Heritage of American humor; A traveller's quest

Narrative of American humor. We have many sources of worthwhile laughter all influence our outlook on life from the early days comes a unique heritage for the 20th century American heritage enhanced by being shared. The University of North Dakota broadcasting service presents 50 dramatized essays on the American humor in newspapers books and anthologies old and new. The 20th century American can obtain a perspective on the intelligences attitudes styles and sensibilities of the American outlook as it concerns himself and his world neighbors. The heritage of American humor is produced by the University of North Dakota under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. The writer narrator is Professor Joseph Epps meal at the University of North Dakota Department of English program.

The travelers ques. It is my wish today that we recall how Mark Twain was a traveling man and that he ended his days a sad man. It was as if he travelled in quest of something and then realized that he would never find. His travels began in Missouri but soon spread to include Iowa New York Pennsylvania and the intervening country. His travels went down the Mississippi River went west to the rocky mountain mining frontier and on to San Francisco and even to the Sandwich Islands now known as the state of Hawaii. Then they opened out to go abroad to return to go abroad again and even around the globe. And baffled in their quest in the present time. They often went back in time to childhood. And even back to the once upon a time King Arthur. My notion is that Mark Twain was in quest of a far country where there is

no humbug. And it's my notion too that he never found that country in the present or in the past. And so he ended his days a sad man. But his question brought it about that his writings are a report of humbug with comment there on. At any point on Mark Twain's travels as a journeyman printer or river pilot or newspaper columnist or lecturer or famous name a very sharp clear I looked out to measure the quantity and quality of the humbug in its vicinity and in his reports of this and especially in the shark bite comments on it. The laughter reports of humbug with comments there on by a traveling man. These make up our program for today. From the wealth of reporting come in found in Mark Twain's writings we have chosen to produce three items i report from Milan Italy dated from the 1860s. Another from a raft on the Mississippi River and dated from an NDE belum childhood and another from Britain and dated from the once upon a

time of King Arthur. Our first report then is from Mark Twain as a tourist in Milan Italy just after the War Between the States. Tumble down ruin of the church. The mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world. The Last Supper painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church. It's battered and scarred in every direction and stained and discolored by time in a pony and horses kick the legs off most of the disciples when they hear the horses not the disciples were stable they're more than half a century ago. The world seems to have become settled in the belief that it's not possible for human genius to outdo this creation of a supposed go on copying it as long as any of the original is left visible. There are a dozen easels in the room and as many artists transferring the great picture to

their canvases fifty proofs of steel engraving and lithographs are scattered around too and I couldn't help noticing how superior the copies were to the original. So maybe the original was handsome when it was new but it is not now. That picture is about 30 feet long and 10 or 12. I think in the figures or at least life size is one of the largest paintings in Europe. The colors are damed with age the countenances are scaled and marred and nearly all expression is gone from them. The hair is a dead blur upon the wall and there is no life in the eyes. People come here from all parts of the world and glorify this masterpiece. They stand entranced before it and they stained with bated breath and parted lips and when they speak it's only in that catchy ejaculations of rock. When. Was the time

such matchless color and feeling what subliminal can suck. I only envy such people. I envy them. I envy them their honest admiration of it beyond just their delight. If they feel good like I Arbor no animosity towards any of them but all the same the thought will intrude itself upon me. How can they see what is not visible. What would you say of a man who looked at some decayed blind toothless pock marked up at Chris and said what matchless beauty what saw what expression. What would you say of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and said oh my oh my beating heart. What a noble forest is there. You vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of feeling expression tone and these other easily acquired an inexpensive technicalities of art that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures. Well there's

not one man in seventy five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express. There's not one man in five hundred that can go into a court room and not mistake an innocent juryman for the black hearted to session on trial. Yet such people talk of character and presume to interpret expression in pictures. We once met Hughes the actor was lauding the ability of the human face to express the passions and emotions hidden in the breast. Saying that the countenance may disclose what is passing in the art plainer than the tongue. Now you say it's my face. What does it express despair. But it expresses peaceful resignation. What does express rage but it means terror. Still it is smothered for often now Joy. Oh no no no. Any ass can see at me that

people coolly pretend to read character and interpret expression in pictures. That was the first of three sharp eyed reports on humbug with comment by a traveling man a travelling man was Mark Twain on his way through Milan Italy to the Holy Land. The second report today is one written in the person of Huck Finn and dates from the traveling man's past from Mark Twain's Antebellum childhood on the river. It is one of the little joys of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nigger Jim. I've just had an exciting time on a wrecked floating on down the river. I know they are shore resting from their travel books. Talk is talk. By and by when we get up we turn over the truck off the wreck and found boots and blankets and clothes and all sorts of things and a box of books and a spyglass and three boxes of cigars. We have never been this rich before in neither of our lives. The C guys was prime.

