The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1880-03-19
Eli Perkins ON Lying.

Now, my friends. there has been a
good deal said about lying in this coun-
try lately. I confess that have been
called great liar myself. In fact the
Tyre has been struck a great many times.
Laughter. You remember that Henry
Watterson, of the Louisville Courier
Journal, said publicly on the steps of the
hotel at Saratoga last summer that he
was personally acquainted with three OF
the biggest liars-the biggest living liars
in the world, and when they asked him
who they were he said &" George Alfred
Townsend is one and Eli Perkins is the
other two" Great laughter. Now,
my friends, speaking of lying, maintain
that all great humorists are great liars,
and that the funniest men have always
been the biggest liars. But do not say
vice versa that all great liars are great
humorists. If this we're the case, then
the lawyers would be the funniest men in
the world. Laughter. The lie, to be
funny, must be purely innocent-it must
be told to make our fellow-men happy,
and to harm no man, or it must be told
to make wrong ridiculous, as did Don
Quixote," &C Ginx's Baby" and the sa-
tires of Juvenal and Dean Swift. In fact,
the lie told must be an innocent Baron
Munchausen lie. If the old humorists
were not great liars, then Dean Swift's
ss Tale of Tub" was true story, Gulh-
vers travels were as true as Moody,s ser
mons, Thackeray's " Yellow Plush Pa
pers" were Sunday school tracts, and
Baron Munchausen's four hundred gi-
gantic lies were as true as Macaulay' 8
History of England. Almost all fun is
exaggeration, all exaggerating is lying.
Mark Twain is fearful liar. Show me
| 4ra !,
Room" Artemus Wards works are pure
fictions, pure lies, with no satire, but
| told simply to produce innocent ugh
| ter. Laughter cannot be produced with
| out acting, painting or writing and exag-
geration-in plain English, without act
ing, painting or writing an innocent lie.
The humorous artist, the caricaturist like
John Leech and Cruikshank, had no
| other element but the lie to draw upon to
produce laughter. They had to make
long nose, big ear, Il a
crooked leg, or cock-eye. No
| one ever laughed at true picture.
If live man really looked as Cruik-
shank or John Leech painted him, we
would shed tears at his mournful condl-
ton. If real man acted like Don
| Quixote, we would weep at his misfor-
tunes. Sometimes people laugh at a
great truth, for truth is often stranger
| sounds like a bigger lie) than fiction.
This has always been my great trouble.
Laughter. have generally told such
great, strange truths, that the people
would laugh because they thought it was
a lie. So 1 have got the reputation OF
being a worldly minded humorist, when,
in fact. I am great truth teller; to il
lustrate: One night I was telling about
the big trees in California. I said I rode
into big hollow tree, ON horeback, and
| then walked out through the knot-holes.
| Laughter The people laughed be-
cause they thought it was lie, when, in
| fact, it was the truth. The trees are
| thirty five feet in diameter, and the hole
| through them is twelve feet in diameter
as wide through as barn-door. To IL
| lurtrate what I mean, by an innocent
| Baron Munchausen story: had an I'm
Gle William once, who got caught in a
| fearful rain storm one night when he was
on the way to attend a prayer meeting at
New London, Connecticut. He started
for New London on horseback, but when
| he got about halfway there, there arose
| dreadful storm. The wind blew hur-
| ricane, the rain poured in torrents, the
! lightning cleaned through the sky, and
| my uncle got in behind large barn.
But in moment the lightning struck
that barn and knocked it into thousand
splinters, and sent his horse whirling
over into neighboring corn-patch.
'What did you do then, Uncle William?''
I asked. s'Well," said he, ''I didn't
hardly know what to do. Twas very much
discouraged, but to tell you the honest
truth-the honest Connecticut truth, Eli,
went right out into the cornfeld, took
off myscoat, bumped up my bare back,
and took eleven strokes of lightning right
on my bare backbone, drew the lightning
all out of the sky, and then got onto my
horse and got into New London in time
to lead at the evening prayer meeting" "
Uproarious laughter. Globe Democrat.