By the middle 1860s, when Mark Twain was still relatively unknown, Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings) had achieved national fame as one of the foremost literary comedians in America. He made his reputation as a coiner of clever aphorisms, a writer of familiar essays, sketches, and burlesque almanacs, and as a comic lecturer. He was a humorist, a homespun philospher, and a conscious literary artist. One of his chief strengths was originality; in such a graphic epigram as "when a feller gits a goin down hil, it dus seem as tho evry thing had bin greased for the okashun," even the deliberate misspellings fade into the background behind the compelling image.

Shaw was born on 21 April 1818, in Lanesboro, Massachusetts, located in the heart of the Berkshire Hills. Young Henry was brought up in an enlightened, active family--both his paternal grandfather and father being involved in national and state...