Traits of American Humour, Vol. 1 of 3

Title: Traits of American Humour, Vol. 1 of 3

Editor: Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Release date: September 3, 2015 [eBook #49863] Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49863

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TRAITS

OF

AMERICAN HUMOUR,

BY NATIVE AUTHORS.

EDITED AND ADAPTED

BY THE AUTHOR OF “SAM SLICK,”

“THE OLD JUDGE,” “THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA,” &C. &C.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

COLBURN AND CO., PUBLISHERS,

GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1852.

LONDON:

Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

PREFACE.

Most Europeans speak of America as they do of England, France, or Prussia, as one of the great countries of the world, but without reference to the fact that it covers a larger portion of the globe than all of them collectively. In like manner as the New England confederacy originally comprised the most enlightened and most powerful transatlantic provinces, and the inhabitants accidentally acquired the appellation of Yankees, so this term is very generally applied to all Americans, and is too often used as a national, instead of a provincial or a sectional soubriquet. In order to form an accurate estimate of the national humour, it is necessary to bear these two great popular errors constantly in view. The Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern States, though settled by a population speaking the same language, and enjoying the same institutions, are so distant from each other, and differ so widely in climate, soil, and productions, that they have but few features in common; while the people, from the same causes, as well as from habits, tastes,

necessities, the sparseness or density of population, free soil, or slave labour, the intensity, absence, or weakness of religious enthusiasm, and many other peculiarities, are equally dissimilar.

Hence, humour has a character as local as the boundaries of these civil subdivisions.

The same diversity is observable in that of the English, Irish and Scotch, and in their mirthful sallies, the character of each race is plainly discernible.

That of the English is at once manly and hearty, and, though embellished by fancy, not exaggerated; that of the Irish, extravagant, reckless, rollicking, and kind-hearted; while that of the Scotch is sly, cold, quaint, practical, and sarcastic.

The population of the Middle States, in this particular, reminds a stranger of the English, that of the West resembles the Irish, and the Yankees bear a still stronger affinity to the Scotch. Among the Americans themselves these distinctions are not only well understood and defined, but are again subdivided so as to apply more particularly to the individual States.

Each has a droll appellation, by which the character of its yeomanry, as composed of their ability, generosity, or manliness on the one hand, and craft, economy, or ignorance of the world, on the other, is known and illustrated. Thus, there are the Hoosiers of Indiana, the Suckers of Illinois, the pukes of Missouri, the buck-eyes of Ohio, the red-horses of Kentucky, the mud-heads of Tenessee, the wolverines of Michigan, the eels of New England, and the corn-crackers of Virginia.

For the purpose of this work, however, it is perhaps sufficient merely to keep in view the two grand divisions of East and West, which, to a certain extent, may be said to embrace those spread geographically North and South, with which they insensibly blend.

Of the former, New England and its neighbours are pre-eminent. The rigid discipline and cold, gloomy tenets of the Puritans required and enforced a grave demeanour, and an absence from all public and private amusements, while a sterile and ungrateful soil demanded all the industry, and required all the energy of the people to ensure a comfortable support. Similar causes produce a like result in Scotland. Hence the striking resemblance in the humour of the two people. But though the non-conformist fathers controlled and modified the mirth of the heart, they could not repress it. Nature is more powerful than conventional regulations, and it soon indemnified itself in the indulgence of a smile for the prohibition of unseemly laughter.

Hypocrisy is short-lived:

“Vera redit facies, dissimulata peret.”

The Puritans, as one of their descendants has well observed,[1] emigrated “that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches, and to listen to painful preaching as long as they would, even unto thirty seventhly, if the Spirit so willed it. They were not,” he says, “plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug.” Add two hundred years’ influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy, hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is best as for what will do, with a clasp to his purse, and a button to his pocket, not skilled to build against time, as in old countries, but against sore-pressing need, accustomed to move the world with no

assistants but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstances beget here, in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron enthusiasm, such unwilling-humour, such close-fisted generosity. This new ‘Græculus esuriens’ will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as new tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he will make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterwards. In cœlum jusseris, ibit, or the other way either, it is all one so as anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains.

New England was most assuredly an unpromising soil wherein to search for humour; but, fortunately, that is a hardy and prolific plant, and is to be found in some of its infinite varieties, in more or less abundance everywhere.

To the well-known appellation of Yankees, their Southern friends have added, as we have seen, in reference to their remarkable pliability, the denomination of “Eels.” Their humour is not merely original, but it is clothed in quaint language. They brought with them many words now obsolete and forgotten in England, to which they have added others derived from their intercourse with the Indians, their neighbours the French and Dutch, and their peculiar productions. Their pronunciation, perhaps, is not very dissimilar to that of their Puritan forefathers. It is not easy to convey an adequate idea of it on paper, but the following observations may render it more intelligible:

“1.[2] The chief peculiarity is a drawling pronunciation, and sometimes accompanied by speaking through the nose, as eend for end, dawg for dog, Gawd for God, &c.

