Thanks in part to Howe’s relentless editorials, the Atchison Globe became the most widely quoted small-town newspaper in the country. Howe ran it for thirty-three years before selling it to his staff for $50,000.
- Most new things are old things done better by painstaking men.
- You can usually tell a suspicious character by the way he hates the police.
- Idealism gets people in trouble; materialism gets them out.
- I never knew a man so mean that I was not willing that he should admire me.
- Who ever saw a man and wife who were both red-headed?
- Speaking of radiantly happy brides, we do not see them as often as we see radiantly happy widows.
He launched E.W. Howe’s Monthly in 1911, a one-man magazine written entirely by its proprietor, consisting solely of one-liners, short musings, and observational paragraphs. It was a kind of proto-blog, mailed monthly and read widely—especially by businessmen, politicians, and big-city editors.
Here are some more Howe-isms:
- What people say about you behind your back, that’s your standing in the community.
- The real dread of men is not the devil, but old age.
- A man never receives as many letters as he thinks he should.
- Don’t touch a piano if you can’t play.
- To be an ideal guest, stay at home.
- A really dangerous man generally tries to avoid trouble.
- When Americans start talking about schoolhouses and war, they go crazy.
- There is only one thing people like that is good for them: a good night’s sleep.
- There must be poverty to punish the shiftless and encourage industry.
- Any man will claim a good stray umbrella.
Howe’s work reflected the dry wit of what critic Greil Marcus called “Old Weird America”—a world full of bizarre customs and hard-bitten wisdom.
- It looks shiftless to own more than one dog.
- They tell of a man who ate dinner with a chew of tobacco in his mouth.
- What has become of the old-fashioned farmer who caught the woman schoolteacher who boarded at his house, and washed her face in the snow?