Chapter 1

THE BEST AMERICAN HUMOROUS SHORT STORIES

_Edited by_ ALEXANDER JESSUP

_Editor of “Representative American Short Stories,” “The Book of the Short Story,” the “Little French Masterpieces” Series, etc._

INTRODUCTION

This volume does not aim to contain all “the best American humorous short stories”; there are many other stories equally as good, I suppose, in much the same vein, scattered through the range of American literature. I have tried to keep a certain unity of aim and impression in selecting these stories. In the first place I determined that the pieces of brief fiction which I included must first of all be not merely good stories, but good short stories. I put myself in the position of one who was about to select the best short stories in the whole range of American literature,[1] but who, just before he started to do this, was notified that he must refrain from selecting any of the best American short stories that did not contain the element of humor to a marked degree. But I have kept in mind the wide boundaries of the term humor, and also the fact that the humorous standard should be kept second—although a close second—to the short story standard.

In view of the necessary limitations as to the volume’s size, I could not hope to represent all periods of American literature adequately, nor was this necessary in order to give examples of the best that has been done in the short story in a humorous vein in American literature. Probably all types of the short story of humor are included here, at any rate. Not only copyright restrictions but in a measure my own opinion have combined to exclude anything by Joel Chandler Harris—_Uncle Remus_—from the collection. Harris is primarily—in his best work—a humorist, and only secondarily a short story writer. As a humorist he is of the first rank; as a writer of short stories his place is hardly so high. His humor is not mere funniness and diversion; he is a humorist in the fundamental and large sense, as are Cervantes, Rabelais, and Mark Twain.

No book is duller than a book of jokes, for what is refreshing in small doses becomes nauseating when perused in large assignments. Humor in literature is at its best not when served merely by itself but when presented along with other ingredients of literary force in order to give a wide representation of life. Therefore “professional literary humorists,” as they may be called, have not been much considered in making up this collection. In the history of American humor there are three names which stand out more prominently than all others before Mark Twain, who, however, also belongs to a wider classification: “Josh Billings” (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1815–1885), “Petroleum V. Nasby” (David Ross Locke, 1833–1888), and “Artemus Ward” (Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–1867). In the history of American humor these names rank high; in the field of American literature and the American short story they do not rank so high. I have found nothing of theirs that was first-class both as humor and as short story. Perhaps just below these three should be mentioned George Horatio Derby (1823–1861), author of _Phoenixiana_ (1855) and the _Squibob Papers_ (1859), who wrote under the name “John Phoenix.” As has been justly said, “Derby, Shaw, Locke and Browne carried to an extreme numerous tricks already invented by earlier American humorists, particularly the tricks of gigantic exaggeration and calm-faced mendacity, but they are plainly in the main channel of American humor, which had its origin in the first comments of settlers upon the conditions of the frontier, long drew its principal inspiration from the differences between that frontier and the more settled and compact regions of the country, and reached its highest development in Mark Twain, in his youth a child of the American frontier, admirer and imitator of Derby and Browne, and eventually a man of the world and one of its greatest humorists.”[2] Nor have such later writers who were essentially humorists as “Bill Nye” (Edgar Wilson Nye, 1850–1896) been considered, because their work does not attain the literary standard and the short story standard as creditably as it does the humorous one. When we come to the close of the nineteenth century the work of such men as “Mr. Dooley” (Finley Peter Dunne, 1867- ) and George Ade (1866- ) stands out. But while these two writers successfully conform to the exacting critical requirements of good humor and—especially the former—of good literature, neither—though Ade more so—attains to the greatest excellence of the short story. Mr. Dooley of the Archey Road is essentially a wholesome and wide-poised humorous philosopher, and the author of _Fables in Slang_ is chiefly a satirist, whether in fable, play or what not.

This volume might well have started with something by Washington Irving, I suppose many critics would say. It does not seem to me, however, that Irving’s best short stories, such as _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ and _Rip Van Winkle_, are essentially humorous stories, although they are o’erspread with the genial light of reminiscence. It is the armchair geniality of the eighteenth century essayists, a constituent of the author rather than of his material and product. Irving’s best humorous creations, indeed, are scarcely short stories at all, but rather essaylike sketches, or sketchlike essays. James Lawson (1799–1880) in his _Tales and Sketches: by a Cosmopolite_ (1830), notably in _The Dapper Gentleman’s Story_, is also plainly a follower of Irving. We come to a different vein in the work of such writers as William Tappan Thompson (1812–1882), author of the amusing stories in letter form, _Major Jones’s Courtship_ (1840); Johnson Jones Hooper (1815–1862), author of _Widow Rugby’s Husband, and Other Tales of Alabama_ (1851); Joseph G. Baldwin (1815–1864), who wrote _The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi_ (1853); and Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870), whose _Georgia Scenes_ (1835) are as important in “local color” as they are racy in humor. Yet none of these writers yield the excellent short story which is also a good piece of humorous literature. But they opened the way for the work of later writers who did attain these combined excellences.

