THE HUMOROUS SPEAKER: BEING A Choice Collection of Amusing Pieces, BOTH IN PROSE AND VERSE, ORIGINAL AND SELECTED; CONSISTING OF DIALOGUES, SOLILOQUIES, PARODIES, &C. DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, LITERARY SOCIETIES, DEBATING 00 PUBLIC BY OLIVER OLDHAM. Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci, NEW YORK: NEWMAN & IVISON, 178 FULTON STREET. CINCINNATI: MOORE, ANDERSON & CO. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS & CO. AUBURN: J. C. IVISON & CO. 1853.- DETROIT: A. M'FARREN Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York. LENOX LIBRARY NEW YORK STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 216 William St., N. Y. PRINTED BY J. D. BEDFORD, 59 Ann Street. PREFACE. HUMOR and fun! Humor and fun! There's nothing like it under the sun. But, if you'd have it a perfect thing, Or rather chains, That Wisdom throws o'er Fancy's strains; For Fancy she's a mettlesome steed,. Fills you with dirt, The kind to hurt; With trifling trains Of thought that chiefly entertains, Because obscure, or low, or profane; From which no useful lesson you gain, Except you, with all your might and main, But humor's good, If we but rightly use it would. It trains the laughing power, at least, Which measures, they say, 'twixt man and beast; For, though sometimes With brutes he chimes, Below the brutes, For example, in much of the liquor he quaffs,* Yet is he the only creature that laughs. Hyenas, true, And monkeys too, Are a sort of ghastly, grinning crew; But the genuine laugh belongs to man, Variety, which May prove a kind of moral switch, To lash the crimes that baffle the law- * "Tis known that men will alcohol drink, 7 There 's many a crime, and heinous too, And sharp berates, The sin, but not the sinning pates, That vice and folly have rendered crazy, Well, this is the aim the book would reach, Has that design Indicated in Horace's line,— (See the title-page, and read the Latin, A flowing hexameter, smooth as satin,) Where a dactyl (utile) is made to meet With a spondee, (dūlcī,) th' appropriate feetOne meaning the useful, the other the sweet: Which things, says Horace, when duly they meet, Combine to produce an author complete, Whom every reader can gladly greet. The book 's for youth, For schools, in sooth; Yet it contains much humorous truth, |