending."

The next day Lewis included a longer item in his
legislative story on the same subject. He said the bill was
known as the "soft soap bill" and that there was "not the
shadow of a hOpe that the bill [would] receive more than
enough votes to compliment the industry of the gentleman
who wasted the midnight oil in drafting it." He said one
representative had already drawn up a bill providing that
"an angel from Heaven [should] be chairman of the reformatory
committee." Then he added:

Not that he or any one else believes that there is no
reform for one who has sinned, but because it has come

to be generally understood that punishment for crime
should not be entirely done away with.

 

A week later, on March 1, Lewis included a longer
item on the bill in which he explained it away as a "vision-
ary scheme" that no more than two or three people in the
state had ever taken seriously. He said if for some reason
the senate and house should both pass the bill it would
stand a strong chance of being vetoed by the governor. The
tone of the story was the same as that of the critical edito-
rial, only not quite so harsh. On March 19 Lewis reported
that the bill had been defeated in the house. He referred
to the bill as the "scheme to amend the morals of offenders

by making them the wards of demagogues." But he ended his

72

story on a note which, if taken seriously, had a poignant
ring to it. "The only consolation is that which a writer has
when his manuscript comes back rejected," he said, "a feeling
that the writer is so far ahead of the age that the public
cannot appreciate him." Perhaps Lewis had favored the bill
after all. Or perhaps he was just being sarcastic.

While the indeterminate sentence bill was being
defeated, Murphy's case was still pending. But either the
case was beginning to appear less clear cut than it had
originally, or Lewis's attitude was beginning to change
slightly. On February 24 he wrote that it was beginning to
look doubtful that the case would be decided. He said the
investigating committee had not found any papers or persons
favorable to Murphy and that even the papers that had caused
the governor to issue the pardon were not available. "If the
man has any friends," Lewis wrote, "they had better bestir
themselves, if they hOpe to get his claim properly before
this body."

It was a month before Lewis mentioned Murphy again,
and the story showed a clear change in attitude. He reported
on March 25 that another case similar to Murphy's had been
brought before the legislature, and that the man involved
had asked for relief. But Lewis said if he wanted "pecuniary
remuneration" he wouldn't get it because the legislature
‘would not vote any more money to anyone unless it was asked

for by state institutions. To do so, he said, would "open

73

the door to let in half a dozen other and similar cases."
He said a committee report on Murphy would be made the fol-
lowing week but that it would either be unfavorable or would
be given without recommendation. He said about twenty-five
affidavits relating to the case had been found but that they
all had been prepared especially to win the case. He said
former Governor Henry Crapo, who was by this time dead, had
been heard to say he felt he "had been victimized" in his
pardoning of Murphy. Lewis wrote figi§_to the Murphy case
in a paragraph that sounded different from anything he had
had to say about the case previously.
It would seem as if an innocent person should be
in some way remunerated for the mistake of judges and
jurors, but, in most cases, the pardoned person should
feel that getting pardoned out at all was worth a
round sum, for it is only now and then that an innocent
person sent to State Prison can establish the fact that
he is unlawfully incarcerated.
Lewis had no more to say about Murphy. If the committee
report was ever given, Lewis did not report it. Something
obviously had changed his mind. He could have become con-
vinced that Murphy wasn't innocent after all, or that if his
case should set a precedent the state would be innundated
with other cases, most of which would not be legitimate.
His editors could have put some pressure on him over his gen-
erally liberal attitudes toward capital punishment and penal
system reform. Whatever the reasons for dropping Murphy so

suddenly, the "little man" and the attempts at reforming the

penal system had provided Lewis with some of his best "items."

CHAPTER VI

JUST FOR FUN

Much of the material that Lewis included in his
stories from Lansing had little if anything to do with legis-
lative matters. Occasionally, particularly during periods
of recess, he would file stories that were not supposed to
be legislative news. These stories concerned events in the
Lansing area that, for one reason or another, Lewis chose to
write about. While the legislature was in session he occa-
sionally would include in his legislative stories paragraphs
of non-legislative news dealing with such subjects as acci-
dental deaths, interesting court cases, or weather news.

But there were few legitimate news items of this type in-
cluded in the legislative stories. Simply covering the
activities of the legislature must have kept him sufficiently
busy without attempting to cover general news of Lansing.

The legislative stories did, however, include a
considerable amount of non-news material: character sketches,
personal observations about various topics, and brief humor-
ous essays. It is impossible to tell whether most of this
material was based on fact or was the product of Lewis's

imagination. Some of it seems to have been pure fantasy;

74

75

some of it may have been true--factual reporting of a
humorous or unusual event. Whichever the case, it is in
the extraneous articles and paragraphs that the beginnings
of Lewis's humorous style can be seen most clearly.

A common form of the humor of the day was the pun.
Typically, to call the reader's attention to the joke and to
proclaim it as intentional, puns were italicized. Lewis
sprinkled a few of them throughout his legislative stories,
mostly in 1869, and most of them were bad--even for puns.

A debate over whether to hire a stenographer for a Wayne
County court prompted Lewis to observe: "Some lgng_winded
members, who could not write ghQEt-hand, thought good
stenographers could be had at $3 per day." And in the same
story he included a sort of a pseudo-pun: "A paper mill is
about the only subject excited, but that has only been
erected 92 paper, as yet." During the legislative excursion
of 1869, Lewis reported on a party at which a series of
toasts was offered. One of the toasts was to "the press,"
and it was responded to by Senator Edward G. Morton of
Monroe, himself a newspaperman. But, Lewis noted, "time
pressed, and he had no time to talk."

Occasionally the humor took the form of a wisecrack.
Near the end of the 1869 session, Lewis reported that the
secretary of the senate had been presented a "handsome gold

watch chain" by the members. "The gift was well meant,"

76

Lewis wrote, "but it's like presenting a curry-comb to a
man and asking him to buy a horse to use it on."

Between sessions, in 1870, Lewis had begun experi-
menting with some forms of visual humor. He had started
writing a daily account of the activities of the police
court in Detroit and had developed a style in which the last
few words of a paragraph or poem would be set in small capi-
tal letters on a separate line, thus forming a sub-headline
that read out of the previous paragraph and introduced the
one following. The technique was well handled and was ef-
fective in the police court stories. He tried it again in
one of his legislative stories near the end of the 1871
session, but it didn't work. The material of the stories
didn't lend itself to such gimmickry.

Another visual device worked a little better in the
legislative stories, albeit not much better. The governor
addressed the legislature at the beginning of each session
and his speeches were translated into Dutch and some other
languages.1 In February, 1871, Lewis reported that he had
been studying a copy of the Dutch translation of the speech
and was "much surprised" to see that the translator had
changed some of it.

For instance, where his Excellency recommends an

apprOpriation for a chemical laboratory at the Agri-
cultural College the pamphlet says that

 

1"From Lansing," Detroit Free Press, Feb. 12, 1371:

 

77

"De grevraagde prijis wordt door deskungigen als
zeer redehjk beschouwd."

And, as if that wasn't enough, it adds . . . .
He then gave two more quotations in Dutch and continued to
talk about the "changes." The humor, of course, was that
neither Lewis nor his readers--most of them anyway--had the
slightest idea what the translation said. But it was the
type of humor that had to be printed-~it wouldn't work
orally.

Lewis had a fascination for unusual names. The man
who would later produce such characters as Giveadam Jones
and Elder Toots may have developed this interest while
writing his Central Station Court series. Names played a
big part in the humor of that series, which he began in
1870. He showed a marked interest in names in his 1871
legislative stories, but the interest had not been so ap~
parent in 1869. Just after the senatorial election in 1871,
in which the candidates were Austin Blair and T. W. Ferry,
Lewis wrote that he hoped no boy baby had been born in
Lansing during the previous few days. "If such ii the
case," he wrote, "he's a 'Blair' or a 'Ferry' sure, and must
go struggling through life under the grievous burden of the
cognomen."

Three times during the 1871 session Lewis referred
to unusual place names in Michigan. The first reference was

in one of those items that had nothing to do with legisla-

tive matters, but made interesting reading. "It looks

78

barbarous," he wrote on January 22, "whether it is or not,
to read, in Bret Harte's poems, or in a California publica-
tion, that some one was murdered at 'Gouge Eye Gulch,‘ or
that a thief was hung at 'Dead Man's Corners.'" But he said
some equally notorious names could be found in some northern
counties of Michigan. He then included a long list of names
such as Bad Ax, Pine Stump Corners, Snake Valley, Dead
Sailor's Point, Dirk Knife Flats, Gallows Hill, Cutthroat
Creek, etc. Near the end of the session, in an item about
the newly-released census figures, Lewis included a para-
graph that began: "Among the townships having odd names

are . . . ." He then listed forty-two names of townships,
including Gore, Texas, Sleeping Bear, and Raisin.

Earlier he had devoted a long portion of one of his
stories to a rather minor bill because he was intrigued
with an unusual name. His lead on the item began:

'Tell me of the legend of C1amunion,‘ I asked of a

Western county member the other day, and, after we had
filled our pockets with apples, proceeded down cellar
to the furnace, and [had] driven the firemen off their
seats, he began to inform me of the cause of the out-
rageous name which appears in a certain bill 'To or-
ganize the Township of Clamunion, in the unorganized
County of Missaukee.‘

Lewis told the complicated story of how the name came to

be chosen--a story that involved a stream named Clam Creek

and a group of veterans who had fond memories of the union

before the war. In telling the story Lewis brought in more

 

21bid.

