So I started to go again, but before I had reached the door he says, says he:
“But stop, mister, you didn’t pay me for the biscuit.”
“What!” says I, “do you mean to impose upon me? Do you think I am going to pay you for the biscuits, and let you keep them, too? Ain’t they there now on your shelf? What more do you want? I guess, sir, you don’t whittle me in that way.”
So I turned about and marched off and left the feller staring and scratching his head as tho’ he was struck with a dunderment.
Howsomeever, I didn’t want to cheat him, only jest to show ’em it wa’n’t so easy a matter to pull my eye-teeth out; so I called in next day and paid him two cents.
And now humor began to creep into the newspapers, and it came about that American humorists, almost without exception, have been newspaper men.
Following Seba Smith’s plan each author created a character, usually of homely type, and through him as a mouthpiece gave to the world his own wit and wisdom.
Mrs. Frances Miriam Whitcher wrote the Widow Bedott papers, and Frederick Swartout Cozzens the Sparrowgrass Papers, but best known today is the Mrs. Partington, the American Mrs. Malaprop, created by Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber.