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I may be wrong, but it has ever since seemed to me that there was a particularly nice distinction involved in this spontaneous estimate of my character, and it may be that a great many of our American humorists, so called, would be more aptly described as kidders . Our guying propensities, and the tongue-in-the-cheek style of humor so prevalent to-day, suggest the thought anyhow that the term kidder is more discriminating than that of humorist , as signifying the qualities of a Cervantes, a Rabelais, a Swift, or a Mark Twain.
It was in a South Carolina barber shop that the second nicety came unexpectedly upon me. I had looked for a certain quaint philosophy and humor among the negroes of the South, and must confess to considerable disappointment in not finding much of it. The picturesque article in the African line that has so delighted us in the fiction of our masters of the pen from the South seems either to have vanished completely from the face of the earth or to be a trifle shy in the revelation of itself to outsiders. At any rate I found little of it in my wanderings in that territory; although a somewhat disagreeable amount of self-conscious quaintness, "for revenue only," was not wanting among negroes encountered.
But this white barber, an anemic
little man, whose lazy drawl and languid manner bespoke anything but independence of spirit, and in whose presence I instinctively thought of the term "white trash," gave me in full measure what I had looked for in the sons of Ham. After sitting in his chair for a few minutes I mentioned casually that South Carolina had a "fine Governor," referring to an individual named Blease, who at that time, occupied the high seat at Columbia, and of whose gyroscopic talents I had yet to find a South Carolinian of standing who was proud.
"I ain't got no use fo' Mistuh Blease, suh," the man replied, stroking his razor up and down the strop with a vigor entirely out of keeping with his presumed character. If I had been a blind man, I should have felt sure he was a negro, such was his accent.
"I am sorry to hear that," said I. "It would be pleasant to find somebody in the State who has some use for him; but so far it all seems to be the other way."
"No, suh, I ain't got no use fo' him, suh," continued the barber. "I don't like his kind, suh. I have shaved Mistuh Blease many a time, suh, an' when he was runnin' fo' Governah he came in hyere most every day, suh. One mornin' I says to him, 'Mistuh Blease,' says I, 'you'd ought to be a mighty proud man, suh, runnin' fo' Governah of South Cyarolina, suh, an' sure to git it. That's an honah, suh,' I says, 'fo' yo' and yo' children and yo' children's children to be proud of.' And what do you suppose he answered, suh? 'To Blank with the honah!' says he. 'What the blank do yo' suppose I caiah fo' the honah?'
"And I've nuvver give him the honah, suh; no, suh. Mis -tuh Blease done got elected, and I've shaved him twenty times since, suh; but he's nuvver had the honah from me, suh. I've nuvver called him Governah yit, suh; but it's been Mistuh Blease every time, suh! "
It was when I was recovering from this loyal assertion of the little man's respect for the Commonwealth of his birth that the stillness of the shop was broken by the excited voice of a tall, lantern-jawed individual with a distinct type of accent, who came rushing in from the street.
"Anybody round hyah knows what it costs to beat up a niggah in this hyah State?" he cried.
I gasped, and the barber paused languidly in his ministrations, holding his razor poised like the sword of Damocles over my head, while he reflected.
"Why," said he, "I dunno aigsactly; but the las' time the co'hts decided the question I think it was ten dollahs, suh."
"All right," said the intruder, starting to the door. "If it don't come to no moh'n ten dollahs, I'll do it. Up home in Ferginia, where I come from, it never costs moh'n five; but I'm willin' to go as high as fifteen. A coon down hyah at my bohdin' house done give my wife some back talk this mornin', an if it don't cost moh'n fifteen dollahs I'm gwine to throw the critter outen de winder !"
X HUMORS OF THE ROAD
A period that has produced a Dooley, and an Ade, and an Irvin Cobb, and a Bert Leston Taylor, is surely not poor in humorous possessions of a scintillating character, whether we demand that our humor shall be a product of pure fun or of profoundly serious thinking. J. Montgomery Flagg in picture and in text is as much a master of effervescent foolery as ever was either John Phœnix or Artemas Ward; and in the humor that is designed to interpret life itself I find an endless store of it in the works of Wallace Irwin, of Montague Glass, of Miss Edna Ferber, and of Mrs. Alice Regan Rice; the last two, by the way, forming a complete refutation of the preposterous notion that women are devoid of the sentiment that cheers but does not inebriate. And as for the wits, if Oliver Herford were as lonely among wits as he is unique, I should still feel that we were rich beyond measure in that form of humor which is for the most part intellectual, of the mind rather than of the emotions.