The world is growing wiser. Ancient Error is drawing off his defeated
forces, the rear guard blinking in the destructive light of reason
and science. It has now been ascertained that wrinkles are not caused
by care and grief, but by laughing. Such is the dictum of an eminent
physician, and it is becoming in us laymen to accept it with due
humility and govern ourselves accordingly, subduing the rebellious
diaphragm and mortifying the countenance. More easily said than done,
doubtless, but what that is easily done is worth doing?
It is to be feared that much of the laughing that is done has its
energizing motive in some fundamental principle of human nature not
affectable by human will; that we frequently laugh from causes beyond
our control, between which and the thing we think we laugh at there
is no other relation than coincidence in point of time. That which we
happen to have in attention at the time of the mysterious impulse is
mistaken as the cause of the impulse and thought comic, whereas it
has no such character, and under other circumstances would have been
thought a very serious matter. This view is abundantly confirmed by
observation. Men have been known to laugh even when reading the work of
the professional humorist, when listening to a story at a club, when
in the very presence of a negro minstrel. It is difficult, indeed, to
mention environing conditions so dispiriting as to assure gravity.
But there is a kind of laughter essentially different in origin. It is
not spontaneous, but induced. It has not, like death, all seasons for
its own—is not a purely subjective phenomenon, like hereditary gout,
but requires the conspiracy of occasion and stimulation by something
outside the laughter; for examples a candidate’s assurance of devotion
to the public interest, a pig standing on its head, or an editorial
article by Deacon George Harvey.
It is clear that by diligence, vigilance and determination this latter
kind of laughter can be greatly reduced in frequency, intensity and
duration, and its ravages upon the human countenance stayed to that
extent. We have only to keep ourselves out of the way of its exciting
causes. If we find ourselves within ear-shot of the candidate attesting
his love of the people we can close our ears and retire. Seeing a pig
preparing to stand on its head, we may turn away our eyes and fix the
mind upon some solemn subject—Mark Twain at the grave of Adam, or Adam
at the grave of Mark Twain. Catching the sense of a Harvey editorial we
can lay down the paper and put a stone on it. So shall our faces retain
their pristine smoothness, enabling us to falsify with impunity the
family Bible record with regard to date of birth.
It is of course impossible to enumerate here many of the things to be
sought or avoided in order not to laugh and grow wrinkled, but two
are so obviously important that they force themselves forward for
mention. Our reading should be confined as much as possible to the
comic weeklies, and we should give a wide berth to those dailies which
deem it their duty to rebuke the commercial spirit of the age. It is
believed that by taking these two precautions against the furrowing
fingernails of Mirth one can retain a fresh and youthful rotundity of
countenance to the end of one’s days and transmit it to those who come
after.