THE WIT AND HUMOR 
 OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
THE WIT 
 AND HUMOR OF 
 COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 (16071800) 
 BY 
 
 CARL HOLLIDAY 
 
 ACTING PHOFE880B OF ENGLISH, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE," "THE COTTON 
 PICKER AND OTHER POEMS," " ONCE UPON A TIME," 
 
 "THREE CENTURIES OF SOUTHERN POETRY." "THE 
 
 LITERATURE OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA," "THE 
 
 CAVALIER POETS," "THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF ENGLISH FICTION " ETC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA & LONDON 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BT J. B, UPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHED MARCH, 19x3 
 
 PRINTED BT J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. 
 
To 
 THE MEMORY 
 
 OP 
 MARK TWAIN 
 
 241159 
 
Hail, rosy laughter ! thou deserv st the bays ! 
 Come, with thy dimples, animate these lays, 
 While universal peals attest thy praise. 
 Daughter of Joy! thro thee we health attain, 
 When Esculapian recipes are vain. 
 
 Jonathan Mitchell Sewall (1748-1808) 
 
 of New Hampshire 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If there is any branch of literature in which 
 America has excelled other modern nations, it 
 is humor. It is doubtful, for instance, whether 
 any other nation has produced during the last 
 half-century a wit surpassing Josh Billings in 
 shrewd sarcasm, Artemus Ward in ridiculous 
 extravagance, or Mark Twain in solemn state 
 ment of the outrageously untrue. This ability 
 in the American, however, of " seeing the 
 point " is by no means a development of the 
 last half-century. It is as old as the nation. 
 The colonists had scarcely landed in Virginia 
 before witty letters telling of ludicrous sights 
 and mishaps in the raw settlement began to go 
 back to England ; while in New England there 
 soon was heard a taunting satire like that of 
 the Hebrew prophets of old. Nor has the 
 stream of wit and humor once ceased from that 
 day to this. Faithfully, too, this type of lit 
 erature has served the nation in every crisis. 
 It has ridiculed our foes, encouraged our defend- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ers, and turned the hardships of war into causes 
 of merriment. In great political struggles it 
 has laughed hypocrisy, bombast, and danger 
 ous movements out of court. In times of peace 
 it has proved its value in maintaining decent 
 standards, in driving silly and foppish ten 
 dencies from our midst, and in showing us our 
 selves as we really are. 
 
 In spite of this, however, and in spite, also, 
 of the variety and richness of the humor which 
 we have added to the world >s literature, there 
 has been scarcely a line written concerning its 
 development in this nation. Other peoples, 
 notably the French and the English, possess 
 such studies of their fun-makers; but here in 
 America, where everybody is something of a 
 humorist, students of literature seem to have 
 looked upon the subject as one beneath the dig 
 nity of serious investigation. Surely the ele 
 ment which has entered into the very woof of 
 our literature and which has become a dis 
 tinguishing characteristic of us as a nation is 
 worthy of no small attention. 
 
 In the present work I trace the course of our 
 wit and humor from the days of the first settle 
 ment up to the opening of the nineteenth cen- 
 
 6 
 
PREFACE 
 
 tury. At some future time I hope to continue 
 the story through two other periods, dealing in 
 the one with the Early National Humor up to 
 the Civil War, and in the other with Modern 
 American Humor. In the volume now pre 
 sented I believe I show that the current idea 
 of colonial sombreness is, happily, very incor 
 rect; that our forefathers of Revolutionary 
 days enjoyed a laugh and often indulged; and 
 that their wit and humor did a work in the 
 founding and maintaining of the Eepublic not 
 yet recognized even in the more detailed his 
 tories on this period. 
 
 In several instances I am indebted to 
 Duyckinck s Cyclopedia of American Litera 
 ture and to those admirable works by Moses 
 Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature 
 during the Colonial Times, and The Literary 
 History of the American Revolution. With 
 out these books I could hardly have secured 
 some of the biographical details contained in 
 this volume. My thanks for assistance most 
 kindly rendered are due Miss Mary Hannah 
 Johnson, Librarian of the Nashville Carnegie 
 Library, and Dr. Eichard Jones, recently of 
 Vanderbilt University. 
 
 7 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Now, in conclusion, if you, the " gentle 
 reader," fail to see the humor of the old times, 
 as discussed in this book, I pray you remember 
 the words of Shakespeare, that 
 
 " A jest s prosperity lies in the ear 
 
 Of him that hears it, never in the tongue 
 Of him that makes it." 
 
 CABL HOLLIDAY 
 
 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 
 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Question as to the first American humorist John 
 
 Pory Francis Higginson William Wood 
 Nathaniel Ward His training and early 
 career His coming to America His Simple 
 Cobbler of Aggawam His views on fashions, 
 women, tailors, the Irish Ward s sincerity. ... 15 
 
 II. Many wits unnoticed Thomas Mbrton Strange 
 
 epitaphs William Wood s New England Pros 
 pect His descriptions of animals and Indians 
 George Alsop s Character of Maryland Mary 
 land lawyers, girls, and Indians Ebenezer Cook s 
 Sot Weed Factor Cook s opinion of Maryland 
 planters and lawyers His description of An 
 napolis A colonial court 29 
 
 HI. A comparison of Northern and Southern colonial 
 conditions William Byrd His early training 
 His public life His shrewdness and wit His 
 History of the Dividing Line Progress to the 
 Mines Journey to the Land of Eden His sar 
 castic comments on North Carolinians Descrip 
 tion of a native His witty comparisons 43 
 
 IV. Two wits of old Boston Mather Byles His 
 early career His church-trial His gift of pun 
 ning His rival, Joseph Green Green s Enter 
 tainment for a Winter s Evening The Death of 
 9 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mr. Old Tenor Byles Hymn Written during a 
 Voyage Green s parody on it Byles parody 
 on the parody The significance of their work. . . 53 
 
 V. Dr. William Douglass His merciless wit His 
 
 estimate of colonial physicians His views on 
 religion Nathaniel Ames His Astronomical 
 Diary and Almanac His use of sayings, advice, 
 etc. The influence of his Almanac Ben Frank 
 lin s indebtedness to it 65 
 
 VI. Famous men and folk-lore Benjamin Frank 
 lin A summary of his life and deeds His 
 shrewdness His youthful humor Paper Poor 
 Richard s Almanac Father Abraham s Speech 
 His humor useful The oyster joke His Auto 
 biography Its making Franklin s readiness of 
 wit The "hanging" joke The hat joke The 
 king joke Advice to an alderman Dialogue 
 with the Gout Franklin s Revolutionary satires 
 Rules for Reducing a great Empire An Edict 
 by the King of Prussia Instructions from the 
 Count de Schaumbergh Franklin s sincerity 
 Bancroft s opinion of him 70 
 
 THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 I. War and satire A True and Historical Narrative 
 
 of Georgia Tea and satire The American 
 Chronicles of the Times The growing dislike of 
 things British An address to the Troops in 
 Boston A New Song to an Old Tune Broad 
 sides against Howe, Burgoyne, and Arnold 91 
 
 II. Wit conflicts between Tories and patriots 
 
 Witherspoon s parody on Rivington s petition , . , 103 
 10 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 III. Tory satires not equal to patriots Reasons for 
 this The " association " oath, a subject for 
 satire The Pausing American Loyalist Tory 
 contempt for continentals The Congress The 
 Rebels The use of personalities Tom Paine 
 as a subject A Modern Catechism The decline 
 
 of Tory humor 107 
 
 IV. Yankee use of British satire Yankee Doodle 
 The antiquity of the tune Its use by the con 
 tinentals The Battle of King s Mountain News 
 paper wit Taxation of America The Fate of 
 John Burgoyne The Dance The effect of humor 
 
 in time of war 114 
 
 V. The leaders in Toiy wit The roughness of Revo 
 
 lution humor Jonathan Odell His life His 
 song for King George s birthday His opinion 
 of satire The Word of Congress The Congrat 
 ulation The Feu de Joie The American Times 
 Odell s fierceness His hatred of democracy 
 His opinion of American statesmanship He deals 
 in personalities His continued hatred of the 
 United States 124 
 
 VI. Joseph Stansbury His life His gentle humor 
 His satire on Clinton His "happy" poem 
 
 His convivial verse His exile song 137 
 
 VII. The public solemnness of colonial statesmen 
 Francis Hopkinson John Adams opinion of 
 him Moses Coit Tyler s praise of him His 
 life His Battle of the KegsTtis bitter letter to 
 Galloway His Letter written by a Foreigner 
 Its view of English ignorance His Pretty Story 
 
 11 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Its liveliness and timeliness His dainty lyrics 
 The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat The 
 Wasp Hopkinson s ability to squelch Tories 
 His Prophecy His taunts for Rivington His 
 effectiveness 145 
 
 VIII. Philip Freneau, "the human wasp" His 
 delicate verses Plagiarized by Scott, Campbell, 
 and Hunter His youthful lines His career 
 Tyler s description of him His bitter hatred of 
 the British O Connor s Answer His Song of 
 Thyrsis His poem on Sancho A Prophecy 
 His ferocious outbursts of 1775 (On the Con 
 quest of Amercia General Gage s Soliloquy 
 The Midnight Consultations Lib era Nos, Domine 
 Mac Swig gen) Their biting sarcasm 
 America Independent Its curse on the British 
 His master satire, The British Prison Ship 
 Its description of British cruelty The Political 
 Balance Jove s opinion of England Freneau s 
 reply to King George His faith in America. . . 170 
 
 IX. John Trumbull The origin of his name His 1 
 amazing precocity His training at Yale His 
 Meddler essays Isabella Sprightly s auction 
 The Correspondent essays The Progress of Dul- 
 ness Its bitter truthfulness The Prophecy of 
 Balaam The Destruction of Babylon An Elegy 
 on the Times The writing of McFingal The 
 three phases of The Progress of Dulness Ita 
 application to modern educational conditions 
 The plot of McFingal Compared with Butler s 
 Hudibras Its permanent merits 199 
 
 12 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 I. The origin of the Hartford "Wits Yale vs. Har 
 
 vard Leading members of the " Wits " Sub 
 jects for their satire The Wits, mainly Fed 
 eralists Their praise of one another Their 
 fight for Union Their satires on Jefferson 
 Three divisions of their writings The An- 
 archiad Its romantic origin Its denunciation 
 of Jeffersonian democracy The Echo It 
 squelches the fakes Its dislike for the French 
 A newspaper thunder-storm The Political 
 Green-House The dissolution of the Wits. . . . 227 
 
 II. The Hartford Wits as individuals Timothy 
 
 Dwight David Humphreys His career His 
 Happiness of America The Monkey 245 
 
 III. Joel Barlow His college and army days He 
 revises Watts Psalms His Vision of Columbus 
 i His Scioto Land advertisement His strenu 
 ous career in France Song of the Guillotine 
 Barlow made minister to France His pathetic 
 death His Advice to a Eaven in Russia 
 Hasty Pudding Its praise of democracy Com 
 pared to Snowbound and Cotter s Saturday night. 252 
 
 IV. Richard Alsop His early work His gentle wit 
 His parody on Governor Hancock s message 
 against theatres 262 
 
 V. Theodore Dwight Lemuel Hopkins His eccen 
 
 tricities His satire on Ethan Allen The 
 Victim of the Cancer Quack The effect of the 
 Hartford Wits 267 
 
 VI. Democratic replies to the Wits Hugh Brack- 
 
 13 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQH 
 
 enridge His varied and useful life His drama, 
 Bunker Hill Brackenridge and General Lee 
 Six Political Discourses Brackenridge in the 
 Whiskey Rebellion Modern Chivalry Its fame 
 Brackenridge makes Washington laugh 
 Modern Chivalry, a rebuke to too much liberty 
 The laughable experiences of Teague O Regan 
 Closeness of American humor to American his 
 tory Plentifulness of humor in later colonial 
 days Washington s attempts at wit 272 
 
 THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 I. The colonists and the theatre The first American 
 
 play, The Prince of Parthia Ponteach Disen 
 chantment Sewall s The Americans Roused 
 Mercy Warren s Adulator and The Group Their 
 sarcasm toward the Tories The Fall of British 
 Tyranny Its amusing pictures of British per 
 plexity The Block-heads The first American 
 comedy, The Contrast, by Royall Tyler The 
 author s career His May Day and Good Spec 
 The Contrast rebukes modern " depravity " 
 The heartiness of early American drama The 
 use of lyrics The " Sleighing Song " Dun- 
 lap s Leicester His Father of an Only Child 
 Its naturalness and humor 289 
 
 II. Conclusion 307 
 
 Bibliography 309 
 
 Index . 317 
 
THE WIT AND HUMOR 
 OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 The usual way to begin a book dealing with 
 humor is, I believe, to make a painstaking dis 
 crimination between wit and humor. This, how 
 ever, I decline to do, for two reasons: First, 
 because I have never been able to find or make 
 a very good definition of either; and, second, 
 because any reader who has not the ability to 
 know either one when he sees it doubtless would 
 not possess acumen enough to understand any 
 such discussion as I might undertake. This 
 book is not intended for his kind, anyway. 
 
 I intend simply to tell of the development of 
 humor among our forefathers from their com 
 ing in 1607 to the days when their children had 
 the Republic in pretty fair working order, say, 
 
 15 
 
OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 about 1800; in short, as a ballad of the times 
 puts it, 
 
 " When these free states were colonies 
 
 Unto the mother nation; 
 And in Connecticut the good 
 Old Blue Laws were in fashion." 
 
 And, now, not to waste time on preliminaries, 
 let us hasten back to those "Pilgrim Father" 
 days, choose a sarcastic Puritan, and smile with 
 him, or at him. 
 
 Who cracked the first joke in America? The 
 early records do not state. We are not even 
 quite sure as to the first American who tried to 
 be funny on paper. Of course, some of the 
 very earliest colonists in both Virginia and 
 New England wrote humorous and sarcastic 
 accounts back home, and the ludicrous situa 
 tions portrayed in these are not lost upon us 
 of a later date. One might call to mind John 
 Pory of the Jamestown settlement, whose let 
 ters to the " home folks " were quaintly 
 witty; Francis Higginson, sturdy old New 
 Englander, in his " True Eelation " (1629), 
 and his " New England Plantations " (1629), 
 sometimes came dangerously near joking; and 
 
 16 
 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 some students of American literature would 
 say that William Wood of Massachusetts, by 
 his sprightly "New England s Prospect" 
 (1634), deserves the place as first of the 
 numerous fathers of American humor. But 
 the first man to do it with malice aforethought 
 and with the intention of publishing also, seems 
 to have been the New England preacher 
 Nathaniel Ward (1578-1652). 
 
 NATHANIEL WARD 
 
 The first of our American satirists was no 
 mere laughing fool. Few men of those grave 
 and stubborn colonial days had received a bet 
 ter mental training for civil and theological 
 strife, and few had held themselves more per 
 sistently to an uncomfortably stormy career. 
 Your true Puritan fought sin and everything 
 else in the neighborhood, and Nathaniel Ward 
 was not an exception. He graduated at 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and old 
 Bishop Fuller has spoken of him as one of the 
 most learned writers in the ancient institution. 
 But his was a knowledge far wider than the 
 range of books. He had travelled the nations 
 of Europe and had conversed with their lead- 
 
 2 17 
 
AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ers ; he had attended the lectures of that daring 
 theologian, Paraeus of Heidelberg; he was a 
 good friend of Francis Bacon s; and he had 
 been so intimate with royalty that he had held 
 in his arms the infant Prince Eupert, the swag 
 gering cavalier of Cromwell s day. 
 
 For some years Ward had been a lawyer, and 
 if the trend of the times had not been toward 
 religious discussions, his subtle reasoning 
 power* might have made him one of the greatest 
 jurists of the century. But the question 
 " What think ye of Christ? " was on every 
 man s lips, and Ward felt called upon, like 
 many another brilliant intellect of that stern 
 era, to explain the Higher Law. For ten years 
 he fervently " wagged his pow in a pulpit " 
 ten stormy years harassed by the watchful eye 
 of that terror of lax Churchmen, Archbishop 
 Laud, who sent innumerable bits of advice and 
 innumerable warnings to the little rectory at 
 Stondon Massey in Essex; for the future 
 pioneer of American satire was a trifle too 
 original in his theological views to suit the 
 theologically sensitive old bishop, and the tenor 
 of their way was not always that of brotherly 
 love. 
 
 18 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 At length the crisis came. In 1633 the Arch 
 bishop summoned the rector, bitterly rebuked 
 him for having anti-Christ theories, silenced 
 him (technically but not actually), and excom 
 municated him for non-conformity. Naturally 
 Ward looked to the hills of Masachusetts, 
 whence came his help ; everybody who dissented 
 in those days did that. And so it happened 
 that early in 1634 Nathaniel Ward, preacher, 
 satirist, and pig-headed citizen, took charge 
 of the little church at Aggawam (now Ipswich), 
 Massachusetts, and began to impress upon the 
 people of the commonwealth the fact that some 
 thing in the nature of a human firebrand had 
 fallen in their midst. His friends called it 
 godly zeal ; but his enemies designated it plain 
 pig-headedness. Perhaps it was both. 
 
 We may not enter into a detailed account of 
 his varied activities ; he seemed to have a hand 
 in everything. History tells us, for one thing, 
 that he helped John Cotton and other Puritan 
 leaders draw up that strange code of laws with 
 the misleading title of " Body of Liberties." 
 This decidedly unhumorous deed was done in 
 1641, but five years later he wrote, doubtless as 
 a recompense, the first American book of 
 
 19 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 humor, the Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, a 
 work showing how badly, according to the cob 
 bler s views, the world was theologically and 
 socially out of joint. Other books he com 
 posed, but as they deal extensively in promises 
 of volcanic landscapes in the next world, they 
 cannot with propriety be called funny. Ward 
 returned to England in 1647, and there, in 1652, 
 was gathered to his fathers, several of whom 
 were preachers, and who therefore doubtless 
 missed entirely the scenery just mentioned, or 
 else caught but distant glimpses of it from the 
 windows of the Heaven-bound observation car. 
 
 This Simple Cobbler is a most sarcastic fel 
 low. It turns out that he had been " a soli 
 tary widower almost twelve years," and per 
 haps that explains some of his bitter jokes. He 
 is especially biting when discussing the fash 
 ions affected by ladies of the early seventeenth 
 century: 
 
 " Should I not keep promise in speaking a 
 little to women s fashions, they would take it 
 unkindly. I was loath to pester better matter 
 with such stuff ; I rather thought it meet to let 
 them stand by themselves, like the Quae genus 
 
 in the grammar, being deficients or redundants, 
 
 20 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 not to be brought under any rule: I shall there 
 fore make bold for this once, to borrow a lit 
 tle of their loose-tongued Liberty, and mis 
 spend a word or two upon their long-waisted, 
 but short-skirted Patience. . . . 
 
 Gray Gravity itself can well beteem 
 That Language be adapted to the theme. 
 x He that to Parrots speakes, must parrotise; 
 He that instructs a Fool, may act th unwise. 
 
 "It is known more than enough that I am 
 neither Niggard, nor Cynic, to the due bravery 
 of the true gentry. I honor the woman that 
 can honor herself with her attire; a good text 
 always deserves a fair margin ; I am not much 
 offended if I see a trim fur trimmer than she 
 that wears it. In a word, whatever Christian 
 ity or Civility will allow, I can afford with 
 London measure ; but when I hear a nugiperous 
 gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in 
 this week : what the nudiustertian fashion of the 
 Court ; with egg [desire] to be in it in all haste, 
 whatever it be ; I look at her as the very gizzard 
 of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, 
 the epitome of Nothing, fitter to be kicked, if 
 she were a kickable substance, than either hon 
 ored or humored." 
 
 21 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 It is evident that, besides being a widower, 
 friend Ward must have been a dyspeptic. The 
 world is out of joint, and woman has had a 
 large share in this anatomical catastrophe. 
 There are in her certain traits that the sarcas 
 tic Puritan cannot at all comprehend. 
 
 " To speak moderately, " says he, " I truly 
 confess it is beyond the ken of my understand 
 ing to conceive how those women should have 
 any true grace or valuable virtue, that have so 
 little wit, as to disfigure themselves with such 
 exotic garb, as not only dismantles their native 
 lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant- 
 bar-geese,ill-shapen, shotten shell-fish, Egyptian 
 hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flurts 
 of the pastery, which a proper English woman 
 should scorn with her heels. It is no marvel 
 they wear drailes on the hinder part of their 
 heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore 
 part but a few squirrels brains to help them 
 frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another. 
 ... I can make myself sick at any time with 
 comparing the dazzling splendor wherewith 
 our gentle-women were embellished in some 
 former habits, with the gut-foundered goose- 
 
 dom wherewith they are now surcingled and 
 
 22 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 debauched. We have about five or six of them 
 in our Colony ; if I see any of them accidentally, 
 
 I cannot cleanse my fancy of them for a month 
 after. . . . Methinks it should break the hearts 
 of Englishmen to see so many goodly English 
 women imprisoned in French cages peering out 
 of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to 
 help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves 
 them." 
 
 Now and again Ward s emotions become too 
 fervid for prose: he bursts into poetry: 
 
 II The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble, 
 
 Women and care, and care and Women, 
 And Women and care and trouble. " 
 
 Thus the " cobbler 9 - proceeds, pegging the 
 foibles of his day and oftentimes speaking with 
 a Franklin-like bluntness and common-sense. 
 In fact, there is considerable resemblance be 
 tween Ward s ideas and expressions and those 
 of Poor Richard. While paying his respects to 
 the ladies and their fashions he does not forget 
 the tailors. He fears for these knights of the 
 needle : 
 
 " It is a more common than convenient say 
 ing that nine tailors make a man; it were well 
 
 23 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 if nineteen could make a woman to her mind. 
 If tailors were men indeed, well furnished but 
 with mere moral principles, they would disdain 
 to be led about like Apes, by such mimic Mar 
 mosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men 
 that have bones in them, to spend their lives in 
 making fiddle cases for futilous women s 
 fancies; which are the very pettitoes of in 
 firmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys. . . . 
 It is no little labor to be continually putting up 
 English women into outlandish casks; who if 
 they be not shifted anew once in a few months, 
 grow too sour for their husbands. What this 
 trade will answer for themselves when God 
 shall take measure of tailors consciences is 
 beyond my skill to imagine. . . . He that makes 
 coats for the moon, had need take measure 
 every noon; and he that makes for women, as 
 often, to keep them from lunacy." 
 
 I quote thus freely from Ward s opinion on 
 women, not to arouse the ire of the female 
 perambulating fashion plates of to-day, but 
 simply to show that the stern Pilgrim fathers 
 did, after all, have some sort of humor, even 
 if a grim sort. Our histories so often leave 
 the impression that the Puritan was merely a 
 
 24 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 funereal creature, the deadly enemy of mince- 
 pie and plum-pudding, that it is well to refer 
 to the ancient writings now and then and see 
 for ourselves that they dared to smile, and that 
 right often. 
 
 Many were the faults and human weaknesses 
 attacked by this first of American satirists. 
 Indeed, he seemed to look upon himself as 
 divinely appointed scolder plenipotentiary to 
 the world at large. Hear a few complimentary 
 remarks concerning the Hibernians: 
 
 " These Irish, anciently called Anthro 
 pophagi (man-eaters), have a tradition among 
 them, that when the Devil showed our Saviour 
 all the Kingdoms of the Earth and their glory, 
 he would not show him Ireland, but reserved 
 it for himself; it is probably true, for he hath 
 kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old 
 Pox foresaw it would eclipse the glory of all 
 the rest. . . . They are the very offal of men, 
 dregs of mankind, reproach of Christendom, 
 the bots that crawl on the beasts tail." 
 
 We must not think that Nathaniel Ward was 
 a satirist and nothing else. Often he turned 
 from his scoffing and sarcasm to call down the 
 curse of God upon England s enemies and to 
 
 25 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 speak with heartfelt earnestness of the folly 
 and sin about him. Satire and humor have 
 ever been a mighty weapon in the political, 
 social and general reform movements of Amer 
 ica, and this first American book of wit is no 
 exception. Running through four editions 
 within the first year of its existence and arous 
 ing the men of two lands to a determined frame 
 of mind, its value in its own day cannot be 
 doubted, and even yet, as Tyler declares in his 
 History of American Literature, " it is a tre 
 mendous partisan pamphlet, intensely vital, 
 . . . full of fire, wit, whim, eloquence, sarcasm, 
 invective, patriotism, bigotry." The scolding, 
 rabid " Simple Cobbler " was violently in 
 earnest; the day of judgment was at hand. 
 Hear his first sentence: " Either I am in an 
 apoplexy or that man is in a lethargy, who doth 
 not now sensibly feel God shaking the heavens 
 over his head and the earth under his feet." 
 He saw political ruin threatening England, in 
 sanity hovering over every woman, and heresy 
 stalking into every church. Beware, cried he, 
 beware of false prophets ! He usually hears 
 best in their meetings, that stops his ears 
 closest ; he opens his mouth to the best purpose 
 
 26 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 that keeps it shut ; and he doeth best of all that 
 declines their company as wisely as he may. 
 . . . Here I hold myself bound to set up a bea 
 con to give warning of a new-sprung sect of 
 phranta sties, which would persuade themselves 
 and others that they have discovered the Nor- 
 West passage to Heaven? " 
 
 Certainly our first satirist was a worshipper 
 of sincerity. His heart was in his book, and 
 he spoke straight from that heart; his words 
 need no interpreter. Of course, his learning 
 got the better of him at times, but that was a 
 common fault among the prose writers of the 
 seventeenth century. For instance, years ago 
 Professor Moses Coit Tyler defied any man to 
 explain this expression of Ward s: "If the 
 whole conclave of hell can so compromise ex- 
 adverse and diametrical contradictions as to 
 compolitize such a multimonstrous maufrey of 
 heteroclites and quicquidlibets quietly, I trust I 
 may say with all humble reverence, they can do 
 more than the senate of heaven. " How old 
 Dr. Johnson would have enjoyed that sentence! 
 But we have seen that this was not Ward s 
 usual manner of procedure; for his soul was 
 too heated for such verbal jugglery. 
 
 27 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Thus this early American wit lashed the 
 fallen sons of Adam. Wrong he often was; 
 narrow we must consider him in this day; 
 blindly obstinate his enemies thought him in his 
 own time. But beneath all his mistakes and 
 natural failings we may frequently perceive 
 that same plain, homely and earthy philosophy, 
 that assumed yet shrewd simplicity, which have 
 made us smile with Franklin and Josh Billings 
 and Artemus Ward and many another Ameri 
 can wiseacre. It has been a valuable and bril 
 liantly original brood that grumbling old 
 Nathaniel Ward fathered. 
 
II 
 
 THOMAS MORTON 
 
 Eight in the beginning the reader must un 
 derstand that many a fledgling wit of these first 
 days must go unnoticed; else we should have 
 a work as large as a family Bible and, perhaps, 
 just as grave and solemn. One is tempted, for 
 instance, to linger over the literary efforts of 
 Thomas Morton (1634), who scandalized all 
 New England by raising a May-pole eighty feet 
 high at Merry Mount, brewing " a barrel of 
 excellent beer," and shouting with his com 
 panions such Bacchanalian verses as 
 
 " Drink and be merry, merry, merry, boys, 
 Let all your delight be in Hymen s joys, 
 lo to Hymen now the day is come, 
 About the Merry May-pole take a roame 
 
 Nectar is a thing assign d, 
 
 By the Deities own mind, 
 
 To cure the heart opprest with grief, 
 
 And of good liquors is the chief 
 
 Then drink, etc. 
 
 lo to Hymen, etc." 
 
 29 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 We may not stay to wonder over the many 
 statements in his quaint volume New English 
 Canaan; such as his interesting discovery that 
 the beaver must sit " in his house built on the 
 water with his tayle hanging in the water, 
 which else would over-heate and rot off." 
 
 Then, too, we should find much cause for as 
 tonishment in the epitaphs of those grave days. 
 When Keverend Mr. Samuel Stone of Hart 
 ford died, a friend thus sang his praise: 
 
 " A stone more than the Ebenezer fam d; 
 
 Stone splendent diamond, right orient named; 
 A cordial stone, that often cheered hearts 
 With pleasant wit, with Gospel rich imparts; 
 Whetstone, that edgify d th obtusest mind; 
 Loadstone that drew the iron heart unkind; 
 A pond rous stone, that would the bottom sound 
 Of Scripture depths, and bring out Arcan s found ; 
 A stone for kingly David s use so fit, 
 As would not fail Goliah s front to hit." 
 
 And again, when John Sherman of New 
 Haven, preacher, mathematician, almanac- 
 maker, and father of twenty-six children, heard 
 of the death of his good friend Mitchell, a Har 
 vard pastor, he exclaimed (after due thought 
 and many poetic pangs) : 
 
 30 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 " Here lies the darling of his time, 
 Mitchell expired in his prime; 
 Who four years short of forty-seven, 
 Was found full ripe and pluck d for heaven." 
 
 When Thomas Dudley, father of our first 
 poetess, Anne Bradstreet, came to his death 
 bed, he showed where his daughter had received 
 her surprising gift, by composing such farewell 
 lines as 
 
 " Dim eyes, deaf ears, cold stomach shew 
 My dissolution is in view; 
 Eleven times seven near lived have I, 
 And now God calls, I willing die." 
 
 Nor may we stop to laugh with William 
 Wood over the quaint wit in his New England s 
 Prospect (1634), wherein he speaks with rare 
 discernment concerning 
 
 " The kingly Lion, and the strong-armed Bear, 
 The large-limbed Mooses, with the tripping Deer; 
 Quill-darting Porcupines and Raccoons be 
 Castled in the hollow of an aged tree; 
 
 The grim-face Ounce, and ravenous, howling Wolf 
 Whose meagre paunch sucks like a swallowing 
 gulf." 
 
 31 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 He has much, also, to say about the red man : 
 very amusing, too, save to an Indian. " A 
 sagamore with a hum-bird in his ear for a 
 pendant, a black-hawk on his occiput for his 
 plume, mowhackees for his gold chain, good 
 store of wampompeage begirting his loins, his 
 bow in his hand, his quiver at his back, with 
 six naked Indian spatter-lashes at his heels for 
 his guard, thinks himself little inferior to the 
 great Cham; he will not stick to say he is all 
 one with King Charles. He .thinks he can blow 
 down castles with his breath, and conquer king 
 doms with his conceit. " 
 
 Those were strange old days around Boston 
 town. As has been said by plain, blunt Benja 
 min Thompson of Harvard, another of the 
 colonial wits whom we must neglect, 
 
 " Twas in those days an honest grace would hold 
 Till an hot pudding grew at heart a-cold. 
 And men had better stomachs at religion, 
 Than I to capon, turkey-cock, or pigeon; 
 When honest sisters met to pray, not prate, 
 About their own and not their neighbor s state/* 
 
 Doubtless many who would have liked to 
 laugh remained to pray, and learned from these 
 
 32 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 pudding spoilers and superhuman women to 
 fear all signs of levity. 
 
 The habitual humorist was, however, not such 
 an avis rara in early colonial days as our his 
 tories would teach. The first efforts of the 
 Virginia colony were so full of disaster and 
 sorrow, and the founders of the New England 
 provinces were so impressed with the serious 
 ness of life that the gay and ridiculous phases 
 of existence received, it is true, but little public 
 recognition, or at least but little literary ex 
 pression. Nathaniel Ward s Simple Cobbler 
 appeared in 1647. In 1666 a Virginia colonist, 
 George Alsop (1638-?), published in London a 
 little volume entitled A Character of the Prov 
 ince of Maryland. Here again we find a rather 
 successful effort to be humorous. 
 
 GEORGE ALSOP 
 
 Alsop, who had come over in 1658 and had 
 worked for four years in Baltimore county, 
 Maryland, had seen in the new land much of a 
 surprising nature, and here and there through 
 out his book are bits of description with the 
 
 3 33 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 snap and originality of view that mark a man 
 of wit. Hear of the good old days in Mary 
 land : 
 
 " Here if the lawyer had nothing else to 
 maintain him but his howling, he might button 
 up his chaps, and burn his buckram bag, or else 
 hang it upon a pin until its antiquity had eaten 
 it up with dirt and dust. Then with a spade, 
 like his Grandsire Adam, turn up the face of 
 Creation, purchasing his bread by the sweat 
 of his brows, that before was got by the motion- 
 ated water-works of his jaws. . . . All villainous 
 outrages that are committed in other States, 
 are not so much as known here. A man may 
 walk in the open woods as secure from being 
 externally dissected as in his own house or 
 dwelling. 
 
 We can easily perceive how conscious was 
 Alsop s effort to be witty. There is a certain 
 glibness in it all, a wish to glitter, a desire to 
 put thoughts in eye-catching phrases. Mary 
 land girls, he says, are rather bashful but have 
 much common-sense. " All complimental 
 courtships, dressed up in critical rareties, are 
 mere strangers to them, plain wit comes near 
 est their genius; so that he that intends to 
 
 34 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 court a Mary-Land girl must have something 
 more than the tautologies of a long winded 
 speech to carry on his design, or else he may 
 (for aught I know) fall under the contempt of 
 her frown and his own windy oration. 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler has declared in his History 
 of American Literature that " there was but 
 one American book (The Simple Cobbler) pro 
 duced in the seventeenth century that for 
 mirthful, grotesque, and slashing energy, can 
 compare with this." The volume is full of 
 " wild nonsense." In dedicating the work to 
 Lord Baltimore, Alsop remarks to Maryland 
 merchants, " This dish of discourse was in 
 tended for you at first, but it was manners to 
 let my Lord have the first cut, the pie being 
 his." And then, in bidding his little book fare 
 well, he exclaims : 
 
 " Good Fate protect thee from a critic s power; 
 
 For if they once but wring and screw their mouth, 
 Cock up their hats, and set the point due-South, 
 Arms all akimbo, and with belly strut 
 As if they had Parnassus in their gut, 
 These are the symptoms of the murthering fall 
 Of my poor infant, and his burial. 
 35 
 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL, DAYS 
 
 You will note that there is a touch of sarcasm 
 in this Marylander s humor. And he is not 
 lacking in another trait of piquant humor, 
 the vigorous use of figures of speech. " The 
 Indians," he tells us, " paint upon their faces 
 one stroke of red, another of green, another of 
 white, and another of black, so that when they 
 have accomplished the equipage of their coun 
 tenance in this trim, they are the only Hiero- 
 glyphicUs and Representatives of the Furies." 
 
 To construct an elaborate and dignified ex 
 pression concerning a very simple matter is an 
 old trick among humorists; and our colonial 
 friend by no means forgets it. Describing the 
 decidedly unhumorous procedure of scalping, 
 he remarks that some chosen one from among 
 the Indians " disrobeth the head of skin and 
 hair at one pull, leaving the skull almost as 
 bare as those Monumental Skeletons at Chirur- 
 geons Hall; but for fear they should get cold 
 by leaving so warm and customary a cap off, 
 they immediately apply to the skull a cataplasm 
 of hot embers to keep their pericranium 
 warm. The volume has many a round-about 
 expression of such a nature. " I have vent 
 ured," says he, " to come abroad in print, and 
 
 36 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 if I should be laughed at for my good meaning, 
 it would so break the credit of my understand 
 ing that I should never dare to show my face 
 upon the Exchange of conceited wits again. " 
 
 Your boisterous humorist seems to have 
 flourished at this period far better in the South 
 ern colonies than in the Northern. The l Sim 
 ple Cobbler" had certain theological pegs 
 which he felt duty-bound to drive into the tough 
 New England sole, and therefore he would fain 
 be witty. But John Pory, when he described 
 the strange customs of " James City," and 
 George Alsop, when he sent forth his " dish 
 of discourse," cared naught for theology; each 
 wrote because the fun was in him. A little 
 later, however, we shall find the case rather re 
 versed; for the times soon called for sarcastic 
 men, for satirists who could turn the laugh on 
 the enemy; and then New England wit flour 
 ished with surprising richness. 
 
 The great majority of our American humor 
 ists have dealt in prose only ; but now and then 
 there has come among us a rhyming jester, such 
 as a Leland, a Field, or a Eiley, to add melody 
 to laughter. There was no dearth of would- 
 be poets in the early colonial days, and though 
 
 37 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 most of them hobbled rather than soared, we 
 find the very lameness of their poetic feet of 
 more entertainment perhaps than the nimble 
 efforts of some of their successors in the field 
 of American poetry. Not that these dignified 
 divines wished to be entertaining; they were 
 too much in earnest for that. Old Nicholas 
 Noyes of Salem, for instance, was doubtless sor 
 rowing deeply when he wrote of his deceased 
 fellow-preacher : 
 
 " For rich array cared not a fig, 
 And wore Elisha s periwig; 
 At ninety-three had comely face 
 Adorned with majesty and grace; 
 Before he went among the dead, 
 He children s children s children had." 
 
 EBENEZER COOK 
 
 But here and there was a poetizer intention 
 ally funny, and one of the earliest of these was 
 a certain Ebenezer Cook of Maryland. Cook 
 must have been very much ashamed of his 
 verses, for he has left scarcely a trace of a 
 record about himself. We know simply that he 
 dwelt in Maryland and published in London in 
 1708 a little book entitled The Sot Weed Fac- 
 
 38 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 tor; or a Voyage to Maryland, a satire in 
 which is described the laws, government, courts, 
 and constitutions of the country, and also the 
 buildings, feasts, frolics, entertainments, and 
 drunken humors of the inhabitants in that part 
 of America. An eighteenth century title meant 
 a good day s work for the author. 
 
 It is chiefly for the edification of " Maryland, 
 my Maryland " that Cook s troubles are aired 
 in this volume. The poet decides to take mer 
 chandise to Maryland to trade for tobacco, and 
 he begins the long and tedious voyage. 
 
 " Freighted with fools, from Plymouth sound 
 To Maryland our ship was bound. " 
 
 Having landed, he opens his store and the 
 " sot- weed factors " crowd about him. " Sot- 
 weed, be it known, is " tobacco." Behold 
 these primitive Americans: 
 
 " With neither stockings, hat nor shoe, 
 These sot-weed planters crowd the shore, 
 In hue as tawny as a Moor; , 
 
 Figures so strange, no god designed 
 To be a part of human kind; 
 But wanton nature, void of rest, 
 Moulded the brittle clay in jest." 
 39 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 In the course of Ms trading Cook meets a 
 Quaker. Now, evidently Cook is not an ad 
 mirer of the Quaker sect; else his own words 
 are deceiving: 
 
 " While riding near a sandy bay, 
 I met a Quaker, yea and nay; 
 A pious, conscientious rogue 
 As e er wore bonnet or a brogue; 
 Who neither swore nor kept his word, 
 But cheated in the fear of God; 
 And when his debts he would not pay, 
 By Light within he ran away/ 
 
 And by this pious gentleman he is so badly 
 swindled that he has scarcely anything left to 
 call his own. When a man is once fooled, he 
 immediately makes himself a bigger fool by 
 going to law about it. Ebenezer Cook was no 
 exception. He found a lawyer who 
 
 " ... with a stock of impudence, 
 Supplied his want of wit and sense ; 
 With looks demure amazing people; 
 No wiser than a daw in steeple " 
 
 and who for a liberal fee would 
 
 " ... have poisoned half the parish, 
 
 And hanged his father on a tree." 
 
 40 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 Up to Annapolis they go. And see Annapo 
 lis in all its primitive beauty ! 
 
 " A city, situated on a plain, 
 
 .Where scarce a house will keep out rain, 
 
 But stranger here will scarcely meet 
 With market-place, exchange, or street. - 
 
 Now here the judges try the suit 
 And lawyers twice a year dispute. 
 As oft the bench most gravely meet, 
 Some to get drunk and some to eat 
 A swingling share of country treat." 
 
 But the " bench " and the lawyers did some 
 thing more than consume hearty country fare ; 
 the " treat " simply refreshed them for the 
 oratorical battle to come. Hear Cook s own 
 description of this early scene of judicial dig 
 nity: 
 
 " We sat like others on the ground, 
 Carousing punch in open air, 
 Till crier did the court declare. 
 The planting rabble being met, 
 Their drunken worships being likewise set, 
 Crier proclaims that noise should cease, 
 And straight the lawyers break the peace. 
 41 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Wrangling for plaintiff and defendant, 
 
 I thought they ne er would make an end on t, 
 
 With nonsense, stuff, and false quotations, 
 
 With brazen lies and allegations; 
 
 And in the splitting of the cause, 
 
 They used such motions with their paws, 
 
 As showed their zeal was strongly bent 
 
 In blows to end the argument. " 
 
 Thus the disgusted Ebenezer continues 
 through twenty-one quarto pages. The verse 
 is for the most part the merest doggerel; the 
 humor is of the slam-bang variety ; but the fact 
 remains that here was a joker who laughed 
 loudly and had no theological scruples about it. 
 It indicates the development of a national trait, 
 the irreverent tendency to poke fun on all 
 occasions and at all things no matter how dig 
 nified or how honored. Thus, in spite of re 
 ligious dogma, pioneer hardships, struggles 
 with savage nature and still more savage men, 
 the founders of the Commonwealth developed, 
 perhaps for the most part unconsciously, that 
 most characteristic of our traits the ability 
 to enjoy the ridiculous. 
 
Ill 
 
 As we look at the cold, stern portraits of the 
 Puritan fathers or read their strict statutes 
 and closely argued theological tracts, we can 
 easily imagine how reluctant the times were 
 to admit to " New Canaan such a light- 
 minded being as a joker. Yet, there was laugh 
 ter in spite of these long-faced latter-day 
 saints, and to-day we sometimes laugh because 
 of them. The Bay Psalm Book, in spite of its 
 good intentions, compels a smile now and then, 
 and that classic the New England Primer 
 made even the school boys of colonial days 
 laugh. It is said that after the last alphabeti 
 cal rhyme, the one illustrating Z, of course 
 
 " Zachias, he climbed a tree 
 His Lord to see " 
 
 irreverent New England boys were wont to 
 write: 
 
 " Zachias, he had a fall 
 And didn t see his Lord at all! " 
 43 
 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 But too often, as the school lads grew into 
 manhood, they lost that sense of humor which 
 throughout all history has distinguished a 
 broad-minded man from a bigoted zealot. 
 
 In the Southern colonies we might reason 
 ably expect a different condition. Here were 
 the descendants of Cavaliers ; here was a more 
 liberal religion or, in some sections, none at 
 all. The soil was rich, and life was not harsh. 
 The people loved sports and were fond of show. 
 As early as 1700, according to the Scotch- 
 Carolinian John Lawson, in his History of 
 Carolina, the city of Charleston, South Caro 
 lina, had " great additions of beautiful large 
 brick buildings," and a well-trained militia 
 whose " officers, both infantry and cavalry, 
 generally appear in scarlet mountings and as 
 rich as in most regiments belonging to the 
 crown, which shows the richness and grandeur 
 of the colony." By 1716 this city and Wil- 
 liamsburg, Virginia, were seeing English come 
 dies played by English troupes, and Williams- 
 burg had a house built for the purpose. Psalm- 
 singing was not then and never has been highly 
 popular in Virginia and the Carolinas ; but that 
 there was some demand for real music may be 
 
 44 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 intimated from the fact that among the effects 
 of a Virginia musician dying in 1775 there were 
 such works as Handel s Acis and Galatea and 
 Apollo s Feast and several Corelli pieces. 
 Among such people we should expect to find a 
 vein of wit and humor. And doubtless there 
 was; but what chance would it have had for 
 publication in the isolated plantation life of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth century? Only oc 
 casionally do we see the glitter of sparkling wit 
 or hear the laugh of whole-hearted humor. 
 
