Mr. John Hay, once a Secretary of President Lincoln, and afterward a hard-working journalist, is also a poet, and has perpetrated some graceful verses, but when any one offers to quote a bit from John Hay, the hearers always understand that it will be something humorous. His dialect poems do not exceed half-a-dozen, yet they seem as popular now as when first written twenty years ago. They were not carefully elaborated; the author is said to have dashed them off in a hurry as a relief from hard editorial work, but they struck the popular heart at once, probably because, like most other American humor, there was a basis of seriousness and sense to them. The finale of his poem, “Little Breeches,”—a poetic story of a lost child who was saved, as his father supposed, by angels, will long be the most popular and effective protest against formal religious ideas. He says of the angels:
“I think that savin’ a little child
And bringin’ him back to his own
Is a durn sight better bizness
Than loafin’ round the throne.”
Was there ever a greater commercial success in literature than that achieved by Mark Twain? The combined books of the most successful American novelist have not sold as many copies as one of Mark Twain’s books. Why? Because Mark Twain is funny—because he knows how to say something in a way in which nobody else has said it. Scores of other men have written about the Holy Land and our own West, but it was not until “Innocents Abroad” and “Roughing It” appeared that people in general began to manifest a lively interest in these portions of the world. Innumerable sketches have been written about life on the Mississippi River in the old days before railroads and emancipation, but all of them combined did not “catch” the public as successfully as “Huckleberry Finn.” The latter was humorous, the others were not; there was no other point of difference.
It does not matter, to the American people, from where humor comes, so it really is humorous and has a point to it. We will take it in any shape or dialect. One of the great successes of humorous literature during the civil war was that achieved by Col. Charles G. Halpine, who made a mythical Irish soldier, “Private Miles O’Reilly,” his mouthpiece for a lot of humorous criticisms of the Government, the army and navy. During the same period there arose a Southerner, signing himself “Bill Arp,” who made some hard hits, in humorous style, at the North; somehow they found their way through the lines and were freely reprinted at the North. In later years another Southerner—the creator of “Uncle Remus,” put a lot of delightful stories into negro dialect, and a host of people at once began to quote them. In New York Mr. Julian Ralph wrote a lot of humorous sketches under the general head of “The German Barber,” and the newspaper press began to quote them. Across the ocean Max O’Rell began to satirize the English people and customs, and straightway his books sold better here than abroad.
On the stage and platform, as everywhere else, humor is the most popular and attractive feature. A few years ago, before the theatrical companies could easily reach any city or large town, the lecture was a favorite means of entertainment, and more than three hundred Americans and foreigners were busy every winter in hurrying from town to town to deliver lectures. The three hundred have been reduced almost to three, but there is room there still for any one who has anything humorous to say. “Bob” Burdette, more popularly known as “The Burlington Hawk-eye Man,” works himself almost to death every winter in going all over the United States to give his humorous recitations. He is a very religious man, and a working Baptist, but people never ask him for a religious address: they always want to hear his fun. Another of the few successful men remaining on the platform is A. P. Burbank, a man who for ten years has determined every year to go upon the stage in legitimate comedy, but so humorous are his recitations and so effective his manner in delivering them that those who have heard him before insist upon hearing him more, and he goes again and again to towns where he has been a dozen times before, each time to find his audience larger and more appreciative, and each time to receive the assurance that they will want him again the following winter. Little Marshal Wilder, who never took a lesson in elocution in his life, and has been cruelly handicapped by nature, attempts merely to make people laugh; he succeeds, so he seldom is allowed to have an evening to himself, and when the “platform” season is ended here goes over to England and has three or four engagements a night.
Everybody knows that on the stage humor takes better than anything else. There may be a great tragedy well presented on the boards of a city theatre, or a brilliant spectacle, or a so-called emotional drama which appeals to everything improper in human nature, but the theatre which is presenting a good comedy can always depend upon holding its own. No dead-head seats are to be had at such theatres. The manager can always depend upon getting money for all the room at his disposal. The fun may be very rough, sometimes it is decidedly vulgar, but people ask as few questions and make as few protests against fun, no matter what its kind, as drunkards do against the quality of their whiskey.
American appreciation of humor may be found also in the number and wide circulation of periodicals devoted entirely to fun. There used to be a theory that there was no room for a humorous paper in the United States because the ordinary dailies and weeklies indulged in so much fun themselves. But after the enormous success of Puck, Judge, Life, and some other periodicals, it is useless to argue any longer on the subject. After a political or social question has been apparently worn threadbare in editorials and essays, out comes one of these papers with a pithy saying or a good cartoon that carries more influence than all the serious talk combined. It matters little upon which side of the question, even in politics, these professional humorists are found. Their hits when well made are cheerfully acknowledged even by their own enemies. During the palmy days of the New York ring, Mr. Nast, the cartoonist of Harper’s Weekly, was offered an annual allowance several times larger than his salary if he would give up work entirely and go abroad. Humor and high character are often allied; one of the strongest illustrations of the fact is that Mr. Nast without any hesitation refused this valuable offer. Some of the abuses of local government in New York have been more effectually fought by Mr. Keppler and his associate artists in Puck than by all the work of editors, lawyers and judges. Puck’s influence in politics became so great that before the last Presidential campaign began it became absolutely necessary for the party which it was fighting to start a humorous pictorial journal of their own, and it was quite safe to suppose that it was influential in the political results that followed.
A delightful thing about humorous writings is that no one seems jealous of their influence or afraid to give them greater prominence. The only complaint which the publishers of the humorous weeklies have to make against their brethren of the daily press is, that their own circulation might be better were not so many of their good things promptly reprinted everywhere. No sooner does one of these papers come from the press than its best sayings are scissored and reprinted in a thousand or more papers. Almost any daily paper of large circulation seems to think it necessary to have a humorist of its own. They pay more for humorous contributions than for any other class of matter, and all of them are more keenly on the look-out for a new humorist than for a possible Presidential candidate. The readers of the daily press quote for one another the funny sayings of their favorite paper long before they think of mentioning the other contents; indeed, most of them are so absorbed by the fun that they don’t seem to have remembered anything else.
We cannot possibly overestimate the value of our national faculty of seeing the humorous side of things. It keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous; it prevents us, both as individuals and a people, from being laughed at for anything we may do in sober earnest. It is very hard, in this day and land, for any man, society, party or church to be a fool without hearing about it in a good-natured way that robs the rebuke of its sting. It is not so in other countries.
But our sense of humor does still more for us. It smooths numberless rough places in the pathway of a people whose road is not easy to travel. It averts many a quarrel, closes dangerous breaches, and is balm to wounds that otherwise would smart. It is almost always harmless. There are men and women whose fun always lingers upon incidents that are vulgar, but this is a fault of perverted minds—not of the humorous spirit. It is a better introduction, between strangers, than any letter or form of words, and it expresses much in little, doing it more effectively than any of the wise saws and proverbs of more serious races. It seems irrepressible and omnipresent; a man or woman may be too tired or sick to reason or to think, but whoever saw an American too weary to see the point of a joke or to offer another in return? We need to preserve our humor almost as carefully as if it were our character, for should we ever lose it our character will be the worse for the change.