Wit and humor, and the distinction between them, defy precise
definition. Luckily, they need none. To one asking what is beauty, a wit
replied: "That is the question of a blind man." Similarly, none requires
a definition of wit and humor unless he himself be lacking in all
appreciation of them, and, if he be so lacking, no amount of explanation
will avail to give him understanding. Borrow, in one of his sermons,
declared concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile,
multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously
apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard
to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of
Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting wind." Nor is it
fitting to attempt exact distinctions between wit and humor, which are
essentially two aspects of one thing. It is enough to realize that humor
is the product of nature rather than of art, while wit is the expression
of an intellectual art. Humor exerts an emotional appeal, produces
smiles or laughter; wit may be amusing, or it may not, according to the
circumstances, but it always provokes an intellectual appreciation.
Thus, Nero made a pun on the name of Seneca, when the philosopher was
brought before him for sentence. In speaking the decree that the old man
should kill himself, the emperor used merely the two Latin words: "Se
neca." We admit the ghastly cleverness of the jest, but we do not
chuckle over it.
The element of surprise is common to both wit and humor, and it is
often a sufficient cause for laughter in itself, irrespective of any
essentially amusing quality in the cause of the surprise. The
unfamiliar, for this reason, often has a ludicrous appeal to primitive
peoples. An African tribe, on being told by the missionary that the
world is round, roared with laughter for hours; it is told of a Mikado
that he burst a blood-vessel and died in a fit of merriment induced by
hearing that the American people ruled themselves. In like fashion, the
average person grins or guffaws at sight of a stranger in an outlandish
costume, although, as a matter of fact, the dress may be in every
respect superior to his own. Simply, its oddity somehow tickles the
risibilities. Such surprise is occasioned by contrasting circumstances.
When a pompous gentleman, marching magnificently, suddenly steps on a
banana peel, pirouettes, somersaults, and sits with extreme violence, we
laugh before asking if he broke a leg.
The fundamentals of wit and humor are the same throughout all the
various tribes of earth, throughout all the various ages of history. The
causes of amusement are essentially the same everywhere and always, and
only the setting changes according to time and place. But racial
characteristics establish preferences for certain aspects of fun-making,
and such preferences serve to some extent in differentiating the written
humor of the world along the lines of nationality. Nevertheless, it is a
fact that the really amusing story has an almost universal appeal. I
have seen in an American country newspaper a town correspondent's
humorous effort in which he gave Si Perkins's explanation of being in
jail. And that explanation ran on all fours with a Chinese story ages
and ages old. The local correspondent did not plagiarize from the
Chinaman: merely, the humorous bent of the two was identical. In the
ancient Oriental tale, a man who wore the thief's collar as a punishment
was questioned by an acquaintance concerning the cause of his plight.
"Why, it was just nothing at all," the convict explained easily. "I was
strolling along the edge of the canal, when I happened to catch sight of
a bit of old rope. Of course, I knew that old piece of rope was of no
use to anyone, and so I just picked it up, and took it home with me."
"But I don't understand," the acquaintance exclaimed. "Why should they
punish you so severely for a little thing like that? I don't understand
it."
"I don't understand it, either," the convict declared, "unless, maybe,
it was because there was an ox at the other end of the rope."
The universality of humor is excellently illustrated in Greek
literature, where is to be found many a joke at which we are laughing
to-day, as others have laughed through the centuries. Half a thousand
years before the Christian era, a platonic philosopher at Alexandria, by
name Hierocles, grouped twenty-one jests in a volume under the title,
"Asteia." Some of them are still current with us as typical Irish bulls.
Among these were accounts of the "Safety-first" enthusiast who
determined never to enter the water until he had learned to swim; of the
horse-owner, training his nag to live without eating, who was successful
in reducing the feed to a straw a day, and was about to cut this off
when the animal spoiled the test by dying untimely; of the fellow who
posed before a looking glass with his eyes closed, to learn how he
looked when asleep; of the inquisitive person who held a crow captive in
order to test for himself whether it would live two centuries; of the
man who demanded to know from an acquaintance met in the street whether
it was he or his twin brother who had just been buried. Another Greek
jest that has enjoyed a vogue throughout the world at large, and will
doubtless survive even prohibition, was the utterance of Diogenes, when
he was asked as to what sort of wine he preferred. His reply was: "That
of other people."