 WILLIAM BYRD 
 
 Among the few who dared to write down 
 their smiles in those early days there was a 
 Virginian who undoubtedly had a real genius 
 for wit, the versatile Colonel William Byrd 
 (1674-1744). Moses Coit Tyler in all his 
 studies of colonial literature seems inclined to 
 consider him the most brilliant colonist before 
 the days of Jefferson. How many things he 
 could do well ! How widely, how variously he 
 touched life ! 
 
 Born on his father s vast estate, " West- 
 over/ Virginia, he was reared with every ad 
 vantage that wealth, travel, study, and natural 
 
 45 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ability could offer. He was a student in Eng 
 land, Holland, and France, was admitted to the 
 bar in the Middle Temple, was chosen a Fellow 
 of the Eoyal Society, was appointed receiver- 
 general of revenues for Virginia, and upon his 
 return to America at once became a leader in 
 all the colonial movements of his day. For 
 thirty-seven years a member of the Virginia 
 council, he at length became its president, was 
 three times special envoy to England, founded 
 the cities of Eichmond and Petersburg, Vir 
 ginia, gathered the largest and most valuable 
 library in the American colonies, wrote some of 
 the most sprightly and entertaining prose in 
 early American literature, and was, as his 
 epitaph declares, " the constant enemy of all 
 exorbitant power, and hearty friend to the 
 liberties of his country." 
 
 In such a man, who had lived so fully and 
 gladly, we should expect to find the glint of 
 wit. And it is here in undeniable brilliancy. 
 With it, too, is a style like the man; for, as 
 Professor Trent has said, in his Southern 
 Writers, " as an easy and charming author he 
 is unsurpassed by any other early American 
 save Benjamin Franklin." Shrewd and seri- 
 
 46 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 ous on occasions, just as much so as Franklin 
 could be, lie at the same time, like Poor Bich- 
 ard, possessed for every trial the saving grace 
 of humor. Byrd is especially witty when de 
 scribing North Carolinians. If one is not a 
 " tar heel," one may enjoy immensely these re 
 marks of the genial Virginian. In 1729 Byrd 
 was requested to survey the boundary line be 
 tween Virginia and North Carolina, and after 
 sixteen weeks spent in this work he wrote all 
 about it in his highly instructive and highly sar 
 castic History of the Dividing Line. Hence 
 forth the jovial Colonel could not approach any 
 subject pertaining to North Carolina without 
 cracking jokes. It reminds one of Artemus 
 Ward and the Mormons. In 1732 he visited 
 his mineral land in the Old North State, and 
 the result was his Progress to tlie Mines, and 
 the following year another visit brought forth 
 his Journey to the Land of Eden. The sarcasm 
 of the title is sufficiently plain, I trust. 
 
 Evidently Byrd is surprised at conditions in 
 this wilderness. The only people, he declares, 
 who have no religion are the Hottentots of the 
 Cape of Good Hope and of North Carolina! 
 " They are not troubled with any religious 
 
 47 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 fumes, and have the least superstition of any 
 people living. They do not know Sunday from 
 any other day, any more than Eobinson Cru 
 soe did ; which would give them a great advan 
 tage, were they given to be industrious. But 
 they keep so many Sabbaths every week, that 
 their disregard of the seventh day has no man 
 ner of cruelty in it, either to servant or cat 
 tle." North Carolina has " a climate where 
 no clergyman can breathe, any more than 
 spiders in Ireland." The town of Edenton, 
 which Byrd visited, struck him as being unique. 
 " I believe this is the only metropolis in the 
 Christian or Mahometan world, where there is 
 neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or 
 any other place of public worship whatsoever. 
 . . . The people seem easy without a minister, 
 as long as they are exempted from paying 
 him." 
 
 Byrd intimates that these Carolinians had 
 one supreme virtue in which modern Americans 
 are sadly deficient; they were not extravagant. 
 " A citizen here is counted extravagant if he 
 has ambition enough to aspire to a brick-chim 
 ney! " Here good things and hard-earned 
 cash are never wasted; for the people " are 
 
 48 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 never guilty of the sin of suffering " liquor 
 " to sour upon their hands, " and " they pay 
 no tribute, either to God or to Caesar." Then, 
 too, their towns are not infested with swarms 
 of daintily dressed dudes; indeed the natives 
 dressed with extreme plainness. Let Byrd tell 
 us of one country gentleman that he met in the 
 South Shore district of the colony: " Like the 
 ravens, he neither ploughed nor 1 sowed, but 
 subsisted chiefly upon oysters which his hand 
 maid made a shift to gather from the adjacent 
 rocks. Sometimes, too, for change of diet, he 
 sent her to drive up the neighbors cows, to 
 moisten their mouths with a little milk. But 
 as for raiment, he depended mostly upon the 
 length of beard, and she upon the length of 
 hair, part of which she brought decently for 
 ward, and the rest dangled behind quite down 
 to her rump, like one of Herodotus s East 
 Indian Pigmies." 
 
 It was well for William Byrd that these vari 
 ous complimentary accounts were not published 
 during his life-time; else the Old North State 
 would doubtless have protested vigorously 
 against that portion of his epitaph that declares 
 him the " hearty friend to the liberties of his 
 
 4 49 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 country." These papers, written during the 
 period between 1728 and 1736, were not printed 
 until 1841, when they appeared under the title, 
 The Westover Manuscripts. This and the 
 later edition, known as The Byrd Manuscripts 
 (1866), came as a surprise to students of 
 American literature ; for here was a collection 
 of essays, descriptions, and narratives, brim 
 full of individuality, frothy with wit, and yet 
 lacking none of the red wine of that experience 
 which only active life can bring. Though un 
 doubtedly written mainly for self -enjoyment, 
 the sketches have a style scarcely equalled by 
 any other colonial writers save Franklin and 
 Jefferson, and though lacking the quantity of 
 the works of either of these statesmen, they 
 have a sure lightness of touch never attained 
 by the one and a straightforwardness of ex 
 pression never indulged in by the other. If he 
 had chosen to remain in England, he would have 
 become undoubtedly one of the greater wits of 
 the eighteenth century ; as he did not choose to 
 do so, his fame in his own land was long under 
 a cloud. But there are signs that his " great 
 elegancy of taste and life " (to quote from his 
 tombstone) and his merit as a " well-bred gen- 
 
 50 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 tleman and polite companion " will in time re 
 ceive their deserved recognition. Within the 
 last decade he has reached that stage where the 
 school text-books on American literature men 
 tion him as " among others present." 
 
 From the one standpoint of mere individual 
 ity and uniqueness of expression this is nothing 
 more than justice. He has that much sought- 
 for genius for saying things in a way which is 
 laughably novel. Of " ginseng " he declares: 
 " It cheers the heart even of a man that has a 
 bad wife. . . . Tis friendly to the lungs, much 
 more than scolding itself. ... It will make a 
 man live a great while, and very well while he 
 does live." He notices that the path leading 
 to a certain preacher s door was " as narrow 
 as that which leads to heaven, but much more 
 dirty." He remarks on " the Carolina 
 felicity of having nothing to do." His mills 
 in that colony, he declares, he found " as still 
 for the want of water, as a dead woman s 
 tongue for the want of breath." The noisiest, 
 most struggling stream he found in the section 
 he named " Matrimony Creek." 
 
 Here, then, was an early American of genu 
 ine wit. His mind worked quickly; he saw 
 
 51 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 things in novel and surprising relations; lie 
 expressed himself with a " snap " and accuracy 
 worthy of imitation even in our own electrical, 
 abbreviated day. One of the earliest of our 
 long list of American humorists, he bears com 
 parison with our latest; for the sparkle of his 
 wit is not a reflection caught from his library, 
 but a light found by his sharp eyes in daily 
 intercourse with his little world of men. 
 
IV 
 
 MATHER BYLES 
 
 There were once in eighteenth century Bos 
 ton-town two witty rhymesters who caused 
 more merriment in that staid city than all the 
 other townsmen together. They were named 
 Mather Byles and Joseph Green. Both were 
 brilliant speakers, "profound" scholars, and 
 stem-faced Christians on Sunday. During 
 the remainder of the week they were such 
 chronic jokers that of one it was written, 
 
 " There s punning Byles provokes our smiles, 
 
 A man of stately parts, 
 He visits folks to crack his jokes, 
 Which never mend their hearts. 
 
 " With strutting gate and wig so great, 
 
 He walks along the streets; 
 And throws out wit, or what s like it, 
 To every one he meets." 
 
 while for the other a friend wrote an epitaph 
 no less suggestive: 
 
 53 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Siste Viator, here lies one 
 Whose life was whim, whose soul was pun, 
 And if you go too near his hearse 
 He ll joke you, both in prose and verse. " 
 
 Their lives did not flow in unruffled calm 
 either, as one might suppose in the case of such 
 merry punsters. Heavy trials came to them; 
 both died practically exiled by their fellow 
 countrymen; but both laughed dull care away, 
 and saw in each tribulation a new cause for a 
 joke. 
 
 Byles was born at Boston in 1706 and could 
 boast of such ancestors as Eichard Mather and 
 John Cotton. With such forefathers it is a 
 miracle that he even knew the meaning of a 
 jest! Educated at Harvard, he became the pas 
 tor of Hollis Street Church in his native city in 
 1733, and there entered into a career which 
 became a part of the very woof and fibre of 
 Boston. For forty-three years he preached 
 sermons "calculated" (pardon the American 
 ism) to thrill the most stolid souls, and for 
 forty-three years he cracked jokes calculated 
 to upset the gravity of the most long-faced 
 Puritan; and then at length came a blow that 
 would have crushed a less stalwart spirit. The 
 
 54 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 Revolution was at hand; Byles declared in 
 favor of Great Britain; and he poured salt on 
 Yankee wounds by praying in public for the 
 health and prosperity of His Majesty King 
 George ! But a day of retribution was coming. 
 In 1776, immediately after the evacuation of 
 Boston, a committee of Churchmen was ap 
 pointed to call the free-speaking parson to task 
 for this unbecoming conduct, and forthwith the 
 charges against him were committed to writing, 
 and the old preacher summoned to the church 
 to answer the accusations. 
 
 Now there was no small dread of their sharp- 
 eyed and sharper-tongued pastor for his was 
 a lofty figure with a fearless look of authority 
 about it and before he arrived at the meeting 
 the abashed committee had taken seats in a 
 high gallery as distant as possible from the 
 altar. " At length Dr. Byles entered dressed 
 in his ample, flowing robes and bands, under 
 a full bush-wig that had been recently pow 
 dered, surmounted by a large three-cornered 
 hat." He walked solemnly to the pulpit, hung 
 his hat upon a peg, seated himself, and waited 
 for developments. The trembling committee 
 could not speak. After a silence of some min- 
 
 55 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 utes he "turned with a portentous air toward 
 the gallery," and said, "If ye have aught to 
 communicate, say on." Here one of the com 
 mittee, " a very little man with a very little 
 voice," stood up and began to read: 
 
 " The Church of Christ in Hollis Street " 
 
 " Louder! " roared the preacher. 
 
 " The Church of Christ in Hollis Street " 
 
 " Louder! " again roared the grim clergy 
 man. 
 
 The spokesman made a mighty effort and was 
 allowed to read four or five lines, when the 
 infuriated pastor arose and thundered, 
 
 " Tis false! Tis false! Tis false! And 
 the Church of Christ in Hollis Street knows 
 that tis false." 
 
 Taking down his hat, he marched from the 
 church and never preached in it again. 
 
 In 1777 he was tried in a Boston court for 
 praying for King George and for helping Brit 
 ish soldiers, and was sentenced to imprison 
 ment in a guard-ship and to be exiled to Eng 
 land. Even under these circumstances his 
 jovial nature did not forsake him; for, upon 
 being invited to warm himself when first en 
 tering the court-room, he exclaimed, " Gentle 
 men, when I came among you, I expected per- 
 
 56 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 secution, but I could not think you would have 
 offered me the fire so suddenly! " Again, 
 when his sentence was afterwards changed to 
 imprisonment within his own premises, having 
 sent his guard on an errand, he amused a great 
 crowd of Bostonians by gravely marching, gun 
 in hand, back and forward before his own door, 
 keeping guard over himself! Later the watch 
 man was removed, but within a short time was 
 replaced, and then again removed; and the 
 doctor smilingly remarked that he had been 
 " guarded, reguarded, and disreguarded. 
 
 On no occasion was he ever known to be with 
 out a witty observation. In 1780 a famous 
 " dark day " occurred, and a lady, having sent 
 her child to Byles to ask the cause, received 
 the reply that he was as much in the dark as 
 she was. One day a carriage containing two 
 members of the town-council stuck in a mud- 
 hole in front of his house. The parson gazed 
 for some moments upon the spectacle, and then 
 calmly remarked, " Gentlemen, I have often 
 complained to you of this nuisance, without any 
 attention being paid to it, and I am very glad 
 to see you stirring in this matter now! On 
 one occasion he admitted himself beaten and 
 that by a woman. For some time he had 
 
 67 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 courted her, but finally she married a suitor 
 named Quincy. 
 
 " Bo, madam, " said Byles, " it appears you 
 prefer a Quincy to Byles/ 
 
 11 Yes," replied the lady sharply, " for if 
 there had been anything worse than biles, God 
 would have afflicted Job with them! " 
 
 JOSEPH GREEN 
 
 Now Mather Byles only equal in wit in the 
 whole city of Boston was his neighbor, Joseph 
 Green. He was indeed a worthy rival. Born 
 at Boston in 1706, and educated at Harvard, he 
 had early become wealthy as a distiller, and 
 had thus gained leisure to produce several 
 amusing and highly popular poems. One of 
 these, long read by New England fire-sides, was 
 his Entertainment for a Winter s Evening, a 
 sarcastic account of a boisterous Masonic meet 
 ing held in a church. 
 
 " Muse renown d for story-telling, 
 Fair Clio, leave thy airy dwelling. 
 
 Come, goddess, and our ears regale 
 With a diverting Christmas tale. 
 O come, and in thy verse declare 
 58 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 Who were the men and what they were, 
 
 And what their names, and what their fame, 
 
 And what the cause for which they came 
 
 To house of God from house of ale, 
 
 And how the parson told his tale: 
 
 How they return d, in manner odd, 
 
 To house of ale from house of God. 
 
 So good Saint Francis, man of grace, 
 
 Himself preached to the braying race; 
 
 And farther, as the story passes, 
 
 He addressed them thus My brother asses V 
 
 Another of his successful poems was A 
 Mournful Lamentation over the Death of Mr. 
 Old Tenor, the corpse being not a musician, but 
 a species of currency which the government 
 had withdrawn from circulation. These verses 
 made the rough beams of many an ancient farm 
 house ring with laughter. 
 
 Like Byles, lie could furnish laughter on a 
 moment s notice and for all occasions. See 
 ing workmen tearing down a Boston school- 
 house to make room for an addition to a church, 
 he instantly remarked, 
 
 " * A fig for your learning! I tell you the town, 
 To make the church larger, must pull the school 
 down. 
 
 59 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 * Unluckily spoken/ replied Master Birch: 
 Then learning, I fear, stops the growth of the 
 church / 
 
 The uninspired citizens of Boston wondered 
 at the intellect that could grind out poetry in 
 such short order, and make it so amusing be 
 sides. Green and his rival wit were the pride 
 of the town beings capable of performing 
 astonishing literary feats. 
 
 But the greatest feat of Green s was his 
 parody on Byles Hymn Written during a Voy 
 age. The wit contest that arose from it gave 
 old Boston entertainment for weeks. It &11 
 happened after this wise: Dr. Byles was con 
 sidered such good company that Governor 
 Belcher of Massachusetts, when starting on a 
 sea-voyage, enticed him aboard and sailed away 
 while the parson was taking a glass in the cabin. 
 When Byles came forth he was surprised to find 
 " water, water everywhere "; but he took the 
 joke as a joker should, and prepared to act as 
 chaplain of the crew. When Sunday came he 
 found not a single hymn-book on board ! Many 
 a parson would have called it " unkind provi 
 dence "; but Byles, being a Boston parson, rose 
 
 60 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 to the occasion and wrote a hymn that was not 
 at all bad. 
 
 " Great God, thy works our wonder raise; 
 
 To thee, our swelling notes belong; 
 While skies and winds and rocks and seas, 
 Around shall echo to our song. 
 
 " Thy power produced this mighty frame, 
 
 Aloud to thee the tempests roar, 
 Or softer breezes tune thy name 
 Gently along the shelly shore. 
 
 " Round thee the scaly nation roves, 
 
 Thy opening hands their joys bestow, 
 Through all the blushing coral groves, 
 Those silent gay retreats below." 
 
 This was Green s opportunity. Immediately 
 upon publication of Byles sacred song, he put 
 forth a parody: 
 
 " In David s Psalms an oversight 
 
 Byles found one morning at his tea, 
 Alas! that he should never write 
 A proper psalm to sing at sea. 
 
 " He sat awhile and stroked his muse, 
 
 Then taking up his tuneful pen 
 Wrote a few stanzas for the use 
 Of his seafaring brethren. 
 61 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The Psalm 
 " .With vast amazement we survey 
 
 The wonders of the deep, 
 .Where mackerel swim, and porpoise play, 
 And crabs and lobsters creep. 
 
 " Fish of all kinds inhabit here, 
 And throng the dark abode, 
 Here haddock, hake, and flounders are, 
 And eels, and perch, and cod. 
 
 11 From waging winds and tempests free 
 
 So smoothly as we pass, 
 The shining surface seems to be 
 A piece of Bristol glass. 
 
 11 But when the winds and tempests rise, 
 
 And foaming billows swell, 
 The vessel mounts above the skies, 
 And lower sinks than hell. 
 
 " Our heads the tottering motion feel 
 
 And quickly we become 
 Giddy as new-dropp d calves and reel 
 Like Indians drunk with rum." 
 
 Of course Byles could not suffer this in 
 silence. He replied with a parody on the 
 parody, and Boston had another laugh. 
 
 62 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 " In Byles works an oversight 
 
 Green spy d, as once he smok d his chunk, 
 Alas ! that Byles should never write 
 A song to sing when folks are drunk. 
 
 " Thus in the chimney on his block, 
 Ambition fir d the stiller s pate; 
 He summon d all his little stock, 
 The poet s volume to complete. 
 
 Song 
 " With vast amazement we survey 
 
 The can so broad, so deep, 
 Where punch succeeds the strong sangree, 
 Both to delightful flip. 
 
 " From cruel thoughts and conscience free, 
 
 From dram to dram we pass: 
 Our cheeks, like apples, ruddy be: 
 Our eyeballs look like glass. 
 
 * 
 
 " Thus lost in deep tranquillity, 
 
 We sit, supine and sot, 
 Till we two moons distinctly see 
 Come, give us t other pot." 
 
 Thus these two wits amused old-time Bos 
 ton. It must not be thought, however, that 
 they were continually acting the part of clowns. 
 
 63 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The sermons of the one and the serious work 
 of the other, have the gravity, the display of 
 learning, and the untiring length of the best 
 of their species in the eighteenth century, while 
 several of their poems have a sincerity of emo 
 tion which surprises us after a reading of their 
 satirical efforts. But if Byles and Green are 
 remembered at all to-day it is because they 
 joked with such tireless enthusiasm. For they 
 proved, unconsciously perhaps, that the winter 
 of Puritanical austerity was passing away and 
 that the summer of laughter, with old Ben 
 Franklin leading the fearless choir of jokers, 
 was almost at hand. 
 
WILLIAM DOUGLASS 
 
 One of the keenest intellects in America in 
 the early eighteenth century was that of Dr. 
 William Douglass (1691-1752) of Boston. His 
 was a merciless wit, a caustic sarcasm that 
 spared no man nor movement he thought 
 tainted with hypocrisy; and the quarrels this 
 led him into with every undesirable citizen, 
 from quacks to governors, were most numerous, 
 and most delightful to him. Concerning the 
 physicians of America he presented the fol 
 lowing admiring sentiments in his Summary of 
 the British Settlements: " In our plantation 
 a practitioner, bold, rash, impudent, a liar, 
 basely born, and educated, has much the ad 
 vantage of an honest, cautious, modest gentle 
 man. . . . Our American practitioners are so 
 rash and officious the saying in ... Ecclesias- 
 ticus . . . may with much propriety be applied 
 to them: He that sinneth before his Maker, 
 let him fall into the hand of the physician. 
 Frequently there is more danger from the 
 
 5 65 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 physician than from the distemper. . . . When 
 I first arrived in New England, I asked ... a 
 noted facetious practitioner what was their 
 general method of practice. He told me their 
 practice was very uniform : bleeding, vomiting, 
 blistering, purging, anodyne, and so forth; if 
 the illness continued there was * repetendi 
 and finally murderandi ." Douglass de 
 clared that after an earthquake in Jamaica, 
 one quack advertised " pills to prevent persons 
 or their effects suffering by earthquakes." 
 
 Individuals were no more spared than gen 
 eral classes of fakes. George Whitefield, he 
 maintained, was " an insignificant person, of 
 no general learning, void of common prudence. 
 . . . The strength of his argument lay in his 
 lungs. . . . He and his disciples seemed to be 
 great promoters of impulses, ecstasies, and 
 wantonness between the sexes. Hypocritical 
 professions, vociferations, and itineracies are 
 devotional quackery." In short, he thought 
 it a great waste of time for the mechanics and 
 farmers to be gathering to hear such talk ; and 
 he took pleasure in pointing out that every time 
 the preacher held a meeting, labor was lost 
 amounting to one thousand pounds. 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 NATHANIEL AMES 
 
 Douglass might well have quoted the words 
 of his contemporary, the shrewd almanac 
 maker, Dr. Nathaniel Ames : He that lives by 
 fraud is in danger of dying a knave. " There 
 was something very much akin in the self-con 
 fidence, the shrewdness, and the ready wit of 
 these two Massachusetts physicians. Nathaniel 
 Ames (1708-1764), as both doctor and inn 
 keeper, became learned, not in books but in 
 human nature, and his Astronomical Diary and 
 Almanac, so immensely popular throughout all 
 New England, contained the shrewd and tact 
 ful wisdom of a man of the world. Current 
 events received full justice in the spare spaces 
 between his astronomical calculations; homely 
 advice to fops, broilers, flirts, and scamps was 
 presented liberally; while absurd prophecies 
 sprinkled here and there, made the rafters of 
 many an ancient farmhouse echo laughter. 
 Thus: 
 
 May 22. " Some materials about this time are 
 hatched for the clergy to debate on." 
 
 November 9. " These aspects show violent winds 
 and in winter storms of driving snow; mischiefs by 
 
 67 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 the Indians, if no peace; and among us, feuds, quar 
 rels, bloody-noses, broken pates if not necks." 
 
 December 15. 
 
 " This cold, uncomfortable weather 
 
 Makes Jack and Gill lie close together." 
 
 February 24-27. " If you fall into misfortunes, 
 creep through those bushes which have the least 
 briers. 
 
 July 16-27. " Every man carries a fool in his 
 sleeve ; with some he appears bold, with some he only 
 pops out now and then, but the wise keep him hid." 
 
 September 12-16. " To some men their country is 
 their shame; and some are the shame of their coun 
 try." 
 
 This was the sort of reading indeed most 
 needed in the days of Ames and Franklin. 
 Among the wealthier classes of Eastern cities 
 there was a tendency to imitate French cus 
 toms and to some extent, French vices, a shame- 
 facedness toward the plain and honest ways 
 of the forefathers, and Nathaniel Ames and 
 " Poor Bichard," with their almanacs, read in 
 many homes where no other print save that of 
 the Bible was ever seen, had a steadying effect 
 upon the common folk. " I don t pretend to 
 direct the learned ; the rich and voluptuous will 
 scorn my direction, and sneer or rail at any 
 
 68 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 that would reclaim them; but since this sheet 
 enters the solitary dwellings of the poor and 
 illiterate, where the studied ingenuity of the 
 learned writer never comes, if these brief hints 
 do good, it will rejoice the heart of your hum 
 ble servant, Nathaniel Ames." His was a 
 lowly philosophy, intended for the lowly peo 
 ple, where, as he says, " if there was less de 
 bating and more acting, twould be better 
 times; " for 
 
 " The lawyers tongues they never freeze, 
 If warmed with honest clients * fees." 
 
 Numerous writers have said that Ben 
 Franklin was the first man ever to have pub 
 lished an almanac filled with information, wit, 
 and philosophy; but eight years before the 
 " Poor Richard " sayings began to delight both 
 America and Europe, Nathaniel Ames had pre 
 pared the readers for just such a class of lit 
 erature and had made possible the enormous 
 success which was to come in this manner to 
 him whom we shall next discuss, Benjamin 
 Franklin. 
 
VI 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 If Abe Lincoln and Zeb Vance and Davy 
 Crockett had done and said all the funny things 
 they have been credited with, they would have 
 been busy at nothing else for some centuries. 
 It is the good fortune, or perhaps, the fate, of 
 every conspicuous character to gather about his 
 memory a folk lore, doubtless full of admira 
 tion, but not always flattering in its good taste 
 and morality. One of the earliest of these 
 American heroes was that genial humorist, 
 philosopher, scientist, statesman, editor, and 
 common-sense man, Benjamin Franklin. The 
 jokes and shrewd sayings attributed to this 
 prince of good fellows would fill a bulky volume. 
 Gradually there has gathered about him a host 
 of tales until in truth he has become at length 
 the central figure in a lengthy myth or comic 
 epic. 
 
 The chief incidents in Ben Franklin s life are 
 
 70 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 so well known to every intelligent American 
 that it seems unnecessary at this time to enter 
 into any lengthy recital of them. A genuine 
 man and a lover of genuine men, he seems to 
 interest every class of people. Perhaps no 
 other early American, save Jefferson, touched 
 life at so many points. Let us, for a moment, 
 refresh our memory of his manifold experi 
 ences. Born at Boston, January 17, 1706, the 
 son of a candle-maker and soap-boiler, he very 
 early learned the full meaning of toil; for at 
 the age of ten he was hard at work in his 
 father s shop. He was a strong boy with a 
 solid, prudent mind; but he chafed under the 
 confinement and drudgery of his father s occu 
 pation, and, like many a youngster of spirit, 
 longed to escape a commonplace life by running 
 off to sea. 
 
 His saving grace, however, was his fondness 
 for reading, and on books he spent all that he 
 obtained as a child-laborer. Very serious vol 
 umes he read, too ; for he tells us that the first 
 book he bought, Pilgrim s Progress, was sold to 
 buy Burton s Historical Collection, and that 
 among the other books of his youthful library 
 were Plutarch s Lives and Mather s Essay to 
 
 71 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 do Good. He early had an itching to write 
 poetry; but this was cured by his father s blunt 
 statement that poets were generally beggars, 
 and doubtless, judging by the specimens which 
 matter-of-fact Ben has left behind, the advice 
 was excellent; for he would indeed have been 
 a beggar had he received his poetic dues. His 
 constant reading, however, prompted him to 
 improve his prose style, and by untiring prac 
 tice with the Spectator as a model, he developed 
 a simplicity and a directness of expression not 
 excelled by many writers in the English lan 
 guage. 
 
 We may not linger over the details of his 
 boyhood struggles. At the age of twelve he 
 was apprenticed to his brother, James, pub 
 lisher of The New England Courant of Boston, 
 caught what Holmes has called " lead-poison 
 ing," or the desire to appear in print, and 
 contributed anonymous articles to the Courant. 
 At seventeen he had run away to Philadelphia, 
 where his ramble with a loaf of bread at his 
 mouth and one under each arm amused his 
 future wife, and where his taking a good nap 
 in the Quaker meeting-house indicated his 
 future complaisancy toward all religion. The 
 
 72 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 next important step occurred when, after be 
 ing sent to England by a deceitful politician to 
 purchase a printing outfit, he found himself 
 stranded in London and obliged to seek work 
 in a metropolitan printing-house. A great 
 man forces luck from his adversities; and we 
 find Franklin shrewdly gaining an accurate 
 knowledge of every detail of the art of print 
 ing. When, after eighteen months absence, he 
 returned to Ajnerica, no other man in the coun 
 try could approach him in typographical skill 
 and fertility of resources. 
 
 By 1729 he had " set up " shop for himself, 
 and then what a wonderful career of activity 
 began! He established The Pennsylvania 
 Gazette, founded the famous Junto Club, 
 created the first subscription-library in Amer 
 ica, began the publication of Poor Richard s 
 Almanac in 1732, was clerk of the General As 
 sembly in 1736, postmaster of Philadelphia in 
 1737, and postmaster-general for the American 
 colonies in 1753, organized the first American 
 police force supported by taxation, the first 
 fire-company in Philadelphia, and the State 
 militia of Pennsylvania, founded the University 
 of Pennsylvania, discovered the identity of 
 
 73 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OP COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 lightning and electricity in 1752, was awarded 
 the Copley medal in 1753, was chosen a Fellow 
 of the Eoyal Society, was a delegate to the 
 Albany Convention of 1754, and there proposed 
 a plan for a union of the colonies, was repre 
 sentative of Pennsylvania in England from 
 1757 to 1762, was colonial representative to 
 oppose the Stamp Act of 1764, was European 
 representative of various colonies until 1775, 
 was a signer of the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence, was American Ambassador in 
 France from 1776 until 1785, was the moving 
 power in procuring the treaty with England 
 in 1783, was president of Pennsylvania from 
 1785 to 1788, was a delegate to the Federal 
 Convention of 1787, and served as a uniting 
 spirit in that final endeavor to form a nation. 
 Honors were lavished upon him. Both Yale 
 and Harvard gave him the M.A. degree; St. 
 Andrews and Oxford conferred upon him the 
 Doctor of Laws ; Edinburgh presented him the 
 freedom of the city; London society lionized 
 him; and France received him with an ovation 
 greater than that accorded Voltaire. Number 
 less medallions in his honor were struck off, and 
 a Frenchman made the brilliant summary: 
 
 74 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 " He has seized the lightning from heaven and 
 the scepter from tyrants. " 
 
 It was a wonderful life, and yet how simple ! 
 The man was never puffed up, never vain 
 glorious. Deliberately he had trained himself 
 to be broad-minded; he tossed dogmatism to 
 the winds. In his early manhood he began to 
 refrain from over-positive statements, and in 
 his old age he could say: " Perhaps for the last 
 fifty years no one has ever heard a dogmatical 
 expression escape me." It may be that he was 
 a trifle too shrewd. He seems indeed a little 
 too calculating when he declares, " I took care 
 not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, 
 but to avoid the appearances to the contrary. 
 I dressed plain, and was seen at no places of 
 idle diversions. I never went out afishing or 
 shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched 
 me from my work, but that was seldom, was 
 private, and gave no scandal." But, as 
 Sainte-Beuve points out, " there is a flower of 
 religion, a flower of honor, a flower of chivalry 
 that you must not require of Franklin." 
 
 From such a man we should expect a sort of 
 shrewd, earthy humor, and, verily, we are not 
 disappointed. In his youthful days he wrote a 
 
 75 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 poem entitled Paper, in which he expresses his 
 opinion on poetic matters : 
 
 " What are our poets, take them as they fall, 
 
 Good, bad, rich, poor, much read, not read at all? 
 Then all their work in the same class you 11 find : 
 They are the mere waste paper of mankind." 
 
 But to counterbalance this weakness on the 
 spiritual side, we find in another stanza that 
 blunt common-sense for which he was so noted : 
 
 " The retail politician s anxious thought 
 
 Deems this side always right and that stark 
 
 naught ; 
 
 He foams with censure, with applause he raves, 
 A dupe to rumors and a tool of knaves: 
 He ll want no type his weakness to proclaim. 
 While such a thing as foolscap has a name. 
 
 In those busy days of the eighteenth century 
 such a man was needed. His newspaper soon 
 became a power in the land, while Poor Rich 
 ard s Almanac what might we not say of it 
 and its fame ! Begun in 1732, it was issued for 
 twenty-five consecutive years at the rate of ten 
 thousand per year, and very few families in 
 all New England and the neighboring colonies 
 escaped its influence. What a collection of 
 
 76 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 shrewd sayings and proverbs were in those 
 quaint pamphlets! In 1758 Franklin collected 
 the principal statements in one connected dis 
 course, Father Abraham s Speech, supposed to 
 be an address given by a wise old gentleman 
 at an auction. The result astonished even the 
 self-possessed author; for the brief lecture 
 was universally applauded. Poor Richard, 
 who was " excessive poor " and whose wife was 
 " excessive proud, " has become as much a liv 
 ing figure in literature as Tom Jones or Mr. 
 Pickwick. His common-sense is so extreme that 
 it verges on the ridiculous, and just there is 
 the main point in Franklin s humor. " The 
 poor man must walk to get meat for his 
 stomach, the rich man to get a stomach for his 
 meat." " Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, 
 put out the kitchen fire. " Three may keep a 
 secret if two of them are dead." " If you 
 would have your business done, go; if not, 
 send." " Keep thy shop, and thy shop will 
 keep thee." " Fish and visitors smell after 
 three days." Any one who can read Father 
 Abraham s harangue without smiling is a dan 
 gerous man, fit for treason, spoil, and the other 
 Shakespearian sins. 
 
 77 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 All of Franklin s humor has a lesson; it is 
 meant to do somebody good oftentimes him 
 self. Even his practical jokes always were to 
 his own profit. One day he came, half-frozen 
 from his long ride, to a wayside inn. A great 
 crowd was about the fire, and for some time 
 Franklin stood shivering. Suddenly he turned 
 to the hostler. 
 
 " Hostler," said he in a loud voice, " have 
 you any oysters ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Well, then," commanded Franklin in still 
 louder tones, i give my horse a peck ! 
 
 " What! " exclaimed the hostler, " give 
 your horse oysters! " 
 
 " Yes," said Franklin, " give him a peck." 
 
 The hostler, decidedly astonished, prepared 
 the oysters and started for the stable. Every 
 body instantly arose from the fire-place and 
 rushed out to see the marvellous horse eat 
 oysters. Franklin took the most comfortable 
 seat before the roaring blaze, and calmly 
 awaited developments. Soon all returned, dis 
 appointed and shivering. 
 
 " I gave him the oysters, sir," said the 
 hostler, " but he wouldn t eat them." 
 
 78 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 " Oh, well, then," answered Franklin non 
 chalantly, " I suppose I shall have to eat them 
 myself. Suppose you try him with a peck of 
 oats." 
 
 The other guests took seats wherever they 
 could find any, and there was silence for some 
 time. 
 
 His Autobiography contains several similar 
 instances of his ability to take care of Benjamin 
 Franklin, Esquire. How narrowly, by the way, 
 we missed not having that book at all! In 
 1771, while visiting at the home of the Bishop 
 of St. Asaph in Hampshire, England, he wrote 
 a long letter to his son, the governor of New 
 Jersey, telling some of the main incidents of 
 his life. Thirteen years later the letter was 
 swept into a garbage pile in the streets of 
 Philadelphia, but luckily was found by a friend 
 of Franklin s, and was sent to the philosopher 
 with the request that he complete the account. 
 Franklin, then at Passy, France, wrote another 
 chapter, and four years later, at Philadelphia, 
 added other portions and brought the account 
 down to 1757, the year he entered actively into 
 public life. Soon after his death, the story 
 was translated into French, and in 1793 was 
 
 79 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 turned back into English and published in Lon 
 don. In 1817 there was a direct publication of 
 the manuscript; but not until 1868 was there 
 given to the world a complete edition of this 
 highly profitable and entertaining narrative. 
 How much we would have missed his ridicu 
 lous entry into Philadelphia, his conflict be 
 tween his avarice and George Whitefield s elo 
 quence, his shrewdness in business affairs, his 
 good-humored handling of statesmen. 
 
 Franklin must have been a centre of attrac 
 tion in all assemblies. He had a witty saying 
 ready for every occasion. We all remember 
 how neatly and yet how significantly he an 
 swered the member of the Colonial Congress 
 who declared they would all have to hang to 
 gether. " Yes," rejoined Franklin, " or verily 
 we shall hang separately! " Jefferson, in his 
 biographical sketches, tells how Franklin, notic 
 ing his sensitiveness over the mutilation of the 
 Declaration of Independence, tried to comfort 
 him by a little story: " When I was a journey 
 man printer, one of my companions, an appren 
 tice hatter, having served out his time, was 
 about to open shop for himself. His first con 
 cern was to have a handsome sign-board, with 
 
 80 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 a proper inscription. He composed it in these 
 words, John Thompson, Hatter, makes and 
 sells hats for ready money, with a figure of a 
 hat subjoined; but he thought he would submit 
 it to his friends for their amendments. The 
 first he showed it to thought the word Hatter 
 tautologous, because followed by the words 
 makes hats, which showed he was a hatter. 
 It was struck out. The next observed that the 
 word i makes might as well be omitted, be 
 cause his customers would not care who made 
 the hats. If good and to their mind, they would 
 buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. 
 A third said he thought the words i for ready 
 money were useless, as it was not the custom 
 of the place to sell on credit. . . . They were 
 parted with, and the inscription now stood, 
 1 John Thompson sells hats. l Sells hats! 
 says his next friend. Why nobody will ex 
 pect you to give them away; what then is the 
 use of that word? It was stricken out, and 
 * hats followed it the rather as there was one 
 painted on the board. So the inscription was 
 reduced ultimately to John Thompson with 
 the figure of a hat subjoined." Jefferson s 
 heated temper was cooled considerably by the 
 narrative. 
 
 6 81 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 John Adams tells us, in his Diary, of another 
 story of Franklin s one that gave the republi 
 can French extreme content. " A Spanish 
 writer of certain visions of Hell relates that a 
 certain devil, who was civil and well-bred, 
 showed him all the apartments of the place, 
 among others that of deceased kings. The 
 Spaniard was much pleased at so illustrious a 
 sight, and after viewing them for some time 
 said he should be glad to see the rest of them. 
 The rest! said the demon. Here are all 
 the kings that ever reigned upon earth from the 
 creation of it to this day. "What the devil 
 would the man have? " It was this ability to 
 tell a joke that tickled some certain weakness 
 in his audience that made him so useful in many 
 a nerve-straining crisis. 
 
 He saw life clearly and did not attempt to 
 evade its plain teachings. His advice, while 
 often eccentric in appearance, was always sane. 
 A gouty alderman came to him seeking a cure 
 for the disease. 
 
 " Why/ said Franklin, " take a bucket of 
 water and a cord of wood three times a week! " 
 
 The alderman forgot both his dignity and 
 his gout. 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 66 What! " he exclaimed. " Why, how can I 
 do that? " 
 
 " Well/ replied Franklin, " drink a cup of 
 the former three times a day and carry the lat 
 ter up three flights of stairs." 
 
 Doubtless the alderman preferred the gout. 
 
 Franklin himself was sometimes a sufferer 
 from this aristocratic ailment, and one of his 
 most famous bits of humor is his Dialogue with 
 the Gout. 
 
 Franklin Ehl Oh! Eh! What have I done to 
 merit these cruel sufferings? 
 
 Gout Many things; you have ate and drank too 
 freely and too much indulged those legs of yours in 
 their indolence. 
 
 Franklin Who is it that accuses me? 
 
 Gout It is I, even I, the Gout. 
 
 Franklin I take Eh! Oh! as much exercise 
 Eh as I can, Madam Gout. You know my seden 
 tary state, and, on that account, it would seem, 
 Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing 
 it is not altogether my own fault. 
 
 Gout Not a jot ; your rhetoric and your politeness 
 are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. . . . 
 Why instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by 
 salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, 
 
 83 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not 
 worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate break 
 fast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two 
 buttered toast, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy 
 are not things the most easily digested. . . . But 
 what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the 
 beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you 
 have dined would be the choice of men of sense; 
 yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are 
 found engaged for two or three hours! . . . Wrapt 
 in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy 
 your constitution. . . . The same taste prevails with 
 you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places 
 where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure 
 air, beautiful women and most agreeable and instruc 
 tive conversation ; all which you might enjoy by fre 
 quenting the walks. But these are rejected for this 
 abominable game of chess. Fie then, Mr. Franklin! 
 But amidst my instructions I had almost forgot to 
 administer my wholesome corrections; so take that 
 twinge and that. 
 
 Franklin Oh ! Eh ! Oh ! Ohhh ! as much instruction 
 as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches ; 
 but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections. 
 
 Gout No, Sir, no I will not abate a particle of 
 what is so much for your good, therefore 
 
 Franklin Your reasoning grows tiresome. 
 Gout I stand corrected. I will be silent and con 
 tinue my office; take that, and that. 
 
 84 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 Franklin Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you! 
 
 Gout No, no; I have a good number of twinges 
 for you to-night, and you may be sure of some more 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Franklin What, with such a fever! I shall go 
 distracted. Oh! Eh! Can no one bear it for me? 
 
 Gout Ask that of your horses; they have served 
 you faithfully. 
 
 Franklin I am convinced now of the justness of 
 Poor Richard s remark that " our debts and our sins 
 are always greater than we think for." 
 
 Gout So it is. Your philosophers are sages in 
 your maxims and fools in your conduct. 
 
 Franklin Ah! how tiresome you are! 
 Gout Well, then, to my office ; it should not be for 
 gotten that I am your physician. There. 
 Franklin Ohh! What a devil of a physician. 
 
 Franklin was so extremely busy in the vari 
 ous governmental actions connected with the 
 Eevolution that he doubtless did not have time 
 to write as much as other wits of the day in 
 defence of his native land. That he by no 
 means lacked the ability is shown by at least 
 three cunningly phrased and bitterly satirical 
 sketches written by him to show the injustice 
 
 85 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of the British position. These were his Rules 
 for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small one 
 (1773), An Edict by the King of Prussia 
 (1773), and a letter of instructions From the 
 Count de Schaumbergh to the Baron Hohen- 
 dorf commanding the Hessian Troops in 
 America (1777). 
 
 The first of these tells with a bitterness, all 
 the more effective because of its calmness, just 
 how to destroy a nation. The method, of 
 course, coincides identically with that then be 
 ing pursued by Great Britain in her dealings 
 with her colonies. Note a few lines from this 
 sarcastic broadside : 
 
 " An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that 
 though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a 
 great city of a little one. The science that I, a mod 
 ern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very 
 reverse. 
 
 "1. In the first place, gentlemen, you are to con 
 sider that a great empire, like a great cake, is most 
 easily diminished at the edges. Turn your attention, 
 therefore, first to your remotest provinces; that, as 
 you get rid of them, the next may follow in order. 
 
