- After the war- Theodore Winthrop - Edward - Historic fiction Foreign subjects - Anglo- American novelists-Caricature-In the inter- est of realism-The society novel-William Poetry Criticism Development of Humor- Primitive - English -Early humor in America - Ward — Byles Nasby "Josh 463 471 66 Though the beginning may seeme harsh in regard of the Antiquities, brevity, and names; a pleasanter discourse ensues.” CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. American Literature IN ITS COLONIAL & I INTRODUCTORY Renaissance. THERE are many indications of an increasing interest in colonial antiquities. The most obvious is the latest fashion in architecture, with its gambrel roofs, The Colonial pillared porticos, yellow and white coloring, suggesting if not following the style of building in the eighteenth century. Such houses must be furnished in a manner to correspond, and the country-side is ransacked to find uncomfortable chairs, clocks whose altitude is greater than their accuracy, and sideboards with rheumatic joints. New factories are started to make old bric-a-brac, and good plate is battered into better. The children that run about these houses answer to ancient names like Dorothy, Gladys, and Sibyl — the more antique, like Keziah and Keturah, Benhadad and Barzillai, being dropped as too Hebraic for modern use. Then the colonial spirit spreads from the family to the community, and societies and organizations spring up to connect their members with pilgrims and soldiers, governors and wars. We have our colonial dames, and they have their battles. There are sons and daughters of this and that, distinguished in proportion to the remoteness of their ancestry. So wide has the contagion spread that we have been threatened with a return of the full-skirted coat and long waistcoat, of small clothes and shoe buckles, although no one has yet suggested the earlier steeple hat, doublet, and trunk hose of the Puritan. Indeed, through all this Stuart and Hanoverian restoration a saving soberness of judgment has prevailed sufficient to keep it from running away with its advocates. At least, they have never taken kindly to the Cromwellian features of colonial art. Possibly some may discover signs of coming imperialism in this, and the slogan of the future may be the old song whose burden was: "In good old colony times, After all, this looking backward and bringing forward is not a mere fad or temporary craze. Its lightest movements are as the foam on the surface which goes with a strong current underneath the historical spirit of this generation, combined with a patriotism which means to honor the nation's founders by preserving the records of their doings. In everybody's desire to gather up Sibylline leaves before it is too late, it is not strange that family records and genealogies, old wills and inventories, surviving plate, spinning wheels, and even pewter mugs, should get into the drag-net. Who shall say what value any of these may have to the historian in coming centuries? In view of this retrospective disposition of our time it would be glaringly inconsistent to overlook the writings |