“Fallin’ in luv is like fallin’ in molases—sweet but drefful dobby.”
“Yu can’t tell what makes a kis taste so good eny more than you kin a peech. Eny man who kin set down wher it is cool and tell what a kis tastes like hain’t got eny more taste in his mouth than a knot-hol hez.”
Mrs. Partington.—Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814–1890) was influenced by Sheridan even more strongly than was Saxe by the elder Hood. Mrs. Partington is America’s Mrs. Malaprop. Her misuse of the English language Shillaber recorded in three books bearing the several titles, “Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington” (1854), “Partingtonian Patchwork” (1873), and “Ike and his Friend” (1879). Mrs. Partington’s likeness to her English predecessor, or, as she would undoubtedly have said, her “predecessoress,” may be seen in her chance remark: “I am not so young as I was once, and I don’t believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, heaven knows as well as I do, I don’t want to, for I wouldn’t be a centurion or an octagon and survive my factories and become idiomatic by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place, and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never live to see it.”
Artemus Ward.—Charles F. Brown (1834–1867), the third of the humourists writing about the middle of the last century, was born in Waterford, Maine, and lived in various parts of the United States as his newspaper work called him first to one town and then to another. He made extensive lecture trips, and finally went in 1866 to England, where he died in March of the following year. He had the distinction of being the first American contributor to Punch. He published during his lifetime a number of books, among which were “Artemus Ward: His Book” (1865), “Artemus Ward: His Book of Goaks” (1865), and “Artemus Ward in London” (1867). Undoubtedly his best single work was a lecture giving an account of his visit to the Mormons. Learning from Brigham Young that he was married to eighty wives and sealed to as many more, Artemus remarked that the prophet was “the most marriedest man” he ever saw. Ward then went on to say: “In a privit conversashun with Brigham I learnt the follerin’ fax: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don’t do it only onct a year and sez it’s wuss nor cleanin’ house. He don’t pretend to know his children, there is so many of ’em, tho they all know him. He sez about every child he meats call him Par and he takes it for granted it is so.”
Later Writers of Boisterous Humour.—Taking up now the writers who were born in the decade immediately preceding the turning point of the nineteenth century, we may regard as worthy of special mention Charles Heber Clark, Charles Bertrand Lewis, Robert Jones Burdette, and Edgar Wilson Nye. Of these, all save one are still living and still writing. Mr. Clark was born in Berlin, Maryland, in 1841. For many years he has been the editor of The Textile Record, published in Philadelphia, to which he has contributed a number of articles on economic themes. He is best known, however, by two books of humour: “Out of the Hurly Burly” and “Elbow Room,” both written under the nom de plume of “Max Adeler.” Mr. Lewis (born in 1842) is best known by his pseudonym, “M. Quad,” a title drawn from the parlance of printers. Mr. Lewis’ earlier work was much more spontaneous than that which he is producing now. Connected with The Detroit Free Press, he contributed to it a steady stream of character sketches of great variety. Collecting them later, he published them under various titles. Of these volumes the best are “Brother Gardener’s Lime-Kiln Club,” “Quad’s Odds,” and “Mr. and Mrs. Bowser.”
Edgar W. Nye (1850–1896), best known as “Bill Nye,” was born in Shirley, Maine, and died near Asheville, North Carolina. Educated in Wisconsin, he first turned his attention to the study of law. Abandoning that pursuit after having been admitted to the bar, he dabbled in several different occupations, and finally became a newspaper correspondent. For a short time he travelled with James Whitcomb Riley, the two giving a series of entertainments which proved widely popular. Nye’s published works were many, but they have little chance of permanent life. As good as any are “Bill Nye and the Boomerang” (1881), “A Comic History of the United States” (1894), and “The Railroad Guide” (1888), the last written in partnership with Mr. Riley. Mr. Burdette, the last of the quartette here mentioned together, was born in Greensboro, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and received his schooling in Peoria, Illinois. During the Civil War he was a soldier in the Union Army. At the close of the struggle, Mr. Burdette returned to Peoria, where he was connected with first one and then another of the newspapers published there. Finally, failing in a paper issued under his own proprietorship, he went to Burlington, Iowa, and became a member of the staff of The Hawkeye. While engaged in newspaper work, Mr. Burdette began to write funny things to amuse his invalid wife; and these, published later in the columns of the paper, have made him known throughout the United States. He was licensed as a Baptist preacher in 1887, since when he has signed himself Robert Burdette, D., on the ground that the abbreviation D. is the next thing to that of D.D. Mr. Burdette’s best humorous work may be read in “The Rise and Fall of the Moustache and other Hawkeyetems” (1877) and “Chimes from a Jester’s Bells” (1897).
