Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture

Chapter 1: PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.

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About This Book

A lively assortment of comic verses, short prose pieces, and illustrated vignettes that lampoon everyday life on the frontier and in small towns. Individual items portray bungled schemes, animal mishaps, social embarrassments, and civic or courtroom absurdities presented with ironic twists. Many pieces are brief rhymes or tall tales while others develop longer humorous narratives, and most are paired with spirited drawings that amplify physical gags and visual punch lines. The overall tone is playful and satirical, aiming to amuse by exposing human foibles through slapstick situations and witty observation.

PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.

Not only is truth stranger than fiction, but it is funnier also. Just as some men have no eye for colors, but are color blind; so some men have no eye for fun, but are fun blind. Happy is the man who can see the humor which bubbles up in daily life; doubly happy he who, having seen, can tell the fun to others and so spread the glad contagion of a laugh; but thrice happy is the man who, having seen, can tell the fun; and having told, can picture it for others’ eyes and so roll on the rollicking humor, for the brightening of a world already far too sad.

Palmer Cox is one who sees, and tells, and pictures all the fun within his reach, as this volume of Frontier Humor will certainly attest.