front. You may load up with ever so good a verb, but I notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present German range-you only cripple it. . . . Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue.

Fourthly, I would reorganize the sexes, and distribute them according to the will of the Creator. This as a tribute of respect if nothing else. . . Fifthly, I would do away with these great, long, compounded words, or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. . . . Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins' to the end of his oration. ... Seventhly, I would discard the parenthesis.. I would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain, straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it, and hold his peace."

In The Innocents Abroad, after saying how far the Bedouins of Palestine fall short of his fond expectations, he closes :

"To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to take the romance out of him forever-to behold his steed is to long in charity to strip his harness off and let him fall to pieces."

Many writers have attempted to follow in the steps of Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. Many a hand has essayed the peculiarities of the one or the other. But the result, with scarcely any exception, has been unutterably dreary. The style of humor which

is pleasant enough under the manipulation of its originator loses all its charm beneath an alien touch. To win fame by fun, and that alone, is a difficult matter. The two writers mentioned have done soat the expense of true literary merit; but as yet no one else has succeeded.

It would be ungracious, in this book, to neglect the contribution of Canada to English literature. Yet the comparative unimportance of that contribution forbids any extended notice. It is only of recent years that Canadian writers have gained a place in the eyes of the outside world. This is natural enough; indeed, when we consider the physical difficulties with which Canadians have had to contend, it is remarkable that the position should have been gained even at the close of the century. In the first place, the English had to win the country from the French. That accomplished, there succeeded the difficult questions of reconstruction; then the absorbing struggles of 1776 and 1812, and the Rebellion of 1837. The following thirty years were taken up by the political agitation that culminated in the Confederation of 1867. So that, prior to the last date, there had not been much time among our always limited population for the cultivation of original literature. The earlier rise and greater achievement of literature in the United States was but natural. That country had the advantage of a century's sturdy growth; for the New England section had been strong and flourishing many years

before the War of Independence, while the French owned Canada, and England held but a footing here and there. And there is another matter which has exercised considerable effect upon the growth of a Canadian literature. Only about half of Canada's huge territory is fitted for continuous residence, and there is no vast and rich South to counteract the effect of the long winters. Again, the powerful influence of her great neighbor has tended to draw away not a little of her best blood. Yet despite these and like difficulties Canada has done much. She has stretched her sway across a continent, has federated her scattered provinces, has preserved absolute liberty and justice for the men of an alien race in her midst, and has brought them into thorough sympathy with their English fellows. And as soon as her people had made her a nation, they began to turn their attention to letters, so that during the closing thirty years of the century, a literature emerges which may fairly be called national.

One name, however, stands forth commandingly during the first half of the century-the greatest, so far, in Canadian letters. It is THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON, widely known from his principal character as "Sam Slick." Haliburton was connected by descent with Sir Walter Scott, whose paternal grandmother was Barbara Haliburton. He was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1796, and received his education at King's College, at that

time the only university in the Maritime Provinces. He was called to the bar in 1820, and became a member of the House of Assembly in his native province. In 1840 he was made Judge of the Supreme Court, but shortly afterwards removed to England. Here he entered the Imperial Parliament, but did not achieve any very conspicuous success. His death took place in 1865.

Judge Haliburton may be said to have originated the broader school of Western humor. He "set the keynote of the tunes which so many have since with very various degrees of taste and skill been playing."

He has been called the Father of American humor; certain it is that he was the first to use the New England dialect for humorous purposes. The corner-stone of his fame is the book published in 1837, called The Clock Maker, or Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville. It consists of sketches which had previously appeared in a local paper. Sam Slick was a typical Yankee peddler, such as those who overran the Provinces in Haliburton's time. Into his mouth his author puts all manner of humor, satire and sound common sense. The book became very popular in England and the United States as well as Canada. By 1840 two other series had been published. Haliburton wrote a good deal in the vein that he had found successful. His books include The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England; Traits of American Humor; Nature and Human

Nature. His Yankee, Sam Slick, was the origin of the conventional "Uncle Sam" of the comic prints. Haliburton's work is interesting to Canadians for its witty presentation of bygone conditions, and for the added reason of his utterances on the subject of Imperial Federation.

Of later writers it is difficult to speak, as they are for the most part of very recent origin. The French-Canadian authors lie outside our scope, though they have done work which deserves more than passing notice. The first English poet in Canada was CHARLES HEAVYSEGE (1816-1869). His drama Saul was admired by Longfellow, and was termed by an English reviewer "one of the most remarkable English poems ever written out of Great Britain." The writings of JAMES DE MILLE (1835-1880) should not be overlooked. An educator and novelist, he was well known between 1870 and 1880. The Dodge Club, or Italy in 1860 (1866), anticipated Mark Twain in the field of humorous travel. A Castle in Spain, which first appeared in Harper's Magazine, was one of his best books. De Mille was a versatile writer, producing, besides some twenty novels, a useful text-book on rhetoric. A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was published posthumously and anonymously in 1888. It created a good deal of comment, in its serial as well as book form, the unknown author being accused of plagiarizing from novels that had appeared six years after it was actually written.