the Senate of the United States-which removed him forever from the list of Presidential possibilities.

No sane person would elect to be continually cooped up with another who is witty or humorous on all occasions, any more than he would desire to dwell in a land of perpetual day; but sunshine is a good thing, nevertheless. So are wit and its cousin humor. King Solomon tells us that there is a time to every purpose under the heaven-a time to weep and a time to laugh. Laughter is the sweetest music that ever greeted the human ear, and the chief purpose of wit and humor is to produce laughter.

Henry Ward Beecher, who was created for enjoyment, once said: "If a horse had not been intended to go, he would not have had the 'go' in him." Wit and humor, like all other of the numberless precious gifts of God to man, undoubtedly have their proper uses. They help to float a heavy speech and give wings to solid argument. A brilliant sally, a sparkling epigram, a "fetching" simile, a happy mot and apropos anecdote, may extricate one from a perilous predicament, where all else would utterly fail.

For example, take the case of Tom Corwin whose splendid genius lighted up and glorified the age in which he lived. While the anti-slavery agitation was becoming acute and the Abolitionists growing strong enough to defeat candidates, though still too weak to elect them, Corwin-who was swart as Othello-being a candidate for Congress, was once addressing a great openair meeting in southern Ohio, and doing his best to offend no one, when a wily and malicious auditor, in order to unhorse him, interrupted him with the query: "Are you in favor of a law permitting colored people to eat at the same tables with white folks in hotels and on steamboats?" "Black Tom" did not follow the Scriptural injunction: "Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay." That was too concise and direct for the end he had in view, which was to dodge, or, in prize-ring parlance, to "duck." If he should answer, "Yea," all the proslavery votes would be cast against him and he would be defeated. Should he answer "Nay," the Abolitionists would defeat him. He answered neither "Yea" nor "Nay," but-his dark, mobile countenance shining with the gladness of certain

victory-he replied: "Fellow citizens, I submit that it is improper to ask that question of a gentleman of my color!" The crowd, delirious with delight, yelled itself hoarse and the "Wagon-Boy" carried the day and the election. Now, I propound to a candid world this pertinent question. Could any dry-as-dust statesman have escaped the net of the fowler as easily and gracefully as did Corwin? I think not.

The truth is that the man who is dowered with wit and humor is in first-class intellectual company-with Shakespeare and Bacon; Swift and Sheridan; Jerrold and Sydney Smith; with Dickens and Thackeray; Curran and Lamb; with Burns and Byron, and countless master-spirits of the elder world; and with our own Washington Irving, Tom Marshall, and George D. Prentice; with Sargent S. Prentiss; with Lowell and Holmes and Lincoln; with "Sunset" Cox, Henry Watterson, and Proctor Knott; with Horr, Ingersoll, and Thomas B. Reed; with Justice Harlan and George C. Vest; and with a bright and shining host of statesmen, orators, poets, and literati-not to mention all the professionals from "John Phoenix" to "Mark Twain."

It is a significant fact, pertinent here and well calculated to furnish food for reflection, that the three most distinguished living New York humorists are now comfortably located in these downy berths: Joseph H. Choate is Ambassador to Great Britain; General Horace Porter is Ambassador to France; Chauncey Mitchell Depew is United States Senator. It may also be interesting to state that one of the most illustrious NewYorkers of the last generation, William Maxwell Evarts, the foremost lawyer of his time, owed his world-wide fame as much to his wit as to his legal attainments; and he filled the great offices of Attorney-General, Secretary of State, and Senator of the United States. It is safe to say that Dr. Talmage's humorous faculty has netted him over a quarter of a million on the lecture platform, and Governor Bob Taylor's has placed him in the ranks of rich Tennesseeans.

Unless Republicans as well as republics are ungrateful, they will some day erect a magnificent monument to their pioneer, Senator John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, whose irresistible

humor compelled the attention of men who were ready to stone his sober-minded companions.

This is par excellence the land of orators. Here within the life of the Republic-a mere span in the history of the human race the divine gift of moving the mind and heart by the power of spoken words has been bestowed upon more men than in all the rest of the world since the confusion of tongues at the unfinished Tower of Babel. By universal acclaim Demosthenes is the Grecian orator, Cicero the Roman orator, Mirabeau is the French orator, Castelar the Spanish orator, and Edmund Burke the English orator. Their "right there is none to dispute." Who is the American orator? Ask that question of any American audience and there will be a score of answers, precipitating a heated wrangle.

