college, remaining steadfast to the "comics" until a few years ago,
when he began to give public readings, and discovered that he was
capable of higher and more effective work. It was in fact his
versatility that made him the most accomplished and the most popular
author-entertainer in America. Before he went into journalism the more
sedate of his family connections were in constant fear lest he should
adopt the profession of the actor, and he held it over them as a
good-natured threat. On one occasion, failing to get a coveted
appropriation from the executor of the estate, he said calmly to the
worthy man: "Very well. I must have money for my living expenses. If you
cannot advance it to me out of the estate I shall be compelled to go on
the stage. But as I cannot keep my own name I have decided to assume
yours, and shall have lithographs struck off at once. They will read,
'Tonight, M. L. Gray, Banjo and Specialty Artist.'" The appropriation
was immediately forthcoming.

It is in no sense depreciatory of my brother's attainments in life to
say that he gave no evidence of precocity in his studies in childhood.
On the contrary he was somewhat slow in development, though this was due
not so much to a lack of natural ability--he learned easily and quickly
when so disposed--as to a fondness for the hundred diversions which
occupy a wide-awake boy's time. He possessed a marked talent for
caricature, and not a small part of the study hours was devoted to
amusing pictures of his teachers, his playmates, and his pets. This
habit of drawing, which was wholly without instruction, he always
preserved, and it was his honest opinion, even at the height of his
success in authorship, that he would have been much greater as a
caricaturist than as a writer. Until he was thirty years of age he wrote
a fair-sized legible hand, but about that time he adopted the
microscopic penmanship which has been so widely reproduced, using for