Baton Rouge tri-weekly gazette & comet. [volume] (Baton Rouge, La.) 1865-18??, 1866-04-17

n.
-s-@~s
BILL ARP, So-CALLED.-Withou
deciding how justly the following
from the Augusta Constitutionalist
applies to "Bill," it is certain that
the general view here taken is q
correct one:
That species of humor dependent,
in considerable degree, upon tricks
of language and photographed alb
surdities, is certainly not of very
high order of literature. It must
have an humble place when COM
pared with the master touches of
Sterne, Cervantes, LIE Sage, Thack-
cry, Charles Lamb and Dickens, and,
on principle, it is hardly commenda-
BILE when the perversion of grammar
is rendered the more attractive by a
nimble intellect Imitators crop up,
like spring mushrooms, and, without
any of the ability to back them, ape
nothing but salient incongruities and
tarcical acrobatics of syntax.
The most prominent example of
this kind of writing is Artemus
Ward, who has been bidding his ma
tive land "adoo" for the last nine
months. Claptrap and show-bills
have been brought into requisition /;
the popular imagination glows to a
white heat; pufs fly thick and fast;
finally the great Artemus speaks, but
no one seems thoroughly satisfied
that he is half so jocose as his pro-
gramme warranted. Most people
never got the worth of their money,
we know; but inasmuch as that
many-headed monster (the gentle
people, the Unsuitable populace has
the nav of the horse-leeches' daugh-
ter, all who present themselves for
its applause should be thoroughly
aware of the impediments. During
the last few years the redoubtable
Bill Arp has kept us all in a roar by
following somewhat in the wake of
A. Ward, and beating him at his
own game.
Now, Bill is both gentleman and
scholar-State Senator to boot-and
what he thus gets up picturesquely
is what his cultivated mind chooses
to discard and slough off. He came
just in the right time, and the blows
he gave We're as smashing as Tom
Sayers' fist or butchers cleaver.
Humor welled up spontaneously,
rich and pungent. Wit and wisdom
sprang forth, clad in uncouth gar
ments, tatte1ed Confederates, but full
of valor. His lungs were like those
made by kitchen knife, sharpened
on paving stone, ragged and awful |
gouges. Everybody read him and |
everybody liked him, the women
folk specially -God bless them |
Just as long as he wrote from the |
abundance of his heart, he could not |
fail to hold his own; but when, in |
an evil hour, he contracted with Mr.. |
Mullaly, of the Metropolitan Record, |
to be funny periodically, that minute
he forsook his good genius.
We have read his last effusion,
and it is fiat. 1t is not our Bill, but
a CHASTITY counterfeit. 1t makes us
sad to think SO, but the truth must
out. How much better for General
Grant if he had stopped shaking
multitudinous hands six months
sooner than he did; how much bet
ter for Doesticks if he had sacrificed
to the furies before he married
Fanny Ferns angel how much bet
ter for Asa Hartz if he had made
full stop Of his old style, when en-
larged from "prison on Lake Erie 2"
The great desert of humor is filled
with the bones of devoted pilgrims.
We should be truly grieved to have
to say to noble Bill what Gil Bias
said to the archbishop, but how shall
the melancholy duty be evaded, if
the contortions of the sybil are with
out inspiration