Reuben, all armed; a certain aim he took
At a young chicken, standing by a post,
And loosed his bullet smartly from his gun,
As he would kill a hundred thousand hens.
But I might see young Reuben’s fiery shot
Lodged in the chaste board of the garden fence,
And the domesticated fowl passed on,
In henly meditation, bullet free.
Edward Everett Hale, George William Curtis, Richard Grant White and Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel) wrote about this time, but their prose articles are too long to quote in full and not adapted to condensation.
Again the newspaper writers forge to the front and in George Horatio Derby we find “the Father of” the new school of American humor. His sketches, over the name of John Phoenix, began to appear about the middle of the Nineteenth century and were later collected under the titles of Phoenixiana and Squibob Papers.