The sentimental vein of the midcentury is seen in the work of Seba Smith (1792–1868), Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), Frances Miriam Whitcher (“Widow Bedott,” 1811–1852), Mary W. Janvrin (1830–1870), and Alice Bradley Haven Neal (1828–1863). The well-known work of Joseph Clay Neal (1807–1847) is so all pervaded with caricature and humor that it belongs with the work of the professional humorist school rather than with the short story writers. To mention his _Charcoal Sketches, or Scenes in a Metropolis_ (1837–1849) must suffice. The work of Seba Smith is sufficiently expressed in his title, _Way Down East, or Portraitures of Yankee Life_ (1854), although his _Letters of Major Jack Downing_ (1833) is better known. Of his single stories may be mentioned _The General Court and Jane Andrews’ Firkin of Butter_ (October, 1847, _Graham’s Magazine_). The work of Frances Miriam Whitcher (“Widow Bedott”) is of somewhat finer grain, both as humor and in other literary qualities. Her stories or sketches, such as _Aunt Magwire’s Account of Parson Scrantum’s Donation Party_ (March, 1848, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_) and _Aunt Magwire’s Account of the Mission to Muffletegawmy_ (July, 1859, _Godey’s_), were afterwards collected in _The Widow Bedott Papers_ (1855-56-80). The scope of the work of Mary B. Haven is sufficiently suggested by her story, _Mrs. Bowen’s Parlor and Spare Bedroom_ (February, 1860, _Godey’s_), while the best stories of Mary W. Janvrin include _The Foreign Count; or, High Art in Tattletown_ (October, 1860, _Godey’s_) and _City Relations; or, the Newmans’ Summer at Clovernook_ (November, 1861, _Godey’s_). The work of Alice Bradley Haven Neal is of somewhat similar texture. Her book, _The Gossips of Rivertown, with Sketches in Prose and Verse_ (1850) indicates her field, as does the single title, _The Third-Class Hotel_ (December, 1861, _Godey’s_). Perhaps the most representative figure of this school is Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), who as “Miss Leslie” was one of the most frequent contributors to the magazines of the 1830’s, 1840’s and 1850’s. One of her best stories is _The Watkinson Evening_ (December, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), included in the present volume; others are _The Batson Cottage_ (November, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_) and _Juliet Irwin; or, the Carriage People_ (June, 1847, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_). One of her chief collections of stories is _Pencil Sketches_ (1833–1837). “Miss Leslie,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe, “is celebrated for the homely naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire of her comic style.” She was the editor of _The Gift_ one of the best annuals of the time, and in that position perhaps exerted her chief influence on American literature When one has read three or four representative stories by these seven authors one can grasp them all. Their titles as a rule strike the keynote. These writers, except “the Widow Bedott,” are perhaps sentimentalists rather than humorists in intention, but read in the light of later days their apparent serious delineations of the frolics and foibles of their time take on a highly humorous aspect.

George Pope Morris (1802–1864) was one of the founders of _The New York Mirror_, and for a time its editor. He is best known as the author of the poem, _Woodman, Spare That Tree_, and other poems and songs. _The Little Frenchman and His Water Lots_ (1839), the first story in the present volume, is selected not because Morris was especially prominent in the field of the short story or humorous prose but because of this single story’s representative character. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) follows with _The Angel of the Odd_ (October, 1844, _Columbian Magazine_), perhaps the best of his humorous stories. _The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether_ (November, 1845, _Graham’s Magazine_) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe’s humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which are at least excellent fooling; few more than that.

Probably this is hardly the place for an extended discussion of Poe, since the present volume covers neither American literature as a whole nor the American short story in general, and Poe is not a humorist in his more notable productions. Let it be said that Poe invented or perfected—more exactly, perfected his own invention of—the modern short story; that is his general and supreme achievement. He also stands superlative for the quality of three varieties of short stories, those of terror, beauty and ratiocination. In the first class belong _A Descent into the Maelstrom_ (1841), _The Pit and the Pendulum_ (1842), _The Black Cat_ (1843), and _The Cask of Amontillado_ (1846). In the realm of beauty his notable productions are _The Assignation_ (1834), _Shadow: a Parable_ (1835), _Ligeia_ (1838), _The Fall of the House of Usher_ (1839), _Eleonora_ (1841), and _The Masque of the Red Death_ (1842). The tales of ratiocination—what are now generally termed detective stories—include _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ (1841) and its sequel, _The Mystery of Marie Rogêt_ (1842–1843), _The Gold-Bug_ (1843), _The Oblong Box_ (1844), “_Thou Art the Man_” (1844), and _The Purloined Letter_ (1844).

