The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-09-10

In the case of very old men we some
times call them battle horses or extinct
volcanoes but beyond these three classes
We hardly venture on description. So l
was misled. l had expected that the
reporter would say: AS soon as Mr.. Lea
cock came across the floor we felt we
were in the presence Of dynamo Cor
an extinct battle horse as the case may
be)."
| Now in Mr.. Leacock's case his creative
faculty has naturally. gone beyond this sort
of thing and has invented a great number
of extraordinary characters. most of whom
are what may be termed masks or bur-
lesque creations. For example, he has one
| piece in former book entitled "Winsome
Winnie" being a take off on those stories
| of adventure and shipwreck which betrays
| all the invention necessary for any fully
equipped author, besides being screamingly
funny. But the point I make here is that
| humor, so called. by itself must be
ephemeral, unless it has other elements
mixed in with it that are permanent. In
| the case of Mark Twain, both his Tom
| Sawyer and his Huckleberry Finn are not
| only humorous but they have human quail
| tiles Of sentiment and other things that
make them stand out az living creations.
When an author makes characters that
serve only a humorous purpose or a
satirical purpose they may serve his imme-
| date needs. and the publc's immediate
| needs. more closely than any other kind;
but they are bound to perish, in the nature
of things. Take all of Dickens's creations:
many of them are intensely humorous, but
they are well rounded out by the adj
mixture of sentiment, indeed in many cases
of sentimentality; but. after all. hat is
what most people crave
Perhaps the most successful example of
humorist who used himself alone to
achieve his results and his reputation was
Artemus Ward He assumed THAI he was
the proprietor of a wax works show, and
rarely varied his program. He begins his
letters like this:
To THE EDITOR OF
SI-Im movin along-slowly along
down lords your place. want you should
rite me letter, sayin' how is the show
bzniss In your place My show at
present consists of three moral Bares.
a kangaroo Ca amoozin little Raskal-
twould make you larf yerself to deth
to see the little cuss jump up and squaD
wax hggers of G. Washington Gen. Tay-
lor John Bunyan, Capt. Kidd and DR..
Webster in the act of KILN DR.. Park
man-&c.
. know NJ lxg of
in a large sense photographed. but in
humorous writing the temptation to use
oneself is practically irresistible, although
in some cases it is thinly disguised by a
name that the author may use to carry
out his intention. Thus we have Mr.. b. =.
Shillaber, who during the period of the
civil war created Mrs Darlington, Just as
in our day Montague Glass created the
characters of Potash and Perlmutter, in
both cases the mediums thus used con-
veying to the reader long line of hu-
morous observations One extract from
Mrs. Darlington will be enough to show
how terrible some of her talkswas. To q
lady who declared that she was a spinster
Mrs Darlington remarks:
80 you are spinster. Them" as her
visitor paused for breath. do you use a
large or small wheel?"
Mr.. Peter Dunno (now. alasi SO inarticu-
lats) has used this method in his MIR.
Dooley. achieving his large reputation
merely by means of this one character
. character. however. that has much more
TO 1t than Mrs. Partington because Mr..
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