A thunder-storm was going
on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in
condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so
conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty
heavy thunder you have here.
on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in
condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so
conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty
heavy thunder you have here.
James Russell Lowell
Such a one described the county jail (the one stone
building where all the dwellings are of wood) as 'the house whose
underpinnin' come up to the eaves,' and called hell 'the place where
they didn't rake up their fires nights. ' I once asked a stage-driver if
the other side of a hill were as steep as the one we were climbing:
'Steep? chain lightnin' couldn' go down it 'thout puttin' the shoe on! '
And this brings me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke before. To
me there is something very taking in the negro 'so black that charcoal
made a chalk-mark on him,' and the wooden shingle 'painted so like
marble that it sank in water,' as if its very consciousness or its
vanity had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the painter. I heard a
man, in order to give a notion of some very cold weather, say to another
that a certain Joe, who had been taking mercury, found a lump of
quicksilver in each boot, when he went home to dinner. This power of
rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into flesh and blood and the vivid
conception of Joe as a human thermometer strike me as showing a poetic
sense that may be refined into faculty. At any rate there is humor here,
and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper and not the shallower
quality. The _tendency_ of humor is always towards overplus of
expression, while the very essence of wit is its logical precision.
Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had any humor, deceived,
perhaps, by their gravity of manner. But this very seriousness is often
the outward sign of that humorous quality of the mind which delights in
finding an element of identity in things seemingly the most incongruous,
and then again in forcing an incongruity upon things identical. Perhaps
Captain Hall had no humor himself, and if so he would never find it. Did
he always feel the point of what was said to himself? I doubt it,
because I happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The
Captain was walking up and down the veranda of a country tavern in
Massachusetts while the coach changed horses.
A thunder-storm was going
on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in
condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so
conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty
heavy thunder you have here. ' The other, who had divined at a glance his
feeling of generous concession to a new country, drawled gravely, 'Waal,
we _du_, considerin' the number of inhabitants. ' This, the more I
analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. The same man was capable of
wit also, when he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was once employed
to make some commandment-tables for the parish meeting-house. The
parson, a very old man, annoyed him by looking into his workshop every
morning, and cautioning him to be very sure to pick out 'clear mahogany
without any _knots_ in it. ' At last, wearied out, he retorted one day:
'Wal, Dr. B. , I guess ef I was to leave the _nots_ out o' some o' the
c'man'ments, 't'ould soot you full ez wal! '
If I had taken the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I
have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met
with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my
theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I
have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very
good company. For, as to the _jus et norma loquendi_, I agree with
Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to
Gray. I think that a good rule for style is Galiani's definition of
sublime oratory,--'l'art de tout dire sans etre mis a la Bastille dans
un pays ou il est defendu de rien dire. ' I profess myself a fanatical
purist, but with a hearty contempt for the speech-gilders who affect
purism without any thorough, or even pedagogic knowledge of the
engendure, growth, and affinities of the noble language about whose
_mesalliances_ they profess (like Dean Alford) to be so solicitous. If
_they_ had their way--! 'Doch es sey,' says Lessing, 'dass jene
gotbische Hoflichkeit eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Umganges
ist.
building where all the dwellings are of wood) as 'the house whose
underpinnin' come up to the eaves,' and called hell 'the place where
they didn't rake up their fires nights. ' I once asked a stage-driver if
the other side of a hill were as steep as the one we were climbing:
'Steep? chain lightnin' couldn' go down it 'thout puttin' the shoe on! '
And this brings me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke before. To
me there is something very taking in the negro 'so black that charcoal
made a chalk-mark on him,' and the wooden shingle 'painted so like
marble that it sank in water,' as if its very consciousness or its
vanity had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the painter. I heard a
man, in order to give a notion of some very cold weather, say to another
that a certain Joe, who had been taking mercury, found a lump of
quicksilver in each boot, when he went home to dinner. This power of
rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into flesh and blood and the vivid
conception of Joe as a human thermometer strike me as showing a poetic
sense that may be refined into faculty. At any rate there is humor here,
and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper and not the shallower
quality. The _tendency_ of humor is always towards overplus of
expression, while the very essence of wit is its logical precision.
Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had any humor, deceived,
perhaps, by their gravity of manner. But this very seriousness is often
the outward sign of that humorous quality of the mind which delights in
finding an element of identity in things seemingly the most incongruous,
and then again in forcing an incongruity upon things identical. Perhaps
Captain Hall had no humor himself, and if so he would never find it. Did
he always feel the point of what was said to himself? I doubt it,
because I happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The
Captain was walking up and down the veranda of a country tavern in
Massachusetts while the coach changed horses.
A thunder-storm was going
on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in
condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so
conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty
heavy thunder you have here. ' The other, who had divined at a glance his
feeling of generous concession to a new country, drawled gravely, 'Waal,
we _du_, considerin' the number of inhabitants. ' This, the more I
analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. The same man was capable of
wit also, when he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was once employed
to make some commandment-tables for the parish meeting-house. The
parson, a very old man, annoyed him by looking into his workshop every
morning, and cautioning him to be very sure to pick out 'clear mahogany
without any _knots_ in it. ' At last, wearied out, he retorted one day:
'Wal, Dr. B. , I guess ef I was to leave the _nots_ out o' some o' the
c'man'ments, 't'ould soot you full ez wal! '
If I had taken the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I
have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met
with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my
theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I
have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very
good company. For, as to the _jus et norma loquendi_, I agree with
Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to
Gray. I think that a good rule for style is Galiani's definition of
sublime oratory,--'l'art de tout dire sans etre mis a la Bastille dans
un pays ou il est defendu de rien dire. ' I profess myself a fanatical
purist, but with a hearty contempt for the speech-gilders who affect
purism without any thorough, or even pedagogic knowledge of the
engendure, growth, and affinities of the noble language about whose
_mesalliances_ they profess (like Dean Alford) to be so solicitous. If
_they_ had their way--! 'Doch es sey,' says Lessing, 'dass jene
gotbische Hoflichkeit eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Umganges
ist.
