The Irish Highlander,
who denies, in a rich brogue, that any Irish are ever admitted
into his regiment, and the cannie burgher from Aberdeen, who, on
his return home from a visit to London, says it's an "awfu' dear
place; that he hadna' been twa oors in the toon when bang went
saxpence," are types which raise a laugh all over the United
Kingdom, and all because, again, they furnish materials for
ludicrous contrast which everybody is capable of appreciating.
Neither the Irishman, Scotchman, nor Englishman, as such, can be
made to yield much fun, if sketched alone. It is when ranged
alongside of each other, and measured by the English middle-class
standard of propriety, that they become entertaining.
In a homogeneous society, like that of the United States, none of
this material is to be found. The New Englander, to be sure,
furnishes a type which differs from the Middle-States man or the
Southerner or Westerner, but none of them differs enough to make him
worth caricaturing. His speech, his dress, his modes of acting and
thinking so nearly resemble those of his neighbors in other parts of
the country that after the comic writer or draughtsman had done his
best or his worst upon him, it would remain still a little doubtful
where the joke came in.
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