79

humorous names--Red Dog Corners, Dead Horse Ditch, and
others. The story may or may-not have been true, but Lewis
seems to have had a great deal of fun in telling it.

He included in one of his legislative stories a
still longer tale that probably was fiction. It was a
story about a widow named "Clemmer" and her ten-year-old
son, "Marky." Widow Clemmer-wanted to change Marky's name
to something more "high sounding," and, so the story went,
she had been directed to Lewis as one who could help her.
After suggesting names for fifteen minutes, all of which
were unsuitable to the woman, Lewis suggested that the boy
take his name, which he told her was "Mikadoraorariggige-
linker." The woman realized he was making fun of her and
she stormed out of his office. Lewis ended the anecdote

with a profession of innocence:

I hadn't the least idea of offending the lady.
There's no knowing how soon any of us may be left a
widow with one son, but I really wanted to encourage
the boy in starting out right in the world.

The story was well written and was remarkebly similar to
the type of sketch Lewis would later produce for his humor

4 I I I O I
columns. Lew1s's legislative stories conta1ned several

 

31bid., Jan. 15, 1871, p. 1.

4A case could be made for calling the tale "social
satire," but it seems more likely that Lewis used it as
:nothing more than a funny story. The line between simple
Innnor and more sophisticated satire is a fine one, and
Lewis was basically a humorist, not a satirist.

80

sketches or tales of this type. Some of the stories may
have been based in fact; some may have been fiction. Some
of them, such as "The Easy Man," were vehicles that Lewis
employed to convey his satirical views. Others, such as the
one above, seem to have been merely entertainment. The rest
fell somewhere between these two extremes.

Whatever their purpose, and whether their basis was
in fact or in fancy, the sketches tended to fall into three
broad and indistinct categories. Not infrequently a sketch
would fit in more than one category, or the categories
themselves would overlap. The first category, and probably
the most significant as far as Lewis's development as a
humOrist is concerned, was that of the character sketch.

It was Lewis's ability to create many different types of
humorous characters that helped him achieve fame as a humor-
ist. In the sketches included in the legislative stories,
the characters were not necessarily fully developed. Indeed,
like the porter whose ventilation system was supposed to
take the wind out of the speakers, they may only have re-
ceived passing mention from time to time; but they were pre-
sented in such a way that the reader saw them as real people.
On the other hand they were occasionally, like "The Easy

Man" and "My Rural Friend,"5 rather carefully portrayed,

 

5See Appendix F.

81

considering the time and space Lewis had available to him
and the fact that he was supposed to be reporting legisla-
tive news, not writing humorous sketches.

Another category, which was really a sub-category
of the character sketch, was made up of sketches dealing
with peddlers or agents. The separate category is used
because the agent, the forerunner of the traveling salesman
and the descendent of the yankee peddler, was a common
subject of other humorists of the nineteenth century.

The third category contains sketches that did not
necessarily deal with individuals. People sometimes were
included in them, but they were not drawn as recognizable
types, and the nature of the individual was not as impor-
tant as the events in which he was involved.

In both 1869 and 1871 Lewis included in his stories
sketches about rural people coming to visit the legislature.
A sketch written in 1869 concerned a man from Gratiot
County who came to town to see the "Legislaychure" and left
about a week later after being "taken" by some gamblers.6
It was a humorous little item, but was not so well-written
or as carefully drawn as some later ones. In a sketch
written in 1871 Lewis told of a rural family who appeared
in the house during a debate over a contested seat. They

stayed all day long, through lunch and dinner hours, until

 

6See Appendix F.

82

the case was decided at eight o'clock that night. All the
while the man was "lively as a bug," paying rapt attention.
When the case was decided Lewis approached the man and asked
him if the decision went to suit him.

'Wall can't say,‘ replied the man, brightening up,
'because I didn't exactly get to know what they were
talking about. But I was bound to see 'er through, if
it took till daylight.‘

That story may have been true, or at least based in fact.
At any rate it was well written and interesting.7

During the legislative excursion of 1869, Lewis in-
cluded a humorous sketch about "a friend" who had drunk too
much champagne. The man had gone to his room to put on a
clean "French yoke" but by mistake had gotten hold of a
piece of feminine attire and "was carrying on like a lunatic
because the laundress had forgotten to starch the bosom to
the proper stiffness!" The friend in the sketch bore a
startling resemblance to Mr. Bowser, the harried husband who
would become one of Lewis's most popular humorous characters
in later years.

In 1871 Lewis attempted something that seems not to

have worked very well, although it isn't clear exactly what
he was trying to do. Early in the session, on January 10,

he reported that he had met his "enemy," who refused to make

peace with him on any terms. He didn't elaborate on that

 

7See Appendix G.

83

statement; but he added that he had also met his "affinity."
He said the man was a member of the house and
I am going to call him Chain Lightning. I have named
him thus because he is the most genial, lazy, good
natured man in the world, and never bothers himself with
more than one care--to get his meals on time. When he
sits down.he dro 3 like a bag of shot, and when he says
anything he puts a period after each word. He says
he's going to have a good time here this winter, and
I'll bet no other man will get the chance to move an
adjournment or recess when my old friend is present.
He's going to be a big fund of information to me this
winter.
Throughout the rest of the session "Chain Ligntning" appeared
frequently in Lewis's stories. He was usually being quoted
in some innocuous way, or was supposedly proposing a humor-
ous speech or bit of legislation, such as a "a.bill to en-
courage raising oysters in this State." Only once was he
quoted at any length and that was near the end of the session
when he supposedly made a speech more or less in support of
a bill authorizing the state to turn over the dead bodies
of paupers to the University of Michigan Medical School.
Lewis said "Chain Lightning" had written out his speech in
advance, "knowing that the reporter would want it."‘ His
speech sounded as though it had been written by Lewis him-
self. He said that after death it would be nice to be
buried in a nice clean grave with posies blooming over it,
but he wouldn't know about it and if his body would add to
the knowledge of the world he wouldn't mind giving it to

8Detroit Free Press, Jan. 10, 187l,'p. l.

84

science. It wasn't really a good speech from either a
humorous or a serious point of view. After Lewis's report
of that speech, "Chain Lightning" disappeared from the
stories. It seems as though Lewis had plans for the charac-
ter that never fully developed. Or it may all have been
part of an inside joke between Lewis and whoever served as
the model for "Chain Lightning."

During this session Lewis reported personal encounters
with four different agents, each seeking Lewis's assistance
in getting his product purchased by the state or by members
of the legislature. In almost all the cases Lewis adopted
the role of an innocent bumbler who, in attempting to help
the agent, succeeded in guaranteeing that his products would
have no sale at all. The accounts took the form of short
essays, written in such a way that the reader realized it
was all a put-on, Lewis deliberately defeating the agent's
purpose while professing extreme naivete.

Late in January he reported that he was approached
by a man with a package under his arm and, thinking the
package was some sort of gift for him, Lewis let the man
talk. Then the man revealed that the package was a machine
for making gas which he wanted to sell to the state to be
used in the legislative chambers for lighting. "I told him
I didn't take any interest in it," Lewis reported, "but he

‘went down and bought the cigars, procured a sleigh to take

85

me home to dinner, and I at last agreed to help him get a
resolution through the Senate to allow him to light that
chamber with his new kind of gas."

Lewis said he spoke to all the senators in person
with the result that they voted down the new gas. Later
Lewis said he found another box of cigars on his table with
a note from the agent asking him not to speak to members of
the house in behalf of the invention. "However, I will,"
Lewis wrote. "I think it's the best thing I ever saw, and
if I knew the name of it, or how it works, or the agent's
name, or the company manufacturing it, I should send them
my written certificate as to its virtues."

A month later Lewis added a mysterious footnote to
this story. On March 1 he reported that a stranger named
Tyrell, who had come to the area two weeks earlier and had
gone to work for a farmer, had been found dead in his room,
apparently from an overdose of laudanum or opium. "His
papers show that he came here from Chicago," Lewis wrote,
"and a pawn ticket for a silver watch was among his personal
effects." A week later Lewis reported that the man had
turned out to be the gas agent. Lewis ended the item with
a not particularly funny attempt at humor.

Discouraged at the obstinacy of [the senate[ and not
half believing in the good qualities of the improvement

he agented, he retired from the city, became disgusted
with the world, and stepped out of it during a lonely

86

night, leaving his situation open to the next. The
incident should be taken as a warning by all other
persons who design to bother this body.
Shortly after his encounter with the gas peddler,
Lewis reported that another agent was present trying to sell
the legislators some new kind of ventilator system. Lewis
said he was not successful. About the same time Lewis en-
countered what he called in a sub-headline "A Delicate
Situation." He was accosted by a female Bible-seller. She
wanted Lewis's opinion as to whether she should remain in
Lansing an extra day to try to sell her Bibles to members
of the legislature. He passed up the opportunity for a
practical joke, but he told why in his story.
Now, I had sat with the legislative body four weeks,
knew every man of them, and could tell her exactly.
But, here she was, on expense, anxious to proceed to
the next town, and, after a long struggle as to whether
I should tell her my honest sentiments, or see her go
to two or three dollars additional expense, victory at
last rested with conscience, and she took the first
train out of town.
Lewis said he didn't mean that the legislators were not
religious, but, he added with tongue in cheek, he knew that
every member of the body already had a Bible and wouldn't
want another one. If the woman had been a man, Lewis ad-
mitted, he would have encouraged him to stay and "he'd

probably have left Lansing feeling that he only wanted the

one consolation of punching my head."

