as

bon mots were made with the theater subject as, for example, when asked which performer he liked best in a certain piece, he replied: "The prompter, for I heard more and saw less of him than anyone else."

A member of the Kemble family, having made his first appearance on the operatic stage was stopped at rehearsal by the orchestra conductor who called to him: "Mr. Kemble, you are murdering the music." "My dear sir," came the quiet retort, "it is far better to murder it outright than to keep on beating it as you do."

The delightful persiflage of Oscar Wilde and the keen satire on the social customs of his day are well known to the readers of his plays, as for instance, when a Russian visitor to London planned a series of receptions he remarks: "He thinks he is setting up a salon -but it is only a restaurant." When, in his

But though we have not produced any great masterpiece of world-humor, though we can boast of no Cervantes, or Swift or Moliere, it is nevertheless a fact that the most distinctive characteristic of the American literature of the last two generations has been the abundance of writers who have excelled in that lighter criticism of life. This has had a wide range from the curt, exaggerated word play of Artemus Ward to the wise nonsense of a Josh Billings; from the serious satire of a Hosea Bigelow to the grace and gentle brilliancy of Holmes and Irving.

The very fact that as a nation America

is still a-venturing adds to her sense of the ridiculous-she fairly exudes vitality and good humor. Her people have more points of contact, dip more freely into the lives and experiences of their fellow men-all of which conduces to the exchange of quip and jest and to a ready appreciation of the witticisms of others. There is no more valuable asset than this same sense of humor; it has helped over many a rough place in life. True humor is one of the qualities which gives great minds vision, insight, poise and sympathy and it was this quiet, placid humor as evidenced in Lincoln that helped through his dark hours. When the president was asked if he were sure God was on "our" side, it was with no spirit of irreverence that he replied: "I am not troubling so much about that as whether or not we are on God's side."

The Civil War developed a new line of communication by the rise of the newspaper to a popularity it had never before enjoyed. The press of the country blossomed with special articles satirizing certain phases of government and politics. The newspapers have from that day to this been an important medium of humorous expression and have frequently created an amusing, fictitious personality as the mouthpiece of a humorous writer. A salient characteristic of the earlier newspaper humorist was this sincerity of type. With some it may have been the very ridiculousness of the chosen mouthpiece but always the reader felt as definite an acquaintance as if they had met the character in play or novel.

There was Huntley of the Brooklyn Eagle, Opie Read of the Arkansaw Trav eler and Knox and Sweet of the Texas Siftings. Instead of one, the latter had an entire cast of characters, each separate and distinct-the shrewd colored parson, the Rev. Whangdoodle Baxter; Mose Schamberg, the persuasive slopshop merchant: and Uncle Mose, the personification of dignity and alertness. This column soon became a market for the exchange editor all over the country.

Philander Johnson of the 'ashington Star has won fame and fortune with his Senator Sorghum, Mr. Chuggens, Mr. Dustin Stox, the millionaire, and young Mrs. Torkins. Down at Danbury, Conn., James M. Bailey edited the News and indulged in

quaint discourse over everyday experiences -such as the perversity of the stove-pipe or the eccentricities of the domestic hen, the pet dog or family carry-all. This soon secured for him wide fame as the "Danbury News Man."

These so-called "funny men" may stand in the same relation to literature as does opera bouffe to grand opera—their appeal may not be to the more fastidious but they have meant more to the great body of the plain people than the more serious bookmen who survive longer than merely a decade or a generation.

Humorists such as Bret Harte, John Hay and Mark Twain, though beginning in the journalistic field, have infused a gentle. gracious humor into a real literature. And unlike the court jesters of Shakespeare's day, the wits of our time and country have also been given credit for wisdom as well. Beside the above, Franklin, Warner, Holmes, Irving and many others have succeeded to high places. In fact, to be a good raconteur is as necessary an asset for the bishopric or bench as is the art of the afterdinner speaker for a foreign ambassadorship. As one writer has said: "Sense is the necessary counterpart of nonsense just as humor is of pathos, neither being able to exist without the other."

The gentle humor of Mark Twain was augmented by his atmosphere of feigned solemnity. His impassive countenance and slow drawl of utterance gave a rich vitality to his knowledge of human nature. The personality of the man was constantly before the public. During his lifetime the press was full of anecdotes of this whimsical character and through his almost

by his wife, he followed in the footsteps of Artemus Ward by taking to the public platform as a medium for his humorous dissertations. Of this period he himself says: "I wrote a lecture about two hours long on the Rise and Fall of the Mustache and said it without hesitation, manuscript or remorse." Later Mr. Burdette associated himself with the Brooklyn Eagle and having entered the ministry about this time, he spent his last years as pastor and then pastor emeritus of the Temple congregation in Los Angeles.