Mark Twain.—Of American humourists “Mark Twain,” known in private life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is readily placed foremost by critics and admirers both at home and abroad. He has the right to be considered the Nestor of our writers, for, born in 1835, he began to produce his earliest work when Irving was in his prime, and has therefore seen at least one phase of every school in our literature. His younger years were those of the decline of the Knickerbocker writers; he saw the rise and fall of the Concord group, the Cambridge poets, and the New York writers; and now he is present at the general upward movement all over the country, including the South and the West. His relation to our literature is not unlike that of Fanny Burney to the novel; she was born before Richardson published “The History of Sir Charles Grandison,” and did not die until twelve years after the birth of George Meredith, thus being contemporaneous with the greatest English novelists from the first to the last. Mr. Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, and when scarcely thirteen years old was apprenticed to a printer. Barring a few years spent as pilot upon the Mississippi, he has devoted his life to literary work. His writings include “The Innocents Abroad” (1869), the humorous record of a trip in the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere; “The Gilded Age” (1873), a novel written conjointly with Charles Dudley Warner; “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), both books about boys whose exploits are interesting to young and old alike; “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (1889), a cruel parody of Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”; and “Christian Science,” an attempt, despite all the fun it makes, to report sincerely upon a careful investigation of the claims of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and her disciples. It is unfortunate for Mr. Clemens that he is a humourist, for he has had to suffer the lot long ago mentioned by Holmes as the fate of the fun-producer: no one can ever take such a man seriously; no one can believe that he ever has any other purpose than to tickle our fancy or awaken our laughter. Yet it is not impossible that future critics may come to regard “The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and “The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc” (1896), two serious and dignified pieces of writing, as Mr. Clemens’s best work.
Within recent years Oxford University has conferred the degree of D.C.L. upon Mr. Clemens in recognition of his contributions to literature. This action by a great institution of learning has filled many minds with surprise, nor have all of them quite recovered their mental equilibrium yet. Some, indeed, are still asking the old question, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” and can hardly believe their ears when they receive the answer, “Yea, verily!” Humour at last seems to be coming to its own. Said Mr. Meredith a few years ago: “Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the Muses. She was in her origin, short of laughter, the loudest expression of the little civilisation of men.” While it must be admitted that when he wrote this the greatest English writer now living had in mind something much more delicate, much more refined, much more subtle, than anything yet produced in America, it is not beyond thought that even he would let us classify the fun-makers of this country as true humourists. They deal little in satire, little in irony, but they have much in common with those to whom Mr. Meredith said: “If you laugh all round a person, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you, and yours to your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”
V. THE ORATORS AND THE DIVINES.
The Historical Background.—In America, oratory has been the most fortunate of all the arts. Whether in the era prior to the Revolution, or in the formative years of the Republic before 1800, or in the first half and more of the nineteenth century—in the pulpit as well as at the bar and in the forum, American orators have drawn their inspiration directly from the political or religious life of the nation. From the nature of things, no other art, neither poetry, nor painting, nor music, could bear so intimate a relation to the course of our national existence as the utterance of the public speaker. Every crisis in our history, the Revolution itself, the War of 1812, the struggle between North and South, was hastened by the spoken word. Trained poets have been wanting among us; trained speakers, in so far as their powers could develop without a correspondingly high development of poetry and music, we have always possessed; men skilled in rousing enthusiasm and reverence throughout congregations of the pious, men alert to kindle the intelligence of a legislature or to sway the minds of judge and jury. From the first, this training was continuous and effective. In the bare colonial churches thought, word, and action of the pastor were criticised by an audience that had braved the sea and the savage for the privilege of listening. From the colonial courts of justice spread the education which warranted Burke in saying of a litigious populace: “In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful.... But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science.” With this knowledge of law, every other colonist was a keen debater for his private rights and, when the time came, for the rights of his community or nation. From a population thus educated sprang the forensic leaders of the Revolution; and to its sources in eighteenth-century popular education we follow back the steady stream of American eloquence which in the nineteenth century runs strong and full in the noblest efforts of American literature—say Webster’s tribute to Massachusetts in the reply to Hayne, and Lincoln’s undying speech at Gettysburg.