 " 2. That the possibility of this separation may 
 always exist, take special care the provinces are never 
 incorporated ivith the mother country ; that they do 
 
 86 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 not enjoy the same common rights, the same privileges 
 in commerce; and that they are governed by severer 
 laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any 
 share in the choice of the legislators. 
 
 11 4. However peaceably your colonies have sub 
 mitted to your government, shown their affection to 
 your interests, and patiently borne their grievances, 
 you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and 
 treat them accordingly. Quarter troops upon them, 
 who by their insolence may provoke the rising of mobs, 
 and by their bullets and bayonets suppress them. By 
 this means, like the husband who uses his wife ill from 
 suspicion, you may in time convert your suspicions 
 into realities. 
 
 . . 
 
 7. When such governors have crammed their 
 coffers, and made themselves so odious to the people 
 that they can no longer remain among them, with 
 safety to their persons, recall and reward them with 
 pensions. You may make them baronets too, if that 
 respectable order should not think fit to resent it. 
 All this will contribute to encourage new governors in 
 the same practice, and make the supreme government 
 detestable." 
 
 The second Franklin satire, An Edict ly the 
 King of Prussia, caused a great commotion in 
 England. Couched in diplomatic terms, and 
 
 87 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 sounding somewhat like other papers by 
 Frederick the Great, it was taken by numerous 
 English to be the real article, and great was 
 their indignation toward the impudent German 
 ruler. Franklin, noting Great Britain s ex 
 tensive claims upon the colonies, published in 
 the Public Advertiser an edict by Frederick 
 making exactly the same claims upon the Brit 
 ish Isles. It contained most serious language. 
 " And all persons in the said island are hereby 
 cautioned not to oppose in any wise the execu 
 tion of this, our edict, or any part thereof, such 
 opposition being high treason; of which all 
 who are suspected shall be transported in fet 
 ters from Britain to Prussia, there to be tried 
 and executed according to the Prussian Law." 
 According to Franklin, he himself was present 
 at an English breakfast table when a guest came 
 rushing in with the paper, and shouting, 
 " Here s news for ye! Here s the King of 
 Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom! " 
 A few paragraphs were read, and then another 
 guest burst forth: " Damn his impudence; I 
 dare say we shall hear by next post that he is 
 upon his march with one hundred thousand men 
 to back this! " Later the reader began to dis- 
 
 88 
 
EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR 
 
 cern the hoax, and, turning to Franklin, said 
 with disgust, " I ll be hanged if this is not some 
 of your American jokes upon us." 
 
 The third of Franklin s war satires, Count de 
 Schaumbergh s instructions, deals with that in 
 famous bargain by which princes of Germany 
 sold the bodies and souls of their Hessian sub 
 jects to be used by the British king against his 
 own subjects. This is one of the bitterest satires 
 of colonial days; it is indeed too bitter to be 
 amusing. It shows that beneath the calmness 
 of its philosophical author there was the fiery, 
 hating soul of the patriot. 
 
 There are a thousand and one anecdotes and 
 jokes of Franklin s that we might hear again 
 with entertainment ; but we must leave him and 
 them; for, to use his own words, perhaps we 
 " are paying too much for the whistle." In 
 him we have a genuine specimen of American 
 common-sense, a common-sense so large, even at 
 times so disproportioned, as to appear almost 
 lop-sided and " funny." Yet, in it is that same 
 hidden censure, that disgust for all shams, that 
 standing for honest, even if earthy, ideals 
 which has characterized the great majority of 
 the successors of this pioneer in American hu- 
 
 89 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 mor. And in the words of Bancroft, in his New 
 York Historical Society lecture of December 
 9, 1852, " Franklin was the greatest diplomatist 
 of the eighteenth century. He never spoke a 
 word too soon ; he never spoke a word too late ; 
 he never spoke a word too much ; he never failed 
 to speak the right word at the right season. " 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 L 
 
 In times of war we may, of course, expect 
 scornful sarcasm and biting satire; and, there 
 fore, as we approach the prolonged struggle of 
 the American Eevolution, we find the American 
 sense of the ludicrous becoming more and more 
 alert. The colonist becomes eager to discern 
 the weakness of his enemy, to discover all of 
 that enemy s predicaments, and to set them 
 with taunting laughter before the world. Many 
 were the satirical " take-offs " of the day. 
 They began, not suddenly, but many years be 
 fore the actual outbreak of war; indeed, we 
 might easily trace the bitterness of feeling 
 through occasional verse back even to Bacon s 
 Rebellion in 1676. But as we draw near the 
 momentous year, 1776, the harvest of satirical 
 sketches and poems is indeed plentiful. 
 
 A NARRATIVE OF GEORGIA 
 
 In 1740, for instance, three Georgia patriots 
 of Scotch-Irish blood, Patrick Tailfer, Hugh 
 
 91 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Anderson, and David Douglas, issued against 
 Governor Oglethorpe a bitter tirade entitled 
 A True and Historical Narrative of Georgia. 
 Here is sarcasm enough for any man even for 
 the greedy Oglethorpe himself. Many coun 
 tries, declare the three hot-heads, " fondly 
 imagine it necessary to communicate to such 
 young settlements the fullest rights and proper 
 ties, all the immunities of their mother-coun 
 tries, and privileges rather more extensive. 
 . . . But your Excellency s concern for our 
 perpetual welfare could never permit you to 
 propose such transitory advantages for us. 
 You considered riches, like a divine and a 
 philosopher, as the irrit amenta malonim, and 
 knew that they were disposed to inflate weak 
 minds with pride, to hamper the "body with lux 
 ury, and introduce a long variety of evils. Thus 
 have you protected us from ourselves, as Mr. 
 Waller says, by keeping all earthly comforts 
 from us. You have afforded us the oppor 
 tunity of arriving at the integrity of the primi 
 tive times by entailing a more than primitive 
 poverty on us. ... The valuable virtue of 
 humility is secured to us by your care to pre 
 vent our procuring, or so much as seeing, any 
 
 92 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 negroes . . . lest our simplicity might mistake 
 the poor Africans for greater slaves than our 
 selves. . . . 
 
 Like Death you reign 
 O er silent subjects and a desert plain." 
 
 Under the first flush of war, satires appeared 
 in practically every newspaper in the colonies. 
 Of course, tea soon came in for its full share 
 of sarcasm. One patriotic woman wrote a 
 poem entitled Virginia Banishing Tea, contain 
 ing the lines : 
 
 " Begone, pernicious, Baleful Tea, 
 With all Pandora s ills possessed; 
 Hyson, no more beguiled by thee, 
 My noble sons shall be oppressed." 
 
 Another hater of British tea and tyranny 
 wrote : 
 
 11 Vain, foolish curmudgeons, 
 To think we, like gudgeons, 
 Swallow baits that of Freedom bereaves ; 
 Tea, nabobs, and minions, 
 With their dire opinions, 
 May be damned but we 11 not be slaves. 
 93 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE TIMES 
 
 Perhaps the best of the innumerable sarcas 
 tic sketches on the drink was the series of 
 pamphlets entitled The First Book of the 
 American Chronicles of the Times, issued in 
 1774 and 1775. Its mock dignity as a parody 
 on the Bible adds much to its sharp criticisms 
 on British injustice. A few quotations to show 
 its flavor: 
 
 " 1. And behold! when the tidings came to the 
 great city that is afar off, the city that is in the land 
 of Britain, how the men of Boston, even the Boston- 
 ites, had arose, a great multitude, and destroyed the 
 Tea, the abominable Merchandise of the east and cast 
 it into the midst of the sea, 
 
 " 2. That the Lord the King waxed exceeding 
 wroth, insomuch that the form of his visage was 
 changed, and his knees smote one against the other. 
 
 " 3. Then he assembled together the Princes, the 
 Nobles, the Counselors, the Judges, and all the Rulers 
 of the people, . . . and when he had told them what 
 things were come to pass, 
 
 4. They smote their breasts and said, These men 
 fear thee not, King, neither have they obeyed the 
 voice of our Lord the King, nor worshipped the Tea- 
 Chest, which thou has set up. . . . 
 
 94 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 The King, following the advice of his wise 
 men, sends an army, under " Thomas the 
 Gageite," to subdue the Bostonites; but a sor 
 rowful letter from this leader tells of great 
 expectations ruined: 
 
 " 5. * O King, thy servant is in a great strait; the 
 men of New England are stiff-necked, and as stub 
 born hogs, neither knoweth thy servant what to make 
 of them ; they are worse unto me than all the plagues 
 of Egypt. 
 
 " 6. * For they resolve upon resolves, they address, 
 they complain, they protest, they compliment, they 
 flatter, they sooth and they threatened to root me up. 
 
 " 9. For the men of New England are as venom 
 ous as the poison of a serpent, even like the deaf 
 adder that stoppeth her ears; they give good words 
 with their mouths, but curse with their hearts; they 
 go to and fro in the evening and grin like a dog, and 
 run about through the city ; they slander thy servant, 
 they make a byword of him, and grudge him every 
 thing; yet complain if they be not satisfied. 
 
 " 10. Surely, King, the spirit of Oliver or the 
 devil is got in them. 
 
 . . 
 
 36. Now it came to pass, while the Gageites 
 abode in the land of the Bostonites, they day by day 
 committed iniquity; they made great clattering with 
 
 95 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 their sackbuts, their psalteries, their dulcimers, bands 
 of music, and vain parade. 
 
 " 37. And they drummed with their drums, and 
 piped with their pipes, making mock fights, and run 
 ning to and fro like shitepokes on the muddy shore. 
 
 " 38. Moreover, by night, they abused the watch 
 men on duty, and the young children of Boston by 
 the wayside, making mouths at them, calling them 
 Yankees. " 
 
 Then, at length, says the chronicler, when 
 this condition was no longer bearable, Jeremiah 
 (Samuel Adams) and other prophets of the 
 Americanites spake loud and showed the peo 
 ple how they were about to be compelled to 
 " bow down to the Tea Chest, the God of the 
 Heathen." "And they assembled themselves 
 together, in a Congress in the great city of 
 Philadelphia, in the house of the Carpenters, 
 the builders house, in the land of Pennsyl 
 vania, on the seventh day of the ninth month, 
 with their coaches, their chariots, their camels, 
 their horsemen, and their servants, a great mul 
 titude and they communed together." 
 
 Thus we have the course of history from the 
 Night of the Tea Chest to the Day of the 
 Declaration. 
 
 96 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Such pamphlets and tracts, spread through 
 out the principal cities and even into the rural 
 districts, of course caused the colonists much 
 merriment, and, in no small degree, contributed 
 to their confidence and to their growing dis 
 like for things British. John Adams says that 
 he found in one home King George s picture 
 standing upside down on the floor, with this 
 inscription attached: 
 
 Behold the man who had it in his power, 
 To make a kingdom tremble and adore. 
 Intoxicate with folly, see his head 
 Placed where the meanest of his subjects tread. 
 Like Lucifer, the giddy tyrant fell : 
 He lifts his heels to Heaven, but points his head to 
 Hell." 
 
 After war really began, the satirical squibs 
 came thick and fast. The ridiculous retreat of 
 the British from Concord was the source of 
 many a sarcastic verse, while the Battle of 
 Bunker Hill with its " near-victory " for the 
 Americans gave many a patriotic scribbler an 
 opportunity to show his talent. A few speci 
 mens must suffice. Thus, a ballad, widely cir- 
 
 7 97 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 culated in the Bevolutionary days and sup 
 posed to be written by a Yankee-Irishman, was 
 the one commonly entitled An Address to the 
 Troops in Boston: 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE TROOPS 
 
 " By me faith, but I think ye re all makers of bulls, 
 Wid your brains in your breeches, your guts in your 
 
 skulls ! 
 Get home wid your muskets, and put up your 
 
 swords, 
 
 And look in your books for the meaning of words : 
 Ye see now, me honeys, how much ye re mistaken, 
 For Concord by discord can never be baten! " 
 
 * How brave ye wint out wid your muskets all bright, 
 And thought to bef lighten the folks wid the sight ; 
 But whin ye got there, how they powder d your 
 
 pums, 
 And all the waj? home how they pepper d your 
 
 And is it not, honeys, a comical crack, 
 
 To be proud in the face, and be shot in the back? 
 
 " And what have ye got now, wid all your designin , 
 But a town without victuals to sit down and dine 
 in; 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 And to look on the ground like a parcel of noodles, 
 And sing how the Yankees have conquer t the 
 
 Doodles ; 
 I m sure if ye re wise, ye 11 make peace for a 
 
 dinner 
 For fightin and fastin will soon make ye thinner." 
 
 Shortly before the Battle of Bunker Hill, 
 when Clinton, Howe and Burgoyne had ar 
 rived to end quickly and permanently this petty 
 rebellion of colonial ruffians, there appeared 
 for sale on the streets of the three leading 
 cities, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, a 
 lively ballad with plenty of ginger and snap, 
 and a world of scorn for British governmental 
 ideas, A New Song to an Old Tune. Tea and 
 taxation, as usual, come in for discussion; as 
 we may see from these few lines: 
 
 A NEW SONG 
 
 " There is no knowing where this oppression will 
 
 stop; 
 
 Some say There s no cure hut a capitol chop ; 
 And that I believe s each American s wish, 
 Since you ve drenched them with tea, and deprived 
 em of fish. 
 
 99 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " The birds of the air and the fish of the sea, 
 
 By the gods, for poor Dan Adams use were made 
 
 free, 
 Till a man with more power than old Moses would 
 
 wish, 
 Said Ye wretches, ye shan t touch a fowl or a 
 
 fishi 
 
 " Three Generals these mandates have borne cross 
 
 the sea, 
 
 To deprive em of fish and to make em drink tea; 
 In turn, sure, these freemen will boldly agree 
 To give em a dance upon Liberty Tree." 
 
 ANOTHER PROPHECY 
 
 One of these generals, Howe, had a good 
 reputation as a warrior, and at first the patriots 
 were fearful lest victory might indeed prove 
 easy for him. The Loyalists knew this, and 
 one of them, to help along the British cause, 
 started the report that a prophetic hen at Ply 
 mouth had laid an egg bearing upon its shell 
 the inscription: " Oh, America! Howe shall be 
 thy conqueror. But as time dragged on and 
 Howe s strategic gifts shone with a most dim 
 lustre, the Americans took heart, and one of 
 them in turn answered the hen in Another 
 
 Prophecy, a part of which ran thus : 
 
 100 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " When eggs can speak what fools endite, 
 And hens can talk as well as write, 
 When crocodiles shed honest tears, 
 And truth with hypocrites appears; 
 When every man becomes a knave 
 And feels the spirit of the slave, 
 And when veracity again 
 Shall in a Tory s bosom reign; 
 When vice is virtue, darkness light, 
 And freemen are afraid to fight; 
 When they forget to play the men 
 And with the spirit of a hen 
 Desert the just and sacred cause, 
 And opening Heaven smiles applause 
 On such a bloody, barbarous foe, 
 Then I ll be conquered by a Howe! " 
 
 But let us not think for a moment that the 
 renowned Howe received all the broadsides; 
 Burgoyne, Benedict Arnold, and many another 
 enemy of the American cause were handled 
 with justice if not with mercy. 
 
 " In seventeen hundred and seventy-seven 
 General Burgoyne set out for Heaven; 
 But as the Yankees would rebel, 
 He missed his route, and went to Hell! " 
 101 
 
AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 And this for Arnold, appearing in the New 
 Jersey Gazette, November 1, 1780: 
 
 " Quoth Satan to Arnold: My worthy good fellow, 
 
 I love you much better than ever I did; 
 You live like a prince, with Hal * may get mellow, 
 But mind that you both do just what I bid. 
 
 " Quoth Arnold to Satan: My friend, do not doubt 
 
 me! 
 
 I will strictly adhere to all your great views ; 
 To you I m devoted, with all things about me 
 You ll permit me, I hope, to die in my shoes. 7 " 
 
 *Hal: Sir. Henry Clinton. 
 
II 
 
 WITHERSPOON S PARODY 
 
 It is interesting to see how many local con 
 flicts of wit resulted from the ill-feeling be 
 tween Tory and patriot. Many a mocking 
 laugh echoes down from those troubled days. 
 Note, for example, John Witherspoon s parody 
 on James Rivington s petition to Congress. 
 Rivington was a New York printer whose sym 
 pathy was decidedly with the British but whose 
 prosperous business was decidedly with the 
 Americans. Accordingly, in May, 1775, he 
 wrote a paper, A Tory s Petition to the Conti 
 nental Congress, in which he endeavored to 
 show his neutrality, promised to give no offence 
 and boasted somewhat of the extensiveness of 
 his business. Rivington was extremely un 
 popular among the patriots his office was 
 afterwards mobbed and many sarcastic com 
 mentaries were made upon his petition. It re 
 mained for old John Witherspoon, Scotchman, 
 
 103 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 preacher, college-president, and signer of the 
 Declaration (pardon the combination!), to 
 voice the sentiments of the people in a widely 
 read parody. It "respectively sheweth 
 
 11 That a great part of the British forces has already 
 left this city, and from many symptoms there is reason 
 to suspect that the remainder will speedily follow 
 them. Where they are gone or going is perhaps known 
 to themselves, perhaps not; certainly, however, it is 
 unknown to us, the loyal inhabitants of the place, and 
 other friends of government who have taken refuge 
 in it, and who are therefore filled with distress and 
 terror on the unhappy occasion. 
 
 1 1 That as soon as the evacuation is completed, it is 
 more than probable, the city will be taken possession 
 of by the forces of your high mightiness, followed by 
 vast crowds of other persons Whigs by nature and 
 profession friends to the liberties and foes to the 
 enemies of America. Above all, it will undoubtedly 
 be filled with shoals of Yankees, that is to say, the 
 natives and inhabitants (or as a great lady in this 
 metropolis generally expresses it, the wretches} of 
 New England. 
 
 " That your petitioner, in particular, is at the 
 greatest loss what to resolve upon or how to shape his 
 course. He has no desire at all, either to be roasted 
 in Florida, or frozen to death in Canada or Nova 
 
 104 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Scotia. Being a great lover of fresh cod, he has had 
 thoughts of trying a settlement in Newfoundland, 
 but recollecting that the New England men have 
 almost all the same appetite, he was obliged to re 
 linquish that project entirely. If he should go to 
 Great Britain, dangers no less formidable present 
 themselves. Having been a bankrupt in London, it 
 is not impossible that he might be accommodated with 
 a lodging in Newgate, and that the ordinary there 
 might oblige him to say his prayers, a practice from 
 which he hath had an insuperable aversion all his life 
 long. 
 
 " I beg leave to suggest that upon being received 
 into favor, I think it would be in my power to serve 
 the United States in several important respects. I 
 believe many of your officers want politeness. They 
 are, like old Cineinnatus, taken from the plough ; and 
 therefore must still have a little roughness in their 
 manners and deportment. Now, I myself am the 
 pink of courtesy, a genteel, portly, well-looking fel 
 low as you will see in a summer s day. ... I hear 
 with pleasure that your people are pretty good 
 scholars, and have made particularly very happy ad 
 vances in the art of swearing, so essentially necessary 
 to a gentleman. Yet I dare say they will themselves 
 confess, that they are still in this respect far inferior 
 to the English army. There is, by all account, a 
 coarseness and sameness in their expressions ; whereas 
 there is variety, sprightliness, and figure in the oaths 
 
 105 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of gentlemen well educated. ... I have imported 
 many of the most necessary articles for appearance 
 in genteel life. I can give them Lavornitti s soap- 
 balls to wash their brown hands clean, perfumed 
 gloves, paint, powder, and pomatum. . . . 
 
 l Finally, I hope I may be of service to the United 
 States as a writer, publisher, collector, and maker of 
 news. ... I might write those things only, or chiefly 
 which you wish to be disbelieved, and thus render you 
 the most essential service. ... It would be endless to 
 mention all my devices ; and therefore I will only say 
 further that I can take a truth and so puff and swell 
 and adorn it, still keeping the proportion of its parts, 
 but enlarging their dimensions, that you could hardly 
 discover where the falsehood lay, in case of a strict 
 investigation, " 
 
Ill 
 
 TORY SATIRES 
 
 The Tory satires that have been handed 
 down to this day are far less numerous and de 
 cidedly less talented than similar efforts by the 
 patriots. This may be because the Tories, be 
 ing in the minority, may have feared to speak 
 with the same recklessness as their opponents ; 
 or, perhaps, the better the Tory pamphlets and 
 tracts were, the more quickly and completely 
 they were destroyed by the "Yankees." 
 Moreover, the Loyalists could print their broad 
 sides only in New York or Boston, where the 
 British soldiers were for a time in absolute 
 control. But whatever the Tories sheets 
 lacked in quantity and genius, they apparently 
 endeavored to make up in epithets, foul lan 
 guage, and an irritating condescension. Moses 
 Coit Tyler in his Literary History of the 
 American Revolution gives three reasons for 
 this last characteristic: (1) Loyalists had an 
 
 107 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 unclouded conviction that they themselves were 
 right; (2) they had been accustomed to leading 
 all social and political movements, and there 
 fore considered the Revolution a plebeian en 
 terprise; (3) the Loyalists fully expected Great 
 Britain to win. " Since they could not reason 
 down the rebellion, they meant, not only to fight 
 it down, but to laugh it down, to sneer it down, 
 and to make it seem to all the world as ridicu 
 lous as, to themselves, it already seemed sor 
 did and vulgar and weak." Apparently only 
 the most violent " tongue-lashings " would 
 serve for this purpose. 
 
 THE PAUSING LOYALIST 
 
 Undoubtedly numerous colonists became 
 " patriots " through fear that their property 
 would be confiscated and they themselves be 
 driven into exile. The Congress of 1774 had 
 created a so-called " association " to be as 
 sented to by every believer in American liberty. 
 This, of course, the Tories considered a tempt 
 ing subject for sarcastic consideration, and the 
 few journals which would receive contributions 
 from Britain s friends printed poetic and prose 
 comments that must have enraged the "em- 
 
 108 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 battled farmers." For instance, the Middle- 
 sex Journal of January 30, 1776, published a 
 typical specimen entitled The Pausing Loyal 
 ist: 
 
 " To sign, or not to sign! That is the question: 
 Whether t were better for an honest man 
 To sign and so be safe; or to resolve, 
 Betide what will, against l associations, 
 And, by retreating, shun them. To fly I reck 
 Not where and, by that flight, t escape 
 Feathers and tar, and thousand other ills 
 That Loyalty is heir to: tis a consummation 
 Devoutly to be wished. To fly to want 
 To want? perchance to starve! Ay, there s the 
 
 rub! 
 
 For in that chance of want, what ills may come 
 To patriot rage when I have left my all, 
 Must give us pause! There s the respect 
 That makes us trim, and bow to men we hate. 
 For who would bear th indignities o the times, 
 Congress decrees, and wild Convention plans, 
 The laws controll d, and inj ries unredressed, 
 The insolence of knaves, and thousand wrongs 
 Which patient liegemen from vile rebels take, 
 When he, sans doubt, might certain safety find 
 Only by flying? Who would bend to fools 
 And truckle thus to mad, mob-chosen upstarts, 
 But that the dread of something after flight 
 (In that blest country, where, yet, no moneyless 
 109 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Poor wight can live) puzzles the will, 
 
 And makes ten thousands rather sign and eat, 
 
 Than fly to starve on Loyalty ! " . . . 
 
 There is a certain grim despair in the smil 
 ing condescension of such lines. 
 
 THE CONGRESS 
 
 Indeed it must have gone hard with these 
 men who could trace their ancestry back to the 
 days of the Normans to see themselves derided 
 and perhaps persecuted by those whom they 
 considered merely country laborers or town 
 mechanics and shop-keepers. The Loyalist 
 impression of the social standing of these fel 
 lows was pretty well summed up in the ballad, 
 The Congress, written in 1776: 
 
 11 These hardy knaves and stupid fools, 
 Some apish and pragmatic mules, 
 Some servile acquiescing tools, 
 These, these compose the Congress! 
 
 " When Jove resolved to send a curse, 
 And all the woes of life rehearse, 
 Not plague, not famine, but much worse 
 He cursed us with a Congress. 
 
 110 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " Good Lord! disperse this venal tribe; 
 Their doctrine let no fools imbibe 
 Let Balaam no more asses ride, 
 Nor burdens bear to Congress. 
 
 " Old Catiline, and Cromwell too, 
 Jack Cade, and his seditious crew, 
 Hail brother-rebel at first view, 
 And hope to meet the Congress. " 
 
 This same sneering tone sounds through 
 practically every poem of Tory origin. Caste 
 is the hardest of all institutions to break down, 
 and the fact was just as evident in the Ameri 
 can Eevolution as in any other great social 
 upheaval. North and South the sneer was the 
 same. A South Carolina Loyalist declared 
 that 
 
 " Priests, tailors, and cobblers fill with heroes the 
 camp, 
 
 And sailors, like crawfish, crawl out of each 
 
 swamp; " 
 
 while John Ferdinand Smyth, a New England 
 Loyalist, in his ballad, The Rebels, similarly 
 declared that 
 
 " With loud peals of laughter, your sides, sirs, would 
 crack, 
 
 ill 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 To see General Convict and Colonel Shoe-black, 
 
 With their hunting-shirts and rifle-guns; 
 
 See cobblers and quacks, rebel priests and the like, 
 
 Pettifoggers and barbers, with sword and with pike, 
 
 All strutting, the standard of Satan beside, 
 
 And honest names using, their black deeds to hide." 
 
 ON TOM PAINE 
 
 Nor were these sarcastic commentaries on 
 the American warriors always general; they 
 frequently dealt in personalities. The New 
 York Gazette (August 11, 1779), the paper pub 
 lished by the James Bivington noted above, 
 took delight in presenting numerous " personal 
 tokens " similar to the following one on Tom 
 Paine : 
 
 " Hail mighty Thomas! in whose works are seen 
 A mangled Morris and distorted Deane; 
 [Whose splendid periods flash for Lee s defense, 
 Replete with everything but Common Sense. 
 You, by whose labors no man e J er was wiser, 
 You, of invective great monopolizer; 
 O say, what name shall dignify the lays 
 Which now I consecrate to sing thy praise! 
 In pity tell by what exalted name 
 Thou would st be damned to an eternal fame: 
 Shall Common Sense or Comus greet thine ear, 
 A piddling poet, or puffed pamphleteer? 
 
 112 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 By daily slanders earn thy daily food, 
 Exalt the wicked, and depress the good; 
 And having spent a lengthy life in evil, 
 Return again unto thy parent devil ! 
 
 In short, the Tory estimate of the enemy was 
 nothing more or less than that expressed in the 
 afore-mentioned New York Gazette, when A 
 Modern Catechism (May 23, 1778) pronounced 
 the instigators of the Revolution to be an un 
 principled and a disappointed faction in the 
 mother country and an infernal, dark-design 
 ing group of men in America audaciously 
 styling themselves a Congress, . . . obscure, 
 pettifogging attorneys, bankrupt shop-keepers, 
 outlawed smugglers, . . . wretched banditti, 
 . . . the refuse and dregs of mankind. As 
 the war progressed, however, the " dregs of 
 mankind " became bolder and bolder in their 
 sarcasm, while the blue-blooded satirists feared 
 more and more to speak, until, as the day for 
 the last scene at Yorktown approached, the 
 Yankee humorists laughed alone and heard no 
 mocking echo. 
 
IV 
 
 YANKEE DOODLE 
 
 It is plain that of humorous verse, or, rather, 
 humorous doggerel, there was no lack. It is 
 very good proof of the abiding sense of humor 
 in the American people that in those troubled 
 and positively dangerous days they were able 
 to see and enjoy the ludicrous side of the war 
 fare. Not infrequently they seized upon the 
 very satires of the enemy and hurled them 
 back in his teeth. Yankee Doodle, for in 
 stance, has for itself just such a history. The 
 tune of this popular ballad is older than most 
 of the existing nations. In the twelfth cen 
 tury it was used as a chant in Catholic churches 
 of Italy, and when played slowly doubtless 
 served very well as a sacred air. But the 
 melody was too easily learned to remain in 
 such a limited service, and after 1200 we find 
 it gradually working its way into the daily life 
 of the ordinary peasant. It became a most 
 
 114 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 popular vintage song in Spain and southern 
 France; reached northward into Holland, 
 where, as a reaper s song, it acquired the words 
 " Yanker dudel, doodle down "; and at length 
 entered England, where, before the reign of 
 Charles I, it was a widely known nursery; 
 rhyme with the words: 
 
 " Lucky Locket lost her pocket, 
 Kitty Fisher found it 
 Nothing in it, nothing on it, 
 But the binding round it." 
 
 In the days of the Puritan rule the Cavaliers 
 wrote a song in ridicule of Cromwell, who, it 
 is said, once rode into Oxford, mounted on a 
 small Kentish horse and with his small plume 
 tied into a knot: 
 
 " Yankee doodle came to town 
 
 Upon a Kentish pony; 
 He stuck a feather in his cap 
 And called Mm macaroni." 
 
 " Macaroni/ it should be remembered, was a 
 term frequently applied to London dudes. 
 
 Thus the song had served in many capacities 
 when Dr. Eichard Shuckburg, a surgeon in the 
 
 115 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 British army, seeing the raw New England rus 
 tics gazing in open-mouthed wonder at the Eng 
 lish cannons and soldiers, suddenly conceived 
 the idea of writing new words to the old tune 
 to apply to the patriots. Many lines of the 
 poem easily betray its origin: 
 
 " And there we see a thousand men, 
 
 As rich as Squire David; 
 And what they wasted ev ry day, 
 I wish it could be saved. 
 
 And there I see a swamping gun, 
 Large as a log of maple, 
 
 Upon a deuced little cart, 
 A load for father s cattle. 
 
 And every time they shoot it off, 
 It takes a horn of powder, 
 
 And makes a noise like father s gun 
 Only a nation louder. 
 
 I went as nigh to one myself 
 As Siah s underpinning; 
 
 And father went as nigh again, 
 I thought the deuce was in him. 
 
 116 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 And there was Cap n Washington, 
 
 And gentlefolks about him; 
 They say he s grown so tarnal proud 
 He will not ride without em. 
 
 " He s got him on his meeting clothes, 
 Upon a slapping stallion ; 
 He set the world along in rows, 
 In hundreds and in millions. 
 
 But lie laughs best who laughs last. The 
 colonists liked the song, sang it as their own, 
 and later, as they shot down the retreating 
 British from behind walls and trees, they 
 whistled it with such mocking vim that Corn- 
 wallis is said to have exclaimed, " I hope to 
 God I shall never hear that damned tune 
 again! " 
 
 Many a derisive ballad was composed by the 
 rude bards of the camp and roared forth 
 around the evening fire. Such a one was The 
 Battle of King s Mountain (1781): 
 
 Twas on a pleasant mountain 
 
 The Tory heathen lay, 
 With a doughty major at their head, 
 One Ferguson, they say. 
 117 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Cornwallis had detached him, 
 
 A-thieving for to go, 
 And catch the Carolina men, 
 
 Or bring the rebels low." 
 
 TAXATION OF AMERICA 
 
 As shown in previous paragraphs, these rude 
 camp-songs were accompanied by a continuous 
 stream of newspaper verse. Some of this we 
 have noted; room for one or two more speci 
 mens may perhaps be spared. It was in 1778 
 that a certain Peter St. John of Connecticut 
 wrote a long ballad entitled Taxation of Amer 
 ica a poem that pleased the colonists not only 
 by its ideas but by its swinging rhythm and a 
 refrain in the last line that gave it a devil-may- 
 care air quite irresistible : 
 
 " While I relate my story, 
 Americans give ear; 
 Of Britain s fading glory 
 
 You presently shall hear; 
 I ll give a true relation, 
 Attend to what I say 
 Concerning the taxation 
 Of North America. 
 118 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " There are two mighty speakers, 
 
 Who rule in Parliament, 
 Who ever have been seeking 
 
 Some mischief to invent; 
 Twas North and Bate, his father, 
 
 The horrid plan did lay 
 A mighty tax to gather 
 
 In North America. 
 
 " They searched the gloomy regions 
 
 Of the infernal pit, 
 To find among their legions, 
 
 One who excelled in wit ; 
 To ask of him assistance, 
 
 Or tell them how they may 
 Subdue without resistance 
 
 This North America. 
 
 " Old Satan the arch-traitor, 
 
 Who rules the burning lake, 
 Where his chief navigator 
 
 Resolved a voyage to take; 
 For the Britannic ocean 
 
 He launches far away, 
 To land he had no notion 
 
 In North America. 
 
 " He takes his seat in Britain, 
 
 It was his soul s intent 
 Great George s throne to sit on, 
 And rule the Parliament; 
 119 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 His comrades were pursuing 
 
 A diabolic way, 
 For to complete the ruin, 
 
 Of North America. " 
 
 Thus the poet continued, doubtless to the 
 great delight of the uncritical colonists and to 
 the great disgust of the British litterateurs in 
 the invading army. 
 
 FATE_OF JOHN BURGOYNE 
 
 We have seen with what scorn the early fail 
 ures of the English generals were received. As 
 the war progressed and these leaders displayed 
 no special brilliancy in the art of war, the scorn 
 of the Yankees deepened, and a source of de 
 light to all editors was poetry ridiculing these 
 blundering soldiers. The Fate of John 
 Burgoyne is a typical example: 
 
 " When Jack, the king s commander, 
 
 Was going to his duty, 
 Through all the crowd he smiled and bowed 
 To every blooming beauty. 
 
 " To Hampton Court he first repairs 
 To kiss great George s hand, sirs; 
 Then to harangue on state affairs 
 Before he left the land, sirs. 
 120 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " The Lower House sate mute as mouse 
 
 To hear his great oration; 
 And all the peers, with loudest cheers, 
 Proclaimed him to the nation. 
 
 " With great parade his march he made 
 
 To gain his wished-for station, 
 While far and wide his minions hied 
 To spread his Proclamation. 7 
 
 " But ah, the cruel fates of war! 
 This boasted son of Britain, 
 When mounting his triumphal car, 
 With sudden fear was smitten. 
 
 " The sons of freedom gathered round, 
 
 His hostile bands confounded, 
 And when they d fain have turned their back 
 They found themselves surrounded! 
 
 " In vain they fought, in vain they fled; 
 
 Their chief humane and tender, 
 To save the rest soon thought it best 
 His forces to surrender. " f , , 
 
 THE DANCE 
 
 All this must have been extremely amusing 
 to Burgoyne, doubtless it " tickled " him 
 
 almost as much as another song of the day, 
 
 121 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The Dance (1781), did Cornwallis, that is if 
 either one stopped long enough to read. How 
 ever, the old saying declares that " he who 
 runs may read/ and according to this poem 
 Cornwallis at least must have been a very fast 
 reader. 
 
 11 Cornwallis led a country dance, 
 
 The like was never seen, sir, 
 Much retrograde and much advance, 
 And all with General Greene, sir. 
 
 " They rambled up and rambled down, 
 
 Joined hands, then off they run, sir, 
 Our General Greene to Charlestown, 
 The earl to Wilmington, sir. 
 
 11 Greene in the South then danced a set, 
 
 And got a mighty name, sir, 
 Cornwallis jigged with young Fayette, 
 But suffered in his fame, sir. 
 
 " Quoth he, my guards are weary grown 
 
 With footing country dances, 
 They never at St. James s shone 
 At capers, kicks or prances. 
 
 " Though men so gallant ne er were seen, 
 
 While sauntering on parade, sir, 
 Or wriggling o er the park s smooth green, 
 Or at a masquerade, sir, 
 122 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " Yet are red heels and long-laced skirts 
 
 For stumps and briars meet, sir ? 
 Or stand they chance with hunting shirts, 
 Or hardy veteran feet, sir? 
 
 " His music soon forgets to play 
 His feet can no more move, sir, 
 And all his bands now curse the day 
 They jigged to our shore, sir. 
 
 " Now, Tories all, what can ye say? 
 
 Come is not this a griper, 
 That while your hopes are danced away, 
 Tis you must pay the piper? " 
 
 Many, many are the specimens which might 
 be presented; but will not these suffice to show 
 that those years of warfare were not such 
 dreary times after all? While the rough- 
 voiced regimentals shouted their rude ballads 
 through the tented streets, the friends at home 
 battered the enemy with a broad but none the 
 less effective satire. The effect of a taunt on 
 a discouraged foe is not to be belittled, and, for 
 aught we know, the scornful jokes of the 
 colonial wits may have done a part in putting 
 the red-coats to flight not yet sufficiently recog 
 nized in our histories of the momentous period. 
 
 123 
 
V 
 
 As has been intimated, much of the Revolu 
 tionary wit and humor was anonymous; here 
 and there, however, among the musty news 
 papers and rudely printed pamphlets we meet 
 with a familiar name. On the Tory side the 
 leaders in the merry battle were undoubtedly 
 Jonathan Odell and Joseph Stansbury, while 
 the champions of satire for the patriots were 
 just as undoubtedly Francis Hopkinson, Philip 
 Freneau, and the popular member of the sar 
 castic group known as the " Hartford Wits," 
 John Trumbull. At times these men gave 
 Laughter good cause for " holding both his 
 sides/ while their particular victim of the 
 moment must doubtless have felt, as Artemus 
 Ward said Jefferson Davis did, that " it would 
 have been worth ten dollars in his pocket if he 
 had never been born. " For in those early days 
 men spared not one another; they hit hard and 
 
 124 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 no sense of refinement withheld them from bit 
 ter and even vulgar personalities. 
 
 It would have been difficult to find two men 
 more unlike in their natures than the two Loy 
 alists, Jonathan Odell, the fiery, and Joseph 
 Stansbury, the gentle. Both loved England 
 with a jealous love; but the one hated her ene 
 mies forever, the other forgave them freely. 
 Odell thundered with a malignant scowl; 
 Stansbury sang with an amused simile. 
 
 JONATHAN ODELL 
 
 The first of these, Jonathan Odell, was born 
 at Newark, New Jersey, in 1737. His ances 
 tors had been in America for more than one 
 hundred years; according to our view, there 
 fore, he should have had better taste than to 
 be a Tory. After graduating from the College 
 of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1754, he studied 
 medicine, became a surgeon in the British 
 army, and for some time served in the West 
 Indies. At length he came to the conclusion 
 that it was more important to improve men s 
 souls than to cure their bodies, and, conse 
 quently, in 1767, he became rector of St. Mary s 
 parish at Burlington, New Jersey. He was 
 
 125 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 always a zealous worker in any movement that 
 gained his sympathy, and he soon had the repu 
 tation of being a godly and fearless man. 
 
 Like his fellow Tory, Stansbury, he was with 
 the colonists in their efforts to have oppressive 
 measures repealed; but, as a preacher and as 
 a Loyalist, he was opposed to violence, espe 
 cially violence toward England. Yet, up to the 
 time of the Battle of Bunker Hill he took no 
 part in the hot debates of the day. He had his 
 opinions, nevertheless, vigorous, stubborn opin 
 ions too, and they soon got him into trouble. 
 In October, 1775, two letters of his were opened 
 by suspicious committeemen, and certain Tory 
 expressions in these missives caused his arrest. 
 Boldly he declared his neutrality. "I pre 
 sumed it reasonable in me," he said in after 
 years, "to expect I should be indulged in the 
 unmolested enjoyment of my private sentiments 
 so long as I did not attempt to influence the 
 sentiments or conduct of other men." 
 
 But Odell did not long live up to this theory. 
 June 4, 1776, was King George s birthday. 
 The loyal preacher wrote a song on the happy 
 occasion, and a number of British captives in 
 the neighborhood, meeting for a banquet on an 
 island in the Delaware Eiver, roared forth 
 
 126 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 with great enthusiasm this poetical tribute to 
 their ruler. On July 20 Odell was adjudged a 
 dangerous person and was immediately com 
 pelled to sign a pledge that he would remain 
 "within a circle of eight miles from the court 
 house of the city of Burlington." In Decem 
 ber, 1776, the town was shelled to keep the Hes 
 sians away, and Odell very prudently fled, hid 
 for some time in the home of a Quakeress, and 
 at length escaped to New York City, where he 
 received a warm welcome. An experienced 
 soldier, a physician, a clergyman, a scholar, a 
 wit, and a good fellow besides, he was heartily 
 received in every circle of the city s social life. 
 But not a word of satire yet. Three years 
 passed, three years of valuable service to the 
 British; but even then he refused to say to the 
 patriot: "Thou fool." 
 
 In the preface, however, to one of the satires 
 which finally did burst from him, he expressed 
 this sentiment: "The masters of reason have 
 decided that when doctrines and practices have 
 been fairly examined and proved to be contrary 
 to truth and injurious to society, then and not 
 before may ridicule be lawfully employed in the 
 service of virtue." The doctrines and prac 
 tices of the patriots had now been fairly exam- 
 
 127 
 
AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ined; he could stand the strain no longer; his 
 time for a deliverance had come. In Septem 
 ber, 1779, he opened up his batteries. The 
 first shot was The Word of Congress; in No 
 vember came the second and the third, The Con 
 gratulation and The Feu de Joi, and in Decem 
 ber the fourth and last, The American Times. 
 No gentleness here. Hot wrath rings through 
 them all. Bitter scorn too bitter for hearty 
 laughter poisons their every line. They re 
 mind one of Pope s keen thrusts; and indeed 
 they are largely modelled after that satirist s 
 masterpieces. The people, Odell declares, have 
 been poisoned by a deceptive drink, a cup filled 
 with so-called liberty. And who made this 
 drink? 
 
 " What group of wizards next salutes my eyes 
 United comrades, quadruple) allies? 
 Bostonian Cooper, with his Hancock joined, 
 Adams with Adams, one in heart and mind. 
 Sprung from the soil where witches swarmed of 
 
 yore, 
 They come well skilled in necromantic lore; 
 
 See! the smoke rises from the cursed drench, 
 And poisons all the air with horrid stench. 
 128 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " Celestial muse, I fear twill make thee hot 
 To count the vile ingredients of the pot ; 
 Dire incantations, words of death, they mix 
 With noxious plants, and water from the Styx; 
 Treason s rank flowers, Ambition s swelling fruits, 
 Hypocrisy in seeds, and Fraud in roots, 
 Bundles of Lies fresh gathered in their prime, 
 And stalks of Calumny grown stale with time ; 
 Handfuls of Zeal s intoxicating leaves, 
 Riot in bunches, Cruelty in sheaves, 
 Slices of Cunning cut exceeding thin, 
 Kernels of Malice, rotten core of Sin, 
 Branches of Persecutors, boughs of Thrall, 
 And sprigs of Persecution, dipt in Gall. "... 
 
 Democracy! How the word nauseates him! 
 A foul being, he declares, and a dangerous 
 one, a wolf in sheep s clothing. What names 
 shall lie apply to the creature? " Bless me! " 
 he exclaims in The American Times, 
 
 " Bless me! what formidable figure s this 
 That interrupts my words with saucy hiss? 
 She seems at least a woman by her face, 
 With harlot smiles adorned and winning grace. 
 A glittering gorget on her breast she wears ; 
 The shining silver two inscriptions bears: 
 * Servant of Servants/ in a laurel wreath, 
 But Lord of Lords is written underneath. 
 
