With the pen in his hand (or, more
probably, the typewriter under his fingers) his sense of epithet is
precise; but in his conversational stories men were as mad "as Sam
Hill," injuries hurt "like hell," and a knapsack was as heavy "as the
devil." We all laughed; but he should have had more of the artist's
pride.
Three American professional humourists whom I had the good fortune to
meet and be with for some time were Irvin Cobb, Don Marquis, and Oliver
Herford, each authentic and each so different. Beneath Mr. Cobb's fun is
a mass of ripe experience and sagacity. However playful he may be on the
surface one is aware of an almost Johnsonian universality beneath. It
would not be extravagant to call his humour the bloom on the fruit of
the tree of knowledge (I am talking now only of the three as I found
them in conversation). Don Marquis, while equally serious (and all the
best humourists are serious at heart), has a more grotesque fancy and is
more of a reformer, or, at any rate, a rebel. His dissatisfaction with
hypocrisy provoked a scorn that Mr. Cobb is too elemental to entertain.
Some day perhaps Don Marquis will induce an editor to print the
exercises in unorthodoxy which he has been writing and which, in
extract, he repeated to us with such unction; but I doubt it. They are
too searching. But that so busy a man should turn aside from his work to
dabble in religious satire seemed to me a very interesting thing; for
nothing is so unprofitable--except to the honest soul of him who
conceives it.
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