Quincy Whig in Quincy, Illinois

Light And Shade From Humorous Small-Town Snippets

A jumble of witty sketches, anecdotes, and musings from early 20th century journals. It features a discursive tale of a man boasting a barn, reflections on miners and mine names, lighthearted social twaddle about fashion and fat women, a parson’s salary prank, a rodent tale with a blind rat, a brisk courtroom-tinged quip, a khaki of jokes about marriage, a comical slave of the press, and a moral vignette about a circus and a mother’s rebuke accompanied by a child’s clever reply. The pieces reveal a taste for humor, sentimentality, and social observation rendered in clipped, period voice.