 129 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 This is Democracy the case is plain; 
 She comes attended by a motley train; 
 Addresses to the people some unfold; 
 Rods, scourges, fetters, axes, others hold; 
 The sorceress waves her magic wand about, 
 And models at her will the rabble rout ; 
 Here Violence puts on a close disguise, 
 And Public Spirit s character belies. 
 The dress of Policy see Cunning steal, 
 And Persecution wear the coat of Zeal; 
 Hypocrisy Religion s garb assume, 
 Fraud Virtue strip, and figure in her room; 
 "With other changes tedious to relate, 
 All emblematic of our present state." 
 
 We might fill a volume with the pretty 
 things that have been said about Democracy. 
 We might quote from Thomas Jefferson to 
 Thomas Watson, and when we were through we 
 might well conclude that " the greatest thing 
 in the world " is not Love, but Democracy. 
 But, shouts Odell, see the results of Democracy ! 
 The plebians have arisen; the world is turned 
 upside down. 
 
 " From the back woods half savages came down, 
 And awkward troops paraded every town. 
 Committees and conventions met by scores; 
 130 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Justice was banished, Law turned out of doors ; 
 
 Disorder seemed to overset the land ; 
 
 They who appeared to rule, the tumult fanned. 
 
 And behold the statesmenship of the new 
 regime! How self-possessed! What dignity! 
 What state-craft! 
 
 " There Folly runs with eagerness about, 
 And prompts the cheated populace to shout ; 
 Here paper-dollars meagre Famine holds, 
 There votes of Congress Tyranny unfolds; 
 
 Confusion blows her trump and far and wide 
 The noise is heard the plough is laid aside ; 
 The awl, the needle, and the shuttle drops; 
 Tools change to swords, and camps succeed to shops ; 
 
 From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street, 
 The new-born statesmen in committees meet; 
 Legions of senators infest the land, 
 And mushroom generals thick as mushrooms stand. 
 
 By this time we evidently have grasped the 
 idea that Odell was dreadfully in earnest. His 
 Tory heart mnst have been sadly wrung at 
 times. No chance for improvement, he de 
 clares; the case is quite hopeless. Why, the 
 very soil sprouts fools; i. e., patriots. 
 
 131 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 * Was Samuel Adams to become a ghost, 
 Another Adams would assume his post; 
 Was bustling Hancock numbered with the dead, 
 Another full as wise might raise his head. 
 
 Or what if Washington should close his scene, 
 
 Could none succeed him? Is there not a Greene? 
 
 Knave after knave as easy we could join, 
 
 As new emissions of the paper coin. 
 
 When it became the high United States 
 
 To send their envoys to Versailles proud gates, 
 
 Were not three ministers produced at once ? 
 
 Delicious group, fanatic, deist, dunce ! 
 
 And what if Lee, and what if Silas fell, 
 
 Or what if Franklin should go down to hell, 
 
 Why should we grieve? the land tis understood 
 
 Can furnish hundreds equally as good." 
 
 Do not forget for a moment that onr scorn 
 ful friend was a clergyman so conscientious a 
 clergyman, in fact, that he could not see how 
 any self-respecting parson could preach to such 
 miserable creatures as the patriots. Evidently 
 he had forgotten the " lost sheep " doctrine of 
 Christianity. Now, one of the fieriest patriotic 
 preachers of the day was George Duffield, for 
 some time chaplain of the Continental Con 
 gress. Odell was heartily ashamed of the fel 
 low ; he said so in unmistakable terms : 
 
 132 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " A saint of old, as learned monks have said, 
 
 Preached to the fish the fish his voice obeyed, 
 The same good man convened the grunting herd 
 Who bowed obedient to his pow rful word. 
 Such energy has truth in days of yore ; 
 Falsehood and nonsense, in our days, have more. 
 Duffield avows them to be all in all, 
 And mounts or quits the pulpit, at their call. 
 
 Chaplain of Congress give him to become, 
 Light may be dark, and oracles be dumb, 
 It pleased Saint Anthony to preach to brutes 
 To preach to devils best with Duffield suits! " 
 
 Vanity, vanity, saith the preacher; all in van 
 ity. Thus Odell gazed with disgust upon the 
 originators of all this confusion. He espied 
 the smirking, splotched face of Tom Paine, and 
 the parson s fury descended upon that bitter 
 enemy of all parsons. See, exclaimed Odell, 
 how the miscreants work together! 
 
 " Others apart in some obscure recess, 
 The studied lie for publication dress: 
 Prepare the vague report, fallacious tale. 
 Invent fresh calumnies, revive the stale, 
 Pervert all records sacred and profane, 
 And chief among them stands the villain Paine. 
 This scribbling imp, tis said, from London came, 
 That seat of glory intermixed with shame. 
 
 133 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 What cannot ceaseless impudence produce? 
 Old Franklin knows its value, and its use : 
 He caught at Paine, relieved his wretched plight, 
 And gave him notes, and set him down to write. 
 Fire from the Doctor s hints the miscreant took, 
 Discarded truth, and soon produced a book, 
 A pamphlet which, without the least pretence 
 To reason, bore the name of * Common Sense. 
 
 Sense, reason, judgment were abashed and fled, 
 And Congress reigned triumphant in their stead." 
 
 At this distant day we look back upon 
 George Washington as almost a god. We per 
 haps forget that the scorn of the blue-bloods 
 and the sarcasm of the town wits once burnt 
 into his soul and at times severely shook his 
 self-possession. Washington was a very " hu 
 man " being of the eighteenth century, and 
 jokers doubtless had the laugh on him just as 
 frequently as on any other personage of the 
 day. Odell himself left his gloves at home 
 when he began to handle the General. Now, 
 cried he, 
 
 " Strike up, hell s music! roar, infernal drums! 
 Discharge the cannon! Lo, the warrior comes! 
 He comes, not tame as on Ohio s banks, 
 134 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 But rampant at the head of ragged ranks. 
 Hunger and itch are with him Gates and Wayne ! 
 And all the lice of Egypt in his train. 
 
 Hear thy indictment, Washington, at large ; 
 Attend and listen to the solemn charge : 
 Thou hast supported an atrocious cause 
 Against thy king, thy country, and the laws; 
 Committed perjury, encouraged lies, 
 Forced conscience, broken the most sacred ties; 
 Myriads of wives and fathers at thy hand 
 Their slaughtered husbands, slaughtered sons, de 
 mand; 
 
 Innumerable crimes on thee must fall 
 For thou maintainest, thou defendest all. 
 
 Go, wretched author of thy country s grief, 
 Patron of villainy, of villains chief ; 
 Seek with thy cursed crew the central gloom, 
 Ere Truth s avenging sword begin thy doom." 
 
 Would that we might linger over more of 
 OdelPs taunting words. The objects of his sar 
 casm have long since gone to their reward and 
 would not mind the further repetition of his 
 lines. My readers might, however; and men 
 fear the living rather than the dead. All that 
 has been said simply goes to show that times 
 
 135 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 were not monotonous in the days of the Bevolu- 
 tion, and that people laughed now and then in 
 spite of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge. Odell s 
 compliments were purposely spread far and 
 wide by the Tory element, and all were of that 
 sweet flavor found above in his views of Tom 
 Paine or George Washington or of that par 
 ticular enemy of his, General Charles Lee. 
 
 " Arise, ye Fiends, from dark C ocytus brink; 
 Soot all my paper, sulphurize my ink ; 
 So with my theme the colors shall agree, 
 Brimstone and black the livery of Lee." 
 
 Such lines, however, must have added to the 
 laughter of the patriots as well as of the Loy 
 alists ; for the former, with the tide of battle in 
 their favor, could well afford to enjoy the vexa 
 tion of the enemy. 
 
 Like some old Confederate soldiers, Odell 
 was never " reconstructed. Even after he 
 had fled to Nova Scotia and was leading a pros 
 perous life there he never missed an oppor 
 tunity to curse the Americans roundly, and to 
 his dying day he always had some pet scheme 
 up his sleeve by which he hoped to down the 
 Yankees and make the United States a Paradise 
 for Loyalists. 
 
 136 
 
VI 
 
 JOSEPH STANSBURY 
 
 " Though ruined so deeply no angel can save, 
 The empire dismembered, our king made a slave, 
 Still loving, revering, we shout forth honestly 
 
 God save the king! 
 
 Though fated to banishment, poverty, death, 
 Our hearts are unaltered, and with our last breath 
 Loyal to George, we ll pray most fervently 
 
 Glory and joy crown the king! " 
 
 Thus, after the Tories had lost their all, the 
 other leader of their wits, Joseph Stansbury, 
 sang cheerily. Gentle, reasonable, forgiving, 
 he was a more lovable though less effective man 
 than his friend Odell. He was born in London 
 in 1740; was educated at St. Paul s School, 
 where he showed a talent for literature; and 
 came to America in 1769. He soon entered 
 business life at Philadelphia, and, because of 
 his social qualities, especially his ability to com 
 pose and sing songs for all sorts of ceremonies, 
 he speedily became a welcomed member of 
 every circle in the city. 
 
 137 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OP COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 He saw with keen regret the tyrannical 
 methods pursued by his native country and his 
 earlier poems show him to have been in sym 
 pathy with the colonial strugglers. He could 
 not see, however, that separation and independ 
 ence were the proper remedies for the distress ; 
 consequently in 1775 and 1776 we find him 
 classed among the hated Tories. Neverthe 
 less, during the latter year and 1777 he con 
 tinued his business in the city, where, during 
 the British occupation, he was of course ex 
 ceedingly popular. But in 1778 he deemed it 
 wise to withdraw and remain with the British 
 troops in New York City. After the surrender 
 he removed to a New Jersey village, but even 
 there he found no peace ; for, as a Loyalist, he 
 was soon cast into prison at Burlington. Upon 
 his promising to leave the State within nine 
 days, he was allowed to remove in August, 
 1783, to Nova Scotia, where in lonely exile he 
 remained until the autumn of 1785. The sepa 
 ration from his wife and children became un 
 bearable ; he returned to Philadelphia ; he had 
 scarcely entered his home when a letter tossed 
 through a window, warned him to flee; and 
 once more he was a forlorn wanderer. In 
 
 138 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1793, however, he found a home among the 
 more liberal people of New York City, and 
 there he died in 1809. 
 
 Such was the unforgiving bitterness of the 
 Eevolutionary times. At this late day we can 
 see that this gentle Loyalist did not deserve 
 the harsh treatment accorded him. Even his 
 wittiest verses have little of animosity; they 
 are more of smiles than of sneers. Until 1776 
 he said scarcely one satirical word about the 
 patriots; for it was his hope that war could 
 be averted. But one hot day in that year an 
 incident so attacked his risibility that he could 
 no longer stand the strain ; and the poetry came. 
 A certain colonial parson, William Piercy, was 
 preaching a fiery sermon to the Philadelphia 
 militia, and had placed behind himself a hid 
 eously ugly negro, who with unabating zeal 
 fanned the speaker. The next morning a 
 stanza by Stansbury was flying through the 
 streets : 
 
 " To preach up, friend Piercy, at this critical season 
 
 Resistance to Britain is not very civil, 
 Yet what can we look for but faction and treason, 
 From a flaming enthusiast fanned by the 
 devil? " 
 
 139 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 From this time forth Stansbury was fre 
 quently called upon by the Loyalists for songs 
 on this or that occasion. Fortunately for him 
 self but unfortunately for us, he burnt a great 
 mass of his papers immediately after the sur 
 render ; but from what remains we can surmise 
 that he must have caused many a roar of laugh 
 ter in the old days of Tory festivity. The 
 year 1780, however, was not one of joy for 
 British sympathizers. That very year the 
 patriots grew so bold as to rush within the bor 
 ders of New York City, steal a quantity of hay, 
 and set several houses on fire. Stansbury, dis 
 gusted with the procrastination of the British 
 leader, Sir Henry Clinton, turned his sarcasm 
 upon this amusement-loving soldier, one form 
 of amusement which Clinton is said not to have 
 relished : 
 
 11 i Has the Marquis La Fayette 
 Taken off all our hay yet? 
 Says Clinton to the wise heads around him: 
 
 Yes, faith, Sir Harry, 
 
 Each stack he did carry, 
 And likewise the cattle confound him! 
 
 " Besides, he now goes, 
 Just under your nose, 
 To burn all the houses to cinder! 
 140 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 * If that be his project, 
 It is not an object 
 Worth a great man s attempting to hinder. 
 
 " * For forage and house 
 
 I care not a louse; 
 For revenge, let the Loyalists bellow; 
 
 I swear I ll not do more 
 
 To keep them in humor, 
 Than play on my violoncello. 
 
 " If growlers complain, 
 
 I inactive remain 
 Will do nothing, nor let any others! 
 
 Tis sure no new thing 
 
 To serve thus our king 
 Witness Burgoyne, and two famous Brothers ! * 
 
 Stansbury, like his comrade, Odell, was not 
 easily discouraged. Even when Cornwallis 
 surrendered, the witty Loyalist made sturdy 
 efforts to be optimistic. In that gloomy day he 
 wrote for the edification of the frightened 
 Tories of New York City a few stanzas of en 
 couragement : 
 
 " I ve heard in old times that a sage used to say, 
 The seasons were nothing, December or May; 
 The heat or the cold never entered his plan 
 That all should be happy whenever they can. 
 
 141 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " He happened to enter this world the same day 
 With the supple, complying, famed Vicar of Bray : 
 Through both of their lives the same principle ran 
 My boys, we ll be happy as long as we can. 
 
 " Time-serving I hate, yet I see no good reason 
 A leaf from their book shall be thought out of sea 
 son: 
 
 When kicked like a football from Sheba to Dan 
 Egad, let s be happy as long as we can. . . ." 
 
 Before, however, there was ever any neces 
 sity for such a song of encouragement, while 
 yet the British were enjoying the hospitality of 
 New York City, and every Tory foresaw an 
 early and an easy victory, Stansbury furnished 
 many a pleasant line for his friends, lines 
 more enjoyable perhaps because lacking all the 
 bitterness of those by the other satirist, Odell. 
 Those were gay houses in the city, and Stans 
 bury s convivial poems added much to the 
 gaiety. In 1781, for example, he wrote for a 
 " venison dinner at Mr. Bunyan s a rollicking 
 song containing such verses as 
 
 11 But through near our lines they re too cautious to 
 
 tarry, 
 
 What courage they shew when a hen-roost they 
 harry! 
 
 142 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Who can wonder that poultry and oxen and swine 
 Seek shelter in York from such valor divine, 
 While Washington s jaws and the Frenchman s are 
 
 aching 
 The spoil they have lost, to be boiling and baking. 
 
 " Let Clinton and Arnold bring both to subjection, 
 And send us more geese here to seek our protection. 
 Their flesh and their feathers shall meet a kind 
 
 greeting; 
 
 A fat rebel turkey is excellent eating, 
 A lamb fat as butter and white as a chicken 
 These sorts of tame rebels are excellent pickin . 
 
 " To-day a wild rebel has smoked on the table; 
 You ve cut him and sliced him as long as you re 
 
 able. 
 
 He bounded like Congo,* and bade you defiance, 
 And placed on his running his greatest reliance; 
 But fate overtook him and brought him before ye, 
 To shew how rebellion will wind up her story. . . ." 
 
 It has often been said that the chief differ 
 ence between a revolution and a rebellion is that 
 the one succeeds and the other does not. Just 
 there is where Stanshury and Odell and we dis 
 agreed. They looked upon us as rebels; we 
 
 * Congo was a Tory nickname for the Continental Congress. 
 143 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 considered ourselves revolutionists. War de 
 cided that we were the latter, and Stansbury 
 quietly acquiesced, while the violent Odell 
 never could accept the decision. It was the 
 gentler Loyalist, exiled as he was from family 
 and home, who wrote the lines that should have 
 gone to the heart of Tory and patriot alike : 
 
 " Now this war at length is o er, 
 Let us think of it no more; 
 Every party lie or name, 
 Cancel as our mutual shame ; 
 Bid each wound of faction close 
 Blushing we were ever foes." 
 
VII 
 
 Of course, for a time, the Tories considered 
 the American Revolution a huge joke. Not so 
 to many of the colonial fathers. Indeed, some 
 fun-makers were sorely needed by several of 
 those solemn-faced founders of our nation. To 
 them life was a little too earnest; they took 
 themselves perhaps a trifle too seriously. Only 
 a few of these greater men dared to risk their 
 reputation for solidness by joking openly when 
 ever they felt like it ; and naturally these choice 
 spirits stand out conspicuously because of their 
 very loneliness. Among the common folk 
 there was, of course, much rough humor and 
 satire; but we speak now of the moulders of 
 the Commonwealth. Of those conspicuous for 
 their audacity in being funny in public one of 
 the most daring in his defiance toward the an 
 cient idea that all great people must be solemn 
 was Francis Hopkinson. 
 
 10 145 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 FRANCIS HOPKINSON 
 
 John Adams, in a letter to Mrs. Adams, 
 speaks of him as " a painter and a poet. " " He 
 is," continues that grave statesman, "one of 
 your pretty, little, curious, ingenious gentle 
 men. . . . His head is not bigger than a large 
 apple." Yet, even Adams, who was amused 
 to see such a specimen of dainty manhood, con 
 fessed that he was a gentleman of merit. And 
 Hopkinson was more than that. Says Moses 
 Coit Tyler, in his Literary History of the 
 American Revolution: " He was a distin 
 guished practitioner of the law; he became an 
 eminent judge ; he was a statesman trained by 
 much study and experience; he was a mathe 
 matician, a chemist, a physicist, a mechanician, 
 an inventor, a musician, and a composer of 
 music, a man of literary knowledge and prac 
 tice, a writer of airy and dainty songs, a clever 
 artist with pencil and brush, and a humorist 
 of unmistakable power." And with it all was 
 a kindness of heart that made him a friend of 
 every creature even a Tory ! The timid doves 
 waited for him daily in his yard, and, as he ap 
 proached them, flew to meet him, and perched 
 
 146 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 upon his shoulders and head. A little mouse 
 came regularly at meal time and played un- 
 afrighted about his feet. All men loved him 
 all except the Tories and the British, and of 
 course they didn t count, in his estimation. 
 
 Born in Philadelphia in 1737, Hopkinson was 
 left an orphan at the age of fourteen. He was 
 educated at the College of Philadelphia, after 
 wards the University of Pennsylvania, and was 
 a member of the first graduating class in 1757. 
 Three years later he received the degree of 
 Master of Arts. In 1761 he was admitted to 
 the bar, and very soon gained a reputation for 
 high legal ability. That at this early date he 
 had gained the confidence of the leading offi 
 cials is evidenced by the fact that in the same 
 year, 1761, he was chosen secretary of the 
 conference between Pennsylvania and the 
 Indians, a conference, by the way, which gave 
 him the idea for his once famous poem, The 
 Treaty. In 1766 he went to England, remained 
 fourteen months, and returned with an amount 
 of information and culture that proved he had 
 kept his eyes exceedingly wide open. Some of 
 the great men of the day evidently thought so 
 too; for in 1772, on the recommendation of 
 
 147 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Lord North, he was appointed collector of cus 
 toms at Newcastle, New Jersey, and in 1774 
 was made a member of the council of that 
 colony. In the meantime he had married a 
 granddaughter of the founder of B or dent own, 
 New Jersey, and of course henceforth his main 
 interests were in that little commonwealth. 
 
 After all the favors he had received from the 
 British government, he might well have been 
 expected to become a Tory. But he loved 
 America better than position, and from the 
 moment that serious trouble began to brew, he 
 was always present at the brewing. In 1776 
 he was the representative of New Jersey in the 
 Continental Congress, was a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence, served on numer 
 ous committees, and was ever wielding a most 
 facile pen (or quill, shall we say?) in behalf of 
 the new nation ; while among the literary works 
 of his busy brain in those heated days were 
 The Pretty Story (1774), The Prophecy 
 (1776), The Political Catechism (1777), and a 
 host of sharp letters, sarcastic essays, and 
 satirical poems. 
 
 His reward came with the success of the 
 colonies. From 1779 until 1789 he was judge 
 of the admiralty for Pennsylvania, was ap- 
 
 148 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 pointed United States district judge for the 
 same State in 1790, and was ever considered by 
 the greatest officials a man worthy of consulta 
 tion and attention. Full of years and honor, 
 he died in Philadelphia in 1791. Shortly after 
 his death, his works were issued under the 
 title, The Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional 
 Writings of Francis Hopkinson. 
 
 The average reader of to-day knows Francis 
 Hopkinson through one piece, The Battle of the 
 Kegs. And, if he had written nothing else, he 
 is worthy of remembrance for that sly bit of 
 sarcasm. Undoubtedly it was the most popular 
 ballad written in Eevolutionary days. It was 
 copied in every colony ; it was recited at social 
 functions; and public speakers, when wishing 
 to have the laugh on the British, quoted stanzas 
 from it. The incident which caused the poem 
 was laughable in itself, and Hopkinson meas 
 ured up to his opportunity. Kegs charged with 
 powder were floated down the river to destroy 
 the British fleet lying before Philadelphia, with 
 the result that the English soldiers spent the 
 day bravely shooting kegs! It must have been 
 galling to Tories to read in New York and Phil 
 adelphia and Boston papers such lines as these : 
 
 149 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Gallants attend and hear a friend 
 
 Trill forth harmonious ditty, 
 Strange things I 11 tell which late befell 
 In Philadelphia city. 
 
 " Twas early day, as poets say, 
 Just when the sun was rising, 
 A soldier stood on a log of wood 
 And saw a thing surprising. 
 
 " As in amaze he stood to gaze, 
 
 The truth can t be denied, sir, 
 He spied a score of kegs or more 
 Come floating down the tide, sir. 
 
 " Now up and down throughout the town, 
 
 Most frantic scenes were acted; 
 And some ran here and others there, 
 Like men almost distracted. 
 
 " Arise! Arise! Sir Erskine cries, 
 
 The rebels more s the pity, 
 Without a boat are all afloat, 
 And ranged before the city. 
 
 " The motley crew, in vessels new, 
 With Satan for their guide, sir, 
 Packed up in bags or wooden kegs, 
 Come driving down the tide, sir. 
 150 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Therefore prepare for bloody, war, 
 These kegs must all be routed, 
 
 Or surely we despised shall be, 
 And British courage doubted. 
 
 The royal band now ready stand 
 
 All ranged in dread array, sir, 
 With stomach stout to see it out, 
 
 And make a bloody day, sir. 
 
 The cannons roar from shore to shore, 
 
 The small arms make a rattle; 
 Since war began I m sure no man 
 
 E er saw so strange a battle. 
 
 The fish below swam to and fro, 
 
 Attacked from every quarter; 
 Why sure, thought they, the devil s to pay 
 
 Mongst folks above the water! 
 
 The kegs, tis said, though strongly made, 
 
 Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, 
 Could not oppose their powerful foes, 
 
 The conquering British troops, sir. 
 . . . , . 
 
 A hundred men with each a pen, 
 
 Or more upon my word, sir, 
 It is most true would be too few, 
 
 Their valor to record, sir. 
 151 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 11 Such feats did they perform that day 
 
 Against those wicked kegs, sir, 
 That years to come if they get home, 
 They ll make their boasts and brags, sir! " 
 
 Is it not plain that there is really no bitter 
 ness here? It is characteristic of Hopkinson. 
 Always more amused than angered, he simply 
 had a good-humored laugh over the follies of 
 his opponents. Evidently he kept in mind the 
 words of his contemporary Eobert Burns 
 
 " O wad some Pow r the giftie gie us 
 To see oursels as others see us! " 
 
 and did his utmost to help the Tories and 
 British in their efforts along this line. Yet, it 
 was not lack of serious principle that caused 
 him to assume this good-natured levity. There 
 were times when Hopkinson did not mince 
 words. Hear his expressions in a letter to 
 Joseph Galloway, a man who had proved him 
 self a hypocrite: 
 
 " Now that you have gained the summit of your 
 ambitious hopes, the reward of your forfeited honor, 
 that dear-bought gratification, to obtain which you 
 have given your name to infamy and your soul to per- 
 
 152 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 dition now that you sit in Philadelphia, the nominal 
 governor of Pennsylvania, give me leave to address a 
 few words of truth to your corrupted heart. Retire 
 for a moment from the avocations and honors of your 
 new superintendency, and review the steps by which 
 you have mounted the stage of power steps reeking 
 with the blood of your innocent country. 
 
 " When the storm was gathering dark and dreary 
 over this devoted country, when America stood in 
 need of all the exertions which her best patriots and 
 most confidential citizens could make, you stepped for 
 ward you offered yourself a candidate, and, with 
 unwearied diligence, solicited a seat in the American 
 Congress. Your seeming sincerity and your loud com 
 plaints against the unjust usurpations of the British 
 legislature gained the confidence of your country. 
 You were elected; you took your seat in Congress 
 and let posterity remember that while you were 
 vehemently declaiming in that venerable senate against 
 British tyranny, and with hypocritical zeal urging a 
 noble stand in behalf of the liberties of your country, 
 you were at the same time betraying their secrets, 
 ridiculing their economy, and making sport of their 
 conduct. . . . 
 
 " The temporary reward of iniquity you now hold 
 will soon shirk from your grasp. . . . This you know, 
 and the reflection must even now throw a gloom of 
 horror over your enjoyments, which the glittering tin 
 sel of your new superintendency cannot illumine. 
 Look back, and all is guilt look forward, and all is 
 
 153 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 dread ! When the history of the present time shall be 
 recorded, the names of Galloway and Cunningham 
 will not be omitted ; and posterity will wonder at the 
 extreme obduracy of which the human heart is capa 
 ble, and at the unmeasurable difference between a 
 traitor and a Washington. " 
 
 If further proof were needed that this dainty- 
 looking, art-loving gentleman could on occa 
 sion wield a sarcastic pen dipped in fluid bit 
 terness, we might well turn to his Letter Writ 
 ten by a Foreigner on His Travels, in which 
 he causes his " foreigner " to say concerning 
 England : 
 
 " The extreme ignorance of the common people of 
 this civilized country can scarce be credited. In gen 
 eral they know nothing beyond the particular branch 
 of business which their parents or the parish hap 
 pened to choose for them. This, indeed, they practise 
 with unremitting diligence, but never think of extend 
 ing their knowledge farther. 
 
 " A manufacturer has been brought up a maker 
 of pin-heads. He has been at this business forty years 
 and, of course, makes pin-heads with great dexterity; 
 but he cannot make a whole pin to save his life. He 
 thinks it is the perfection of human nature to make 
 pin-heads. He leaves other matters to inferior abili 
 ties. It is enough for him that he believes in the 
 Athanasian Creed, reverences the splendor of the court, 
 
 154 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 and makes pin-heads. This he conceives to be the 
 sum-total of religion, politics, and trade. He is sure 
 that London is the finest city in the world; Black- 
 friars Bridge the most superb of all possible bridges; 
 and the river Thames the largest river in the universe. 
 It is in vain to tell him that there are many rivers in 
 America, in comparison of which the Thames is but 
 a ditch; that there are single provinces there larger 
 than all England; and that the colonies . . . are 
 vastly more extensive than England, Wales, Scotland 
 and Ireland, taken all together he cannot conceive 
 this. He goes into his best parlor, and looks on a map 
 of England, four feet square ; on the other side of the 
 room he sees a map of North and South America, not 
 more than two feet square, and exclaims: How can 
 these things be! It is altogether impossible! . . . 
 Talk to him of the British constitution, he will tell 
 you it is a glorious constitution; ask him what it is, 
 and he is ignorant of its first principles; but he is 
 sure that he can make and sell pin-heads under 
 it. . . ." 
 
 This, however, was not the usual Francis 
 Hopkinson. He preferred not to hiss, but to 
 laugh his opponent out of court. If ever you 
 enter one of the greater libraries of our coun 
 try, ask for his Pretty Story (printed the very 
 day the first Continental Congress met), and 
 enjoy some very gentle yet very real humor. 
 
 155 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 You will find it to be a lively little allegory 
 telling the story of the disturbance between 
 the mother country and the colonies down to the 
 year 1774. England is represented by the Old 
 Farm, America by the New, while the Noble 
 man is the King, and his Wife is Parliament. 
 A few bits from it, to show its flavor : 
 
 11 Once upon a time, a great while ago, there lived 
 a certain Nobleman, who had long possessed a very 
 valuable Farm, and had a great number of children 
 and grand-children. Besides the annual profits of his 
 land, which, were very considerable, he kept a large 
 shop of goods ; and being very successful in trade, he 
 became, in process of time, exceeding rich and power 
 ful, insomuch that all his neighbors feared and re 
 spected him. . . . Now, it came to pass that this No 
 bleman had, by some means or other, obtained a right 
 to an immense tract of wild uncultivated country at 
 a vast distance from his mansion house. But he set 
 little store by this acquisition, as it yielded him no 
 profit ; nor was it likely to do so, being not only diffi 
 cult of access on account of the distance, but was also 
 overrun with innumerable wild beasts very fierce and 
 savage, so that it would be extremely dangerous to 
 attempt taking possession of it. 
 
 1 In process of time, however, some of his children, 
 more stout and enterprising than the rest, requested 
 leave of their Father to go and settle on this distant 
 
 156 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 tract of land." [Then follows a list of the rules laid 
 down by the king for the conduct of the settlers and 
 the promises made by him. The new land showed pros 
 pects of becoming an earthly Paradise; but at length 
 troubles began to come, as in every Paradise. The 
 Nobleman s Wife began to cast envious looks towards 
 the new home, and after a time issued an edict] set 
 ting forth that whereas the tailors of her family were 
 greatly injured by the people of the New Farm, inas 
 much as they presumed to make their own clothes, 
 whereby the said tailors were deprived of the benefit 
 of their custom, it was therefore ordained that for the 
 future the new settlers should not be permitted to have 
 amongst them any shears or scissors larger than a cer 
 tain fixed size. In consequence of this, our advent 
 urers were compelled to have their clothes made by 
 their Father s tailors; but out of regard to the old 
 Gentleman, they patiently submitted to this griev 
 ance. . . . She [the Wife] persuaded her Husband 
 to send amongst them, from time to time, a number 
 of the most lazy and useless of her servants, under the 
 specious pretext of defending them in their settle 
 ments and of assisting to destroy the wild beasts, but 
 in fact, to rid his own house of their company, not 
 having employment for them, and at the same time 
 to be a watch and a check upon the people of the New 
 Farm." 
 
 The story then declares that the Nobleman s 
 Steward had debauched the Nobleman s Wife 
 
 157 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 and had persuaded her to wear two padlocks 
 on her lips so that when he opened one she 
 could cry only " No," and when the other, only 
 " Yes." The Steward then persuaded the 
 Nobleman, who was now in his dotage, to place 
 a heavy tax on several articles to be bought 
 only at his shop, notably Water-Gruel [tea]. 
 But the settlers would have none of it, and 
 allowed the gruel to sour by the roadside. 
 And " one of the new settlers, whose name was 
 Jack [Boston], either from a keener sense of 
 the injuries attempted against him, or from the 
 necessity of his situation, which was such that 
 he could not send back the Gruel because of a 
 number of mercenaries whom his Father had 
 stationed before his house to watch and be a 
 check upon his conduct, he, I say, being almost 
 driven to despair, fell to work and with great 
 zeal stove to pieces the casks of Gruel which 
 had been sent him and utterly demolished the 
 whole cargo. . . . The old Gentleman fell into 
 great wrath, declaring that his absent children 
 meant to throw off all dependence upon him, 
 and to become altogether disobedient. His 
 Wife also tore the padlocks from her lips, and 
 raved and stormed like a Billingsgate. The 
 
 158 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Steward lost all patience and moderation, 
 swearing most profanely that he would leave 
 no stone unturned until he had humbled the set 
 tlers of the New Farm at his feet, and caused 
 their Father to trample on their necks. More 
 over, the Gruel Merchants roared and bellowed 
 for the loss of their Gruel; and the clerks and 
 apprentices were in the utmost consternation 
 lest the people of the New Farm should again 
 agree to have no dealings with their Father s 
 shop." Immediately an immense padlock was 
 fastened upon Jack s gate, and an overseer was 
 sent to Jack s home to " break his spirit." 
 
 Jack appealed to his neighbors for supplies, 
 and " seasonable bounty was handed to Jack 
 over the garden wall, all access to the front 
 of his house being shut up." Moreover, Jack s 
 Family held consultations about the matter; 
 but the Overseer " wrote a thundering prohi 
 bition, much like a Pope s Bull, which he 
 caused to be pasted up in every room in the 
 house ; in which he declared and protested that 
 these meetings were treasonable, traitorous, 
 and rebellious, contrary to the dignity of their 
 Father and inconsistent with the omnipotence 
 of their Mother-in-Law ; denouncing also terri- 
 
 159 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ble punishments against any two of the Family 
 who should from thenceforth be seen whisper 
 ing together, and strictly forbidding the domes 
 tics to hold any more meetings in the garret or 
 stable. 
 
 " These harsh and unconstitutional proceed 
 ings irritated Jack and the other inhabitants of 
 the New Farm to such a degree that . . . 
 
 Caetera desunt " 
 
 Hopkinson refuses to prophesy what will 
 happen ; he leaves it to the gentlemen who were 
 just then assembling in the hall of Congress not 
 far from the book-stall where the Pretty Story 
 was being exhibited. 
 
 If you will look into the story for yourself, 
 you will see how well sustained, how interesting 
 at all points, how full of bright surprises the 
 genial narrative is. There is a flavor of French 
 vivacity and French simplicity about it that 
 charms one. We should not be surprised, there 
 fore, to find that this man wrote some of the 
 daintiest lyrics of early days in some in 
 stances, exquisite little things that might well 
 be revived and made popular through musical 
 setting. 
 
 160 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 But the times were rather adverse toward 
 love-lyrics and nature poems, and Hopkinson s 
 talent was turned to the more immediately use 
 ful field of satirical verse. There were during 
 those dangerous days, undoubtedly, numerous 
 fickle creatures " the summer soldier and the 
 sunshine patriot," as Tom Paine s Crisis called 
 them men who were valiant patriots when the 
 Americans held the city and zealous Tories 
 when the British came to town ; and just such a 
 sharp pen as Hopkinson s was needed for such 
 people. The neat fable. The Birds, tlie Beasts, 
 and the Bat, leaves no doubt as to his opinion 
 of such turn-coats. 
 
 " A war broke out in former days 
 If all is true that ^sop says 
 Between the birds that haunt the grove 
 And beasts that wild in forests rove. 
 
 From every tribe vast numbers came 
 To fight for freedom, as for fame. 
 
 The bat half bird, half beast was there, 
 Nor would for this or that declare, 
 Waiting till conquest should decide 
 Which was the strongest, safest side. 
 .. 
 
 11 161 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The birds in fierce assault, tis said, 
 Amongst the foe such havoc made 
 That, panic-struck, the beasts retreat 
 Amazed, and victory seemed complete. 
 The observant bat, with squeaking tone, 
 Cried, Bravo, Birds! The day s our own; 
 For now I am proud to claim a place 
 Amongst your bold aspiring race. 
 
 " But now the beasts, ashamed of flight, 
 With rallied force renew the fight ; 
 
 Enraged, advance push on the fray 
 And claim the honors of the day. 
 The bat, still hovering to and fro, 
 Observed how things were like to go. 
 
 1 Push on/ quoth he, Our s is the day! 
 We ll chase these rebel birds away, 
 And reign supreme for who but we 
 Of earth and air the lords should be? 
 
 " Now in their turn the beasts must yield 
 The bloody laurels of the field. 
 
 Once more the bat with courtly voice, 
 Hail, noble birds ! Much I rejoice 
 In your success and come to claim 
 My share of conquest and of fame. 
 162 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 The birds the faithless wretch despise : 
 1 Hence, traitor, hence! the eagle cries; 
 * No more, as you just vengeance fear, 
 Amongst our honored ranks appear/ 
 The bat, disowned, in some old shed 
 Now seeks to hide his exiled head; 
 Nor dares his leathern wings display 
 From rising morn to setting day." 
 
 It was true. Many a Tory, in the end, felt 
 inclined " in some old shed ... to hide his 
 exiled head/ And to good-natured Hopkin- 
 son their futile efforts to destroy patriotism 
 before that fatal day, were just as laughable 
 as their final predicament. This scene of the 
 Loyalist wits venting their spleen upon the 
 unmoved structure of American liberty re 
 minded him very much of a wasp endeavoring 
 to sting a church-steeple! Hear some lines 
 from his fable, The Wasp: 
 
 " Wrapt in Aurelian filth and slime, 
 
 An infant wasp neglected lay; 
 Till having dosed the destined time, 
 He woke and struggled into day. 
 
 " In copious streams my spleen shall flow, 
 
 And satire all her purses drain ; 
 A critic born, the world shall know 
 I carry not a sting in vain. 
 163 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " This said, from native cell of clay, 
 
 Elate he rose in airy flight; 
 Thence to the city changed his way, 
 And on a steeple chanced to light. 
 
 " * Ye gods ! he cried, what horrid pile 
 
 Presumes to rear his head so high? 
 This clumsy cornice see how vile: 
 Can this delight a critic s eye? 
 
 " With poisonous sting he strove to wound 
 The substance firm, but strove in vain ; 
 Surprised he sees it stands its ground, 
 Nor starts through fear, nor writhes with pain. 
 
 " Away the enraged insect flew; 
 
 But soon with aggravated power, 
 Against the walls his body threw 
 And hoped to shake the lofty tower. 
 
 " Firm fixed it stands, as stand it must, 
 Nor heeds the wasp s unpitied fall : 
 The humbled critic rolls in dust, 
 So stunned, so bruised, he scarce can crawl. " 
 
 Is it not clear how genuinely useful such a 
 man was in those discouraging times? Many 
 of the colonial leaders seemed instinctively to 
 look to Francis Hopkinson whenever any fac- 
 
 164 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 tion or individual became too prominent in hos 
 tility, and Hopkinson seldom failed to squelch 
 the troublesome party. How skilfully, for ex 
 ample, he checked that malicious enemy of in 
 dependence, Provost Smith of the College of 
 Philadelphia. The provost was writing in the 
 Pennsylvania Gazette his dangerous Letters of 
 Cato to the People of Pennsylvania. The peo 
 ple were more than interested they were 
 aroused; for the papers were strong in argu 
 ment and forceful in style. An answer was 
 needed and that right early. Hopkinson came to 
 the rescue with A Prophecy. An ancient seer 
 had a vision of what would occur, and did occur, 
 in Philadelphia in 1776, and Hopkinson, it 
 seems, interviewed the seer. It turned the laugh 
 on the college president. After speaking of a 
 tree sent over by the king of certain islands a 
 tree which proved exceedingly rotten at the 
 core, the narration states that a proposal was 
 made by a prophet (Dr. Franklin), to cut it 
 down. 
 
 And the people shall hearken to the voice of their 
 prophet, for his sayings shall be good in their eyes. 
 And they shall take up every man his spade and his 
 axe, and shall prepare to dig up and cut away the 
 
 165 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 shattered remains of the blasted and rotten tree, ac 
 cording to the words of their prophet. 
 
 " Then a certain wise man shall arise and shall 
 call himself Cato ; and he shall strive to persuade the 
 people to put their trust in the rotten tree and not to 
 dig it up or remove it from its place. And he shall 
 harangue with great vehemence, and shall tell them 
 that a rotten tree is better than a sound one; and 
 that it is for the benefit of the people that the North 
 wind should blow upon it, and that the branches 
 thereof should be broken and fall upon and crush 
 them. 
 
 * And he shall receive from the king of the islands 
 fetters of gold and chains of silver ; and he shall have 
 hopes of great reward if he will fasten them on the 
 necks of the people, and chain them to the trunk of 
 the rotten tree. . . . And he shall tell the people that 
 they are not fetters and chains, but shall be as brace 
 lets of gold on their wrists, and rings of silver on their 
 necks to ornament and decorate them and their chil 
 dren. And his words shall be sweet in the mouth, 
 but very bitter in the belly. 
 
 11 And it shall come to pass that certain other wise 
 men shall also stand up and oppose themselves to 
 Cato; and shall warn the people not to trust in the 
 allurements of his voice, nor to be terrified with his 
 threats, and to hearken to his puns no more. . . . 
 And they shall earnestly exhort the people to despise 
 
 166 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 and reject the fetters of gold and the chains of silver 
 which the king of the islands would fasten upon them. 
 
 " And in process of time the people shall root up 
 the rotten tree, and in its place they shall plant a 
 young and vigorous tree, and shall effectually defend 
 it from the winds of the North by an high wall. . . . 
 And the young tree shall grow and flourish and spread 
 its branches far abroad; and the people shall dwell 
 under the shadow of its branches, and shall become 
 an exceedingly great and powerful and happy na 
 tion. ..." 
 
 Hopkinson s was a never ceasing pen for the 
 American cause. We have touched only here 
 and there in his works, and some of his best 
 efforts must be left unnoticed. It would be 
 pleasant to linger, for instance, over his First 
 Book of the American Chronicle or his odd 
 Specimens of a Modern Law Suit, wherein a 
 man is brought to trial for paring his nails on 
 Friday. It would be interesting, too, to look 
 over his mock advertisement of the Tory editor, 
 James Eivington, for whom circumstances had 
 " rendered it convenient ... to remove to 
 Europe." Rivington had, for immediate sale, 
 various books, maps, and patent medicines, 
 
 167 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 some of which, according to Hopkinson, were 
 as follows: 
 
 " The History of the American War; or the Glori 
 ous Exploits of the British Generals, Gage, Howe, 
 Burgoyne, Cornwallis, and Clinton." 
 
 " The Right of Great Britain to the Dominion of 
 the Sea a Poetical Fiction. " 
 
 " The State of Great Britain in October, 1760, and 
 in October, 1781, compared and contrasted." 
 
 " Tears of Repentance : or the Present State of the 
 Loyal Refugees in New York, and elsewhere." 
 
 * The Political Liar : a Weekly Paper, published by 
 the Subscriber [Rivington], bound in Volumes." 
 
 " The Battle of Saratoga, and the Surrender at 
 York: Two elegant Prints, cut in Copper, and dedi 
 cated to the King." 
 
 " Microscopes for magnifying small objects, fur 
 nished with a select set ready fitted for use. Amongst 
 these are a variety of real and supposed successes of 
 the British Generals in America. 
 
 " Pocket Glasses for Short-sighted Politicians." 
 
 Vivifying Balsam : excellent for weak nerves, 
 palpitation of the heart, over-bashfulness, and diffi 
 dence. In great demand for the officers of the army. 
 
 " Sp. Men. Or the genuine Spirit of Lying. Ex 
 tracted by distillation from many hundreds of * The 
 Royal Gazette of New York. " 
 
 * l Anodyne Elixir, for quieting fears and apprehen- 
 168 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 sions. Very necessary for Tories in all parts of 
 America. 
 
