“ Your hair has the Quakerish cut of a Philadelphia barber, and your hat, battered at the brim in front, shows where you have tightly grasped it in the struggle to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right overshoe has a large block of Buffalo mud just under the instep, the odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from Albany, and stenciled upon the very end of the 'Wellington' in fairly plain lettering is your name, 'Conan Doyle.' ”

“ But did any one ever openly make the confession, "I know I am lacking in a sense of humor!" However, to recognize the lack one would first have to possess the sense—which is manifestly impossible.
"To explain the nature of laughter and tears is to account for the condition of human life," says Hazlitt, and no philosophy has as yet succeeded in accounting for the condition of human life. "Man is a laughing animal," wrote Meredith, "and at the end of infinite search the philosopher finds himself clinging to laughter as the best of human fruit, purely human, and sane, and comforting." ”

“ By laughter society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness." If this be laughter, grant us occasionally the saving grace of tears, which may be tears of sympathy, and, therefore, kind!
But, after all, since it is true that "one touch of humor makes the whole world grin," what difference does it make what that humor is; what difference why or wherefore we laugh, since somehow or other, in a sorry world, we do laugh? ”

“ And many have been the attempts to define humor, to define wit, to describe and differentiate them, to build high fences to keep them apart.
"Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful; it tosses its analogies in your face; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart," says E. P. Whipple. "Wit is intellectual, humor is emotional; wit is perception of resemblance, humor of contrast—of contrast between ideal and fact, theory and practice, promise and performance," writes another authority. ”

“ George Ade had finished his speech at a recent dinner-party, and on seating himself a well-known lawyer rose, shoved his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, as was his habit and laughingly inquired of those present:
"Doesn't it strike the company as a little unusual that a professional humorist should be funny?" ”

“ Of the test for a sense of humor, it has already been said that it is the ability to see a joke. And, as for a joke, the dictionary, again a present help in time of trouble, tells us at once that it is, "something said or done for the purpose of exciting a laugh." But stay! Suppose it does not excite the laugh expected? What of the joke that misses fire? Shall a joke be judged by its intent or by its consequences? Is a joke that does not produce a laugh a joke at all? ”

“ Boston will always be a joke to Chicago, the east to the west. The city girl in the country offers a perennial source of amusement, as does the country man in the city. And the foreigner we have always with us, to mix his Y's and J's, distort his H's, and play havoc with the Anglo-Saxon Th. Indeed our great American sense of humor has been explained as an outgrowth from the vast field of incongruities offered by a developing civilization. ”

“ Frequently in one week a joke will travel from New York to San Francisco.
The joke is no respecter of persons. Shameless and unconcerned, he tells the story of his life over and over again. Outside of the ballot-box he is the greatest repeater that we have.
Jokes are of three kinds—plain, illustrated and pointless. Frequently they are all three.
No joke is without honor, except in its own country. Jokes form one of our staples and employ an army of workers who toil night and day to turn out the often neatly finished product. ”

“ Humor may be the greatest of the virtues, yet it is the one of whose possession we may boast with impunity. "Well, that was too much for my sense of humor," we say. Or, "You know my sense of humor was always my strong point." Imagine thus boasting of one's integrity, or sense of honor! And so is its lack the one vice of which one may not permit himself to be a trifle proud. ”

“ The curate of a large and fashionable church was endeavoring to teach the significance of white to a Sunday-school class.
"Why," said he, "does a bride invariably desire to be clothed in white at her marriage?"
As no one answered, he explained. "White," said he, "stands for joy, and the wedding-day is the most joyous occasion of a woman's life."
A small boy queried, "Why do the men all wear black?"—M.J. Moor.
Lilly May came to her mistress. "Ah would like a week's vacation, Miss Annie," she said, in her soft negro accent; "Ah wants to be married." ”

“ The American is not only a humorous person, he is a practical person. So it is only natural that the American humor should be put to practical uses. It was once said that the difference between a man with tact and a man without was that the man with tact, in trying to put a bit in a horse's mouth, would first tell him a funny story, while the man without tact would get an axe. ”

“ Englishmen may continue, as in the past to produce the most exquisite of the world's humorous literature—think of Charles Lamb—yet the fundamental faith of mankind will remain unshaken: women have no sense of humor, and an Englishman cannot see a joke! And the ability to "see a joke" is the infallible American test of the sense of humor. ”

“ Consider Hobbes: "The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from the sudden conception of eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly." According to Professor Bain, "Laughter results from the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion." Even Kant, desisting for a time from his contemplation of Pure Reason, gave his attention to the human phenomenon of laughter and explained it away as "the result of an expectation which of a sudden ends in nothing." ”

“ It would seem hardly possible in this day of banquets to find an individual who has missed these occasions entirely—but he is to be found. Especially is this true in a world where toasting and after-dinner speaking are coming to be more and more in demand at social functions—the college world. Here the young man or woman, coming from a country town where the formal banquet is unknown, who has never heard an after-dinner speech, may be confronted with the necessity of responding to a toast on, say "Needles and Pins." ”

“ It is quite probable that humor should not be explained. It would be distressing, as some one pointed out, to discover that American humor is based on American dyspepsia. Yet the philosophers themselves have endeavored to explain it. Hazlitt held that to understand the ludicrous, we must first know what the serious is. And to apprehend the serious, what better course could be followed than to contemplate the serious—yes and ludicrous—findings of the philosophers in their attempts to define humor and to explain laughter. ”

“ This use of the funny story is the American way of adapting it to practical ends. A collection of funny stories used to be an important part of a drummer's stock in trade. It is by means of the "good story" that the politician makes his way into office; the business man paves the way for a big deal; the after-dinner speaker gets a hearing; the hostess saves her guests from boredom. Such a large place does the "story" hold in our national life that we have invented a social pastime that might be termed a "joke match." ”