¥

91bid., March 7, 1871, p. 1.

101bid., Feb. 8, 1871, p. 1.

87

Lewis "got" another agent in a subtle way. Under
the sub-headline "A Puff" he wrote"

The reader will notice how splendidly these letters
stand out in bold relief against the white background,
and how correctly every word is spelled. This is the
result of a new kind of pencil which an agent is here
to introduce. He desired me to try one in writing this
letter, and, if satisfied, to give him a fifty dollar
"puff" in exchange. I would accordingly say that it's
the best pencil I ever saw, and hope that everyone using
pencils will buy of him. 1

Besides the obvious sarcasm, Lewis "forgot" to mention either
the name of the agent or the brand of his pencil.

In addition to these sketches, many of which probably
were embroidered by Lewis's pen, he included in his legis-
lative stories other sketches that probably were factual,
but still were amusing. Just about all of the sketches of
this type appeared in 1871, after his writing style had

matured.12

They ranged from a slightly humorous account,
touched with cynicism, of how Washington's birthday was
almost ignored in Lansing to a tall tale about a senator
who was having meal problems at his boarding house. Under-
statement was often the key to the humor of these sketches.
Lewis's best use of understatement was in a story he told

about a man who approached a senator in the chambers and

asked for a private word with him. He led the senator

 

11Ibid., Feb. 17, 1871, p. 1.

12Some of these sketches are reproduced in Appen-
dices H through K.

88

outside the building, got as far as the gate, and was trying
to get the legislator to walk with him to his hotel before
the senator ordered him to state his business. According

to Lewis the man looked at the senator and said:

Well, you see, I'm a stranger here, looking 'round

a bit, and I wanted to ask you a fair question. I
hain't seen a well day in fourteen weeks; look at them
hands (holding them up), and see the fur on my tongue
(sticking it out.) Them's the result of ager, them is,
and now I want you to tell me, 'pon honor, whether you
think this mineral water will help me any.

Lewis ended the story with the observation that "Some people

may think that the Senator didn't make any reply, but he

did."

These miscellaneous sketches gave Lewis a chance to
practice his ability to write brief, humorous anecdotes
while "informing" his readers of some of the lighter inci-
dents that he witnessed. The miscellaneous sketches, com-
bined with the character sketches, were the beginnings of
Lewis's real work as a humorist. When, not so many years
later, the names of M. Quad and the humorous characters he
created became commonly known in Michigan and the nation,

the sketches and the characters would not be much different

from those that he produced as a legislative correspondent.

 

13Detroit Free Press, Feb. 26, 1871, p. l.

 

CHAPTER VII

TRIALS AND ERRORS

Since no autobiographical material about Lewis has
been found, and the veracity of much of the biographical
material is questionable, his career can best be traced
through his writings. Although his legislative stories do
not reveal too much of a personal nature, they are helpful
in piecing together his development as a writer and reporter.
In one of the earliest stories, Lewis commented on what must
have been a very real problem for him. "Known as a Demo-
crat, and representing the leading Democratic organ of the
state," he wrote, "of course there is not much of a EEEE of
the Republican members to inform me of the various little
wires pulled on [Chandler's] re-nomination, but one oc-
casionally stumbles on a 'wire' by accident." Yes, a
Democratic reporter going it alone in the Radical Republi-
can legislature, outnumbered by competing reporters from
Republican newspapers, could have expected problems.

Lewis seemed to have been less sure of himself, and
just a little more careless with his facts, during the 1869
seession than he was two years later. The first time he

ixientified a legislator by name and party, he got the party

89

90

wrong. On February 19, 1969, he reported that "Mr. Harris,
of Wayne (Rep.) . . ." had made a statement about state ex-
penditures. Two days later he corrected what must have
been an embarrasing error.~ Under the sub-headline "Erratum,"
in the middle of the regular legislative story, Lewis wrote:
Between the compositor and myself, Mr. Harris of
Wayne,. was yesterday reported as a Republican. He
don't 'train in that company,‘ but, on the contrary, is
one of the staunchest and ablest of our minority, al-
ways lending his voice and influence in favor of economy
and reform in the public expense, and bitterly opposing
any matter that looks like a swindle on the hard-working
tax-payers. Would that we had a majority composed of
just such unflinching economists as he.
If Lewis went overboard in correcting the mistake, there may
have been some good reasons for it. A Democratic reporter
should have known all of the representatives of his own
minority party, and especially those from the county in which
his newspaper was published. Lewis himself apparently did
not and had not lived in Detroit at this time; he was still
a resident of Lansing. But that was no excuse for a Free
Press reporter not to know the politics of the Wayne County
representatives. The dividing of the blame between himself
and the compositor could be interpreted either as a mangani—
mous genture on his part if the error were really the fault
of the compositor, or as a rather underhanded move if the
fault were all his own. But the real reason he devoted so

much space to correcting the error probably had something to

do with the fact that he was at that time involved in a

91

heated feud with the Adyertiser & Tribune. The feud was the

 

outgrowth of another apparent mistake on Lewis's part a few
days earlier.

On February 14 his regular legislative story was
preceded by a long list of notaries public who had been
confirmed by the senate. Such lists were routine, an earlier
one having run in January. Other such lists would be pub-
lished throughout the rest of the 1869 session and through
all of the 1871 session. Why the lists were considered so
important is not too clear, except that appointment as a
notary public was one way of making money during a period
when jobs were not too readily available. The newspapers
probably were the first sources by which candidates learned
that their appointments had been confirmed. In any event
Lewis got "scooped" on the list by the rival of the SEES

Press, the Republican Advertiser & Tribune.

 

On Tuesday, February 16, after opening his story
with some routine items, Lewis included the following para-
graph under the sub-headline, "A Contemptible Act":

It was of course known to the several reporters
that a large number of notaries would be confirmed on
Friday. This confirming can only be done by the Senate,
in executive session, the list not even being given to
the clerk until such time arrives--being retained by
the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This gentle-
man, Mr. Williams, refused several papers the list, and
such action was very proper, until the executive session
had acted upon it; but the Private Secretary of the
Governor, Mr. Russell, was more liberal. He let the
Advertiser & Tribune have the list at least ten days

 

92

previous to its being acted upon by the Senate, so that
a private telegram could set the names in print one day
in advance of competitors. When the names were being
put in type in the office of the Advertiser & Tribune,
they had not even been confirmed, and half ofithe list
was liable to have been stricken out.

 

Lewis may actually have been indignant over what he

believed was an unethical act on the part of the governor's

secretary and the reporter for the Advertiser & Tribune.

 

But the tone of his paragraph, and subsequent developments,

make it seem more likely that he was simply a reporter who

had been scooped and was trying to explain to his editor

how it had happened by shifting the blame.

The following day the Advertiser & Tribune answered

 

Lewis's charges in a brief but caustic paragraph on page one.

SILLY FALSEHOOD-—We have not the distinguished
honor or pleasure of the acquaintance of the Lansing
reporter of the Free Press, but he must be a near rela-
tive to a jackass, if not the actual owner of long ears.
In yesterday's edition he stated that the Private Secre-
tary of the Governor furnished the ADVERTISER AND TRI-
BUNE the last list of Notaries ten days before they
were sent into the Senate for confirmation. The state-
ment is a pure fabrication. He did not furnish the list
ten days nor one day before they were sent in. They
did not reach us until the evening of the day of their
confirmation, and had the reporter of the Free Press
been awake enough to get the wax out of his eyes, he
couldlhave copied them and had them in here by the same
mail.

 

 

This was too much for Lewis. In addition to calling

him a liar and a jackass, the article made him look inept as

a reporter. And if, as seems likely, his editor was unhappy

with him for allowing himself to be scooped on a routine

list, then he had to do some more explaining.

 

lDetroit Advertiser & Tribune, Feb. 17, 1869, p. l.

 

93

His next blast appeared in his legislative story on
February 19 under the sub-headline, "How a Radical Reporter
Lied." Lewis said that the governor's secretary explained
that two lists of the notaries had been made. He said that
on Thursday night before the Friday on which the names were

confirmed, the Advertiser & Tribune reporter had asked

 

permission to make an advance copy of the list and was re-
fused. But finally, Lewis continued to quote Russell, the
reporter was told he might make the copy "provided, SET
pressly, that all the other reporters should have the privi~
ledge of copying at the same time. . . ." Lewis said his
rival lied by telling the other reporters that they could
not get an advance COpy, then went ahead and made his copy

in advance. Lewis said he and a Detroit Post reporter got

 

a copy of the list on Friday and sat up nearly all night
making copies of it ". . . and, moreover, believing that the

Advertiser and Tribune reporter was ill, alSo made him a

 

copy." That part of the incident.muSt have infuriated Lewis.
He concluded:

Before we had our copies mailed, the "live" reporter
had his in rint. The epithet of "jackass" used in the
article yesterday will as well suit other shoulders, as
the list of the Advertiser and Tribune was so grossly
incorrect, and so thoroughly muddled, as to receive not
only the censure of scores of members, but of the Govenor
himself; while but two names, of the whole 1,400 pub-
lished in THE FREE PRESS, were even incorrectly spelled.

