There is no doubt that during later years Bill Nye has been more extensively copied than any other humorist of the day. Among the hundreds of good things he has produced, I select a few of the most touching and pathetic:
THE ENGLISH JOKE.
The average English joke has its peculiarities. A sort of mellow distance, a kind of chastened reluctance, a coy and timid, yet trusting, though evanescent intangibility which softly lingers in the troubled air, and lulls the tired senses to dreamy rest, like the subdued murmur of a hoarse jackass about nine miles up the gulch. He must be a hardened wretch indeed, who has not felt his bosom heave and the scalding tears steal down his furrowed cheek after he has read an English joke. There can be no hope for the man who has not been touched by the gentle, pleading, yet all potent, sadness embodied in the humorous paragraph of the true Englishman. One may fritter away his existence in chasing follies of our day and generation, and have naught to look back upon but a choice assortment of robust regrets, but if he will stop in his mad career to read an English pun, his attention will be called to the solemn thought that life is, after all, but a tearful journey to the tomb. Death and disaster on every hand may fail to turn the minds of a thoughtless world to serious matters, but when the London funny man grapples with a particularly skittish and evasive joke, with its weeping willow attachment, and hurls it at a giddy and reckless humanity, a prolonged wail of anguish goes up from broken hearts and a sombre pall hangs in the gladsome sky like a pair of soldier pants with only one suspender.
MR. NYE EMBARRASSED.
There was an entertainment at Laramie a few evenings ago, at which the guests appeared in such costumes as their taste suggested. The following will give some idea of the occasion:
Mr. Nye wore a Prince Albert coat with tails caught back with red jeans, and home made sunflowers. He also wore a pair of velvet knee breeches, which, during the evening, in an unguarded moment, split up the side about nine feet. This, together with the fact that one of his long black stockings got caught on the top of a window cornice, tearing a small hole in it, letting out the saw-dust and baled hay with which he was made up, seemed to cast a gloom over the countenance of this particular guest. With one large voluptuous calf, and the other considerably attenuated, Mr. Nye seemed more or less embarrassed.
JOSEPH C. NEAL.
A series of humorous descriptive articles, known as Charcoal Sketches, appeared in 1837 in a Philadelphia newspaper. They became famous, and for years their author was noted as a leading American humorist. Joseph C. Neal, the author of the Charcoal Sketches, was born on the third day of February, 1807, in the town of Greenland, New Hampshire. His father had for many years been the principal of a popular academy in Philadelphia, but his health failing him, he was compelled to retire to a country residence at Greenland, where, along with his other duties, he officiated as pastor in the Congregational church of the village.
When the subject of this sketch was two years old his father died, and the family soon after removed to Philadelphia, and thence to Pottsville, in the same State. Mr. Neal resided here until 1831, when he settled in Philadelphia, and assumed the duties of editor of the Pennsylvanian, a journal which became very popular, and conspicuous for its influence on the political character of the State. It was in the office of this journal that the elder James Gordon Bennett passed a portion of his early years in journalism.