Then, too, Poe was a master of style, one of the greatest in English prose, possibly the greatest since De Quincey, and quite the most remarkable among American authors. Poe’s influence on the short story form has been tremendous. Although the _effects_ of structure may be astounding in their power or unexpectedness, yet the _means_ by which these effects are brought about are purely mechanical. Any student of fiction can comprehend them, almost any practitioner of fiction with a bent toward form can fairly master them. The merit of any short story production depends on many other elements as well—the value of the structural element to the production as a whole depends first on the selection of the particular sort of structural scheme best suited to the story in hand, and secondly, on the way in which this is _combined_ with the piece of writing to form a well-balanced whole. Style is more difficult to imitate than structure, but on the other hand _the origin of structural influence_ is more difficult to trace than that of style. So while, in a general way, we feel that Poe’s influence on structure in the short story has been great, it is difficult rather than obvious to trace particular instances. It is felt in the advance of the general level of short story art. There is nothing personal about structure—there is everything personal about style. Poe’s style is both too much his own and too superlatively good to be successfully imitated—whom have we had who, even if he were a master of structural effects, could be a second Poe? Looking at the matter in another way, Poe’s style is not his own at all. There is nothing “personal” about it in the petty sense of that term. Rather we feel that, in the case of this author, universality has been attained. It was Poe’s good fortune to be himself in style, as often in content, on a plane of universal appeal. But in some general characteristics of his style his work can be, not perhaps imitated, but emulated. Greater vividness, deft impressionism, brevity that strikes instantly to a telling effect—all these an author may have without imitating any one’s style but rather imitating excellence. Poe’s “imitators” who have amounted to anything have not tried to imitate him but to vie with him. They are striving after perfectionism. Of course the sort of good style in which Poe indulged is not the kind of style—or the varieties of style—suited for all purposes, but for the purposes to which it is adapted it may well be called supreme.

Then as a poet his work is almost or quite as excellent in a somewhat more restricted range. In verse he is probably the best artist in American letters. Here his sole pursuit was beauty, both of form and thought; he is vivid and apt, intensely lyrical but without much range of thought. He has deep intuitions but no comprehensive grasp of life.

His criticism is, on the whole, the least important part of his work. He had a few good and brilliant ideas which came at just the right time to make a stir in the world, and these his logical mind and telling style enabled him to present to the best advantage. As a critic he is neither broad-minded, learned, nor comprehensive. Nor is he, except in the few ideas referred to, deep. He is, however, limitedly original—perhaps intensely original within his narrow scope. But the excellences and limitations of Poe in any one part of his work were his limitations and excellences in all.

As Poe’s best short stories may be mentioned: _Metzengerstein_ (Jan. 14, 1832, Philadelphia _Saturday Courier_), _Ms. Found in a Bottle_ (October 19, 1833, _Baltimore Saturday Visiter_), _The Assignation_ (January, 1834, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _Berenice_ (March, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _Morella_ (April, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall_ (June, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _King Pest: a Tale Containing an Allegory_ (September, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _Shadow: a Parable_ (September, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _Ligeia_ (September, 1838, _American Museum_), _The Fall of the House of Usher_ (September, 1839, _Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine_), _William Wilson_ (1839: _Gift for_ 1840), _The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion_ (December, 1839, _Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine_), _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ (April, 1841, _Graham’s Magazine_), _A Descent into the Maelstrom_ (May, 1841, _Graham’s Magazine_), _Eleonora_ (1841: _Gift_ for 1842), _The Masque of the Red Death_ (May, 1842, _Graham’s Magazine_), _The Pit and the Pendulum_ (1842: _Gift for 1843_), _The Tell-Tale Heart_ (January, 1843, _Pioneer_), _The Gold-Bug_ (June 21 and 28, 1843, _Dollar Newspaper_), _The Black Cat_ (August 19, 1843, _United States Saturday Post_), _The Oblong Box_ (September, 1844, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _The Angel of the Odd_ (October, 1844, _Columbian Magazine_), “_Thou Art the Man_” (November, 1844, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _The Purloined Letter_ (1844: _Gift_ for 1845), _The Imp of the Perverse_ (July, 1845, _Graham’s Magazine_), _The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether_ (November, 1845, _Graham’s Magazine_), _The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar_ (December, 1845, _American Whig Review_), _The Cask of Amontillado_ (November, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), and _Lander’s Cottage_ (June 9, 1849, _Flag of Our Union_). Poe’s chief collections are: _Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque_ (1840), _Tales_ (1845), and _The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe_ (1850–56). These titles have been dropped from recent editions of his works, however, and the stories brought together under the title _Tales_, or under subdivisions furnished by his editors, such as _Tales of Ratiocination_, etc.

Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801–1864) wrote of the frontier life of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century. Her principal collection of short stories is _Western Clearings_ (1845), from which _The Schoolmaster’s Progress_, first published in _The Gift_ for 1845 (out in 1844), is taken. Other stories republished in that collection are _The Ball at Thram’s Huddle_ (April, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), _Recollections of the Land-Fever_ (September, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), and _The Bee-Tree_ (_The Gift_ for 1842; out in 1841). Her description of the country schoolmaster, “a puppet cut out of shingle and jerked by a string,” and the local color in general of this and other stories give her a leading place among the writers of her period who combined fidelity in delineating frontier life with sufficient fictional interest to make a pleasing whole of permanent value.

George William Curtis (1824–1892) gained his chief fame as an essayist, and probably became best known from the department which he conducted, from 1853, as _The Editor’s Easy Chair_ for _Harper’s Magazine_ for many years. His volume, _Prue and I_ (1856), contains many fictional elements, and a story from it, _Titbottom’s Spectacles_, which first appeared in Putnam’s Monthly for December, 1854, is given in this volume because it is a good humorous short story rather than because of its author’s general eminence in this field. Other stories of his worth noting are _The Shrouded Portrait_ (in _The Knickerbocker Gallery_, 1855) and _The Millenial Club_ (November, 1858, _Knickerbocker Magazine_).

Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) is chiefly known as the author of the short story, _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic Monthly_), but his venture in the comic vein, _My Double; and How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic Monthly_), is equally worthy of appreciation. It was his first published story of importance. Other noteworthy stories of his are: _The Brick Moon_ (October, November and December, 1869, _Atlantic Monthly_), _Life in the Brick Moon_ (February, 1870, _Atlantic Monthly_), and _Susan’s Escort_ (May, 1890, _Harper’s Magazine_). His chief volumes of short stories are: _The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868); _The Brick Moon, and Other Stories_ (1873); _Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales_ (1880); and _Susan’s Escort, and Others_ (1897). The stories by Hale which have made his fame all show ability of no mean order; but they are characterized by invention and ingenuity rather than by suffusing imagination. There is not much homogeneity about Hale’s work. Almost any two stories of his read as if they might have been written by different authors. For the time being perhaps this is an advantage—his stories charm by their novelty and individuality. In the long run, however, this proves rather a handicap. True individuality, in literature as in the other arts, consists not in “being different” on different occasions—in different works—so much as in being _samely_ different from other writers; in being _consistently_ one’s self, rather than diffusedly various selves. This does not lessen the value of particular stories, of course. It merely injures Hale’s fame as a whole. Perhaps some will chiefly feel not so much that his stories are different among themselves, but that they are not strongly anything—anybody’s—in particular, that they lack strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn with stray exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions, Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through “uplift” both in speech and the written word.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), one of the leading wits of American literature, is not at all well known as a short story writer, nor did he write many brief pieces of fiction. His fame rests chiefly on his poems and on the _Breakfast-Table_ books (1858-1860-1872-1890). _Old Ironsides_, _The Last Leaf_, _The Chambered Nautilus_ and _Homesick in Heaven_ are secure of places in the anthologies of the future, while his lighter verse has made him one of the leading American writers of “familiar verse.” Frederick Locker-Lampson in the preface to the first edition of his _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (1867) declared that Holmes was “perhaps the best living writer of this species of verse.” His trenchant attack on _Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions_ (1842) makes us wonder what would have been his attitude toward some of the beliefs of our own day; Christian Science, for example. He might have “exposed” it under some such title as _The Religio-Medical Masquerade_, or brought the batteries of his humor to bear on it in the manner of Robert Louis Stevenson’s fable, _Something In It_: “Perhaps there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it after all. Let me be thankful for that.” In Holmes’ long works of fiction, Elsie Venner (1861), _The Guardian Angel_ (1867) and _A Mortal Antipathy_ (1885), the method is still somewhat that of the essayist. I have found a short piece of fiction by him in the March, 1832, number of _The New England Magazine_, called _The Début_, signed O.W.H. _The Story of Iris_ in _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, which ran in _The Atlantic_ throughout 1859, and _A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters_ (January, 1861, _Atlantic_) are his only other brief fictions of which I am aware. The last named has been given place in the present selection because it is characteristic of a certain type and period of American humor, although its short story qualities are not particularly strong.