 Few, indeed, were the men who served the 
 American cause better than this i pretty, little, 
 curious, ingenious gentleman," Francis Hop- 
 kinson. When he picked up his quill, well 
 might the Tories lay in a supply of " Anodyne 
 Elixir, for quieting fears and apprehensions. 
 For to his task Hopkinson brought as keen an 
 intellect, as great a degree of culture, and as 
 forceful and witty a style as could be found in 
 America, and his opponents often feared his 
 good-humored ridicule far more than the vio 
 lent and bitter expressions of some of his fel 
 low patriots. 
 
VIII 
 
 PHILIP FRENEAU 
 
 Some of the sweetest and most delicate verses 
 in the earlier literature of America were writ 
 ten by a man whom the British and American 
 Tories of colonial days considered nothing more 
 nor less than a human wasp. The wasp was 
 Philip Freneau (1752-1832). We of to-day 
 know him mainly through three well-written 
 bits of poetry, Eutaw Springs, The Indian 
 Burying-Ground, and The Wild Honey-Suckle, 
 and these three, it would seem, are not likely 
 soon to be omitted from any thorough 
 anthology of American poetry. Sir Walter 
 Scott showed his admiration for Eutaw 
 Springs when he used with but a slight change 
 a line from it in the introduction to Canto III. 
 of Marmion: 
 
 " And took the spear, but left the shield. " 
 170 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Campbell, in his O Connor s Child, used, with 
 out any acknowledgments whatever, the beauti 
 ful idea embodied in the line from The Indian 
 Bury ing -Ground: 
 
 " The hunter still the deer pursues, 
 
 The hunter and the deer a shade. 1 
 
 Again, his Death Song of a Cherokee Indian 
 was stolen almost bodily by an English woman, 
 Mrs. Anna Hunter, and was praised by English 
 critics as the best poem in a collection entitled 
 Specimens of British Poetesses. 
 
 Freneau was a born poet and in a better day 
 undoubtedly would have done lasting work. 
 Like Pope, he " lisped in numbers, for the num 
 bers came." At sixteen he wrote a long and 
 ambitious poem, The Prophet Jonah; while at 
 seventeen, he had the audacity to compose a 
 dramatic piece in blank verse on so vast a sub 
 ject as The Pyramids of Egypt. And portions 
 of this juvenile work are indeed excellent. 
 While a college boy of eighteen he wrote a poem 
 called The Power of Fancy; and who would deny 
 it an originality, a freshness of treatment rare 
 indeed in that period of the eighteenth cen 
 tury? 
 
 171 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 l Lo ! she walks upon the moon, 
 Listens to the ehiiny tune 
 Of the bright harmonious spheres, 
 And the song of angels hears ; 
 Sees this earth a distant star, 
 Pendent, floating in the air; 
 Leads me to some lonely dome, 
 Where Religion loves to come, 
 Where the bride of Jesus dwells, 
 And the deep-toned organ swells 
 In notes with lofty anthems joined 
 Notes that half distract the mind. 
 
 " Fancy, thou the Muses pride, 
 In thy painted realms reside 
 Endless images of things 
 Fluttering each on golden wings. 
 
 Fancy, to thy power I owe 
 
 Half my happiness below; 
 
 By thee Elysian groves were made, 
 
 Thine were the notes that Orpheus played; 
 
 By thee was Pluto charmed so well 
 
 While rapture seized the sons of hell; 
 
 Come, come, perceived by none, 
 
 You and I will walk alone. " 
 
 And this came, remember, before Scott and 
 Wordsworth had revived the stiffened Muse of 
 
 172 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 the English people. With this freedom from 
 conventionalities, there was in the man s make 
 up something of that daintiness which calls to 
 mind the Cavalier singers of the seventeenth 
 century. It may be seen and, in addition, a 
 genuine love of nature in The Wild Honey - 
 Suckle: 
 
 " Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 
 
 Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
 Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow, 
 
 Unseen thy little branches greet : 
 No roving foot shall find thee here, 
 
 No busy hand provoke a tear. 
 
 " From morning suns and evening dews 
 
 At first thy little being came ; 
 If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
 
 For when you die you are the same ; 
 The space between is but an hour, 
 
 The frail duration of a flower." 
 
 The same daintiness, with not a few happy 
 little conceits, may be seen in The Parting 
 Glass, A Lady s Singing Bird, On the Ruins 
 of a Country Inn, and To a Honey Bee. Some 
 time, when you are in a sentimental mood, read 
 these, and you will be surprised and delighted 
 
 173 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 at their delicacy. As we see the bee light upon 
 the tippler s glass of wine and drink, there 
 comes with the half sad, half humorous senti 
 ments of Freneau an echo of old Omar Khay 
 yam sitting before the inn door of long ago. 
 
 1 Welcome ! I hail you to my glass ; 
 
 All welcome here you find; 
 Here let the cloud of trouble pass, 
 Here be all care resigned. 
 
 This fluid never fails to please, 
 And drown the grief of men or bees. 
 
 And the bee having drowned himself: 
 
 1 Do as you please, your will is mine ; 
 
 Enjoy it without fear, 
 And your grave will be this glass of wine, 
 Your epitaph a tear. 
 
 Go, take your seat in Charon s boat; 
 We ll tell the hive, you died afloat." 
 
 But this is not the Freneau that we are to 
 discuss. His was " an age employed in point 
 ing steel," as he himself declared, and to pierce 
 the enemy of his country with the pointed steel 
 was the chief purpose of his life, a purpose 
 worth more in his estimation than all the fan- 
 
 174 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 tastic and pretty creations of his poetic nature. 
 Perhaps, if some brief account of his life be 
 given, we can understand better the reasons for 
 his choice, and why he was the poet of hatred 
 rather than of love. 
 
 Freneau was born in New York in 1752. His 
 ancestors were French Protestant refugees, and 
 all his family had been cultivated, serious 
 minded, and versatile people. His father, who 
 was a wine merchant, was a man of considerable 
 means, and he saw to it that the boy received 
 a broad training. Young Freneau graduated 
 at Princeton in 1771, and at that youthful age 
 showed his fiery patriotism by reciting with 
 another young fire-eater and humorist, Hugh 
 Brackenridge, a dialogue entitled The Rising 
 Glory of America. 
 
 And now began a most energetic career. 
 Journalist, editor, trader, sea-captain, govern 
 ment official, farmer, poet, he lived the " stren 
 uous life " with a zeal that would have satisfied 
 even our greatest modern advocate of this form 
 of existence. By 1775 he had gained notoriety 
 by at least two compositions, A Voyage to Bos 
 ton (1774) and General Gage s Confession 
 (1775) works which were soon to be followed 
 
 175 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 by a consuming flood of vitriolic satires. In 
 1776 and 1780 he made voyages to the West, 
 Indies, with the result that, having been 
 harassed on the first and captured on the second 
 trip and thrust into a British prison-ship, he 
 gained the good will of all American patriots 
 by writing some of the most caustic sarcasm 
 ever composed in any language. During the 
 war many of his contributions appeared in the 
 Philadelphia Freeman s Journal; in 1790 he 
 was editor of the New York Daily Advertiser;, 
 and in 1791 he took charge of The National 
 Gazette of Philadelphia. But he ever had a 
 longing for the ocean he shows it time after 
 time in his poems and between the years 1798 
 and 1812 he was back in the old sea-faring life. 
 After 1812, he lived quietly at his home near 
 Monmouth, New Jersey, and there it was that 
 he lost his way one dark wintry night and was 
 found dead in the snow. 
 
 The very fact that a man at the age of eighty- 
 one would attempt to walk at a late hour of 
 night through a wild, snow-covered waste, 
 shows the energy, the self-reliance, the un- 
 dauntedness of his nature. Tyler, in his Lit 
 erary History of the American Revolution, 
 gives a pen-picture of him at this age a de- 
 
 176 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 scription well worth repeating: " He was still 
 a fine specimen of active and manly old age; 
 in person somewhat below the ordinary height, 
 but muscular and compact; his face pensive in 
 expression and with a care-worn look ; his dark 
 gray eyes sunken deep in their sockets, but 
 sending out gleams and flashes of fire when 
 aroused in talk ; his hair once abundant and 
 beautiful now thinned and bleached by time; 
 stooping a little as he walked; to those who 
 knew him, accustomed to give delight by a con 
 versation abounding in anecdotes of the great 
 age of the American Kevolution. 
 
 This, then, was the most powerful of Revolu 
 tionary satirists, the most vehemently in earn 
 est, the most unrelenting in his hatred. At 
 times he could be playful; but it was the play 
 fulness of a tiger. Beneath the softness were 
 cruel claws and a merciless heart. Even in his 
 mere playing they were not wholly concealed. 
 Read his Crispin O Connor s Answer and see 
 why the Irishman came to America : 
 
 In British land what snares are laid ! 
 There royal rights all right defeat: 
 They taxed my sun, they taxed my shade, 
 
 They taxed the wretched crumbs I eat; 
 12 177 
 
WIT AND H UMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 They taxed my hat, they taxed my shoes, 
 
 Fresh taxes still on taxes grew; 
 They would have taxed my very nose, 
 Had I not fled, dear friends, to you ! 
 
 Even in those humorous verses not dealing 
 with Bevolutionary themes, such as the Song 
 of Tliyrsis in his Female Frailty, your senti 
 ments and ideals are liable to get scratched. 
 Note how quickly the young widow recovers 
 from her bereavement, and begins, as Freneau 
 would doubtless have said in our own days, to 
 sit up and take notice. 
 
 " The turtle on yon withered bough, 
 That lately mourned her murdered mate, 
 Has found another comrade now 
 Such changes all await! 
 Again her drooping plume is drest, 
 Again she s willing to be blest, 
 And takes her lover to her nest. 
 
 " If nature has decreed it so 
 With all above and all below, 
 Let us, like them, forget our woe, 
 And not be killed with sorrow. 
 If I should quit your arms to-night 
 And chance to die before twas light, 
 I would advise you and you might 
 Love again to-morrow." 
 178 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Even in a playful poem on the wounding of 
 his dog, Sancho, Freneau cannot resist the 
 temptation to give a thrust. The poet s cabin 
 had been attacked by robbers; the dog had 
 rushed to its defence; and like that more 
 famous dog, Bingo of the college song, he had 
 soon been i cut up into sausage-meat. 
 
 " The world, my dear Sancho, is full of distress, 
 And you have your share, I allow and confess ; 
 For twice with a musket, and now a cutteau 
 You had nearly gone off to dog-heaven below. 
 
 Poor fellow, I pity your pitiful case ! 
 
 In fact they have ruined the round of your face ; 
 
 And die when you will, be it early or late, 
 
 You will go to your grave with a scar on your pate. 
 
 " If ever a dog be permitted to pass 
 Where folks I could mention have fixed on a place, 
 (But which, I suspect, they will hardly attain 
 While rights of pre-emption in Satan remain.) 
 
 " Good Sancho had merit to put in his plea, 
 And claim with the claimants a portion in fee, 
 On the ground that in life he was one of the few 
 "Who, in watching and barking, were trusty and 
 true." 
 
 179 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 We may say, however, that when Freneau 
 wrote such things he was not in normal condi 
 tion. His temperature was entirely too low. 
 Between 1775 and 1780 he preferred fever-heat, 
 and he succeeded very easily in keeping himself 
 at that degree. Well might he exclaim : 
 
 " Rage gives me wings, and, fearless, prompts me on 
 To conquer brutes the world would blush to own ; 
 No peace, no quarter, to such imps I lend 
 Death and perdition on each line I send." 
 
 A man strong in his likes and dislikes and 
 always positive in his opinions, he generally 
 wrote what the spirit moved him to write, and 
 the spirit was never a hesitating one. In 1782, 
 after the Americans had shown King George 
 that they could not be conquered, Freneau wrote 
 his Prophecy, and there is no uncertainty in 
 the prophetic tones: 
 
 " When a certain great king, whose initial is G, 
 Shall force stamps upon paper, and folks to drink 
 
 tea; 
 When these folks burn his tea and stampt paper, 
 
 like stubble, 
 
 You may guess that this king is then coming to 
 trouble. 
 
 180 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 But when a petition he treads under his feet, 
 And sends over the ocean an army and fleet; 
 When that army, half -starved and frantic with rage, 
 Shall be cooped up with a leader whose name 
 
 rhymes with cage; 
 
 "When that leader goes home dejected and sad, 
 You may then be assured that the king s prospects 
 
 are bad. 
 
 But when B and C with their armies are taken, 
 This king will do well if he saves his own bacon. 
 In the year seventeen hundred and eighty and two 
 A stroke he shall get that will make him look blue ; 
 In the years eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five 
 You hardly shall know that the king is alive ; 
 In the year eighty-six the affair will be over. 
 And he shall eat turnips that grow in Hanover. 
 The face of the Lion shall then become pale, 
 He shall yield fifteen teeth and be sheared of his 
 
 tail. 
 
 O king, my dear king, you shall be very sore ; 
 The Stars and the Lily shall run you on shore, 
 And your Lion shall growl but never bite more ! ! 
 
 True, part of this prophecy was merely a 
 narrative of what had already happened; but 
 if Freneau had written it five years before there 
 would have been not a whit less positiveness. 
 
 It was in 1775 that we had from Freneau 
 the first ferocious outburst of patriotic ire. 
 
 181 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Among the poems written that year by his rest 
 less pen are such bitter satires as On the Con 
 quest of America Shut Up in Boston, General 
 Gage s Soliloquy, The Midnight Consultations, 
 Lib era Nos, Domine, and Mac Swig gen 
 venomous things every one, especially poison 
 ous to Tories. See what delight is his when 
 Gage is besieged in Boston by those American 
 " peasants " whom the general had denounced 
 and sworn to hang: 
 
 " Rebels you are the British champion cries 
 Truth, stand you forth, and tell Tom Gage he lies ! 
 Rebels ! and see, this mock imperial Lord 
 Already threats those rebels with the cord ! 
 
 " The hour draws nigh, the glass is almost run, 
 When truth must shine and scoundrels be undone, 
 When this base miscreant shall forbear to sneer 
 And curse his taunts and bitter insults here." 
 
 After reading his Midnight Consultations, we 
 may well imagine what a furore it made among 
 the Tories of New York, Philadelphia, and Bos 
 ton. They were already sorely aggrieved at 
 the stubbornness of these plebeian colonists and 
 the lack of perseverance in the character of the 
 English regulars; and Freneau s satire was 
 acid poured upon their smarting wounds. The 
 
 182 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 poem tells of a meeting of British officers at 
 midnight after the Battle of Bunker Hill, at 
 which meeting confusion and anger reigned. 
 The officers were trying to devise a plan for 
 holding the slippery Americans: 
 
 " Twelve was the hour congenial darkness reigned, 
 And no bright star a mimic daylight feigned. 
 First, Gage we saw a crimson chair of state 
 Received the honor of his Honor s weight. 
 This man of straw the regal purple bound, 
 But dullness, deepest dullness, hovered round. 
 Next Graves, who wields the trident of the brine, 
 The tall arch-captain of the embattled line, 
 All gloomy sate mumbling of flame and fire, 
 Balls, cannons, ships, and all their damned attire; 
 Well pleased to live in never-ending hum, 
 But empty as the interior of his drum. 
 Hard by, Burgoyne assumes an ample space, 
 And seemed to meditate with studious face, 
 
 Is he to conquer he subdue our land 
 This buckram hero, with his lady s hand? 
 By Caesars to be vanquished is a curse, 
 But by a scribbling fop by heaven, is worse! 
 Lord Percy seemed to snore but may the muse 
 This ill-timed snoring to the peer excuse : 
 Tired was the long boy of his toilsome day 
 Full fifteen miles he fled, a tedious way. 
 183 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Gage s wrath was great. Thrice he swore, and 
 cried : 
 
 * * Tis nonsense to be beat ! 
 Thus to be drubbed ! Pray, warriors, let me know 
 Which be in fault, myself, the fates, or you! 
 Hencefore let Britain deem her men mere toys! 
 Gods ! to be frighted thus by country boys. 
 "Why, if our army had a mind to sup, 
 They might have eat that schoolboy army up ! 
 
 You have the knack, Lord Percy, to retreat ; 
 
 The death you scaped my warmest blood congeals, 
 
 Heaven grant me, too, so swift a pair of heels ! " 
 
 And there too was that meagre tearfully 
 meagre fare! How could it longer be borne 
 by a high-born British officer? " Three 
 weeks/ cried Gage, 
 
 " Three weeks ye gods! nay, three long years it 
 
 seems, 
 
 Since roast beef I have touched, except in dreams. 
 In sleep choice dishes to my view repair, 
 Waking I gaze and champ the empty air. 
 Say, is it just that I, who rule these bands, 
 Should live on husks, like rakes in foreign lands? 
 Come, let us plan some project ere we sleep, 
 And drink destruction to the rebel sheep. 
 184 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 On neighboring isles uncounted cattle stray, 
 
 Fat beeves and swine an ill defended prey ; 
 
 These are fit victims for my noonday dish, 
 
 These, if my soldiers act as I would wish, 
 
 In one short week would glad your maws and mine 
 
 On mutton we will sup, on roast beef dine ! 
 
 Shouts of applause re-echoed through the hall, 
 
 And what pleased one as surely pleased them all; 
 
 Wallace was named to execute the plan, 
 
 And thus sheep-stealing pleased them to a man." 
 
 Mention has been made of another sarcastic 
 poem of Freneau s written in 1775 his Lib era 
 Nos, Domine. In but one other piece, The 
 Prison Ship, of which we shall hear later, is 
 his denunciation more biting, his nauseating 
 disgust more apparent. How vividly and how 
 vehemently lie sums up in this mock litany the 
 woes of his country and the tyranny of Britain. 
 Lord, deliver us, he cries, 
 
 " From the group at St. James s that slight our peti 
 tions, 
 
 And fools that are waiting for further submissions ; 
 From a nation whose manners are rough and abrupt, 
 From scoundrels and rascals whom gold can cor 
 rupt; 
 
 185 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 11 From the valiant Dunmore, with his crew of ban 
 ditti, 
 
 Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburgh city; 
 From hot-headed Montague, mighty to swear, 
 The little fat man with his pretty white hair. 
 
 " From Tyron the mighty, who flies from our city, 
 And swelled with importance, disdains the com 
 mittee, 
 
 (But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes, 
 What the devil care we where the devil he goes) ; 
 
 * From the scoundrel, Lord North, who would bind us 
 
 in chains, 
 From a dunce of a king who was born without 
 
 brains, 
 
 The utmost extent of whose sense is to see 
 That reigning and making of buttons agree ; 
 
 " From an island that bullies and hectors and swears, 
 I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers 
 That we, disunited, may freemen be still, 
 And Britain go on to be damned, if she will! " 
 
 It is rather surprising to find that this hydro- 
 phobic fire-eater joined no regiment, com 
 manded no war-vessel, engaged in no physical 
 strife whatever with the British foe. His writ 
 ings clearly show that he could not have be 
 longed to the class stigmatized by Tom Paine 
 
 186 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 as " the summer soldier and the sunshine pa 
 triot; " but why did he not enter into actual 
 warfare? Doubtless we shall never know. 
 The Americans may have considered him more 
 valuable to the cause while he was at his desk 
 than in the field. There are some unaccount 
 able lapses even in his satirical warfare 
 periods when he wrote almost nothing for the 
 amusement of the home folks and the in 
 struction of the foreigners. We have noted 
 that in 1776 he sailed for the West Indies, where 
 he remained until the middle of 1778, and on 
 those islands he composed some of his longest, 
 most imaginative, and most nearly perfect 
 works. But they do not, however, deal with 
 rebellious colonists. By 1778 he was back in 
 the colonies and at his old work of sending 
 forth scornful invectives against the red-coats. 
 Exulting that America had declared her inde 
 pendence, he wrote his America Independent 
 and Her Everlasting Deliverance from British 
 Tyranny and Oppression. How many a com 
 pliment of vinegar flavor King George and his 
 Tory advisers received in this energetic 
 tirade! Looking upon the Royalists, Freneau 
 thus expressed himself: 
 
 187 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " So vile a crew the world ne er saw before, 
 And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more! 
 If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air, 
 Those ghosts have entered these base bodies here. 
 
 Whene er they wed, may demons and despair 
 And grief and woe and blackest night be there; 
 Fiends leagued from hell the nuptial lamp display, 
 Swift to perdition light them on their way, 
 Round the wide world their devilish squadrons 
 
 chase 
 To find no realm that grants one resting place. " 
 
 Then, where and when shall Tories find their 
 resting place? Preneau finds but one suitable 
 spot: 
 
 " Far to the North, on Scotland s utmost end, 
 An isle there lies, the haunt of every fiend ; 
 There screeching owls and screaming vultures rest, 
 And not a tree adorns its barren breast. 
 
 Shrouded in ice, the blasted mountains show 
 Their cloven heads, to fright the seas below: 
 
 The blackening wind, incessant storms prolong, 
 Dull as their night, and dreary as my song. 
 When stormy winds with rain refuse to blow, 
 Then from the dark sky drives the unpitying snow ; 
 
 188 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 No peace, no rest, the elements bestow, 
 
 But seas forever rage, and storms forever blow. 
 
 " Here, miscreants, here with Loyal hearts retire, 
 Here pitch your tents, and kindle here your fire ; 
 Here desert nature will her stings display, 
 And fiercest hunger on your vitals prey." 
 
 Another lapse now occurred in Freneau s lit 
 erary productiveness; but it was only a lull 
 before the hurricane. In 1780, evidently weary 
 of war and its demands, he again shipped for 
 the West Indies ; but he had scarcely gotten out 
 to sea when a British ship bore down upon his 
 vessel, captured all, and carried him a prisoner 
 to New York. Imprisoned in a * * rotten hulk, 
 The Scorpion, he literally suffered the tor 
 ments of hell, gained relief in the unconscious 
 ness of a raging fever, and awoke to find him 
 self in a hospital ship, The Hunter. If his 
 bemuddled brain had conceived the idea that a 
 hospital ship would present any fewer horrors 
 than The Scorpion, he was very soon and very 
 rudely undeceived. Never did he forget those 
 days of suffering. In his poem dealing with 
 the experience, The British Prison Ship 
 (1780), he cried to the American sailors: 
 
 189 
 
. WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Strike not your standards to this miscreant foe. 
 Better the greedy wave should swallow all, 
 Better to meet the death-conducted ball, 
 Better to sleep on ocean s deepest bed, 
 At once destroyed and numbered with the dead, 
 Than thus to perish in the face of day 
 Where twice ten-thousand deaths one death repay. 
 
 Eemembrance followed him everywhere; he 
 was literally full of the " Scorpion " poison. 
 He saw in his dreams the beasts in human form 
 that walked the deck of the cursed vessel: 
 
 " Still in my view some English brute appears 
 Some base-born Hessian slave walks threat ning 
 
 by- 
 Some servile Scot, with murder in his eye, 
 Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan 
 Rebellions managed so unlike their own! 
 
 " Oh may I never feel the poignant pain, 
 To live subjected to such fiends again, 
 Stewards and mates that hostile Britain bore, 
 Cut from the gallows on their native shore, 
 Their ghastly looks and vengeance beaming eyes 
 Still to my view in dismal colors rise. 
 
 Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine, 
 And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine, 
 The mangled carcase, and the battered brain, 
 190 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 The doctor s poison, and the captain s cane, 
 The soldier s musket, and the steward s debt, 
 The evening shackle, and the noon-day threat! 
 
 Shut from the blessings of the evening air, 
 Pensive we lay with mangled corpses there ; 
 Meagre and wan and scorched with heat, below, 
 We loomed like ghosts, ere death had made us so! " 
 
 One figure stands out before most of the 
 others in cruelty and savagery the Hessian 
 doctor. l Fair Science never called the wretch 
 her son." Many an American soldier in wars 
 much more modern than the Eevolution can 
 appreciate the truth if not the humor of this 
 description of the blundering quack : 
 
 " He on his charge the healing work begun 
 With antimonial mixtures by the tun; 
 
 He drenched us well with bitter draughts, tis true, 
 Nostrums from Hell, and cortex from Peru; 
 Some with his pills he sent to Pluto s reign, 
 And some he blistered with his flies of Spain; 
 His Cream of Tartar walked its deadly round, 
 Till the lean patient at the potion frowned, 
 And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will, 
 Were nonsense to the drugs that stuffed his bill. 
 191 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 On those refusing, he bestowed a kick, 
 
 Or menaced vengeance with his walking-stick; 
 
 Here, uncontrolled, he exercised his trade, 
 
 And grew experienced by the deaths he made ; 
 
 By frequent blows we from his cane endured, 
 
 He killed at least as many as he cured, 
 
 On our lost comrades built his future fame, 
 
 And scattered fate where er his footsteps came. 
 
 Some did not seem obedient to his will, 
 
 And swore he mingled poison with his pill; 
 
 But I acquit him by a fair confession 
 
 He was no Englishman he was a Hessian ! 
 
 Although a dunce, he had some sense of sin, 
 
 Or else the Lord knows where we now had been, 
 
 Perhaps in that far country sent to range 
 
 Where never prisoner meets with an exchange! " 
 
 After this experience in the prison-ship there 
 was nevermore a sentiment of peace in Fren- 
 eau s breast. He wrote like a frenzied man; 
 his whole life seemed henceforth to be bent 
 toward one purpose: to show the British and 
 the Tories their titter fitness for the land of 
 brimstone and eternal damnation. Look, for a 
 moment, at his Political Balance, or the Fates 
 of Britain and America Compared. Jove, the 
 king of all Creation, " happened to light on the 
 records of Fate." 
 
 192 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " In alphabet order this volume was written, 
 So he opened at B., for the article Britain. 
 * She struggles so well/ said the god, I will see 
 What the sisters in Pluto s dominions decree ! 
 
 " And first on the top of a column he read 
 Of a king with a mighty soft place in his head, 
 Who should join in his temper the ass and the mule, 
 The Third of his name, and by far the worst fool. 
 
 " His reign shall be famous for multiplication, 
 The sire and the king of a whelp generation ; 
 But such is the will and the purpose of Fate, 
 For each child he begets he shall forfeit a state. " 
 
 This did not give Jove all the information desir 
 able, and, in order that he might discover for 
 himself the ultimate end of Great Britain, he 
 ordered Vulcan to make him a globe represent 
 ing the earth, so constructed that it might be 
 taken apart and weighed in sections. Vulcan 
 turned out a fine piece of work, and placed in 
 it all the known geographical divisions. 
 
 " Adjacent to Europe he struck up an island, 
 One part of it low, but the other was high land, 
 With many a comical creature upon it, 
 And one wore a hat, and another a bonnet. 
 . . .... 
 
 13 193 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " These poor little creatures were all in a flame, 
 To the lands of America urging their claim, 
 Still biting or stinging or spreading their sails, 
 For Vulcan had formed them with stings in their 
 tails. 
 
 * l So poor and so lean, you might count all their ribs, 
 Yet were so enraptured with crackers and squibs, 
 That Vulcan with laughter almost split asunder 
 * Because they imagined their crackers were thun 
 der. " 
 
 All being finished, Jove, with the aid of all 
 the gods, succeeded in lifting huge Columbia 
 " one eighth of the globe " into the scale; but 
 the effort cost the gods many a grunt. Then 
 Jove began to search for Great Britain. 
 
 " Then searching about with his fingers for Britain, 
 Thought he, This same island I cannot well hit on ; 
 The devil take him who first called her the Great ! 
 If she was she is vastly diminished of late. 
 
 " Like a man that is searching his thigh for a flea, 
 He peeped and he fumbled, but nothing could see ; 
 At last he exclaimed I m surely upon it 
 I think I have hold of a highlander s bonnet/ " 
 
 By the aid, however, of two moons used as 
 glasses, he at length gains a clear view of the 
 islands : 
 
 194 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1 But, faith, she s so small I must mind how I shake 
 
 her 
 In a box I ll enclose her, for fear I should break 
 
 her: 
 
 Though a god, I might suffer for being aggressor, 
 Since scorpions and vipers and hornets possess her, 
 
 But, Vulcan, inform me what creatures are these 
 That smell so of onions and garlic and cheese ? 
 Old Vulcan replied Odds splutter a nails! 
 Why these are the Welsh, and the country is Wales ! 
 When Taffy is vexed, no devil is ruder 
 Take care how you handle the offspring of Tudor ! 
 
 Jove peeped through his moons and examined their 
 features, 
 
 And said, * By my troth, they are wonderful creat 
 ures ! 
 
 The beards are so long they encircle their throats, 
 
 That unless they are Welshmen I swear they are 
 goats. 
 
 t But now, my dear Juno, pray give me my mit 
 tens 
 
 The insects I am going to handle are Britons 
 I ll draw up their isle with a finger and thumb, 
 As the doctor extracts an old tooth from your gum. 
 195 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Then he raised her aloft but to shorten our tale 
 She looked like a clod in the opposite scale, 
 Britannia so small, and Columbia so large 
 A ship of first rate, and a ferryman s barge! " 
 
 Jove was disgusted. 
 
 11 Then cease your endeavors, ye vermin of 
 
 Britain 
 
 And here in derision their island he spit on 
 Tis madness to seek what you never can find, 
 Or think of uniting what nature disjoined; 
 
 " But still you may flutter awhile with your wings, 
 And spit out your venom, and brandish your stings ; 
 Your hearts are as black and as bitter as gall 
 A curse to yourselves, and a blot on the Ball! " 
 
 Here is a positive genius for rubbing the fur 
 the wrong way. Doubtless old King George, 
 if he ever read any of these tirades of Freneau, 
 must have felt like exclaiming, with another 
 foolish king, " How sharper than a serpent s 
 tooth is an unthankful child! " From such a 
 hater could we ever expect true reconciliation? 
 Even after George III had made his speech 
 recommending peace, Freneau arose in his 
 wrath and shouted : 
 
 196 
 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 " Monster! no peace shall greet thy breast: 
 Our murdered friends shall never cease 
 To hover round and break thy rest! 
 The Furies shall thy bosom tear, 
 Remorse, Distraction, and Despair, 
 And Hell with all its fiends, be there ! 
 
 " Cursed be the ship that e er set sail 
 
 Hence, freighted for thy odious shore; 
 May tempests o er her strength prevail, 
 
 Destruction round her roar! 
 May Nature all her aids deny, 
 
 The sun refuse his light, 
 The needle from its object fly, 
 No star appear by night, 
 
 Till the base pilot, conscious of his crime, 
 Directs the prow to some more grateful clime. 
 
 Freneau s was no hackneyed pen. He wrote 
 with his whole heart, and his heart was one 
 large mass of concentrated ire. With an 
 originality not equalled perhaps by any other 
 eighteenth century American writer, and with 
 a vigor worthy of his riotous times, he served 
 the colonial cause in a way no other man of 
 the age could have served it. A genuine lover 
 of the rights of man was this Philip Freneau; 
 not so rhetorical as Tom Paine, but undoubt- 
 
 197 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 edly more sincere, more savagely in earnest in 
 his efforts to crush the enemies of liberty. He 
 saw the possibilities of the nation, and believed, 
 as he wrote, that 
 
 " The time shall come when strangers rule no more, 
 Nor cruel mandates vex from Britain s shore; 
 When commerce shall extend her shortened wing, 
 And her rich freights from every climate bring; 
 When mighty towns shall flourish free and great, 
 Vast their dominion, opulent their state; 
 When one vast cultivated region teems 
 From ocean s side to Mississippi s streams, 
 While each enjoys his vine tree s peaceful shade 
 And even the meanest has no foe to dread." 
 
IX 
 
 JOHN TRUMBULL 
 
 We come now to the last of the more promi 
 nent wits of this battle of words, John Trum- 
 bull (1750-1831). Tradition tells a pretty lit 
 tle story about that name. One of the kings 
 of England the tradition is pleasantly in 
 definite while walking through a field, at 
 tracted the attention of a bull who, it seems, 
 was not especially fond of kings. The vicious 
 creature rushed bellowing toward the ruler and 
 undoubtedly would soon have gored the royal 
 sprinter to death had not a peasant bravely 
 hastened to the rescue and battled for his High 
 ness life. The grateful king at once de 
 clared that henceforth the laborer s name 
 should be Turnbull, and, what was of more im 
 portance to the rustic, gave him a pension of 
 one hundred marks and a coat of arms co 
 piously decorated with bulls heads. Thus, 
 for a long time the name was Turnbull; but 
 
 199 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 some centuries after the incident a certain 
 proud member of the family, fearing that his 
 ancestry might be connected by the scornful 
 with a butcher-shop, had the name changed to 
 Trumbull, and so it has remained until this day. 
 
 Tales still more curious are told about the 
 particular Trumbull now under our observa 
 tion. It is declared, in his private papers, that 
 before he was two he had memorized all the 
 verses in the Primer and in Watts Divine 
 Songs for Children; at two and a half he could 
 read readily; at five he had completed a read 
 ing of the Bible, and was composing verses of 
 his own. Before he was six he had learned 
 Latin and Greek by listening to his father s 
 pupils, and at seven he passed the entrance ex 
 amination for Yale ! That this last mentioned 
 point is a fact may be ascertained from the ac 
 counts given of it in the old files of various 
 New England newspapers, notably The Connec 
 ticut Gazette of September, 1757. His father 
 had the good sense, however, not to allow him 
 to enter the college until he was thirteen. 
 
 WTiat might we not expect from such a 
 youth? That he would become either an 
 idiot or a Macaulay. He became neither. So 
 
 200 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 much for the caprices of nature. But he did 
 develop into one of the most learned men of 
 colonial America, certainly one of the keenest 
 wits of his day, and the author of the only 
 American mock-heroic poem that approaches 
 the rank of Mac Flecknoe andThe Dunciad. Be 
 fore we progress further, however, perhaps we 
 should note something of his life. It is but 
 human nature to desire to know where a man 
 was born, why he was born, and when he died. 
 
 John Trumbull came of what Emerson and 
 Holmes called the Brahmin stock of New Eng 
 land. Born at Waterbury, Connecticut, in 
 1750, he was thoroughly, one might almost say, 
 violently, educated by his father, and received 
 the bachelor s degree from Yale in 1767 and 
 the master s in 1770. If any reader has the 
 idea that Yale was in this day a dull and gloomy 
 cavern of asceticism and pessimistic theology, 
 he is much mistaken. A gay and brilliant 
 company of young men were within its walls, 
 and there was a genuine love and interest for 
 the purer forms of literature and the fine arts 
 perhaps not equalled in that famous institu 
 tion at this very moment. Here, it seems, Trum 
 bull did his first published literary work. In 
 
 201 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 September, 1769, he began in the Boston Chron 
 icle a series of essays named The Meddler, 
 and the name was indeed fitting. They meddled 
 with everything that might interest a mortal 
 being. Here indeed was pure love of writing. 
 In spite of the fact that Trumbull declared his 
 purpose to be " instructing the ignorant, di 
 verting and improving the learned, rectifying 
 the tastes and manners of the time, and culti 
 vating the fine arts, we are tempted to believe 
 that he wrote, just as many a writer has before 
 and since, simply for the fun of writing. And 
 the pleasure was not all his ; those articles have 
 an entertaining quality that survives to this 
 day. Although too evidently modelled after the 
 Spectator, they dispense very pleasantly with 
 much of the circumlocution and primness of the 
 classic English papers, and speak with a raci- 
 ness and a vivacity that perhaps mark them as 
 the lineal ancestor of the Autocrat series. 
 
 We may not here go into a detailed exami 
 nation; for there are more important produc 
 tions to be discussed; perhaps, however, this 
 little advertisement from one of the " dis 
 courses " may give some idea of their piquant 
 yet genial flavor : 
 
 202 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 * " To Be Sold At Public Vendue, 
 
 The Whole Estate of 
 Isabella Sprightly, Toast and Coquette, 
 (Now retiring from Business). 
 
 1 Imprimis, all the Tools and Utensils necessary for 
 carrying on the Trade, viz: Several bundles of Darts 
 and Arrows, well-pointed, and capable of doing great 
 execution. A considerable quantity of Patches, 
 Paint, Brushes, and Cosmetics, for plastering, paint 
 ing, and whitewashing the face; a complete set of 
 caps, a la mode a Paris/ of all sizes from five to 
 fifteen inches in height; With several dozens of 
 Cupids, very proper to be stationed on a ruby lip, 
 a diamond eye, or a roseate cheek. 
 
 " Item, as she proposes by certain ceremonies to 
 transform one of her humble servants into a husband, 
 and keep him for her own use, she offers for sale, 
 Florio, Daphnis, Cynthio, and Cleanthes, with sev 
 eral others, whom she won by a constant attendance 
 on business during the space of four years. She 
 can prove her indisputable right thus to dispose of 
 them, by certain deeds of gifts, bills of sale, and at 
 testation, vulgarly called love-letters, under their own 
 hands and seals. They will be offered very cheap, for 
 they are all of them broken-hearted, consumptive, or 
 in a dying condition. Nay, some of them have been 
 dead this half year, as they declare and testify in the 
 above-mentioned writing. 
 
 * Copied from the Trumbull MSS. as given in Tyler s Literary 
 History of the American Revolution. 
 
 203 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " N.B. Their hearts will be sold separately. " 
 Again, speaking of that bad habit of society 
 folk, of being out late and arising long after the 
 cock has crowed the healthful hour, he says : 
 
 " The Afternoon hath of late made great encroach 
 ments upon its neighbors, and strangely jostled and 
 discomposed the other parts of the day. It hath 
 driven forward the Morning from its proper station, 
 and forced it to take refuge in the habitation of 
 Noon; it hath made Breakfast and Dinner shake 
 hands, and been the total destruction of Supper; it 
 hath devoured a large portion of Night, and unless a 
 speedy stop be put to its motion, may probably swal 
 low up the whole four and twenty Hours." 
 
 It is evident that this college-student had the 
 talent to become in time a writer of ability, and 
 the fact was just as clear to the young man 
 himself as to anybody else. The year he re 
 ceived his master s degree (1770) he began 
 another series, The Correspondent, in the Con 
 necticut Journal and New Haven Post Boy. 
 We do not know why the editor did not ampu 
 tate some portion of his paper s name; but we 
 can readily see why he allowed Trumbull to 
 contribute to his columns. This second series 
 is a trifle more sarcastic than the first, and is 
 written with a mock dignity and supercilious 
 
 204 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 loftiness that make a sympathetic reader un 
 consciously raise his eyebrows, wag his head in 
 gay unconcern, and try to act just as super 
 ciliously. The writer himself, however, was 
 really and perhaps unknown to himself 
 growing more earnest. He attacked various 
 would-be philosophers, dogmatic divines of the 
 day, and sundry ridiculous vagaries then be 
 coming dangerously popular ; and now and then 
 he hit hard. Clearly this industrious college 
 fellow was getting ready for the main work of 
 his life. 
 
 After receiving his master s degree, Trum- 
 bull studied law a year ; but in the fall of 1771 
 he was back at Yale as a tutor, and here we 
 find him for the next two years. Evidently 
 he was giving considerable time to a serious 
 study of philosophy; for several of his pub 
 lished papers of this period deal with abstruse 
 questions, and consequently are just about as 
 interesting to the general reader as their sub 
 jects are. But the spirit of playfulness in the 
 man would not down, in spite of the dignity ex 
 pected of a Yale tutor, and in the second year of 
 his work there we see him once more enjoying 
 life in the preparation of a second series of 
 
 205 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The Correspondent. At this time, too, ap 
 peared his first long satirical poem. The 
 Progress of Dulness, published in 1772, was 
 something of a revelation to American read 
 ers. Here was a man who could write lines not 
 unworthy, at times, of Dryden and Pope. And 
 how bitterly true this Progress was! Such a 
 volume of protests as arose immediately after 
 its publication had never before greeted an 
 American poem. Surely the shoe must have 
 more than fit; it must have pinched the tender 
 New England foot. As to that, however, we 
 each may judge for ourselves a little later in 
 this discussion. 
 
 It now seemed to occur to Trumbull, as to 
 many another college professor since, that if 
 he intended ever to possess any of this world s 
 goods he had better turn his wits to some other 
 profession. In November, 1773, he was ad 
 mitted to the bar of Connecticut, and from this 
 time forth he looked to the law for his daily 
 bread. Before, however, he began the actual 
 practice of it, he went to Boston, where he 
 studied with John Adams and lived in the home 
 of another prominent man, Thomas Gushing. 
 Doubtless this had much to do with arousing 
 
 206 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 that patriotic ire for which he afterwards be 
 came so noted, and also in shaping his future 
 career as a satirical opponent of Toryism and 
 all that savored of royal prerogative. Then, 
 too, he was in Boston when the strife first began 
 to assume astonishing proportions, when the 
 hastily arranged but highly successful Tea 
 Party was given, and when King George tried 
 so vainly to " bottle up " Boston and seal the 
 cork besides. (Critics will kindly excuse this 
 twentieth century expression; we must use a 
 few terms later than Johnson s day, else the 
 language will become petrified.) We must not 
 think, however, that Trumbull s interest in the 
 law made him forget his poetic talent. During 
 that year at Boston he composed three dignified, 
 even stern poems, The Prophecy of Balaam, 
 The Destruction of Babylon, and An Elegy on 
 the Times, Composed at Boston during the 
 Operation of the Port Bill. Needless to say, 
 among such environments his poems breathed 
 forth prophecies of dire disaster to England 
 and all her friends. 
 
 During the next year Trumbull settled down 
 to the serious practice of law. And in spite of 
 his frail health and the fact that he was known 
 
 207 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 as a humorist and not an especially dignified 
 barrister, he was exceedingly successful, be 
 came State Attorney for Hartford County, a 
 member of the legislature, a Judge of the 
 Superior Court, and finally a Judge of the Su 
 preme Court of Errors. But fickle is fame. 
 Doubtless the folk of the times thought this 
 man would long be remembered as a mighty 
 judge in the land and that his scribblings of 
 the Eevolutionary days would soon pass into 
 oblivion ; and lo ! not one person in ten thousand 
 knows that he ever sat on the bench, while any 
 high- school boy can tell you that he wrote 
 McFingal. 
 
 But to return to that year at Boston. Just 
 here is the turning point in TrumbulPs career. 
 He is now to sacrifice his ambition for a life 
 devoted to pure literature. He is to offer his 
 education, his culture, his genius, on the altar 
 of his harassed country. Henceforth he is to 
 be a satirist, a scoffing, ridiculing, boisterous 
 maker of popular verse, instead of a creator 
 of the noble poetry which he hoped and had the 
 talent to write. That he did this, not through 
 an itching for fame, but through genuine love 
 of country, is evidenced in the fact that much of 
 
 208 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 his work at this period was anonymous and 
 none of it remunerative. 
 