If the writer of yesterday's article "has not the
distinguished honor of my acquaintance," it is perhaps
altogether better for me. Your compositor made me say
Egg days, where it shoGId have read 922, This will

 

94

partially exonerate Mr. Russell and satisfy the Adver-
tiser and Tribune that its weekly column of "Religious"
does not assist its reporters to get advance copies of
matters of general interest.

 

In a grudging way Lewis was admitting he was wrong
about the governor's secretary and was apologizing to him.
He also admitted, although he blamed it on the compositor,
that the "ten days" was an erroneous statement. The tone
still seemed to be that of an explanation aimed at his edi-
tors more than anything else. Certainly such matters could
not have been of particular interest to the general public.

The Advertiser & Tribune ended the feud on February

 

22 with a witheringly sarcastic blast at Lewis under the

headline, "Dies Irae."3

Wh-oo-o-s-h! 'Angels and ministers of grace defend
us!‘ The Free Press correspondent, having devoted him-
self with considerable fervor to the business of mis-
representing the Governor's Private Secretary, has now
turned his attention to me, and abuses me with a savage
heartiness and good will, that, rather commands my
attention.

The reporter said he had no doubt that he and Lewis could get
a lively fight going but since the matter was of no interest
to the public he would drop it with a general denial of all

the charges. He said he was grateful that Lewis had confined

his charges to "lying and stealing, and did not_include

 

2Detroit Free Press, Feb. 19, 1869, p. l.

3"Dies Irae" is Latin for "day of wrath," and is the
title of a Latin hymn on the Day of Judgment, sung in requiem
Imasses in the Roman Catholic Church.

 

95

murder and treason and other like offenses against the deca-
logue and the state law." His sharp sarcasm made Lewis look
silly, yet he did not specifically deny any of Lewis's state-
ments. Lewis's second account of the incident was probably
close to the truth. If so, professional ethics notwith-
standing, it became simply a case of Lewis having been scooped
and trying to talk his way out of it.

Shortly after the affair with the notaries Lewis
blundered again, although the mistake doesn't appear to have
been a major one. He identified the wrong legislator in a
story and, two days later, corrected the mistake.

By 1871 Lewis, now 29 years old, seemed to be more
sure of himself both as a writer and as a reporter. He had

been with the Free Press for two years. He had begun a

 

fairly regular column in the paper, "M. Quad's Epistle,"

and "An Hour at the Central Station Court" had been a daily
feature until he returned to Lansing in January, 1871. If
he had been nervous about making good in 1869, he probably
was no longer troubled by that particular worry. But at

the same time he seemed to be a bit more cautious with facts
than he had been earlier.

Shortly after the senatorial election of 1871, Lewis
reported that he had tried to interview the losers "but with
meager results." He said they were in a hurry and he had
forgotten his pencil, but he listed three quotations from

the men that he said he thought were correct. Then he

96

repeated the qualification. "I Ehigk I am right in their
various expressions," he wrote, "but will cheerfully stand
corrected if any of them say so." This didn't sound like
the Lewis who had gotten into a printed shouting match with
his competition two years earlier. A few days later he again
hedged slightly after quoting some facts. He reported that
the amount of money requested by the various state agencies
amounted to $684,150 and that the last time he had checked
the state treasury contained $458,307.97. But, apparently
still a bit nervous about inaccuracy, he added: "If I have
placed any of the figures too high, they can bear a good deal
of 'trimming' and yet have the appropriations drain the State
Treasury of every cent in it."4
Lewis disliked apologizing or having to admit a

mistake. His reaction in the case of the list of notaries
indicated that. But when he did apologize, he usually had
the last word. About the middle of February, 1871, he said
that he had hurt the feelings of one of the firemen (boiler
or furnace tenders) by writing that they used state reports
instead of pine knots to start the fires. He said he had
to apologize to the offended fireman.

I don't think he has ever used a single pamphlet under

the furnace, or, for a day past, anything else, as the
Hall has been so cold that members have shivered and

4Detroit Free Press, Jan. 13, 1871, p. l.

 

97

"ho-hummed" at a fearful rate, and one of them has

been obliged to resort to an ague cure. If this apology
doesn't satisfy the man, I shall have to think of some
other way.5

Lewis was sounding downright cocky. But he had reason to

be a little brash. He had provided the Free Press, and him-

 

self, with a "beat" that took away any of the stigma that
was left over from the situation with the notaries.

One of the first major events in each of Lewis's
two years as legislative correspondent was the governor's
speech to the legislature. In the speech the governor out-
lined the programs and plans of his administration for the
coming two years. It was an important message. Both years

the Free Press ran the complete text of the speech. In

 

1871 the text of the speech was carried on Thursday, January
5, the day the speech was given in Lansing. The next day,
January 6, Lewis reported in a story datelined January 5
that the governor had delivered his speech at 10:30 that

morning. But, he added, readers of the Free Press would al-

 

ready have seen "an accurate, verbatim copy before the
Governor [had] read the first line." It wag fast work on
Lewis's part. On Sunday, January 8, he explained how he
did it. His story ran on page three under a five-deck

headline:

 

51bid., Feb. 15, 1871, pp. 1,4.

98

A MILE A MINUTE.

 

A Reporter's Ride on a Locomotive.

 

A RACE AGAINST THE TELEGRAPH.

 

How Steam Beat Electricity.

 

AND THE FREE PRESS GOT THE NEWS.

 

The story ran almost one and one-half columns. Lewis ex-
plained that in 1869 the governor had his speech printed
before going to Lansing and that he had left copies in
Detroit where the newspapers could get them. But in 1871
the governor's secretary, Frank Russell (the same one Lewis
had blasted during the controversy over the notaries) had
given copies to the Detroit reporters at three o'clock
Wednesday afternoon, the day before the speech was to be
delivered. Lewis said he went to the telegraph office but
was told it would take ten hours to send the 10,000-word
message. Whether the idea was Lewis's own, or that of some-

one else on the Free Press, is not clear, but, instead of

 

being stymied by the problems of telegraphing the message,
he rushed one-half mile to the railroad station where, after
a bit of confusion, he rented a new locomotive, the North-
ward. Lewis rode the Northward to Jackson, hitting en route
the then unbelievable speed of sixty miles an hour, and made
connections with the Michigan Central fast express that left

Jackson for Detroit at 4:30.

99

Lewis gave his copy of the message to the baggage man to

deliver to the Free Press, and he returned to Lansing aboard

 

his rented locomotive. The story, especially since it was
true, made exciting reading.6 And it made good promotional

material for the Free Press.

 

"A Mile a Minute" may very well have secured Lewis's

position on the Free Press. The story received state-wide

 

attention and apparently was the first of his work to bring
him any significant praise from other newspapers. On
January 10, two days after the story appeared, the Free

Press reported in an editorial that the Advertiser & Tribune

 

was "not pleased with the enterprise exhibited by THE FREE
PRESS in publishing the Governor's message." The editorial

quoted the Advertiser as saying that the Free Press paid

 

 

forty dollars more than the other two papers for a perfect
copy of the speech. But it also quoted its competitor as

saying that the version published by other newspapers con-
tained many "regretted imperfections."

The Free Press frequently ran, on Sundays, a selec-

 

tion of comments about itself taken from other newspapers.
On January 15, the Sunday following publication of Lewis's
story, the paper ran ten such comments under the headline:

"FREE PRESS ENTERPRISE/Commendations of the State Press."

 

6See Appendix L for complete text. A modified ver-
sion of this article appeared later in Lewis's book, "Quad's
Odds."

100

All the comments praised the action of the newspaper in
hiring a locomotive to get the governor's message in print
early. Three of the comments praised the newspaper itself,
four of them praised the Lansing reporter, and three of

them praised "M. Quad" or "Quad" by name. The Owosso Press

 

called Lewis's story "one of the most exciting and thrilling
narratives we have read for many a day."

On January 17 the Free Press reprinted a paragraph

 

from the Albion Recorder, a Republican paper, attacking its
competitor, the Democratic Albion Mirror. The Recorder
said:

The Mirror fills up its outside with THE FREE PRESS
reporter's weIl-written sketch of the enterprise of
that paper in securing an early copy of the message,
even before it was read at the Capitol. Would it not
have been more sensible for the Mirror to have displayed
a little more enterprise and puinshed the message
itself!

To which the Free Press replied:

 

Certainly not. The Mirror showed decided good taste
in the selection of its matter. More persons have read
the reporter's account of his trip from Lansing to
Jackson than have read the message of the governor. It
was better written and attracted far more attention than
did the executive document.

Even allowing for a considerable amount of professional
chauvinism, this was high praise for Lewis. No one recalled
Lewis's comment about the list of notaries and pointed out
that since the message was in type even before it was de-

livered, the governor might have changed some of it at the

last minute.