The universal gift of utterance in America renders appropriate, haply instructive, a discussion and illustration of the use of wit, humor, and anecdote in public speech, for all use them who can and they are found in every species of public speech-bar none. Henry Ward Beecher enlivened many of his sermons with them, as did John Smith of Kentucky and Missouri, commonly called "Raccoon" John Smith, because he was once remunerated in raccoon skins for pronouncing the marriage ceremony. He was famous in the Southwest as one of the great pioneers in the religious reformation with which the name of Alexander Campbell is forever associated in the nickname of "Campbellite." In our time Sam Jones has rivaled Beecher and Smith in this respect. Of course all three have been severely criticized as innovators; but imitation is the sincerest flattery, and scores of young preachers pattern after them with various measures of success and applause.

One of the greatest surprises of my life was to discover that some genius had compiled and published a volume with the rather startling title of "The Wit and Humor of the Bible." I once made the round of the St. Louis bookstores in quest of that "curiosity of literature." From the furtive manner in which the clerks glanced at me out of the tails of their eyes, I incline to the opinion that they thought I was suffering from incipient lunacy.

After all, it must be confessed that the use of wit, humor,

and anecdote-i.e., amusing anecdote-in sermons or in funeral orations is meager and of rather a lugubrious effect. They are used most frequently and most appropriately at the bar, on the stump, in Congress, on the platform, and in after-dinner speeches.

The most famous after-dinner speech within the memory of any living man is that of Henry W. Grady at the banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York in 1886. It is a rich mine of eloquence, wit, humor, and anecdote. To illustrate the power of faith, he told this story, which is perfect: "There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of one page: 'When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife who was'-then turning the page-'one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopherwood, and covered with pitch inside and out.' He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said: 'My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.'

I once heard Vice-President Garrett A. Hobart in an afterdinner speech in Washington, speaking to an audience made up largely of newspaper men, utter this mot: "Since I have been in office, I have given the newspaper men everything they asked of me except my confidence!" which was enjoyed immensely by all his hearers, especially by the newspaper men themselves.

Hon. Joseph H. Choate is no less celebrated as a postprandial orator than as a lawyer. Nothing verbal could be more delicious than his description of the dinners of the New England Society of New York as "those gatherings of an unhappy company of Pilgrims who meet annually at Delmonico's to drown the sorrows and sufferings of their ancestors in the flowing bowl, and to contemplate their own virtues in the mirror of history." At one of those dinners he proposed the following toast, which contains more wit than do most witty speeches: "Women, the better half of the Yankee world-at whose tender

summons even the stern Pilgrims were ever ready to spring to arms, and without whose aid they never could have achieved the historic title of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Pilgrim Mothers were more devoted martyrs than were the Pilgrim Fathers, because they not only had to bear the same hardships that the Pilgrim Fathers stood, but they had to bear with the Pilgrim Fathers besides."

New-Yorkers agree that either Choate or Chauncey M. Depew is the finest after-dinner speaker on earth. Some one says: "At an annual dinner of the St. Nicholas Society Choate was down for the toast, "The Navy,' while Depew was to respond to 'The Army.' Depew began by saying, 'It's well to have a specialist: that's why Choate is here to speak about the Navy. We met at the wharf once and I never saw him again till we reached Liverpool. When I asked how he felt he said he thought he would have enjoyed the trip over if he had had any ocean air. Yes, you want to hear Choate on the Navy.' Choate responded: 'I've heard Depew hailed as the greatest after-dinner speaker. If after-dinner speaking, as I have heard it described and as I believe it to be, is the art of saying nothing at all, then Dr. Depew is the most marvelous speaker in the universe.""

In joint discussions on the stump every weapon in the mental armory is brought into service. In that species of public speech wit and humor are invaluable and are most used-especially that sort known as repartee. By far the most memorable performance in that line was the series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. The United States senatorship was the prize directly in sight, but both looked beyond that to the Presidency as their goal. In winning the senatorship Douglas lost the Presidency to Lincoln. Unlike in everything except ambition, they were most equally matched, each being wondrously strong. They had known each other from early manhood and were on the friendliest footing; but they laid on and spared not, being none too particular about "hitting below the belt." On one occasion Douglas sneeringly referred to the fact that he once saw Lincoln retailing whisky. "Yes," replied Lincoln, "it is true that the first time I saw Judge Douglas I was selling whisky by the drink. I