A cask of Jerepigo - Herman Charles Bosman

"Bosman had a way of seeing life which was very much out of the ordinary—perhaps uniquely his own. Life in his vision was crowded with things that fascinated, delighted and awed him; with secret meanings that kept him vibrating in a vital way. As a result his personality was invested with an aura of intense excitement. And that is the keynote of his life.

"It is these sketches that come closest of all his works to conveying an idea of the flavour of Bosman’s conversation. And it is especially this part of his work... that ranks Bosman as a humorist of the first order, on a level with those great Americans of the last century, Mark Twain, Bret Hart, Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry and the rest of that wonderful school whom Bosman considered to be the Elizabethans, the true Golden Age poets of American literature."

(From Lionel Abrahams’ biographical introduction to A Cask of Jerepigo.)