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February 17th, 2018: "Humoreske" by Henry van Dyke


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Please join us for our weekly literary chat in #readers_corner at 8:30 P.M. (EST) on February 17th 2018 -- 00:30 A.M. (GMT), February 18th -- for our next discussion.  By popular demand I have found another tale by Henry van Dyke (the author of our last story) to see if he was consistently a producer of stories that Nan likes or simply a one hit wonder.  We will discuss van Dyke's story "Humoreske".

I did some research on van Dyke and learned that following from Wikipedia:  

     "Henry Jackson van Dyke Jr. was born on November 10, 1852, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Henry Jackson van Dyke Sr. (1822–1891), a prominent Brooklyn Presbyterian clergyman known in the antebellum years for his anti-abolitionist views.  Henry graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in 1869,[3]Princeton University, in 1873 and from Princeton Theological Seminary, 1877. He served as a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923."

      "Van Dyke chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. In 1908–09 Dr. van Dyke was a lecturer at the University of Paris.  By appointment of President Woodrow Wilson, a friend and former classmate of van Dyke, he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. Van Dyke resigned as ambassador at the beginning of December 1916 and returned to the United States. He was subsequently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors as an author and educator.  He died on April 10, 1933. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery."

In my opinion, his education as a minister and long involvement with the Presbyterian Church had a large effected the moral issues evident in those of his stories which I have read.  Many of his stories read more like essays than fictional tales, but all of his writings seem to contain a humanistic albeit very conservative Christian viewpoint reflected in the values espoused by his characters.  

This selection is more of a boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl in the end type of story,  but unlike the typical slick magazine treatment of young love, this story does not trigger the gag effect found in the stories finding their way into scripts for Halmark Movie Channel shows.  I think you will enjoy it.

The story is available on line at:

  https://americanliterature.com/author/henry-van-dyke/short-story/humoreske

Webchat address:  http://koach.com/cha...=readers_corner  

mIRC Users:  /server -m chat3.koach.com:6667 -j #readers_corner

I hope to see you all at the chat.

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