unfailing delight to the receptive American mind. It is a poor
community which cannot furnish its archaic jest for the diversion
of its neighbours.

The finest example of our bulldog resoluteness in holding on to a
comic situation, or what we conceive to be a comic situation, may
be seen every year when the twenty-second of February draws near,
and the shops of our great and grateful Republic break out into an
irruption of little hatchets, by which curious insignia we have
chosen to commemorate our first President. These toys, occasionally
combined with sprigs of artificial cherries, are hailed with
unflagging delight, and purchased with what appears to be patriotic
fervour. I have seen letter-carriers and post-office clerks wearing
little hatchets in their button-holes, as though they were party
buttons, or temperance badges. It is our great national joke, which
I presume gains point from the dignified and reticent character of
General Washington, and from the fact that he would have been
sincerely unhappy could he have foreseen the senile character of a
jest, destined, through our love of absurdity, our careful
cultivation of the inappropriate, to be linked forever with his name.

The easy exaggeration which is a distinctive feature of American
humour, and about which so much has been said and written, has its
counterpart in sober and truth-telling England, though we are always
amazed when we find it there, and fall to wondering, as we never
wonder at home, in what spirit it was received. There are two kinds
of exaggeration; exaggeration of statement, which is a somewhat
primitive form of humour, and exaggeration of phrase, which implies
a dexterous misuse of language, a skilful juggling with words. Sir
John Robinson gives, as an admirable instance of exaggeration of