 In August, 1775, he wrote for the Connecti 
 cut Courant, a burlesque on Gage s proclama 
 tion to the " rebels, " and doubtless the ap 
 plause which this effort received encouraged 
 him to hasten his work on his masterpiece, 
 McFingal, then under preparation. The first 
 canto of this mock epic appeared in Philadel 
 phia on almost the same day in January, 1776, 
 as Tom Paine s vigorous treatise, Common- 
 sense. Of course, John Trumbull wrote much 
 after this date but the main literary work of 
 his life was now done. In 1781, when the 
 strain of war was practically over, he divided 
 this first canto of McFingal into two, added two 
 more, and in 1782 issued the poem in its present 
 form. Henceforth busy with his duties as a 
 lawyer and judge, he passed his life in industry 
 and with undoubted usefulness to his country 
 men. But the spark that might have become a 
 flame of genius had perished, it seems, in the 
 day of strife, and the poet that might have been 
 remained merely the poet that might have 
 been. In 1825 the old man, a distinguished 
 jurist by this time, decided to remove to De- 
 
 14 209 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 troit to spend his last days with his daughter 
 in that wilderness village. He tarried for a 
 few days in New York City, where a great 
 banquet was given him, and all the famous men 
 of the day, it seems, gathered to bid him God 
 speed. At Detroit he lived the quiet, studious 
 life of which he was always fond, and there in 
 1831 he died. A striking monument stands 
 over his grave in Elmwood cemetery in that 
 city. 
 
 Here was a man who, in a work which he de 
 clared uncongenial, surpassed any other Ameri 
 can who has ever attempted the type of verse 
 that made the fame of Dryden, Pope, Churchill, 
 and a score of other poetic wits of Great 
 Britain. In what traits does he surpass? It 
 is necessary for our purpose here to examine 
 but two of his works, his masterpieces, The 
 Progress of Dulness and McFingal. 
 
 As we have intimated, Trumbull did not be 
 lieve himself a natural satirist. Commenting 
 upon the question, he once wrote : " I was born 
 the dupe of imagination. My satirical turn was 
 not native. It was produced by the keen spirit 
 of critical observation operating on disap 
 pointed expectation, and avenging itself on real 
 or fancied wrongs." One cannot read The 
 
 210 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Progress of Dulness without seriously doubt 
 ing the statement. Even if not to the manner 
 born, however, he would in all probability have 
 been forced into satirical conflicts by the very 
 spirit of the times. It was the fashion of the 
 day to be a witty scribbler. That cross-grained 
 genius, Pope, had cast his flippant slurs at all 
 forms of humanity; Charles Churchill was 
 stinging the reading world with a sharp and 
 venomous pen; while a host of Grub Street 
 slashers were exercising their ill-natured 
 spleen. It paid to be satirists ; men feared and 
 endeavored to conciliate them. 
 
 Whatever the reason, it was not the Eevolu- 
 tion that made Trumbull a merciless wit. The 
 Progress of Dulness, written before the war, 
 has a keenness, a precision in its thrusts, an 
 accuracy of observation that show an unusual 
 genius for saying sharp things in a sharp way. 
 The poem deals with three phases of intel 
 lectual poverty a poverty just as prevalent 
 to-day as in the eighteenth century. First 
 come the adventures of Tom Brainless, wherein 
 the forms of education offered by American 
 colleges of Trumbull s day are arraigned and 
 proved to be as useless as some phases of the 
 modern system. Tom, the farmer s son, must 
 
 211 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 go to college. He has shown no particular apti 
 tude for study, in fact, he is something of a 
 blockhead; but his parents have made the de 
 cree, and to college Tom must go. In the in 
 stitution he is soon overcome by that most 
 prevalent college disease laziness. 
 
 " Greek spoils his eyes, the print s so fine, 
 Grown dim with study, or with, wine ; 
 Of Tally s Latin much afraid, 
 Each page he calls the doctor s aid; 
 While geometry with lines so crooked, 
 Sprains all his wits to overlook it. 
 His sickness puts on every name, 
 Its cause and uses still the same, 
 Tis tooth-ache, colic, gout, or stone, 
 With phases various as the moon ; 
 But though through all the body spread, 
 Still makes its cap tal seat, the head. 
 In all diseases, tis expected, 
 The weakest parts be most infected. 
 Kind Head- Ache, hail ! thou blest disease, 
 The friend of idleness and ease; 
 Who, mid the still and dreary bound 
 Where college walls her sons surround, 
 In spite of fears, in justice spite, 
 Assum st o er laws dispensing right, 
 Set st from his task the blunderer free, 
 Excused by dullness and by thee." 
 212 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Other students work hard. 
 
 " And plodding on in one dull tone, 
 Gain ancient tongues and lose their own." 
 
 Tom, however, is in no such danger. 
 
 At length the young dunce comes forth 
 with his diploma; how he obtained it is 
 one of those mysteries known only to weary 
 faculties and college presidents. See the 
 fledgling Solomon, as he disdainfully mingles 
 with the stupid populace. 
 
 " Our hero s wit and learning now may 
 Be proud by token of diploma, 
 Of that diploma which with speed 
 He learns to construe and to read ; 
 And stalks abroad with conscious stride, 
 In all the airs of pedant pride, 
 With passport sign d for wit and knowledge 
 And current under seal of college." 
 
 But, alas, 
 
 " Few months now past, he sees with pain, 
 His purse as empty as his brain." 
 
 His father advises him " to teach a school at 
 first and then to preach," and Tom promptly 
 
 213 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 decides to become a teacher. This is, of 
 course, the most natural thing in the world, 
 as school-boards are frequently seeking cheap 
 blockheads, and such fellows seldom fail to se 
 cure the position if they sell their ignorance 
 lower than other blockheads. 
 
 Tom is a great success ; he can wield the rod s 
 "electric end" with wonderful agility. But 
 the real ambition of his life is to become a 
 preacher. He studies theology and 
 
 Learns with nice art to make with ease 
 The Scriptures speak whate er he please ; 
 With judgment, unperceived, to quote 
 What Poole explained, or Henry wrote; 
 To give the gospel new editions, 
 Split doctrines into propositions, 
 Draw motives, uses, inferences, 
 And torture words in thousand senses; 
 Learn the grave style and goodly phrase, 
 Safe handed down from Cromwell s days, 
 And shun, with anxious Care the while, 
 The infection of a modern style ! 
 
 Thus equipped, he goes forth to find a flock, 
 discovers it in a withered, or more accurately 
 speaking, a petrified country-town, sinks into 
 a living oblivion, 
 
 214 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 1 And starves on sixty pounds a year ; 
 And culls his texts, and tills his farm, 
 Does little good and little harm; 
 On Sunday, in his best array, 
 Deals forth the dullness of the day ; 
 And while above he spends his breath, 
 The yawning audience nod beneath." 
 
 Behold what wonders education hath wrought ! 
 Thus endeth the story of Tom Brainless. 
 
 The second part of The Progress of Dulness 
 tells of one, Dick Hairbrain, and is a really 
 strong piece of writing dealing with a subject 
 which is still paramount in college circles the 
 evil life of the money-cursed, pampered, and 
 sensual college boy. The third part of the 
 poem is even more modern. In fact, we have 
 not even yet reached the high plane of some of 
 the views expressed in this treatise in verse. 
 Miss Harriet Simper shows us, by her 
 ignorance, silliness, and empty life, the folly of 
 giving women no deeper and higher insight 
 into knowledge, of excluding her from the 
 realm of higher thought, and of condemning 
 her to a shallow, narrow round of existence. 
 What a fate is Harriet s, and yet how common 
 a one! 
 
 215 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Poor Harriet now hath had her day ; 
 No more the beaux confess her sway; 
 New beauties push her from the stage ; 
 She trembles at th approach of age, 
 And starts to view the alter d face 
 That wrinkles at her in her glass. 
 So Satan, in the monk s tradition, 
 Feared when he met his apparition. 
 At length her name each coxcomb cancels 
 From standing lists of toasts and angels ; 
 And slighted where she shone before, 
 A grace and goddess now no more. 
 Despised by all, and doomed to meet 
 Her lovers at her rival s feet, 
 She flies assemblies, shuns the ball, 
 And cries out, vanity, on all; 
 Affects to scorn the tinsel-shows 
 Of glittering belles and gaudy beaux 
 
 Now careless grown of airs polite, 
 Her noonday nightcap meets the sight; 
 Her hair uncomb d collects together 
 With ornaments of many a feather 
 
 A careless figure half undress d 
 
 (The reader s wits may guess the rest) ; 
 
 She spends her breath, as years prevail, 
 At this sad, wicked world to rail, 
 To slander all her sex impromptu, 
 And wonder what the times will come to." 
 216 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 This, be it remembered, is not a crude pro 
 duction of an uncultured provincial. There is 
 an admirable finish in much of it, and, with 
 this polish, an artistic unity, a keen observa 
 tion, a power of sustaining, and an ability to 
 produce epigram not unworthy, at times, of 
 Pope himself. 
 
 Well conceived and well written as this is, 
 McFingal is a much more masterly production. 
 In this we approach, perhaps at times even 
 equal, the excellence of the Dunciad, Mac Fleck- 
 noe, and portions of the Rape of the Lock. 
 Griswold once said that it was the best imita 
 tion of Butler s Eudibras that had been writ 
 ten; but if this really is an imitation of the 
 famous English satire, here is an instance 
 where the imitation excels at many points the 
 original. It can make no claim to be noble or 
 beautiful poetry; but it has that saving grace 
 which every successful satire must possess, 
 energy, and withal a kind of verse which, while 
 not accurate in its metre and rhyme, compels a 
 smile through its agility. 
 
 For those who have not read the poem there 
 awaits what the modern editor calls " a rat 
 tling good story. Squire McFingal, a Scotch- 
 American living in a provincial town, believed 
 
 217 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 heartily in absolute submission to Parliament. 
 The Squire was a most windy orator, ready to 
 speak on any subject or occasion; but his chief 
 power lay in telling in thunderous tones just 
 what would happen if Americans did not be 
 have better. He 
 
 " Brought armies o er by sudden pressings 
 Of Hanoverians, Swiss, and Hessians; 
 Feasted with blood his Scottish clan, 
 And hang d all rebels, to a man; 
 Divided their estates and pelf, 
 And took a goodly share himself. 
 
 Now, Squire McFingaPs chief rival in the 
 town was a certain patriot named Honorius. 
 In the course of colonial events a town-meeting 
 was held in which Honorius made a fiery 
 harangue to the citizens. In the midst of the 
 speech the Squire came in frowning severely, 
 and took a seat near the orator ; but Honorius, 
 not a whit abashed, continued his loud-voiced 
 discourse. " Britain/ shouted he, 
 
 " . . . midst her airs so flighty, 
 Now took a whim to be almighty ; 
 Urged on to desperate heights of frenzy, 
 Affirmed her own omnipotency ; 
 Would rather ruin all her race 
 Than bate supremacy an ace." 
 218 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 When Americans protested, he declared, Eng 
 land 
 
 " Then signed her warrants of ejection, 
 And gallows raised to stretch our necks on ; 
 And on these errands sent in rage, 
 Her bailiff and her hangman, Gage ; 
 And at his heels, like dogs to bait us, 
 Despatched her posse comitatus. 
 
 And who is this mighty Gage? What powers 
 are his? What strength of intellect, culture, 
 followers, resources? 
 
 11 And as old heroes gained by shifts, 
 From gods, as poets tell, their gifts, 
 Our general, as his actions show, 
 Gained like assistance from below, 
 By Satan graced with full supplies 
 From all his magazine of lies." 
 
 Then the wrathful Honorius turned upon the 
 Squire himself and called that stern-faced Tory 
 the leader of a party composed of 
 
 " Priests who, if Satan should sit down 
 To make a Bible of his own, 
 Would gladly, for the sake of mitres, 
 Turn his inspired and sacred writers; 
 Lawyers who, should he wish to prove 
 His title t his old seat above, 
 219 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Would, if his cause he d give em fees in 
 Bring writs of Entry sur disseisin, 
 Plead for him boldly at the session, 
 And hope to put him in possession; 
 Merchants who, for his kindly aid, 
 Would make him partners in their trade ; 
 And judges who would list his pages 
 For proper liveries and wages." 
 
 McFingal could stand no more. Arising in 
 his wrath, he made a few preliminary remarks 
 and then entered, as usual, into a hair-raising 
 prophecy. " Behold! " he cried, 
 
 " Behold the world will stare at new sets 
 Of home-made Earls in Massachusetts; 
 Admire, arrayed in ducal tassels, 
 Your Ol vers, Hutchinsons, and Vassals; 
 
 In wide-sleeved pomp of goodly guise, 
 What solemn rows of bishops rise ! 
 Aloft a Card nal s hat is spread 
 O er punster Cooper s rev rend head! 
 
 Knights, viscounts, barons shall ye meet 
 As thick as pavements in the street! 
 Even I, perhaps Heaven speed my claim- 
 Shall fix a Sir before my name." 
 
 220 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 But these new-fangled notions cannot be vic 
 torious. The so-called patriots will soon be 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
 
 " The vulgar knaves 
 Will do more good preserved as slaves." 
 
 Affairs now became decidedly exciting. 
 Honorius replied to the Squire s speech, but 
 was interrupted by some Tory rowdies, and the 
 meeting bid fair to terminate in a free-for-all 
 fight. Luckily, however, a loud disturbance 
 outside suddenly drew the people s attention, 
 and the meeting adjourned sine die. 
 
 Here the original McFingal story closed. 
 But, as we have seen, Trumbull in 1782 pub 
 lished the poem enlarged into four cantos, and 
 in this version we find, to our great satisfac 
 tion, that the Squire at length became so ob 
 noxious that violent hands were laid upon him 
 and forced him to flee the country. It all hap 
 pened in this manner. The patriots had 
 erected a Liberty Pole, and at its top the Stars 
 and Stripes waved defiance to all Tories. 
 McFingal s blood was fired. Gathering his lit 
 tle band of retainers he attempted to cut down 
 the unseemly staff. Naturally dire conflict 
 ensued. 
 
 221 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " At once with resolution fatal, 
 Both Whigs and Tories rush d to battle, 
 Instead of weapons, either band 
 Seized on such arms as came to hand. 
 
 So clubs and billets, staves and stones 
 Met fierce, encountering every sconce, 
 And cover d o er with knobs and pains 
 Each void receptacle for brains. 
 
 And many a groan increased the din 
 
 From batter d nose and broken shin. 
 
 McFingal, rising at the word, 
 
 Drew forth his old militia-sword; 
 
 Thrice cried King George, as erst in distress, 
 
 Knights of romance invoked a mistress ; 
 
 And like a meteor rushing through, 
 Struck on their Pole a vengeful blow/ 
 
 Affairs would have gone badly with the 
 patriots 
 
 " Had not some Pow r, a Whig at heart, 
 Descended down and took their part 
 (Whether t were Pallas, Mars, or Iris, 
 Tis scarce worth while to make inquiries)." 
 
 This sympathetic Power, whoever he was, 
 
 222 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 urged a Whig to pick up a spade and advance 
 to the defence of the emblem of freedom. The 
 spade is mightier than the sword. 
 
 " The sword perfidious fails its owner; 
 That sword, which oft had stood its ground, 
 By huge trainbands encircled round; 
 And on the bench, with blade right loyal, 
 Had won the day at many a trial, 
 Of stone and clubs had braved th alarms, 
 Shrunk from these new Vulcanian arms. 
 The spade so temper d from the sledge, 
 Nor keen nor solid harm d its edge, 
 Now met it, from his arm of might, 
 Descending with steep force to smite ; 
 The blade snapp d short and from his hand, 
 With rust embrown d the glittering sand. 
 
 McFingal turns to call his friends. 
 
 * In vain ; the Tories all had run, 
 
 When scarce the fight was well begun : 
 Their setting wigs he saw decreas d 
 Far in th horizon tow rd the west. 
 
 The fatal spade discharged a blow 
 Tremendous on his rear below." 
 
 The fate that now faces the Squire is indeed 
 
 223 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 a serious one. A court is hastily formed, and 
 a decision still more hastily made. 
 
 " Forthwith the crowd proceed to deck 
 With halter d noose McFingal s neck, 
 While he in peril of his soul 
 Stood tied half -hanging to the pole ; 
 Then lifting high the ponderous jar, 
 Pour d o er his head the smoking tar. 
 
 And now the feather-bag displayed 
 Is waved in triumph o er his head, 
 And clouds him o er with feathers missive, 
 And down, upon the tar, adhesive : 
 Not Maia s son, with wings for ears, 
 Such plumage round his visage wore; 
 Nor Milton s six wing d angel gathers 
 Such superfluity of feathers. 
 Now all complete appears our Squire, 
 Like Gorgon or Chimaera dire." 
 
 Decked in this gay attire, McFingal sneaks 
 away to his home, hides in a turnip bin in the 
 cellar, and from this lowly station delivers a 
 farewell address to the remnant of his fright 
 ened followers. Soon afterwards, he goes his 
 way to Boston, hopeless and sick of Whigs and 
 liberty. 
 There is a boisterous energy in all this, a 
 
 224 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 rude activity, that suited the not highly re 
 fined but exceedingly earnest populace of the 
 day. Then, too, its satire is not so bitter but 
 that the very enemy himself might enjoy the 
 situations. One wonders if Irving was not un 
 consciously influenced by the once popular epic ; 
 for the Knickerbocker History seems in not a 
 few pages a McFingal in prose. Moses Coit 
 Tyler, in his Literary History of the American 
 Revolution, calls the poem " one of the world s 
 masterpieces of political badinage," and such 
 praise is not extravagant. Though modelled 
 to some extent on Butler s Hudibras, it is un 
 doubtedly much higher in tone, contains a 
 larger number of eloquent passages, and has in 
 general a more skilful polish than that famous 
 English classic. Here and there one seems to 
 hear snatches from the master-minds of an 
 cient and modern days. And there is, in spite 
 of the subject and the treatment, a flavor of 
 culture through it all. And its author knew 
 all the tricks of the trade. It abounds in sur 
 prising rhymes, fantastic ideas, mock dignity, 
 and a jig-like movement which seldom fail to 
 excite merriment. Then, too, there is a Pope- 
 like talent for making memory-tempting coup 
 lets. Who has not heard, for instance, 
 
 15 225 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " No man e er felt the halter draw, 
 With good opinion of the law "? 
 
 There has been from time to time some rather 
 useless disputing among students of American 
 literature as to whether Trumbull was influ 
 enced more by Butler or by the more bitter 
 satirist, Churchill. It does not seem necessary 
 to enter here into a discussion of the question. 
 We know certainly that the story served its 
 purpose and that it sounded through New Eng 
 land like a trumpet call. Everybody read it; 
 everybody believed its truths; and everybody 
 recognized its helpfulness. To us it presents 
 in entertaining form an accurate portrayal of 
 Eevolutionary conditions and sentiments, just 
 as it did to those stragglers before whom it 
 placed in clearer light the ideals for which they 
 were striving. For these reasons it gained the 
 public ear, and, as far as may be expected of 
 any piece of literature written for an emer 
 gency, still holds it. The poem is yet read, but 
 its popularity should be greater ; for aside from 
 its historical interest and its power of enter 
 taining, it shows the skilful use of a literary 
 weapon which has been used in all the great 
 struggles of the civilized world, and which will 
 be used in the many to come. 
 
 226 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Toward the close of the eighteenth century it 
 happened that a number of Yale men were liv 
 ing in or near the town of Hartford, Connecti 
 cut. Now, whenever old students of one alma 
 mater meet, they always feel like shouting the 
 college song, giving the college yell, and closing 
 the meeting with the singing of " Blest Be the 
 Tie That Binds. " Perhaps eighteenth century 
 alumni were a trifle too dignified for that sort 
 of thing ; but they felt the bonds of college days 
 nevertheless, and of course sometimes asso 
 ciated with one another until their little group 
 really became a " club." Certainly the next 
 most natural move in those days would be the 
 reciting of original poems in these clubs, the 
 reading of witty papers to one another, and 
 finally debates on such timely subjects as 
 Homer, Shakespeare, and " the great Mr. 
 Pope." Now, you must remember that early 
 newspapers were just as eager for good 
 " copy " as the journals of to-day, and natu- 
 
 227 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 rally the third step in this club life would be 
 the publication of the aforesaid poetic lines and 
 witty essays. 
 
 THE HARTFORD WITS 
 
 In telling this, I have told you the story of 
 the development of those Yale men into the 
 once famous group known as the " Hartford 
 Wits." Of course, there were other reasons 
 for the group s existence. Yale men of that 
 era, especially one, Timothy Dwight, who after 
 wards became president of Yale, considered 
 Harvard men dangerously unorthodox. In 
 deed, some of those Harvard scholars boldly 
 intimated that there wasn t an ounce of brim 
 stone in all hell, while some of the younger 
 fellows even had the audacity to doubt the very 
 existence of that tropical settlement. Timothy 
 Dwight, who was a clergyman of the original 
 "blue-stocking" order, thought it was scan 
 dalous, and wrote in his Triumph of Infidelity 
 some satirical lines about 
 
 "... the smooth Divine, unused to wound 
 The sinner s heart, with hell s alarming sound. 
 No terrors on his gentle tongue attend; 
 No grating truths the nicest ear offend." 
 228 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Yale men thought it their sacred duty to com 
 bat Harvard in such a matter as this. 
 
 Then came far more important affairs. The 
 Eevolution was on, and the patriots needed 
 every kind of aid possible. Nobly, even if at 
 times somewhat crudely, the Hartford Wits re 
 sponded. John Trumbull was one of them, 
 and we know his part in the merciless ridicule 
 of all that savored of Toryism; Timothy 
 Dwight, who aided now and then, preached to 
 the soldiers and wrote to the stay-at-homes; 
 and, as we shall see later, nearly every other 
 member of the little group, composed of such 
 men as David Humphreys, M. F. Cogswell, Joel 
 Barlow, Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, Theodore Dwight 
 and Eichard Alsop, served his country not only 
 with pen but with arms. For a season war 
 broke up the witty company, and they all could 
 sympathize with one of the number who asked: 
 
 " Amid the roar of drums and guns, 
 When meet again the Muses sons ? " 
 
 But the struggle of arms past, " they hung 
 up the sword in Hartford, and grasped the 
 lyre." And the lyre must needs be a strong 
 and often harsh one; for now many new dan- 
 
 229 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 gers presented themselves and the times were 
 indeed troubled. The war debt was thirty- 
 eight millions ; the lower classes refused to pay 
 taxes ; the paper money was almost worthless ; 
 the war veterans had not been paid for months ; 
 the bounties of land promised many of them had 
 not been presented. Congress had promised 
 the officers five years extra pay, and the peo 
 ple objected loudly. The Cincinnati Society, 
 founded by those who had been so fortunate or 
 unfortunate as to wear shoulder-straps, was 
 looked upon as an attempt to form a perpetual 
 aristocracy in free America. France, in her 
 wars, looked to the States for aid, and many 
 hot-heads were in favor of granting it. 
 Numerous mobs were formed in Connecticut, 
 and a certain Shay had a miniature rebellion 
 in Massachusetts. Participants in these law 
 less acts sought refuge in Ehode Island, and 
 that "little but mighty" commonwealth re 
 fused to surrender them. Every State had its 
 suspicions concerning a union, and preferred to 
 be a republic by itself. The need of a central 
 ized government was paramount. Some 
 speaker of the day very cleverly said, " Thir 
 teen staves and ne er a hoop cannot make a 
 
 230 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 barrel." Many orators, however, were not so 
 reasonable, but, on the other hand, went about 
 the country making loud-mouthed appeals to 
 the people to rise in their might and sweep away 
 the threatened monarchy. 
 
 Again, after the Union was more or less 
 firmly established, there were still other trou 
 bles. Those politicians who had opposed such 
 a close centralization became the Anti-Feder 
 alists or Democratic party, led by Thomas 
 Jefferson and Aaron Burr; while those who 
 took the opposite view formed the Federalists, 
 led by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and 
 Jay. The Hartford Wits, for the most part, 
 had been and remained true to Washington, 
 and therefore to his party. Here indeed was 
 an opportunity for the display of peppery wit. 
 Then, too, those great events across the waters ; 
 Napoleon and Nelson were before the eyes of 
 the world ; a deadly conflict between monarchy 
 and democracy was on ; and the Hartford Wits 
 felt called upon to encourage or discourage as 
 the spirit moved them. When all these topics 
 grew wearisome, there remained, of course, one 
 eternal subject literary criticism. Then would 
 they take up the discussion of books and damn 
 
 231 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 authors and critics with, an energy that would 
 have put Dryden, Pope, and Byron to the blush. 
 Even supposing that this theme grew tiresome, 
 they could form a mutual admiration society 
 and heartily praise one another. 
 
 For instance, one member wrote of another 
 such lines as these: 
 
 " In lore of nations skilled, and brave in arms, 
 See Humphreys glorious from the field retire, 
 Sheathe the glad sword and string the tuneful lyre. 
 
 And another, Joel Barlow, author of the fear 
 fully and wonderfully constructed Columbiad 
 or Vision of Columbus, received this flattering 
 notice: 
 
 " In Virgilian Barlow s tuneful lines 
 
 With added splendor great Columbus shines. " 
 
 What with rebuking Harvard sceptics, fighting 
 in the field, ridiculing Tories, scolding tax 
 payers, opposing dishonest currency, condemn 
 ing extravagant debts, encouraging the de 
 mands of soldiers, explaining the intentions of 
 the Cincinnati Society, lashing mobs, dis 
 couraging State independence, supporting cen 
 tralization, silencing " spread-eagle " orators, 
 squelching fire-eating Jacobins, scourging Anti- 
 
 232 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Federalists, commenting on foreign affairs, 
 pooh-poohing critics, and praising one another, 
 thes/e Hartford Wits had about all they could 
 well attend to. But, in all seriousness, they came 
 in answer to a need of the struggling era, and 
 Barrett Wendell is entirely correct when he 
 says in his History of Literature in America; 
 "An heroic, patriotic effort they stand for, and 
 one made with enthusiasm, wit, and courage." 
 Undoubtedly they helped to an appreciable 
 degree in the preservation of the nation. When 
 it seemed that the petty jealousies of the sepa 
 rate colonies would effectually prevent a sound 
 and permanent union, these writers in their 
 serial poem, The Anarchiad (1786-7), placed 
 before the people this all-important question: 
 
 " Shall lordly Hudson part contending powers, 
 And broad Potomac lave two hostile shores? 
 Must Alleghany s sacred summits bear 
 The impious bulwarks of perpetual war, 
 His hundred streams receive your heroes slain 
 And bear your sons inglorious to the Main? " 
 
 It is evident that these wits were sometimes 
 very serious. Note again some lines from The 
 Anarchiad on that same momentous question: 
 Shall we be one nation or many? 
 
 233 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Behold those veterans worn with want and care, 
 Their sinews stiffened, silvered o er their hair, 
 Weak in their steps of age, they move forlorn, 
 Their toils forgotten by the sons of scorn; 
 This hateful truth still aggravates the pain, 
 In vain they conquered, and they bled in vain. 
 
 For see, proud Faction waves her flaming brand, 
 And discord riots o er the ungrateful land; 
 
 In honor s seat the sons of meanness swarm, 
 And senates base the work of mobs perform, 
 To wealth, to power the sons of union rise, 
 While foes deride you and while friends despise. 
 
 Go view the lands to lawless power a prey, 
 Where tyrants govern with unbounded sway; 
 See the long pomp in gorgeous state displayed, 
 The tinselled guards, the squadroned horse parade ; 
 
 High on the moving throne, and near the van, 
 The tyrant rides, the chosen scourge of man; 
 Clarions and flutes and drums his way prepare, 
 And shouting millions rend the conscious air; 
 Millions whose ceaseless toils the pomp sustain, 
 Whose hour of stupid joy repays an age of pain. 
 
 Nor less abhorred the certain woe that waits 
 The giddy rage of democratic states; 
 
 234 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Led by wild demagogues the factious crowd, 
 
 Mean, fierce, imperious, insolent, and loud, 
 
 Nor fame nor wealth, nor power nor system draws, 
 
 They see no object and perceive no cause, 
 
 But feel by turns, in one disastrous hour, 
 
 The extremes of license and the extremes of power. 
 
 But this is not the sort of work in which they 
 found the greatest delight or in which they 
 most excelled. They enjoyed more thoroughly 
 such exercise as Dwight s description of the 
 mild and sweetly polite Harvard preacher men 
 tioned above, or that description by Lemuel 
 Hopkins of Thomas Jefferson, who posed as a 
 pretty accurate scholar on everything from 
 Anglo-Saxon to vaccination: 
 
 " Great sire of stories past belief; 
 Historian of the Mingo chief; 
 Philosopher of Indians hair; 
 Inventor of a rocking-chair ; 
 The correspondent of Mazze, 
 And Banneker less black than he ! " 
 
 How they loved to poke fun at the versatile 
 sage of Monticello! Upon taking the oath of 
 office for the second time, March 4, 1805, Jef 
 ferson said in his inaugural address: " On 
 taking this station on a former occasion, I de- 
 
 235 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 clared the principle on which I believed it my 
 duty to administer the affairs of our common 
 wealth. My conscience tells me that I have, on 
 every occasion, acted up to that declaration, 
 according to its obvious import and to the un 
 derstanding of every candid mind." This was 
 indeed an opportunity for the men of Hartford, 
 and they grasped it while it was hot. Forth 
 with appeared a burlesque the inaugural re 
 marks of one, Jefferson: 
 
 " Tis just four years this all-eventful day, 
 
 Since on my head devolved our country s sway. 
 
 You will remember with what modest air 
 I first approached the Presidential Chair, 
 How blushed my cheek, what faltering in my gait, 
 When first I squatted on the throne of state ! 
 
 A foolish custom forced me to declare 
 Off-hand what point of compass I should steer; 
 But knowing well that every Federal eye 
 On me was fixed some mischief to descry, 
 I tuned my fiddle for the vulgar throng, 
 And lulled suspicion by a soothing song." 
 
 He asked his conscience if he had broken the 
 promises of four years ago. Conscience an 
 swered that he had not. 
 
 236 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 " Thus, when you promised to be just and true 
 To all and give to every man his due, 
 Could Candor possibly have understood 
 That the term all men could your foes include ? 
 
 Nor shall the Federalists, perverse and base, 
 
 On grounds like these lay claim to hold their place. 
 
 Again, when toleration was your theme, 
 
 What stupid mortal could a moment dream 
 
 You meant to drop at once your choicest grace, 
 
 The right to turn the Federalists from place? 
 
 Now, Sir, since I have set all matters right, 
 Conscience will bid the President good-night. 3 
 
 The effusions of the Hartford Wits may be 
 divided into three sections. The first series 
 of these satires and other poems, consisting in 
 all of twenty-four installments, was entitled 
 The Anarcliiad, and dealt with the ruffian ele 
 ment in the lower classes and the subtle enemies 
 of union in the upper classes. These contri 
 butions, as well as some of those in the other 
 sections, were published in The Neiv Haven 
 Gazette, and appeared in 1786 and 1787. Now, 
 you must know that these Yale men had con, 
 siderable romance in their souls ; therefore we 
 should not expect them to thrust these literary 
 efforts upon the world without some piquant 
 
 237 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 flavor of the wonderful and mysterious. No, 
 indeed; it was solemnly stated that The 
 Anarchiad had been dug up from the exceed 
 ingly ancient ruins of an Indian fort, where 
 Madoc, a Welshman, who discovered America 
 ages before Columbus had thought of being 
 born, had buried the manuscript. It simply 
 shows how surprisingly appropriate prophecies 
 and advice intended for remote antiquity often 
 times are for the present moment; for these 
 venerable hammerings of Madoc hit the 
 eighteenth century nail squarely on the head. 
 Anarch, the leader of the forces of confusion 
 and ruin, which forces are, of course, the Anti- 
 Federalists, urges all kinds of dangerous 
 actions. 
 
 " Stab Independence! dance o er 
 Freedom s grave! " 
 
 What else did these Democrats desire but the 
 reign of confusion in the newly created 
 nations 1 
 
 11 The State surrounding with the wall of brass, 
 And insurrections claim thy noblest praise, 
 O er Washington exact thy darling Shays, 
 With thy contagion embryo mobs inspire, 
 And blow to tenfold rage the kindling fire, 
 Till the wide realm of discord bow the knee 
 And hold true faith in Anarch and in thee." 
 238 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 The second section of the Hartford utter 
 ances was the series known as The Echo, the 
 first poem of which appeared in the American 
 Mercury of August, 1791, and the last in 1796. 
 Written almost entirely by Richard Alsop and 
 Theodore Dwight, a brother of Timothy, it 
 mocked or " echoed " with multiplied rever 
 berations the bombast and other exaggerations 
 of the day. As the Duyckincks say in their 
 Cyclopedia of American Literature, " If a 
 penny-a-liner grew more maudlin and drunken 
 in his style than usual ; if an office-holder played 
 his fantastic tricks, a politician vapored, or a 
 scientific pretender bored the public with his 
 ignorance, or a French democratic procession 
 moved at the heels of Genet, it was sure to be 
 heard of from the banks of the Connecticut." 
 From this more general purpose, however, the 
 poem passed to the more specific and far more 
 bitter one of ridiculing the Democrats on every 
 possible occasion. We have seen how Jeffer 
 son and his inaugural address of 1805 were 
 treated ; the eccentric John Hancock, the rough 
 and ready frontiersman Hugh Brackenridge, 
 and many another Anti-Federalist, received 
 just as merciless consideration. 
 
 239 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Leave us our Clinton, Jefferson and Co, 
 These shall arouse us in the daily papers, 
 And Jonny Hancock give us Negroe capers. " 
 
 Every political move, no matter how honest its 
 intention, was liable to attack; thus with Jay s 
 Treaty: 
 
 " I say that we ve determined, one and all, 
 
 That Jay s vile treaty to the ground shall fall. 
 Doubtless the subject will much heat excite, 
 Blockheads will prate, and demagogues will write, 
 From Club to Club the uproar will expand. 
 
 Full well I see how Democrats will meet, 
 And drink seditious toasts at every treat, 
 Roar out to liberty to save the land, 
 And damn a treaty they don t understand." 
 
 Fear of the French and of their ultra-demo 
 cratic notions was abroad in the land, and such 
 lines as the following, known to have been writ 
 ten by Lemuel Hopkins, must have gained the 
 applause of all good Federalists : 
 
 " See fraught with democratic lore, 
 Genet arriv d on Charleston shore. 
 But, as was meet, first broach d his mission 
 To men of sans-culotte condition; 
 Who thronged around with open throats, 
 As round old Crusoe flock d the goats, 
 240 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 And learn d his sermon, to his wishes, 
 As Austin taught huge shoals of fishes; 
 Made all the anti-federal presses 
 Screech shrill hosannas, styl d addresses; 
 And while to Court he took his way 
 Sung hallelujahs to Genet; 
 
 Like Hessian flies, import d o er, 
 Clubs self -create infest our shore. " 
 
 As we have noted, however, these satires 
 were not intended solely for political purposes. 
 Anything extravagant was a sufficient incen 
 tive for a sarcastic broadside. For instance, 
 it seems that a Boston newspaper attempted in 
 July, 1791, to give a poetic description of a 
 storm occurring there, and the result was a 
 poetic " echo," from which the following lines 
 are taken: 
 
 " On Tuesday last great Sol, with piercing eye, 
 Pursued his journey thro the vaulted sky, 
 And in his car effulgent roll d his way 
 Four hours beyond the burning zone of day; 
 When lo! a cloud, o er shadowing all the plain, 
 From countless pores perspir d a liquid rain, 
 While from its cracks the lightnings made a peep, 
 And chit-chat thunders rock d our fears asleep. 
 But soon the vapory fog dispersed in air, 
 And left the azure blue-eyed concave bare ; 
 16 241 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Even the last drop of hope, which dripping skies 
 Gave for a moment to our straining eyes, 
 Like Boston Rum, from heaven s junk bottles broke, 
 Lost all the corks, and vanished into smoke. 
 But swift, from worlds unknown, a fresh supply 
 Of vapor dimm d the great horizon s eye; 
 
 The seen and unseen worlds grew dark, and nature 
 gan to weep. 
 
 Majestic thunders, with disploding roar, 
 And sudden crashing, bounced along the shore, 
 Till, lost in other lands, the whispering sound 
 Fled from our ears and fainted on the ground. 
 
 N.B. At Cambridge town, the self -same day, 
 A barn was burnt well-fuTd with hay. 
 Some say the lightning turned it red, 
 Some say the thunder struck it dead, 
 Some say it made the cattle stare, 
 And some it kill d an aged mare; 
 But we expect the truth to learn 
 From Mr. Wythe, who own d the barn." 
 
 The third section of the Hartford serial 
 tirade was entitled The Political Green House, 
 and appeared in 1799. It is for the most part 
 a review of the previous year, and uses the 
 various important events of those twelve 
 
 242 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 months as a means of attacking Jefferson and 
 all Jacobins. Here, too, is found an attack 
 upon one of their own Wits, Joel Barlow, who 
 is accused of stealing parts of the Anarchiad 
 for his Conspiracy of Kings. As Barlow had 
 written no small part of the Anarcliiad, doubt 
 less he thought he might borrow his own; but 
 the Green House writer, probably Alsop, de 
 clares it " a prominent trait of the Jacobinical 
 character to take what belongs to others, with 
 out leave and without paying for it." All 
 measures against the French receive hearty 
 praise; the Alien and Sedition Law is a joy 
 forever; while Vermont, in running all the 
 Jacobins out of office, has become an earthly 
 Paradise. 
 
 Now, in 1807, The Echo and The Political 
 Green House, with a poem entitled A Poetico- 
 Political Olio, consisting of extracts from 
 Democracy, an Epic Poem, were published as 
 one volume with the title, The Echo ivith Other 
 Poems. (The "general reader" may, of 
 course, skip all such dry facts and dates if he 
 finds them uninteresting; they are intended for 
 those unfortunates who occupy college chairs 
 of literature and who must gather vast masses 
 
 243 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of minute details in order to astonish their awe- 
 stricken students.) But to resume: The Echo 
 and The Political Green House thus printed to 
 gether enjoyed considerable vogue long after 
 the disturbances that created them had been 
 forever settled; and doubtless this later enter 
 tainment was more whole-souled than in the 
 old days when Anti-Federalists, reading these 
 roughly printed sheets, found themselves han 
 dled without gloves. 
 
 But all America knows that those Federal 
 ists fought a losing battle and that the Demo 
 crats, with Jefferson as leader, turned the tide 
 of the American political sea. And it seems 
 that the Hartford Wits also knew it; for toward 
 the last the satire was not so stinging as in 
 earlier days, the laughter was not so whole 
 hearted, and now and again the poets seemed 
 to be asking themselves, How will the people 
 take this? " Like most mortals, they at length 
 began to have opposing opinions, grew discour 
 aged or uninterested, and gave it up ; and thus 
 the Hartford Wits, as a ~body, died a natural 
 death. But, as individuals, they were rather 
 lively corpses for some years after their fra 
 ternity or club had been interred. 
 
 244 
 
II 
 
 And now, of course the most natural ques 
 tion in the world at this juncture would be, 
 " Who were these wits as individuals? " In 
 the last quarter of the eighteenth century Hart 
 ford and New Haven had some very brilliant 
 citizens, and the " Wits " were the cream of 
 the milk. Originally this fine fellowship or 
 junto consisted of probably only four members, 
 Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, David 
 Humphreys, and Joel Barlow; but toward the 
 close of the war days such men entered the 
 circle as Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, 
 and Theodore Dwight, and these, with occa 
 sional aid from two or three other citizens of 
 Connecticut, made things lively. Here Words 
 worth might have written another " We are 
 Seven; " he could not have selected seven more 
 active, brainy, and versatile characters in all 
 America. Let us glance at the varied and use 
 ful lives of them all, and, at the same time, as 
 we have seen what they could do as a whole, let 
 
 245 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 us see what each could do as an individual 
 writer. 
 
 TIMOTHY DWIGHT 
 
 Timothy Dwight has small right to appear 
 in this or any other book of humor; and he is 
 mentioned here with the Wits mainly because 
 in his younger days he wrote lines against 
 Harvard sinfulness, and encouraged and some 
 times aided these verse-writers dwelling in or 
 near Hartford town. His humorous verse, 
 however, was very meagre, and should always 
 have been labelled clearly. His forte lay in pro 
 ducing an epic containing nine thousand, six 
 hundred and seventy-two never read lines en 
 titled The Conquest of Canaan. Another poem 
 of his, Greenfield Hill, is shorter and therefore 
 no worse. Then, too, every school-boy knows 
 that he wrote the once admired Ode to Colum 
 bia, beginning, 
 
 " Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise! " 
 
 but no school-boy wades through it unless a 
 merciless teacher condemns him to the ordeal. 
 As we all know, Dr. Dwight at length became 
 president of Yale, preached many solemn and 
 
 246 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 elongated sermons, and at last, full of years, 
 honors, and theology, returned unto his fathers. 
 
 DAVID HUMPHREYS 
 
 John Trumhull we have already discussed. 
 It is not difficult to discern the flavor of his 
 satire throughout The Anarchiad and the other 
 works of the group ; for now and then one comes 
 across lines that could have dropped from no 
 other pen of the day. A man who was often at 
 his side, and who with him penned many a 
 sharp verse, was Colonel David Humphreys 
 (1753-1818), soldier, diplomatist, wit, and 
 genial gentleman. His was a life lived to tfye 
 brim. Born at Derby, Connecticut, he gradu 
 ated at Yale, entered the Eevolutionary Army 
 as a captain, and served from 1780 until the 
 close of the strife as aide-de-camp to Washing 
 ton. The friendship that existed between the 
 wit and the great general became a tie that 
 bound them closely until death. For months 
 at a time Humphreys lived at Mt. Vernon, and 
 he and Washington always acted like brothers. 
 That he was a brave warrior is shown by the 
 fact that Congress presented him with a sword 
 for gallantry at Yorktown; and that he was a 
 firm believer in the rights of the struggling 
 
 247 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 people is evidenced by his Address to the Armies 
 of the United States (1782) which, by the way, 
 you will be spared here, as its length is one 
 of its most conspicuous characteristics. 
 
 After his service in the army, he held the 
 important position of secretary of the legation 
 Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams at Paris, 
 and while thus employed wrote another widely 
 noticed poem a thousand lines this time on 
 the " Happiness of America." It contains 
 some well turned verses, as may be seen from 
 the following: 
 
 " There some old warrior, grown a village sage, 
 Whose locks are whitened with the frosts of age, 
 While life s low-burning lamp renews its light, 
 With tales heroic shall beguile the night ; 
 Shall tell of battles fought, of feats achieved, 
 And sufferings ne er by human heart conceived 
 
 Troops strive with troops ; ranks, bending, press on 
 
 ranks ; 
 
 er slippery plains the struggling legions reel ; 
 Then livid lead and Burgoyne s glittering steel 
 With dark-red wounds their mangled bosoms bore; 
 While furious coursers, snorting foam and gore, 
 Bear wild their riders o er the carnaged plain, 
 And, falling, roll them headlong on the slain. 
 
 248 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Thus will the veteran tell the tale of wars, 
 Disclose his breast, to count his glorious scars; 
 In mute amazement hold the listening swains ; 
 Make freezing horror creep through all their veins ; 
 Or oft, at freedom s name, their souls inspire 
 With patriot ardor and heroic fire." 
 
