The Iowa transcript. (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1858-1866, 1866-01-31

| vigorous, before we nave settled down into
= prosais way Of looking ct things; before
our minds have stiffened and our intellec'
tual epidermis become thickened by the
wear and tear Of life. II is true that those
happy constituted men, who retain their
impressibility, will acquire richer humor
as their minds become stored by new ideas.
The humor Of Hamlet or Of Jaques would
be uncomfortable in a very young man. But
the peculiar cast Of humor by which any
man will be hereafter distinguished is gene
rally displayed as conspicuous in his youth
as ut a later period.
1t is very difficult task to find the cpl
tibet which ought t, make the peculiarities
OF American humor Ineligible to those
who do not already understand all that can
pc saiu 70 them. No one can put into
words the difference between the scent Of a
rose and wall-flower. A single expert
meht VIII 10 more than any quantity of ex-
pinnation And, therefore, when we attempt
to seize some Of the main characteristics OF
American humor, We are only trying by
very Intellectual means to teach what any
one may learn far better from five minutes
study OF the "BIdELow PAPERS A whole
stream Of American humor has lately been
turned upon us. "ARTEMus WARD" the
1 ~. NENN lAPEKS, the LETTERS
OF "MAJoR DowNING," and various other
facetious performances, have made their
appearance on this side Of the Atlantic As
rule, nothing is more difficult than for one
nation to laugh at the jokes which amuse
another. great philosopher used to laugh
till the tears ran down his checks at the
sight Of two spiders fighting; our inability
to perceive the joke may, possibly, be a
| of l,,11o - 4: ..l..Y
ness. Englishmen and Yankees are, how
ever, so far Of one family as to appreciate
each others humor. Some Of the papers
| we have mentioned contain very small
jokes; but English railway travellers Ger.
tainly buy them and chuckle over them.
Their humor only differs from ours as
another species of the Same genius. And
therefore we may appreciate it sufficiently
to see how this variety is connected with
certain other national peculiarities. II is
not so unlike as to be riaced outside our
sphere of criticism, and yet it is unlike
enough to suggest the necessity Of some
explanation.
There is contrast between different
American writers which strikes u.s. The
United States are, as we know, the land
which is or ought to be bounded on the
the setting sun, on the North by the aurora
borealis, and on the South by the Day Of
Judgment. The language Of their orators
not unfreluently corresponds to the magni-
tude Of the national idea. There have been
many successors to the inimitable Elijah
Program. His well known bursts of clo-
quence are, like many Of Mr.. Dickens imi-
tations, good deal more lively than reality,
but they strike the true note. The subject
Of his eloquence was "vcrdant rs are the
mountains Of our country, bright and flow
ing as are our mineral ticks, unspiled by
whitening conventionalitics as are our broad
and boundless prearers. Rough he may
be, 80 air our bars; wild he may be, so air
our butfalers; but he is the child Of nature,
and the child Of freedom, and his boastful
answer to the despot and tyrant is, that his
bright home is in the settin' sun"
We could quote nothing from the origi-
nails so good as the imitation. 1t is q kind
Of portable soup, an ounce Of which diluted
with water would produce gallon Of
Fourth Of July Grafton. The originals gem
orally make their "tall talk" duh as well
as bombastic. The contrast of which we
have spoken is that between the manufac-
turers aud the consumers OF this cloauence.
The genuine Yankee is the incarnation of
Mhrewd common sense. 1t seems strange
that he should be taken in by this "wind
bag" style Of oratory. One would as soon
expect hat-6sh to rise at salmon fly. He
has such a keen eye for fact, that one
expect him to detect mere flummery. The
explanation is, perhaps, simple. Every half
educated person first tries to be eloquent
by piling up big words, and to be forcible
by employing strong ones. He has read
enough to to understand sesquipedalian ex
pressiOns, and his taste is not polished
enough to see through them. We see some
thing Of the same kind whenever an English
penny-a-liner tries to be impressive. BUTT
is also characteristic of the Americans that
this bombast not only exists side by side
with peculiarly dry humor, but gradually
passes into it. The perpetrator of uncon-
scious absurdities gradually begins TO manu-
facture them consciously and of malice pre-
pense. He talks in 'Ercles vein and winks
at us, rs If he saw the joke himself The
mere. buncombe of orators passes into the
quaint cxaggerations characteristic, Of the
Western States, who describe themselves as
half horse, half alligator, with a dash of the
The most outrageous bomhast
of the war proceeded from the notorious
Parson Brownlow, who said, if We remem-
Der right, that he proposed, If necessary, TO
fight the "Sesesh" till hell frozc, and then
to fight them on the ice. The strong touch
of profanity which is here Characteristic
ally introduced, produces another distinct
form Of exaggerated language. 1t is COM
mon, especially in the South western States,
to meet people who seem to have made
study of the art of protane swearing. They
invent new and curious oaths. They sys-
tematically interlard every sentence with
choice collection of peculiar epithets. They
corruscste into explosions Of new
tangled oaths, going off like some novel piece
Of fireworks. It is obviously impossible to
quote any appropriate specimens Of this
language.
The use Of very big words, either scri
ously, or as more or less consciously
absurd piece Of extravagance, is not the
really characteristic part of American hui
NOR. There are, indeed, two ways of pro-
ducing . comic effect which may be con-
rs the inverse Of each other. An
absurd 0verstatemcnt or an absurd under
statement may be equally effective. When
Falstaff tells Randolph that his face is an
" everlasting bonfire light that he has
/" saved him q thousand marks in links and
torches, walking in the night bctwixt tay-
ern and tavern" he gives good specimen
of the first. A we'll known American exam
pie is the assertion Of the Mississippi cap
tain, that his boat would float wherever the
ground was little damp. To illustrate
the second. We might quote the American,
who had managed to quote something in his
native country to parallel all the wonders
Of Europe. At last he was asked whether
ko.y - ~ :,,cA nwo,S 81 th, Inns all