Again, we may find numerous duplicates of contemporary stories of our
own in the collection over which generations of Turks have laughed, the
tales of Nasir Eddin. In reference to these, it may be noted that
Turkish wit and humor are usually distinguished by a moralizing quality.
When a man came to Nasir Eddin for the loan of a rope, the request was
refused with the excuse that Nasir's only piece had been used to tie up
flour. "But it is impossible to tie up flour with a rope," was the
protest. Nasir Eddin answered: "I can tie up anything with a rope when I
do not wish to lend it."
When another would have borrowed his ass, Nasir replied that he had
already loaned the animal. Thereupon, the honest creature brayed from
the stable. "But the ass is there," the visitor cried indignantly. "I
hear it!" Nasir Eddin retorted indignantly: "What! Would you take the
word of an ass instead of mine?"
In considering the racial characteristics of humor, we should pay
tribute to the Spanish in the person of Cervantes, for _Don Quixote_ is
a mine of drollery. But the bulk of the humor among all the Latin races
is of a sort that our more prudish standards cannot approve. On the
other hand, German humor often displays a characteristic spirit of
investigation. Thus, the little boy watching the pupils of a girls'
school promenading two by two, graded according to age, with the
youngest first and the oldest last, inquired of his mother: "Mama, why
is it that the girls' legs grow shorter as they grow older?" In the way
of wit, an excellent illustration is afforded by Heine, who on receiving
a book from its author wrote in acknowledgment of the gift: "I shall
lose no time in reading it."
The French are admirable in both wit and humor, and the humor is usually
kindly, though the shafts of wit are often barbed. I remember a humorous
picture of a big man shaking a huge trombone in the face of a tiny
canary in its cage, while he roars in anger: "That's it! Just as I was
about, with the velvety tones of my instrument, to imitate the
twittering of little birds in the forest, you have to interrupt with
your infernal din!" The caustic quality of French wit is illustrated
plenteously by Voltaire. There is food for meditation in his utterance:
"Nothing is so disagreeable as to be obscurely hanged." He it was, too,
who sneered at England for having sixty religions and only one gravy. To
an adversary in argument who quoted the minor prophet Habakkuk, he
retorted contemptuously: "A person with a name like that is capable of
saying anything."
But French wit is by no means always of the cutting sort. Its more
amiable aspect is shown by the declaration of Brillat Savarin to the
effect that a dinner without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only
one eye. Often the wit is merely the measure of absurdity, as when a
courtier in speaking of a fat friend said: "I found him sitting all
around the table by himself." And there is a ridiculous story of the
impecunious and notorious Marquis de Favières who visited a Parisian
named Barnard, and announced himself as follows:
"Monsieur, I am about to astonish you greatly. I am the Marquis de
Favières. I do not know you, but I come to you to borrow five-hundred
luis."
Barnard answered with equal explicitness:
"Monsieur, I am going to astonish you much more. I know you, and I am
going to lend them to you."
The amiable malice, to use a paradoxical phrase, which is often
characteristic of French tales, is capitally displayed in the following:
The wife of a villager in Poitou became ill, and presently fell into a
trance, which deceived even the physician, so that she was pronounced
dead, and duly prepared for burial. Following the local usage, the body
was wrapped in a sheet, to be borne to the burial place on the shoulders
of four men chosen from the neighborhood. The procession followed a
narrow path leading across the fields to the cemetery. At a turning, a
thorn tree stood so close that one of the thorns tore through the sheet
and lacerated the woman's flesh. The blood flowed from the wound, and
she suddenly aroused to consciousness. Fourteen years elapsed before the
good wife actually came to her deathbed. On this occasion, the
ceremonial was repeated. And now, as the bearers of the body approached
the turn of the path, the husband called to them:
"Look out for the thorn tree, friends!"