So we laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking and me reading the books and having a general good time. I told him all about what happened inside the wreck and I said these kinds of things was adventures. But Jim said he didn't want no more adventures. I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such and how gaudy they dressed and how the much style they put on and called each other your majesty and your grace and your Lordship and so instead of Mr. and Jim's eyes bugged out he was interested in he said. I didn't know what it was that many of them. I hear about none I'm scarcely but old King Solomon unless you count them kings as in a pack of cards. How much do you get to get why they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it. They can have just as much as they want. Everything belongs to them in their day and what they've got to do work they don't do nothing. Why how you talk. They just set around all these that so of course it is they just set around cept maybe when there's a war then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around or go Hawken just laze around Hawkins bitten and other times when things is done by first with the parliament. And if everybody

don't go just is. So he whacks off their heads but mostly they just hang round the harem ground of which the harems. What's the harem. The place where he keeps his wives. But you know what. Herr Solomon had one I guess he had about a million y y years there so I done forgot it a heron's a bughouse I reckon a most likely day has rackety times in the nursery and I reckon the wives Qualls considerable in that crease direct yet they say Solomon the wisest man who ever lived. I don't take no stock in that because why would a wise man want to live in the midst of such a blim blam and all the time. No he wasn't a wise man to build a pile of factory you could shut down to buy a factory when you want to read well he was the wisest man anyway because the widow she told me so herself I don't care what the weather say he won oh wise man look he had somebody dead that you just ways I have a seat. Do you know about that child he was going to chop into his Sino the widow told me about. Well then I want to add a bit in this notion in the world. Just take an look at it a minute. There's the stump

there that's one that's one of the women and you as you that's you know I was Solomon and it's your dollar bills the china bowl for you claims it and what does I do does I shine around monster neighbors and find out which one of you the bill belong to and handed over to the right one all safe and sound the way anybody had any gumption would do. No I've taken whacked a bill in two and give half of it to you and the other half to the other woman. That's the way Sullivan was going to do with the child. Now I want to ask you what's the use of that half of Bill came via nothing with it and what use have a chair. I wouldn't give a dern or a million. But hang it Jim you've missed the whole point. Blame it you clean Mr thousand me go long don't talk to me about your points I reckon I know since when I sees it and they know since it's such do what does that dispute want about half a child as pupils about the whole child. And the man think he can settle a dispute about a whole child would have a child. Don't

know enough to come in out in the rain. Don't talk to me about Solomon our candles in by the fact book but I tell you you don't get the point lamed a point I reckon I knows what I know and minute a real bind is down further down deeper. It lays in the way Solomon was reigns and you take a man's got only one of two children is that mental be wasteful You know he 80 can't vote. He know how to value but you take a man who's got about 5 million children round out and it's different. He assumed the child who was a cat is plenty mole a child or two more or less for no consequence to Solomon there. I never see such an aching. If you've got a notion in his head once well there was just no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any guy I have A C so I want to talk about are the kings and let Solomon slide. I thought about Louis the Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France a long time ago. And by this little boy the dolphin it would have been king. But they took and shut him up in jail and some say he died there all of which I would some say get out and get

away and come here to America that's good. But he'd be pretty lonesome. They know kings here as they talk you know that he can get no situation what he do. Well I don't know. Some of them gets on the police and some of them learn people how to talk Fred was hooked on French people talk the same way we does. No Jim you wouldn't understand a word they said not a single word would not be busted. How did that come I don't know but it's so. I got some of the Jabber out of a book. I suppose a man came up to you and say parley voo frenzy. What would you think I would think nuffin I dey bust him over the head that is if you want white I would allow an old nigger to call me that shot today calling him anything. It's only saying do you know how to talk French. Why couldn't he say it as saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying well it's a dickless way and I don't want to hear no more about it. They no sense in it. Look you here Jim. Does a cat talk like we know what cat don't. Well does a cat or a cow don't know. Does a cat talk like a

