Books: Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor
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Thomas L. Masson (Editor) >> Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor
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THE BRITISH MATRON
(Anonymous)
I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies
retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to
suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can
quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes
me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less
refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that
we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful
ponderosity of frame--not pulpy, like the looser development of our
few fat women, but massive, with solid beef and streaky tallow; so
that (though struggling manfully against the ideal) you inevitably
think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks her
advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round
space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could
ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her
personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far
greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her
visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet
calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but
because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance, such
acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles and dangers, and
such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything
positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly
formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four-gun
ship in time of peace; for, while you assure yourself that there is
no real danger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her
onset if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict
any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold--nay, a hundredfold--
better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and
haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the
English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude and
strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a
tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I
suspect, only in society and in common routine of social affairs, and
would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that
might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she
has grown up.
You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at
the recollection. But conceive of her in a ballroom, with the bare,
brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other
corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden
blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown cabbage-rose
as this.
Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest,
slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness
has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though
very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the
truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves,
and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which,
somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves
during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet
should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have
attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought
to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have
overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the
altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is
it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be
held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence
when the ceremony was performed? And ought not an English married
pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of
twenty-five years to legalize all that corporeal growth of which both
parties have individually come into possession since pronounced one
flesh?--_Our Old Home_.
THE POSTER GIRL
The blessed Poster Girl leaned out
From a pinky-purple heaven;
One eye was red and one was green;
Her bang was cut uneven;
She had three fingers on her hand,
And the hairs on her head were seven,
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No sunflowers did adorn;
But a heavy Turkish portiere
Was very neatly worn;
And the hat that lay along her back
Was yellow like canned corn.
It was a kind of wobbly wave
That she was standing on,
And high aloft she flung a scarf
That must have weighed a ton;
And she was rather tall--at least
She reached up to the sun.
She curved and writhed, and then she said
Less green of speech than blue:
"Perhaps I _am_ absurd--perhaps
I _don't_ appeal to you;
But my artistic worth depends
Upon the point of view."
I saw her smile, although her eyes
Were only smudgy smears;
And then she swished her swirling arms,
And wagged her gorgeous ears,
She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,
And wept some purple tears.
Carolyn Wells.
James Gardner Sanderson
THE CONUNDRUM OF THE GOLF LINKS
(_With thanks to Kipling_)
When the flush of the new-born sun fell first on
Eden's gold and green,
Our Father Adam sat under the Tree and shaved
his driver clean,
And joyously whirled it round his head and
knocked the apples off,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves:
"Well done--but is it golf?"
Wherefore he called his wife and fled to practise
again his swing--
The first of the world who foozled his stroke (yet
the grandpapa of Tyng);
And he left his clubs to the use of his sons--and
that was a glorious gain,
When the Devil chuckled "Beastly Golf" in the
ear of the horrored Cain.
They putted and drove in the North and South;
they talked and laid links in the West;
Till the waters rose o'er Ararat's tees, and the
aching wrists could rest--
Could rest till that blank, blank canvasback,
heard the Devil jeer and scoff,
As he flew with the flood-fed olive branch, "Dry
weather. Let's play golf."
They pulled and sliced and pounded the earth,
and the balls went sailing off
Into bunkers and trees while the Devil grinned,
"Keep your eye on it! _That's_ not golf."
Then the Devil took his sulphured cleik and
mightily he swung,
While each man marveled and cursed his form
and each in an alien tongue.
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as
the newest green,
For each man knows ere his lip thatch grows the
caddy's mocking mien.
And each man hears, though the ball falls fair,
the Devil's cursed cough
Of joy as the man holes out in ten, "You did
it--but what poor golf!"
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to
the shape of a niblick's shaft,
We have learned to make a mashie with a
wondrous handicraft,
We know that a hazard is often played best by
re-driving off,
But the Devil whoops as he whooped of old, "It's
easy, but is it golf?"
When the flicker of summer falls faint on the
Clubroom's gold and green,
The sons of Adam sit them down and boast of
strokes unseen;
They talk of stymies and brassie lies to the tune
of the steward's cough,
But the Devil whispers in their ears, "Gadzooks!
