"He says he wants to get me for his painting, David. Shall I let him?"
"Why, hasn't he gotten you already?" asked David, tying the hollyhocks with grass.
"Yes, I think he has," she answered slowly. "David, you are a little Love," she added.
"Yes, isn't he, though!" I said.
—Wilma I. Ball.
III. The Humorous Story
The humorous story is but the other side of the society story. It is not a thorough study in realism either, for then it would be sad for a large part—as George Meredith has shown us; but it is rather a course of events more or less skilfully arranged to produce a laugh. There is transposition here, suppression there, exaggeration in many places. The reader joins the author in the conspiracy to concoct fun, and as a result both have a good time. The refinement and taste of these narratives range all the long distance from the vulgar horse-play and impossible dialect of the newspaper "funny page" to the genuine humor of Mrs. Stowe's "Sam Lawson" fireside stories and the quiet pleasantness of Sarah Orne Jewett's character sketches in "The Country of the Pointed Firs." Mark Twain began the foundation of that distinction which he now has as the greatest of modern humorists in his early volume of sketches, entitled "The Celebrated Jumping Frog."
The fableau
This type of story probably originated in the medieval French fableau,[5] which was a short humorous tale of the people—one recounting some ludicrous situation. It was generally written in octosyllabic couplets, a metrical form which was admirably suited to sharp, spirited narrative by reason of its skip, its carelessness, its sauciness. Boccaccio and his long train of Italian and other followers retold in prose many of these French stories; but it must be admitted that the condensation and the rapidity of the older metrical tales become diffuseness and sometimes tediousness in the prose version. The fableau was sometimes satiric; usually baldly, even coarsely realistic. Its purpose, however, was always to amuse. Chaucer retold five or more fableaux. He is a jolly narrator, and carries one along often in spite of one's prejudice in favor of modesty and decency. He is honest enough, however, to warn the reader of possible unpalatableness and modern enough to attempt to excuse himself on the basis of art.