THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS.
This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and profane is constantly confronting one in American soil, and has a firm foothold in American humor.
Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New York Mail and Express, every morning sends to the editor a fresh text from the Bible for publication at the top of the editorials. One day that text was received, but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound. I was told that “you should have heard the compositors’ room ring with: ‘Where can that d——d text be?’” Finally the text was wired and duly inserted. These men, however, did not intend any religious disrespect. Such a thing was probably as far from their minds as it was from the minds of the Puritan preachers of old. There are men who swear, as others pray, without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the other a good one.
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All that naïve philosophy, with which America abounds, must, I fancy, be the outcome of hardship endured by the pioneers of former days, and by the Westerner of our own times.
The element of exaggeration, which is so characteristic of American humor, may be explained by the rapid success of the Americans and the immensity of the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a grand scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor is mainly exaggeration, and has no doubt added its quota to the compound which, as I said just now, completely staggers certain foreigners.
Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a German was inclined to be offended with him for saying that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to see through an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to try the effect of one upon him. The governor, thereupon told him the story of the tree, “out West,” which was so high that it took two men to see to the top. One of them saw as far as he could, then the second started from the place where the first stopped seeing, and went on. The recital did not raise the ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to the German: “Well, you see, the joke is lost upon you; you can’t see American humor.”
“THAT’S A TAMNT LIE!”