Produced by David Edwards, Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)
[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained.
Page 204: A word was missing after "The Major was right, for a little" "while" has been added.
[Illustration: Alf BURNETT. From A Photograph By Winder.]
Comic Delineator, Army Correspondent, Humorist, Etc., Etc.
CINCINNATI: RICKEY & CARROLL, PUBLISHERS, 73 WEST FOURTH STREET. 1863.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by RICKEY & CARROLL, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio.
Stereotyped at the Franklin Type Foundry, CINCINNATI.
The author of the following sketches, letters, etc., has been known to us for lo, these many years. We have always found him "a fellow of infinite jest," and one who, "though troubles assailed," always looked upon the bright side of life, leaving its reverse to those who could not behold the silver lining to the darkling clouds of their moral horizon. We could fill a good-sized volume with anecdotes illustrating the humorous in Mr. Burnett's composition, and his keen appreciation of the grotesque and ludicrous--relating how he has, many a time and oft, "set the table in a roar," by his quaint sayings and the peculiar manner in which they were said; but we are "admonished to be brief," four pages only being allotted to "do up" the veritable "Don Alfredus," better known by the familiar appellation "Alf."
Mr. Burnett has been a resident of Cincinnati for the past twenty-seven years, his parents removing thereto from Utica, New York, in 1836. Alf, at the Utica Academy, in his earliest youth, was quite noted as a declaimer; his "youth but gave promise of the man," Mr. B., at the present time, standing without a peer in his peculiar line of declamation and oratory. In 1845, he traveled with Professor De Bonneville, giving his wonderful rendition of "The Maniac," so as to attract the attention of the _literati_ throughout the country.