r of the comic supplements one may catch glimpses of
the great revolving wheels which are crushing the vast majority of our
population into something like uniformity. It is a process of social
attrition. The sharp edges of individual behavior get rounded off. The
individual loses color and picturesqueness, precisely as he casts aside
the national costume of the land from which he came. His speech, his
gait, his demeanor, become as nearly as possible like the speech and
carriage of all his neighbors. If he resists, he is laughed at; and if
he does not personally heed the laughter, he may be sure that his
children do. It is the children of our immigrants who catch the sly
smiles of their school-fellows, who overhear jokes from the newspapers
and on the street corners, who bring home to their foreign-born fathers
and mothers the imperious childish demand to make themselves like unto
everybody else.

A similar social function is performed by that well-known mode of
American humor which ridicules the inhabitants of certain states. Why
should New Jersey, for example, be more ridiculous than Delaware? In
the eyes of the newspaper paragrapher it unquestionably is, just as
Missouri has more humorous connotations than Kentucky. We may think we
understand why we smile when a man says that he comes from Kalamazoo
or Oshkosh, but the smile when he says "Philadelphia" or "Boston" or
"Brooklyn" is only a trifle more subtle. It is none the less real. Why
should the suburban dweller of every city be regarded with humorous
condescension by the man who is compelled to sleep within the city
limits? No one can say, and yet without that humor of the suburbs the
comic supplements of American newspapers would be infinitely less
entertaining,--to the people who enjoy comic supplements.

So it is with the larger divisions of our national life. Yankee,
Southerner, Westerner, Californian, Texan, each type provokes certain
connotations of humor when viewed by any of the other types. Each type
in turn has its note of provinciality when compared with the norm of
the typical American. It is quite possible to maintain that our
literature, like our social life, has suffered by this ever-present
American sense of the ridiculous. Our social consciousness might be far
more various and richly colored, there might be more true provincial
independence of speech and custom and imagination if we had not to
reckon with this ever-present censure of laughter, thi