The peculiar humor which is recognized as characteristically
American might more accurately be called Midwestern, since it was not really
heard until the western migration spilled over the Alleghenies and peopled the
plains that stretched to the Mississippi and beyond. The Yankee (“built on hard
luck and codfish") was already established as a comic rascal, and a
caricature of the stolid Dutchman was a stock amusement, but both of these were
European types merely transplanted to the colonies. 

&nbsp;The Midwestern
frontier, however, was something new in human experience and produced new
responses. The carefully woven fabric of illusion that constitutes much of
civilization offered little protection in forest, swamp and prairie. Life in
the clearings, in the log cabins and the malarial river bottoms was hard,
monotonous and depressing. The vast disaepancy between the vision that had brought
them there and the actuality they found on arriving must have been almost
unendurable to the settlers and laughter their only relief. Mark Twain, who as
a child saw the last of the Midwestern frontier, said, ‘The secret source of
humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven."

The World, The Flesh, And H. Allen Smith PDF

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