RADIANCIES OF HUMOR
I want to radiate humor and my appreciation of it. But it must be
natural, genuine, kind-hearted, sweet, and pure. The humor that has a
sting for some one else, that is unkind, unjust, malicious, cruel, or
unclean is not for me. And, furthermore, I do not want that any one
should ever feel that I can or would enjoy such humor. I want to radiate
such a spirit, give forth such an "aura" that no one will ever come to
me with unkind or unclean humor, or expect me to want to hear it.
No, true humor is gentle, kind, humane, and human. I think little of any
man or woman who cannot enjoy a good hearty laugh. I believe in
laughter; in joking, in fun, in wit, in humor--in the things that
provoke laughter. Laugh heartily, laugh loud, laugh long, and you will
oftentimes laugh away dyspepsia, the blues, and worries. Laugh at your
own misfortunes, your own mishaps. My dear friend, Burdette, used to
clap me on the back and exclaim in his bright, cheery voice: "Be your
own funny man." He once illustrated it by saying, in effect: "You've
laughed many a time watching a man chase his hat when a windstorm ran
away with it, but how do you feel when it's your own hat? Take a look at
yourself. See the spectacle you make--the bewhiskered, the dignified,
the long-legged--as you rush frantically after the fleeing tile. Can't
you see the fun in bending down, making a dive for the hat, just at the
moment an extra gust comes and--flip, flop--the hat scoots on and you
grasp the empty space. Laugh at yourself, my boy, and you'll get hold of
the world by the tail and conquer it!"
How true it is!
The greatest humoristic after-dinner speaker in America to-day is Simeon
Ford. How often have I laughed at and with him. Study his humor. Half of
it is making fun at himself, his "bizarre, gothic style of
architecture," and that kind of thing. He pokes fun, slyly, at himself,
and watches the effect on other people. Instead of "guying" other, and
sensitive, people--(notice, I say sensitive, _not_ sensible),--he guys
himself, and the more absurd the picture he can draw of himself the more
he seems to enjoy it. He is original, quaint, individualistic, truly
funny, not a mere retailer of old chestnuts, warmed over at the brazier
of his wit, but a creator, a real _maker_ of humor, and the result is
people sit and laugh and laugh, and then laugh some more, and when it
is all over go away wondering what it was all about. But there is no
sarcasm, no sting, no malice in the fun, no one is hurt, everything is
as harmless as the frolics of a young lamb.
So it was with dear little Marshall Wilder. Dear Marsh! how I loved him!
Handicapped with a distorted body, his mind was as quick as lightning.
How well I remember running in upon him in his bedroom in a hotel in
Buffalo one morning and asking him to come down to a breakfast table of
friends who had assembled to give me a "Good-by." Though he was not
well, he hastily threw on his clothes, came down, and for an hour
brightened our circle, with some of the most flashing, bright, and
spontaneous wit I ever heard. Everybody was charmed, delighted,
thrilled, for he sprang from gay to grave, laughter to tears, jollity to
pathos so startlingly quick as to keep us with one hand to our eyes,
wiping away the tears, when we had originally raised them to hide our
wide-open, laughing mouths. He loved to make others happy; he was ever
ready to plunge deep into the pool of simple-hearted pure fun. Who will
ever forget that day when he, Elbert Hubbard, Von Liebich, with half a
dozen or more of the brightest minds of the Continent, who were visiting
at Roycroft together, planned to go to the Pan-American Exposition at
Buffalo. I was privileged to be of the number. We planned to go as a
lot of country joskins, real "Hicks," with hayseed in our hair, and
carrying our carpet-bags with us. As I was the only bewhiskered man of
the "bunch," I was made the victim. I was to dress in country style, go
down the "Midway"--or whatever the street of shows was called--and
attract the attention of the "barkers" and draw their fire. Then the
others were to saunter up and we, in turn, would open up our fire upon
the barker. Can you imagine the results? We carried out the plan exactly
as contemplated. I ate liquorice and let the juice flow down from the
corners of my mouth, so that it looked like tobacco juice, I gaped at
everything, and listened with wide-eyed wonder, I felt like a
countryman, so now I looked like one, and I became, immediately, the
butt of the jokes and jests of the "spieler" of the show before which I
stood. I think I can fairly hold my own in such a combat, and the
audience that was assembled, generally seemed to think so, but imagine
the way the fur began to fly when Hubbard arrived and chipped in, and
Marshall and Von, and Bert II, and each of the others. Talk about a
stranger dog set on by a dozen home dogs--it was nothing, compared with
the fun we had badgering and baiting that over-confident spieler. Then I
moved on to the next stand, far enough away, however, so that no one
was aware of our plot. The crowd soon "tumbled" and followed, and we
repeated the game to the infinite amazement of the discomfited
"barkers." It was the wildest revelry of good-natured, good-humored,
spontaneous fun I have ever engaged in, and a thousand years can never
efface its memory.