But that's not golf!"
Now if we could win to the Eden Tree where
the Nine-Mile Links are laid,
And seat ourselves where Man first swore as he
drove from the grateful shade,
And if we could play where our Fathers played
and follow our swings well through,
By the favor of God we might know of Golf
what our Father Adam knew.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
THE MINISTER'S WOOING
"Wal, the upshot on't was, they fussed and fuzzled and wuzzled till
they'd drinked up all the tea in the teapot; and then they went down
and called on the Parson, and wuzzled him all up talkin' about this,
that, and t'other that wanted lookin' to, and that it was no way to
leave everything to a young chit like Huldy, and that he ought to be
lookin' about for an experienced woman.
"The Parson, he thanked 'em kindly, and said he believed their
motives was good, but he didn't go no further.
"He didn't ask Mis' Pipperidge to come and stay there and help him,
nor nothin' o' that kind; but he said he'd attend to matters himself.
The fact was, the Parson had got such a likin' for havin' Huldy
'round that he couldn't think o' such a thing as swappin' her off for
the Widder Pipperidge.
"'But,' he thought to himself, 'Huldy is a good girl; but I oughtn't
to be a-leavin' everything to her--it's too hard on her. I ought to
be instructin' and guidin' and helpin' of her; 'cause 'tain't
everybody could be expected to know and do what Mis' Carryl did'; and
so at it he went; and Lordy massy! didn't Huldy hev a time on't when
the minister began to come out of his study and wanted to ten' 'round
an' see to things? Huldy, you see, thought all the world of the
minister, and she was 'most afraid to laugh; but she told me she
couldn't, for the life of her, help it when his back was turned, for
he wuzzled things up in the most singular way. But Huldy, she'd just
say, 'Yes, sir,' and get him off into his study, and go on her own
way.
"'Huldy,' says the minister one day, 'you ain't experienced outdoors;
and when you want to know anything you must come to me.'
"'Yes, sir,' said Huldy.
"'Now, Huldy,' says the Parson, 'you must be sure to save the turkey
eggs, so that we can have a lot of turkeys for Thanksgiving.'
"'Yes, sir,' says Huldy; and she opened the pantry door and showed
him a nice dishful she'd been a-savin' up. Wal, the very next day the
parson's hen-turkey was found killed up to old Jim Scrogg's barn.
Folks say Scroggs killed it, though Scroggs, he stood to it he
didn't; at any rate, the Scroggses they made a meal on't, and Huldy,
she felt bad about it 'cause she'd set her heart on raisin' the
turkeys; and says she, 'Oh, dear! I don't know what I shall do. I was
just ready to set her.'
"'Do, Huldy?' says the Parson; 'why, there's the other turkey, out
there by the door, and a fine bird, too, he is.'
"Sure enough, there was the old tom-turkey a-struttin' and a-sidlin'
and a-quitterin', and a-floutin' his tail feathers in the sun, like a
lively young widower all ready to begin life over again.
"'But,' says Huldy, 'you know _he_ can't set on eggs.'
"'He can't? I'd like to know why" says the Parson. 'He _shall_ set on
eggs, and hatch 'em, too.'
'"Oh, Doctor!' says Huldy, all in a tremble; 'cause, you know, she
didn't want to contradict the minister, and she was afraid she should
laugh--' I never heard that a tom-turkey would set on eggs.'
"'Why, they ought to,' said the Parson getting quite 'arnest. 'What
else be they good for? You just bring out the eggs, now, and put 'em
in the nest, and I'll make him set on 'em.'
"So Huldy, she thought there weren't no way to convince him but to
let him try; so she took the eggs out and fixed 'em all nice in the
nest; and then she come back and found old Tom a-skirmishin' with the
Parson pretty lively, I tell ye. Ye see, old Tom, he didn't take the
idea at all; and he flopped and gobbled, and fit the Parson; and the
Parson's wig got 'round so that his cue stuck straight out over his
ear, but he'd got his blood up. Ye see, the old Doctor was used to
carryin' his p'ints o' doctrine; and he hadn't fit the Arminians and
Socinians to be beat by a tom-turkey; and finally he made a dive and
ketched him by the neck in spite o' his floppin', and stroked him
down, and put Huldy's apron 'round him.
