note of
exaggeration. "These violent delights have violent ends." But during
their brief and laughing existence they serve to normalize society.
They set up, as it were, a pulpit in the street upon which the comic
spirit may mount and preach her useful sermon to all comers.

Despite the universality of the objects of contemporary American humor,
despite, too, its prevalent method of caricature, it remains true that
its character is, on the whole, clean, easy-going, and kindly. The old
satire of hatred has lost its force. No one knows why. "Satire has
grown weak," says Mr. Chesterton, "precisely because belief has grown
weak." That is one theory. The late Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago,
declared in one of his last books: "The world has outgrown the dialect
and temper of hatred. The style of the imprecatory psalms and the
denunciating prophets is out of date. No one knows these times if he is
not conscious of this change." That is another theory. Again, party
animosities are surely weaker than they were. Caricatures are less
personally offensive; if you doubt it, look at any of the collections
of caricatures of Napoleon, or of George the Fourth. Irony is less
often used by pamphleteers and journalists. It is a delicate rhetorical
weapon, and journalists who aim at the great public are increasingly
afraid to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In the editorials in
the Hearst newspapers, for instance, there is plenty of invective and
innuendo, but rarely irony: it might not be understood, and the crowd
must not be left in doubt.

Possibly the old-fashioned satire has disappeared because the game is
no longer considered worth the candle. To puncture the tire of
pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to stick tacks under the
steam road-roller: the road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths
down your mischievous little tacks and you too, indifferently. The huge
interests of politics, trade, progress, override your passionate
protest. "Shall gravitation cease when you go by?" I do not compare
Colonel Roosevelt with gravitation, but have all the satirical squibs
against our famous contemporary, from the "Alone in Cubia" to the
"Teddy-see," ever cost him, in a dozen years, a dozen votes?

Very likely Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Chesterton are right. We are less
censorious than our ancestors were. Americans, on the whole, try to
avoid giving pain through speech. The satirists of the golden age loved
that cruel exercise of po