Life — March 7, 1889 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Mile there's Life there’s Hope.” VOL, XIII. MARCH 7, 1889, No, 323. 28 West Twenty-THIRD Street, New York, Published every Thursday, $5.00 a year in advance, postage (ree. Single copies, rocents. ltack oumbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. L, bound, $15.00; Vol. II, bound, $10.00; Vols, IIL, 1V., V., VIL, VIL, VIII, IX.,X.. Xi. and X11, bound, or in flat numbers, at regular rates. tions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed enveloy Sabscribers ‘wishieg address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. l’ Philip H. Welch had not been an anonymous contrib- utor to Lire, as he was to the numerous other daily and weekly magazines and newspapers by which his hum- orous fancies were distributed throughout the length and breadth of the land, not only every reader of this paper, but the entire reading community of the United States would have felt a sense of personal loss upon the announcement of his untimely death. His name is not entirely unknown to our readers either, for many of his longer articles were signed; but the great bulk of his work was of such a nature that it was impossible to identify the writer with it. Some idea of what this work was may be gathered from the cir- cumstance that, almost since Lire’s initial number, a very large proportion of the bright conversations, witty thoughts, and brilliant paragraphs appearing in these pages from week to week have been from his tireless pen. . . . SIDE from his writings for Lire, Mr. Welch's other literary work was enormous. For several years he has been a regular contributor to almost a score of publications, including such representative journals as The Times, The Sun, Puck, Judge, The Epoch, and Texas Siftings. From these original sources Mr. Welch's humor spread from newspaper to magazine, and from magazine to newspaper, literally from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the Great Lakes. In the last four or five years he probably published alone more purely humorous “ matter” than all the rest of the humorists of the United States to- gether. The fecundity of his pen in this particular direction is unparalleled in the history of journalism or literature. . . . UT there is another and a deeply pathetic reason why Philip H. Welch's career is of interest—and of pe- culiarly sad interest—to the tens of thousands whose laugh- ter he had evoked. During all these years that his wit has been banishing the shadows of others, he himself has been engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with one of the most terrible forms of death. Cancer in the tongue and throat has been slowly eating its dreadful way to a vital spot. One agonizing operation has followed another, in the hope of arresting the fatal progress of the malady, and all with- out avail, ND Mr. Welch never once gave way under the strain. His heroism and fortitude were unbounded. From the different hospitals where he vainly searched for relief, from his sick-bed at home, from other cities, whither he journeyed to obtain the aid of eminent physicians in his hopeless struggle for life, he turned out his quota of work as regularly as when he sat at his desk in the office of the Sun. More than once, indeed, the faint odor of an anas- thetic upon his manuscript, reaching this desk from a hos- pital the day after an operation, was pitiful evidence of the desperate conditions under which he labored, yet never did he write or utter one word of complaint. . . * T was in Mr. Welch's last days, however, that his hero- ism was best manifested. Until within a few months, he had ventured to hope against hope that medical science might prove equal to the desperate emergency his condition presented; but early last summer he began to realize fully that he was past human aid, And now ensued a new and more piteous phase of the struggle with death. The en- croachments of his disease were daily more agonizing, and but for the exertion of an extraordinary power of will, he could not have endured the awful ordeal. . . . ND gladly would he have laid down the burden of life, were it not for one reason: Mr. Welch was nota rich man ; he depended upon his labor for his own and his family’s daily bread. At his death his loved ones might be left in comparative poverty save for what he would be able to put by forthem before he succumbed. And this young hero suffered daily a thousand deaths that he might leave them in better circumstances. Actually holding the grim monster at arm's length, he labored on, day after day. Captain Shannon writ- ing the prospectus of the Pad/ Mall Gazette, a“ journal writ- ten by gentlemen for gentlemen,” in the squalor of Fleet prison, does not constitute an incongruity in any degree so tragic as this picture of Mr. Welch, with the actual clutch of death at his throat, penning, with hourly-failing strength, the witticisms that should make happier people laugh. . . . ANY a hero of the battlefield, whose name is written indelibly upon the scroll of fame, would have proved unequal to the test that Philip H. Welch passed with such splendid courage and fortitude. comicbooks.com