“2. Before the sounds ow and oo, they often insert a short i, which we will represent by the y; as kyow for cow, vyow for vow, tyoo for too, dyoo for do, &c.

“3.[3] The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the r, when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it, even before a vowel.

“4. He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same may be said of the final d, as han’ and stan’ for hand and stand.

“5. The h in such words as while, when, where, he omits altogether.

“6. In regard to a, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as hev for have, hendy for handy, ez for as, thet for that; and again giving it the broad sound as in father, as hansome for handsome.”

“7. Au in such words as daughter and slaughter, he pronounces ah.”

Wholly unconstrained at first by conventional usages, and almost beyond the reach of the law, the inhabitants of the West indulged, to the fullest extent, their propensity for fun, frolic, and the wild and exciting sports of the chase. Emigrants from the border States, they engrafted on the dialects of their native places exaggerations and peculiarities of their own, until they acquired almost a new language, the most remarkable feature of which is its amplification. Everything is superlative, awful, powerful, monstrous, dreadful, almighty, and all-fired. As specimens of these extravagancies four narratives of the Adventures of the celebrated Colonel Crocket are given, of which the humour consists mainly in the marvellous. As they were designed for “the million,” among whom the scenes are laid, rather than the educated class, they were found to contain many expressions unfit for the perusal of the latter, which I have deemed it proper to expunge. Other numbers in both volumes, liable to the same objection, have been subjected to similar expurgation,

which, without affecting their raciness, has materially enhanced their value.

The tales of both West and South are written in the language of the rural population, which differs as much from the Yankee dialect as from that of the Cockney. The vocabulary of both is most copious. Some words owe their origin to circumstances, and local productions, and have thence been spread over the whole country, and adopted into general use; such as[4] backwoods, breadstuffs, barrens, bottoms, cane-brake, cypress-brake, corn-broom, corn-shucking, clearing, deadening, diggings, dug-out, flats, husking, prairie, shingle, sawyer, salt-lick, savannah, snag.

Metaphorical and odd expressions often originated in some curious anecdote or event, which was transmitted by tradition, and soon made the property of all. Political writers and stump speakers perform a prominent part in the invention and diffusion of these phrases. Among others may be mentioned: To cave in, to acknowledge the corn, to flash in the pan, to bark up the wrong tree, to pull up stakes, to be a caution, to fizzle out, to flat out, to fix his flint, to be among the missing, to give him Jessy, to see the elephant, to fly around, to tucker out, to use up, to walk into, to mizzle, to absquatulate, to cotton, to hifer, &c.

Many have been adopted from the Indians; from corn, come, samp, hominy, and sapawn; from the manive plant, mandioca, and tapioca, and from articles peculiar to the aborigines, the words, canoe, hammock, tobacco, mocassin, pemmican, barbecue, hurricane, pow-wow.

The Spaniards have contributed their share to the general stock, as canyon, cavortin, chaparral, pistareen, rancho, vamos.

The French have also furnished many more, such as cache, calaboose, bodette, bayou, sault, levee, crevasse, habitan, charivari, portage.[5]

The “Edinburgh Review,” for April, 1844, in an article on the provincialisms of the European languages, states the result of an inquiry into the number of provincial words which had then been arrested by local glossaries at 30,687.

“Admitting that several of them are synonymous, superfluous, or common to each county, there are nevertheless many of them which, although alike orthographically, are vastly dissimilar in signification. Making these allowances, they amount to a little more than 20,000; or, according to the number of English counties hitherto illustrated, to the average ratio of 1478 to a county. Calculating the twenty-six unpublished in the same ratio, (for there are supposed to be as many words collected by persons who have never published them,) they will furnish 36,428 additional provincialisms, forming in the aggregate, 59,000 words in the colloquial tongue of the lower classes, which can, for the chief part, produce proofs of legitimate origin.”

The process of coinage has been far more rapid and extensive in America than in Europe. That of words predominates in the Western, and that of phrases in the Eastern States. The chief peculiarity in the pronunciation of the Southern and Western people, is the giving of a broader sound than is proper to certain vowels; as whar for where, thar for there, bar for bear.

In the following table of words, incorrectly pronounced, such as belong to New England are designated by the letters N.E.; those exclusively Western, by the letter W.; the Southern words by S.; the rest are common to various parts of the Union. In this attempt at classification, there are, doubtless, errors and imperfections; for an emigrant from Vermont to Illinois would introduce the provincialisms of his native district, into his new residence.

Until lately, the humour of the Americans has been chiefly oral. Up to the period when the publication of the first American “Sporting Magazine” was commenced at Baltimore, in 1829, and which was immediately followed by the publication, in New York, of “The Spirit of the Times,” there existed no such class of writers in the United States, as have since that recent day, conferred such popularity on this description of literature.

