Chapter I: Foreword

Outlining is a modern art. For centuries we have collected and selected, compiled and compended, but only of late have we outlined.

And an Outline is a result differing in kind from the other work mentioned, and presenting different conditions and contingencies.

An Outline, owing to its sweep of magnificent distances, can touch only the high spots, and can but skim those. Not in its province is criticism or exhaustive commentary. Not in its scope are long effusions or lengthy extracts.

Nor may it include everybody or everything that logically belongs to it.

An Outline is at best an irregular proposition, and the Outliner must follow his irregular path as best he may. But one thing is imperative, the Outliner must be conscientious. He must weigh to the best of his knowledge and belief the claims to inclusion that his opportunities present. He must pick and choose with all the discernment of which he is capable and while following his best principles of taste he must sink his personal preferences in his regard for his Outline as a whole.

Nor can he pick and choose his audience. To one reader,--or critic,--a hackneyed selection is tiresome, while to another it is a novelty and a revelation. And it must be remembered that a hackneyed poem is a favorite one and a favorite is one adjudged best, by a consensus of human opinion, and is therefore a high spot to be touched upon.

While the Outline is generally chronological, it is not a history and dates are not given. Also, when it seemed advisable to desert the chronological path for the topographical one, that was done.

Yet Foreign Literatures cannot be adequately treated in an Outline printed in English. Translations are at best misleading. If the translation is a poor one, the pith and moment of the original is partly, or wholly lost. And if the translation be of great merit, the work may show the merit of the new rendition rather than the original.

And aside from all that, few translations of Humor are to be found.

The translators of foreign tongues choose first the philosophy, the fiction or the serious poetry of the other nations, leaving the humor, if any there be, to hang unplucked on the tree of knowledge.

So the foreign material is scant, but the high spots are touched as far as could be found convenient.

The Outline stops at the year 1900. Humor since then is too close to be viewed in proper perspective.

But the present Outliner mainly hopes to show how, with steady footstep, from the Caveman to the current comics Humor has followed the Flag.

C. W.
NEW YORK,
_April, 1923_.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All rights on poems and prose in this volume are reserved by the authorized publisher, the author, or the holder of copyright, with whom special arrangements have been made for including such material in this work. The editor expresses thanks for such permission as indicated below.

D. APPLETON & COMPANY: For “To a Mosquito” by William Cullen Bryant; “Tushmaker’s Tooth-Puller” by G. H. Derby; and for “The Sad End of Brer Wolf” by Joel C. Harris, from _Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings_.

THE CENTURY CO.: For an extract from the “Chimmie Fadden” stories; and for the poem “What’s in a Name?” by R. K. Munkittrick.

DAVID MCKAY COMPANY: For “Ballad of the Noble Ritter Hugo” by Charles G. Leland.

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY: For “At the Sign of the Cock” by Owen Seaman; “Here Is the Tale” by Anthony C. Deane; and “On a Fan” and “The Rondeau” by Austin Dobson.

FORBES & COMPANY: For “If I Should Die To-Night” and “The Pessimist” by Ben King.

HARPER & BROTHERS: For “Elegy” and “Mavrone” by Arthur Guiterman. With the permission of the Estate of Samuel L. Clemens, the Mark Twain Company, and Harper & Brothers, publishers, with a full reservation of all copyright privileges is included an extract from the “Jumping Frog” by Mark Twain.

HURST & COMPANY: For an extract from “Bill Nye.”

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY: With their permission and by special arrangement with them as authorized publishers of the following authors’ works, are used selections from: Charles E. Carryl, Guy Wetmore Carryl, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James T. Fields, Bret Harte, John Hay, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John G. Saxe, E. R. Sill, Bayard Taylor.

LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY: For five limericks and “The Two Old Bachelors” from _Nonsense Books_.

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.: For “A Philosopher” by Sam Walter Foss from _Dreams in Homespun_; also for an extract from “The Partington Papers” by B. P. Shillaber.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: For verses from _Through the Looking-Glass_ by Lewis Carroll.

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS: For “Two Men” and “Miniver Cheevy” by E. A. Robinson from _The Children of the Night_ and _The Town Down the River_.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY: For an extract from Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley).

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 3

ANCIENT HUMOR 21

MIDDLE DIVISION 43

PART I. GREECE 43

PART II. ROME 86