Dignity! What had we to do with dignity? We were fun-makers,
delight-makers, like the old-time Indians of the cliff-dwelling days,
and we went into the game with vim, energy, earnestness, abandon, and
enthusiasm.
And I learned a wonderful lesson, once, from Marshall Wilder, that was
worth many a long-winded sermon for practical usefulness in meeting the
hardships, the woes, the pains of life. I was on the stage of a theater
with him, just preparatory to his "act." He was suffering excruciating
agony--as he often did, from his frail and deformed body--and sweat was
pouring down his brow and cheeks. "Put your arms around me, and love me
tight, George!" he gasped, "hold me tight," and I held him, clasping his
hands also in mine. He gripped me with fierce intensity, clearly
indicating the pain he was in, and thus we stood, until the call came
for him. Then, wiping his brow and face, with a smile that was at once
ghastly and sweet in its pathos, he rushed before his audience, and had
them laughing at his merry quips and quirks, his jests and jokes,
before I could recover from the sympathy I felt for his deep suffering.
Brave, courageous, plucky Marsh. Ready to make fun for others in spite
of his own pain. How often when men come to me with long drawn-out tales
of their woes, _their_ pains, _their_ sufferings, _their_ trials,
_their_ hardships, do I feel like saying to them: "Cut it out! Go and do
as did Marsh Wilder. Make some one else laugh. Make some one else happy,
and you'll forget your own troubles!" For it is true. The very effort of
concentration upon making others laugh, or add to their happiness,
largely, if not completely, leads to a forgetfulness of one's own woes.
Then, too, the man who can laugh at himself wins a hearing from the
world that nothing else can gain for him. There is an appeal, somehow,
in this fact, that is irresistible. Bishop Peck, of the M. E. Church,
was a Falstaffian build of man. Indeed, it is said that he weighed a
full pound for every day in the year. A man with three hundred and
sixty-five pounds of corporeal presence naturally possessed an
aldermanic "front" of compelling proportions. On one occasion the Bishop
was called upon at the General Conference (which, I believe, that year
met in Baltimore), to represent the church upon the Pacific Coast. The
good bishop had a habit of always stroking, or smoothing down his vest,
when beginning his address, and at this time, as he arose, and began his
deliberate strokings of his vast and protuberant rotundity, he
accompanied it with the words: "Brethren, the Pacific Slope greets you!"
His amazement, as a perfect roar of laughter greeted him and shook the
building, can well be imagined, yet he did not lose his _sang-froid_. In
another moment he had grasped the fun of the situation, and laughing
with the vast audience, seized upon that as a theme upon which he played
with eloquence, fervor, and power in an extemporized speech which, as
many who heard it say, he never surpassed in his life.
Suppose his "dignity" had prevented his joining in the laugh at himself!
What an opportunity he would have lost.
I saw a similar event once in the Free Trade Hall, in Manchester,
England. That great assembly hall was crowded, awaiting the coming upon
the platform of the Conference of all the Baptist Ministers of Great
Britain. We had been waiting some time and I, for one, was young enough
to be impatient as the time announced drew near. It was in the days of
Moody and Sankey's great revivals in England, and Sankey's hymn, "Hold
the Fort!" had captured the church-going ear. To pass away the time I
started the song. The audience caught on. We sang the first verse and
the chorus with vim and fervor. Then, just as we began the second verse,
the body of ministers began to march on to the platform, led by their
gray-haired president. Recall the lines and imagine the result as the
words of the marching ministers were united in our thoughts!
See the mighty host advancing
Satan leading on!
Some of us shrieked with laughter. One man near me nearly had a fit of
hysterics. They say Englishmen can't see a joke. I never saw an American
audience "catch on" any quicker than did that Manchester one. In a
moment the singing stopped and the place was in an uproar of wildest
laughter. The good president at first seemed nonplused and confused, but
some one must have explained it to him, for before the ministers had
scarce taken their seats, he advanced to the edge of the platform,
secured silence, and began to the effect: "Beloved friends! If we seem
like the hosts of evil, marching with Satan at their head, we belie our
looks. The Evil One has blinded your eyes. We are the army of the other
side. We are Christian soldiers, engaged in a never-to-cease conflict
with that army of evil that we shall assuredly conquer," and so on,
giving one of the most pertinent, direct, spontaneous, and truly
eloquent of addresses.
He rose to the occasion--joined in the laugh upon himself, won his
audience, and then used the sympathy he had gained, to strike home some
deep and important truths.
This is what I want to live, to radiate: love of humor, readiness to
laugh at it even though it be laughing at myself, ready to make it when
I can for others, ready to join in other people's appreciation of it.