are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make
a business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose
duty it is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh
Billings, and Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or
two others of less note, are a kind of personages which no other
society has produced, and could in no other society attain equal
celebrity. In fact, when one examines the total annual production
of jokes in the United States, one who knows nothing of the past
history of the comic-paper question can hardly avoid the
conclusion that such periodicals would run serious risk of being
overwhelmed with "good things" and dying of plethora. Yet the
melancholy fact is that several--indeed, all that have been
started--have died of inanition; that is, of the absence of
jokes. The last one says it offered all the great humorists in
the country plenty of work, and their own terms as to pay, and
failed to enlist them, and the chance jokes apparently were
neither numerous enough nor good enough to keep it afloat.

Now what is the cause of this disheartening state of things? Why can
the United States not have a comic paper of their own? The answers
to this question vary, though of course not greatly. They are mostly
given in the shape of a history, with appropriate comments, of the
unsuccessful attempts made to establish comic papers; one went down
because it did not sympathize with the liberal and humane movements
of the day, and laughed in the pro-slavery interest; another,
because it never succeeded in getting hold of a good draughtsman for
its engravings; and another venture failed, among other mistakes, we
are told, because it made fun of the New York _Tribune_. The
explanation which finds most general favor with the public is, that
while in England, France, and Germany "the great dailies" confine