Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor — Story, Setting & Ideas

Dialect as a Comic Engine

Seba Smith's 'My First Visit to Portland' exemplifies how the anthology uses nonstandard speech to generate humor. The narrator's voice is thick with colloquialisms: 'I tackled up the old horse,' 'ropped me up another shirt,' and 'I didn't know what a steamboat was any more than the man in the moon.' The comedy arises not from plot but from the gap between the narrator's naive perspective and the reader's broader knowledge. When the Portland editor advises him to 'go ahead' like steamboats, the humor depends on the narrator's literal-mindedness. Masson's inclusion of such pieces privileges character over incident, making dialect a primary vehicle for wit.

The Tall-Tale Structure of Innocence

Several selections in the volume follow a pattern: a guileless protagonist ventures into a sophisticated setting and outwits or is outwitted by its inhabitants. In Smith's story, the narrator deliberately enters 'Hucklers' Row' to test whether Portland sharpers can 'twist my eye-teeth out.' The bargaining scene—biscuits at two cents for three—unfolds with a deadpan logic that mocks both the seller's pretense and the buyer's faux naivete. This structure recurs in Artemus Ward's 'One of Mr. Ward's Business Letters,' where the showman's exaggerated earnestness undercuts commercial transactions. Masson's editorial eye favors tales where innocence is a weapon, not a weakness.

Understatement and the Anti-Climax

Unlike the broad farce of some contemporaries, the humor in this anthology often relies on underplayed reactions. When Smith's narrator sees the editor's tears and his mother's 'hearty crying spell,' he responds with a laconic 'This made me feel rather bad for a minit or two.' The emotional stakes are deflated by the narrator's flat delivery. Similarly, in 'The Harp of a Thousand Strings,' Joshua S. Morris builds a mock-sermon that escalates to absurd heights only to collapse into anticlimax. Masson's selections consistently reward readers who attend to tone and timing rather than slapstick.

Regional Voices and National Identity

The anthology's subtitle might have been 'American' in the broadest sense, but its contents are heavily Northeastern and Midwestern. Smith's Maine dialect, Holley's New England spinster, and Browne's Ohio showman create a patchwork of regional types. Yet the humor rarely mocks these voices; instead, it treats them as authentic expressions of character. Repplier's opening essay argues for humor as a civilizing force, and Masson's choices bear this out: the comic figures are not butts of jokes but survivors who navigate a changing nation with wit. The volume thus becomes a kind of folk archive, preserving speech patterns and social attitudes of the late nineteenth century.

Readers approaching this collection should listen for the cadence of each piece—the drawl, the pause, the deliberate misdirection. Masson has curated not a series of punchlines but a gallery of American voices, each with its own rhythm and logic. The humor works best when taken slowly, allowing the dialect to settle and the understatement to register. Whether encountering Artemus Ward's business letters or Seba Smith's Portland adventures, the pleasure lies in the telling, not the tale.

The rain made the old anthology’s pages cling together, and I slowed down, savoring Masson’s dry jokes about human folly. That afternoon’s quiet laughing reminded me of something else, a gentler, stranger collection of moral tales, so I found myself drifting to Fantastic Fables — Inside the Classic and just sat there with both, forgetting the weather entirely.