AMERICAN HUMOR.

Colonist, Volume V, Issue 467, 15 April 1862, Page 4

AMERICAN HUMOR.

The origin of American humor is a difficult question, and is surrounded by a thorny thicket of theories and doubts. First, couie3 an Irish element of humorous exaggeration, brag and fun, with a fondness for that special Irish feature—the bull. Secondly, a Spanish element of pugnacity and conceit, and hatred of negroes, with a strongly developed love of the marvellous. Thirdly, a German element of homeliness and simplicity, and embracing all stores of German settlors. Fourthly, an Indiau element of ferocity and daring, mingled with self-applauding narratives of hunting stories, and local lies about animals, including especially, adveuturcs with snakes, and feats with the rifle. Fifthly, a Puritan element, dry, grave,, and chuckling, and embracing all stories of preachers, prayer-meetings, and anti-slavery stories. Lastly, a special American element arising from the fusion of oil these : sobered by German influences; made vivacious by French influences; passionated by Indian climate; made bragging and chivalrous by Spanish alliantes ; made dry, sectarian, fervid, by hereditary Puritan feeling ; yet in itself, neither pure German, French, Spanish, Indian, Puritan, English, Scotch or Irish —but American whole and undivided. About five-and-twonty years since, the humor first became really popular and soundly routed in England. Mrs. Trollope and Marryat heralded its advent. It gained the public ear as soon as the prejudices of the old foolish and lamentable war had died out; it came wrapped in oottou ; it came as a new fruit or vegetable to try if there was a market for it; our own old fun was dying out; our new fun was beginning, and there was room for American fun; we tried it, and liked it, as wg had done oranges after eating apples for hundreds of years. We learned to relish the flavor, though cross-grained people and bitter critical people called it ' extravagant,' ' ridiculous,' and most horrible of all to respectable people's ears —vulgar. We had so leug been taught to think the Americans, convicts, rebels, cruel smugglers, slave-drivers, that we scarcely liked at first to retail even their fun. By degrees, like crinoline, hair powder, and other ephemeral follies, it grew from a luxery into a necessity. Daily conversation wanted it as much as the s dandy' wanted kid gloves, perfumes, and boxes at the opera. Rice, too, gave it a great impetus. He was a second-rate American comedian, who had suddenly hit on a new idea. He bad studied the droll negro boatman on the wharf at Yicksburg, on the Mississippi, learnt his songs, caught bis droll jargon, copied his walk, aud borrowed liis dances. Negro fun had hitherto been taught dangerous ground—do one had imitated it. Rice tried it and succeeded. His negro career was one long triumph. Even bis imitators became popular. He came over to England, jumped Jim Crow to a pretty tune, and introduced among us our blessing and curse in the shape of negro minstrelsy and American jokes. Of course, his songs were not pure negro ; they ■were not even American sougs; they were generally Irish and Scotch tunes, furnished up aud re-arranged—good old tunes too, not unjustly dug up again, but they were sunk in the negro manner, and his dialogue was spiced with American jokes, divested of their provincial shell or rind. At this time, when the New Orleans Picayune was teeming with absurd fun, and offering prizes ' for the biggest lie.' England was deluged with Yankee jukes—as, for instance :—■ 'There is a man in Naahvllie, Ken luck,' says an American paper, ' so enormously tall, that 1.0 Las to get up a ladder to shave himself.' Or, ' There is a man in Memphis, Tennessee,' says en American paper, ' who is so absent, that the other day he tucked up his wet umbrella iv bed, and stuck himself up iv a corner to dry.' Or, ' There is a farmer in Ohio,' says an American paper, ' who learning that skunks lived three hundred years, has just bought one to see ii the report is true. He is ' some pumpkins ' on his new purchase.' Half these jokes were old Joe Millers, the last ono going back as far as that primeval joker, Heraclitus; but they did very well for ' Buncombe,' and the Americans are not a reading people, nor^does business leave many of them much time to think. About this time the dangers of travelling in America were typified for cur amusement in good stories of captains siiting on the safety-valves of steamers ; of lady passengers giving whole deck loads of bacon Lams to feed the fires of racing steamers; in stories of explosions, where the cuptains exerts himself to suve only the passengers who haven't paid their fares. Then we had hosts of negro blunders, showing that half-simple, halfcrafty race in a ludicrous and good-natured light, but never in a heroic, defiant, or intellectual altitude.

But I can illustrate all this better by specimens drawn from a popular jest book, value twenty-iive cents, sold by thousands last year at all the railway Btations from Now Jersey to New Orleans. It is a good specimen of the ordinary conversational fun of average people in America. It is neither belter nor worse; it is adorned with the crudest wood-cuts, and is printed in the most economically large type. It i 3 entitled The Portfolio of the Young 'Un, and the abridged extracts I give from it will be full of racy colloquialisms.