at a minute's
notice.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XLII.

THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN HUMOR AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS--THE SACRED AND
THE PROFANE--THE GERMANS AND AMERICAN HUMOR--MY CORPSE WOULD "DRAW,"
IN MY IMPRESARIO'S OPINION.

_Madison, Wis., April 22._

Have been lecturing during the past fortnight in about twelve places,
few of which possessed any interest whatever. One of them,
however--Cincinnati--I was glad to see again.

This town of Madison is the only one that has really struck me as being
beautiful. From the hills the scenery is perfectly lovely, with its
wooded slopes and lakes. Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have
had a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood; for he has driven me in
his carriage to all the prettiest spots, delighting me all the while
with his conversation. He is one of those Americans whom you may often
meet if you have a little luck: witty, humorous, hospitable,
kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected good-fellowship.

The conversation turned on humor.

I have always wondered what the origin of American humor can be; where
is or was the fountain-head. You certainly find humor in England among
the cultured classes, but the class of English people who emigrate
cannot have imported much humor into America. Surely Germany and
Scandinavia cannot have contributed to the fund, either. The Scotch have
dry, quiet, pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can hardly
have been great enough to implant their quaint native "wut" in American
soil. Again, the Irish bull is droll, but scarcely humorous. The
Italians, the Hungarians, have never yet, that I am aware of, been
suspected of even latent humor.

What then, can be the origin of American humor, as we know it, with its
naive philosophy, its mixture of the sacred and the profane, its
exaggeration and that preposterousness which so completely staggers the
foreigner, the French and the German especially?

The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt, originated with the
Puritans themselves, and is only an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl,
next-door-neighbor fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so
common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the Scotch minister, whom
his zeal for the welfare of missionaries moved to address Heaven in the
following manner: "We commend to thy care those missionaries whose lives
are in danger in the Fiji Islands ... which, Thou knowest, are situated
i