If no selections from the writings of our modern humorists, Artemus Ward, P. V. Nasby, Mark Twain, and others, grace these pages, the omission arises partly from the difficulty of selecting and partly from the fact that these writings are only too well known for our purpose. While the compiler has, doubtless, brought her readers face to face with many of their old acquaintances, she naturally prefers not to introduce those whom they are certain to meet every day at their own tables. “There must be a line drawn somewhere.”
But there is a word to be said about K. N. Pepper, whose irresistibly droll papers were contributed to the Knickerbocker Magazine, early in the ’50’s. He was, in fact, pioneer in that region of illiterature, in which so many others, since he withdrew, have apparently settled for life. Artemus Ward learned from him (and never hesitated to give him credit for the original idea,) the trick of bad spelling, and caught many of his fantastic ways of thought. His Betsey Jane was Pepper’s Hannah Gane amplified,—but the twins, and the son who read the Clipper, and the daughter who delighted in the Ledger, were original Wards. (And what a guardian they had, in their hi-minded father!)
K. N. Pepper describes in the Knickerbocker, his first visit to New York. He arrived there on the twenty-fifth of November, and that anniversary suggested many solemn reflections. “I thinc,” he pensively remarks, “that I see the British evacuating of the sitty. I thinc I se them gathering up their goods and things. I thinc I hear them cuss, and then I thinc I doant.”
Very suddenly he retired from the field, leaving his laurels to be picked up and won by others, and presently disappeared from public view. But it is possible that Mr. James W. Morris, of Onondaga County, N. Y., could, if he chose, furnish some information concerning him.[4]
The Widow Bedott, too, was precursor and prototype of Miss Slimmins, Josiah Allen’s wife, and all of that ilk; and, among her imitators, has, thus far, had no equal. Her prose was a model of absurdity; but there are no words to characterize her poetry.
Listen, as she condoles with a widower, on his recent bereavement:
Sickness and afflictions is trials sent
By the will of a wise creation,
And always ought to be underwent
With fortitude and resignation.