There was nothing remarkable about his babyhood except his red hair
and the great quantity of soothing syrup necessary to keep him toned
down.
He was born of humble parents. His father had never been on a jury,
delivered a Fourth of July oration, or been sued for slander, and his
mother had never rescued anybody from drowning, or delivered a lecture
on woman’s rights.
He never had any brothers or sisters. He might have had in due time,
but his midnight howls wore his mother out when he was two years old,
and she went to join the angels and left him to howl it out.
His father was accidentally shot while courting a second wife, and the
boy kicked the clothes off the bed to find himself an orphan.
He was the sole heir to all the property, and the property consisted
of a wheelbarrow, a toothbrush, and one or two other things. The boy’s
uncle swooped down on the estate, stole everything but the debt it
was owing, and the orphan was given a grand bounce into the cold and
heartless world.
But little is known of his boyhood. He probably had patches before
and behind, like other orphans; wept over the grave of his mother in
his sad moments, and crawled under the circus canvas in his hours of
sunshine. Nothing in his demeanor attracted the attention of John
Jacob Astor or Commodore Vanderbilt, and consequently he had more
cuffs than fat clerkships.
At the age of fifteen he was invited to go up in a balloon.
He didn’t go.
When he was seventeen he decided to become a pirate, and all the
captains of the Erie canal discouraged him.
At eighteen he was in the legislature--sat there and heard a speech
and then left with the other spectators.
At twenty he was foreman of a fire company, but was impeached because
he couldn’t “holler” as loudly as “No. 7.”
He had just reached his majority when he led a rich and beautiful girl
to the altar--and handed her over to the bridegroom. He commenced
in that year to be a “head-writer” on newspapers. Was almost daily
informed that his proper sphere was acting governor of a state, or in
commanding armies, but he stuck to journalistic work.
He was funny from the start, but it took eighteen years to make
people believe it. He has had many wives, and is the father of scores
of happy children. He has had the cholera and small-pox, written
articles varying from astronomy to the best manner of curing hams,
been wrecked, shot, assassinated, and banished, and is to-day hale,
hearty, and bald-headed.
All reports about a steamboat blowing him up are canards. He blew the
boat up.
For further particulars see circulars.
For ten years after M. Quad joined forces with the Detroit Free Press
he wrote steadily for that journal, and rarely allowed an issue of the
paper to be made without a humorous article from his pen. Since 1880,
however, little or no humor has appeared, Mr. Lewis changing suddenly
from a gay, rollicking style to descriptive sketches, thoughtful and
pathetic. In 1881 he made a lengthy visit to the South and tramped
over the old battlefields of the Rebellion. In the columns of the Free
Press he described, in a series of weekly letters, the battles and the
battlefields of the engagements with which he had been connected during
the war. These letters were written under the title of Sixteen Years
After, and signed by M. Quad. They have been copied extensively by the
American and foreign press.
One of the raciest things that has ever appeared from the pen of
Charles B. Lewis, is the following: