The average English joke has its peculiarities. A sort of mellow
distance, a kind of chastened reluctance, a coy and timid, yet
trusting, though evanescent intangibility which softly lingers in
the troubled air, and lulls the tired senses to dreamy rest, like the
subdued murmur of a hoarse jackass about nine miles up the gulch. He
must be a hardened wretch indeed, who has not felt his bosom heave and
the scalding tears steal down his furrowed cheek after he has read
an English joke. There can be no hope for the man who has not been
touched by the gentle, pleading, yet all potent, sadness embodied in
the humorous paragraph of the true Englishman. One may fritter away
his existence in chasing follies of our day and generation, and have
naught to look back upon but a choice assortment of robust regrets,
but if he will stop in his mad career to read an English pun, his
attention will be called to the solemn thought that life is, after
all, but a tearful journey to the tomb. Death and disaster on every
hand may fail to turn the minds of a thoughtless world to serious
matters, but when the London funny man grapples with a particularly
skittish and evasive joke, with its weeping willow attachment, and
hurls it at a giddy and reckless humanity, a prolonged wail of anguish
goes up from broken hearts and a sombre pall hangs in the gladsome sky
like a pair of soldier pants with only one suspender.