lying of Ovid Bolus, Esq., is described with due elaboration; the pathetic fate of the Virginian emigrants who had no weather eye open for sharpers is set forth with artistic skill; and, finally, the fabulous exploits of Cave Burton, Esq., of Kentucky yield place to the astounding triumphs of the eloquence of Sargent S. Prentiss. If the fighting, swearing, drinking, gambling, hailfellow-well-met Southwest had produced no other literary monument than this, it would not have broken the Ten Commandments in vain. One wonders whether Judge Baldwin, who died Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California, ever saw on the Pacific coast any life more picturesque than that he left behind him. Surely he never examined a more amusingly ignorant candidate for admission to the bar than Mr. Thomas Jefferson Knowly.

Of social type and class humorists the number is so large as to be fairly disconcerting, especially at the close of an article. Fortunately, such humorists constitute the rank and file of their profession at all times, and the reader, by allowing for changes in fashions and manners, can infer from the similar humor of to-day the kind of jests and skits his father laughed at. A few of the more prominent representatives of the class deserve, however, to be mentioned. Among the earliest are George D. Prentice (18021870), the witty Louisville editor, and Frances Miriam Whitcher (1811-52), the only woman on our list,-if the writers of fiction were included this would not be the case,-author of the amusing "Widow Bedott Papers." As Miss Berry she won notoriety by contributions to newspapers and magazines, without dreaming that, when she married, the clamors of the supposed models for her characters would drive her clerical husband from his charge. No such effects seem to have been caused by the mild humor of the "Sparrowgrass Papers" of Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (1818-69), whose work is now but faintly remembered. After the Civil War the humorists of this type, profiting perhaps by the example set them by Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, become more aggressive and certainly more attractive to the modern reader. Prominent among them are Melville D. Landon ("Eli Perkins," born 1839), C. H. Clark ("Max Adler"), Charles B. Lewis ("M. Quad," born 1842), well known for the "LimeKiln Club papers in the Detroit "Free Press," and James M. Bailey (1841-94), the popular "Danbury News Man." The

mention of the last-named shows us at once that we have reached the golden age of humorous journalism (circa 1875). Hitherto humorous articles had been copied widely by the various newspapers. Now the paper that secured an original humorist on its staff would obtain a large circulation throughout the country. Mr. Bailey, for example, soon carried his "Danbury News" up to a circulation of thirty thousand. Later it was found profitable to establish journals like "Peck's Sun" in Milwaukee and the "Texas Siftings" of Alexander E. Sweet, recently deceased, which existed for and by their humor alone. This type of "funny paper" has passed; but "Puck," founded in 1877, the first really successful comic periodical in the country, still holds its own, although deprived of the guidance of its genial editor, the late H. C. Bunner, himself a humorist of a refined and most attractive type.

The humor of whimsicality alone remains to be treated briefly, its main representatives being John Phoenix, Josh Billings, who is too large for any one class, and has been dealt with already, and Charles Farrar Browne'(1834-67), better known as “ Artemus Ward." Derby's books, "Phoenixiana" and the "Squibob Papers," have been lately republished, which is perhaps a sign that his fame is emerging from its comparative eclipse. Whether he will hold latter-day readers is a moot point. When at his best, as when he lectures on astronomy, plays the editor, proposes a new system of English grammar, and writes a musical review extraordinary, he is a very delightful John Phoenix to some of us-in his own San Diego French, "il frappe toute chose parfaitement froid." But often his fantastic humor seems forced and becomes tiresome. Still it cannot be denied that he introduced the humor of the Pacific coast to the American public, and that he taught his fellowhumorists new tricks of extravagance in expression and thought. As a fair but not thoroughly satisfactory specimen of his quips and cranks, the following description of the moon must suffice:

"This resplendent luminary, like a youth on the Fourth of July, has its first quarter; like a ruined spendthrift, its last quarter; and, like an omnibus, is occasionally full and new. The evenings on which it appears between these last stages are beautifully illumined by its clear, mellow light."

The fame of Artemus Ward, showman, lecturer, practical joker, and whimsical writer, is perhaps more persistent than that

country. Be this as it may, it is impossible to read even a meager sketch of him without yielding him one's heart, yet at the same time realizing that, as in the case of a great orator, no one who did not see and hear the man is at all competent to judge him. His literary remains, although it would be easy to underrate their true wit and extravagant humor, do not of themselves explain his once tremendous vogue; but when to them we add the testimony of men who knew and loved him, it is not difficult to conclude that as a whimsically witty genius, although not as a broad, hearty humorist, he has had no equal in America. It is impossible to prove this conclusion, and it would be useless to attempt to support it by quotations even from his account of his famous visit to Brigham Young, or from his lecture on the Mormons. Perhaps a better test of the man's real greatness is supplied by the fact that his contemporaries at home and abroad, and our later selves, let and still let him say anything he will with impunity. He writes from Stratford to "Punch": "I've been lingerin' by the Tomb of the lamentid Shakspere. It is a success.' "It's Artemus Ward," is our involuntary comment, if we have learned to understand him.

Artemus Ward and Shakspere are good names to close with, for they help to show us that humor makes the whole world akin. And

poor Artemus's fate reminds us that American humor, as, for example, in Eugene Field's "The Old Man," is constantly tending to run into pathos. But the bare mention of Field recalls George Ade, Oliver Herford, Charles Battell Loomis, and the many true humorists whom we have omitted,1—not forgotten, some of whom will contribute to these pages, but more of whom, like Edgar W. Nye ("Bill Nye," 1850-96), have passed to a place where their smiles find no counterparts in tears. Living or dead, they have been the benefactors of their people. It may suggest a coarse taste, it may even be uncritical, as superfine criticism now goes, to maintain that their work is an integral and not the least valuable part of American literature; but, however this may be, it seems safe to prophesy that whenever America ceases to produce good humorists, and men and women ready to smile. and laugh with them, the country will cease to be the great nation that now engages our love and pride. Yet it is equally safe to prophesy that a people that has a jest for everything--even for political corruption-will sooner or later have more need of writers who, like Milton and Dante, rarely smile.

1 From a working list of eighty-itself a product of selection.