Gresham was a man of unparalleled energy and ingenuity. He had created
several of the typical characters who appeared from time to time in "On
Your Way," as, for instance, Mrs. Jenkinson, our Mrs. Malaprop, and
Jones junior, our "howler" manufacturing schoolboy. He was also a stout
apostle of a mode of expression which he called "funny language." Thus,
instead of writing boldly: "There is a rumour that----," I was taught to
say, "It has got about that----." This sounds funnier in print, so
Gresham said. I could never see it myself.

Gresham had a way of seizing on any bizarre incident reported in the
morning papers, enfolding it in "funny language," adding a pun, and
thus making it his own. He had a cunning mastery of periphrasis, and a
telling command of adverbs.

Here is an illustration. An account was given one morning by the
Central news of the breaking into of a house at Johnsonville (Mich.) by
a negro, who had stolen a quantity of greenbacks. The thief, escaping
across some fields, was attacked by a cow, which, after severely
injuring the negro, ate the greenbacks.

Gresham's unacknowledged version of the episode ran as follows:

"The sleepy god had got the stranglehold on John Denville when Caesar
Bones, a coloured gentleman, entered John's house at Johnsonville
(Mich.) about midnight. Did the nocturnal caller disturb his slumbering
host? No. Caesar Bones has the finer feelings. But as he was
noiselessly retiring, what did he see? Why, a pile of greenbacks which
John had thoughtlessly put away in a fire-proof safe."

To prevent the story being cut out by the editor, who revised all the