Famous funny fellows : $b Brief biographical sketches of American humoristsClemens, William Montgomery
History
Famous funny fellows : $b Brief biographical sketches of American humorists
Clemens, William Montgomery
American wit and humor -- History and criticism; Humorists, American -- Biography
The following criticism of the acting of Mary Anderson was written by
a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, journalist: “Mary is about six feet in height
when in repose, but when her frame is charged with emotion, and she
gets mad, or excited, she seems to rise right up out of the stage and
telescope until she is eighteen or nineteen feet high, and others look
like dwarfs. At times she puts on a sweet, lovely look, and you would
have to be held by two persons to keep you from mounting the stage,
and telling her that you loved her like a steam engine; and then she
would put on a dying look, and a wild, scared, desperate expression, so
you want to rush out after a doctor. She has lungs like a blacksmith’s
bellows; when she contracts them, she looks so thin that her back bone
can be traced with the naked eye; but when she inflates them, her dress
fits her like paper on the wall.”
Thomas Snell Weaver, the funny man of the New Haven, Connecticut,
Register, is one of the coming humorists of the day. He is widely
quoted. The following is from his writings:
“There was an extra air of refinement about the front parlor. The
storks on a shingle and the Egyptian figures on panels had all been
removed to the back parlor to make room for the super-æstheticism of
the aureolan glory of the sunflower and the drooping grace of the lily
embroidered on bannerets and hung in fitting corners of the grand old
room. In this room they sat, and quietly enjoyed each other’s presence,
bound together by ties yet undiscovered.
“‘Angela’ said he, ‘I think it is four years this very night since we
gazed into the firelight together.’
“‘So long, Mr. Thistlewaite?’ said she tremulously, and in expectant
mood.
“‘Now, I should think that after so long a time--it occurs to me to
say--or rather to ask--why wouldn’t it be well--to call me “George”
hereafter?’
“‘Oh, is that all?’ she said. The harpstrings of her expectancy had
just been struck with a chord, but alas! the matrimonial overture was
not then to be played. The whole orchestra was out of tune for her for
the next six weeks.
Mr. H. T. White, a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago
Tribune, is also designed to make his mark in the world as a humorist.
His style is peculiar, as the following selection will no doubt show:
“‘Do not go, darling’--and as she spoke the words--spoke them in low,
tender tones, that thrilled him from mail-truck to keelsom--Gwendolen
Mahaffey laid her soft, white cheek on Plutarch Riordan’s shoulder, and
gave him a look with her lustrous, dove-like eyes that would make your
head swim.
“‘I cannot stay,’ he replied, kissing the peachy red lips as he spoke,
and feeling wistfully in his overcoat pocket for a plug of tobacco, ‘I
must go now right away.’
“But the girl placed her arms around his neck--arms whose soft, rounded
curves and pink-tinted skin would have made an anchorite throw up his
job, and pleaded with him to stay a little longer.
“‘I cannot,’ he again said, looking at her tenderly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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