It has come to pass, I know not how, that what is accepted as American
humor has largely become the prey of specialists. When we see the
signature of Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Artemus Ward, Bob Burdette, Bret
Harte, or any one of a dozen more, we know what kind of humor will
accompany the name. Each man has his particular and familiar line, and
never diverges from it. But there is something wrong about this.
Humor—whatever it used to mean in Ben Jonson’s days—now means something
more than the comic eccentricity of an individual. It means the arch
smile, half quizzical and half tender, that glimmers upon the
countenance of human nature when contemplating its own follies and
perversities.
The name of Eugene Field, of the Chicago “Daily News,” though heard for
the first time only a few years ago, is already a famous and a favorite
name in journalism. He, too, bears the reputation of a humorist: but his
humor is not of the conventional order; it has a wider and a loftier
scope. He has a gentle yet intrepid heart, a penetrating but broad
intellect, and a pen that is at once trenchant and kindly, sensible and
imaginative. He is the author of some of the purest and most charming
fairy-tales that have been written since Hans Christian Andersen’s time.
He has produced poems whose effortless art and tender pathos have
brought them to the knowledge of perhaps half the newspaper readers of
America; and, withal, he has poured out genuine and spontaneous fun
enough to restore that gayety of nations which the death of a certain
renowned comedian was said to have eclipsed. Yet, in all his jesting, he
has never jested heedlessly or cruelly. If he has laughed at what is
foolish, he has honored what is good: if he has unsparingly satirized
what is absurd or unworthy in our civilization, he has always reverenced
what is sacred and holy in our nature. His is no common mind, and we
have as yet seen but a small arc of its complete circle. No man born on
this continent is a more robust American than he; no man scents a sham
more unerringly, or abominates it more effectively; no man’s ideal of
American literature is higher or sounder. And though circumstances have
hitherto confined his contributions to that literature within
comparatively narrow limits, yet he has given ample indications of
vigorous powers and a catholic range. He is sometimes as homely and
pithy as a New-England farmer; sometimes as refined and subtle as a
French epigrammatist; now he chuckles like a Gargantuan, and again he
evinces the artistic grace of a trained poet or romancer. But above all
and beneath all he is a man, full of the strength and the richness of
human nature, and loving human nature with all his heart, as only a man
can.
The present little volume comprises mainly a bubbling-forth of
delightful _badinage_ and mischievous raillery, directed at some of the
foibles and pretensions of his enterprising fellow-townsmen; who,
however, can by no means be allowed to claim a monopoly of either the
pretensions or the foibles herein exploited. Laugh, but look to
yourself: _mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur_. It is a book which
should, and doubtless will, attain a national popularity; but admirable,
and indeed irresistible, though it be in its way, it represents a very
inconsiderable fraction of the author’s real capacity. We shall hear of
Eugene Field in regions of literature far above the aim and scope of
these witty and waggish sketches. But, as the wise orator wins his
audience at the outset of his speech by the human sympathy of a smile,
so does our author, in these smiling pages, establish genial relations
with us, before betaking himself to more ambitious flights. If he have
half the confidence that his friends have in his power of wing, he will
be far aloft ere long; and then, as now, we shall all wish him heartily
God-speed!