“ For, before all else, a teacher must possess a sense of humor! If it be true, then, that the sense of humor is so important in determining the choice of a profession, how wise are those writers who hold it an essential for entrance into that most exacting of professions—matrimony! "Incompatibility in humor," George Eliot held to be the "most serious cause of diversion." ”

“ A sense of humor, as was intimated before, is the chiefest of the virtues. It is more than this—it is one of the essentials to success. For, as has also been pointed out, we, being a practical people, put our humor to practical uses. It is held up as one of the prerequisites for entrance to any profession. "A lawyer," says a member of that order, must have such and such mental and moral qualities; "but before all else"—and this impressively—"he must possess a sense of humor." ”

“ Smith replied.
"And how would you do it?" said the preacher.
"With what was left over from last Sunday," said Mr. Smith.
The late Bishop Foss once visited a Philadelphia physician for some trifling ailment. "Do you, sir," the doctor asked, in the course of his examination, "talk in your sleep?"
"No sir," answered the bishop. "I talk in other people's. Aren't you aware that I am a divine?"
"Yes, sir," said the irate man, "I got even with that clergyman. I slurred him. Why, I hired one hundred people to attend his church and go to sleep before he had preached five minutes." ”

“ It was the general opinion that a large percentage of Americans met death at the end of a rope. Finally the hostess turned to Field and asked:
"You, sir, must have often seen these affairs?"
"Yes," replied Field, "hundreds of them."
"Oh, do tell us about a lynching you have seen yourself," broke in half a dozen voices at once.
"Well, the night before I sailed for England," said Field, "I was giving a dinner at a hotel to a party of intimate friends when a colored waiter spilled a plate of soup over the gown of a lady at an adjoining table. ”

“ Dinner was a little late. A guest asked the hostess to play something. Seating herself at the piano, the good woman executed a Chopin nocturne with precision. She finished, and there was still an interval of waiting to be bridged. In the grim silence she turned to an old gentleman on her right and said:
"Would you like a sonata before going in to dinner?"
He gave a start of surprise and pleasure as he responded briskly:
"Why, yes, thanks! I had a couple on my way here, but I could stand another."
Music is the universal language of mankind.—Longfellow. ”

“ A certain amount of good-natured chaffing may be indulged in. Yet there may be danger in even the most kindly of fun. One never knows how a jest will be taken. Once in the early part of his career, Mark Twain, at a New England banquet, grew funny at the expense of Longfellow and Emerson, then in their old age and looked upon almost as divinities. His joke fell dead, and to the end of his life he suffered humiliation at the recollection. ”

“ Agnes Repplier, writing on Humor, speaks of "those beloved writers whom we hold to be humorists because they have made us laugh." We hold them to be so—but there seems to be a suggestion that we may be wrong. Is it possible that the laugh is not the test of the joke? Here is a question over which the philosophers may wrangle. Is there an Absolute in the realm of humor, or must our jokes be judged solely by the pragmatic test? ”

“ Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.—Sir Thomas Browne. ”

“ While coming to Congress, several sessions ago, he was approached in the Pullman coach by a New Yorker, who, after bowing politely to him, said:
"Is not this Senator Blackburn of Indiana?"
The Kentuckian sprang from his seat, and glaring at his interlocutor exclaimed angrily:
"No, sir, by ——. The reason I look so bad is I have been sick!"
"Every time the baby looks into my face he smiles," said Mr. Meekins.
"Well," answered his wife, "it may not be exactly polite, but it shows he has a sense of humor." ”

“ A friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute more lightly as "a facetious turn of thought," or more specifically in literature, as "a sportive exercise of the imagination that is apparent in the choice and treatment of an idea or theme." Isn't there something about that word "sportive," on the lips of so learned an authority, that tickles the fancy—appeals to the sense of humor? ”

“ A street-car was getting under way when two women, rushing from opposite sides of the street to greet each other, met right in the middle of the car-track and in front of the car. There the two stopped and began to talk. The car stopped, too, but the women did not appear to realize that it was there. Certain of the passengers, whose heads were immediately thrust out of the windows to ascertain what the trouble was, began to make sarcastic remarks, but the two women heeded them not.
Finally the motorman showed that he had a saving sense of humor. ”

“ United States Senator Ollie James, of Kentucky, is bald.
"Does being bald bother you much?" a candid friend asked him once.
"Yes, a little," answered the truthful James.
"I suppose you feel the cold severely in winter," went on the friend.
"No; it's not that so much," said the Senator. "The main bother is when I'm washing myself—unless I keep my hat on I don't know where my face stops."
A near-sighted old lady at a dinner-party, one evening, had for her companion on the left a very bald-headed old gentleman. While talking to the gentleman at her right she dropped her napkin unconsciously. ”

“ I happen to know the greatest talker in the world, and you haven't her in the index."
A guest was expected for dinner and Bobby had received five cents as the price of his silence during the meal. He was as quiet as a mouse until, discovering that his favorite dessert was being served, he could no longer curb his enthusiasm. He drew the coin from his pocket, and rolling it across the table, exclaimed: "Here's your nickel, Mamma. I'd rather talk."
A belated voyager in search of hilarity stumbled home after one o'clock and found his wife waiting for him. ”

“ When in doubt, consult the dictionary, is, as always, an excellent motto, and, following it, we find that our trustworthy friend, Noah Webster, does not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is "the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations, happenings, or acts," with the added information that it is distinguished from wit as "less purely intellectual and having more kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos." ”