 

7Detroit Free Press, Jan. 17, 1871, p. 2.

 

101

As late as January 29 the Free Press quoted the

 

Pontiac Bill Poster, which complimented the paper and Lewis

 

and said his story was "having a big run through the papers
of this State."

About this same time Lewis visited the state prison
at Jackson, the asylum for the deaf, mute and blind at Flint,
and the insane asylum at Kalamazoo. A legislative committee
also visited these same institutions and it isn't clear from
Lewis's stories if he went along with the committee or made
the visits by himself. From the tone of the stories, how-
ever, it appears that he made the visits privately. At any
rate, he wrote a long story on each institution; the stories

appeared in the Free Press on February 1, 4 and 5. There

 

was little or no humor in the stories, but they were well
written and they brought Lewis some more state-wide acclaim.

One of the characteristics of the series was that

Lewis was specific and anecdotal in his writing. In the
prison story, he described in detail some of the prisoners,
the cells, the shops. He even visited with a few of the
prisoners from the Detroit area. In his story on the Flint
asylum he showed a remarkable flair for stirring the emotions
of his readers. The story began:

Shut your eyes, and then try to grope your way across
the room or along the street. Stop your ears and then
see what a feeling comes over you--a feeling that you
have been transferred to another sphere, shut in from

the world by a wall so thick that no sound can penetrate.
Think for a moment that you are never to speak again,

102

and see what the sensation is at heart. And now let

me tell you of these children, the poor unfortunate ones
at Flint, who grope about in darkness, shut in from
God's sunshine, who have not the power of speech and
hearing.

In the account of the insane asylum, Lewis avoided
what must have been an obvious impulse for a writer such as
himself; he did not write about the odd characters that he
saw there. When he referred to a few of the inmates he
wrote about them tenderly. "Some of the readers will feel
a disappointment when they have ended the article," he
wrote, "and not found a word about raving maniacs, dark
dungeons, ferocious keepers, clanking chains and blood-
curdling groans." He said that unfortunately there were
places where such things could be seen and heard but that
they were "beyond the pale of humanity, and the newer and
better method [was] fast rooting out the old."9

Lewis's series on the state institutions drew even

heartier praise from other newspapers than had the locomo-

tive story. On February 12 the Free Press once again quoted

 

the Pontiac Bill Poster:

"Quad," of THE FREE PRESS, made over twelve columns
in writing up the State Institutions last week, while
the other Detroit dailies had less than six. Besides,
his letters were full of anecdotes, adventures and

 

81bid., Feb. 4, 1871, p. 1.

91bid., Feb. 5, 1871, p. 3.

103

matters that could not fail to interest every resident
of Michigan. This is the only time we ever saw the
institutions fully written up, and is another proof
that THE FREE PRESS is bound to maintain the inside
track.
The next Sunday, February 19, six other newspapers were
quoted each praising the series. "His reports are so in-
teresting, and so different from the usual style of 'doing'
such things," said the Lansing Herald, "that no person.can
fail to appreciate them." The Owosso Press called the
stories "highly entertaining" and referred to Lewis as "the
indefatigable 'Quad'."ll
Lewis had come a long distance in a short time. In
mid-February, 1869, a fellow journalist had called him a
"jackass" in print; almost exactly two years later he was
receiving state-wide commendations for his work. He was not

yet a figure of national prominence, not yet "the most

quoted American humorist." But he was on his way.

 

loIbid., Feb. 12, 1871, p. 2.

11Ibid., Feb. 19, 1871, p. 2.

EP I LOGUE

It has not been the purpose of this study to analyze
Lewis's writings, nor to attempt to find any cause and effect
relationship between his work as a legislative correspondent
and his later work as a humorist. The sole intent has been
to answer a simple question: how did a man who was to be-
come internationally known as a humorist approach the busi-
ness of writing legislative news? If, in the process of at-
tempting to answer that question, any additional insight has
been given into the more academic area of the development of
attitudes and style, such insight is of secondary rather
than primary importance.

If the man who was M. Quad is worthy of further
study (and it is the Opinion of this writer that he is) the
job will not be an easy task. Unless lewis's personal
papers are found or additional biographical material is
discovered, any study will have to be limited to Lewis's
writings. A significant portion of the writings can be found
only in the neWSpapers and magazines in which they originally
appeared. It is doubtful that any truly complete bibliog-
raphy of Lewis's work could be compiled, even if the

writings in newspapers were not considered. Much research

104

105

was required to assemble the brief and incomplete bibliog-
raphy appended to this study and no attempt was made to
locate and identify articles by Lewis in magazines.

Scholars may question whether one newspaper humorist
such as Charles Bertrand Lewis is worthy of their time, yet
many studies have been made of other humorists contemporary
with Lewis who, while better known to modern readers, were,
in their time, no more popular than he. For the regionalist
interested in Michigan history, Lewis is a significant
figure.

When he was reporting on the legislative excursion
of 1869, Lewis said that members of the press accompanied
the legislators on the trip because "what would an excursion

be without the 'chief' along to 'tak' the notes?"1

For the
student of nineteenth century newspaper humor, it is un-
fortunate that Lewis did not have his own "chief"--a Boswell

to accompany him along his career and "'tak' the notes."

 

1Detroit Free Press, March.2, 1869, p. 4.

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

An Accounpjgf Ingham_Counpy From IE§_Organization, edited
By Frank N. Turner. Vol. III of Historic Michigan:
Land of the Great Lakes, Its Life, Resources, In-
dustries, PeopIe,Politics,Government, wars, IhSti-
tutions, Achievements,The Press, Schbols and
Churches, Leggndary and Prehistoric Lore. Eaited

By George N. Fuller, n.p.: National Historical As-
sociations, Inc., n.d.

Applegate, Tom 5., comp. A History of the Press of Michi-

ganz prepared For the Centennial,_hy order othov.
Jo n J. Bagley. Adrian, Mich.: Times Steam Presses,
1876.

Burke, W. J., and Howe, Will D. American Authors and Books,
1640 to the Present Day. Revised ed. New York:
Crown Publishers, 1962.

Clemens, Will M. Famous anny Fellows, Brief Biogra hical
SketchegofAmerican Humorists. New York: John W.
Lovell Co., 1882.

Darling, Birt. City in the Fgrest: The Story of Lansing.
New York: Stratford House, 1950.

Ford, Robert. American Humourists Recgnt and Living.
Paisley, Scotland: Alexander Gardner, 1897.

Gohdes, Clarence. "The Later Nineteenth Century.” Part III
of The Literature of the Amerigan People, an His-
toriEal and Critical Survey. Edited’by Arthur

Hobson Quinn. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1951.

Hudson, Frederic. Journalism in the UnitedlStates, From
1690 to 1872. New York: Harper & Brothers, I873.

106

107

Johannsen, Albert. The House of Beadle and Adams and its
Dime and Nickel Novels; The Story of a VaniShed
Liherature. 2 vols. Norman: University of Okla-
hOma Press, 1950.

 

 

 

 

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History: 1690-
1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan Co., 1962.

 

Patten, Gilbert. Frank Merriwell's "Father." Edited by
Harriet Hinsdaie ahd Tony London. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1964.

 

Young, Art, comp. Authors' Readin s. 2nd ed. New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1 7.

 

 

Dictionary of American Biograpgy. Edited by Dumas Malone.
20 vols. New York: C arles Scribner's Sons,
1928-36.

Lamb's Biogpaphical Dictionary of the United States. Edited
by JOhn Howard Brown. 7 vols. Boston: Federal
Book Co., 1903.

 

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. 52 vols.
New York: James T. White & Co., 1898-1970.

 

Who's Who in America, 1920-1921. Edited by Albert Marquis
Nelson. Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Co., 1921.

Articles in Periodicals

 

Blair, Walter. "The POpularity of Nineteenth-Century Ameri-
can Humorists." American Literature, May, 1931,
pp. 175-94.

Holden, Edward G. "Little Journeys in Journalism." Michi-
gan History Magazine, July, 1927, pp. 424-28.

 

 

Kirke, Edmund. "The City of the Strait." Harper's New
Monthlngagazine, August, 1886, pp. 327-47.

 

 

Smith, Henry Ladd, and Knox, James. "The Needlers: Our
Journalistic Satirists." Journalism Quarterly,
XXXIX (Summer, 1962), pp. 309-16.

 

Titherington, Richard H. "Charles B. Lewis: 'M Quad' of
the Detroit Free Press." Golden Argosy, January 8,

 

108

"Charles B. Lewis (M. Quad), a Sketch." Critical Review,
February, 1893, pp. 51-56.

Newspapers

 

Bower, Helen C. "Lewis' Popularity in South is Recalled."
Detroit Free Press, Aug. 24, 1924, sec. 1, p. 14.

 

Lewis, Josie Berry. "She Remembers Papa: Daughter Recalls
Colorful Career of Free Press Writer, M. Quad.”
Detroit Free Press, Sept. 25, 1955, sec. D, p. 2.

 

Stark, George W. "We Old Timers . . . Blown Into Fame."
Detroit News, Feb. 24, 1939, n.p.

 

. "We Old Timers . . . M. Quad." Detroit News,
Feb. 23, 1939, n.p.