"'There, Huldy,' he says, quite red in the face, 'we've got him now';
and he traveled off to the barn with him as lively as a cricket.
"Huldy came behind, just chokin' with laugh, and afraid the minister
would look 'round and see her.
"'Now, Huldy, we'll crook his legs and set him down,' says the
Parson, when they got him to the nest; 'you see, he is getting quiet,
and he'll set there all right.'
"And the Parson, he sot him down; and old Tom, he sot there solemn
enough and held his head down all droopin', lookin' like a rail pious
old cock as long as the Parson sot by him.
"'There; you see how still he sets,' says the Parson to Huldy.
"Huldy was 'most dyin' for fear she should laugh. 'I'm afraid he'll
get up,' says she, 'when you do.'
"'Oh, no, he won't!' says the Parson, quite confident. 'There,
there,' says he, layin' his hands on him as if pronouncin' a
blessin'.
"But when the Parson riz up, old Tom he riz up, too, and began to
march over the eggs.
"'Stop, now!' says the Parson. 'I'll make him get down agin; hand me
that corn-basket; we'll put that over him.'
"So he crooked old Tom's legs and got him down agin; and they put the
corn-basket over him, and then they both stood and waited.
"'That'll do the thing, Huldy,' said the Parson.
"'I don't know about it,' says Huldy.
"'Oh, yes, it will, child; I understand,' says he.
"Just as he spoke, the basket riz up and stood, and they could see
old Tom's long legs.
"'I'll make him stay down, confound him,' says the Parson, for you
see, parsons is men, like the rest on us, and the Doctor had got his
spunk up.
"'You jist hold him a minute, and I'll get something that'll make him
stay, I guess; and out he went to the fence and brought in a long,
thin, flat stone, and laid it on old Tom's back.
"'Oh, my eggs!' says Huldy. 'I'm afraid he's smashed 'em!'
"And sure enough, there they was, smashed flat enough under the
stone.
"'I'll have him killed,' said the Parson. 'We won't have such a
critter 'round.'
"Wall next week, Huldy, she jist borrowed the minister's horse and
side-saddle and rode over to South Parish to her Aunt Bascome's--
Widder Bascome's, you know, that lives there by the trout-brook--and
got a lot o' turkey eggs o' her, and come back and set a hen on 'em,
and said nothin'; and in good time there was as nice a lot o' turkey-
chicks as ever ye see.
"Huldy never said a word to the minister about his experiment, and he
never said a word to her; but he sort o' kep more to his books and
didn't take it on him to advise so much.
"But not long arter he took it into his head that Huldy ought to have
a pig to be a-fattin' with the buttermilk.
"Mis' Pipperidge set him up to it; and jist then old Tom Bigelow, out
to Juniper Hill, told him if he'd call over he'd give him a little
pig.
"So he sent for a man, and told him to build a pig-pen right out by
the well, and have it all ready when he came home with his pig.
"Huldy said she wished he might put a curb round the well out there,
because in the dark sometimes a body might stumble into it; and the
Parson said he might do that.
"Wal, old Aikin, the carpenter, he didn't come till 'most the middle
of the afternoon; and then he sort o' idled, so that he didn't get up
the well-curb till sundown; and then he went off, and said he'd come
and do the pig-pen next day.
"Wal, arter dark, Parson Carryl, he driv into the yard, full chizel,
with his pig.
"'There, Huldy. I've got you a nice little pig.'
"'Dear me!' says Huldy; 'where have you put him?'
"'Why, out there in the pig-pen, to be sure.'
"'Oh, dear me!' says Huldy,'that's the well-curb--there ain't no pig-
pen built,' says she.
"'Lordy massy!' says the Parson; 'then I've thrown the pig in the
well!'
"Wal, Huldy she worked and worked, and finally she fished piggy out
in the bucket, but he was as dead as a doornail; and she got him out
o' the way quietly, and didn't say much; and the Parson he took to a
great Hebrew book in his study.
