small doses becomes nauseating when perused in large assignments. Humor in literature is at its best not when served merely by itself but when presented along with other ingredients of literary force in order to give a wide representation of life. Therefore “professional literary humorists,” as they may be called, have not been much considered in making up this collection. In the history of American humor there are three names which stand out more prominently than all others before Mark Twain, who, however, also belongs to a wider classification: “Josh Billings” (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1815–1885), “Petroleum V. Nasby” (David Ross Locke, 1833–1888), and “Artemus Ward” (Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–1867). In the history of American humor these names rank high; in the field of American literature and the American short story they do not rank so high. I have found nothing of theirs that was first-class both as humor and as short story. Perhaps just below these three should be mentioned George Horatio Derby (1823–1861), author of _Phoenixiana_ (1855) and the _Squibob Papers_ (1859), who wrote under the name “John Phoenix.” As has been justly said, “Derby, Shaw, Locke and Browne carried to an extreme numerous tricks already invented by earlier American humorists, particularly the tricks of gigantic exaggeration and calm-faced mendacity, but they are plainly in the main channel of American humor, which had its origin in the first comments of settlers upon the conditions of the frontier, long drew its principal inspiration from the differences between that frontier and the more settled and compact regions of the country, and reached its highest development in Mark Twain, in his youth a child of the American frontier, admirer and imitator of Derby and Browne, and eventually a man of the world and one of its greatest humorists.”[2] Nor have such later writers who were essentially humorists as “Bill Nye” (Edgar Wilson Nye, 1850–1896) been considered, because their work does not attain the literary standard and the short story standard as creditably as it does the humorous one. When we come to the close of the nineteenth century the work of such men as “Mr. Dooley” (Finley Peter Dunne, 1867- ) and George Ade (1866- ) stands out. But while these two writers successfully conform to the exacting critical requirements of good humor and—especially the former—of good literature, neither—though Ade more so—attains to the greatest excellence of the short story. Mr. Dooley of the Archey Road is essentially a wholesome and wide-poised humorous philosopher, and the author of _Fables in Slang_ is chiefly a satirist, whether in fable, play or what not. This volume might well have started with something by Washington Irving, I suppose many critics would say. It does not seem to me, however, that Irving’s best short stories, such as _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ and _Rip Van Winkle_, are essentially humorous stories, although they are o’erspread with the genial light of reminiscence. It is the armchair geniality of the eighteenth century essayists, a constituent of the author rather than of his material and product. Irving’s best humorous creations, indeed, are scarcely short stories at all, but rather essaylike sketches, or sketchlike essays. James Lawson (1799–1880) in his _Tales and Sketches: by a Cosmopolite_ (1830), notably in _The Dapper Gentleman’s Story_, is also plainly a follower of Irving. We come to a different vein in the work of such writers as William Tappan Thompson (1812–1882), author of the amusing stories in letter form, _Major Jones’s Courtship_ (1840); Johnson Jones Hooper (1815–1862), author of _Widow Rugby’s Husband, and Other Tales of Alabama_ (1851); Joseph G. Baldwin (1815–1864), who wrote _The...