absolve them from any fault of theirs in the bastardy.

Humour is the most conspicuous thing in the world, which must explain why
the little humour in _Elsie Venner_ and the _Breakfast Table_ series
is not only the first thing the critic touches but the thing whereby he
relates this author to his following and to the world. The young man
John, Colonel Sprowle with his 'social entertainment,' the Landlady and
her daughter, and the Poor Relation, almost make up the sum of the comic
personages, and fifty per cent. of the things they say--no more--are good
enough to remain after the bloom of their vulgarity has worn off. But
that half is excellent, keen, jolly, temperate; and because of that
temperance--the most stimulating and fecundating of qualities--the humour
of it has set the literature of a hemisphere to the tune of mirth. Like
Mr. Lowell's it was humour in dialect--not Irish dialect nor negro, but
American; and it made New England aware of her comedy. Until then she
had felt within herself that there was nothing to laugh at. 'Nature is
in earnest when she makes a woman,' says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Rather, she takes herself seriously when she makes the average spiritual
woman: as seriously as that woman takes herself when she makes a novel.
And in a like mood Nature made New England and endowed her with purpose,
with mortuary frivolities, with long views, with energetic provincialism.

If we remember best _The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_, we do so in
spite of the religious and pathetic motive of the greater part of Dr.
Holmes's work, and of his fancy, which should be at least as conspicuous
as his humour. It is fancy rather than imagination; but it is more
perfect, more definite, more fit, than the larger art of imagery, which
is apt to be vague, because it is intellectual and adult. No grown man
makes quite so definite mental images as does a child; when the mind ages
it thinks stronger thoughts in vaguer pictures. The young mind of Dr.
Holmes has less intellectual imagination than intelligent fancy. For
example: 'If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get
an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable
plumage flaps heavily along his straightforward course, while the other
sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again,
tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of
him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the sam