the questions, mum."
And this of the little boy, who was asked by his mother as to what he would like to give his cousin for a birthday present.
"I know," was the reply, "but I ain't big enough."
Many of our humorists have maintained a constant geniality in their humor, even in the treatment of distressing themes. For example, Josh Billings made the announcement that one hornet, if it was feeling well, could break up a whole camp meeting. Bill Nye, Artemas Ward and many another American writer have given in profusion of amiable sillinesses to make the nation laugh. It was one of these that told how a drafted man sought exemption because he was a negro, a minister, over age, a British subject, and an habitual drunkard.
The most distinctive flavor in American humor is that of the grotesque. It is characteristic in Mark Twain's best work, and it is characteristic of most of those others who have won fame as purveyors of laughter. The American tourist brags of his own:
"Talk of Vesuve—huh! Niag'll put her out in three minutes." That polished writer, Irving, did not hesitate to declare that Uncle Sam believed the earth tipped when he went West. In the archives of our government is a state paper wherein President Lincoln referred to Mississippi gunboats with draught so light that they would float wherever the ground was a little damp. Typically American in its grotesquerie was the assertion of a rural humorist who asserted that the hogs thereabout were so thin they had to have a knot tied in their tails to prevent them from crawling through the chinks in the fence.
Ward displayed the like quality amusingly in his remark to the conductor of a tediously slow-moving accommodation train in the South. From his seat in the solitary passenger coach behind the long line of freight cars, he addressed the official with great seriousness:
"I ask you, conductor, why don't you take the cow-catcher off the engine and put it behind the car here? As it is now, there ain't a thing to hinder a cow from strolling into a car and biting a passenger."
Similar extravagance appears in another story of a crawling train. The conductor demanded a ticket from a baldheaded old man whose face was mostly hidden in a great mass of white whiskers.
"I give it to ye," declared the ancient.
"I don't reckon so," the conductor answered. "Where did you get on?"
"At Perkins' Crossin'," he of the hoary beard replied.
The conductor shook his head emphatically.
"Wasn't anybody got aboard at Perkins' Crossin' 'cept one little boy."
"I," wheezed the aged man, "was that little boy."
In like fashion, we tell of a man so tall that he had to go up on a ladder to shave himself—and down cellar to put his boots on.
We Americans are good-natured, as is necessary for humor, and we have brains, as is necessary for wit, and we have the vitality that makes creation easy, even inevitable. So there is never any dearth among us of the spirit of laughter, of its multiform products that by their power to amuse make life vastly more agreeable. Every newspaper, and most magazines carry their quota of jests. Never, anywhere, was the good story so universally popular as in America today. It is received with gusto in the councils of government, in church, in club, in cross-roads store. The teller of good stories is esteemed by all, a blessing undisguised. The collection that follows in this volume is, it is believed, of a sort that will help mightily to build an honorable fame for the narrator.
For greater convenience in references to the volume, the various stories and anecdotes are placed under headings arranged in alphabetical order. The heading in every case indicates the subject to which the narration may be directly applied. This will be found most useful in selecting illustrations for addresses of any sort, or for use in arguments. History tells us how Lincoln repeatedly carried conviction by expressing his ideas through the medium of a story. His method is rendered available for any one by this book.
STORIES
JOKES
ABSENTMINDEDNESS
The man of the house finally took all the disabled umbrellas to the repairer's. Next morning on his way to his office, when he got up to leave the street car, he absentmindedly laid hold of the umbrella belonging to a woman beside him, for he was in the habit of carrying one. The woman cried "Stop thief!" rescued her umbrella and covered the man with shame and confusion.
That same day, he stopped at the repairer's, and received all eight of his umbrellas duly restored. As he entered a street car, with the unwrapped umbrellas tucked under his arm, he was horrified to behold glaring at him the lady of his morning adventure. Her voice came to him charged with a withering scorn:
"Huh! Had a good day, didn't you!"
The absentminded inventor perfected a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in a tone of deep regret:
"Dear me! I've gone and forgotten my umbrella."
The professor, who was famous for the wool-gathering of his wits, returned home, and had his ring at the door answered by a new maid. The girl looked at him inquiringly:
"Um—ah—is Professor Johnson at home?" he asked, naming himself.
"No, sir," the maid replied, "but he is expected any moment now."
The professor turned away, the girl closed the door. Then the poor man sat down on the steps to wait for himself.
The clergyman, absorbed in thinking out a sermon, rounded a turn in the path and bumped into a cow. He swept off his hat with a flourish, exclaiming:
"I beg your pardon, madam."
Then he observed his error, and was greatly chagrined. Soon, however, again engaged with thoughts of the sermon, he collided with a lady at another bend of the path.
"Get out of the way, you brute!" he said.
The most absent-minded of clergymen was a Methodist minister who served several churches each Sunday, riding from one to another on horseback. One Sunday morning he went to the stable while still meditating on his sermon and attempted to saddle the horse. After a long period of toil, he aroused to the fact that he had put the saddle on himself, and had spent a full half hour in vain efforts to climb on his own back.
ACQUAINTANCE
The Scotchman who ran a livery was asked by a tourist as to how many the carryall would hold.
"Fower generally," was the answer. "Likely sax, if they're weel aquaint."
ACTORS
The tragedian had just signed a contract to tour South Africa. He told a friend of it at the club. The friend shook his head dismally.
"The ostrich," he explained in a pitying tone, "lays an egg weighing anywhere from two to four pounds."
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