' The spelling is now a little altered but
the sound is the same.
"When the French first settled on the banks of the river St.
Lawrence, they were stinted by the intendant, Monsieur Picard, to a
can of spruce beer a day. The people thought this measure very
scant, and were constantly exclaiming, 'Can-a-day!' It would be
ungenerous of any reader to require a more rational derivation of
the word Canada."
No name is more familiar to us in connection with humour than that of
"Joe" (Josias) Miller. He was well known as a comedian, between 1710 and
1738, and had considerable natural talent, but was unable to read. He
owes his celebrity to popular jest books having been put forward in his
name soon after his death.[9] It was common at that time, as we have
seen in the case of Scogan, for compilers to seek to give currency to
their humorous collections by attributing them to some celebrated wit of
the day. To Jo Miller was attributed the humour most effective at the
period in which he lived, and it has since passed as a byword for that
which is broad and pointless. Sometimes it merely suggests staleness,
and I have heard it said that he must have been the cleverest man in the
world, for nobody ever heard a good story related that someone did not
afterwards say that it was "a Jo Miller.
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