cow or a cow talk like a cat. No they don't. It's natural and right for him to talk different from each other he calls and it right for a cat and a cow to talk different from what most surely it is. Well then why isn't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us. All right now you answer me that is a cat a man Huck No. Well anyway no sense of the cat talking like a man is a cow a man or is a cow a cat. No shame either of them. Well then she ain't got no business to talk like either one or the other of them is a Frenchman the man yes. Well then Dad blame it why don't we talk like a man US. I said we're no use wasting words you can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit. Even for a traveling man as earnest in his quest of humbug as Mark Twain it is a long jump from travels along the Mississippi River of childhood to travels by way of the legendary castles and chapels of King Arthur's Britain. Yet Mark Twain

made the jump. It was part of his quixotic notion that laughter might rid the world of humbug that through ridicule one might come to the land where there would be no humbug. So he tried to jump already in 1885 his hocks readings about Kings Doffen Knights lords and ladies shows Mark Twain was preparing for his travels into the past and in 1889 he published his report of the trip. How he got back to Arthur's country through the assumed character of a Connecticut Yankee has already been noted in the fourth program of this series that was devoted to America's search for a comic past. Here we give the Yankee story of his trip back to the lost land of King Arthur. This time in the context of the post Civil War pessimism and cynicism that drove Mark Twain on his traveler's Quest here is the Yankee story again. I'm an American. I was born and reared in Hartford in the state of Connecticut. Anyway just over the river in the country. So I'm a Yankee of the Yankees and practicals

is nearly barren of sentiment I suppose or poetry in other words. My father was a blacksmith my uncle was a horse doctor. And I was both long at first. Then I went over into the great arms factory and learned my real trade learned all there was to it. I became head superintendent at a couple of thousand men under me. Well man like that is a man that's full of fight. That goes without saying. With a couple of thousand rough men under one one has plenty of that sort of meant I had anyway. But at last I met my match. It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars and with a powder we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack the same this spring every joint in my skulls was to make it overlap its neighbor and the world went in darkness and I didn't feel anything anymore. I didn't know anything at all at least for a while. When I came to again I was sitting under an oak with a whole beautiful broad country landscape all to myself.

Nearly not entirely for there was a feather and a horse looking down at me a feller fresh out of a picture book. He was an old time iron armor from head to heel with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail keg with slits in it and he had a shield and a sword and a prodigious spear and his horse had an armor too and a steel horn projecting from his forehead and and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bed quilt. Will you just. Which will you try a passage of arms for land or lady or what do you given me get along back your search. There are reports you. What did that man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear with his nail keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight ahead. You know I saw he meant business so I was up the oak when he arrived. That was how the Connecticut Yankee arrived in King Arthurs Kingdom. The date was June 19th of the year five twenty eight. There are the Yankee almost

immediately saw the opportunities for a man of knowledge brains pluck and enterprise. He soon in fact became sir boss and in the course of his administrative activities he came into contact with a demo like or two was whom he renamed Sandy for short. As he related in his own report the encounter with Sandy went like this. There never was such a country as Arthur's for wandering liars and they were both sexes already a month went by with one of these tramps arriving with a tale about some princess held captive in a castle somewhere by a giant. You think that the King would have asked for credentials and a pointer to the locality of said Castle. Best route to it and so on. But no everybody swallow these people's lies whole. Well one day you and I was not one of these people came along. He was a she won this time. And told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was kept in the vast and gloomy castle with 44

other young and beautiful girls. They'd been languishing in the castle 26 years and their captors were three brothers with four arms and one each. Well no. Would you believe it. KING And the castle were in raptures about this opportunity for adventure every night of the Round Table One of the chances. But they conferred upon me who did not want it so willy nilly and without the slightest idea where the castle might be or how to get to it. Yankee set out with Sandy to rescue the forty five princesses held prisoner there for twenty six years and after many adventures the Yankee and Sandy found themselves nearing an unknown castle. They were approaching it through the splendors of a sinking sun when a conversation something like this is reported by The Yankee Years at the castle I know not who hold this castle in coming to I thought I passed and from here my dear Whereabouts does the castle lie what's the direction from here.

Please you sir it Hartley no direction from here by reason that the road is not straight but turn out for the direction of it abideth not but some time and some time. And as a Yankee explained this answer exasperated his precise mapmaking soul. But let him go on with his report and his comment. Sandy and I went on toward the bottom turn of the road that went up towards the castle I was a little anxious if knights errant were to be believed not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality of course as a matter of fact knights errant were not to be believed measured by modern standards of veracity. Yet measured by the standards of their time and scaled accordingly you got the truth. It is very simple you you discounted a statement 97 percent the rest is fact. Still even making this allowance the truth remains that if I could find out something about a castle before I rang the doorbell I mean hail the warders. It was the sensible thing to

