Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 4 The Powers of Nature Part 2

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 4 The Powers of Nature Part 2

The language of this humor combines the human and the nonhuman: frontier screamers, also known as ring-tailed roarers, advertise themselves as “half-horse, half alligator, part earth-quake, and a little of the steamboat.” 45  In one exchange, a screamer declares: “I can whip my weight in wild cats and ride straight through a crab apple orchard on a flash of lightning. Clear meat-ax disposition!”—answered by, “I can tote a steam boat up the Mississippi and over the Alleghany mountains. My father can whip the best man in Old Kaintuck and I can whip my father.” 46  A female screamer can “laugh the bark off a pine tree, swim straight up a cataract, gouge out alligators’ eyes, dance a rock to pieces, sink a steamboat, blow out the moonlight . . .” 47 Both the negative and positive aspects of the frontier are taken to weird extremes in this humor. The self-reliance and courage of the frontiersman becomes the unleashed braggadocio of the ring-tailed roarer. Closeness to nature becomes a complete m…