HUMOROUS WRITERS. Then let us laugh. It is the cheapest luxury man enjoys, and is worth a hundred groans in any state of the market.-Charles Lamb. America has a rich fund of humorous writings of a type all her own from the shrewd-witted down East Yankee, "Hosea Biglow," with his strong common sense mixed with droll witticisms, to the flippant, irreverent "funny man," who treats with equal liberty the sacred and the profane, and who takes delight in showing up the comic side of serious things and in making audacious use of scriptural quotations. All types of humor depend particularly upon the effective use of contradiction and anti-climax. Note the elements in the following: A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, Ef he must hev beliefs, nut to b'lieve 'em tu hard. -Hosea Biglow. "These to the printer," I exclaimed, And, in my humorous way, I added (as a trifling jest), "There'll be the devil to pay." -Holmes. To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan. -Hosea Biglow. They braced my aunt against a board To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins,— Oh, never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. -Holmes. Always live within your income, if you have to borrow money to do it. -Artemus Ward. It is better to kno less than to kno so mutch that ain't so. -Josh Billings. Boss: How many ab' yees are down here? Voice from Below: T'ree. Boss: Half of yees lower yer 'selves up and help Moike wid de poipe. A landlady was much surprised because one of her eccentric boarders always said Hebrews 13:8 every time as he sat down to a meal. Day after day,-morning, noon, and night, the good lady heard Hebrews 13:8 until her curiosity was so piqued that she searched her Bible. She was much shocked, perhaps you will be, too, when you read the verse. The first original Yankee from "jest about the middle of daown East" was "Major Jack Downing," a creation. of Seba Smith in his "Downing Letters" of 1830. This calculating, keen-witted Yankee stimulated many writers to try their pen at fun-making. Other well-known humorous writers who followed quickly in the footsteps of this first Yankee from down East were Hosea Biglow and The Autocrat. We have spoken of their work in previous pages, as well as dealing with the humorous strain of various other writers. Among the well-known authors who have made an especial business of being "funny men" and who have won fame through their mirth-provoking powers are: Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Josh Billings, John Kendrick Bangs, Robert Burdette, and scores of lesser fame. We have space in these pages to dwell at length only on the first three mentioned. The other writers may be studied fully if the teacher desires. ARTEMUS WARD. 1834-1867. HARLES FARRAR BROWNE, who, under the name CAR of "Artemus Ward," delighted America and England with his genial wit and drollery, in which there was never a grain of malice, was born April 26, 1834, at Waterford, Maine. He died of consumption March 26, 1867. Up to the hour of his death he was engaged in adding to the amusement of his fellow creatures and an unfinished paper found after his death was a droll commentary on the "disagreement" of various doctors who attended him. He lectured to delighted audiences to within a few days of his death and was often so ill that he could hardly dress for the nightly exhibition. His personality was a distinct surprise to the English audiences, comprising the most distinguished men. and women in society, literature and politics, who crowded to hear him. His letters to Punch and other writings with their grotesque misspelling and their representation of the writer as a jolly illiterate itinerant showman did not prepare his hearers for the refined delicate man dressed in faultless evening attire who stepped before the curtain of his "show" and with white refined hands holding now a fishing rod and again an umbrella or a riding whip, pointed out the various features of his "pictures." While he made his audience roar with laughter he himself remained grave and even mournful in appearance, which is said to have added to the comic effect of his delivery. The wit of Artemus Ward is distinctively American, a combination of drollery and common sense. "You hardly know what it is that makes you laugh outright." Artemus Ward's father, Levi Browne, was a land surveyor and Justice of the Peace. His mother, Caroline I. Browne, was a descendant of the Puritans. Commenting on his Puritan origin Artemus once said: "I think we came from Jerusalem, for my father's name was Levi, and we had a Moses and a Nathan in the family, but my poor brother's name was Cyrus, so perhaps that makes us Persians." The buoyancy and fun which pervade Artemus Ward's relations, business and friendly, with his fellow men remind us of that other bright spirit, Robert Louis Stevenson. After but a partial education at the Waterford school Charles was apprenticed in a printing office, his father wishing him to learn that trade. He soon left the first office and entered that of the Carpet Bag (edited by B. P. Shillaber, "Mrs. Partington"), and it was in his sixteenth year, while engaged in "setting up" the writings of "Miles O'Reilly," John G. Saxe and others that he made his own first contribution to literature, writing it in a disguised hand and putting it secretly in the editorial box. He had the delight of setting it up the next day. He then traveled as journeyman printer through Massachusetts and New York and finally settled in Toledo, |