Show AMERICAN HUMOR If there is one thing more than another which illy becomes a 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 follows fol-lows American humor is becoming rather scarce A few years ago the literary markets of the world were overstooked with American Ameri-can humor but somehow or other the stuff spoiled on the hands of the first purchasers and today it is almost impossible to get a decent specimen of pure original humor Artemus Ward was about the first American Ameri-can humorist There were a 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 infrequent coarseness and vulgarity perhaps it is well that American humor rose and fell with Artemus Ward Josh Billings I Bil-lings P V Nasby and the dabblers in border dialect It is well that the sunny side of the writings of Irving Holmes Saxe and Lowell is forgotten in the tributes to Bill Nye and J Whitoomb 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 grati fication of the national sense of humor rests wholly upon the efforts of these desig nated shining examples In the foregoing we have the opinions of just two out of the thousands of writers of the daily press and both in a sense agree that American humor distinctively I distinct-ively American 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 a very large contingent outside of Cincinnati Cin-cinnati and Kansas City whose sense of the ludicrous and humorous is touched I by different means For instance when I Field Marshal Halstead gets the drop on I 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 provoking power on others Again When that genial and gentlemanly not to say sedate man Dr Munford dodged calibre 44 pistol shots aimed around a horse car and saved his life by a miracle be could not laugh nor could his staff but at this distance it possessed the elements of genuine American humor and nothing I but a respect for fellowprofessionals kept I the paragraphers off Webster defines the word humor as follows That quality qual-ity of the imagination which gives to ideas a wild or fantastic turn and tends to excite laughter or mirth by ludicrous imI i ages or representations Neither of the i writers 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 Bijah and His Honor in the Detroit Police Court and who of all the thousands of men who have read the doings of these I 1 worthies have benefitted by it What words of wisdom wit and keen satire lurk in the pompous utterances of Bro Gardner of the Lime Kiln Club and what better educator of the shiftless and nomadic coloredman can be devised Who has not laughed and cried with Burdette in the great range of human passions of which he is the master and on which he plays with a master hand Who has not felt as if he would a dide following Pecks Bad Boy and Opie Reeds inimitable negro lJI1L It r character sketches How eagerly are the I papers favored with Uncle Bill Nyes i letters caught up and read in public and i in the family and laughed over till tears I come by men and maidens alikenot to mention mothers fathers uncles and aunts There is a school of American humor It is in the writings of these men and the people know it and if the > home tables of the gentlemen of the Enquirer and Times furnish only dyspeptic dyspep-tic food that is no reason why all the rest of the world should not recognize the ludicrous in the writings ol the day and ease their load of care with healthy and catching laughter |