He abounds in true Yankee aphorisms--"when a man is going down, everybody lends him a kick," "Where impudence is wit, 'tis folly to reply." He uses unexpected comparisons and whimsical _non sequiturs_: he sails on "a Napa steam packet of four cat-power"; "the wind blew," he declared, "like well-watered roses." R. W. Emerson, he was informed, while traveling in upper Norway, "on the 21st of June, 1836, distinctly saw the sun in all its majesty shining at midnight!--in fact, all night. Emerson is not what you would call a superstitious man, by any means--but, he left." It was Derby who wrote the first Pike County ballad. "Suddenly we hear approaching a train from Pike County, consisting of seven families, with forty-six wagons, each drawn by thirteen oxen." Elsewhere he has described the typical "Pike": "His hair is light, not a 'sable silvered,' but a _yeller_, gilded; you can see some of it sticking out of the top of his hat; his costume is the national costume of Arkansas, coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons of homespun cloth, dyed a brownish yellow, with a decoction of the bitter barked butternut--a pleasing alliteration; his countenance presents a determined, combined with a sanctimonious expression." "Now rises o'er the plains in mellifluous accents, the grand Pike County Chorus: Oh, we'll soon be thar In the land of gold, Through the forest old, O'er the mounting cold, With spirits bold-- Oh, we come, we come, And we'll soon be thar. Gee up, Bolly! whoo, up, whoo haw!" Not much was added to Western humor after Derby. Mark Twain's earliest manner had much in it that smacks of "Phoenix." The chapters entitled, "Phoenix Takes an Affectionate Leave of San Francisco," "Phoenix is on the Sea," and "Phoenix in San Diego" might have been taken from _Roughing It_. Just as truly the chapters, "Inauguration of the New Collector" and "Return of the Collector," "Thrilling and Frantic Excitement Among Office Seekers" might have been written by Orpheus C. Kerr. Yet despite such similarities, the later school did not necessarily filch from "Phoenix": they learned their art as he had learned it from contact with the new West. All drew from the same model. III