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 BY OLIVER OLDHAM. Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci, NEW YORK: IVISON, PHINNEY & CO., 48 & 50 WALKER ST. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS & CO., 39 & 41 LAKE ST. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by HENRY IVISON In the Clork's Office for the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED 81 THOMAS B. SMITH 216 William St., N. Y 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, That gives a thoughtless rider no heed; Fills you with dirt, The kind to hurt; With trifling trains Of thought that chiefly entertains, Because obscene, or low, or profane; From which no useful lesson you gain, 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, And he ought to enjoy it as best he can. May prove a kind of moral switch, To lash the crimes that baffle the law-- * "Tis known that men will alcohol drink, There's many a crime, and heinous too, To punish and check, in the spirit true 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, Whom every reader can gladly greet. The book's for youth, For schools, in sooth; Yet it contains much humorous truth, |