Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/44

26 Minor Humorists to be ungrateful for his many services in other fields and to express the highest appreciation of what he contributed to in- ternational comedy. Of the deluge of humorists who followed, Charles Heber Clark ("Max Adeler"), like Leland, became better known in England than in the United States. Out of the Hurly-Burly (1874), his first and best book, links together facetious extrava- gances in prose and verse on a thread of narrative describing the perplexities of the suburbanite. Its delightful illustrations by A. B. Frost contributed almost as much as the text to the popularity of the book. Clark's travesties of the obituary lyric have been long remembered. At times rivalling the mock horrors of the Bab Ballads, bis mortuary burlesques go far to justify Augustine BirreU's dictum that the essence of American himiour consists in speaking lightly of dreadful subjects. In spite of his pseudonym Clark was not one of the many dialect writers. The verbal humours of German-American speech were further exhibited, however, in the Yawcob Strauss rhymes of Charles FoUen Adams. Negro dialect and certain broad aspects of darky pretentiousness were turned to laugh- able effect by Charles Bertrand Lewis ("M. Quad") in T%e Lime-Kiln Club (1887) and other sketches. At the close of the century Bowery slang gained a temporary currency through the Chimmie Fadden stories of Edward Waterman Townsend, but Faddenism never seriously disturbed the cult of Mr. Dooley, whose Irish-American witticisms deserve more ex- tended mention. A remarkable type of later slang, that in- vented by an author and yet perfectly intelligible to all alert Americans, reached its apogee in the work of George Ade, whose Fables in Slang (1900) have been followed by several volumes of a similar method. Humorists who did not rely upon dialect for their main effect usually began on the humour of a particular locality and gradually extended their range. Miss Marietta Holley as "Josiah Allen's Wife" from up-state New York has for more than forty years appUed shrewd observation and the homeliest common sense to the popular amusements and fashionable problems of the day. My Opinions and Betsy Bobbetfs (1873) and Samantha at Saratoga (1887) established her reputation as a keen deviser of ludicrous incidents and impossible social blun-