The Washington critic., 1886-07-02
PRESIDENTIAL HuMOR.

Wit and humor each contains all the
elements Of fun. Wit Is spontaneous,
humor is not. Mr.. Cleveland is not a
spontaneous man; he is, therefore, not
witty man. but he has shown in sew
eral of his state papers that he was q
humorous man. The first indication
the people had of II was the use of the
phrase 'fnnocuous desuetude." One
of the characteristics of humor is eX.
aggeration and another is the CON.
parison of dissi nilarilies Both of
these are displayed in the above phrase,
for 'innocuous desuetude" is an ex-
aggeration Of rhetoric, and its use con-
stitutes comparison between itself
and Mr.. Cleveland's s usual literary style
that must provoke the risiblities even
of himself.
In his recent phenomenal contribu-
tions to the veto literature of the coun-
try he has developed such qualities
that If he were not President he might
easily secure q position on leadin =
metropolitan journal as a great Ameri-
can humorist or brilliant and versatile
paragrapher, whichever he might elect,
and could probably earn as much In a
month as he now earns in day, not to
mention show tickets, railroad passes
and the numerous other luxurious
emoluments indigenous to the editorial
soil. Permit us to give few examples.
In his veto of Senate bill 1192, grant
ing pension to Captain Denny, who
had served less than year and re-
signed, and who wanted pension for
injuries received by being thrown on a
saddle horn, the President says that
the number of men so injured would
seem to indicate that those saddles
were very dangerous contriyances
There is here a flavor of Douglass
Jerrold and Dean Swift which these
gentlemen would appreciate audlbly if
they were in a place where laugh
would not be do uop. In the case of
A, ]. Wilson, drafted soldier who
served eight months and claimed TO
have contracted dozen or fifteen dis
eases, the President cheerfully re.
marks; whatever else may be said of
this claimants achievements during
his short military career, it must be
conceded that he contracted grclt
deal of disability" In this we see the
fine Italian hand of such modern funny
men as Mark Twain or Bill Nye, with
possibly touch Of the y0c0cJ sarcasm OF
Charles A. Dana, and il is In every way
worthy TO have come from the brain Of
any one Of this able and esteemed
triad. In the case of Martha Nell
vain, whose husband died in 1888 from
an overdose Of morphia, the Preslden
says that in his belief the taking o
morphia in any quantity was not thu
natural result Of military service. Their,
is quiet laugh all through this, "a
comes to him who reads the refined
humor OF Charles Dudley Warner, an(
a column of such matter would fill thu
aching void left on the fourth page o
the New York Times by the absence o
that classic humorist, Mr. Alden. Ii
the case Of Mary Norman, claiming
pension on the ground that her hus
band had been SO deafened by servic
that he was drowned in ferryboat be
cause he couldn't hear the ferrymal
when he called out that the boat wa
sinking, the President, with something
of the Josh Billings philosophic, ant
Platonic questioning, humor, says
"IIow he could have saved his life /
he had heard is not stated"
In these as in number of othe
cases not cited, the President ha
shown that he possesses the fine frenzy
OF the born humorlst, and notwith
standing the fact that many of the pen