Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1871-05-25
ssrss., EsS Vol. |, No. 40.
Good Laughers.

laugher. rare gift, and therefore
the more to be priced and cherished.
A good laugher must be a good man
and a wise man; for to laugh well,
he must appreciate, he must have
quick and responsive faculties, with
various and sound knowledge. do
not imply that all good men are
good laughers any more than that
all fools are knaves, because all
knaves are overcunning fools. Some
good and estimable men were born
under weeping planet-their mel
ancholy may frequently be traced to
physical causes before they saw the
light; but the man who knew most
of this matter about laughter, good
Master William Shakespeare, always
makes his best laughers to be good
characters. 'Laugh if you are wise,"
is his motto. There is no emotion,
however, that is perhaps more var
ious, and at the same time indica-
tive of the real character, than
laughter Speech" said Gold
smith, Twas given to man to conceal
his thoughts If laughter does
not reveal them, it will constantly
indicate his sincerity or insincerity
of the moment. Some men laugh
periodically, as the tide GIBBS and
flows; some eynically, like swapping
of stick. Some laugh as Cassius
smiled, as though they scorned
themselves that can be brought to
laugh at any thing. Those are gen
orally pragmatists. One laugh /
knew was said to be like vinegar on
a deaths head. Itwas like Quilp's
malicious; and its owner con-
trived to swindle every one with
whom he became acquainted. One
man (your pompous one will laugh
like an old ram-solemn, cultural,
and profound. Another will laugh
like a parrot; there is the outward
and audible sign," but look in his
face, and all the while it is like the
head of a ship. Some men laugh
as though they were being unbear-
ably tickled, and others scream like
macaws. These are not the worst
specimens of Democritists, for at all
events they are no hypocrites. But
the most intolerable fellows (after
your pompous cynic) are they who
laugh without as well as with cause.
"As the cracking of thorns under a
pot, so is the laughter of a fool"
says the wisest of kings. To one
of these, who had been going on for
a whole evening, DR.. johnson turned
round like a stung bear: Il hope,
sir, 1 have said nothing tonight
that you comprehend''-savage, but
venial. 1t is said of Dean Swift
that no one ever saw him laugh. It
is difficult to believe that; for
though his own wit and humor were
both splenetic, there are ciroum-
stances and combinations in his own
writings the ludicrous force of which
he must have felt to have originated.
Can he have been the only man I'M
moved upon reading the vagaries of
Brother Peter in the open street,
when his head begins to turn with
vanity and conceit? One can fancy
his laugh to have been short, abrupt,
and austere; but possessing, as he
did, so vivid an appreciation of the |
ludicrous, his innermost recesses
must at times have been convulsed.
On the other hand, Burton, the Gel
ebrated author of the '.Anatomy of
and who himself fell a
martyr to hypochondria, would sit
on the wharf at Cambridge, for the
purpose of hearing the bargeman's
abuse and coarse language to each
other till he nearly laughed himself
into fits. Thomas Carlyle says,
''No man who has once heartily and
wholly laughed can be altogether ir-
reclaimably bad. How much lies in
the cipher-key wherewith
we decipher the whole man! Some
men wear an everlasting barren
simper; in the smile of others lies
a cold glitter, as of ice. The fewest
are able to laugh, what can be called
but only sniff, and litter,
and snigger from the throat out
ward, or at best produce some
husky cachinnation, as if
they were laughing through wool;
Of none such comes good. The man
who cannot laugh is not only fit for
treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but
his whole life is already a treason 1
80 glorious laughter (says the
keen and cordial wit of our own
lay, honored Douglas Jerrold), |,
thou man-loving spirit, that for a
time dost take the burden from the
weary back; that dost lay salve to
the feet bruised and cut by iints
and shards; that takest blood -ba-
king melancholy by the nose, and
makest it grin despite itself; that all
The sorrows of the past, the doubts
Of the future, confoundest in the Joy
If the presents; that makest man
5ruly acknowledgements of
and care! What was talked
Of as the golden chain of Jove was
nothing but succession of laughs i
"a chromatic scale of merriment,
reaching from earth to Olympus. 1t (.
S not true that Prometheus stole I
he fire, but the laughter of the gods, /:
20 defy our clay, and in the abun- i
lance of our merriment to make us ,
creatures. Have YOU Ii
,ver considered what man would be 1
destitute of the ennobling faculty
If laughter? Why, Sir, laughter is
% the face of man what sinovia Il
hink anatomists call it) is to the !
oints; it oils, and lubricates, and I
makes the human countenanpe di- J
'ine. Without it our faces would j
lave been rigid, hyena-like; the in
quities of our heart, with no sweet I
to work upon them, would {!
lave made the face of the best J
.mong us a horrid, husky thing,
With two sullen, hungry, cruel lights
It the top (for foreheads would have \
,one out of fashion,, and cavern h
'us hole below the nose. Think of t
babe without laughter-as it is, its s
lrst intelligence. The creature f
hows the divinity of its origin and n
nd by smiling upon us. Yes, $
miles are its first talk with the b
world smiles the first answers that &