"Something like that," I replied. "It was called 'Coffee and Repartee.'"
"Well, anyhow, whatever the thing was called, she'd read it," said the barber.
"I have met two other people who have done the same thing and lived; so don't worry," I observed.
"Whaddyer suppose she ast me?" he queried.
"I give it up," said I. "What?"
"She ast me," said he, "was you so very comical, and I told her no, he ain't so damned comical, but he's a hell of a kidder!"
I may be wrong, but it has ever since seemed to me that there was a particularly nice distinction involved in this spontaneous estimate of my character, and it may be that a great many of our American humorists, so called, would be more aptly described as kidders. Our guying propensities, and the tongue-in-the-cheek style of humor so prevalent to-day, suggest the thought anyhow that the term kidder is more discriminating than that of humorist, as signifying the qualities of a Cervantes, a Rabelais, a Swift, or a Mark Twain.
It was in a South Carolina barber shop that the second nicety came unexpectedly upon me. I had looked for a certain quaint philosophy and humor among the negroes of the South, and must confess to considerable disappointment in not finding much of it. The picturesque article in the African line that has so delighted us in the fiction of our masters of the pen from the South seems either to have vanished completely from the face of the earth or to be a trifle shy in the revelation of itself to outsiders. At any rate I found little of it in my wanderings in that territory; although a somewhat disagreeable amount of self-conscious quaintness, "for revenue only," was not wanting among negroes encountered.
"She ast me was you so very comical," said he.