THE

HUMOROUS SPEAKER:

:

BEING

A Choice Collection of Amusing Pieces,

BOTH IN PROSE AND VERSE,

ORIGINAL AND SELEOTED;

CONSISTING OF

DIALOGUES, SOLILOQUIES, PARODIES, &C.

DESIGNED

FOR THE USE OF SCIITOLO, LITEKARY SOCIÉTIES, DEBATING

CLUBS, SOCIAL CERCLEZ ATD DOMESTIC ENTERTAINMENT,

في

NEW YORK:
NEWMAN & IVISON, 178 FULTON STREET.
CINCINNATI: MOORE, ANDERSON & Co. CHICAGO: S. O. GRIGGS & 00.
AUBURN: J. O. IVISON & CO. DETROIT: A. M'FARREN

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by

HENRY IVISON,
In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York.

LENOX LIBRARA

NEW YORK

PREFACE.

HUMOR and fun!
Humor and fun!

There's nothing like it under the sun.
But, if

you

'd have it a perfect thing,
All of it honey, none of it sting,
Except, perchance, an occasional fling
At pride, or folly, or some such thing,

Hold on the reins,
Or rather chains,

That Wisdom throws o'er Fancy's strains;
For Fancy she's a metolesome steed,: .
That gives a thoughtless rider ro. heed;
Rushing right on-mud: gully, or mead,
With a sort of geometric speed;' »

Fills you with dirt,
The kind to hurt;
Addles your brains
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,
Shun, as a viper, the filthy strain.

But humor 's good,
And fun is 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,
Nay, often shoots

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,

And he ought to enjoy it as best he can.
"There is a time to laugh,”. the wise man said,
And a place: Tacen tliiselpolskie read;
I

; Where even a debt, as heey.as.lead,

a May something ftud toidutiven

finu: his head, And cheer up å spitit souliese wed.

It yields a rich
Variety, which

May prove a kind of moral switch,
To lash the crimes that baffle the law-
Ingratitude, avarice, et cetera ;—for

a

There's many a crime, and heinous too,
That comes not in the law's purview,
Which, still, the satirist much may do

,
To punish and check, in the spirit true

Of him that hates,
And sharp berates,

The sin, but not the sinning pates,
That vice and folly have rendered crazy,
Foppish or rakish, profane or lazy,
Extravagant, flippant_I know not what-
From a sober fool to a silly sot.
Well, this is the aim the book would reach,
Endeavoring in humorous way to teach,
By a pertinent representative speech,
What should be avoided by all and each.

The work, in fine,
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 (ūtīlē) is made to meet
With a spondee, (dūlci,) th' appropriate feet
One 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,