Juniata sentinel. [volume] (Mifflintown, Pa.) 1846-1873, 1873-09-03
Personality.

Ihere IS nOtnlng else IN the world
which bears the marks of its nativity SC
unmistakably as wit and humor do. The
speeches of Burke might have been
delivered by Webster; the poetry OF
Wordsworth and Southey might have
been written by Americans there is
nothing about the German philosophy
which is so essentially German that it
might not have been English; and there
are some of the French dramatists who
could almost have initiated even Shakes
peare himself. But it is not so with wit
and humor. Given jest, and it needs
but little discernment to tell whence it
came. Sheridan's much-quoted remark
concerning Dundas, that he "resorts to
his memory for his wit and to his imagi-
nation for his facts" could not possibly
have been made by any but an English
man, or even by an Englishman of any
other than Sheridan's time.
Douglas Jerrold's witticism, eft is
better to be witty and wise than witty
and otherwise" was not only very Eng
lish, but very Jerroldy, and few people
would need to be told who said it.
And so it is with the humor of other
peoples. Who would hesitate for a
moment to credit Ireland with the man
who, Wanting the glories of the past,
wanted to know "where you will find a
modern building which has lasted as
long as the ancient ones?" Equally
evident is Sir Richard Steele's nativity,
from his celebrated effort to extend hos
pitality to a friend, to whom he said,
eff you should ever come within mile
of my house, hope you will stop there. !"
And there can be no question that it
was an Irish editor who announced that
prominent gentleman of the country
had "died suddenly after lingering
Illness"
Perhaps the most strongly marked
humor, however, is that of our own
country. 1t is of broad-guage sort
kind of high-pgessure affair-too much
like us to belong to anybody else
Thackeray's joke about the size of our
oysters was purely English, of course,
and differed in every way from that of
his American companion, who remarked
that he had seen an oyster so large that
it "took three men to swallow it whole"
Equally American was the remark of
the North Carolinian, who, in speaking
of the extreme leanness of his neighbor's
hogs, said that che had to put overcoats
on them to enable them to make a
shadow in the SUM-" 1t must have been
this North Carolinian's brother who
said an acquaintance 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 boss 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 writers in
our Western States. 1t is indescribable,
and we can indicate what it is only CIV
ing 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"
"a Chicago man ate ten dozen eggs
on wager last week. The money he
won has b3en paid to his widow"
ga man out in Kansas said he could
drink quart of Cincinnati whisky, and
he did it. The silver mountings on his
coffin cost S13.75."
We cannot fail to discover at once the
parentage of anything of this sort. 1t
is too evidently indigenous to be mis-
taken for an exotic.
The jests of other nations are equally
well marked. Yonr French 6oa-n,ot
has an unmistakable shrug of the
shoulders about it. German wit is
elaborate and minutely accurate in all
its details. A Scotch joke must of neces-
sity be gimlet-pointed, else it could
never be driven home in the heads of
Scotchmen.
We cannot only discover the nation
ality of jest from internal evidences,
but We can often tell the exact region
whence it came, and sometimes even it's
very authorship is apparent. When we
hear man say that he "wrestles his
hash" at such place, We know very
well that man was raised" west of the
.Alleghenies. The man who asks you
"what you We got on your wheel-house,"
when he wants to know what you pro-
pose 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
sopho more at that, who, when asked
what stars never set, replied, 'roostars.
There are some Jests as we have
already remarked, whose very author
ship is apparent; notably some of Hoods
and nearly all of Charles Lambs. SAKE
has closely initiated his master 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 vender of ear-trumpets, who, in
vaunting his wares, says:
"There was MrsH
So very deaf
That she might have worn a percussion cap,
And been knocked on the head without hearing it
snap.
Well, sold her a horn, and the very next day
She heard from her husband at Bota,iy Bay
Charles Lamb was never like anybody
else, and certainly nobody else was ever
like Charles Lamb. 1t was he, of course
(who else could it have been p 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 make it up by going array
earlier in the evening"" His good things
were always SO essentially and wholly
his own, that there is no possibility OF
mistaking their origin. No other man
could have thought his thoughts or any
thing like them. Nobody else would
ever have thought of pitying our fore
fathers, who lived before the times of
candlelight, because when they cracked
joke after dark, they had to feel about
for smile, and handle their neighbors
cheeks to be sure that they understood