Then mourn not for your pardner’s death,
But to forgit endevver,
For, sposen she hadn’t a died so soon,
She couldn’t a lived forever.
And when, at last, she secured a widower of her own, the Rev. Shadrack Sniffles, how jubilant her muse became:
The heart that was scornful and cold as a stun,
Has surrendered at last to the fortinit one.
Farewell to the miseries and griefs I have had!
I’ll never desert thee, O Shadrack, my Shad.
The wonderful puns and repartees of Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith, prince and king of wits! are open to the same objection as those alluded to above: they are only too familiar, already. But as that is equivalent to saying that they have charmed only too many people; turned too many sorrowful or wearied minds out of their ordinary channels; excited too much healthful and delightful laughter; we are, after all, not disposed to complain. Rather let us, Sancho-Panza-like, invoke a benison, first on Cervantes himself; then on the English Hood and Hook, and Moore and Sheridan and Lamb, on the three Smiths, Sydney and James and Horace; on Dickens, Thackeray and Jerrold, and Edmund Lear; on our own Irving, Derby, Whicher, Morris, Brown, the Clarkes; our Lowell, Saxe, Holmes, Strong; our Warner, Cozzens, Dodgson, Gilbert, Locke, Bret Harte; our Grail Hamilton, and our Phebe Carey; and on all the named and unnamed, known and unknown writers, through whom have come to us the exquisite sense of fun, the blessing of irrepressible mirth, and of hearty, wholesome, innocent, delicious laughter!