The second volume of Marshall P. Wilder's ten-part anthology gathers thirty-five works that span dialect verse, parodic ballads, and satirical dialogues. The collection opens with Carolyn Wells's fable "The Two New Houses," a moral tale about architectural arrogance, and closes with Anne Virginia Culbertson's cake-walk lyric "Go Lightly, Gal." Between these poles, the reader encounters James Whitcomb Riley's Hoosier monologues, Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley sketches, and H.W. Boynton's "The Golfer's Rubaiyat," a sustained parody of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The volume's structure juxtaposes rural and urban settings, formal and vernacular registers, creating a mosaic of late-nineteenth-century American humor.

Parody as Structural Frame

Several pieces in this volume rely on recognizable literary forms as scaffolding for their humor. H.W. Boynton's "The Golfer's Rubaiyat" maps the quatrains of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat onto the rituals of golf: "Wake! for the sun has driven in equal flight / The stars before him from the Tee of Night." The parody maintains the original's meter and stanza structure while substituting golfing terminology for Persian imagery. Similarly, Charles Godfrey Leland's "Ballad" and Charles E. Carryl's "A Nautical Ballad" adopt the ballad stanza for comic effect. These works reward readers familiar with the source texts, as the humor depends on the tension between elevated form and mundane subject matter. The volume thus functions partly as a catalog of parodic techniques, demonstrating how American humorists repurposed established genres for satire.

Dialect as Character and Setting

Dialect writing dominates the collection, with pieces by James Whitcomb Riley, Anne Virginia Culbertson, and Finley Peter Dunne using nonstandard orthography to evoke specific regions and social types. Riley's "The Way it Wuz" and "Ringworm Frank" employ Hoosier dialect, while Culbertson's "Comin' Thu" and "Go Lightly, Gal" render African American Vernacular English in the context of a cake walk. Dunne's Mr. Dooley sketches, such as "Mr. Dooley on Reform Candidates," use Irish-American dialect for political commentary: "That frind iv ye'ers, Dugan, is an intilligent man... All he needs is an index an' a few illusthrations to make him a bicyclopedja iv useless information." The dialect is not merely decorative; it establishes character, setting, and social perspective. Readers must attend to the phonetic spelling, which slows reading and foregrounds the oral quality of the humor.

Recurring Motifs: Rural Life and Social Pretension

Two thematic threads run through the volume: the contrast between rural simplicity and urban sophistication, and the satire of social climbing. In "Grandma Keeler Gets Grandpa Ready for Sunday-School" by Sarah P. McLean Greene, the humor arises from the domestic rituals of elderly rural characters. At the other extreme, George William Curtis's "Our Best Society" skewers urban social ambitions. The volume also includes several pieces about amateur theatricals and musicales, such as May Isabel Fisk's "An Evening Musicale" and Robert J. Burdette's "The Strike at Hinman's." These works share a preoccupation with performance—whether on stage, on the golf course, or in the parlor—and the gap between aspiration and competence. The cumulative effect is a portrait of a nation defining itself through its foibles.

Movement Between Prose and Verse

The anthology alternates between prose sketches and verse, creating a rhythm that prevents monotony. Prose pieces like Dunne's Mr. Dooley dialogues and Burdette's "An Archæological Congress" offer extended comic scenarios, while poems such as John B. Tabb's epigrams and Carolyn Wells's fables provide concise punchlines. The verse often employs regular meter and rhyme, making it suitable for reading aloud. The volume's organization does not group pieces by form or theme; instead, it juxtaposes contrasting styles. For instance, the dialect poem "Comin' Thu" is followed by the parody "The Golfer's Rubaiyat," then by Dunne's political satire. This arrangement encourages readers to appreciate the range of American humor rather than settling into a single mode.

Readers approaching this volume should be prepared for the density of dialect and allusion. The humor often depends on familiarity with specific regional speech patterns, literary conventions, or social contexts of the late 1800s. Reading aloud can clarify the rhythm of dialect verse, while a willingness to encounter unfamiliar references will reward the patient reader. The volume stands as a document of its era's comic sensibilities, offering a cross-section of the voices that amused American audiences at the turn of the century.