Bret Harte

There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons
which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte. But one
supreme reason stands not in a certain general superiority to them
all--a reason which may be stated in three propositions united in a
common conclusion: first, that he was a genuine American; second, that
he was a genuine humourist; and, third, that he was not an American
humourist. Bret Harte had his own peculiar humour, but it had nothing in
particular to do with American humour. American humour has its own
peculiar excellence, but it has nothing in particular to do with Bret
Harte. American humour is purely exaggerative; Bret Harte's humour was
sympathetic and analytical.

In order fully to understand this, it is necessary to realise, genuinely
and thoroughly, that there is such a thing as an international
difference in humour. If we take the crudest joke in the world--the
joke, let us say, of a man sitting down on his hat--we shall yet find
that all the nations would differ in their way of treating it
humourously, and that if American humour treated it at all, it would be
in a purely American manner. For example, there was a case of an orator
in the House of Commons, who, after denouncing all the public abuses he
could think of, did sit down on his hat. An Irishman immediately rose,
full of the whole wealth of Irish humour, and said, "Should I be in
order, Sir, in congratulating the honourable gentleman on the fact that
when he sat down on his hat his head was not in it?" Here is a glorious
example of Irish humour--the bull not unconscious, not entirely
conscious, but rather an idea so absurd that even the utterer of it can
hardly realise how abysmally absurd it is. But every other nation would
have treated the idea in a manner slightly different. The Frenchman's
humour would have been logical: he would have said, "The orator
denounces modern abuses and destroys to himself the top-hat: behold a
good example!" What the Scotchman's humour would have said I am not so
certain, but it would probably have dealt with the serious advisability
of making such speeches on top of someone else's hat. But American
humour on such a general theme would be the humour of exaggeration. The
American humourist would say that the English politicians so often sat
down on their hats that the noise of the House of Commons was one
crackle of silk. He would say that when an important orator rose to
speak in the House of Commons, long rows of hatters waited outside the
House with note-books to take down orders from the participants in the
debate. He would say that the whole hat trade of London was disorganised
by the news that a clever remark had been made by a young M. P. on the