PARTIAL LIST OF THE NAMES OF STORY-TELLERS IN THIS VOLUME
| George Ade | Sir Wilfrid Laurier |
| Bret Harte | Oliver Herford |
| Mark Twain | J. M. Barrie |
| Sec. of State P. C. Knox | Richard Mansfield |
| W. M. Evarts | John Sharp Williams |
| De Wolf Hopper | J. G. Blaine |
| King Edward of England | Phillips Brooks |
| Joseph Jefferson | Daniel J. Sully |
| Lord Beaconsfield | Bill Nye |
| Abraham Lincoln | John C. Spooner |
| Alvey A. Adee | Robert Edeson |
| Patrick A. Collins | Andrew Lang |
| Horace T. Eastman | Benjamin R. Tillman |
| D. G. Rossetti | William E. Gladstone |
| J. M. Maclaren | Charles Lamb |
| Dean Swift | Edwin Booth |
| Clyde Fitch | Weedon Grossmith |
| J. McNeill Whistler | Senator W. A. Clark |
| Leigh Hunt | Francis Wilson |
| Edward Everett Hale | Chauncey M. Depew |
| Dean Hole | Albert J. Beveridge |
| Irving Bacheller | Beerbohm Tree |
| Thomas B. Reed | Herbert S. Stone |
| J. C. S. Blackburn | Frank R. Stockton |
| N. C. Goodwin | Henry James |
| Brander Matthews | William Allen White |
| Andrew Carnegie | Bishop Brewster |
| Speaker Cannon | Frederic Remington |
| Walter Damrosch | Julian Ralph |
| Rev. Robert Collyer | Senator John T. Morgan |
| Rev. Sam Jones | J. J. Ingalls |
| Dean Kirchwey | Archbishop Ryan |
| John Wanamaker | J. A. Tawney |
| Henry Guy Carleton | Thos. Bailey Aldrich |
| Charles Francis Adams | Elihu Root |
[PREFACE]
THE collection of these humorous paragraphs has extended over a number of years. Even a small beginning became a source of such entertainment that the collection grew and grew, always without any thought of publication.
The man who can not laugh has yet to be found. Therein lies that immediate appeal to a common ground which the sense of humor gives, and it has been a conspicuous characteristic of those who look to the public for appreciation and support. Lord Palmerston and Abraham Lincoln were two notable examples of men for whom sympathy quickened through their ready wit, and no political speaker drives home his arguments half so well as he who can introduce a witty illustration. The joke has ever been a potent factor in combating oppression and corruption, in ridiculing shams. It has embalmed some reputations, and has blasted others. It is the champion of the weak against the strong, and has often illuminated for us, as in a flash, a glimpse of character or custom that would otherwise have been lost to the world.
There is only one similar collection of which I am aware, the “Jest Book” by Mark Lemon, who was for twenty-nine years the editor of “Punch.” Alas that there should be fashions in jokes as well as in hats, for much of his book that we know must have been humorous reading to his contemporaries, leaves us, of the present generation in America, indifferent.