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developing fixed class types of humor. We have not even the lieutenant
or the policeman as permanent members of our humorous stock company.
The policeman of to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. The
lieutenant may go back to his grocery wagon or on to his department
store. But whenever and wherever such an individual fails to adapt
himself to his new companions, fails to take on, as it were, the colors
of his new environment, to speak in the new social accents, to follow
the recognized patterns of behavior, then the kindly whip of the
humorist is already cracking round his ears. The humor and satire of
college undergraduate journalism turns mainly upon the recognized
ability or inability of different individuals to adapt themselves to
their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. A freshman must
behave like a freshman, or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave as
if he were nothing but the automaton of a freshman, or he will be
laughed at more merrily still.

One of the first discoveries of our earlier humorists was the Down-East
Yankee. "I'm going to Portland whether or no," says Major Jack Downing,
telling the story of his boyhood; "I'll see what this world is made of
yet. So I tackled up the old horse and packed in a load of ax handles
and a few notions, and mother fried me a few doughnuts ... for I told
her I didn't know how long I should be gone,"--and off he goes to
Portland, to see what the world is made of. It is a little like Defoe,
and a good deal like the young Ulysses, bent upon knowing cities and
men and upon getting the best of bargains.

Each generation of Americans has known something like that trip to
Portland. Each generation has had to measure its wits, its resources,
its manners, against new standards of comparison. At every stage of the
journey there are mishaps and ridiculous adventures; but everywhere,
likewise, there is zest, conquest, initiation; the heart of a boy who
"wants to know"--as the Yankees used to say; or, in more modern
phrase,--

"to admire and for to see,
For to behold this world so wide."

There is the same romance of adventure in the humor concerning the
Irishman, the Negro, the Dutchman, the Dago, the farmer. Each in turn
becomes humorous through failure to adapt himself to the prevalent
type. A long-bearded Jew is not ridiculous in Russia, but he rapidly
becomes ridiculous even on the East Side of New York. Underneath all
this popular humo