There are hundreds of humorists in America who are comparatively
unknown--humorists who are intensely funny, but who do not know it;
persons who write one or two good things and then cease to write;
journalists of the staid, old school, who once in a decade or so say
something really witty. During the last ten years I have endeavored to
accumulate a portion of the many stray bits of fun that have appeared
in the American newspapers from time to time.
As an example I quote the following from an unknown humorist: “The
editor of a mining camp newspaper went to Denver to hear Emma Abbott
sing, and in a review of the opera said: ‘As a singer she can just
wallop the hose off anything that ever wagged a jaw on the boards. From
her clear, bird-like upper-notes, she would canter away down on the
base racket and then cushion back to a sort of spiritual treble, which
made every man in the audience imagine every hair on his head was the
golden string of a celestial harp, over which angelic fingers were
sweeping in the inspiring old tune, Sallie Put the Kettle on. Here she
would rest awhile, trilling like an enchanted bird, and hop in among
the upper notes again with a get-up-and-git vivacity that jingled the
glass pendants on the chandeliers, and elicited a whoop of pleasure
from every galoot in the mob. In the last act she made a neat play,
and worked in that famous kiss of hers on Castle. He had her in his
arms with her head lying on his shoulder, and her eyes shooting red-hot
streaks of galvanized love right into his. All at once her lips began
to twitch coaxingly and get into position, and when he tumbled to her
racket, he drawed her up easy like, shut his eyes, and then her ripe,
luscious lips glewed themselves to his and a thrill of pleasure nabbed
hold of him, and shook him till the audience could almost hear his
toenails grind against his boots. Then she shut her eyes and pushed
harder and dash--O, Moley Hoses!--the smack that followed started the
stitching in every masculine heart in the house.”
A Montana editor writes as follows of a hated rival:--“The blear-eyed
picture of melancholy and imbecility who has ravaged his exchanges
to fill up The Insect during the past year, and the cheerful
looking corpse who has acted lately as his man Friday, and who is
a tenderfoot, equally soft at both ends, will doubtless paralyze
everybody to-day with his thunderbolts of choice sarcasm and polite
invective. The intelligibility of their phillippics, however, will
depend largely on whether they could borrow that dictionary or not,
their vocabulary being painfully abridged if left to their own
resources.”
The editor of the Solid Muldoon, a weekly journal published at Ouray,
Colorado, thus vaunted his own paper: “It is the most powerful antidote
for meanness and kindred diseases, ever offered to a suffering
community. Elder Ripley, who hasn’t told the truth in thirty-two years,
feels better, and he has only been on our list two months. Captain
Stanley, who hasn’t tasted water for thirteen years, can now look at a
brooklet without serious results. Ed Snydom, who has been troubled with
his spine ever since the Ute outbreak, put out a large washing Monday.
Jim Vance, who came to this country with an Arkansas record, now moves
in the first society. O, it is a perfect balsam; two-fifty per annum.
One annum contains fifty-two doses.”
An editor in Texas gives the following figures from a statistical
memorandum of his life:
Been asked to drink 11,362 times
Drank 11,362 times
Requested to retract 416 times
Didn’t retract 416 times
Been invited to parties and receptions by parties
fishing for puffs 3,333 times
Took the hint 33 times
Didn’t take the hint 3,300 times
Threatened to be whipped 170 times
Been whipped 0 times
Whipped the other fellow 4 times
Didn’t come to time 166 times
Been promised whiskey, gin etc., if we would go after them 5,610 times
Been after them 5,610 times
Been asked what’s the news 300,000 times
Told 23 times
Didn’t know 200,000 times
Lied about it 99,977 times
Been to church 2 times
Changed politics 32 times
Expect to change still 50 times
Gave to charity $5.00
Gave for terrier dog $25.00
Cash on hand $1.00
The following cheerful valedictory of an editor was printed in the
Asheville, North Carolina, Journal: “In this issue of the paper I offer
my house and lot for sale. My object is to quit the country--possibly
for the country’s good. For the past nine years I have endeavored to
make a livelihood here at the newspaper business, and at this writing
I am a good breathing representation of the Genius of Famine, or
an allegory of Ireland during the potato rot. The day star of my
prosperity has gone down behind a dark cloud of unpaid and uncancelled
obligations. As a dernier resort, I propose to cast my lot among the
Mongolians of the Pacific coast, and with this view my leisure moments
are devoted to deciphering the hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest,
while I patiently await the advent of a purchaser.”
The following criticism of the acting of Mary Anderson was written by
a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, journalist: “Mary is about six feet in height
when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she
gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and
telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look
like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would
have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage,
and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine; and then she
would put on a dying look, and a wild, scared, desperate expression, so
you want to rush out after a doctor. She has lungs like a blacksmith’s
bellows; when she contracts them, she looks so thin that her back bone
can be traced with the naked eye; but when she inflates them, her dress
fits her like paper on the wall.”
Thomas Snell Weaver, the funny man of the New Haven, Connecticut,
Register, is one of the coming humorists of the day. He is widely
quoted. The following is from his writings:
“There was an extra air of refinement about the front parlor. The
storks on a shingle and the Egyptian figures on panels had all been
removed to the back parlor to make room for the super-æstheticism of
the aureolan glory of the sunflower and the drooping grace of the lily
embroidered on bannerets and hung in fitting corners of the grand old
room. In this room they sat, and quietly enjoyed each other’s presence,
bound together by ties yet undiscovered.
“‘Angela’ said he, ‘I think it is four years this very night since we
gazed into the firelight together.’
“‘So long, Mr. Thistlewaite?’ said she tremulously, and in expectant
mood.
“‘Now, I should think that after so long a time--it occurs to me to
say--or rather to ask--why wouldn’t it be well--to call me “George”
hereafter?’
“‘Oh, is that all?’ she said. The harpstrings of her expectancy had
just been struck with a chord, but alas! the matrimonial overture was
not then to be played. The whole orchestra was out of tune for her for
the next six weeks.
Mr. H. T. White, a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago
Tribune, is also designed to make his mark in the world as a humorist.
His style is peculiar, as the following selection will no doubt show:
“‘Do not go, darling’--and as she spoke the words--spoke them in low,
tender tones, that thrilled him from mail-truck to keelsom--Gwendolen
Mahaffey laid her soft, white cheek on Plutarch Riordan’s shoulder, and
gave him a look with her lustrous, dove-like eyes that would make your
head swim.
“‘I cannot stay,’ he replied, kissing the peachy red lips as he spoke,
and feeling wistfully in his overcoat pocket for a plug of tobacco, ‘I
must go now right away.’
“But the girl placed her arms around his neck--arms whose soft, rounded
curves and pink-tinted skin would have made an anchorite throw up his
job, and pleaded with him to stay a little longer.
“‘I cannot,’ he again said, looking at her tenderly.
“‘Cannot?’ repeated the girl, a shade of anger tinging the tone in
which the words were uttered. ‘And pray, sir, what is it that so
imperatively calls you hence?’
“‘Bending over her with a careless grace that artfully concealed the
slight bagginess at the knees of his pants, Plutarch said, in low,
bitter tones that were terrible in their intensity:
“‘I have broken my suspenders!’”
H. C. Dodge, as a writer of humorous and witty verse, has few equals in
America. His style is somewhat like that of the late lamented Tom Hood.
One of Mr. Dodge’s productions is entitled