The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1882-07-27
PSEUDO HUnoH,srs.

AhO AoNSSAupl "Albihbo VI SNAh
American humorists run to the gro
tesque, the absurd, and the indecent
treatment of subjects. Light, fanciful
touches of real wit, the pleasant ming
ling of pathos with the comical, the
genuine expression of honest mirthful-
ness, are rarely met with. Instead
there is the coarse yulgarity of false
humor, which profanes noble senti-
ment, gives clownish capers TO themes
the general mind has long revered, and
by a fantastic revel about religion, mar
riage, and even death itself, wins the
applause and excites the laughter of
shallow minds and low instincts. The
ease with which this sort of stuff Is
contrived-by a peryersion of the
thoughts and writings of men truly in
tellectual, or by the distortion of fine
sentiment into grotesque proportions
has given us ii yagrant army OF such
puddlers, until nearly every third class
town in the country has its scribbling
clown The quaint conceits Of Arte-
mus Ward, whose humor was indispu :
able and original, inspired the bright,
fresh genius of other men to an indul-
gence in pleasing mental capers, and
for a time it appeared that a worthy
school Of American humorists had been
established. But the damnable blight
of imitation set in like a dry rot; that
which was unique became common
place, just az a superb painting is cheap
ened by the work of the chromatic
realist. From. that time down there
had been an increasing dilution of new
ideas, and special humor has come TO
be everything but creditable to its news
paper perpetrators. 4
A more disgusting instance of the
low order OF writing which passes for
humor cannot be found than is present
ed by "a Wisconsin psaudo humorist in
an article on the unfortunate Jennie
Cramer. The tragic mystery of this
girls death and the subsequent proceed5
ings, are treated in an attempted face
tiousness that is CHASTITY. Referring
to the post norton, this funny man
doubts if there were ~''enough left of
the poor girl to wad a gun" And this
choice bit of English follows: 'If
Jennie Cramer's mother had taken her
girl across her knee the first time she
rebelled, and taken a bed slat and
knocked the wind out of her patent
hustle and spread the hustle all over
the small of her back, and sat her down
on IA hard bottom chair so hard that the
filling had fallen put of her upper teeth,
Jennie would be alive to-day" That
is a sample of the delightful comedy
that has made the idiot who wrote it a
deserved place among the American
''humoristsn of to-day. 1t is such inn
becility as this that nourishes the
growth of weekly mushroom papers, a
sort of guano for minds watered by the
vaporous filth of the Police Gazette.
Indeed, writers of the calibre. of him
quoted from exercise a more deleteri-
GUS effect upon their patrons than do
the necessarily guarded scribblers who
manufacture colored sensations for the
readers of the gazette NAMED and kin
dred sheets. Among their other vices
they are professional thieves, cribbing
from one another Unfortunately. One
of the number has actually made his
reputation as a humorist by taking parts
of the Ledger stories, changing a phrase
or two, substituting peculiar names,
and palming the whole off as his own.
An this is what it is to be a humorist
in these days. A cheaply earned noto-
riety to be sure. Not a thing written
worth treasuring, not an epigram, not
q bon mot, scarcely an original thought,
hardly a well written paragraph. The
subjects are as stereotyped as the mat
ter is sterile. Fortunately there are a
few bright exceptions in the country.
but the bastard brood of Scriblerius''
obscures them with its flood of deadly
inanity.-Inter Ocean.