The written humor of the Dutch does not usually make a very strong
appeal to us. They are inclined to be ponderous even in their play, and
lack in great measure the sarcasm and satire and the lighter subtlety in
fun-making. History records a controversy between Holland and Zealand,
which was argued pro and con during a period of years with great
earnestness. The subject for debate that so fascinated the Dutchmen was:
"Does the cod take the hook, or does the hook take the cod?"
Because British wit and humor often present themselves under aspects
somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts
unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction
are the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British
colonies is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly parallels our own
in many distinctive features. Thus, there is a Canadian story that might
just as well have originated below the line, of an Irish girl, recently
imported, who visited her clergyman and inquired his fee for marrying.
He informed her that his charge was two dollars. A month later, the girl
visited the clergyman for the second time, and at once handed him two
dollars, with the crisp direction, "Go ahead and marry me."
"Where is the bridegroom?" the clergyman asked.
"What!" exclaimed the girl, dismayed. "Don't you furnish him for the two
dollars?"
It would seem that humor is rather more enjoyable to the British taste
than wit, though there is, indeed, no lack of the latter. But the people
delight most in absurd situations that appeal to the risibilities
without any injury to the feelings of others. For example, Dickens
relates an anecdote concerning two men, who were about to be hanged at a
public execution. When they were already on the scaffold in preparation
for the supreme moment, a bull being led to market broke loose and ran
amuck through the great crowd assembled to witness the hanging. One of
the condemned men on the scaffold turned to his fellow, and remarked:
"I say, mate, it's a good thing we're not in that crowd."
In spite of the gruesome setting and the gory antics of the bull, the
story is amusing in a way quite harmless. Similarly, too, there is only
wholesome amusement in the woman's response to a vegetarian, who made
her a proposal of marriage. She did, not mince her words:
"Go along with you! What? Be flesh of your flesh, and you a-living on
cabbage? Go marry a grass widow!"
The kindly spirit of British humor is revealed even in sarcastic jesting
on the domestic relation, which, on the contrary, provokes the bitterest
jibes of the Latins. The shortest of jokes, and perhaps the most famous,
was in the single word of _Punch's_ advice to those about to get
married:
"Don't!"
The like good nature is in the words of a woman who was taken to a
hospital in the East End of London. She had been shockingly beaten, and
the attending surgeon was moved to pity for her and indignation against
her assailant.
"Who did this?" he demanded. "Was it your husband?"
"Lor' bless yer, no!" she declared huffily. "W'y, my 'usband 'e 's more
like a friend nor a 'usband!"
Likewise, of the two men who had drunk not wisely but too well, with
the result that in the small hours they retired to rest in the gutter.
Presently, one of the pair lifted his voice in protest:
"I shay, le's go to nuzzer hotel--this leaksh!"
Or the incident of the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a
suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The woman
stared at it with an accusing eye, and questioned bluntly:
"What makes your nose so red?"
The tramp answered with heavy sarcasm:
"That 'ere nose o' mine, mum, is a-blushin' with pride, 'cause it ain't
stuck into other folks's business."
But British wit, while often amiable enough, may on occasion be as
trenchant as any French sally. For example, we have the definition of
gratitude as given by Sir Robert Walpole--"A lively sense of future
favors." The Marquis of Salisbury once scored a clumsy partner at whist
by his answer to someone who asked how the game progressed: "I'm doing
as well as could be expected, considering that I have three
adversaries." So the retort of Lamb, when Coleridge said to him:
"Charles, did you ever hear me lecture?". * * * "I never heard you do
anything else." And again, Lamb mentioned in a letter how Wordsworth had
said that he did not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if
he had a mind to try it. "Clearly," Lamb continued, "nothing is wanted
but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that runs back to Tudor
times, although it has been attributed to various later celebrities,
including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was executing a number lurid
with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer remarked that the piece was
tremendously difficult. This drew the retort from another auditor:
"Difficult! I wish to heaven it were impossible!"
Americans are famous, and sometimes infamous, for their devotion to the
grotesque in humor. Yet, a conspicuous example of such amusing absurdity
was given by Thackeray, who made reference to an oyster so large that it
took two men to swallow it whole.
