Humor Books

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in... more...

Burr. Bird. The Bird and the Burdock. Who is there who has never heard, About the Burdock and the Bird? And yet how very very few, Discriminate between the two, While even Mr. Burbank can't Transform a Bird into a Plant! The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease, By paying close attention to the habits of the Bees, For en-to-molo-gists aver, the Bee can be in Clover, While... more...

PREFACE. The design of the projector of this volume was, that it should contain the Best of the shorter humorous poems in the literatures of England and the United States, except: Poems so local or cotemporary in subject or allusion, as not to be readily understood by the modern American reader; Poems which, from the freedom of expression allowed in the healthy ages, can not now be read aloud in a... more...

VOLUME 1 GROTESQUE SKETCHES    

INTRODUCTION This series of papers was begun in March, 1888. A single number was printed, when it was interrupted the course of events, and not resumed until nearly years later, in January, 1890. The plan of the series was not formed in my mind when I wrote the number. In returning to my task I found that my original plan had shaped itself in the underground laboratory of my thought so that some... more...

FOREWORDA SMALL phial, I doubt not, could contain the attar of the epigrammatic literature of all time. Few of the perfumes of this diminutive form of wit and satire have survived. Pretty and scented vaporings, most of the thousands and thousands of them, that have died on the air of the foibles of their day.Yet how the pungent ones can persist! The racy old odors, which are as new as now, that still... more...

PREFACE. Again it come to pass, in the fulness of time, that my companion, Josiah Allen, see me walk up and take my ink stand off of the manteltry piece, and carry it with a calm and majestick gait to the corner of the settin' room table devoted by me to literary pursuits. And he sez to me: "What are you goin' to tackle now, Samantha?" And sez I, with quite a good deal of dignity,... more...

INTRODUCTION "Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is entirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of nature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous growths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary. "Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards perfection to which all human affairs... more...

I. The Balance of Trade in Impressions FOR some years past a rising tide of lecturers and literary men from England has washed upon the shores of our North American continent. The purpose of each one of them is to make a new discovery of America. They come over to us travelling in great simplicity, and they return in the ducal suite of the Aquitania. They carry away with them their impressions of... more...

The Periodical Souse, the Never-Again Feeling and the Ride On the Sprinkling Cart Once there was an Indian who had a Way of putting on all his Feathers and breaking out of the Reservation. For three Weeks at a Stretch he gave a Correct Imitation of the Shining Light who passes the Basket and superintends the Repairs on the Parsonage. He was entitled to a Mark of 100 for Deportment. With his Meals he... more...