 In those days ability to write meant advance 
 ment in the political world, and consequently in 
 1786 we see Humphreys a member of the State 
 Legislature. Soon, however, he was back at 
 Mt. Vernon, translating de Mierre s The Widow 
 of Malabar, to be acted by Hallam s American 
 Company at Philadelphia in 1790. In 1794 he 
 became our first ambassador to Lisbon ; in 1797 
 he was made minister to Spain; and in 1802 
 he returned to America, and henceforth devoted 
 much of his time to introducing merino sheep 
 into the Xew World. He became decidedly in 
 terested in this sheep industry, and even wrote 
 a poem about it, in the course of which he says : 
 
 " Oh, might my guidance from the downs of Spain 
 Lead a white flock across the western main; 
 Fam d like the bark that bore the Argonaut 
 Should be the vessel with the burden fraught! 
 Clad in the raiment my Merinos yield, 
 Like C-incinnatus fed from my own field ; 
 Far from ambition, grandeur, care, and strife, 
 249 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 In sweet fruition of domestic life ; 
 
 There would I pass with friends beneath my trees, 
 
 What rests from public life; in letter d ease." 
 
 Although sixty years old when the War of 1812 
 began, he entered the army as a brigadier-gen 
 eral, and served throughout the campaign. 
 Thus his days until his death at New Haven six 
 years later were full of activity and reward. 
 
 Humphreys was not a strikingly original 
 man ; but he had energy and perseverance, and 
 he could polish a line or add a sharp word or 
 two to the pointed verses of his colleagues. It 
 would not be of special interest to try to point 
 out just what Humphreys did or did not write 
 in the various poems of the Hartford Wits. 
 Perhaps, after all, it could not be done. But, 
 if you would see a specimen of his individual 
 wit, here are some lines from The Monkey, 
 " who shaved himself and his friends. " 
 
 " A man who own d a barber s shop 
 At York, and shaved full many a fop, 
 A monkey kept for his amusement; 
 He made no other kind of use on t 
 
 " It chanc d in shop, the dog and cat, 
 While friseur din d, demurely sat, 
 250 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Jacko found naught to play the knave in, 
 So thought he d try his hand at shaving. 
 Around the shop in haste he rushes, 
 And gets the razors, soap, and brushes ; 
 Now puss he fix d (no muscle stirs) 
 And lather d well her beard and whiskers, 
 Then gave a gash, as he began 
 The cat cry d * waugh ! and off she ran. 
 
 * Next Towser s beard he tried his skill in, 
 Though Towser seemed somewhat unwilling: 
 As badly here again succeeding, 
 The dog runs howling round, and bleeding. 
 
 " Nor yet was tir d our roguish elf; 
 He d seen the barber shave himself; 
 So by the glass upon the table, 
 He rubs with soap his visage sable, 
 Then with left hand holds smooth his jaw, 
 The razor in his dexter paw; 
 Around he flourishes and slashes, 
 Till all his face is seam d with gashes. 
 His cheeks dispatch d his visage thin 
 He cock d, to shave beneath his chin ; 
 Drew razor swift as he could pull it, 
 And cut, from ear to ear, his gullet. 
 
 Moral 
 
 " Who cannot write, yet handle pens, 
 Are apt to hurt themselves and friends. 
 Though others use them well, yet fools 
 Should never meddle with edge tools." 
 251 
 
Ill 
 
 JOEL BARLOW 
 
 Of all the Hartford Wits, excluding John 
 Trumbull, doubtless the best known in our day 
 is Joel Barlow (1754-1812). Who has not read 
 his Hasty Pudding? 
 
 11 I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, 
 My morning incense and my evening meal, 
 The sweets of Hasty Pudding." 
 
 It is interesting to see what a poetic product 
 he could make out of such a subject as " mush " 
 and out of many other subjects no less prosaic ; 
 but his life, it would seem, is far more interest 
 ing than anything he wrote. How manifold 
 were his activities, how romantic his advent 
 ures, and how miserable his end! He was 
 born at Reading, Connecticut, and was edu 
 cated at Dartmouth and at Yale. When he 
 received his B.A. from the latter college in 
 1778, he read as the class-poem, The Prospect 
 of Peace, verses full of patriotism and unusual 
 benevolence toward all nations. In 1781 he re- 
 
 252 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 ceived the M.A. from his alma mater. But 
 during his vacations Barlow had spent his lei 
 sure time fighting the British, and the taste of 
 army life thus experienced so pleased him that 
 he studied theology six weeks and entered the 
 ranks as a chaplain some months before receiv 
 ing the master s degree. After the Revolution 
 he studied law and was admitted to the bar at 
 Hartford in 1785. During that same year he 
 was given the task of revising Watts version 
 of the Psalms, and did it very acceptably, al 
 though some caustic wit of the day exclaimed : 
 
 " You ve proved yourself a sinful cre tur; 
 You ve murdered Watts and spoilt the meter; 
 You ve tried the word of God to alter, 
 And for your pains deserve a halter." 
 
 At Hartford Barlow founded The American 
 Mercury, in which The Echo and other poems 
 by the Wits appeared; and there, too, in 1787 
 he published his loud-sounding, but rather tire 
 some Vision of Columbus. This vision em 
 braces Heaven, Earth, and Hell, and all that 
 lie therein, and was considered in its day 
 a marvellous accomplishment. The verses 
 brought him fame, and before long he was ap 
 pointed European agent of the Scioto Land 
 
 253 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Company. He opened an office in Paris, ad 
 vertised lavishly, and sent broadcast among 
 the people this glowing description of the Ohio 
 valley, where the company s lands were lo 
 cated: " Farms for sale on the banks of the 
 Ohio, la belle riviere; the finest district of the 
 United States! Healthful and delightful of 
 climate; scarcely any frost in winter; fertile 
 soil ; a boundless inland navigation ; magnificent 
 forests of a tree from which sugar flows; ex 
 cellent fishing and fowling; venison in abund 
 ance; no wolves, lions, or tigers; no taxes; no 
 military duty. All these unexampled advan 
 tages offered to colonists at five shillings the 
 acre! " 
 
 This sounds rather modern, does it not? 
 The company, too, was modern; it proved to 
 be a fake of the first water, and Barlow, be 
 sieged by the butcher, the baker, and the candle 
 stick maker, all of whom wanted their money 
 back, was glad to resign his position and look 
 for other fields of labor. He was not long in 
 the seeking. The French Revolution was draw 
 ing near ; the French people were full of excite 
 ment, and Barlow felt called upon to enter 
 Parisian politics. Having translated Volney s 
 
 254 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Ruins, lie took it over to London for publica 
 tion, and while there wrote his violent Advice 
 to the Privileged Classes, a work which was 
 promptly proscribed by the British govern 
 ment. Not content with this, he composed The 
 Conspiracy of Kings against the enemies of 
 France, and aroused still more bitterness. He 
 became a member of the Constitution Society, 
 was sent as a British delegate to the French 
 Convention, and received as a parting gift a 
 present of one thousand pairs of shoes. It was 
 at this time, it is thought, that he wrote his 
 Song to the Guillotine: 
 
 " Fame, let thy trumpet sound, 
 Tell all the world around 
 
 How Capet fell ; 
 And when great George s poll 
 Shall in the basket roll, 
 Let mercy then control 
 
 The Guillotine. 
 
 " When all the sceptred crew 
 Have paid their homage to 
 
 The Guillotine; 
 Let freedom s flag advance, 
 Till all the world, like France! 
 O er tyrants graves shall dance, 
 And peace begin." 
 255 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 In Paris lie became a speculator, gained 
 great wealth, lived like a king, and widened 
 the sphere of his political power. His coun 
 try, recognizing his diplomatic qualities, chose 
 him as consul to Algiers from 1795 to 1797, and 
 there he rendered valuable service in liberating 
 American prisoners and making with the neigh 
 boring petty powers treaties then considered 
 advantageous but now looked upon as disgrace 
 ful. 
 
 By 1805 Barlow had returned to America. 
 Jefferson received him with open arms ; he was 
 hailed as a shrewd diplomat; and his verses 
 convinced the people that he was no less a poet. 
 His immense and unwieldly Columbiad and his 
 Hasty Pudding, the latter prepared during his 
 active work in France, found a multitude of 
 readers. His affairs were indeed prosperous. 
 Having built a splendid home in Washington, 
 he hovered about the powers that were, with 
 the result that in 1811 he was appointed minis 
 ter to France. Now came the closing scene. 
 Napoleon requested a conference with him at 
 Wilna ; then occurred the retreat from Moscow ; 
 and Barlow, necessarily involved in it, followed 
 the army until one evening in a little Polish vil 
 lage his strength failed him and he died in 
 
 256 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 wretchedness. How bitterly he felt the disas 
 ter and how scornfully he regarded Napoleon 
 we may judge from his last poem, dictated as 
 he lay on his death-bed in that bleak, starving, 
 snow-covered town: 
 
 Advice to a Raven in Russia. 
 
 " Black fool, why winter here? These frozen skies, 
 Worn by your wings and deafened by your cries, 
 Should warn you hence, where milder suns invite, 
 And Day alternates with his mother Night. 
 You fear, perhaps, your food will fail you there 
 Your human carnage, that delicious fare, 
 That lured you hither, following still your friend, 
 The great Napoleon, to the world s bleak end. 
 
 You fear he left behind no wars to feed 
 His feather d cannibals and nurse the breed. 
 Fear not, my screamer, call your greedy train, 
 Sweep over Europe, hurry back to Spain 
 You 11 find his legions there, the valiant crew 
 Please best their master when they toil for you. 
 
 Choose then your climate, fix your best abode 
 He ll make you deserts, he ll bring you blood. 
 
 War after war his hungry soul requires; 
 State after state shall sink beneath his fires. 
 
 17 257 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Till men resume their souls, and dare to shed 
 Earth s total vengeance on the monster s head! " 
 
 It was while in Paris in 1793, so some of the 
 accounts say, that Barlow wrote his yet famous 
 Hasty Pudding; but it was not until 1796 that 
 it was presented to American readers through 
 the columns of a New Haven paper. Far from 
 home, he began to think of the plain, old-fash 
 ioned New England food, and memory brought 
 back even the minute details of it all. See the 
 note he appended to the poem; French cooks 
 and French etiquette had not destroyed his na 
 tive simplicity; " There are various ways of 
 preparing and eating it ; with molasses, butter, 
 sugar, cream, and fried. Why so excellent a 
 thing cannot be eaten alone? Nothing is per 
 fect alone, even man, who boasts of so much per 
 fection, is nothing without his fellow substance. 
 In eating, beware of the lurking heat that lies 
 deep in the mass ; dip your spoon gently, take 
 shallow dips, and cool it by degrees. It is 
 sometimes necessary to blow. This is indicated 
 by certain signs which every experienced feeder 
 knows. They should be taught to young begin 
 ners. I have known a child s tongue blistered 
 for want of this attention, and then the school- 
 
 258 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 dame would insist that the poor thing had told 
 a lie. ... A prudent mother will cool it for 
 her child with her own sweet breath. The hus 
 band, seeing this, pretends his own wants blow 
 ing too from the same lips. A sly deceit of 
 love. She knows the cheat, but feigning 
 ignorance, lends her pouting lips and gives a 
 gentle blast, which warms the husband s heart 
 more than it cools the pudding. " 
 
 The poem itself is in three stately cantos, 
 with here an echo of Dryden and there an echo 
 of Pope, very distant echoes, however, it must 
 be admitted. And yet, the mock heroic strain 
 is well sustained throughout. The old saying 
 goes thus : The proof of the pudding is the 
 eating of it; " therefore, test for yourself the 
 flavor of Hasty Pudding: 
 
 "Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic song 
 Flow like thy genial juices o er my tongue, 
 Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime, 
 And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme, 
 No more thy awkward unpoetic name 
 Should shun the muse or prejudice thy fame; 
 But rising grateful to the accustom d ear, 
 All bards should catch it, and all realms revere! 
 
 259 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy 
 Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy ! 
 Doom d o er the world through devious paths to 
 
 roam, 
 
 Each clime my country and each house my home, 
 My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end, 
 I greet my long lost, unforgotten friend. 
 For thee through Paris, that corrupted town, 
 How long in vain I wandered up and down, 
 Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard, 
 Cold from his cave usurps the morning board. 
 London is lost in smoke and steep d in tea; 
 No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee ; 
 The uncouth word, a libel on the town, 
 Would call a proclamation from the crown. " 
 
 And see what results come from a hasty pud 
 ding diet. Barlow recognizes the pleasant and 
 useful qualities of other items in the vegetable 
 kingdom ; but, after all, what can compare with 
 corn? 
 
 " My song resounding in its grateful glee, 
 No merit claims : I praise myself in thee. 
 My father loved thee through his length of days ! 
 For thee his fields were shaded o er with maize ; 
 From thee what health, what vigor he possess d, 
 Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest; 
 Thy constellation ruled my natal morn, 
 And all my bones were made of Indian corn. J 
 
 The simplicity of New England life, he de- 
 
 260 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 clares, has been the salvation of the nation; 
 and Hasty Pudding is the symbol of that sim 
 plicity. 
 
 " To mix the food by vicious rules of art, 
 To kill the stomach, and to sink the heart, 
 To make mankind to social virtue sour, 
 Cram o er each dish, and be what they devour; 
 For this the kitchen muse first fram d her book, 
 Commanding sweats to stream from every cook; 
 Children no more their antic gambols tried, 
 And friends to physic wonder d why they died. 
 Not so the Yankee his abundant feast, 
 With simples furnish d and with plainness drest, 
 A numerous offspring gathers round the board, 
 And cheers alike the servant and the lord; 
 Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous taste, 
 And health attends them from the short repast." 
 
 Here, then, is an embryo Snowbound or Cot 
 ter s Saturday Night, rude, but energetic, 
 with true though humble descriptions, and a 
 quiet humor that makes the poem throughout 
 a decidedly pleasant piece of reading. Bar 
 low s sarcastic lines on Englishmen and Tories 
 were undoubtedly an aid to the American 
 cause ; but not by these will the future remem 
 ber him. Hasty Pudding alone will keep his 
 memory green; for it is 
 
 "A name, a sound to every Yankee dear." 
 261 
 
IV 
 
 RICHARD ALSOP 
 
 Of the other leading spirits among the Wits, 
 by far the most enthusiastic was Richard 
 Alsop (1761-1815). In fact, Alsop was, after 
 a time, the very genius and life of the endeavor. 
 A versatile fellow, acquainted with the litera 
 ture of several languages, fond of outdoor life, 
 something of a naturalist, quick and varied in 
 conversation, fond of every phase of life, he 
 was a person of interest to all kinds and con 
 ditions of men. 
 
 He early became interested in the efforts of 
 his fellow Yale graduates, helped write the 
 first number of The Echo in 1791, and was busy 
 in this sort of " well doing " until its close in 
 1805. His Poem: Sacred to the Memory of 
 George Washington (1809) was widely read, 
 while a number of translations added to his 
 fame, especially his Enchanted Lake of the 
 Fairy Morgana (1806), which, we are informed, 
 
 262 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 was a translation from the Orlando Inamorato 
 of Francesco Berni. Of course, the " gentle 
 reader " is acquainted with this classic, and I 
 shall therefore not dwell upon its merits. Be 
 sides, I have not read it, and might make some 
 misleading statements. I might discuss, also, 
 his Charms of Fancy; but asi it extends through 
 five books, doubtless the reader will be charmed 
 to have it left to his own fancy. 
 
 In spite, however, of these weighty efforts to 
 write masterpieces, Richard Alsop was a nat 
 ural wit, a genial humorist who, like Irving, 
 poked a gentle sort of fun at the follies of his 
 day. Perhaps, if it had been possible, he 
 would have preferred to make his witticisms 
 without touching anybody s tender spots; for 
 he possessed a talent for creating humor for its 
 own sake, a humor that both friend and foe 
 could enjoy. The Newspaper Thunder Storm, 
 quoted in previous pages, was from his pen, 
 and, while sarcastic, there is in it nothing of 
 the offensive tone so frequently found in the 
 satires of his era. But, because Alsop pre 
 ferred genial humor, we must not think him 
 unable to fence with the sharp blade of wit. In 
 the course of a century or two, the Puritanism 
 
 263 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of New England had begun to thaw into a 
 rather cool but nevertheless acceptable liberal 
 ism ; and the followers of Shakespeare and Ben 
 Jonson, always on the lookout for a good open 
 ing, quietly entered the land of the Blue Laws, 
 and ventured to give barn-storming theatrical 
 exhibitions under the pseudonym of " moral 
 lectures." Governor Hancock was noted for 
 his vinegar-flavored piety, and we should not be 
 surprised therefore to learn that he sent the 
 Massachusetts Assembly a message calling at 
 tention to the fact that " Stage plays, Inter 
 ludes, and Theatrical Entertainments under the 
 style and appellation of l Moral Lectures " 
 were being presented in the State, directly in 
 defiance of the ancient laws of the Common 
 wealth. This was on November 8, 1792. On 
 November 10 Alsop published in The Echo a 
 long and witty parody on the paper. Perhaps 
 some extracts will give you a better idea of the 
 poem and of the poet than any further words 
 on my part. 
 
 " A thing most vile, most dreadful in its kind, 
 Hangs, like a mill-stone, heavy on my mind; 
 By conscience urged, in duty s cause made bold, 
 To you this wicked thing I shall unfold, 
 264 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Since plain enough to me is its intent, 
 
 An open insult on my government. 
 
 Long since, while Britain with maternal hand, 
 
 Cheer d the lov d offspring of Columbia s land, 
 
 This State, then Province, pass d with wise intent, 
 An Act, Stage-Plays and such things to prevent : 
 You ll find it, sirs, among the Laws sky blue, 
 Made near that time on brooms when Witches flew. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding this, some chaps uncivil, 
 
 Grand emissaries of our foe the Devil, 
 
 Aliens and Foreigners and Actors funny, 
 
 Who less esteem our morals than our money ; 
 
 Even in our holy Capital of late, 
 
 Have dared insult the majesty of state, 
 
 And to exhibit publicly, propose, 
 
 Stage-Plays and Interludes and Heathen Shows; 
 
 Which in the garb of Moral Lectures drest, 
 
 Of our good, sober manners make a jest. 
 
 Judge, Gentlemen ! my feelings when at first 
 This information on my ear-drum burst: 
 Not more was Israel s hapless King appall d 
 When Endor s witch the ghost of Samuel call d. 
 
 Wild consternation on my visage hung, 
 Congeal d my blood, and every nerve unstrung; 
 
 265 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 O er my whole frame a palsying horror flew, 
 And sense, retiring, bade a long adieu. 
 
 With joy extreme, gentlemen ! in you 
 
 The firm upholders of the laws I view, 
 
 On you devolves the task (I grant it great), 
 
 To keep unstain d the chasteness of our State: 
 
 Since that good lady is beset so sore 
 
 By rakes and libertines full many a score. 
 
 And whate er punishment you shall devise, 
 As to your noble judgments seemeth wise ; 
 Whether you burn, drown, knock them on the head, 
 Or hang them by the neck till dead, dead, dead 
 
 I hope a great example it will stand, 
 And in terrorem guard our pious land." 
 
LEMUEL HOPKINS 
 
 The work done by Theodore Dwight consisted 
 mainly of suggesting a line here and there, and 
 of sharpening the points of some of the satires 
 produced by the others; but the work done by 
 Dr. Lemuel Hopkins (1750-1801) was much 
 more definite and shows individuality if not 
 positive talent. Hopkins was an eccentric phy 
 sician, long-legged and staring-eyed, and yet a 
 man skilled in his profession and strikingly in 
 telligent. Long after his death the story con 
 tinued to be told of his having found a child suf 
 fering with scarlet fever lying in a closed room 
 and covered with a multitude of blankets, and 
 of how he seized it and ran, wild-eyed, from 
 the house. The family, thinking him demented, 
 pursued him with brooms, pokers, rolling pins, 
 anything at hand. Hopkins, however, hurried 
 to a tree nearby, placed the child under the cool 
 shade, calmly asked for some wine for the lit- 
 
 267 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 tie one, and soon had the child delivered from 
 its delirium. And yet, splendid physician as 
 he was, he lived in constant fear of consump 
 tion, and had himself bled so often that he did 
 indeed at last die from a lung trouble brought 
 on by this weakening surgery. 
 
 In spite of his strange manners, Hopkins 
 was sound of heart and stood boldly for what 
 he believed. When General Ethan Allen wrote 
 a work upholding infidelity, the sharp-witted 
 doctor came back at him with a poem a 
 mighty weapon in a skilful hand. 
 
 " Lo, Allen scaped from British jails, 
 His tushes broke by biting nails, 
 Appears in Hyperborean skies, 
 To tell the world the Bible lies. 
 See him on green hills north afar 
 Glow like a self-enkindled star, 
 Prepar d (with mob-collecting club 
 Black from the forge of Belzebub, 
 And grin with metaphysic scowl, 
 With quill just plucked from wing of owl) 
 As rage or reason rise or sink, 
 To shed his blood, or shed his ink. 
 Behold inspired from Vermont dens 
 The seer of Antichrist descends, 
 To feed new mobs with Hell-born manna 
 In Gentile lands of Susquehanna; 
 
 268 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 And teach the Pennsylvania Quaker 
 High blasphemies against his maker. 
 
 All front he seems like wall of brass, 
 
 And brays tremendous as an ass; 
 
 One hand is clench d to batter noses, 
 
 While t other scrawls gainst Paul and Moses." 
 
 We know, too, that he wrote some of the bitter 
 lines against Jefferson, already quoted, and 
 parts of that strong plea to the States, also 
 quoted above, beginning with the words: 
 
 "Go view the lands to lawless power a prey." 
 
 He had no patience whatever with the many 
 quacks whom the lax medical laws of the day 
 allowed to prey upon the people, and some of 
 his bitterest expressions are against these vam 
 pires. For many years a popular poem at the 
 New England fire-side was his Victim of the 
 Cancer Quack: 
 
 11 Here lies a fool flat on his back, 
 The victim of a cancer quack ; 
 Who lost his money and his life, 
 By plaster, caustic, and by knife. 
 The case was this A pimple rose 
 South-east a little of his nose, 
 269 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Which daily reddened and grew bigger, 
 As too much drinking gave it vigor. 
 A score of gossips soon ensure 
 Full threescore different modes of cure; 
 But yet the full-fed pimple still 
 Defied all petticoated skill; 
 When fortune led him to peruse 
 A hand-bill in the weekly news, 
 Signed by six fools of different sorts, 
 All cured of cancers made of warts, 
 Who recommend, with due submission, 
 This cancer-monger as magician. 
 
 The bargain struck, the plaster on, 
 Which gnawed the cancer at its leisure, 
 And pained his face above all measure. 
 But still the pimple spread the faster, 
 And swelled like toad that meets disaster. 
 
 Then purged him pale with jalap drastic, 
 And next applied the infernal caustic. 
 But yet, this semblance bright of hell 
 Served but to make the patient yell; 
 And, gnawing on with fiery pace, 
 Devoured one broadside of his face. 
 * Courage tis done, the doctor cried, 
 And quick the incision knife applied: 
 That with three cuts made such a hole 
 Out flew the patient s tortured soul! " 
 270 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 These, then, were the leaders of the little 
 group of wits who made many a politician and 
 impostor of colonial days writhe under the well- 
 knotted lash. Much that they wrote was the 
 veriest doggerel, and some of them knew it; 
 but whatever they produced was wildly ap 
 plauded by their friends and dreaded by their 
 enemies. It was a unique movement in those 
 old days, and its success was unequalled by like 
 attempts until a similar organization known as 
 the Croaker Poets arose years later in New 
 York City. Those broadsides The Anarchiad, 
 The Echo, The Political Green House, and 
 others fulfilled a positive need of the times, 
 and no matter how indifferent their literary 
 qualities, their importance in the making of the 
 nation is worthy of no small consideration. 
 
VI 
 
 HUGH BRACKENRIDGE 
 
 Now, we must not think that the victims of 
 these Hartford Wits aimed no arrows in reply ; 
 several of the persecuted returned hot missives. 
 The Wits had at least one notable and worthy 
 opponent Hugh Brackenridge (1748-1816). 
 Brackenridge was a " furious " Democrat, a 
 man so violent in his oppositions that, accord 
 ing to his son s testimony, he resigned a posi 
 tion as judge for fear he should, while holding 
 office, inflict bodily injury upon a political 
 enemy. And yet, strange as it may seem, we 
 have to-day scarcely a scrap of his satirical 
 comments upon the Federalists. His son 
 states that the father was exceedingly careless 
 about his manuscripts, considering them worth 
 less as soon as they had served their purpose ; 
 and doubtless it is because of this characteris 
 tic that his fame as a brilliant political wit rests 
 mainly on tradition. He left to posterity, 
 
 272 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 however, one work which bears the marks of 
 genius: the Duyckincks speak of it as one of 
 the greatest political satires yet produced in 
 America. That work is Modern Chivalry, or 
 the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague 
 Regan, His Servant (1796-1806). Bracken- 
 ridge, the early follower of Jefferson and erst 
 while staunch admirer of the " common peo 
 ple, " had so changed his views under a decade 
 or two of Democratic government that now he 
 had almost lost faith in the genius of the popu 
 lace for self-rule. If you are a believer, in the 
 infallibility of Democracy, read this book, and 
 your faith will be considerably shaken. 
 
 Brackenridge s life, like that of/ nearly every 
 other humorist whom we have discussed, was 
 full of activity. Born in Scotland, he came at 
 the age of five with his parents and their 
 numerous other children, to America. The 
 father was so poverty-stricken that upon land 
 ing he had to sell his only coat to buy the fam 
 ily some food, and it is known that all walked 
 nearly the entire distance from New York City 
 to York County, Pennsylvania. There they 
 leased a backwoods farm and nearly starved 
 to death before the first crop came. But who 
 
 18 273 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ever heard of a Scotchman s failing? Hugh 
 Brackenridge not only survived the lack of food 
 and the unremitting toil, but at the same time 
 learned Latin and Greek from a circuit-riding 
 parson, " swapped " his knowledge of these 
 for lessons in mathematics, and at fifteen was 
 ready to teach school. Those were days of 
 arduous struggle for the boy; often he walked 
 thirty miles to obtain a book and then spent 
 the night reading it by the light of a log-fire. 
 That at the age of fifteen he was well prepared 
 to teach the old-time country-school every one 
 may judge for himself. He went down to Gun 
 powder Falls, Maryland, to instruct, found 
 among the students a giant bully who had 
 thrashed all former teachers, and, having tried 
 persuasion in vain, " seized a brand from the 
 fire, knocked the rebel down, and spread terror 
 around him." From that day the discipline 
 at Gunpowder Falls was exemplary. 
 
 But Brackenridge would never have been 
 content as a mere country school-teacher. Soon 
 he wais at Princeton, serving as a tutor and 
 general utility man, and studying with the same 
 zest as in his boyhood. When he graduated 
 in 1771, he recited with Freneau a dialogue, 
 
 274 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 The Rising Glory of America, a poem which, 
 as we have seen, was widely read throughout 
 the colonies. He still remained at Princeton 
 several months, tutoring and studying theology, 
 and then, after receiving license to preach, he 
 returned to Maryland, where he preached and 
 supervised a highly successful academy. 
 
 It was while he was thus engaged that the 
 Battle of Bunker Hill occurred. The strain 
 was too much for his Scotch blood. He has 
 tily prepared a vigorous drama entitled 
 Bunker Hill, which was published a few 
 months later, and during the same year, 1776, 
 hurried away to Philadelphia. There he 
 edited the United States Magazine, a journal 
 that did good service in lashing the Tories and 
 other foes of the new government, and in it he 
 did work that gained him wide notoriety and 
 not a few bitter enemies. Having written one 
 day a severe stricture on General Lee s con 
 duct toward Washington, he was called upon 
 the next morning by the fiery general to receive 
 a thrashing. In response to an earthquake of 
 a knock, Brackenridge stuck his head out an 
 upstairs window, whereupon Lee shook his fist 
 at him and shouted, 
 
 275 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Come down, and I ll give you as good a 
 horse-whipping as any rascal ever received ! 
 
 " Excuse me, general, 7 calmly replied 
 Brackenridge ; " but I wouldn t come down for 
 two such favors! 
 
 Soon we find Brackenridge serving as a 
 chaplain in the Continental Army. What fiery 
 sermons were his ! Six of them were published 
 in 1778 under the title, Six Political Discourses 
 Founded on the Scripture; the publisher did a 
 very dangerous thing not to print them on 
 asbestos! How Brackenridge could hate! 
 Listen to a few Christian remarks concerning 
 the British: " Let every class of men join to 
 execrate the tyrant and the tyranny, and to 
 rank the George of England with the Cains 
 and the murderers of mankind. Let fathers 
 teach their sons the degenerate nature and the 
 name of Englishmen let mothers still with this 
 the children on the breast, and make the name 
 a bugbear. . . . Let every man become a sol 
 dier. . . . Let him be of the mind to fight from 
 hill to hill, from vale to vale, and on every 
 plain, until the enemy is driven back, and forced 
 to depart, until the tyrant shall give up his 
 claim, and be obliged to confess that free men, 
 that Americans, are not to be subdued." 
 
 276 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Now, Brackenridge never did like preach 
 ing, so he said; and, moreover, he had his 
 serious doubts as to the veracity of Presby 
 terian doctrines. He turned to the law, studied 
 in the office of Samuel Chase at Annapolis, and 
 in 1781 went to Pittsburgh, then a small vil 
 lage, and was almost immediately chosen for 
 the State Legislature. Now came the trouble 
 over the tax on liquor, and Brackenridge, with 
 characteristic impetuosity, was so bitterly op 
 posed to the excise that he aided in the Whis 
 key Insurrection in Pennsylvania, and was 
 obliged to defend himself in 1795 by publishing 
 his Incidents of the Insurrection in the West 
 ern Part of Pennsylvania. 
 
 All this was but an unconscious preparation 
 for his masterpiece, Modern Chivalry; for some 
 of the most laughable portions of the book deal 
 with these very matters of excise and rebellion. 
 The first part of the work appeared in 1796, 
 and ten years later came the second part. The 
 book became almost a household classic in the 
 western territory. One day, while at a 
 frontier inn, Brackenridge asked the landlord 
 if he had anything to read. " That I have," 
 said the host, as he reached down under the 
 bar and pulled out Modern Chivalry. " There 
 
 277 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 is something will make you laugh, and the 
 man that wrote it was no fool neither." Years 
 afterward a descendant of the author, while 
 travelling through Mississippi, was asked 
 whether he was related to the Brackenridge 
 who wrote Modern Chivalry, and, upon stating 
 that he was, immediately was offered a horse 
 by the native, and could persuade the owner to 
 take no pay for its use. 
 
 We should not be surprised, therefore, to find 
 Brackenridge succeeding from this time forth. 
 In 1799 he was appointed Judge of the Supreme 
 Court of Pennsylvania, a position which he 
 honored by his unswerving integrity until his 
 death in 1816. And yet, in spite of his digni 
 fied office, he was always full of wit, and is said 
 to have found but one man whom he could not 
 make laugh immediately. That man was 
 George Washington. One evening at a social 
 meeting he tried all his powers upon the Father 
 of the Country ; but not one smile flitted across 
 the sombre face. That night, however, Brack 
 enridge had his revenge. Lying in a room 
 adjoining Washington s, he heard the general 
 giggling far into the night. It is not known 
 whether George of the Hatchet was slow to see 
 
 278 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 a joke or whether he discovered Brackenridge s 
 intention and determined not to be overcome 
 in the presence of the other guests. 
 
 Modern Chivalry is rough in its flavor, not 
 always delicate in its expression, but ever 
 positive and manly in its sentiments. One finds 
 in it here and there reminders of old Don 
 Quixote. Captain Farrago, one of the main 
 characters, a keen, practical man, with an 
 abounding sense of humor, finds continued 
 amusement in his red-headed Irish servant, 
 Teague Began, who is constantly getting into 
 a stew because of his popularity with the 
 masses. Just here is the main purpose of the 
 book : to show the follies of a young democracy, 
 to illustrate the fact that an unsettled, raw 
 race is not always ready for the duties and 
 responsibilities of the self-government thus 
 suddenly cast upon them. What a politician 
 Teague might have made ! He could have had 
 any office from hog-reeve to a seat in Congress, 
 simply because he was popular with the com 
 mon people." He was so ignorant that he 
 could not justly hold any position; but what 
 did that matter so long as the free voter liked 
 him! But, alas, how fickle are the free voters! 
 
 279 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Appointed collector of the excise in the Alle- 
 ghanies, he is seized by these same " free peo 
 ple, " " the masses," " the voters," tarred and 
 feathered, and borne away to oblivion. My 
 dear, deluded politician, all the people can 
 fool you part of the time; part of the people 
 can fool you all the time; but don t let all the 
 people fool you all the time! 
 
 If it had not been for the restraining pres 
 ence of Captain Farrago, Teague would have 
 been the people s fool for ever and a day. 
 That Farrago himself was possessed of plenty 
 of sense and a shrewd wit may be inferred 
 from his reply to a challenge for a duel. It 
 is a clever bit of ridicule of the gentlemanly 
 custom of " defending one s honor." 
 
 " SIR: 
 
 11 l I have two objections to this duel matter. The 
 one is, lest I should hurt you ; and the other is, lest 
 you should hurt me. I do not see any good it would 
 do me to put a bullet thro any part of your body. I 
 could make no use of you when dead for any culinary 
 purpose, as I would a rabbit or turkey. I am no canni 
 bal to feed on the flesh of men. Why then shoot 
 down a human creature, of which I could make no 
 use? A buffalo would be better meat. For though 
 your flesh may be delicate and tender; yet it wants 
 
 280 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 that firmness and consistency which takes and retains 
 salt. At any rate, it would not be fit for long sea 
 voyages. You might make a good barbecue, it is true, 
 being of the nature of a raccoon or an opossum ; but 
 people are not in the habit of barbecuing anything 
 human now. As to your hide, it is not worth taking 
 off, being little better than that of a year old colt. 
 
 " It would seem to me a strange thing to shoot at 
 a man that would stand still to be shot at; inasmuch 
 as I have been heretofore used to shoot at things fly 
 ing or running or jumping. Were you on a tree now, 
 like a squirrel, endeavoring to hide yourself in the 
 branches, or, like a raccoon, that after much eyeing 
 and spying, I observe at length in the crotch of a tall 
 oak, with bough and leaves intervening, so that I could 
 just get sight of his hinder parts, I should think it 
 pleasurable enough to take a shot at you. But as it 
 is there is no skill or judgment requisite either to dis 
 cover or take you down. 
 
 * * As to myself, I do not much like to stand in the 
 way of anything harmful. I am under apprehensions 
 you might hit me. That being the case, I think it 
 most advisable to stay at a distance. If you want to 
 try your pistols, take some object, a tree or a barn door 
 about my dimensions. If you hit that, send me word, 
 and I shall acknowledge that if I had been in the same 
 place, you might also have hit me. 
 
 Teagm&O Began, however, was not possessed 
 of such a supply of common-sense. He was al- 
 
 281 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ways at the service of his countrymen. One 
 day he and the Captain, coming upon an assem 
 blage, found the people voting for a legislator. 
 There were two candidates, the one a man of 
 considerable intelligence, the other a weaver 
 who knew almost nothing beyond the trade of 
 spinning. The people wanted the weaver; he 
 was popular with the voting classes. Captain 
 Farrago made a speech against the laborer, and 
 in the course of his remarks said: 
 
 " To come from counting threads and adjusting 
 them to the splits of a reed, to regulate the finances 
 of a government, would be preposterous; there being 
 no congruity in the case. There is no analogy be 
 tween knotting threads and framing laws. . . . Not 
 that a manufacturer of linen or woolen or other 
 stuffs, is an inferior character, but a different one 
 from that which ought to be employed in affairs of 
 state. . . . When you go to the senate house, the ap 
 plication to you will not be to warp a web; but to 
 make laws for the commonwealth. Now, suppose that 
 the making of these laws requires a knowledge of 
 commerce or of the interests of agriculture, or those 
 principles upon which the different manufactures de 
 pend, what service could you render? ... It is a 
 disagreeable thing for a man to be laughed at, and 
 there is no way of keeping one s self from it but by 
 avoiding all affectation. : 
 
 282 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 But even while this was going on, the peo 
 ple took a sudden liking for red-headed 
 Regan, while he on his part was just as sud 
 denly seized with a liking for the legislature. 
 Naturally the Captain seriously objected; the 
 people, however, " were tenacious of their 
 choice, and insisted on giving Teague their 
 suffrages; and by the frown upon their brows, 
 seemed to indicate resentment at what had been 
 said, as directly charging them with want of 
 judgment. . . . It is a very strange thing, said 
 one of them, . . . that after having con 
 quered Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and got a 
 government of our own, we cannot put in it 
 whom we please. . . . He may not be yet 
 skilled in the matter, but there is a good day 
 coming. We will empower him; and it is bet 
 ter to trust a plain man like him than one of 
 your high-flyers that will make laws to suit 
 their own purposes. " 
 
 As a last resort, Farrago took Teague aside 
 and showed him the evils of the statesman s 
 life. " When a man becomes a member of a 
 public body, he is like a raccoon or other beast 
 that climbs up the fork of a tree; the boys 
 pushing at him with pitchforks or throwing 
 
 283 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 stones or shooting at him with an arrow, the 
 dogs barking in the mean time. One will find 
 fault with your not speaking; another with 
 your speaking, if you speak at all. They will 
 put you in the newspapers and ridicule you as a 
 perfect beast. There is what they call the 
 caricatura, that is, representing you with a 
 dog s head or a cat s claw. As you have a red 
 head they will very probably make a fox of 
 you, or a sorrel horse, or a brindled cow. It is 
 the devil in hell to be exposed to the squibs and 
 crackers of the gazette wits and publications. 
 Teague decided to decline the honor with 
 thanks. 
 
 We all know how a raw, uncultured com 
 munity likes to show off what little learning it 
 does possess. Just so it must have been in the 
 early days of our Republic. A Philosophical 
 Society had been formed, declares the author, 
 and Teague think of it! had been invited to 
 become a member! " It was necessary . . . 
 for the candidates to procure some token of a 
 philosophic turn of mind, such as the skin of 
 a dead cat, or some odd kind of a mouse-trap ; 
 or have phrases in their mouths about minerals 
 and petrifactions; so as to support some idea 
 of natural knowledge, and pass muster. There 
 
 284 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 was one who got in, by finding accidentally the 
 tail of a rabbit, which had been taken off in a 
 boy s trap. . . . The beard of an old fox, taken 
 off and dried in the sun, was the means of in 
 troducing one whom I knew very well. ... It 
 happened as the Captain was riding this day, 
 and Teague trotting after him, he saw a large 
 owl that had been shot by somebody, and was 
 placed in the crotch of a tree. . . . The Cap 
 tain being struck with it, as somewhat larger 
 than such birds usually are, desired Teague to 
 reach it to him ; and tying it to the hinder part 
 of his saddle, rode along." As they came into 
 the village, members of the Society saw the 
 bird, marvelled at it, and at once proposed to 
 elect Teague to membership. 
 
 Of course, Farrago felt duty-bound to offer 
 some objections. You may have noticed that 
 there are always some hard-headed fellows who 
 oppose " the will of the people. " Farrago s 
 objections were all in vain. " Said the philoso 
 pher, at the first institution of the society, by 
 Dr. Franklin and others, it was put upon a nar 
 row basis, and only men of science were con 
 sidered proper to compose it; and this might 
 be a necessary policy at that time. . . . The 
 matter stands now on a broad and catholic bot- 
 
 285 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 torn ; and like the gospel itself, it is our orders, 
 to go out into the highways and hedges, and 
 compel them to come in. There are hundreds 
 whose names you may see on our list, who are 
 not more instructed than this lad of yours." 
 
 As in many another emergency, the Cap 
 tain s last and only successful appeal was to 
 Teague s cowardice. He described the hard 
 ships liable to come to a member of the learned 
 Philosophical Society, and then stressed the 
 dangers of it all. " It is their great study to 
 find curiosities ; and because this man saw you 
 coming after me, with a red head, trotting like 
 an Esquimaux Indian, it has struck his mind 
 to pick you up and pass you for one. Nay, it 
 is possible they may intend worse; and when 
 they have examined you awhile, take the skin 
 off you, and pass you for an overgrown otter, 
 or a musk-rat, or some outlandish animal, for 
 which they will themselves invent a name. " 
 Again the Irishman declined the honor. 
 
 Do you not see that it is all a protest against 
 too much liberty to an unprepared people, an 
 argument against the infallibility of democ 
 racy? In its day the book was really needed; 
 for there seemed to be imminent danger of our 
 nation s becoming freedom-mad and filling the 
 
 286 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 halls of congress with the butcher, the baker, 
 and the candlestick maker, instead of with oil- 
 magnates, coal-barons, and railroad manipula 
 tors. And, luckily, the lesson was taught where 
 it was most needed; for, as we have seen, the 
 book had its greatest popularity in the primi 
 tive society of the new West. 
 
 How closely American humor of those days 
 clings to the history of the nation! First it 
 portrays the humor of founding a new civiliza 
 tion; it passes to a satirical expression of the 
 people s discontent ; it aids with its sarcasm in 
 a deadly struggle against tyranny; and now 
 it turns and warns its people of their extrava 
 gance in a new-found liberty. Perhaps noth 
 ing has been more important in influencing the 
 development of America s political history 
 than the humor of the American press. 
 
 In these later colonial times everybody 
 laughed. We gain such mistaken ideas from 
 our books of history concerning the sombre- 
 ness and solemnity of the old days. Every 
 statesman, nearly every preacher, unbent now 
 and then, in private at least, and indulged in 
 wit. John Adams wrote some very passable 
 humor; Jefferson is credited with numerous 
 brilliant passes ; pious Timothy Dwight, as we 
 
 287 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 have seen, loved to crack a joke on his theo 
 logical foes ; and Governor William Livingston, 
 of New Jersey, known as " the Don Quixote 
 of the Jerseys, " wrote so many laughable 
 squibs that at last the people of his State pro 
 tested, and passed resolutions declaring it in 
 decorous in their Chief Magistrate to be so 
 funny. Even grave George Washington now 
 and then attempted humor. Does he not ap 
 proach it in this letter describing a soldier s 
 dinner! 
 