It is undeniable that the British are fond of puns. It is usual to sneer
at the pun as the lowest form of wit. Such, alas! it too often is, and
frequently, as well, it is a form of no wit at all. But the pun may
contain a very high form of wit, and may please either for its
cleverness, or for its amusing quality, or for the combination of the
two. Naturally, the really excellent pun has always been in favor with
the wits of all countries. Johnson's saying, that a man who would make a
pun would pick a pocket, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not
recorded that Napier ever "pinched a leather," but he captured Scinde,
and in notifying the government at home of this victory he sent a
dispatch of one word, "_Peccavi_" ("I have sinned"). The pun is of the
sort that may be appreciated intellectually for its cleverness, while
not calculated to cause laughter. Of the really amusing kind are the
innumerable puns of Hood. He professed himself a man of many sorrows,
who had to be a lively Hood for a livelihood. His work abounds in an
ingenious and admirable mingling of wit and humor. For example:
"Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms,
But a cannon ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
"And as they took him off the field,
Cried he, 'Let others shoot,
'For here I leave my second leg,
'And the Forty-Second Foot.'"
It is doubtless true that it would require a surgical operation to get a
joke into some particular Scotchman's head. But we have some persons of
the sort even in our own country. Many of the British humorists have
been either Scotch or Irish, and it is rather profitless to attempt
distinctions as to the humorous sense of these as contrasted with the
English. Usually, stories of thrift and penuriousness are told of the
Scotch without doing them much injustice, while bulls are designated
Irish with sufficient reasonableness. In illustration of the Scotch
character, we may cite the story of the visitor to Aberdeen, who was
attacked by three footpads. He fought them desperately, and inflicted
severe injuries. When at last he had been subdued and searched the only
money found on him was a crooked sixpence. One of the thieves remarked
glumly:
"If he'd had a good shilling, he'd have killed the three of us."
And there is the classic from _Punch_ of the Scotchman, who, on his
return home from a visit to London, in describing his experiences,
declared:
"I had na been there an hour when bang! went saxpence!"
Anent the Irish bull, we may quote an Irishman's answer when asked to
define a bull. He said:
"If you see thirteen cows lying down in a field, and one of them is
standing up, that's a bull."
A celebrity to whom many Irish bulls have been accredited was Sir Boyle
Roche. He wrote in a letter:
"At this very moment, my dear----, I am writing this with a sword in one
hand and a pistol in the other."
He it was who in addressing the Irish House of Commons asserted stoutly:
"Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all possible
misfortune is usually followed by a greater."
And there is the hospitable invitation of the Irishman:
"Sir, if you ever come within a mile of my house, I hope you will stop
there." And it was an Irishman who remarked to another concerning a
third: "You are thin, and I am thin, but he's as thin as the two of us
put together." Also, it was an Irishman who, on being overtaken by a
storm, remarked to his friend: "Sure, we'll get under a tree, and whin
it's wet through, faith, we'll get under another."
Naturally, we Americans have our own bulls a plenty, and they are by no
means all derived from our Irish stock. Yet, that same Irish stock
contributes largely and very snappily to our fund of humor. For the
matter of that, the composite character of our population multiplies the
varying phases of our fun. We draw for laughter on all the almost
countless racial elements that form our citizenry. And the whole content
of our wit and humor is made vital by the spirit of youth. The newness
of our land and nation gives zest to the pursuit of mirth. We ape the
old, but fashion its semblance to suit our livelier fancy. We moralize
in our jesting like the Turk, but are likely to veil the maxim under
the motley of a Yiddish dialect. Our humor may be as meditative as the
German at its best, but with a grotesque flavoring all our own. Thus,
the widow, in plaintive reminiscence concerning the dear departed, said
musingly:
"If John hadn't blowed into the muzzle of his gun, I guess he'd 'a' got
plenty of squirrels. It was such a good day for them!"
And in the moralizing vein, this:
The little girl had been very naughty. She was bidden by her mother to
make an addition to the accustomed bedtime prayer--a request that God
would make her a better girl. So, the dear child prayed: "And, O God,
please make Nellie a good little girl." And then, with pious
resignation, she added:
"Nevertheless, O God, Thy will, not mine, be done."
