popularity with which his writings burst upon the public has not endured. The quaint spelling, on which both he and Artemus Ward so much relied, was but a weak prop, and could not stand the stress of time.
The little town where Josh Billings was born and where he gained his keen insight into the life of the New England farmer owes its name to a woman. When in 1765 Governor Bernard found it necessary to incorporate the rapidly growing settlements in the western hills of Massachusetts, he gave the name of Berkshire to the county, for the sake of his old home in England; and one of the small towns he called Pittsfield, in honor of the great prime minister. But what was then the chief town in the newly opened region he named for the Countess of Lanesborough, the wife of one of his privy councillors, whose beauty and popularity had won for her the title of "Lovely Lanesborough" in the Boston society of that day. The full name, "Lovely Lanesborough," might well be accorded the village also. It is located five miles north of Pittsfield, in a beautiful valley, with the clear waters of Pontoosuc Lake stretching like a bright mirror at its southern border, while at the head of the long blue line of hills that shut it in from the outside world rises the sturdy summit of old Greylock, the loftiest peak in the region and in Massachusetts. From the high hill near the centre of the town, Pontoosuc and Onota lakes and the Cheshire reservoir are plainly visible. This view is doubly charming if seen in the early morning when the mist hangs low in the hollows, forming here and there another phantom lake.
When Josh Billings was born, in 1818, and for some years following, beside the natural beauty of the place, there was plenty of opportunity to observe the busy life of a prosperous New England town. Lanesborough contained in its earlier days five hotels, three tanneries and two cloth dressing factories, as well as several grist mills