 

"Charles B. Lewis (M. Quad) Buried," New York WOrld, Aug.
23, 1924, p. 19.

"M. Quad Comes Back With a Little Piece for 'The Sun.'"
New York Sun, Nov. 12, 1916, n.p.

 

"M. Quad Dies at 82, Famous Humorist." New York Times,
Aug. 23' 1924’ p. 9.

"'M. Quad' Going Strong at Age of 81 Years." Detroit Free
Press, Feb. 18, 1922, p. 8.

"'M. Quad,‘ Humorist, Dies at Brooklyn Home." Detroit Free
Press, Aug. 23, 1924, pp. 1,3.

"'M. Quad' Made Judge Poke Fun at Own Court." Detroit Free
Press, Aug. 24, 1924, sec. I, p. 14.

"No Age Limit for Humor." Kansas City Star, March 8, 1924,
n.p.

Detroit Free Press, 1860-1891.

 

New York World, 1891-1924.

 

109

Public Documents

Michigan. Legislature. Manual Containing the Rules of the
Senate & House of Representatives of the State of
Mibhigan, with the Joint Rules of the Two Houses,
and Other Matter. Lansing: 1867.

. Manual for the Use of the ngislature of the
State of Michigan. 1869-70. Lansing: 1869.

. Manual for the Use of the ngislature of the
State of Michigan. 1871-72. Lansing: 1871.:

U.S. Department of the Interior. Census Office. Population
Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United States:
1850. Roll 709. Ohio, Medina County. Washington,
D.C.: National Archives and Records Service,
National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1964.

 

. Popglation Schedules_of the Eighth Censusgfthe
United States:_1860. Roll 545. Michigan, VI and’
VII, Huron and Ingham Counties. Washington, D.C.:
National Archives and Records Service, National
Archives Microfilm Publications, 1967.

U.S. National Archives and Records Service. Military Service
Records.

Unpublished Material

Applegate, Margaret J. "The Detroit Fgee Press During the
Civil War." Unpublishéd M.A. Thesis, Wayne State
University, 1938.

Hamper, Winston M. "The Story of the Detroit Free Press."
Unpublished M.A. thesis, Wayne State University,
1942.

"First Annual Catalogue of the Michigan State Agricultural
College 1857." Handwritten copy of catalogue on
file in special collections room, Michigan State
University Library, East Lansing.

"The Story of the Detroit Free Press." Unsigned, undated
pamphlet in possession of George A. Hough, III,
associate professor of journalism, Michigan State
University, East Lansing.

LEWIS'S PUBLISHED WORKS

Note: The following bibliography is as complete as
the author has been able to make it without attempting to
include Lewis's writings in newspapers and magazines. The
seven plays listed at the end of the bibliography were
copyrighted by Lewis, but apparently were not published.

Lewis, Charles Bertrand. Bessie Baine; or, The Morman's
Victim. Boston: G. W. Studley, 1876.

. Brother Gardner's Lime Kiln Club: Being the
Regular Proceedings of the Regular Club for the Last
Three Years. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1882.

 

 

. Bugler Ben. 1872. [Publication data unavailable.
Listed by W. J. Burke and Will D. Howe in American
Authors and Book§y1649 to the Present Day. Revised
ed. New York: Crown Publishers, 1962f

 

 

. The Comic Biography of James A. Garfield. 1881.
[PublicatiOn data unavailable. ListedbyStanley
J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft in American Authors
1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American
Literaure. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1938].

 

 

 

 

. Field, Fort and Fleet; Being a Series of Brilliant
and Authentic Sketches of the Most Notable Battles of
Ehe Late Civil War, Including Many Incidents and Cir-
cumstances Never Before Published in anyForm.

Detroit: Detroit Free Press Publishing Company, 1885.

 

 

 

 

. Goaks and Tears. Boston: H. L. Shepard & Co.,
1875.

 

. The Humorous Mr. Bowser. New York: J. S. Ogilvie
Publishing Company, 1911.

 

. The Hunter's Vision: The Search_for the Cave of
Gold. Boston: American Union and Ballou's Maga-
#

Zine, 1872.

 

110

111

. The Island Prisoner; or, The Kidnappers of the
Lake. No. 17 of Beadle's Weekly, March 10, 1883,
to No. 22, April 14, I883.

 

 

. The Life and Troubles of Mr. BoWser; Being a
Veracious and Authentic Account OfiSome Of his Doings
at Home and Abroad with Mrs. Bowser in the Foreground
to Assist in Maintaining the Interests of the General
Narrative. Chicago: Jamieson-Higgins Co., 1902.

 

 

 

 

. Mad Dan, the Boy Spy; or, False to the LKing but
True to Her Lover. No. 180 of Saturday Journal,
August 23, 1878, to No. 186, October 4,1873.

 

 

 

. Mad Dan, the Spy of 1776. A Centennial Story.
No. I5 of Beadle & Ad& 3 Twenty Cent NoveIs.
July 5,1878.

 

 

. Mr. and Mrs. Bowser and their Varied Experiences.
New York: J. S. OgilVIe Publishing Company, 1899.

 

. "Quad's Odds." Detroit: R. D. S. Tyler & Co.,
1875.

 

. Sawed-Off Sketches; Humorous and Pathetic. New
York? G. W. Carleton & Co., 1884.

 

. Sparks of Wit and Humour. London: G. Routledge
& Sons, 1887.

 

. Trials and Troubles of the Bowser Family. 1889.
[PuhIication data unavailable. Listed by Kunitz.
and Haycraft in American Authors.]

 

. Under Five Lakes; or, The Cruise of the Destroyer."
New York: G. Munro, 1886.

 

 

21218:
Ben and Dot. 1879.

Bijah, 1880.

Brother Gardner and His Lime-Kiln Club. 1882.

 

Deacon Jackson. 1879.

 

Her Next Husband.. 1876.

 

Tennessee. 1898.

 

Yakie.

1879.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

"The Easy Man"

They have an "easy man" in the House. Nothing ever
disturbs him. He sleeps most of the time, except when there
is a motion to adjourn. This is the only subject he ever
votes on, being probably convinced that his constituents
cannot haul him over the coals for desiring to stretch his
limbs by a walk around the city. The spiciest debate does
not excite him. He looks at the combatants through half
closed eyes, and mentally calculates on which side victory
will rest. He don't answer to his name at roll call; he
simply gives his head a side inclination, just as if he was
replying to a deserved compliment. When the House goes into
"committee of the whole," the "easy man" goes into a sleeping
committee of one. He don't sleep very sound, however, for
as the hands on the clock point to twelve, he gets uneasy,
Opens his eyes, rises to his feet, and very deliberately
says, "Mr. Speaker, I move this House do now adjourn." If
informed that his motion is "not in order," he falls back
into his cane-seat like a bag of sand, satisfied that he has

done his best to benefit his fellow men. I often see my

112

113

"easy man" wending his way toward the skating park, but he
only goes there to look on--its [sic] out of his line to

skate.

Detroit Free Press, January 19, 1869, p. l.

 

APPENDIX B

UNTITLED

There is one thing which would have escaped my
notice entirely, had not an individual walked into my sanc-
tum yesterday to demand why these things are thus. After
much coughing and stamping 5J1 the hall, the door opened,
the face of an African looked in, smiled, winked, and to my
nod of encouragement, the corpus of a noble colored man
squoze its way in.

"Wall, boss?"

"Well."

"You're de FREE PRESS feller, hain't ye?"

"Yes."

"Wall, you see as how my name's Thormus Jackson
Haynes."

"Yes."

"And as how I've been a-tryin' to git offis up dar,
an' can't do it."

"Yes."

"And as how I want ye to come down on dat legisla-
shush body for dere way of fooling de niggers; I tried to
git fireman, an' doorkeeper, an' cloak room, an' porter, an'
postmaster, an' any other little offiss dat war being rushed

for, but I didn't git noffin!"

114

115

"So-h-h?"

"Dat am de hebbenly truth. Dey said dat de thing
war all right--dat I war jess de feller for de position,
but--but whar am my offiss--whar am I now?"

Yes, "whar am he," the negro, the "amendment," the
gentleman who, as a politician, overturned well laid politi-
cal plans in many a town last fall? Not a one of them has
received an office. Not one of them has been recognized as
capable of filling the least of the positions in the gift of
House and Senate. They are out of the "ring" entirely, out
in the cold, and there isn't even anyone to feel bad about
it--except myself. I got up and went over to where "Thormus"
stood, patted his bowed head, and I promised him that he
should have his name and his grievance published to the
world, and that I would use my influence to get him promi-
nently before the first Democratic Legislature that convened.
At which we shook hands, and he went away more cheerfully
disposed.

Detroit Free Press, January 11, 1871, p. l.

 

APPENDIX C

An Oversight

For some cause or other, the electors of Michigan
failed to send a Revels here, or to give this body a Rgipy
look. How the oversight occurred is none of my business,
but the failure was the cause of a little merriment around
the bar of the hall yesterday. A very smooth tongued and
well dressed negro, loaded down with "glittering general-
ities," igg., brass chains, watches and rings, walked up
the hall, pulled open the door, and, as he was confronted
by the Sergeant-at-Arms, politely requested:

"If you please, sah, you may take my cawd to one
of the colored Representatives."

