It's difficult to rate a collection of stories. There were a few, such as "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decaying Punsters" and "Bargain Day at Tutt House," to which I'd love to assign 5 stars. Others, such as "A Call," I'd give 4 to. However, there were others in this collection to which I would also assign a 3, 2, or even in some cases a 1. Overall, I found myself skimming some stories and skipping others altogether. It was rare that a tale in this collection really caught my attention. Given that this is supposed to be the "best" of American humorous short stories, I'd expected better. I enjoyed the feel of the leather bound text in my hands, the smell of an old book, and the occasional chuckle elicited by some of the better stories, but in general I was disappointed.

This book added quite a bit to my awareness of early-to-mid 20th century humor. Not that I couldn't have thought of most of these authors if I thought about it, but who would have thought about whether Life with Father began life as a book? I ended up skipping a lot of the early stories that were heavy on the dialect, but all in all, this added quite a bit to my to-read list. James Thurber, Sally Benson, and Clarence Day top my list to check out.

Another fascinating exercise in changing standards, this book was compiled early in the last century. That means some of the stories are still funny, some are worth a chuckle, a few are just baffling. For example, I discovered that casual racism and romanticism of slavery (as opposed to the deliberate savage mocking of it in Twain's works) dramatically cuts down on the humor of a piece--when characters are casually mentioned as "owning five slaves between them" I just find their hijinks less amusing. The O. Henry story plays with racism and stereotypes in ways that seem to be subverting expectations and thus retains some humor, but many are quite off-putting, and the last story in the volume (where the shiftless and dim lead in a minstrel show steals a bunch of money and runs away home to the South, where he abducts a screaming girl to be his "wife," the end) will almost certainly hit modern ears with a shocking thud--if it was ever funny, it just isn't anymore. Some of the stories will elicit a smile, and when they don't it's interesting to puzzle out why someone once thought they were funny when they don't seem it now, but it's hardly an anthology for when you want a belly laugh.