The Donaldsonville chief., 1872-12-28
DoNAIDsoNVILIE LA, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 49, 1872
course, and differed in every way from
that Of his American COMPANION. who

course, and differed in every way from
; that of his American companion, VIII,
, remarked that he had seen an oyste
so large that it "toek three men tx
swallow it whole.n Equally American
was the remark Of the North Carroll
nian, who, in speaking Of the extreme
leanness Of his neighbours hogs, sail
that g he had to put oyercoats on them
to enable them to make shadow il
the SUM-" It must have been this North
Carolinian's brother who said an. &C.
quaintance was $50 tall that he never
found out when his feet were cold till
they had got warm again."
Nobody but an American could have
called Shakespeare "a bose poet" as
Artemus Ward did.
But the most peculiarly American
form Of humor yet developed is that
which has lately become SO popular
among editorial paragraph writer's in
our Western States. It is undescriba-
BILE, and we can indicate what it is only
by giving one or two examples:
"Mrs. Gwin, of Davenport, assisted
the kitchen fire, one day last week,
with the kerosene-can. The heavy
rain kept good many people from
attending the funeral"
ga Chicago man ate ten dozen
eggs on a wager last week. The
money he won has been paid to his
widow"
"a man out in Kansas said he could
drink quart of Cincinnati whisky,
and he did it. The silver mounting on
his coffin cost 1895"
We can not fail to discover at once
the parentage of anything Of this sort.
It is too evidently indigenous to be
mistaken for an exotic.
The .jests of other nations are equal
" we'll marked. Your French bo,,-not
has all unmistakable shrug of the
shoulders about it. German wit is
elaborate and minutely accurate in
all it's details. A Scotch joke must Of
necessity be gimlet-pointed, else it
could never be driven home i'll the
heads of Seotchmen.
We can not only discover the nation
ality of q jest from internal evidences,
but we can often tell the exact region
whence it came, and sometimes even
its very authorship is apparent. When
we hear a man say that he wrestles
his hash" at such place, we know
very we'll that that man was "raised"
west of the .Alleghapies. The man
who asks you "what you've got on
your wheel-house," when he wants to
know what you propose to do, has no
need to tell anybody that he has lived
on the banks Of the Mississippi river.
And it could only have been a college
student, and q sophomore at that, who
when asked what stars never set, re-
piled, 4 yoostass:o ssss=ft 'fsa.~ -7s<stasss
There are some jests as we haye
already remarked, whose very author
ship is apparent; notably some Of
Hoods and nearly all Of Charles
Lambs. SAKE has closely initiated
his masters in the matter of puns,
but he has never shown himself equal
to such play on words as that which
Hood puts into the mouth Of the ven
der of ear-trumpets, who, i'll Wanting
his wares, says: ... 49,. ...-.
"There was Mrs F.,
So very deaf .- H.s=~rg
And been knocked on the head without hear
Well, / sold her horn, and the very next
She heard from her husband at Botany Bay"
Charles Lamb was never like any
body else, and certainly nobody else
was ever like Charles Lamb. It was
he of course (who else could it have
been y, who replied to the complaint
of his superior in the India House,
that he came to his desk later in the
morning than any other of the writer's,
by saying, eyes; but you see l make
it up by going aacay earlier in the eve
ming" His good things were always
so essentially and wholly his own,
that there is no possibility of mistak-
ing their origin. No other man could
have thought his thoughts or any
thing like them. Nobody else would
ever have thought of plying our fore
fathers, who lived before the times of
candlelight, because whenever they
cracked a joke after dark, they had to
feel about for smile, and handle their
neighb0rs' cheeks to be sure they un-
derstood it!-Hearth and Home.
The Shreveport Telegram, a Demo-
cratic newspaper, in commenting on
mattersin in New Orleans, says: The af-
fair has assumed such grave legal
bearing that We are unable to pro-
nounce upon it, preferring to await
further developments. 1t is evident,
however, that the party in opposition
to Warmoth are determined that he
shall proceed in this matter in legal
manner, and as they will likely be sus-
tanned in their action by the powers of
the general government, he has heavy
struggle ahead of him. He is bold
enough, we admit, to carry the most
ultra designs into execution, and in.
his desperation would drag the whole
State after him; but we have faith in
the cool judgment Of the people in
this emergency. If Warmoth is right,