At times, we are as cynical as the French. So of the husband, who
confessed that at first after his marriage he doted on his bride to such
an extent that he wanted to eat her--later, he was sorry that he hadn't.
Our sophistication is such that this sort of thing amuses us, and, it is
produced only too abundantly. Luckily, in contrast to it, we have no
lack of that harmless jesting which is more typically English. For
example, the kindly old lady in the elevator questioned the attendant
brightly:
"Don't you get awful tired, sonny?"
"Yes, mum," the boy in uniform admitted.
"What makes you so tired, sonny? Is it the going up?'
"No, mum."
"Is it the going down?"
"No, mum."
"Then what is it makes you so tired, sonny?"
"It's the questions, mum."
And this of the little boy, who was asked by his mother as to what he
would like to give his cousin for a birthday present.
"I know," was the reply, "but I ain't big enough."
Many of our humorists have maintained a constant geniality in their
humor, even in the treatment of distressing themes. For example, Josh
Billings made the announcement that one hornet, if it was feeling well,
could break up a whole camp meeting. Bill Nye, Artemas Ward and many
another American writer have given in profusion of amiable sillinesses
to make the nation laugh. It was one of these that told how a drafted
man sought exemption because he was a negro, a minister, over age, a
British subject, and an habitual drunkard.
The most distinctive flavor in American humor is that of the grotesque.
It is characteristic in Mark Twain's best work, and it is characteristic
of most of those others who have won fame as purveyors of laughter. The
American tourist brags of his own:
"Talk of Vesuve--huh! Niag'll put her out in three minutes." That
polished writer, Irving, did not hesitate to declare that Uncle Sam
believed the earth tipped when he went West. In the archives of our
government is a state paper wherein President Lincoln referred to
Mississippi gunboats with draught so light that they would float
wherever the ground was a little damp. Typically American in its
grotesquerie was the assertion of a rural humorist who asserted that the
hogs thereabout were so thin they had to have a knot tied in their
tails to prevent them from crawling through the chinks in the fence.
Ward displayed the like quality amusingly in his remark to the conductor
of a tediously slow-moving accommodation train in the South. From his
seat in the solitary passenger coach behind the long line of freight
cars, he addressed the official with great seriousness:
"I ask you, conductor, why don't you take the cow-catcher off the engine
and put it behind the car here? As it is now, there ain't a thing to
hinder a cow from strolling into a car and biting a passenger."
Similar extravagance appears in another story of a crawling train. The
conductor demanded a ticket from a baldheaded old man whose face was
mostly hidden in a great mass of white whiskers.
"I give it to ye," declared the ancient.
"I don't reckon so," the conductor answered. "Where did you get on?"
"At Perkins' Crossin'," he of the hoary beard replied.
The conductor shook his head emphatically.
"Wasn't anybody got aboard at Perkins' Crossin' 'cept one little boy."
"I," wheezed the aged man, "was that little boy."
In like fashion, we tell of a man so tall that he had to go up on a
ladder to shave himself--and down cellar to put his boots on.
We Americans are good-natured, as is necessary for humor, and we have
brains, as is necessary for wit, and we have the vitality that makes
creation easy, even inevitable. So there is never any dearth among us of
the spirit of laughter, of its multiform products that by their power
to amuse make life vastly more agreeable. Every newspaper, and most
magazines carry their quota of jests. Never, anywhere, was the good
story so universally popular as in America today. It is received with
gusto in the councils of government, in church, in club, in cross-roads
store. The teller of good stories is esteemed by all, a blessing
undisguised. The collection that follows in this volume is, it is
believed, of a sort that will help mightily to build an honorable fame
for the narrator.
For greater convenience in references to the volume, the various stories
and anecdotes are placed under headings arranged in alphabetical order.
The heading in every case indicates the subject to which the narration
may be directly applied. This will be found most useful in selecting
illustrations for addresses of any sort, or for use in arguments.
History tells us how Lincoln repeatedly carried conviction by expressing
his ideas through the medium of a story. His method is rendered
available for any one by this book.