Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Culture's Garland
IT has come to pass, I know not how, that what is accepted as American humor has largely become the prey of specialists. When we see the signature of Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Artemus Ward, Bob Burdette, Bret Harte, or any one of a dozen more, we know what kind of humor will accompany the name. Each man has his particular and familiar line, and never diverges from it. But there 18 something wrong about this. Humor - whatever it used to mean in Ben Jonson's days - now means something more than the comic eccentricity of an individual. It means the arch smile, half -quizzical and half tender, that glimmers upon the countenance of human nature when contemplating its own follies and perversities.
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