"Miss
Leslie," wrote Edgar Allan Poe, "is celebrated for the homely
naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire of her comic
style." She was the editor of _The Gift_ one of the best annuals of
the time, and in that position perhaps exerted her chief influence on
American literature When one has read three or four representative
stories by these seven authors one can grasp them all. Their titles as
a rule strike the keynote. These writers, except "the Widow Bedott,"
are perhaps sentimentalists rather than humorists in intention, but
read in the light of later days their apparent serious delineations of
the frolics and foibles of their time take on a highly humorous
aspect.
George Pope Morris (1802-1864) was one of the founders of _The New
York Mirror_, and for a time its editor. He is best known as the
author of the poem, _Woodman, Spare That Tree_, and other poems and
songs. _The Little Frenchman and His Water Lots_ (1839), the first
story in the present volume, is selected not because Morris was
especially prominent in the field of the short story or humorous prose
but because of this single story's representative character.
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