"After that the Parson set sich store by Huldy that he come to her
and asked her about everything, and it was amazin' how everything she
put her hand to prospered. Huldy planted marigolds and larkspurs,
pinks and carnations, all up and down the path to the front door; and
trained up mornin'-glories and scarlet runners round the windows. And
she was always gettin' a root here, and a sprig there, and a seed
from somebody else; for Huldy was one o' them that has the gift, so
that ef you jist give 'em the leastest of anything they make a great
bush out of it right away; so that in six months Huldy had roses and
geraniums and lilies sich as it would take a gardener to raise.
"Huldy was so sort o' chipper and fair spoken that she got the hired
men all under her thumb: they come to her and took her orders jist as
meek as so many calves, and she traded at the store, and kep' the
accounts, and she had her eyes everywhere, and tied up all the ends
so tight that there wa'n't no gettin' 'round her. She wouldn't let
nobody put nothin' off on Parson Carryl 'cause he was a minister.
Huldy was allers up to anybody that wanted to make a hard bargain,
and afore he knew jist what he was about she'd got the best end of
it, and everybody said that Huldy was the most capable girl they ever
traded with.
"Wal, come to the meetin' of the Association, Mis' Deakin Blodgett
and Mis' Pipperidge come callin' up to the Parson's all in a stew and
offerin' their services to get the house ready, but the Doctor he
jist thanked 'em quite quiet, and turned 'em over to Huldy; and Huldy
she told 'em that she'd got everything ready, and showed 'em her
pantries, and her cakes, and her pies, and her puddin's, and took 'em
all over the house; and they went peekin' and pokin', openin'
cupboard doors, and lookin' into drawers; and they couldn't find so
much as a thread out o' the way, from garret to cellar, and so they
went off quite discontented. Arter that the women sat a new trouble
a-brewin'. They began to talk that it was a year now since Mis'
Carryl died; and it railly wasn't proper such a young gal to be
stayin' there, who everybody could see was a-settin' her cap for the
minister.
"Mis' Pipperidge said, that so long as she looked on Huldy as the
hired gal she hadn't thought much about it; but Huldy was railly
takin' on airs as an equal, and appearin' as mistress o' the house in
a way that would make talk if it went on. And Mis' Pipperidge she
driv 'round up to Deakin Abner Snow's, and down to Mis 'Lijah
Perry's, and asked them if they wasn't afraid that the way the Parson
and Huldy was a-goin on might make talk. And they said they hadn't
thought on't before, but now, come to think on't it, they was sure it
would and they all went and talked with somebody else and asked them
if they didn't think it would make talk. So come Sunday, between
meetin's there warn't nothin' else talked about; and Huldy saw folks
a-noddin' and a-winkin', and a-lookin' arter her, and she begun to
feel drefful sort o' disagreeable. Finally Mis' Sawin, she says to
her, 'My dear, didn't you never think folk would talk about you and
the minister?'
"'No; why should they?' says Huldy, quite innocent.
"'Wal, dear,' says she, 'I think it's a shame; but they say you're
tryin' to catch him, and that it's so bold and improper for you to be
courtin' of him right in his own house--you know folks will talk--I
thought I'd tell you, 'cause I think so much of you,' says she.
"Huldy was a gal of spirit, and she despised the talk, but it made
her drefful uncomfortable; and when she got home at night she sat
down in the mornin'-glory porch, quite quiet, and didn't sing a word.
"The minister he had heard the same thing from one of his deakins
that day; and when he saw Huldy so kind o' silent, he says to her,
'Why don't you sing, my child?'
"He had a pleasant sort o' way with him, the minister had, and Huldy
had got to likin' to be with him; and it all come over her that
perhaps she ought to go away; and her throat kind o' filled up so she
couldn't hardly speak; and, says she, 'I can't sing to-night'
"Says he, 'You don't know how much good your singin' has done me, nor
how much good you have done me in all ways, Huldy. I wish I knew how
to show my gratitude.'
"'Oh, sir!' says Huldy, '_is_ it improper for me to be here?'
"'No, dear,' says the minister, 'but ill-natured folks will talk; but
there is one way we can stop it, Huldy--if you'll marry me. You'll
make me very happy, and I'll do all I can to make you happy. Will
you?'
