Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
He was fond of the writings of "Orpheus C. Kerr" and "Petroleum V. Nasby," who were famous humorists at the time of the Civil War; and he amused himself and others in the darkest hours by quoting passages from these now forgotten authors.
"Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" But Roosevelt was not himself a humorist, and his writings give little evidence of his possession of the faculty. Lincoln, now, was one of the foremost American humorists.
When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty.
Even that bland old fraud, John Jacob Dumble, admitted sorrowfully that he was no match for Pap in a horse, cattle, or pig deal; and George Leadham, the blacksmith, swore that Pap would steal milk from a blind kitten. The humorists of the village were of opinion that Heaven had helped Pap because he had helped himself so freely out of other folks' piles.
It is almost impossible to imagine a governor of the Bank of England making a joke in his official capacity, but wit is perfected in the mouth of similar sucklings in New York. Of recent prominent speakers in America all except Carl Schurz and George William Curtis are professed humorists.
Those who saw, in 1912, the ceremonies attendant on the deposition of the bones of Jean Jacques Rousseau in the Pantheon were sick at heart. Never had the Government of France sunk so low. The Royalists shouted, the extreme radicals hooted, and when the carriage of Fallières passed, it was seen that humorists had somehow succeeded in writing jocose inscriptions on the presidential carriage.
This playful allusion to powdered wife, and speculation as to how she was best cooked, is the first instance we have been able to find of what is called "American humor," and Captain Smith has the honor of being the first of the "American humorists" who have handled subjects of this kind with such pleasing gayety.
I suspect that he was an Englishman who had passed himself off upon the Italian management as a true Yankee, and who had formed himself upon our school of clowning, just as some of the recent English humorists have patterned after certain famous wits of ours.
There are, of course, a few, a very few, of our greatest authors who have striven forward to the first place in our Valhalla without the help of the largest reading-class among us; but I should say that these were chiefly the humorists, for whom women are said nowhere to have any warm liking, and who have generally with us come up through the newspapers, and have never lost the favor of the newspaper readers.
It is, perhaps, interesting to reflect that he was a contemporary of Shakespeare, so that the two greatest humorists the world has produced were living at the same time. By SENATOR JOHN J. INGALLS
Word Of The Day
Others Looking