Thomas L. Masson - Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor (Volume 4)

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Title: Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor

Author: Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6313][Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule][This file was first posted on November 25, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN WIT ***

Produced by Duncan Harrod, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: Mark Twain]

Edited by Thomas L. Masson

By

Fitzhugh Ludlow
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Danforth Marble
William Dean Howells
Samuel Minturn Peck
William Cullen Bryant
and others

1903

AGNES REPPLIER
A Plea for Humor

MARIETTA HOLLEY
An Unmarried Female

FITZHUGH LUDLOW
Selections from a Brace of Boys

ROBERT JONES BURDETTE
Rheumatism Movement Cure

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
An Aphorism and a Lecture

JOSHUA S. MORRIS
The Harp of a Thousand Strings

SEBA SMITH
My First Visit to Portland

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
The Mosquito

JOHN CARVER
Country Burial-places

DANFORTH MARBLE
The Hoosier and the Salt-pile

ANNE BACHE
The Quilting

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
A Fragment

Domestic Happiness

CHARLES F. BROWNE ("Artemus Ward")
One of Mr. Ward's Business Letters

On "Forts"

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Without and Within

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Street Scenes in Washington

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Mis' Smith

JAMES JEFFREY ROOHE
A Boston Lullaby

CHARLES GRAHAM HALPINE
Irish Astronomy

SAMUEL MINTURN PEOK
Bessie Brown, M. D.

ROBERT C. SANDS
A Monody

CAROLYN WELLS
The Poster Girl

JAMES GARDNER SANDERSON
The Conundrum of the Golf Links

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
The Minister's Wooing

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Mrs. Johnson

ANONYMOUS
The Trout, the Cat and the Fox The British Matron

Agnes Repplier

More than half a dozen years have passed since Mr. Andrew Lang,startled for once out of his customary light-heartedness, askedhimself, and his readers, and the ghost of Charles Dickensall threepowerless to answerwhether the dismal seriousness of the presentday was going to last forever; or whether, when the great wave ofearnestness had rippled over our heads, we would pluck up heart to bemerry and, if needs be, foolish once again. Not that mirth and follyare in any degree synonymous, as of old; for the merry fool, tooscarce, alas! even in the times when Jacke of Dover hunted for him inthe highways, has since then grown to be rarer than a phenix. He hascarried his cap and bells and jests and laughter elsewhere, and hasleft us to the mercies of the serious fool, who is by no means soseductive a companion. If the Cocquecigrues are in possession of theland, and if they are tenants exceedingly hard to evict, it isbecause of the encouragement they receive from those to whom weinnocently turn for help: from the poets, novelists and men ofletters whose duty it is to brighten and make glad our days.

"It is obvious," sighs Mr. Birrell dejectedly, "that many peopleappear to like a drab-colored world, hung around with dusky shreds ofphilosophy"; but it is more obvious still that, whether they like itor not, the drapings grow a trifle dingier every year, and that noone seems to have the courage to tack up something gay. What is muchworse, even those bits of wanton color which have rested generationsof weary eyes are being rapidly obscured by somber and intricatescroll-work, warranted to oppress and fatigue. The great masterpiecesof humor, which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried inthe courts of an orthodox morality and found lamentably wanting; orelse, by way of giving them another chance, they are being subjectedto the peine forte et dure of modern analysis, and are revealinghideous and melancholy meanings in the process. I have always believedthat Hudibras owes its chilly treatment at the hands of criticswiththe single and most genial exception of Sainte-Beuveto the absoluteimpossibility of twisting it into something serious. Strive as we may,we cannot put a new construction on those vigorous old jokes, and tobe simply and barefacedly amusing is no longer considered a sufficientraison d'etre. It is the most significant token of our ever-increasing "sense of moral responsibility in literature" that weshould be always trying to graft our own conscientious purposes uponthose authors who, happily for themselves, lived and died beforevirtue, colliding desperately with cakes and ale, had imposed suchdepressing obligations.

"'Don Quixote,'" says Mr. Shorthouse with unctuous gravity, "willcome in time to be recognized as one of the saddest books everwritten"; and, if the critics keep on expounding it much longer, Itruly fear it will. It may be urged that Cervantes himself was lowenough to think it exceedingly funny; but then one advantage of ournew and keener insight into literature is to prove to us howindifferently great authors understood their own masterpieces.Shakespeare, we are told, knew comparatively little about "Hamlet,"and he is to be congratulated on his limitations. Defoe would hardlyrecognize "Robinson Crusoe" as "a picture of civilization," havinginnocently supposed it to be quite the reverse; and he would be asamazed as we are to learn from Mr. Frederic Harrison that his bookcontains "more psychology, more political economy, and moreanthropology than are to be found in many elaborate treatises onthese especial subjects"blighting words which I would not evenventure to quote if I thought that any boy would chance to read themand so have one of the pleasures of his young life destroyed. As for"Don Quixote," which its author persisted in regarding with suchmisplaced levity, it has passed through many bewilderingvicissitudes. It has figured bravely as a satire on the Duke ofLerma, on Charles V., on Philip II., on Ignatius Loyola-Cervantes wasthe most devout of Catholicsand on the Inquisition, which,fortunately, did not think so. In fact, there is little or nothingwhich it has not meant in its time; and now, having attained thatdeep spiritual inwardness which we have been recently told is lackingin poor Goldsmith, we are requested by Mr. Shorthouse to refrain fromall brutal laughter, but, with a shadowy smile and a profoundseriousness, to attune ourselves to the proper state of receptivity.Old-fashioned, coarse-minded people may perhaps ask, "But if we arenot to laugh at 'Don Quixote,' at whom are we, please, to laugh?"aquestion which I, for one, would hardly dare to answer. Only, after reading the following curious sentence, extracted from a latelypublished volume of criticism, I confess to finding myself in a stateof mental perplexity utterly alien to mirth. "How much happier," itsauthor sternly reminds us, "was poor Don Quixote in his energeticcareer, in his earnest redress of wrong, and in his ultimate triumphover self, than he could have been in the gnawing reproach andspiritual stigma which a yielding to weakness never failinglyentails!" Beyond this point it would be hard to go. Were these thingsreally spoken of the "ingenious gentleman" of La Mancha or of JohnHoward or George Peabody or perhaps Elizabeth Fryor is there nolonger such a thing as recognized absurdity In the world?