"Wal, Huldy never told me just what she said to the minister; gals
never does give you the particulars of them things jist as you'd like
'em--only I know the upshot and the hull on't was, that Huldy she did
a considerable lot o' clear starchin' and ironin' the next two days,
and the Friday o' next week the minister and she rode over together
to Doctor Lothrop's, in Oldtown, and the Doctor he jist made 'em man
and wife."
William Dean Howells
MRS. JOHNSON
It was on a morning of the lovely New England May that we left the
horse-car and, spreading our umbrellas, walked down the street to our
new home in Charlesbridge, through a storm of snow and rain so finely
blent by the influences of this fortunate climate that no flake knew
itself from its sister drop, or could be better identified by the
people against whom they beat in unison. A vernal gale from the east
fanned our cheeks and pierced our marrow and chilled our blood, while
the raw, cold green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the
sopping sidewalks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow
and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and
there in the vacant lots abandoned hoopskirts defied decay; and near
the half-finished wooden houses empty mortar-beds and bits of lath
and slate, strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their
interest to the scene....
This heavenly weather, which the Pilgrim Fathers, with the idea of
turning their thoughts effectually from earthly pleasures, came so
far to discover, continued with slight amelioration throughout the
month of May and far into June; and it was a matter of constant
amazement with one who had known less austere climates, to behold how
vegetable life struggled with the hostile skies, and, in an
atmosphere as chill and damp as that of a cellar, shot forth the buds
and blossoms upon the pear trees, called out the sour Puritan courage
of the currant-bushes, taught a reckless native grapevine to wander
and wanton over the southern side of the fence, and decked the banks
with violets as fearless and as fragile as New England girls, so that
about the end of June, when the heavens relented and the sun blazed
out at last, there was little for him to do but to redden and darken
the daring fruits that had attained almost their full growth without
his countenance.
Then, indeed, Charlesbridge appeared to us a kind of paradise. The
wind blew all day from the southwest, and all day in the grove across
the way the orioles sang to their nestlings.... The house was almost
new and in perfect repair; and, better than all, the kitchen had as
yet given no signs of unrest in those volcanic agencies which are
constantly at work there, and which, with sudden explosions, make
Herculaneums and Pompeiis of so many smiling households. Breakfast,
dinner and tea came up with illusive regularity, and were all the
most perfect of their kind; and we laughed and feasted in our vain
security. We had out from the city to banquet with us the friends we
loved, and we were inexpressibly proud before them of the help who
first wrought miracles of cookery in our honor, and then appeared in
a clean white apron and the glossiest black hair to wait upon the
table. She was young and certainly very pretty; she was as gay as a
lark, and was courted by a young man whose clothes would have been a
credit, if they had not been a reproach, to our lowly basement. She
joyfully assented to the idea of staying with us till she married.
In fact, there was much that was extremely pleasant about the little
place when the warm weather came, and it was not wonderful to us that
Jenny was willing to remain. It was very quiet; we called one another
to the window if a large dog went by our door; and whole days passed
without the movement of any wheels but the butcher's upon our street,
which flourished in ragweed and buttercups and daisies, and in the
autumn burned, like the borders of nearly all the streets in
Charlesbridge, with the pallid azure flame of the succory. The
neighborhood was in all things a frontier between city and country.
The horse-cars, the type of such civilization--full of imposture,
discomfort, and sublime possibility--as we yet possess, went by the
head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled
in calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would
take us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was visible
through the trees. We learned, like innocent pastoral people of the
golden age, to know the several voices of the cows pastured in the
vacant lot, and, like engine-drivers of the iron-age, to distinguish
the different whistles of the locomotives passing on the neighboring
railroad. . . .
We played a little at gardening, of course, and planted tomatoes,
which the chickens seemed to like, for they ate them up as fast as
they ripened; and we watched with pride the growth of our Lawton
blackberries, which, after attaining the most stalwart proportions,
were still as bitter as the scrubbiest of their savage brethren, and
which, when by advice left on the vines for a week after they turned
black, were silently gorged by secret and gluttonous flocks of robins
and orioles. As for our grapes, the frost cut them off in the hour of
their triumph.
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