Preachers, Varments, Planners

NATIVE AMERICAN HUMOR (396 pp.)--Edited by James R. Aswell--Harper ($3.75).

"By sundown the gals come a-pourin out of the woods for the frolic like ants out of an old log when t'other end's afire. [Then] an old Hardshell preacher* come a-walkin in out of nowhar in the dark, with his mouth mortised into his face in a shape like a mule's hoof, heels down. . . . Like all Hardshells, he was dead agin women and lovely sounds and motions and dancin and cussin and kissin. [But] the whiskey part of the frolic he had nothin agin. . . .

"I sort of edged up aside him and, says I, 'Mister, will you have a few draps?' He blowed an awful sigh, and says he, 'This is a wicked and a perverse generation of vipers, young man.' [But] that shovel-shaped underlip of his jist fell outwards like the fallin door of a coal stove, and he upsot the gourd inside of his teeth. I seed the mark of the truck agoing down his throat jist like a snake travelin through a wet sausage gut. He smelt into the gourd a good long smell, turned up his eyes, and said, 'Barm of life.' "

Made in U.S.A. Like barbed wire and bifocal eyeglasses, this brand of humor is a U.S. invention. It is as pure an expression of Yankee or backwoods genius as the coonskin cap and the basswood spittoon. The latest to work it over is Tennessee-born James R. Aswell, who has dug out about 100 items (including the above, by Tennessee's George W. Harris about 1845) from old books, newspapers and magazines.

By vigorous doctoring of texts (i.e., cutting, rearranging, shearing off excess dialect) Editor Aswell has adapted them for what he calls "modern reading." His conception of humor is broad enough to embrace Irving, Poe and Edward Everett, but he also includes the best of the true-blue local colorists, nateral-born liars and ringtailed roarers. Among them:

Augustus B. Longstreet (Georgia Scenes) on hoss-swapping in the 1830s ("Why, man, do you bring such a hoss as that to trade? . . . Well, anyhow, let me look at him. Maybe he'll do to plow").

Mortimer Thompson ("Q. K. Philander Doesticks") on Broadway theatricals in 1855.

David R. Locke on Petroleum V. Nasby's troubles at "Confedrit X Roads (wich is in the Stait uv Kentucky)."

Johnson J. Hooper on census-taking in Alabama ("Bless your soul, honey, take a seat. Now do! Are you the gentleman that Mr. Van Buren has sent out? I wonder! Well, good Lord look down, how was Mr. Van Buren and family when you seed him?")

Thomas Bangs Thorpe on the charms of Arkansas: "Why, stranger, just breathe Arkansaw air and it will make you snort like a horse." (Mosquitoes? "Well, stranger . . . it is a fact that they are rather enormous. [But] if they are large, Arkansaw is large, her varments are large, her rivers are large. A small mosquito would be of no more use in Arkansaw than preaching in a cane-brake.")

George W. Bagby on a concert by famed Pianist Anton Rubinstein: "Well, sir, he had the blamedest, biggest, catty-corneredest pianner you ever laid your eyes on--something like a distracted billiard table on three legs. . . . Played well? You bet he did. When he first sit down, he peered to care mighty little about playing, and wished he hadn't come. He tweedle-eedled a little on the treble, and twoodle-oodled some on the bass. . . . All of a sudden, old Ruby changed his tune. . . . He lit into them keys like a thousand of brick. He give 'em no rest, day or night. He set every living joint in me agoing, and not being able to stand it no longer, I jumped spang into my seat and jest hollered: 'Go it, my Rube!' Every blamed man, woman and child in the house riz on me, and shouted: 'Put him out! Put him out!'"

* I.e., a hell & brimstone fundamentalist, not to be confused with Softshell -- or modern -- Baptists, or the Six-Principle, Seventh-Day, Particular, Truthful, Lying, Free-Will, No Effort, Duck River or Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists.

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