 " Since our arrival at this happy spot, we have had 
 a ham, sometimes a shoulder of bacon, to grace the 
 head of the table; a piece of roast beef adorns the 
 foot ; and a dish of beans or greens, almost impercep 
 tible, decorates the centre. When the cook has a mind 
 to cut a figure, which I presume will be the case to 
 morrow, we have two beef-steak pies, or dishes of 
 crabs, in addition,, one on each side of the centre dish, 
 dividing the space and reducing the distance between 
 dish and dish to about six feet, which without them 
 would be near twelve feet apart. Of late he has had 
 the surprising sagacity to discover that apples will 
 make pies; and it is a question, if, in the violence of 
 his efforts, we do not get one of apples instead of hav 
 ing both of beef-steaks. If the ladies can put up with 
 such entertainment, and will submit to partake of it 
 on plates, once tin but now iron (not become so by the 
 labor of scouring) , I shall be happy to see them. . . . " 
 
 288 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 No study of colonial humor would be com 
 plete without some mention of the dramatic wit 
 of the period. Notwithstanding the current 
 opinion to the contrary, many of our ancestors 
 of New England and New York and Pennsyl 
 vania went to plays and enjoyed them. Would 
 that this were the place to enter into some dis 
 cussion of the early American theatre; it is a 
 genuinely interesting subject. We have seen 
 that performances were given in Williamsburg, 
 Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, as 
 early as 1716, and in houses built for such a 
 purpose; while dramatic performances were 
 not rare in New York and Philadelphia as far 
 back as 1760. In 1792 plays were presented in 
 Boston under the name of " dramatic recita 
 tion," so as not to conflict with the laws on 
 " stage plays." The bill was repealed in 1793, 
 and that same year the Federal Street The 
 atre was built, and on February 4, 1794, was 
 opened for public acting. 
 
 19 289 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The first play written in America for actual 
 presentation seems to have been Thomas God 
 frey s Prince of Parthia, composed in 1758 and 
 offered in 1759 to the once famous American 
 Company at Philadelphia. It was a dignified, 
 stiff piece of work ; but it might have succeeded 
 with the uncritical colonists of that day. For 
 some unknown reason, however, it was never 
 produced. As early as 1766 a play based on an 
 American theme, Ponteach, or, The Savages of 
 America, had been written by Major Bobert 
 Eogers, an officer in the French and Indian 
 War ; but we have no record of its performance. 
 Perhaps it was best that it was born to blush 
 unseen ; for it had some cause to blush. It was 
 thoroughly conventional; every Indian in it 
 was a cultured gentleman. We know, too, that 
 in 1767 there was published in New York City 
 an amusing satirical play called Disenchant 
 ment, or, The Force of Credulity, a New Ameri 
 can Comic Opera of Three Acts, written by 
 one " Andrew Barton." But it was so effec 
 tive in its personal allusions that it was with 
 drawn after its first rehearsal at Philadelphia, 
 Verily, American drama was having a hard 
 struggle to be born. . 
 
 290 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 In 1774 dramatic literature came to its own 
 as a political agency. In that year we find 
 Jonathan Sewall, hot-headed old Tory of 
 Massachusetts, writing a crude but neverthe 
 less effective colloquy entitled, The Americans 
 Roused, in a Cure for the Spleen, or, Amuse 
 ment for a Winter s Evening: Being the Sub 
 stance of a Conversation on the Times over a 
 Friendly Tankard and Pipe. What a fine ap 
 pearance all that would have made on ye old 
 time bill-board! Again, however, the piece 
 was not publicly presented; but, as it was 
 widely read and as it ridiculed the work of the 
 first Continental Congress, it did indeed arouse 
 the Americans. About the same time Madam 
 Mercy "Warren, " the historical, philosophical, 
 poetical, and satirical consort of ... General 
 James Warren of Plymouth " so the quaint 
 announcement put it wrote two plays dealing 
 with the political situation of the period. One 
 of these was The Adulator: a Tragedy, as 
 it is now Acted in Upper Servia. Of course, 
 "Upper Servia" was nothing more nor less 
 than Boston, while Brutus, Cassius, Marcus, 
 and the other classic characters were our more 
 modern friends, John Adams, Samuel Adams, 
 
 291 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Hancock, and so on. If any Englishman ever 
 read that dramatic sketch, he must have been 
 decidedly ashamed of himself; for Mercy 
 Warren portrayed the whole British race as a 
 multitude of devils. Her other play, The 
 Group, was published in 1775. Various indig 
 nant Koyalists of New England found them 
 selves presented to the public under the aston 
 ishing names of Beau Trumps, Scriblerius 
 Fribble, Simple Sapling, Sir Sparrow Spend- 
 all, Brigadier Hateall, and Judge Meagre. 
 Perhaps a part of one of the Judge s speeches 
 will give an idea of the general flavor: 
 
 " I hate the people who, no longer gulled, 
 
 See through the schemes of our aspiring clan. 
 
 And from the rancor of my venomed mind, 
 
 I look askance on all the human race; 
 
 And if they re not to be appalled by fear, 
 
 I wish the earth might drink that vital stream 
 
 That warms the heart and feeds the manly glow 
 
 The love inherent, planted in the breast, 
 
 To equal liberty conferred on man 
 
 By Him who formed the peasant and the King." 
 
 The next year, 1776, there was published a 
 play not quite so long as its title would indi 
 cate The Fall of British Tyranny: or Ameri- 
 
 292 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 can Liberty Triumphant. The First Campaign. 
 A Tragi-Comedy of Five Acts, as Lately 
 Planned at the Royal Theatrum Pandemonium 
 at St. James. The drama is really a portrayal 
 of all the important events in the Revolution 
 up to the date when the play appeared, and the 
 plot, as daring in location as in time, hops from 
 one continent to another with an agility 
 equalled only by the author s contempt for the 
 classic rules of play-writing. Perhaps we can 
 realize something of its rough humor from this 
 bit of a scene. The British generals and a 
 British admiral are holding a council of war. 
 They cannot see what to do with these stub 
 born American rustics. The Battle of Bunker 
 Hill is just over, and Lord Boston is complain 
 ing of the way these colonists fight. A loud 
 squabbling results; but the admiral breaks in 
 upon it in true sailor fashion: 
 
 " Damn it, don t let us kick up a dust among our 
 selves, to be laughed at fore and aft. This is a hell 
 of a council of war, though I believe it will turn 
 out one before we re done. 
 
 Lord Boston: Well, gentlemen, what are we met 
 here for? 
 
 293 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Admiral Tombstone: Who the devil should know 
 if you don t? Damn it, didn t you send for us? 
 
 Clinton: The provincials are vastly strong, and 
 seem no novices in the art of war. Tis true, we 
 gained the hill at last, but of what advantage is it to 
 us? None. The loss of fourteen hundred as brave 
 men as Britain can boast of is a melancholy consid 
 eration, and must make our most sanguinary friends 
 in England abate of their vigor. 
 
 Elbow Room: I never saw or read of any battle 
 equal to it. ... No laurels there ! 
 
 Mr. Caper: No, nor triumphs neither. I regret in 
 particular the number of brave officers that fell that 
 day, many of whom were of the first families in Eng 
 land. 
 
 Admiral Tombstone: Aye, a damned affair, indeed! 
 Many powdered beaux petit maitres fops fribbles 
 skip jackets macaronies jack puddings noble 
 men s bastards and whores sons fell that day; and 
 my poor marines stood no more chance with em than 
 a cat in hell without claws. 
 
 Lord Boston: It can t be helped, Admiral. What 
 is to be done next? 
 
 Admiral Tombstone: Done? why, what the devil 
 have you done? Nothing yet, but eat Paramount s 
 beef, and steal a few Yankee sheep ; and that, it seems, 
 is now become a damned lousy, beggarly trade, too; 
 for you haven t left yourselves a mouthful to eat." 
 
 294 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 Late in the winter of 1775 General Burgoyne 
 wrote for the amusement of his officers and the 
 Tories a farce called The Blockade, a play 
 which the aforesaid officers presented with 
 great gusto in Faneuil Hall, Boston. But the 
 sad day for the evacuation came in March, 
 1776, and then it was that some American, 
 probably Mercy Warren, wrote a farce on the 
 farce, and gave it the happy title of The Block- 
 Heads, or the Affrighted Officers. It afforded 
 many a laugh to the patriots, for it dealt with 
 the surprise felt by the British when they awoke 
 one morning to find Washington and his rag 
 amuffins encamped upon the hills about Boston. 
 Thus the merry war of words continued. Dra 
 matic humor, in short, served the country in 
 just the same way and with just as much zeal 
 as did the newspapers and the magazines and 
 the innumerable pamphlets of the day. 
 
 ROYALL TYLER 
 
 Few if any of these early attempts deserve 
 the name of dramas; some were never acted; 
 some were never intended for acting; they 
 sometimes had simply the dramatic feature of 
 dialogue or conversation. The first American 
 
 295 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 comedy regularly produced was The Contrast, 
 a Comedy in Five Acts: written by a Citizen of 
 the United States, played at the John Street 
 Theatre in New York in 1787. The " citizen 
 of the United States," it was soon known, was 
 Eoyall Tyler (1757-1826). It would not do to 
 attempt to rehearse with any detail the deeds 
 of Tyler s life; it would require another vol 
 ume. He felt capable to undertake any task, 
 no matter how novel or difficult. We have 
 heard that " fools rush in where angels fear to 
 tread;" but this Tyler was no fool. He be 
 came a famous jurist in his day; he was aide- 
 de-camp to General Benjamin Lincoln when 
 that soldier undertook to squelch Shay s Ee- 
 bellion ; and he wrote informing magazine arti 
 cles on all sorts of subjects. He went abroad, 
 and the result was his entertaining Yankee in 
 London (1809). His contributions to the 
 Farmer s Weekly Museum (Walpole, N. H.) 
 were widely copied and made his name known 
 in every New England home. His Reports of 
 Cases in the Supreme Court of Vermont 
 (1809) showed him to be an attorney of much 
 acumen. He was forever busy a rather relia 
 ble sign of genius, by the way. 
 
 296 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 While in New York, seeing about affairs con 
 nected with Shay s Eebellion, he concluded that 
 he could write a play, and The Contrast proved 
 it. It was acted by that famous " American 
 Company " in April, 1787, and was such a suc 
 cess that Tyler felt encouraged to try his hand 
 again. The next month he produced May Day 
 in Town, or New York in an Uproar, a comic 
 opera in two acts. Ten years later, in 1797, 
 his Good Spec, or Land in the Moon, caught 
 the public fancy in Boston. Eoyall Tyler 
 might have made a famous playwright, if he 
 had not been such a successful judge. 
 
 Strange to say, this first attempt, The Con 
 trast, is not nearly so egotistical as most first 
 attempts in literature are. In the " advertise 
 ment " the author puts forward the following 
 excuse: " In justice to the Author it may be 
 proper to observe that this Comedy has many 
 claims to the public indulgence, independent of 
 its intrinsic merits: It is the first essay of 
 American genius in a difficult species of compo 
 sition; it was written by one who never criti 
 cally studied the rules of the drama, and, indeed, 
 has seen but few of the exhibitions of the stage ; 
 it was undertaken and finished in the course of 
 
 297 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 three weeks; and the profits of one night s per- 
 formance were appropriated to the benefit of 
 the sufferers by the fire of Boston." 
 
 And what is our first regularly acted comedy 
 about? Well, it would show once more, if you 
 please, the difference between the " good old 
 times " and these degenerate modern days. 
 But let a few lines from the Prologue tell you 
 about it: 
 
 " Exult each patriot heart! this night is shown 
 A piece which we may fairly call our own; 
 Where the proud titles of * My Lord ! Your Grace ! 
 To humble l Mr/ and plain * Sir give place. 
 Our author pictures not from foreign climes 
 The fashions or the follies of the times; 
 But has confined the subject of his work 
 To the gay scenes the circles of New York. 
 
 The purpose being stated, Tyler proceeds to 
 illustrate it. The first scene of the first act 
 will give an idea of how the " contrast " will 
 be presented; for here at the very beginning 
 the idle chat of the " weaker sex " portrays 
 the shameful depravity of our modern times. 
 What a blessing that we can so easily shift the 
 burden of our wickedness upon woman! Adam, 
 the first man, did it, but let us turn to our 
 
 298 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 comedy. Charlotte and Letitia, two colonial 
 dainsels, are talking. 
 
 " Letitia! And so, Charlotte, you really think the 
 pocket-hoop unbecoming. 
 
 Charlotte: No, I don t say so. It may be very 
 becoming to saunter round the house of a rainy day ; 
 to visit my grandmamma, or to go to Quakers meet 
 ing; but to swim in a minuet, with the eyes of fifty 
 well-dressed beaux upon me, to trip it in the Mall, 
 or walk on the Battery, give me the luxurious, jaunty, 
 flowing bell-hoop. It would have delighted you to have 
 seen me the last evening, my charming girl! I was 
 dangling o er the Battery with Billy Dimple; a knot 
 of young fellows were upon the platform ; as I passed 
 them I faltered with one of the most bewitching false 
 steps you ever saw, and then recovered myself with 
 such a pretty confusion, flirting my hoop to discover 
 a jet-black shoe and brilliant buckle. Gad! how my 
 little heart thrilled to hear the confused raptures of 
 * Demme, Jack, what a delicate foot! * Ha! Gen 
 eral, what a well turned 
 
 Let.: Fie! fie! Charlotte (stopping her mouth}. I 
 protest you are quite a libertine. 
 
 Charl.: Why, my dear little prude, are we not all 
 such libertines? Do you think when I sat tortured 
 two hours under the hands of my friseur, and an hour 
 more at my toilet, that I had any thoughts of my 
 aunt Susan or my cousin Betsey ? though they are both 
 allowed to be critical judges of dress. 
 
 299 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Let . : Why, who should we dress to please, but those 
 who are judges of its merit? 
 
 CharL: Why, a creature who does not know Buff on 
 from Souflee Man! my Letitia Man! for whom 
 we dress, walk, dance, talk, lisp, languish, and smile. 
 . . . Why, I 11 undertake with one flirt of this hoop 
 to bring more beaux to my feet in one week than the 
 grave Maria and her sentimental circle can do by 
 sighing sentiment till their hairs are gray. 
 
 Let.: It is whispered that if Maria gives her hand 
 to Mr. Dimple it will be without her heart. 
 
 CharL : Though the giving of the heart is one of the 
 last of all laughable considerations in the marriage of 
 a girl of spirit, yet I should like to hear what anti 
 quated notions the dear little piece of old fashioned 
 prudery has got in her head. 
 
 Let.: . . . Why, she read Sir Charles Grandison, 
 Clarissa Harlow, Shenstone, and the Sentimental 
 Journey, and between whiles, as I said, Billy s letters. 
 But as her taste improved, her love declined. The 
 contrast was so striking betwixt the good-sense of her 
 books and the flimsiness of her love-letters, that she 
 discovered she had unthinkingly engaged her hand 
 without her heart; and then the whole transaction 
 managed by the old folks now appeared so unsenti 
 mental and looked so like bargaining for a bale of 
 goods that she found she ought to have rejected, ac 
 cording to every rule of romance, even the man of 
 
 300 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 her choice if imposed upon her in that manner. Clary 
 Harlow would have scorned such a match. 
 
 Chart.: Well, how was it on Mr. Dimple s return? 
 Did he meet a more favorable reception than his let 
 ters? 
 
 Let.: Much the same. She spoke of him with re 
 spect abroad and with contempt in her closet. She 
 watched his conduct and conversation, and found that 
 he had by travelling acquired the wickedness of Love 
 lace without his wit, and the politeness of Sir Charles 
 Grandison without his generosity. The ruddy youth 
 who washed his face at the cistern every morning, and 
 swore and looked eternal love and constancy, was now 
 metamorphosed into a flippant, pallid, polite beau, 
 who devotes the morning to his toilet, reads a few 
 pages of Chesterfield s letters, and then minces out, to 
 put the infamous principles in practice upon every 
 woman he meets. " 
 
 Thus the conversation proceeds, relating the 
 idle nothings of the day. And thus, too, our 
 New England lawyer-dramatist strove to 
 arouse once more the waning patriotism of the 
 metropolis of the New World, and, in a new 
 field, to make American humor a useful agency 
 to American democracy. The Eevolution over, 
 however, and the nation on the highway to pros 
 perity, most of the plays ceased to deal with the 
 
 301 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 dangers of the day, and existed merely for the 
 pleasure that they gave. Some of them were 
 crude; some of them were rude; and several 
 of them were vulgar to an extent that aston 
 ishes us of scarcely a century later. All of them 
 were lively and hearty, however, while not a 
 few contained many a good laugh and many a 
 jingle that caught the public ear. Now and 
 then one of these old lyrics is wafted down to 
 our day; such as, the Sleighing Song from the 
 once popular Better Sort, or the Girl of Spirit 
 (1789). Hear a few lines from a "popular 
 song " of colonial days: 
 
 " What pleasure can compare 
 
 To a sleighing with the fair 
 In the evening, the evening, in cold and frosty 
 
 weather ? 
 
 When rapidly we go 
 As we jingle o er the snow, 
 And tantarra, huzza! And tantarra, huzza! 
 
 And tantarra! sings every brave fellow! 
 
 " When to Watertown we get, 
 And the turkey s on the spit, 
 And we dance, boys, and dance, boys, and drive away 
 
 all sorrow, 
 
 Tis then your milk and tea 
 Give place to strong sangree, 
 302 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 And we banish, huzza ! We banish, huzza ! 
 
 And we banish the cares of to-morrow ! 
 
 11 Now for Boston we prepare, 
 
 And the night is cold and clear, 
 And we re stowing close, we re stowing close, because 
 
 it s chilly weather. 
 O then what fun we feel 
 When the sleigh it takes a heel, 
 And we re huddled, huzza! And we re huddled, 
 
 huzza ! 
 And we re huddled, brave boys, altogether! 
 
 " Tis then the ladies cry, 
 lud ! dear ! my ! 
 And we scrabble, boys, we scrabble, boys, all from the 
 
 snowy weather. 
 Then in the sleigh again 
 Do we scamper o er the plain, 
 And tantarra, huzza, tantarra, huzza! 
 
 And tantarra! sings every brave fellow! " 
 
 WILLIAM DUNLAP 
 
 As one looks over these first attempts in 
 American drama one is inclined to wonder why 
 our nation has reached no greater heights in 
 this field of literature. There was life in those 
 old plays ; there was frequently a vigorous bit 
 of rhetoric; there was undoubtedly wit. We 
 
 303 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 might point out as another example, the first 
 American tragedy regularly produced, .Leices 
 ter, performed at the old John Street Theatre 
 in New York in 1794, a play so high in tone 
 and striking in situation that it is by no means 
 to be sneered at. Its author, William Dunlap 
 (1766-1839), wrote at the age of twenty-three a 
 successful comedy entitled The Father of an 
 Only Child; and one may well doubt whether 
 there is living to-day in America a man of 
 twenty-three who could equal it. The fame of 
 this William Dunlap has not passed away even 
 in this day. The Dunlap Society of New York 
 City, in its efforts to encourage American art, 
 has done his name honor. For he was an artist 
 as well as a dramatist; his series of pictures 
 on Scriptural subjects, once exhibited through 
 out America, do indeed great credit to an art 
 in its infancy. As the founder of the National 
 Academy of Design, and author of the His 
 tory of the Rise and Progress of the Art of 
 Design in the United States (1834), he showed 
 his sincere zeal for one of his professions; 
 while through his History of the American 
 Theatre (1832) and his pleasing plays, he 
 showed his knowledge and talent in the other. 
 That the old days were not destitute of hu- 
 
 304 
 
THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE 
 
 mor I hope I have proved. Extracts from 
 Dunlap s Father of an Only Child would but 
 add to the proof. See how natural the dialogue 
 is in this old-time drama. Mr. and Mrs. Backet 
 are seated at breakfast. Mr. Racket has 
 doubtless been out late the night before, as he 
 now has a suspicious black patch on his nose. 
 With his weak and sleepy eyes, he is trying at 
 one and the same time to read a paper and lis 
 ten to his wife s morning discourse. I leave 
 it to my married readers as to whether there is 
 any truth in the description. 
 
 . . 
 
 Racket. Yaw ! yaw ! Curse me if I can see dis 
 tinctly this morning. Is it that I lack sleep, or do the 
 printers lack new types? Go on, my dear, go on: I 
 believe you were speaking. (Reads again.) 
 
 Mrs. Rack. (Rising and speaking aside.) This 
 provoking indifference is not to be borne! I must 
 rouse him from it, or lose all hopes of happiness. 
 (To him.) Let me tell you, Mr. Racket, your present 
 behavior is neither manly nor polite. Contrary to 
 the advice of Colonel Campbell, my guardian, I threw 
 myself and my fortune into your arms, blindly excus 
 ing, as the levities of youth, your noted propensities 
 to vicious dissipation. 
 
 Rack. (Reads.) t A majority of thirty-one in 
 favor of adopting it with amendments. Pray sit 
 20 305 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 down, my dear; you will fatigue yourself; pray sit 
 down. 
 
 Mrs. Rack. Sir, this is adding insult to injury! 
 In marrying you, I risked the displeasure of all my 
 friends: and though the excellent Colonel Campbell, 
 my second father, yielded to my will, I hazarded by 
 my conduct that paternal love which was the first joy 
 of my heart. On your faith I staked all. 
 
 Rack. Let me tell you, my life, you are a des 
 perate gambler! After such a confession, can you 
 ever have the face to find fault with my staking a few 
 hundreds on a card? 
 
 Mrs. Rack. I deserve the reproach, sir; and if the 
 game was yet to play (Pauses.) 
 
 Rack. Come, there is some spirit in that. Go on, 
 madam. 
 
 Mrs. Rack. Perhaps 
 
 Rack. You would play the same stake again. 
 
 Mrs. Rack. What is my gain ? 
 
 Rack. A husband. 
 
 Mrs. Rack. Whose face I never see, except when 
 excess and riot have made it unfit for public view. 
 
 Rack. (Reads.) l And we hope our virtuous exam 
 ple will be followed by all our fellow citizens/ 
 
 Mrs. Rack. (Walking in agitation.) Virtuous 
 example truly! O, Mr. Kacket, we have been mar 
 ried but one year, and 
 
 Rack. (Rising and yawning.) No more! It has 
 been a curst long year! " 
 
 306 
 
II 
 
 It is high time that we bring our discussion 
 of colonial humor to a close. How much it is 
 necessary to omit! We have but noted here 
 and there the more conspicuous flows in the 
 never-ceasing current of laughter. From 1607 
 until the days when the Republic had taken a 
 permanent place among nations, America was 
 never without its store of witty intellects. 
 True, there were blue laws, witch burnings, and 
 Indian massacres ; but in spite of these and the 
 sorrows, superstitions, and unbending theolo 
 gies the people saw much of the sunshine and 
 the gladness of this world. Often indeed their 
 laughter was full of bitter, Hebraic taunting; 
 but there were bitter tyrants and bitter hard 
 ships, be it remembered, and it was something 
 of a wonder that at times there was any joy 
 whatever. It is a remarkable testimony to the 
 sturdiness of the American people, that, in 
 spite of the terrors of the wilderness and the 
 
 307 
 
WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 terrors of tyrannical misrule, they have re 
 tained the happy faculty of being able to see a 
 joke and return it with interest. May they 
 never lose that faculty; for as an old colonist, 
 Jonathan Sewall of New Hampshire, declares 
 in his Eulogy on Laughing, 
 
 " It makes the wheels of nature gliblier play; 
 
 Dull care suppresses; smoothes life s thorny way; 
 Propels the dancing current thro each vein ; 
 Braces the nerves; corroborates the brain; 
 Shakes every muscle, and throws off the spleen." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The following books and periodicals will be found most 
 useful in the study of early humor in America. A num 
 ber of these publications may be secured in any good public 
 or college library; many of them, unfortunately, are to be 
 found in only the largest and oldest collections. It will be a 
 glad day for students of American literature when some 
 society or patriotic individual can furnish the financial 
 means for the publication in inexpensive form of these 
 interesting and valuable colonial writings. 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN: Letters, Boston, 1841. 
 ALLEN: American Biographical Dictionary, Boston, 1857. 
 ALLIBONE: Dictionary of Authors, New York. 
 ALSOP: Political Green House, Hartford, 1799. 
 American Antiquarian Society Proceedings. 
 -American Chronicles of the Times, Philadelphia, 1774-75. 
 American Museum, Philadelphia, 1787-92. 
 ANDRE: The Cow-Chace, New York, 1780. 
 ARBUTHNOT: History of John Bull, New York, 1789. 
 Aristocracy, Philadelphia, 1795. 
 Atlantic Monthly, Boston. 
 
 BANCROFT: History of the United States, New York, 1791. 
 BARLOW: Columbiad, Philadelphia, 1807. 
 BARLOW : Conspiracy of Kings, London, 1792. 
 BARLOW: Vision of Columbus, Hartford, 1787. 
 BARTON : Disappointment, New York, 1767. 
 
 309 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Battle of Brooklyn: A Farce, New York, 1776. 
 
 BEERS: A Century of American Literature, New York, 
 1878. 
 
 BEERS: Initial Studies in American Letters, New York, 
 1892. 
 
 BIGELOW: Life of Benjamin Franklin, New York. 
 
 BLAUVELT: Fashion s Analysis, New York, 1807. 
 
 Blockheads, The, A Farce, Boston, 1776. 
 
 BRACKENRIDGE: Battle of Bunker Hill, Philadelphia, 1776. 
 
 BRACKENRIDGE : Death of General Montgomery, Philadel 
 phia, 1777. 
 
 BRACKENRIDGE: Modern Chivalry, Pittsburgh, 1804. 
 
 BRACKENRIDGE: Six Political Discourses, Lancaster, 1778. 
 -~- BRADSHAW: Southern Poetry Prior to 1860, Richmond, 
 
 Virginia, 1900. 
 -{ " BURTON : Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor, New York, 1858. 
 
 BYLES: Poems on Several Occasions, Boston, 1744. 
 
 BYLES: The Comet, Boston, 1744. 
 
 CAMPBELL : Anne Bradstreet, Boston, 1891. 
 
 CAREY: The Plagi-Scurriliad, Philadelphia, 1786. 
 
 CAREY: The Porcupiniad, Philadelphia, 1799. 
 
 CLEMENS (TWAIN) : Library of American Humor, New 
 York. 
 
 Columbian Muse, New York, 1794. 
 
 Connecticut Journal and New Haven Post-Boy } 1770-73. 
 
 COOK: Sot-Weed Factor, Maryland Historical Society 
 Fund Publications, 1900, No. 36. 
 
 COOK: Sot-Weed Redivivus, Maryland Historical Society 
 Fund Publications, 1900, No. 36. 
 
 DELANCEY: Philip Freneau, 1891. 
 
 DELAPLAINE: "Repository of Lives and Portraits of Dis 
 tinguished American Characters, Philadelphia, 1815-18. 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, London, 1890. 
 
 310 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 DRAKE: Dictionary of American Biography, Boston, 1872. 
 
 BUTTON: Present State of Literature, Hartford, 1800. 
 
 DUYCKINCK: Cyclopedia of American Literature, New 
 York, 1875. 
 
 DUYCKINCK: Poems by Philip Freneau, Philadelphia. 
 
 DWIGHT: Triumph of Infidelity, 1788. 
 
 Echo, The, Hartford, 1807. 
 
 ELIOT: Biographical Dictionary, Boston, 1809. 
 
 Encyclop&dia Britannica. 
 
 EVANS: American Bibliography, Chicago, 1903-05. 
 
 EVERETT: Poets of Connecticut, Hartford, 1844. 
 
 Fall of British Tyranny; A Tragi-Comedy, Philadelphia, 
 1776. 
 
 FESSENDEN: Democracy Unveiled, Boston, 1805. 
 
 FESSENDEN: Original Poems, London, 1804. 
 
 FESSENDEN : Terrible Tractoratum, New York, 1804. 
 
 FISHER: Men, Women and Manners of Colonial Times, 
 Philadelphia, 1898. 
 
 FISKE: Appleton s Cyclopedia of American Biography, 
 New York, 1889. 
 
 FORD: Beginnings of American Dramatic Literature, New 
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 FRENEAU: Poems Written and Published during the Amer 
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 FRENEAU: Miscellaneous Works, Philadelphia, 1788. 
 
 GOODRICH : Recollections of a Life Time, New York, 1857. 
 
 GREEN: Entertainment for a Winter s Evening, Boston, 
 1750. 
 
 GREGOIRE: Critical Observations on the Columbiad, Wash 
 ington, 1809. 
 
 GRIEVOUS, PETER: Congratulatory Epistle to the Redoubt 
 able Peter Porcupine, Philadelphia, 1796. 
 
 GRISWOLD: Curiosities of American Literature, New York. 
 
 311 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 GRISWOLD : Female Poets of America, New York, 1848. 
 
 GRISWOLD: Poets and Poetry of America, Philadelphia, 
 1843. 
 
 HAVEN: Catalogue of American Publications, Albany, 1874. 
 
 HART : Manual of American Literature, New York. 
 
 HOLLIDAY: A History of Southern Literature, New York, 
 1906. 
 
 HOLLIDAY: The Literature of Colonial Virginia, New 
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 HOLLIDAY: Three Centuries of Southern Poetry, Nash 
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 HOPKINS, LEMUEL : The Guillotine, Philadelphia, 1796. 
 
 HOPKINS, LEMUEL: The Democratiad, Philadelphia, 1795. 
 
 HOPKINS, JOSEPH: The Hamiltoniad, Philadelphia, 1804. 
 
 HOPKINSON: Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writ 
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 HOPKINSON : The Old Farm and the New Farm, New York, 
 1864. 
 
 HOWELL: A Fan for Fanning, North Carolina Magazine, 
 February, 1859. 
 
 Hows: American Poems, New York. 
 
 Hows: Golden Leaves from American Poets, New York. 
 
 Hows : Poetry of the People, New York. 
 
 HUMPHREYS: Miscellaneous Works, New York, 1804. 
 
 JACKSON: Literary History of Colonial Pennsylvania, 
 Lancaster, 1906. 
 
 KETTELL: Specimens of American Poetry, Boston, 1829. 
 
 KNAPP : Eminent Lawyers, Statesmen, and Men of Let 
 ters, Boston, 1821. 
 
 LIVINGSTON : Democracy, New York, 1790. 
 
 LOSSING : TrumbulFs McFingal, New York, 1881. 
 
 Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, Philadelphia, 1857. 
 
 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings. 
 
 312 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 McMASTERS : Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, Bos 
 ton, 1895. 
 
 MITCHELL: American Lands and Letters, New York, 1897. 
 
 MOORE: Diary of the American Revolution, New York, 
 1860. 
 
 MOORE: Illustrated Ballad History of the American Revo 
 lution, New York, 1876. 
 
 MOORE: Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, 
 New York, 1856. 
 
 MORRIS: Half-Hours with the Best Humorous Authors, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 MORSE: Benjamin Franklin, Boston, 1889. 
 
 Motley Assembly, The, A Farce, Boston, 1779. 
 
 MUNFORD: Poems, Richmond, 1798. 
 
 National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 
 Philadelphia, 1835. 
 
 NICHOLS : Select Collection of Poems, 1780. 
 
 ODELL: The American Times, New York, 1780. 
 
 Olio, Philadelphia, 1801. 
 
 ONDERDONK : History of American Verse, Chicago, 1901. 
 
 OSGOOD: American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 
 New York, 1904. 
 
 OTIS : American Verse, New York, 1909. *""""" 
 
 PATTEE: Poems of Philip Freneau, Princeton, 1902-07. 
 
 Pennsylvania Historical Society Publications. 
 
 Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 
 
 Philadelphiensis, Philadelphia, 1762. 
 
 "Pilgarlic": The Albaniad, 1791. 
 
 Prince Society Publications, Boston. 
 
 Rhode Island Historical Society Publications. 
 
 RICHARDSON: American Literature, New York, 1887-89. 
 
 RIGGS: The Anarchiad, New Haven, 1861. 
 
 RUTHERFORD: American Literature, Atlanta, 
 
 313 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 SABIN: Bibliotheca Americana, New York, 1868. 
 
 SABINE: Biographical Sketches of Loyalists, Boston, 1864. 
 
 SANDERSON: Biography of the Signers of the Declaration, 
 Philadelphia, 1827. 
 
 SARGENT: Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, Philadelphia, 
 1857. 
 
 SARGENT: Loyal Verses of Stansbury and Odell, Albany, 
 
 1860. 
 
 SEARS: American Literature in the Colonial and National 
 Periods, Boston, 1902. 
 
 SEARSON: Poems on Various Subjects, Philadelphia, 1797. 
 
 SEDGWICK : William Livingston, New York, 1833. 
 
 SEWALL: Miscellaneous Poems, Portsmouth, 1801. 
 
 SEWALL: The American Roused, Reprinted by James Har 
 rington, New York. 
 
 Sewanee Review, Sewanee, Tennessee. 
 
 SHEA: Alsop s Character of the Province of Maryland, 
 New York, 1869. 
 
 SHEA: Early Southern Tracts, 1866. 
 
 SMITH: American Poems, 1793. 
 
 SMITH: Foundation of the American Colonies. 
 
 South Atlantic Quarterly, Durham, North Carolina. 
 
 SPARKS: Library of American Biography, Boston, 1847. 
 
 SPRAGUE : Annals of the American Pulpit f New York, 1869. 
 
 Spunkiad, The, Newburgh, 1798. 
 
 STEDMAN: American Anthology, Boston. 
 
 - ~- STEDMAN: Poets of America, Boston, 1885. 
 
 STEDMAN and HUTCHINSON: Library of American Litera 
 ture, New York, 1889. 
 
 STONE : Ballads and Poems Relating to the Burgoyne Cam 
 paign, Albany, 1893. 
 
 TAPPAN : America s Literature, Boston. 
 
 THOMAS: History of Printing in America. 
 
 314 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 THOMPSON: New England s Crisis, In the Club of Odd 
 
 Volumes, Boston, 1894. 
 
 TOUCHSTONE: The House of Wisdom in a Bustle, Phila 
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 TRENT: History of American Literature, New York, 1903. 
 TRENT and WELLS: Colonial Prose and Poetry, New York, 
 
 1901. 
 
 TRUMBULL: Poetical Works, Hartford, 1820. 
 TUDOR : Life of James Otis. 
 TYLER: History of American Literature during the Colonial 
 
 Times, New York. 
 TYLER: Literary History of the American Revolution, New 
 
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 TYLER: Three Men of Letters, New York. 
 WARREN : The Adulateur, Boston, 1775. 
 WARREN: The Group, Boston, 1775. 
 WA.RREN: Poems Dramatic and Miscellaneous, Boston, 
 
 1790. 
 
 WATSON: Annals of Philadelphia, Philadelphia. 
 WEGELIN: Early American Poetry, New York, 1903. 
 WENDELL : Literary History of America, Boston, 1900. 
 WHIPPLE: American Literature, Boston, 1899. 
 WILLIAMS : The Hamiltoniad, Boston, 1804. 
 WITHERSPOON, JOHN : The Works of, Edinburgh, 1805. 
 WOODBERRY: America in Literature, New York, 1903. 
 WRIGHT: Poetry and Poets of Connecticut, Papers of the 
 
 New Haven Colony Historical Society. 
 WYNNE: Byrd Manuscripts, 1866. 
 
 315 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, John, 82, 97, 146, 206, 287, 
 
 291 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 96, 248, 291 
 Address to the Armies, 248 
 Address to the Troops, 98 
 Adulator, The, 291 
 Advice to Privileged Classes, 255 
 Alsop, George, 33 
 Alsop Richard, 229, 239, 243, 245, 
 
 262 
 
 America Independent, 187 
 American Chronicles, 94 
 Americans Roused, 291 
 American Times, 128, 129 
 Ames, Nathaniel, 67 
 Anarchiad, The, 233, 237, 271 
 Anderson, Hugh, 92 
 Another Prophecy, 100 
 Astronomical Diary and Almanac, 67 
 Autobiography, Franklin, 79 
 
 B 
 
 Barlow, Joel, 229, 232, 243, 245, 252 
 
 "Barton, Andrew," 290 
 
 Battle of King s Mountain, 117 
 
 Battle of the Kegs, 149 
 
 Bay Psalm Book, 43 
 
 Better Sort, 302 
 
 Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat, The, 
 
 161 
 
 Blockade, The, 295 
 Block-Heads, The, 295 
 Body of Liberties, 19 
 
 Brackenridge, Hugh, 175, 239, 272 
 
 Bradstreet, Anne, 31 
 
 Bunker Hill, 275 
 
 Byles, Mather, 53, 60 
 
 Byrd Manuscripts, 50 
 
 Byrd, William, 45 
 
 Character of Maryland, 33 
 Charms of Fancy, 263 
 Cogswell, M. F., 229 
 Columbiad, The, 232, 256 
 Congratulation, The, 128 
 Congress, The, 110 
 Conquest of Canaan, 246 
 Conspiracy of Kings, 243, 255 
 Contrast, The, 296, 297 
 Cook, Eben, 38 
 Correspondent, The, 204, 206 
 Cotton, John, 19, 54 
 Count de Schaumbergh, 86 
 Crispin O Connor s Answer, 177 
 
 Dance, The, 122 
 
 Death of Mr. Old Tenor, 59 
 
 Death-Song of a Cherokee Indian, 171 
 
 Destruction of Babylon, 207 
 
 Dialogue with the Gout, 83 
 
 Douglas, David, 92 
 
 Douglass, William, 65 
 
 Dudley, Thomas, 31 
 
 Duffield, George, 132 
 
 Dunlap, William, 303 
 
 317 
 
INDEX 
 
 Dwight, Theodore, 229, 239, 245, 
 
 267 
 Dwight, Timothy, 228, 229, 235, 
 
 245, 246, 287 
 
 E 
 
 Echo, The, 239, 243, 253, 262, 264, 
 271 
 
 Edict by the King of Prussia, 86 
 
 Elegy on the Times, 207 
 
 Enchanted Lake, The, 262 
 
 Entertainment for a Winter s Even 
 ing, 58 
 
 Eulogy on Laughing, 308 
 
 Eutaw Springs, 170 
 
 F 
 
 Fall of British Tyranny, 292 
 
 Fate of John Burgoyne 120 
 
 Father Abraham s Speech, 77 
 
 Father of an Only Child, 304 
 
 Female Frailty, 178 
 
 Feu de Joie, 128 
 
 First Book of the American Chronicle, 
 
 167 
 
 Force of Credulity, 290 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 28, 50, 64, 69, 
 
 70, 165, 248 
 Freneau, Philip, 124, 170, 274 
 
 General Gage s Confession, 175 
 General Gage s Soliloquy, 182 
 Godfrey, Thomas, 290 
 Good Spec, 297 
 Green, Joseph, 53, 58 
 Greenfield Hill, 246 
 
 Hancock, John, 239, 264, 292 
 Happiness of America, 248 
 
 Hartford Wits, 124, 227, 228 
 Hasty Pudding, 252, 256, 258 
 Higginson, Francis, 16 
 History of Carolina, 44 
 History of the Dividing Line, 47 
 Hopkins, Lemuel, 229, 235, 240, 245, 
 
 267 
 
 Hopkinson, Francis, 124, 145 
 Humphreys, David, 229, 245, 247 
 Hymn Written during a Voyage, 60 
 
 Incidents of the Insurrection, 277 
 Indian Burying-Ground . 170, 171 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 45, 50, 71, 80, 
 231, 235, 236, 240, 243, 244, 248, 
 269, 287 
 
 Journey to the Land of Eden, 47 
 
 Lady s Singing Bird, 173 
 
 Lawson, John, 44 
 
 Leicester, 304 
 
 Letters of Cato, 165 
 
 Letter Written by a Foreigner, 154 
 
 Libera Nos, Domine, 182, 185 
 
 Livingston, William, 288 
 
 M 
 
 McFingal, 208, 209, 210, 217 
 
 MacSwiggen, 182 
 
 May Day in Town, 297 
 
 Meddler, The, 202 
 
 Midnight Consultations, 182 
 
 Modern Catechism, 113 
 
 Modern Chivalry, 273, 277, 278, 279 
 
 Monkey, The, 250 
 
 Morton, Thomas, 29 
 
 318 
 
INDEX 
 
 N 
 
 Narrative of Georgia, 91 
 New England Courant, 72 
 New England Plantations, 16 
 New England Primer, 43 
 New England s Prospect, 17, 31 
 New English Canaan, 30 
 New Song to an Old Tune, 99 
 Newspaper Thunder Storm, 263 
 Noyea, Nicholas, 38 
 
 Odell, Jonathan, 124, 125 
 
 Ode to Columbia, 246 
 
 On the Conquest of America, 182 
 
 On the Ruins of a Country Inn, 173 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 112, 133, 136, 161, 
 
 187, 209 
 Paper, 76 
 Parody on Hancock s Proclamation, 
 
 264 
 
 Parting Glass, The, 173 
 Pausing Loyalist, The, 109 
 Pennsylvania Gazette, 73, 165 
 Poem: Sacred to the Memory of 
 
 George Washington, 262 
 Poetico-Political Olio, 243 
 Political Balance, 192 
 Political Catechism, 148 
 Political Green-House, 242, 243, 271 
 Ponteach, 290 
 
 Poor Richard s Almanac, 73, 76 
 Pory, John, 16, 37 
 Power of Fancy, 171 
 Pretty Story, 148, 155 
 Prince of Parthia, 290 
 Prison-Ship, 185, 189 
 Progress of Dulness, 206, 210, 211 
 Progress to the Mines, 47 
 Prophecy, A, 180 
 Prophecy, The, 148, 165 
 
 Prophecy of Balaam, The, 207 
 Prophet Jonah, 171 
 Prospect of Peace, 252 
 Pyramids of Egypt, 171 
 
 Rebels, The, 111 
 
 Rising Glory of America, 175, 275 
 
 Rivington, James, 103, 167 
 
 Rogers, Robert, 290 
 
 Rules for Reducing a Great Empire, 
 
 Sewall, Jonathan, 291, 308 
 
 Sherman, John, 30 
 
 Shuckburg, Richard, 115 
 
 Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, 20, 33, 
 
 35,37 
 
 Six Political Discourses, 276 
 Sleighing Song, 302 
 Smyth, John F., Ill 
 Song of Thyrsis, 178 
 Song to the Guillotine, 255 
 Sot Weed Factor, The, 38 
 Specimens of a Modern Law Suit, 167 
 Stansbury, Joseph, 124, 137 
 St. John, Peter, 118 
 Stone, Samuel, 30 
 Summary of the British Settlement*, 
 
 65 
 
 Tailfer, Patrick, 91 
 
 Taxation of America, 118 
 
 Thompson, Benjamin, 32 
 
 To a Honey Bee, 173 
 
 Tory Satires, 107 
 
 Treaty, The, 147 
 
 Triumph of Infidelity, 228 
 
 True Relation, 16 
 
 Trumbull, John, 124, 199, 229, 245. 
 
 247, 252 
 Tyler, Royall, 295 
 
 319 
 
INDEX 
 
 Victim of the Cancer Quack, 269 
 Virginia Banishing Tea, 97 
 Vision of Columbus, 253, 256 
 Voyage to Boston, 175 
 
 W 
 
 Ward, Nathaniel, 17, 33 
 Warren, Mercy, 291, 295 
 Washington s Dinner Invitation, 
 288 
 
 Wasp, The, 163 
 Westover Manuscripts, 50 
 Wild Honey-Suckle, 170, 173 
 Witherspoon a Parody on Riving- 
 
 ton, 104 
 
 Wood, William, 17, 31 
 Word of Congress, 128 
 
 Yankee Doodle, 1 14 
 Yankee in London, 296 
 

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