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Read Ebook: Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Volume I by Masson Thomas L Editor
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next PageEbook has 406 lines and 40527 words, and 9 pagesPAGE WASHINGTON IRVING Wouter Van Twiller 1 Wilhelmus Kieft 8 Peter Stuyvesant 13 Antony Van Corlear 15 General Van Poffenburgh 18 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Maxims 21 Model of a Letter of Recommendation of a Person You Are Unacquainted with 21 Epitaph for Himself 22 WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER Nothing to Wear 24 HENRY WARD BEECHER Deacon Marble 39 The Deacon's Trout 41 The Dog Noble and the Empty Hole 43 ALBERT GORTON GREENE Old Grimes 45 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES My Aunt 49 The Deacon's Masterpiece; or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay" 63 Foreign Correspondence 106 Music-Pounding 109 The Ballad of the Oysterman 142 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS Miss Albina McLush 51 Love in a Cottage 125 WILLIAM PITT PALMER A Smack in School 56 B. P. SHILLABER Fancy Diseases 58 Bailed Out 59 Seeking a Comet 59 Going to California 60 Mrs. Partington in Court 61 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL Five Lives 68 JAMES T. FIELDS The Owl-Critic 70 The Alarmed Skipper 104 JOHN HAY Little Breeches 74 HENRY W. SHAW Natral and Unnatral Aristokrats 77 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL The Yankee Recruit 81 What Mr. Robinson Thinks 170 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER My Summer in a Garden 90 FREDERICK S. COZZENS Living in the Country 111 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND Hans Breitmann's Party 127 FRANCES M. WHICHER Tim Crane and the Widow 129 JOHN GODFREY SAXE The Stammering Wife 135 He Came to Pay 139 MARIETTA HOLLEY A Pleasure Exertion 144 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN The Diamond Wedding 162 MISCELLANEOUS Why He Left 23 A Boy's Essay on Girls 38 Identified 47 One Better 48 A Rendition 57 A Cause for Thanks 73 Crowded 103 The Wedding Journey 105 A Case of Conscience 126 He Rose to the Occasion 136 Polite 137 Lost, Strayed or Stolen 138 A Gentle Complaint 141 Music by the Choir 173 WASHINGTON IRVING WOUTER VAN TWILLER It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer Wouter Van Twiller was appointed Governor of the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, under the commission and control of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and the privileged West India Company. This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament--when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little bob-lincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows--all which happy coincidences persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were skilled in the art of foretelling events, that this was to be a happy and prosperous administration. The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though it had been molded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong, and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple. Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page |
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