In 1802, an illiterate American merchant published a book with no punctuation at all. When readers complained, he printed a second edition with one extra page. Just punctuation marks. Pepper and salt it as you please, he wrote.

His name was Timothy Dexter. He was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1747. He apprenticed as a tanner, married a wealthy widow, and moved to Newburyport. During the American Revolution he bought up worthless Continental currency by the bagful. After the war the new government honoured the bills at face value. Dexter became one of the richest men in New England by accident. He could barely read. He spelled his own name three different ways on the same page. He decided this made him a Lord. He renamed himself Lord Timothy Dexter.

He bought a mansion in Newburyport. He raised a cupola with a golden eagle on top. He carved his own mausoleum in the garden. Then he commissioned forty wooden statues of the greatest men in history, painted them in bright colours, and arranged them across his front lawn like a parade. They included Adam, George Washington, William Pitt, Thomas Jefferson, the King of England, and Lord Timothy Dexter himself. His own statue bore the inscription: I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world.

Practical jokers told him to ship bed-warmers to the West Indies to bankrupt him. He did. The sugar planters bought them as ladles for stirring molasses. He made a fortune. They told him to ship coal to Newcastle. He did that too, mid-strike, and sold it at a markup. They told him to ship cats to the Caribbean. The Caribbean had a rat problem. He made another fortune.

Near the end of his life, he staged his own funeral to see who would mourn him. About three thousand people came. He hid in the parlour to listen. When he found his wife laughing in the kitchen with the guests, he came roaring out and beat her with a cane. He died for real in 1806. They buried him in the mausoleum he had built for himself in his statue garden. None of the statues are still standing. The book is still in print.

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