The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
General
The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
American wit and humor
They wander around, growling and jawing, and the mother finally finds
the stockings. Then comes the jackets. They are positive that they hung
them on the hooks, and boldly charge that some maliciously wicked person
removed them. And so it goes until each one is finally dressed, washed,
and ready for breakfast, and the mother feels such a burden off her mind
that she can endure what follows their leaving the table—a good
half-hour’s hunt after their hats, which they “positively hung up,” but
which are at last found under some bed, or stowed away behind the
woodbox.
_C. B. Lewis (“M Quad”)._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_MR. DOTY MAD._
MR. HENRY K. DOTY, one of the most prominent citizens, and the leading
hide and pelt dealer in the North-West, has just returned from a
European tour. He has been absent about four months; and in that time he
has made a visit to every European country, and has become thoroughly
acquainted with the customs, manners, and languages of the different
people. He spent about seventy-five thousand dollars on the trip; but
this could not be called an extravagant sum when one takes into
consideration the superb paintings, statuary, and other works of virtue
that he brought back with him. In Paris, upon the Roo de Rivoly alone,
he purchased fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of pictures; and in
Brussels he bought several thousand dollars’ worth of those elegant
carpets from which that city derives its name. Mr. Doty says that he was
well treated everywhere except in England. He is specially bitter
against Mr. Phelps, our representative at the court of St. James.
“This man Phelps,” says he, “is a little, dried-up, snobbish Vermont
lawyer, with a soul no bigger than a huckleberry. I dyed my moustache,
and put on my dress-suit and my twenty-thousand-dollar diamond
bosom-pin, and called to see him. A fine specimen he is to represent our
wealth and culture! I don’t believe his clothes cost more than twenty
dollars a suit.
“‘I suppose I ought to call on the queen,’ says I.
“He didn’t say anything; and I continued, ‘Would you mind introducing
me?’
“‘Really, Mr. Doty,’ says he, ‘I do not feel like presenting an entire
stranger to her Majesty.’
“‘Oh! you needn’t be scared,’ says I, ‘for I carry as big a letter of
credit as any American in London; and when it comes to culture, and that
sort of thing, I can knock the socks off any of your lords and
marqueezies.’
“Well, will you believe it? he had the impudence to shove a printed list
of questions at me.
“‘You will have to answer these on oath before I can tell you whether I
can present you to her Majesty,’ says he.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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