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the stage." The book is a graphic account of the author's personal experience of the days of the war between the North and the South and of the time which immediately preceded that memorable conflict. The son of Virginia's famous fire-eating governor, Henry Alexander Wise, had opportunities of observation which were not vouchsafed to many, and those of us who have an interest in that period of our history can do nothing more agreeable than to read this fascinating chronicle, which is an admirable example of the art of true narrative. Charles Francis Adams, in Lee at Appomattox, and Other Papers, testifies to the value of this book as "reliable historical material," and quotes from it with evident appreciation of its merits. I wish that he had not called the author "John Sargent Wise," because it indicates a forgetfulness of the famous Whig statesman of Philadelphia, the eminent lawyer John Sergeant. "You can generally distinguish between the real story and the invented," Wise said to me not long ago, and he is right, although it is not easy to explain the reason of it. One can tell about it, but cannot tell how to do it. A man sees color or he does not; if he does not, he is color blind, and no demonstration or argument can make it plain to him. There are other things which may be gained by intuition. I always had a feeling of dissatisfaction with the pretentious humor, if it may be called humor, of Haliburton, otherwise known to preceding generations of readers as "Sam Slick." He never appeared to me to be genuine, possibly because he was Nova-Scotian and not truly Yankee. He savors of the humbug, and he is by no means spontaneous. It delighted me to discover that there was a judicious critic whose opinion is substantially the same, for Professor Felton says: "We can distinguish the real from the counterfeit Yankee at the first sound of the voice and by the turn of a single sentence; and we have no hesitation in declaring that Sam Slick is not what he pretends to be; that there is no organic life in him; that he is an impostor, an impossibility, a nonentity."

If anybody cares to encounter a real Yankee, although we may not understand why he should desire such an experience, he will be likely to find him in the Biglow Papers, the books of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and even in the pages of Artemus Ward, who was transplanted from Maine to Ohio, but who kept the New England essence to the last. He will not find him in the works of Major Jack Downing, who is hardly more convincing than Sam Slick, and who was a pseudo-humorist of the callow age of American literature.

There are sundry illusions, cherished for generations, regarding certain nations and races. The roast-beef of old England may long ago have been worthy of glorification in song and story, but in modern times it is usually transported from Chicago across the ocean, and it is by no means as good as English mutton. The politeness of the Frenchman is a delusive shadow of a vanished past, as one who has been rudely thrust into a Parisian gutter by a swaggering officer in a soiled uniform is ready to testify, and as the unhappy person who braves the perils of the lumbering Parisian omnibus knows to his sorrow. The Swedes seem to have taken to themselves the famous French courtesy when they borrowed Bernadotte in order to place the marshal of Napoleon upon the throne of Gustavus Adolphus. The corpulent German, with his huge pipe, his towering stein of beer, and his elongated dachshund, I have encountered more frequently in the many-colored pages of Puck and Judge than in the domains of the War-Lord. Is the celebrated American humor another departed dream?

It will, of course, be considered a presumptuous thing to ask whether we Americans may justly be called a humorous people. We hear and read a great deal of American humor, and are inclined to brag a little about it, and to set ourselves up as the only possessors of the genuine article. John Phoenix, Artemus Ward, Leland, Irving, Lowell, Holmes, and a few others are constantly cited to us, as well as Mark Twain (who is cosmopolitan) and Dooley (who is Irish). There is room, however, for doubt whether there is a dominant note of humor in us, or, at all events, in us of modern days. I intend to disarm my critic by drawing a line between the citizen of the United States of this decade and his fellow-citizen of forty years ago. The wonderful material prosperity of recent years, the increasing influence of our country as a world-power, no longer hemmed in and confined to a fractional part of a continent, and the absorption of men in the pursuit of wealth,1 have necessarily made us a serious people. We may laugh at the dubious fun of the professionally comic papers, which is sometimes depressing; we may be amused at the unspeakable jocosity of our dailies; the flatness and emptiness of some of our weekly fashion-plate cartoons may arouse a feeble interest; but we must realize the truth that we are dangerously near to being decadent in humor. If any other proof of this state of things is necessary, con

In the magazine wherein these lucubrations first appeared the genial printer made me say, "the pursuit of health." Another instance of typographic wisdom.

sider the stories in some of our Sunday newspapers. No such awful examples of vulgarity, such dilapidated relics of bygone times, such puerile specimens of playful idiocy, could ever be palmed off successfully upon a people capable of appreciating true and original wit. Yet prizes are shamelessly awarded to the most inane and feeble of anecdotes, many of them tottering with the decrepitude of age. Truly the perpetrators of these imbecilities know not what they do. They afford an instance of the madness of print let loose. Let no one misunderstand me; I know that the humorous is not necessarily the funny. It may be serious, but there must be something amusing about it. It must not consist merely of popular slang, of distorted dialect, or of abusive personality, nor must it depend for its effect upon the aid of so-called comic illustrations.

Why Haliburton and Jack Downing have become almost classical I am at a loss to explain. Who can comprehend the secret of popularity? I often wonder why Josh Billings was famous, while such men as Robert Newell and George Lanigan are practically forgotten except by aged persons who used to read newspapers diligently. Shaw was a philosopher, but he chose to adopt the clown's disguise and to resort to the expedient of misspelling, manifestly

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