My thanks are due to so many publishers, magazine editors, and personal friends for material for this book, that a formal note of acknowledgment seems meagre and unsatisfactory. Proper credit, however, has been given all through the volume, and with special indebtedness to Messrs. Harper & Brothers and Charles Scribner's Sons of New York, and Houghton, Mifflin & Co. of Boston. I add sincere gratitude to all who have so generously contributed whatever was requested.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| [CHAPTER I.] | |
| The Melancholy Tone of Women's Poetry—Puns, Good and Bad—Epigrams and Laconics—Cynicism of French Women—Sentences Crisp and Sparkling | 13 |
| [CHAPTER II.] | |
| Humor of Literary Englishwomen | 32 |
| [CHAPTER III.] | |
| From Anne Bradstreet to Mrs. Stowe | 47 |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | |
| "Samples" Here and There | 67 |
| [CHAPTER V.] | |
| A Brace of Witty Women | 85 |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | |
| Ginger-Snaps | 103 |
| [CHAPTER VII.] | |
| Prose, but not Prosy | 122 |
| [CHAPTER VIII.] | |
| Humorous Poems | 150 |
| [CHAPTER IX.] | |
| Good-Natured Satire | 179 |
| [CHAPTER X.] | |
| Parodies—Reviews—Children's Poems—Comedies by Women —A Dramatic Trifle—A String of Firecrackers | 195 |
TO
G.W.B.
In Grateful Memory.
"There was in her soul a sense of delicacy mingled with that rarest of qualities in woman—a sense of humor," writes Richard Grant White in "The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys." I have noticed that when a novelist sets out to portray an uncommonly fine type of heroine, he invariably adds to her other intellectual and moral graces the above-mentioned "rarest of qualities." I may be over-sanguine, but I anticipate that some sagacious genius will discover that woman as well as man has been endowed with this excellent gift from the gods, and that the gift pertains to the large, generous, sympathetic nature, quite irrespective of the individual's sex. In any case, having heard so repeatedly that woman has no sense of humor, it would be refreshing to have a contrariety of opinion on that subject.—The Critic.
PROEM.[a]
We are coming to the rescue,
Just a hundred strong;
With fun and pun and epigram,
And laughter, wit, and song;