Negro Patois and Its Humor

No one ever heard negro patois for first time without laughing, wrote N. S. Dodge in Appleton's Journal sixty years ago.' His analysis of humor residing in this language used by former negro slaves in United States gives abundant evidence of ludicrous effect of idiom itself and of readiness of negro to see ludicrous in most serious situation. During Civil War, said he, the keenest wit, sharpest retorts, severest satire, and most amusing repartees, came from negro. Mr. Dodge placed a big job before philologists sixty years ago when he asked them to find out what it is in organs of speech, or in brain behind and above those organs, that makes English, or any other living language, always same in variation and tone in articulate sounds of any particular race-brogue in Irishman, accent in educated German, 'Pigeon Yankee' in Chinaman

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