Simeon Ford, the after-dinner speaker and raconteur who, so it is said,
can look more sad and at the same time talk more humorously than any
other man before the American public, was born in Lafayette, Indiana,
in 1856. After an education received in the public schools of the town
of his birth he studied law, but finding that there was but little
merriment in Blackstone and briefs, abandoned his first intentions, and
after plunges into various businesses, drifted to New York, where, in
1883, he fell in love with and married Julia Shaw, the daughter of the
proprietor of the Grand Union hotel. He forthwith became a partner with
his father-in-law, and from thence on has been as successful as a hotel
manager as he is famous as an after-dinner speaker.