Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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EVERY age has its humorists and wits, and the depth of their humor is no doubtful index to the literary attainments of its thinking minds. While one epoch jests like a Touchstone, another is content with nothing less than a Sheridan, and the age itself is clownish or witty accordingly. To those who have scanned most eagerly the literary horizon of our own age for the predicted rise of its great facetious luminary, the meteor-like appearance of Henry C. Carey* among its most brilliant stars came with all the surprise that the greatness of the event demands; and every...
...Social Science," as it stands alone, is itself a monument to the honor and fame of two humorists, the author and the editor. For, certainly, no one can have read the editor's preface without the keenest appreciation of Kate McKean's trenchant wit and delicate sense of humor. Employing that same careless freedom with matters of history which Mr. Carey only anticipated her in doing, she shows a novel, if not refreshing, independence of educated opinion, and even of the ordinary processes of reason, in her estimate of the few great men who were so unfortunate as to have...
...with a feeling of "sweet sorrow" that we part for the time with Carey and Porter, to look within the pages of two other works of a somewhat different school of American humor. While exhibiting a less fertility of imagination than the "Social Science," and perhaps less profundity of obfuscations than the "Intellectual Science," yet, in play of fancy and subtlety of wit, the "Harvard Bible"* is second to no other humorous production of this age. In it we think we find traces of a familiar pen, and recognize, here and there, the touches of a master hand, whose productions...
...walks might centre not only on what has been beautified by nature, but also on what has been dignified by history. I need not state how I immediately purchased the guide-book recommended by the editorial pen, or how my chum ridiculed my enthusiasm. He consented, however, to humor me in my harmless delusion; and on the appointed afternoon, accompanied me, guide-book in hand in search of historic notoriety. I do not intend to describe the interesting places that I visited; that feat has been eloquently achieved by the before-mentioned guide-book. It is only of their influence...
...rearing. The very title of the book is a jeu d'esprit. As if to show the absurdity of knowledge in general, apart from things known, he derisively calls his book "An Essay on Human Understanding," without the article. Nowhere is his satire more crushing or his humor more delightful than in his chapters on innate ideas. In a masterly way he states the arguments so that they confute themselves. He shows that his real opinion is that all ideas are innate, and exposes the fallacy of believing any to be derived from sensation or reflection. Here, as well...