Nonsense for old and young — Themes and Context

The Primer as Political Sandbox

Several sketches target Colorado politics with a local specificity that the publishers admit may have faded. In “A Political Object Lesson,” a Democratic candidate stands still while a Republican would be running; Democratic candidates “can not Run. They do not even Walk.” The joke depends on knowing that Colorado’s early politics were fiercely competitive. “Hot Air vs. Cold Water” personifies a windmill as a former Democratic politician now reduced to hauling water for a living, concluding that “Any Kind of Honest Labor is awful rough on a Democrat.” These pieces treat political affiliation as a kind of congenital laziness or hot air—a stance that would have landed differently in 1881 than today.

Deadpan Violence and Domestic Chaos

Field’s humor often turns on sudden, understated violence. In “A Portrait of a Lady,” the “Amiable and Accomplished Wife” is “Walloping him with the Rolling Pin” while her husband is “as Full as a Tick.” “One Autumn Night” describes a lover’s serenade interrupted by a bulldog bite: “A nip, a grip, and then a pang!” The poem ends with a “canine quivering with delight.” Even the George Washington anecdote in “The Truth About the Cherry Tree” twists the myth: young George admits the deed but gets “One in the Neck for using Bad Grammar.” The humor comes from the gap between the primer’s innocent tone and the casual cruelty of the content.

Rhythm and Compression in the Short Forms

Field’s prose sketches rely on abrupt, staccato sentences that mimic a child’s reading book but deliver adult punchlines. “Would You?” asks if a picture of a boodle politician is beautiful, then notes “The left Eye is Closed. It must be Tired.” The deadpan logic is absurd. The verse pieces, like “An Ode to a Cat,” use clipped couplets (“A hungry Cat— / A foolish Rat”) to build a swift, almost mechanical narrative of predation. The brevity forces each word to carry weight; the humor depends on timing and the unexpected shift from primer-style simplicity to cynical or violent payoff.

Because the excerpts are limited to roughly a third of the original 162 sketches, the full range of Field’s targets—and the cumulative effect of the primer format—remains partly obscured. Readers should approach the collection as a period artifact: a newspaper humorist’s experiment in repurposing a children’s form for adult satire, with local references that may require footnotes. The illustrations by John C. Frohn add a visual layer that the text alone cannot convey.

That afternoon, the rain ticking against the window, I kept laughing at the absurd seriousness of old primers turned upside down. The deadpan satire felt oddly gentle, a reminder that even our most earnest structures are just stories. It made me quiet, and in that quiet, I found myself reaching for The Poems of Henry Kendall With Biographical Note by Bertram Stevens — Edition Insights—a different century’s voice, but the same patient longing for something true beneath the words.