The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1873-05-15
The Source of HumOr.

A RECENT writer lashes himself into a
fury over the iniquities of our American
humorists, and denounces them, one and
all, as s'liars and lovers of lies." He has
discovered that sin almost every state
ment they make they are guilty of the
grossest eXaggeration," and from this he
argues that they have no love of truth in
their souls, but are utterly and almost ir-
redeemably bad. We are half tempted to
son that Mark Twain published serious
English review of the Innocents, because
it was the funniest thing he could possibly
think of.
This censor of the genial humorists
clearly has no conception of what humor
il, else he would have discovered that it
is always and necessarily an exaggeration,
and that our American writers in this
branch of literature are by no means Pc
culiar in this regard. Leigh Hunts die
tum was true, that humor is an ebullition
of buoyant animal spirits, and buoyant
animal spirits express themselves always
in exaggeration, because they themselves
are an exaggeration. Your bright, en-
thusiastic boy, fairly running over with
energy and life, is sure to see a thousand
black birds in a peach tree on any bright
June morning, and yet we never think
him liar because his young eyes see
more of joyousness in life than our older
ones possibly can. And it is something
of this same exaggerated appreciation OF
pleasural lie ideas which makes the humor-
ist "slop over" to our great delight.
His animal spirits enable him to see more
in men and things than there really is in
them. and he jubilantly tells us, with pen
or pencil, the things which he sees-not
to deceive us, but to let us share in the
fun he has in the sight. Our enjoyment
OF humor is of the keenest and heartiest
kind, chiefly because the buoyant spirit
of which humor is born is irresistibly con-
tagious.
And this is the reason that so small a
number of writers, comparatively, achieve
anything like genuine success in humor-
GUS writing. Intellectual force, industry,
acuteness of perception, imagination-all
these are necessary to the humor.
| ist, but these alone are not suffi-
cient. Humor is not the product
of intellect, or of the Imagination,
or of the will, or of industry, or of al
these combined. The buOyant animal
spirit, the perpetual overfiowing of the
soul is the first and chief requisite. AND
so humorous books or pictures are not sc
much works of art as manifestations o.
nature, and there is no branch of litera
count for so little, and genius for so much
| as in this.
But while there are very few peopl,
whose buoyancy is sufficient to make then
| humorists, nearly all of us have enough
of animal spirits to make us keen relish
ers of humor. Now and then we NEE
with an exception, but these are so rar'
that the man who "cannot understand ;
| joke' is commonly regarded as himsel
the best of all possible jokes. We nevel
laughed more immoderately ihan we dlC
over the manuscript Of an excellent cler
gyman, submitted to us for publication
year or two ago, in which he in all serious
ness wrote something to this effect: "k
writer has wisely remarked that an ugl.
young woman will become pretty olC
one, if she lives long enough , in sayin.
which he doubtless meant that the cult
vation of moral beauty will in time atom
for the want of its physical counterpart.
The man was not stupid by any means
but his lack of buoyancy was so utter tina
the bon mot he quoted never presente
itself to him as bon mot at all.
Lord Morpeth used to tell of Scotc
friend of his, who, when Lord MOrpet
remarked that some people could not fet
Jest unless it We're fired at them with
cannon, replied, "Weel, but hoo can y
fire a Jest oot of a cannon, mon"
lady friend once put cOnundrum to he
rheumatic old nurse, asking her VIII
are you like a church window, Sally?
and gave the answer, because you ar
full of pains )" whereupon the old colore
woman pityingly replied, ''Oh! dea
somebody has been foolin' of We, hone.
! DENIS anudder sort o. panes. Dey's bee
foolin' ye, chile. p Hearth and Home.