r is my object: 'tis a property
In man, essential to his reason."
THOMAS RANDOLPH, _The Muses' Looking-Glass_.

American humour is the pride of American hearts. It is held to
be our splendid national characteristic, which we flaunt in the faces
of other nations, conceiving them to have been less favoured by
Providence. Just as the most effective way to disparage an author
or an acquaintance--and we have often occasion to disparage both--is
to say that he lacks a sense of humour, so the most effective
criticism we can pass upon a nation is to deny it this valuable
quality. American critics have written the most charming things
about the keenness of American speech, the breadth and insight of
American drollery, the electric current in American veins; and we,
reading these pleasant felicitations, are wont to thank God with
greater fervour than the occasion demands that we are more merry and
wise than our neighbours. Mr. Brander Matthews, for example, has told
us that there are newspaper writers in New York who have cultivated
a wit, "not unlike Voltaire's." He mistrusts this wit because he
finds it "corroding and disintegrating"; but he makes the comparison
with that casual assurance which is a feature of American criticism.

Indeed, our delight in our own humour has tempted us to overrate both
its literary value and its corrective qualities. We are never so apt
to lose our sense of proportion as when we consider those beloved
writers whom we hold to be humourists because they have made us laugh.
It may be conceded that, as a people, we have an abiding and somewhat
disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone
to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth
when it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and
we habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration,
accepting, perhaps unconsciously, Hazlitt's verdict: "Lying is a
species of wit, and shows spirit and invention." It is true also that
no adequate provision is made in this country for the defective but
valuable class without humour, which in England is exceedingly well
cared for. American letters, American journalism, and American
speech are so coloured by pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule,
that the silent and stodgy men, who are apt to represent a nation's
real strength, hardly know where to turn for a little saving dulness.
A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society,