"Aren't you a little ahead of the times?" inquired
the Sergeant; "there isn't any such combination of circum-
stances here as you refer to."

"Sah!" said the colored progressionist, straighten-
ing up until he looked like a column; "sah, did I understand
you correctly? Upon being told that he did, he took his
watch chain, his watch, his brass rings and his body out
through the doorway and upon the steps, having no desire to
witness the legislation not now thought complete without the

presence of the tinted element.
Detroit Free Press, February 16, 1871, p. 1.
116

 

APPENDIX D

LO! THE POOR INDIAN

The other day, in scanning the lobby to see what I
could pick up, I ran across the face and form of an old
Indian. He sat bolt upright on his seat, had his mouth
puckered up in a stoical way, brass ear-rings on, moccasins,
leggings, leather strap and the like, just as if he had
stepped off the war path to hear a little discussion. I
was much pleased to find my "item." I sat down near him,
let my eyes range over him, and reflected, "Here is a relic
of years ago. Where this House now stands this noble red
man may have chased the wild roebuck, or pitched his tent
and reveled in the summer shades. The tread of the mighty
hunter disturbed his reveries, and the change commenced.
Where once was forest, now is busy life. Where the deer
gamboled, the grocery clerk now draws kerosene and molasses.
This Indian sees it all, and, does the retrospective view
make him weep? Ah! it does. See, he raises his hand to
his face to wipe away the falling tear---!"

I thought he was going to, but he didn't. He simply
raised his hand to his mouth and took a huge chew of tobacco.

He had just got to squirting the juice around in a lively

117

118

manner, utterly regardless of the ten cents worth of "shine"
on my boots, when the sergeant-at-arms grabbed him, jacu-
lated: "See here, Jim Ferguson, you want to get right out
of here!" and the old gentleman skipped out in a brisk
manner. Poor old Lo! They wouldn't even let him listen to
the voices of the white men on the spot where his wigwam
smoke had curled to heaven.

--Detroit Free Press, January 22, 1871, p. l.

APPENDIX E

GOV. BALDWIN'S FIRST PARDON

In 1867, one Joseph Bement, of Kent county, was
tried and convicted of the crime of forgery, and sentenced
to the State's Prison for the term of five years. For a
week past I have noticed an elderly man, locks tinged with
that peculiar gray which denotes that mental grief had
hastened the mark of time, eyes downcast, countenance ridged
with those heavy wrinkles and furrows that burdens of care
and sorrow, more than age, place there, loitering about the
halls, stealing softly into and out of the Governor's room,
and I have wondered what crooked path he would have straight-
ened, by legislative favor and enactment. Yesterday the
object of his visit was revealed. He was the father of
Joseph Bement. His son was slowly dying of that fatal di-
sease, consumption. An inmate of a felon's cell, a viper
at his Vitals, cast out by all but his kindred, he felt
that he must go home to die.

A father's love reveals itself in action, not words.
He saw the Governor; he appealed to him; he pleaded ex-
tenuation; his boy must die not in a felon's cell, but in

the old homestead--in the arms of those who could not break

119

120

their love. The father went from here to-day with that

in his eyes which never wells up until hope long deferred
has suddenly and unexpectedly returned to crown a soul-
wrought effort made by a strong man. He had that with him

to open the prison door at Jackson to his son.

--Detroit Free Press, March 5, 1869, p. l.

APPENDIX F

MY RURAL FRIEND

I had a friend here from Gratiot county for about
a week, but he's gone now. He came down to have a brief
look at the "Legislaychure." He'd "hern tell," but had
never "seen 'em" before. He was dreadful familiar; used to
borrow my postage stamps, pick his teeth with the point of
my "faber," and go into my drawer whenever it suited him.
He was very enthusiastic the other day, when two counties
had a slight "onpleasantness." My friend, who was in the
lobby, attempted to slap his knees and cry out "bully!" but
the Sergeant-at-Arms gave him such a look that he adjourned
his demonstration quite shortly. Unknown to me, one night,
he went into a sharper's room to have a little combat with
that teeth-cutting animal called the "tiger." I don't know
how much he won; I guess not much, for the next morning I
saw him going north, satchel over his shoulder, with a stick
passed through the handles, and he didn't exactly have the
look of one going to buy fine land to sell again on long
time.

--Detroit Free Press, January 19, 1869, p. l.

 

121

APPENDIX G

[UNTITLED]

[This sketch began in the middle of a paragraph concerning
a debate over a contested House seat.]

About half-past nine in the morning there was a stir

of surprise at the door, and in walked a tall man with a
soldier's overcoat on, followed by a little bit of a woman,
as angular as a rail, dressed in light costume, and after
her came a big girl, a big boy, a small girl, a small boy,
and two more small boys. The sergeant had a hard time to
find them a seat together, and did not succeed until the
man had sat down on a plug hat, and the boys had had a
struggle to secure a big apple core lying under a table.
The group excited much attention, as the man kept pointing
around, and asking his wife to "see thar," and every ten
minutes, got up and walked to a spitoon ten feet away. At
noon, the group still sat, and I found them there when I
came back from dinner. At six o'clock most of the children
were asleep, the woman was nodding, but they were there,
the man as lively as a bug, and extraordinarily interested
in the arguments. When a member made a good hit, the man

slapped his leg like the kick of a mule, and would have

122

123

made a speech if it hadn't been for the sergeant. At eight
o'clock, when the case was decided, I ran across the family
in the hall, the father carrying two of the children, the
wife another, and the big girl fighting the big boy to get
him along.

"Hello!" says I, "did the result suit you?"

"Wall, can't say," replied the man, brightening up,
"because I didn't exactly get to know what they were talking
about. But I was bound to see 'er through, if it took till
daylight."

--Detroit Free Press, January 29, 1871, p. l.

APPENDIX H

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of George
Washington, an individual somewhat known to history, but the
fact did not create any excitement in this body, or around
the city. The Senate, after having the fact announced to
it, took a recess for two hours more than usual, and the
House for one extra hour, being an aggregate of three extra
hours, in memorium of an individual who wouldn't be thought
of any great account if living in these days of degenerate
Radicalism. The Democrat printing office hung out a flag,
some of the boarding houses had an extra amount of spring
chicken, young America slid down hill, and an attempt to
fire an anvil failed for want of funds to buy powder.

--Detroit Free Press, February 24, 1871, p. l.

 

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i—*~

APPENDIX I

SMALL FRUITS

Certain persons in Branch County, who evidently like
a dish of berries and cream, have petitioned this body to
so amend the cranberry bill as to insure protection for
blackberries and whortleberries. It is desired to amend the
act so as to punish persons trespassing upon private
"patches," and to prevent the wholesale destruction of
bushes by bands of pickers. A few rattlesnakes judiciously
distributed about a Whortleberry marsh would no doubt go a
long way toward perfecting the object of the petitioners,
but the idea does not seem to have occurred to them.

--Detroit Free Press, January 29, 1871, p. l.

 

125

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APPENDIX J

[UNTITLED]

A day or two ago, one of the members, who had been
three weeks getting himself up for a grand effort on the
measure to organize a new county, kicked the quilts off
as he slept, or in some other way reaped one of the richest
colds in the head that has been seen during the session.

He felt his position keenly, but his nose refused to recede
from its condition, and he sat and wiped away his tears and
saw the bill come up. He determined to make an effort,
nose or no nose, and arose and commenced:

"BISTER SPEAKER--I wandt to say a wordt odt that
bill. Idt seems to be thadt idts brovisions are udjust idt
a 'ighly glaring sense, adt--"

But every one laughed so heartily that the member
sat down to recommence the attack on his nose, and the bill
went against him.

--Detroit Free Press, March 19, 1871, p. 6.

 

126

APPENDIX K

"THE TABLE"

Yesterday, one of the members, through the medium of

a waggish friend, was introduced to a visitor from out of
town, who straightway opened his battery by saying that he
had a favor to ask. He was told to say on, and informed
the member that he had a strong desire to see "the table."

"I can't read more than ten lines without coming
across something, which was laid on the table," said he,
"and I want to see what sort of a thing it is."

The member led him into the firemen's room, where
all the pasting and wrapping is done, and pointed out a
long table, which happened just then to be covered with
bills. "So, that's her, is it?" remarked the man, and he
felt of the legs, lifted at the ends, and added that "he
knew it wasn't no common table that was referred to in the
papers." He was further gratified by being informed that
the table was the one used by George Washington at the time
he couldn't tell a lie, and was captured by the British
when Detroit surrendered.

"Gaul!" he ejaculated, "it's worth more'n two
shillings to see her!"

--Detroit Free Press, March 19, 1871, p. 6.

 

127

APPENDIX L

A MILE A MINUTE

I never see a puffing, speeding locomotive, terrible
in power, gentle as a lamb under the hand of the driver--I
never see an operator at his work sending the lightning
flashes over hill and valley--without feeling a stronger hate
than before for the men who sneered at Franklin, calling him
"a poor old crazy man," for the men who insulted the genius
of Morse, calling him an idiot, for the men who laughed at
Fulton when he told them that he could make a steamboat which
would travel four miles an hour.

