The doctor who could not laugh and make me laugh I should put
down for a half-educated man. It is one of the duties of the
profession to hunt for the material of a joke on every corner.
Most of them have so esteemed it. Garth, Rabelais, Abernethy,
and a hundred or so more too near to be named, what genial,
liver-shaking, heart-quickening, wit-waking worthies they were
and are! To the son who loves her best, nature reveals most
her tricks of workmanship. He knows there is a prize in every
package of commonplace and sadness, and he can find it--not only
the bit of fun shining to the eye of a connoisseur like an unset
jewel, but the eccentricity, the resemblance, the revelation,
countless signs and tokens of the evanescent, amusing,
pathetic creature we call the human.--A. B. WARD,
_Scribner’s_.
(1760)