NCE upon a time the Oracle of the Bandusian Fountain inquired of the unthinking world, Quid rides? Then after a lapse of nearly two thousand years came the answer when the parvenu tobacconist placed the motto on the panel of his gilded coach. This question of what constitutes humor has been wrestled with by all the philosophers from Aristotle to "Ali Baba." Why should we waste words after Sunset Cox has exhausted a volume on "Why we laugh" and old Burton spent half a lifetime trying to analyze the twin sister of laughter? All we know is that it is one of the component elements of ethereal energy in which humanity exists and manifests itself in divers forms and various degrees. Like the pretty girl's flirting it can't be defined-can't be taught is its own excuse for being, and the man is to be pitied who doesn't enjoy it. Perhaps we apply the word humorous to whatever is funny without regard to consequences, as for instance the squibs of the flippant newspaper man who writes "anything for a laugh." But it is sympathetic, not comic, appreciation of the imperfections of life-the finer humor is love and leaves no thorn.

Tudor Jenks, who has plastered his name on the billboards of fame quite extensively as a circus writer, speaks apropos of this subject: "In order to appreciate the truth that the soul of satire is the same with the soul of humor, acquaintance

with humorous writing must be supplemented by a personal acquaintance with the authors. If any one interested with this particular form of nature study will take the pains to secure for observation a few humorists (they may easily be attracted by a properly displayed bait of dollar bills), and will study at close range these harmless little beings, he will be amused to find how much of their so-called humor is merely their spoiled artistic work. If we imagine a sculptor to begin with the idea of producing a masterpiece-a bust of Homer, for example-to labor soulfully at his wet clay until the evening shades draw on, or are drawn down; and then if the sculptor, in despair, puts a clay pipe between the lips of his clay failure, and sets a pair of glasses astride the nose of the blind bard we shall have a fair type of the method by which many a funny vender turns out his remarkable wares." Which is to say that when we try for the sublime and accept the ridiculous, that's humor-and therefore no luxury.

The farther back we delve into history the less humor we seem to find. The abiding records are of the heroic deeds.

"One cannot disturb the dust of years and smile serenely."

Man must develop laws for protection and personal liberty before he can laugh-with any safety. A perception of the ludicrous is a mark of civilization-and at the

the Yankee character and speaks of his "unwilling humor" as if there were no profit in it. Though we look upon the Puritans as "hardfaced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed and stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer," still there was occasionally one among them who enjoyed a good laugh about as well as anything, "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," Josselyn in his "Rarities," when he speaks of bullfrogs as large as a baby a year old, and Morton of Merrymount. During the eighteenth century Ben Franklin appeared in the heart of Boston and shocked the natives by asking for a wholesale blessing over the pork barrel. Tutor Flynt spread a smile about him, and Mather Byles, the Tory preacher. softened his unpopularity by muchquoted repartee.

By the nineteenth century the Puritan character had mellowed sufficiently to produce a swarm of New England humorists. Down in Maine Major Downing presided and this state also gave the country Artemas Ward and Bill Nye. New Hampshire produced her Shillaber and Vermont her J. G. Saxe. Massachusetts was the birthplace of "John Phoenix" and the master spirits Holmes and Lowell (but Hawthorne will outlive both). Little Rhody had her Old Grimes with long black coat all buttoned down before. The Nutmeg State was the home of the famous "Hartford Wits" and their ballad of hasty pudding, the "Danbury News Man" -all the Beechers-and at Hartford have lived Mark Twain, Marshall P. Wilder, Charles Dudley Warner.

The twentieth century promises a large gallery of those whose motto

is, Humor vincit omnia. We may consider a few by the entrance.

You think of heroisms of life you do not smile-at the mention of Hannah Dustin, bloody-fingered from her savage massacre, and of old fire-eyed Sam Adams, grim inspirer of the Revolution. But when you hear the name Charles Follen Adams-"Dot vash anudder shtory." Though destiny has placed the label of the humorist upon him, Follen Adams was no less a hero than the foregoing members of his family. At nightfall of the first day's fight at Gettysburg, he was gathered up from the field-twice wounded-and taken to a hospital where, in lingering convalescence, his mind clutching for comedy after a surfeit of tragedy eagerly sought relief in listening to the scrapple English of a Dutch comrade. The impression was so strong upon his mind that later, after he had become a father with children playing pranks about his knee, the poetic impulse that comes with parental fondness-sought expression in this well-remembered Dutch dialect, and the world laughed over "Leedle Yawcob Strauss"-and then pulled out its handkerchief. When "Yawcob" first came out over the signature C. F. Adams, society looked into one another's eyes, dazed and staggered as if an idol had fallen; but the author was rather proud of his brain-child and took pains to spell out his middle name lest the son and grandson of presidents of the United States should be thrown off the centre of his stately bearing. Majestic tragedy is patronized by the ultra-educated; comedy longs to the masses. The learned shy at the mention of the hee-haw

be

Gettysburg. After the war Mr. Adams engaged in business-small wares and fancy goods. He married, in 1870, Harriet Louise Neals. They have a son and daughter living with them at their home in Roxbury.

Mr. Adams never writes by main strength and serves the Muse only

CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS

at her urgent request; consequently he has not glutted the market by overproduction-but two volumes. of his poems are in circulation.

Humor is home love, and Mr. Adams's friends can readily see his own family smiling under Dutch incognito. Since the passing of "Hans Breitman," he is recognized as the leading exponent of

this Dutch dialect which keeps him in demand on the lecture platform and at social assemblies. The most widely read of his poems are "Der Vater Mill," "Dot Long-Handled Dipper," "Vas Marriage a Failure."

"Vas marriage a failure, I ask my Katrine, Und she look off me so dot I feels pooty

mean.

Dhen she say, 'Meester Strauss, shust come here, eef you bleese.'

Und she take me where Yawcob und leedle Loweeze

By dheir shnug trundle bed was shust saying dheir prayer,

Und she say mit a smile, 'Vas dhere some failures dhere?" "

Mr. Adams, rosy-cheeked and snowy-moustached, is not to be especially distinguished from the average city-bred Yankee, with a military and business man's promptness in appointment (as I will testify), and nothing to suggest the poetic dreamer. But when he loses himself on the platform in the character of Fader Strauss relating the torments of "Leedle Yawcob," then it is you are carried away to the Vaterland and smell the limburger and sip the wurtzheimer and pull out your meerschaum, and when he comes to those lines,

"But ven he vas asleep in ped
So quiet as a mouse

I prays der Lord, 'Dake anyding
But leaf dat Yawcob Strauss,'

perhaps a tear will trickle down into your sauerkraut, One did with Dr. Holmes.