The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-06

|
 grata in this office
 The editor. like every other, had dis l covered how rare genuinely funny writing
 is. To discover the humorous books with which the Christmas bookstalls are stock l ed and the humorous articles which now l and then occur In the magazines is the ! publishers most serious occupation. Any
 thing that contains a laugh a line is re-
 ceived gleefully in the editorial offices of
 half hundred American publishing
 houses.
 Both schools of American humor are in
 favor. Anybody who can be either broadly
 or delieately witty finds a hearing these
 days-as well as many who think they are
 able to be either and actually are neither.
 The distinction between the subtle and 1 the obvious groups of humorlsts was
 amusingly traced in a recent Harvard
 Phi Beta Kappa after-dinner speech
 which introduced to the learned society Rev Samuel M. Brothers. publishers
 find" a Unitarian clergyman known
 mostly not so long ago as President FL
 iots pastor. but now duly qualified as
 literary successor to Oliver Wendell l Holmes. who is expected to produce
 typewriter to paper.
 The point was made in this address
 that most American humorlsts have be-
 longed very clearly to one or the other of these schools; and consultation of such | a manual as The Early American Hu- morists," handy reference book that
 gives selections from the writings of
 many who, famous in their own day are l not In too great danger of being forgot l ten, discloses very clearly on the one
 side the jokers who had buffoon gifts like
 Artemus Ward. orpheds c. Kerr, Bill
 Arp, Josh Billings, Petroleum Y. Nasby,
 and the Danbury News Man; and on the
 other side the literary wits like Washing l ton Irving. George William Curtis, and l N. P. Willis, whose quiet humor more
 closely resembled that of the great Eng
 fish writers of the eighteenth century. 1 The discoveries of humorists by publish
 CTS in the last few years have not been 1 so numerous, and many of them have l been disappointments, because the writer
 who has started in by being uproariously 1 funny often conceives an idea of reform 1 ing the world through his humor and
 thereafter becomes deadly dull. This ten dency of the jester to aim to be preacher | has been apparent in the history of American hunor.
 Just as pr. Brothers is perhaps the most valuable recent discovery among 1 men who write, a woman whose humor- l ous powers were quite unexpected up to a 1 short time ago, outside of circle of per sonal acquaintance, has come to the fore l The literary world is still laughing over l the failure of Mark Twain, himself the 1 worlds leading humorist, to recognize a professional hand in the first of the Let | ters of Jennie Allen," which Miss Grace Donworth, a Providence woman, wrote as a practical joke.
 The story is that while some good ladies of San Francisco relief committee of the Rhode Island capital were engaged in asserting and packing clothing sent to them for the benefit of victims of the earthquake and fire, one of them re-
 ceived a letter signed Jennie Allen"
 which requested that 8 certain garment should be returned to her since it had been sent by mistake. The spelling and phrasing of the communication were fear full and wonderful, and half from curi- osity 1t was answered. 1t was also shown
 to number of people and copy of 1t
 came into Mark Twains hands, which he
 
 less serious speechifying, as at an annual
 dinner of the Associated Press and which later the Simplifed Spelling society grave ly issued as part of one of it's leaflets. The letter turned out, of course, to be the production of Miss Donworth, who was a member of the committee After the lady had admitted her guilt she amused her self and her compaions by adding more letters, gradually describing the entire family mi a
 Some of these were published in the La dies Home Journal. Now that in their completeness they have been issued in
 book form, the whole country is quoting
 Miss Donworth's witticsms, such as:
 MT. Splnney says you cant rise with the lark if you've been one the night be- fore,' or "He is a Maine man, but per feet gentleman. So Is his alother," or. again, We are going to live close to my
 folks so l can help them when they need
 me, and his mother is going to live with
 us. My cup runneth over"
 In spite of casional broad touches, the general quality CT Miss Donworth's work puts her in the same class with the more subtle school of hamorists like MT Cro- thers, Robert Grant, Witter Bynner whose recent Ode 10 Harvard contains
 some of the brightest touches Of fancy of
 any recent poem; Ralph Bersengren, in whom Golfers Weekly just now an-
 nounces a combination of Lewis Carroll and Frank Stockton, and Agnes Repplier, whose fund of brilliant wit accumllates steadily year by year.
 Jennie Allens' humor in some respects resembles that of Father John B. Tabb, the prevailing quality in whose delight fully funny verses, as in his "Quips Quld- dits'' and Child Verse" is one of sub tlety, although he now and then breaks mt infr a Dd dp
 ously near being unclerical, as in his oft en-quoted quip:
 1 "A pious prelate used to ride A donkey which, alas-
 His patience often being tried