e temperance
reformer, the tract distributer, the Good Boy of Sunday-school
literature, and the women who send bouquets and sympathetic letters to
interesting criminals. He gives a ludicrous turn to famous historical
anecdotes, such as the story of George Washington and his little
hatchet; burlesques the time-honored adventure, in nautical romances,
of the starving crew casting lots in the long-boat, and spoils the
dignity of antiquity by modern trivialities, saying of a discontented
sailor on Columbus's ship, "He wanted fresh shad." The fun of
_Innocents Abroad_ consists in this irreverent application of modern,
common sense, utilitarian, democratic standards to the memorable places
and historic associations of Europe. Tried by this test the Old
Masters in the picture galleries become laughable, Abelard was a
precious scoundrel, and the raptures of the guide-books are parodied
without mercy. The tourist weeps at the grave of Adam. At Genoa he
drives the _cicerone_ to despair by pretending never to have heard of
Christopher Columbus, and inquiring innocently, "Is he dead?" It is
Europe vulgarized and stripped of its illusions--Europe seen by a
Western newspaper reporter without any "historic imagination."

The method of this whole class of humorists is the opposite of
Addison's or Irving's or Thackeray's. It does not amuse by the
perception of the characteristic. It is not founded upon truth, but
upon incongruity, distortion, unexpectedness. Every thing in life is
reversed, as in opera bouffe, and turned topsy-turvy, so that paradox
takes the place of the natural order of things. Nevertheless they have
supplied a wholesome criticism upon sentimental excesses, and the world
is in their debt for many a hearty laugh.

In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1863, appeared a tale entitled
_The Man Without a Country_, which made a great sensation, and did much
to strengthen patriotic feeling in one of the darkest hours of the
nation's history. It was the story of one Philip Nolan, an army
officer, whose head had been turned by Aaron Burr, and who, having been
censured by a court-martial for some minor offense; exclaimed
petulantly, upon mention being made of the United States government,
"Damn the United States! I wish that I might never hear the United
States mentioned again." Thereupon he was sentenced to have his wish,
and was kept all his life aboard the vessels of the navy, being sent
off on long voyages