"Les rides sur son front gravaient tous ses exploits,"
it is said that Corneille exclaimed, in bourgeois style:
"I don't think people ought to be allowed to steal your verses like that."
American ladies run their husbands and fathers very close in the matter of wit. Their wit is apt to be a little more sarcastic, perhaps. They are not women for nothing.
Some people were talking one day, in a New York drawing-room, of a lady who was making herself conspicuous in society, but of whom no one seemed to know the antecedents.
"Oh, don't speak to me of her," said one lady as witty as uncharitable; "she is sans père et sans proche."
Since the death of Artemus Ward, Mr. Samuel Clemens, whose pseudonym of "Mark Twain" is a household word among every English-speaking people, has held unchallenged the position of first American humorist.
Mark Twain is a man of about fifty years of age, thin, of medium height, and having well-marked features. His face, almost surly, is grave to severity, and rarely relaxes.