The New York “Constellation,”[6] was the only journal expressly devoted to wit and humour; but “The Spirit of the Times” soon became the general receptacle of all these fugitive productions. The ability with which it was conducted, and the circulation it enjoyed, induced the proprietors of other periodicals to solicit contributions similar to those which were attracting so much attention in that paper. Of the latter kind are the three articles from the pen of McClintoch, which originally appeared in the “Portland Advertiser.” The rest of the series by the same author, I have not been able to procure, as they have shared the fate of many others of no less value, that appeared in the daily press of the United States. To collect, arrange, and preserve these specimens of American humour, and present them to the British reader, in an unobjectionable shape, is the object of this compilation.

To such of the numbers contained in these volumes as I could trace the paternity, I have appended the names of the authors, and shall now conclude, by expressing to those gentlemen the very great gratification I have experienced in the perusal of their admirable sketches.

DECEMBER, 1851.

See Introduction to Biglow’s Papers, p. xix.

See Introduction to Dictionary of Americanisms, p. xxiv, and Biglow’s Papers.

See Introduction to Biglow’s Papers, p. xxiv.

Introduction to Dictionary of Americanisms.

See Dictionary of Americanisms.

See Porter’s account of “The Spirit of the Times.”

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

TRAITS

OF

AMERICAN HUMOUR.

I. MY FIRST AND LAST SPEECH IN THE GENERAL COURT.

If I live a thousand years, I shall never forget the day I was chosen representative. Isaac Longlegs ran himself out of a year’s growth to bring me the news; for I staid away from town-meeting out of dignity, as the way is, being a candidate. At first I could not believe it; though when I spied Isaac coming round Slouch’s corner, with his coat-tails flapping in the wind, and pulling straight ahead for our house, I felt certain that something was the matter, and my heart began to bump, bump so, under my jacket, that it was a wonder it didn’t knock a button off. However, I put on a bold face, and when Isaac came bolting into the house, I pretended not to be thinking about it.

“Lieutenant Turniptop!” says Isaac, “huh, huh, you’ve got the election!”

“Got what?” says I, pretending to be surprised, in a coolish sort of a way.

“Got the election,” says he, “all hollow. You’ve got a majority of thirteen—a clear majority—clean, smack smooth, and no two words about it!”

“Pooh!” says I, trying to keep cool; though at the same time I felt all over—I can’t tell how—my skin didn’t seem to fit me. “Pooh!” says I again; but the idea of going into public life, and being called Squire Turniptop, was almost too much for me. I seemed to feel as if I was standing on the tip top of the north pole, with my head above the clouds, the sun on one side, and the moon on the other. “Got the election?” says I; “a hem! hem! hem!” And so I tried to put on a proper dignity; but it was hard work. “Got a majority?” says I, once more.

“As sure as a gun,” says Isaac. “I heard it with my own ears.” Squire Dobbs read it off to the whole meeting. “Tobias Turniptop has fifty-nine, and—is—chosen!”

I thought I should have choked! six millions of glorious ideas seemed to be swelling up all at one time within me. I had just been reading Doctor Growler’s sermon on the end of the world; but now I thought the world was only beginning.

“You’re representative to the Gineral Court,” said Isaac, striking his forefinger into the palm of his left hand, with as much emphasis as if a new world had been created.

I felt more magnanimous than ever.

“I shan’t accept,” says I. (The Lord pardon me for lying).

“Shan’t accept!” screamed out Isaac in the greatest amazement, his great goggle eyes starting out of his head. “Shall I go back and tell them so?”

“I mean I’ll take it into consideration,” said I, trying to look as important as I could. “It’s an office of great responsibility, Isaac,” I said; “but I’ll think of it, and after mature deliberation, if my constituents insist upon my going—Isaac, what’ll you take to drink?”

I could not shut my eyes to sleep all that night; and did nothing but think of the General Court, and how I should look in the great hall of the State House, marching up to my seat to take possession. I determined right off to have a bran new blue coat with brass buttons; but on second thoughts, I remembered hearing Colonel Crabtree say that the Members wore their wrappers. So I concluded that my pepper and salt coat, with the blue satinet pantaloons, would do very well. I decided though, to have my drab hat new ironed, and countermanded the orders for the cow-hide boots, because kip skin would be more genteel. In addition to this, because public men should be liberal, and make a more respectable appearance than common folks, I didn’t hesitate long in making up my mind about having a watch-chain, and an imitation breast-pin. “The check handkerchief,” thinks I to myself, “is as good as new; and my pigtail queue will look splendidly if the old ribbon is a little scoured!”

It can’t be described how much the affairs of the nation occupied my attention all the next day, and three weeks afterwards. Ensign Shute came to me about the Byfield pigs, but I couldn’t talk of anything but my legislative responsibilities.

“The critters beat all natur for squealing,” says he, “but they cut capitally to pork.”

“Ah!” says I, “there must be a quorum, before we can do business.”

“The old grunter,” says he, “will soon be fat enough to kill.”

“Yes,” says I, “the Speaker has the casting vote.”

“Your new pig-pen,” says he, “will hold ’em all.”

“I shall take my seat,” said I, “and be sworn in according to the Constitution.”

“What’s your opinion of corn-cobs?” says he.

“The Governor and Council will settle that,” says I.