ABSTRACT
Within the last thirty years a series of humorous writers have made their appearance, at intervals, each of whom seems to have selected some speciality as a basis upon which he might attain an ephemeral popularity. These specialties have been the different dialects, or, rather provincialisms, which arc prevalent in different sections of our country, though a few of them have adopted as a basis the flexibility of our language and its adaptability to antithesis and exaggeration. Of all these, there are only two whose popularity will be permanent-one of the earliest and one of the latest-Washington Irving and 'Mark Twain'-bccause they have none of these adventitious clements of humor upon which the others depend for popularity, but weave their subtle webs in the unadulterated English.
