1. Walt Mason was a Canadian-born American journalist and writer, whose daily column was syndicated by George Matthew Adams in over 200 US and Canadian newspapers during the early part of the 20th Century.
38 Facts About Walt Mason
1. 2.
Walt Mason's columns were collected into eight books of "prose poems" between 1910 and 1919, for which admirers such as Theodore Dreiser, James Whitcomb Riley, William Dean Howells, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Ade, and Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote laudatory testimonials.
3.
Walt Mason was born in Columbus, Canada West, the sixth of seven sons for John Mason, an English-born Welsh wool-sorter and Lydia Sarah Campbell, a Quebec-born housewife of Scottish background.
4.
Walt Mason was four when his father died in an accident at the factory where he and his brothers would later be employed.
5.
Walt Mason suffered lifelong partial deafness from a swimming incident at age thirteen.
6.
Walt Mason's mother died when he was fifteen, after which he went to Port Hope, Ontario and worked in a hardware store.
7.
Walt Mason moved to upstate New York about the time he turned 18 in 1880.
8.
Walt Mason worked on farms then drifted to the Midwest, landing in St Louis, Missouri.
9.
Walt Mason contributed writings to it, and became well known enough in the local area for an Illinois newspaper to quote him in 1881.
10.
Walt Mason wrote a series called "Poems in Paranthesis" during October and November 1884 for The Frankfort Bee, one appearing each week.
11.
The editors indicated that besides writing poetry in his spare time, Walt Mason was a cartoonist.
12.
Later legend had it that Walt Mason had submitted a poem to Col.
13.
Walt Mason "severed connections" with The Leavenworth Times in late May 1885, and by early June was employed by Edward Howe at The Atchison Globe.
14.
In such fashion Walt Mason moved from newspaper to newspaper until he was able to shake the booze habit for good, which he attributed to the Keeley Cure.
15.
Walt Mason had no position with the Express, rather he was living "in comparative retirement" as one Kansas paper reported.
16.
Walt Mason had by this time developed his unique style, prose sprinkled with rhymes, which he used for a widely printed sermon on drinking.
17.
When Walt Mason came to Emporia, Kansas in early October 1907 he was forty-five and a disillusioned man.
18.
The editor William Allen White had invited Walt Mason to take a job with the already nationally prominent Emporia Gazette.
19.
Walt Mason's writing was well known in Nebraska and Kansas, but hadn't reached other parts of the country.
20.
Walt Mason obliged and the poem he wrote got picked up by the New York Daily News, bringing him to the attention of Eastern readers.
21.
For Memorial Day of 1908 Walt Mason wrote a prose poem called Little Green Tents that appeared in the "star head" of the Gazette, that is often cited as one of his best.
22.
Also celebrated as a fine example of his work, it was the first Walt Mason poem offered for national syndication by George Matthew Adams.
23.
Not until October 1914 did the column become Rippling Rhymes, after the title of Walt Mason's fifth published book.
24.
Walt Mason banged out his columns on a typewriter in a tiny room at the Gazette office, and when resting would place his hands on his ample waistline.
25.
Walt Mason was passionately fond of horses, baseball, and music, and had an inclination towards pranking his colleagues and bosses.
26.
Walt Mason's readers numbered in the millions; they encompassed both the famous and "the ordinary men and women of the crowd".
27.
The steady income allowed Walt Mason to build a custom-designed home on one of the first paved streets in Emporia, a house which he referred to as his "igloo", and later came to be on the National Register of Historic Places.
28.
Theodore Dreiser recounted how Walt Mason had enlivened "many a dreary railway journey" for him.
29.
Four more Walt Mason collections were published near annually: "Horse Sense" in Verses Tense, Walt Mason - His Book, Terse Verse, and Lumber Lyrics.
30.
Walt Mason would continue writing his daily column for another twenty years, but no more collections were published in book form.
31.
Walt Mason wrote six prose poems during 1917 to serve as the storyline for one-reel film shorts.
32.
The first was The Dipper, which Walt Mason showed to a select party at the Theater Royal in Emporia on January 25,1917.
33.
Walt Mason retired from the Emporia Gazette in April 1920, moving his family from Kansas to La Jolla, California.
34.
Walt Mason's wife acted as a gatekeeper, shielding him from dubious callers hoping for a financial handout.
35.
Walt Mason was meticulous in writing his daily column up until January 1939, when at age 76 he was injured in a fall.
36.
Walt Mason fell into a coma during late June, dying of uremic poisoning on June 22,1939.
37.
Walt Mason contracted diphtheria at age six, and died November 19,1900.
38.
Walt Mason remained living with her new parents through Ella Mason's death in 1936, and Walt Mason's death on June 22,1939, in La Jolla, California.