The American Joe Miller: A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humor

THE AMERICAN JOE MILLER:
A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humour. COMPILED BY ROBERT KEMPT.
I love a teeming wit as I love my nourishment. — Ben Jonson. Oh, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!
Shakespeare.
LONDON: CLAYTON AND CO., PRINTERS, 17, BOUVERIE STREET.

So far as the Compiler is aware, no good collection of American wit and humour exists on this side of the Atlantic; certainly, no collection worthy to be considered as the American Joe Miller. In the well-known Percy Anecdotes, in the numerous English Joe Millers, and other jest-books, a few of Brother Jonathan's good things are to be found, in company with the rich and genial wit of John Bull, the pawky humour of the Scotch, and the exuberant mirth of Paddy; but it is believed that the present is the first attempt to present anything like a complete collection of American witticisms to English readers. While every justice has been done in this matter to Scotland by Dean Ramsay's inimitable Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character; and while a kindred service has been performed for England by Mr. John Timbs, and still more recently by Mr. Mark Lemon, not to mention others, no one, seemingly, has bethought him of gathering together the happy scintillations of Brother Jonathan's intellect. The Compiler trusts that he may have undertaken this task with at least some success.
No one at all familiar with the periodical literature of America will deny that the Americans are a witty people. Whether their native wit be so intellectual and refined as the English, so quaint and subtle as the Scotch humour, or so strong and hearty as the Irish, or, again, whether it be so keen and compact as the French esprit , may be reasonably questioned; but that it is a straw that can tickle, and therefore, according to Dryden, an instrument of happiness, all must admit. In considering the nature of American humour, it is obvious that broad exaggeration is its great characteristic. It is essentially outré . No people seek to raise the laugh by such extravagant means as the Yankees. Their ordinary speech is hyperbole, or tall talk. They never go out shooting unless with the long bow. Again, their humour comes from without, rather than from within, and is less a matter of thought than of verbal expression. It deals with the association of ideas rather than with ideas themselves. Transatlantic wit is not as a rule terse, epigrammatic, pungent, like the wit of Lamb, Hood, or Jerrold, which often lies in a single sentence or even word. The humour of Sam Slick or James Russell Lowell, for instance, lies as much in accessories as in the thing itself. It is nothing unless surrounded by circumstantial narrative. But in this it must be confessed the Americans are great masters. The humour of a people always reflects the character of that people, and character, as we all know, is influenced in no small measure by country and climate. Our American brethren are born, or as they themselves say raised, in a country whose physical features have been planned on a scale far surpassing in magnitude—not unfrequently in beauty also—those of every other country in the world. The Americans feel this, and are justly proud of the extent and magnificence of America. It leads them to compare it with other countries, and the comparison is certain to result in favour of their own. Theirs is the country of Lake Superior. Columbia is a Triton among the minnows. Into this Brobdignag of our cousins Munchausen emigrated early, and the genius of the celebrated German Baron still continues to control its people. Only in America will you find a man so tall that he is obliged to go up a ladder in order to shave himself, or so small that it requires two men and a boy to see him; only in America do the railway trains travel so fast that the train often reaches the station considerably in advance of the whistle; only in America are the fogs so thick that they may be cut with a ham knife. It is only an American artist who can paint a snow-storm so naturally that he catches cold by sitting near it with his coat off; it is only in America that sportsmen are such dead shots that the birds when they see the gun come down, rather than abide the consequences of remaining up; and it is only in America that every man is one of the most remarkable men in the country. It must be said of American humour, that you can always, and at once, see the joke. Its meaning is never hidden, and it seldom, if ever, takes the form of the double entendre . To borrow an idea from Elia, there is no need to grope all over your neighbour's face to be sure that he appreciates a genuine Yankee joke. The grins it causes are the very broadest, and the laughter it evokes is the very loudest.