B. P. Shillaber made his way into literature over the same indirect route taken by a Bostonian of an earlier day, Benjamin Franklin. In 1847 he slipped a sketch of his into the Boston Post, where he worked as a compositor, and gained instant notice. Other sketches followed, and Shillaber was suddenly famous as the creator of Mrs. Partington. (A Yankee to the marrow, Mrs. Partington nevertheless owes her name to the English author Sydney Smith. Smith's Mrs. Partington was a Devonshire woman who once tried to sweep the ocean out of her kitchen. This comic episode was on Shillaber's mind when by chance he overhead the remark that inspired the first humorous saying he was to attribute to his Mrs. Partington: it "made no difference to her whether flour was dear or cheap, as she always had to pay just so much for a half-dollar's worth.") Along with...