Perhaps broader and richer and still funnier were the stories of Bill Nye, who used to tell how the farmer charged him forty cents for a glass of milk and when Nye indignantly asked the reason, explained: "Well, I'll tell ye, I need the money," and thus added that phrase to American slang.

But by all odds the most popular newspaper paragrapher the United States has ever boasted was Eugene Field. He is recognized as the father of the "column," the still prevailing mode of humor-haberdashery. His Denver Tribune "primerstories" won him some recognition, but it

Copyright by Paul Thompson, N. Y.

FRANKLIN P. ADAMS

"Columnist" of the New York Tribune

Albert

Bigelow

Boswellian biographer, Albert Paine, we can still keep a vivid picture of his days.

The older generation of newspaper readers recalled, upon the death of Robert J. Burdette, that group whose fugitive work was quoted more widely than the classics and thus brought the provincial papers to which they were attached into almost national prominence. The Burlington Hawkeye was the beginning of the much loved "Bob" Burdette's efforts until his personality to outsiders was merged in that of "The Hawkeye Man" and his paper became a power in Iowa politics. Urged on

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GEORGE FITCH

his paper and alights from the car. It is "snap" with the live humorist of to-day just as it is "punch" with the playwright which is the ingredient which "gets it over."

When we read or go to see "Alice in Wonderland" we admire the almost mathematical accuracy of thought displayed by its author, Lewis Carroll. No insouciant giggle but a determined, deliberate laugh -amused and at the same time admiring the skill of such cleverly constructed consequences. But this is not the rapid-fire humor that is the essential requisite of the "column" as we know it.

Among the famous contributors of this latter day has been George Ade, who under "Stories of the Street and Town" in the Chicago Record first published his "Fables in Slang," richly illustrated by the now famous John T. McCutcheon.

About this same time Finley Peter Dunne was beginning his "Dooley's" in the Trib

THOMAS L. MASSON Managing Editor of "Life"

was after his advent in the Chicago newspaper field that his uninterrupted road to fame began. "Current Gossip" was the heading of his first paragraphs which soon gave way, however, to "Sharps and Flats" now ineffaceably associated with his name and memory. This column might consist of one tale, or be broken up into forty paragraphs and might range from the president to base-ball. It was here that most of his verse, now preserved in all manner of editions, first saw the light. After a sojourn in Europe, his writings began to assume a more bookish flavor and grew less personal in theme. But for twelve years these odd conceits and effervescent wit held their place in the first rank of American humor.

From Field's day on, the column on the editorial page of every city and village paper has been the accepted sphere of jokedom. Just as the "movies" have met the public demand for swiftness of action, so the "funny-man" must be up and running. In a pithy sentence or rhyme he passes a quip on a current topic so that the reader skimming a page with lightning eye, even perhaps after he has given the motorman a signal to stop at the next corner, can catch it and chuckle over it as he folds

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ELLIS O. JONES

Paragraph Writer and Platform Entertainer

une, having gotten his types from a saloonkeeper and bartender across from the newspaper office. Anomalous as it may seem. not since Lowell's type of New England preacher, Hosea Bigelow, has any American worked so rich a vein of satire and to such wholesome purpose-applying sanity to public perfidy or private folly. The Irishman, though unable ever to conform to our ways, follows at our heels much as a street urchin after a swell, half in the spirit of conscious mockery and half in imitative admiration. Life to him is a game and it robs their jests of any bitterness of satire. Then, perhaps, the brogue itself relieves of any sting and the very looseness of thought that engenders the "bull" is sure to produce humorous contradictions. Mr. Dunne seldom relies on pure exaggeration but leaves some thought for your humor to feed upon. Such is his sagacious criticism of spiritualistic evidence: "My aunt seen a ghost once," remarks Mr. Hennesy. "Ivvrybody's aunt has seen a ghost," says Mr. Dooley.

Bert Leston Taylor, familiarly known as

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BURGES JOHNSON

Writer of Humorous Child Verse

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WALLACE IRWIN

Writer of Satire and Political Verse

"B. L. T.," first started "A Little about Everything" on the Chicago Journal, soon going to the Tribune where, with the exception of a few years spent in New York as editor of Puck, he has since reigned supreme with his inimitable "colyum" of "A Line-o'-Type or Two." This is probably the most popular and most widely quoted of its kind to-day. It has been widely imitated, but, as was once said of the McCutcheon cartoons: "They can imitate his style, but they cannot imitate his mind."

Mr. Taylor's successor on the Chicago Journal was Franklin P. Adams who soon moved on to New York. Here in the "Always in Good Humor" column of the Evening Mail he ran many of the "Translations of Horace," which proved so popular that in casting about for another classic that would lend itself to paraphrasing, he lighted upon the "Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys." Mr. Adams is noted for his encouragement of the amateur and invites contributions for his "Conning Tower" in the New York Tribune. Among the latter he discovered that some excellent poems