6. Laureates of American Childhood.-Two of our Middle Western poets are best remembered for their verses about children. Eugene Field (1850-1895) was born in St. Louis, and began his literary career as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. For several years he conducted a column called "Sharps and Flats" in the Chicago Record. Most of his work consisted of ephemeral skits and parodies; like so many other journalists, he produced much that is of small worth. However, he won an assured place in literature by his exquisite sentimental poems of childhood, such as the lullaby entitled "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” those three adventurous fishermen who sailed off one night in a wooden shoe to cast their nets of silver and gold for herring-fish that live in the beautiful sea. Other popular poems are "The Sugar-Plum Tree" and "Seein' Things,' but the most famous of all is "Little Boy Blue":

The little toy dog is covered with dust,

But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;

And that was the time when our little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916), a native of Greenfield, Ind., was associated with the Indianapolis Journal and other newspapers. His homely Hoosier vocabulary, his happy knack of phrasing, and his warm sympathy for children won him a large following. For many years he gave lectures and readings from his own works. There is

little insight but much obvious description and practical philosophy in such popular collections of humorous and sentimental verse as The Old Swimmin' Hole (1883) or his Rhymes of Childhood Days (1890). The appeal of his poetry of democracy and of simple rustic life is such that he has become the most widely read of our poets. The rural note rings true in the poem beginning

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock.

His sentimental poems do not always seem to be sincere, but there is genuine pathos in these lines from "Bereaved":

The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed

Their

pressure round your neck; the hands you used To kiss. Such arms-such hands I never knew. May I not weep with you?

The Little Orphant Annie Book (1908) is named after the well-known little heroine whose story invites smiles as well as tears:

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,

An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other children, when the supper things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun

A-list'nin to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,

An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you

Ef you
Don't

Watch

Out!

CHAPTER X

AMERICAN WIT AND HUMOR

Colonial Humor-Pioneers in Fun-Seba Smith—Benjamin P. Shillaber -Josh Billings-Artemus Ward-Max Adeler-Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)-Our Greatest Humorist-Later Western Humorists— Bill Nye-George Ade-Finley Peter Dunne-Recent Humor-Wallace Irwin-Irvin S. Cobb.

1. Colonial Humor.-Our early American literature was not without writers who had some appreciation of humor. A certain grim sense of the ridiculous may be observed in the writings of Nathaniel Ward and a more genial strain in William Byrd and in Madame Knight. Satire, sometimes of a coarse and pungent quality, occurs in the revolutionary ballad-writers and in the poetry of the Hartford Wits. Yet Franklin alone of all the earlier authors revealed the gift of humor in such abundance as it occurs in numerous later writers. The members of the Knickerbocker school, and Irving in particular, developed a rollicking humorous quality that was long popular. Apart from Franklin's minor works and the first efforts by Irving, there was little professional writing of humor in America before 1825.

2. Pioneers in Fun.-The first American humorists of the national period were, for the most part, born in New England. Naturally they belonged to an age long after the austere Puritans frowned at such frivolity. Seba Smith (1792-1868), a Portland journalist, wrote under the name of Major Jack Downing a series of amusing "Letters" (1830)

on current social and political conditions. These were couched in the Yankee dialect, and anticipated the manner of Lowell's Biglow Papers. Benjamin P. Shillaber (18141890), a Boston editor, wrote several books in which he introduced his famous character of Mrs. Partington, the good woman who tried to sweep the Atlantic Ocean back with a broom, and who has been called the Yankee Mrs. Malaprop because of her "nice derangement of epitaphs."

"Diseases is very various," said Mrs. Partington, as she returned from a street-door conversation with Doctor Bolus. "The Doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Haze has got two buckles on her lungs. . . One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs; another way, of the brown creatures; here they tell us of the elementary canal being out of order, and there about tonsors of the throat; here we hear of neurology in the head; there, of an embargo; one side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcofagus, and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any diseases nowadays."

Henry W. Shaw (1818-1885) had a varied career as steamboat hand, auctioneer, and farmer. His Essa on the Muel, bi Josh Billings (1860) became famous, and resulted in many more sketches by "Josh Billings," in which the spelling was equally bad, and the humor ranged from good to bad. Thus he satirized the glowing and misleading realestate advertisements of his day:

I kan sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars, a pallas, a sweet and pensive retirement, lokated on the virgin banks ov the Hudson, kontaining 85 acres. The land is luxuriously divided by the hand of natur and art, into pastor and tillage, into plain and deklivity, into stern abruptness, and the dallianse ov moss-tufted medder; streams ov

sparkling gladness (thick with trout) danse through this wilderness ov buty, tew the low musik ov the kricket and grasshopper. .. The manshun iz ov Parian marble, the porch iz a single diamond, set with rubiz and the mother ov pearl; the floors are ov rosewood, and the ceilings are more butiful than the starry vault of heavin. Hot and cold water bubbles and squirts in evry apartment, and nothing is wanting that a poet could pra for, or art could portray. As the young moon hangs like a cutting ov silver from the blu brest of the ski, an angel may be seen each night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green. (N. B. This angel goes with the place.)

Josh Billings also published a series of annual Farmer's Allminax that became extremely popular. Scattered through their pages were some shrewd bits of wit and humor. Among his "affurisms" are these:

Young man, when yu hav tew sarch Webster's Dickshinnary tew find words big enuff tew convey youre meaning yu kan make up yure mind that you don't mean mutch.

The grate desire ov mi life is tew amuze sumboddy. I had rather be able tew set the multiplikashun table tew sum lively tune than hev bin the author ov it.

Every man haz a perfekt right tew hiz opinyun, provided it agrees with ours.

I suppoze that one reason whi the "road to ruin" iz broad, is tew accomadate the grate amount ov travel in that direkshun.

3. Artemus Ward.-The most famous of the earlier humorists was Charles Farrar Browne (1834-1867), who was born in Maine of old Puritan stock, and became a printer and reporter in Ohio. His witty articles in the Cleveland Plaindealer were signed Artemus Ward, and under that name he became known as a humorous lecturer. In 1866 he went to England, where he created a furore with his gro