Josh is getting old, and each succeeding year his literary productions
are fewer and shorter. Out of the fortune he has made by his pen, only
$50,000 is retained in his possession. He is an odd-looking genius,
tall, stoop-shouldered, with a large head, massive face, deep-set
eyes, and grizzly beard. His hair, which was formerly brown, is now an
iron gray, and his stiff, drooping moustache is fast changing to the
same color. He parts his hair in the middle, combs it smoothly behind
his ears, allowing it to fall loosely on his neck like the locks of a
school-girl.
A newspaper writer, in speaking of Josh not long since, said: “As he
grows older, he seems to become more and more supremely regardless of
persons, surroundings, or opinions. As he greets one with the machine
like ‘How do ye do,’ or an inanimate ‘Good day,’ the impression is
conveyed that he has arrived at the state of life and prosperity where
he deems fate powerless to work any alteration for the worse. Billings
is essentially a man to himself, taciturn and unobtrusive everywhere.
He is now a willing but unattractive lecturer. He and his wife pass a
quiet, relegated, but doubtless contented life, in an unpretentious
dwelling in Sixty-third street, New York city, the garret of which is
made to answer the combined purpose of literary sanctum and storehouse.”
Shaw has written many witty things besides his quaint “Proverbs,”
which made him famous. The following is an example: