Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1886-10-04
AMERICAN HUMOR.

If there is one thing more than another
which lily becomes writer for the daily
press, it is to show envey, spleen and
malice toward his fellow writer, because
the latter is more successful than he, in
turning a paragraph to suit the public
sense of the humorous or ridiculous.
Such is now the case with the Cincinnati
Enquirer which dismally croaks as fol-
lows:
American humor is becoming rather
scarce. few years ago the literary markets
of the world were overstocked with Ameri-
can humor, but somehow or other the stuff
spoiled on the hands of the first purchasers,
and to-day it is almost impossible to get a
decent specimen of pure, original humor
'Artemus Ward was about the first Ameri-
can humorist. There we're few before his
day, but they were sad failures"
In fondling the lugubrious Enquirer
man the Kansas City Times says:
'It might be proper to inquire right here:
What is meant by American humor? If it
consists of bad spelling, poor English and
not lnfrequent coarseness and vulgarity,
perhaps it is well that American humOr rose
and fell with ''Artemus Ward,'' Gosh Bill
llngs, 'P. V. Nasby" and the dabblers In
border dialect. 1t is we'll that the sunny
side of the writings of Irving, Holmes, SAKE
and Lowell is forgotten in the tributes to
bill Nye" and j. Whitcomb Riley, not to
mention Opie Reid, of whom the Enquirer
speaks In praise. Taking such types in
Illustration, American humor is at a low
ebb, and the world is better off that it is so.
But the Enquirer falls into the error of con-
founding American humor with the labored
attempts of professional funny men, and
makes the absurd proposition that the graft
ncatlon or the national sense of humor
rests wholly upon the efforts of these desig-
mated shining examples.
In the foregoing We have the opinions
OF just two out of the thousands of writer's
OF the daily press, and both in a sense
agree that American humor-distinct-
lively American-is on the wane, or never
existed since "Artemus Ward" ceased to
write. This is, of course, from their
standpoint, as they see humor, but there
is very large contingent outside of Gin
clnnati and Kansas City whose sense of
the ludicrous and humorous is touched
by different means. For instance. when
Field Marshal Halstead gets the drop on
and scoops the Enquirer, the whole
world, all of it but the Enquirer staff,
would laugh at the antics of "Johnnie"
when he learned of it. OF course
Johnnie could see no fun in it, but
that would not detract from its mirth-
power on others. Again, When
that genial and gentlemanly, not to say
sedate man, DR.. Munford, lodged calibre-
A pistol shots, aimed around a horse
car, and saved his life by a miracle, he
could not laugh, nor could his staff. but
at this distance it possessed the elements
OF genuine American humor, and nothing
but respect for fellow professionals kept
the paragraphers off, Webster defines
the word humor as follows: "That quail |
lty of the Imagination which gives to ideas
wild or fantastic turn, and tends to /
excite laughter or mirth by ludicrous i'm !
ages or representations. Neither of the |
writer's quoted above will care to quarrel /
with Webster, so upon that definition /
let us examine the stock on hand. Who
has not laughed and cried with ''Biiah
and His Honor" in the Detroit Police
Court?; and who OF all the thousands of
men who have read the doings of these
worthless have not benefited by it? What
words of wisdom, wit and keen satire
urk in the pompous utterances of "Bro.
Gardner" of the Lime Kiln Club" and
What better educator of the shiftless and
iomadic colored-man can be devised?
Who has not laughed and cried with
5urdette in the great range of human
PASSIONS of which he is the master and on
which he plays with a master
land? Who has not felt as if he
would dide" following "Peck's Bad
Boy" and Opie Reeds inimitable negro