do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn towards which I was hit. As we approached each other I saw that he wore a blue helmet and seemed otherwise clothed in steel but that he bore a curious addition also a stiff squarish garment like Harolds tempered like a bit before and after. And then I. I smiled at my anxiety at his armor and my own forgetfulness for when I got nearer I could read the sign on the stabber it read persimmon So all the first born use it when I was a little idea of my own as Serb boss and I had several wholesome purposes in view towards the civilizing and uplifting of our nation. In the first place it was a furtive an underhand blow at this nonsense of knight errantry though no one suspected that but me. I started a number of these people out the bravest knights I could get. Each sandwiched between bulletin boards bearing one device or another and I judged that by and by when they got to be

numerous enough they begin to look ridiculous and then even the steel clad s that hadn't any board would begin to look ridiculous because he was out of fashion. Second. And these missionaries would gradually and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm. Introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility and from them it would work down to the people. If the priests could be kept quiet this would undermine the church. I mean kindness would be a step towards that. Then education next to freedom and then begin to crumble it being my conviction that any established churches in the stablished crime an established slave pan had no scruples but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised her it. My missionaries are taught to spell out the gilt signs on their tempers. The show yielding was a neat idea I could have got a king to wear a bulletin board for the sake of that guilt splendor. The missionaries and were to spell out these signs and

explained to the lords and ladies what soap was and if the lords and ladies were afraid of it they were to get them to try on a dog. The missionaries next move was a dried on himself he was a stop annoy experiment however desperate they would convince the nobility that soap was harmless if any final doubt remained he must catch a hermit. What you're full of them saints they call themselves and saints they are believed to be there unspeakably holy and work miracles and everybody would not. So if a hermit could survive a wash and then fail to convince even a duke. And give him up let him be get on. Whenever my missionaries overcame a night on the road they swore him to go and get a bulletin board and disseminates open civilization in the rest of his days as a consequence the works on the field were increasing by degrees and the reformist at least spreading my soap factory felt the strain of my missionary at the bottom turn in the road turned out to be a Knight called coat and he said that the castle on the hill in the dusk was the abode of Morgan looks a sister of King Arthur and wife of King

monarch of a realm about as big as the District of Columbia you could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next Kingdom beings and kingdoms are as thick in Britain as they've been in little Palestine and joshing Joshua's time. When the people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. My missionary coat was depressed. For this cash only had scored the worst failure of his campaign not worked off a single cake yet he tried all the tricks even to the washing of a hermit. But the hermit died. That was indeed a bad failure for the animal would now be dubbed a martyr and would take his place among the saints of the Roman calendar. Les mate he is moan this poor missionary and sorrowed bashing so far and so my heart bled for him and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I said for there to grieve fair night for this is not a defeat. We have brains you and I are such as have brains. There are no defeats but only victories. Observe how will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement and advertisement for our soap

and the biggest one to draw that was ever thought will put it on your bulletin board since the hermit died and your aunt's persimmon so patronized by the elect and for just a modest one line ad that was a corker. We have produced for you today three reports from a traveler's Quest. The traveler was a very complex American Samuel Langhorne Clemens alias Mark Twain alias an innocent abroad and Alias Huckleberry Finn alias A Connecticut Yankee. His reports of incidents on his travels through space and back in time back to the twice told fields of childhood and to the legends of the Arthurian castles have been presented as reports on humbug humbugging aesthetics humbugging history and language humbugging ideals and ambitions for knights and ladies are humbug

for Americans living in a federal republic. There is I believe no place in our literature where one may study over better the meaning of humbug for Americans than in the writings of Mark Twain. It was humbug that drove the sensitive an intelligent boy from Missouri on his traveler's quest and perhaps it was continuing humbug in the American dream that saddened the traveler in his last years. The first of our production was adapted for dramatic reading from Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad. Published in 1869. The second was adapted as a dramatic skit. From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Published in 1885 and the third

for dramatic reading from a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court published in 1909. We hope that you have enjoyed. Today's voices. Myron curry. Franklin band or Lee Holt and Barbara Lee. Production by a Scott Bryce technical operation by Dennis Cooper. We invite you to listen next week to the heritage of American humor a series of 15 dramatized essays written and narrated by Professor Joseph Epps meal of the University of North Dakota Department of English. He offers you a perspective on the relationship between the American humor found in newspapers books or anthologies and the American outlook from Colonial to recent times.

The heritage of American humor is produced and recorded by the University of North Dakota broadcasting circle. Under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center. It's being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcast. This is the end of the Radio Network.