The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-08-21
Jokes Out of Date.

Suppose from all the GOOD sayings
which raas Aufrent IN soaiatEs 10 say
nothing of those whicn are written In
books, we were to remove three classes
of witticism-those: namely, which
saVo7 CT p1cfaaity, those which are
more or less indecent, and those which
are sharp personalities-and how much
would lie left asks the Saturday Re
view. Rogers was spiteful himself and
the causee of spite in others. His we'll
known remark about the fortunate man
whom rybody had been praising for
his good locks, mis- wealth, and his rank,
"Thank God, he has got bad teeth i
was a frank expression of the malice
which aniimates mostof hia witticisms.
When HOOK advised Rogers in his turn
not to attend Byron's funeral for fear
the undertaken would claim, him as
corpse inferred six months before, the
facetiohsness Covered. brutal rgmark
upon a personal peculiarity. Talley
rand's sayings are still more offensive.
The answer g Already" to the man who
said he was feeling the torments OF
hell. and Tie remark to tne man who
said that his mother had been beauty.
'' C'etait done, monsieur, votre pefe
qui n'etat pas 81 bein? strike us ow-
ing nearly all the merit to their inciv-
ility. The last saying quoted, for ex-
ample, IL r,nt cne whinh 9crld have
occurred to anybody ends bat q
one which nobody else would have ven-
tured to utter. Talleyrand and Rogers,
of course, have name for cynlcism;
but we do not find that men of greater
COOK nature are always much more
agreeable. an aid-de-carap We are
told. asked Whately, pretty much in
his own style, "What is the difference
between Roman Catholic bishop and
iackass?" the answer being, that 6 One
wears a cross upon his back, and the
other upon his breast." What Is the
difference" retorted Whately, between
an aid-de-camp and a donkey ?" 81
don't know" replied the aid-ce-camp,
interrogatively. "Nor [ either" said
Whately. After all, there is nothing
very fuhny in calling L mGn donkey to
his face, and the particular turn given
to the remark is one which we suspect
to have been hit upon by some hun
dreds of schoolboys before it occurred
to the archbishop. Lamb was one of
the kindliest of men, and his humor
has the smallest possible infusion
for i'll feeling, and yet even Lamb
must have sacrificed friend to joke
pretty often. When he replied to
Coleridges question. "Did you ever
hear me preach ?" "I never heard you
do anything else," we may be pretty
sure the lemark did not strike Cole
ridge as altogether pleasant. 1t is
quite possible, in short, to be good
Christian and a professed wit. And,
if wit passes into cruelty on one side,
does 1t not constantly descend to buf-
foonery on the other? Alas ! these
stories of departed fun are about as
cheerful as the sight of dinner table
after the guests have gone, and left
nothing but half empty glasses and
cigar ashes. And yet we can derive
some kind of consolation even from
reading the best sayings of departed
humorists. A witticism has a kind Of
immortality independent of the origina-
tor. The really good sayings we find
have never been first invented by any
body. They are handed down from one
generation to another, and are much
improved in the process. Then, again,
we compare actual reports of conversa-
ton with the written reco1 DIS of thought,
we are struck be the obvious fact that
what man writes is generally much
better than what he says. Even the
greatest of wits is happier in his study,
where he can polish his own good things
and introduce them in their due place,
than in the random flashes of fun which
owe half their merit to their temporary
surrOuDdiDps