I tested both telegraph and steam the other day, and
the trial served only to increase my respect for them and for
the men who hourly hold them subservient to the will. Two
years ago, the Governor had his message in type before coming

to Lansing at the opening of the session, and he left copies

at Detroit where the newspapers could get them when a telegram

from Lansing should say that it was being delivered before
the two Houses. This session the Governor failed to do this,
and so the daily papers must get it as best they could.

At three o'clock Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Frank

Russell, Private Secretary of the Governor, placed a copy of

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the message in the hands of the three correspondents of the
Detroit dailies, with a wish that they might get it into
Detroit in time for the morning issue.

To the telegraph office:

"Will make ten thousand words or more," says the

operator, "and will take ten hours to telegraph." Ten hours

 

is a long time, when a score of compositors are waiting for [ii
a "rush" on a seven column message, and I am going to beat
the telegraph, speedy as it is.
Half a mile to the depot. l
The locomotive "Northward," a new engine, stands on k—-

the track, having just arrived with the "mixed" train. '”

"Agent, can I hire this engine to run me to Jackson
in time to connect with the 'four-thirty' Michigan Central
fast express East?"

"Hire an engine! Don't you want to hire two or three
national banks besides?" replies the agent, laughing.

"I am in earnest. I'm going to catch that fast
express if money will do it. Ask the Superintendent what he
will let the 'Northward' for the trip."

Click! click! click!

The current flashed over the wires to Jackson,
bearing the following:

MR. WATSON--Reporter FREE PRESS wants to know if

he can hire locomotive Northward to run him to Jackson
in time to connect with 4:30 express train east. He

wants to send in Governor's message.
" OPERATOR"

130

Click! click! click! and in two minutes the

answer came back.

Tell reporter FREE PRESS he can hire engine for the
trip. Tell engineer to get him here in time, if steam
will do it.

A. WATSON
"Here, Tom, read that," says the agent to the engineer,

and in two minutes more we are off. Thirty-seven miles, and

fifty-five minutes to go in, and section men, wood train, rhj
mail train, and the Valley Road trains to look out for.
Whish! rush! scream! and we go ahead. The "North-
ward" is pointed southward, and I am on the firemen's seat,
holding on for dear life. "Hank," the fireman, keeps the 8.;

bell going each moment. Conductor Doremus climbs up beside ’/
me. "Tom" holds the "throttle" with an iron hand, and we
are racing to beat the telegraph.

If ever I am rich, I want some artist to paint me a
picture. I want none of your landscapes, with meek cows and
meeker calves standing on a river's brink--nor a boating
party, nor a market scene, nor a ship under sail, with the
sun going down off her port quarter. I want the picture to
represent the interior of a locomotive cab, the fireman
throwing wood into the red mouth waiting to consume it, with
the engineer peering forward like a sentry on picket, hand
on the lever that shuts off, or gives more steam, his clothing
torn and greasy, his face and hands grimy with sweat and
dust, but an honest noble face, not stained with liquor, and
eyes so bright and fearless that any lass would think them

a prize.

131

Whoop! rush! scream!

Delhi Station goes by us just like a cannon shot,
leaving a wondering crowd on the platform, who only caught a
glimpse of us to lose it in a second. There's a curve ahead,
and Tom lets the whistle scream. On, on, and we catch sight
of half a dozen men, who just get the hand car off the track
in time. But for that whistle we should have caught them on
the cow-catcher. They raise their hats and cheer, but the
rush and roar is so great that we catch no sound from their
lips.

"Scream-m-m!" goes the whistle, and we rush on.
Three minutes and we are in sight of Mason. Ha! ha! see
how the wood train goes through the switch on the side track.
A minute more of delay, and we should have had a fearful col-
lision. There's a crowd at the station, and we slack just
enough to hear them yell and shout. The operator has learned
what sends the "Northward" tearing along the track, and the
shouting takes the sound of "Bully for that FREE PRESS feller!"

"More wood, Hank," says Tom, and the red hot door
flies back, and in goes wood enough to last a family a week.
Whistle! scream! ding dong! The fireman keeps the bells
going, and the whistle sounds before we strike a curve. A
mile in two minutes! That's pretty fast riding, my dear sir.
Did you ever ride on a locomotive, especially when there was
no train behind to steady its rocking motion--especia11y when

there was ice and snow on the track, and the monster was

132

straining to assist a reporter in beating the telegraph?
Well, it's different from the.broad, easy seat in a passenger
coach, where you may fall asleep from sheer listleness [sic].
It's a series of jumps, jolts, knocks and bangs. Here's a
curve. Looking ahead, you shut your eyes hard, fast, and
your heart gives a great throb, for it seems that the iron
monster is going to leave the track for the woods. No, it Hm
goes on, and you open your eyes and feel like one suddenly
drawn back from death. Suppose our engine should leave the
track? Perhaps the train just over broke a rail, or a culvert
or bridge trembled a moment after the last car passed, and
then went down. Don't suppose such a thing! The bare ./
thought chills the blood, and the heart seems to stand still.

"More wood, Hank."

The conductor asks why I hang to the seat, and is
answered by my being bumped against him with force enough to
throw us both down. If you were driving a wagon over a suc-
cession of rail fences, the jar and banging would be no
worse.

Leslie. Here we stop. It is almost time that the
mail train left Jackson, and there are too many lives now
depending to run "wild" further.

"What you running this engine down here in this style
for?" asks the crowd of Tom.

"THE FREE PRESS has hired her to run to Jackson to

connect with fast express."

133

"Bully for THE FREE PRESS fellers; but you can't
make it." "I'll show ye," replies Tom, and the conductor
comes back with a message which says: "Run to Rives' Junc~
tion, and wait for orders." On! on! and the crooked rail
fences look as straight as liberty poles. Count the corners!
Why, man, you might as well try to count the hairs on a man's
head by looking at him for a secOnd! "Hoop--hoop--hoop!"
says the whistle, and way down the track we see black specs
moving about that look like bees. Rush! scream! and we
catch sight of four men, laborers, who swing their hats and
yell. That mile was run in less than two minutes. There's
a spec on the track again. It grows larger and larger, and
we rush by a traveler. He stands close to the rails, and
falls backward as we go by. We think of broken bones and
bloody limbs, but a look backward shows him scrambling up
from the snow. He got the "wind" as we went by, and it
knocked him as flat as if struck with a bludgeon.

"Wh-o-o-p-p!"

Rives' Junction, and now if the mail train bothers
us much, shall have had our journey for nothing, and the
telegraph will laugh at our defeat. Click! click! goes
the instrument, and in half a minute comes back the order.
"Tell Tom to come on with a rush. Will hold train for you."
Puff, puff, and we are off. They are holding a full train
to let THE FREE PRESS get the Governor's message! Hang

tighter now. We ran before--we are flying now. Trees go

134

by looking like lead-pencils; those black threads we run
over are culverts four or five feet wide; that roar that
touched your ears for the fourth of a second was a bridge;
the fences look like a single rail keeping pace with us.
Bang, bump, rock! I hang to the seat, shut my eyes, and
leave my falling tile to the care of the men, who have ridden
a mile a minute before.

We are beating the telegraph--we are running as fast
as any engineer ever dares push his iron steed.

A mile a minute!

 

Around curves, on level stretches, over bridges,
through the woods and across meadows. Only the carrier
pigeon can make this time--only the lightning flash go faster.
Tom is a study. Bent forward, his keen blue eyes fixed on
the rails ahead, his hand seeking gauges, cocks, levers and
throttles by instinct, he looks like a stone statue, his face
as unreadable as marble. None of us speak a word; all eyes
are looking ahead, and the bell is clanging away as if chant-
ing a requiem. The dial shows one hundred and twenty pounds
of steam, just the figure it has kept since we left Lansing.
Hank pulls open the door, looks back at the wood, but Tom
shakes his head, and—--

W-h-o-o-p!

That's Jackson! We have held the mail train more
than ten minutes, and we are going to catch the fast express.

Here we are! How the passengers shout! They have been told

135

the cause of delay, and have good naturedly endured it. A
hundred men and women have cheerfully waited to let the
"Northward" hurry a package through to the thousands of
readers of THE FREE PRESS. Hip! ha! hurrah! they yell,
as we go by, and the sound has hardly died away before our
panting steed stOps at the depot building. "Ten minutes to
Spare!" says Tom, and he wears as proud a smile as if he
owned the "Northward," and had made fortune on a wager against
time. A jump through the wondering crowd and the headlight
of the locomotive drawing the fast express is seen down the
track. Here she comes, and a word with the baggageman sets FM
everything right, and THE FREE PRESS is to have the message .;
at half-past-seven, six hours before the lightning can trans-
mit the last words from Lansing.

Ten minutes for rest and lunch, and we go back, run-
ning with a rush, for there are trains to avoid, and we must
reach Lansing before the evening mail train starts southward.
No moon, no stars, the snow-flakes flying, the red glare of
the fire lighting up woodland and glade, we make the return
trip. A hand-shake with the good fellows who have accompanied
me, and I drop off at the starting point, lame, sore, bruised,
shaken, and glad to turn over my temporary proprietorship of
the "Northward" to "Tom and the boys." QUAD.

--Detroit Free Press, January 3, 1871, p. 3.

 

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