St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-25
PECULLAR HUMOR OF POPE ROBERT.

Col. Bob. Ingersoll's extensive lecture in
Chicago was attended by three thousand peo-
pie and was received with tremendous hilar
ity and marks of approval from eXordium to
peroration. 1t was queer scene, curious
commingling of what most people regard as
sober, solemn fact, and the furious applause
from an audience frantic in its enthusiasm
over the utterances of the speaker. 1t was
as odd mixture as would be one which
should be composed of equal parts of the
severest orthodoxy and the broadcast of farcial
products, the result being a composition in
which the former would lose all its qualities
of sobriety and dignity and would intensity
the comicality of the latter. Without at the
moment questioning the truth or otherwise of
Ingersoll's views, it is curious and possibly
instructive to inspect the new lode of humor
which he has discovered and which he is now
working greatly to his own profit.
Humorists in search of themes have
hitherto spared no portion of the earth or its
contents. Nothing has been too high or low,
or remote, but all this time they overlooked
the Bible. 1t seems to have never occurred
to any of the statirists, the professed hum
orists, those in search of material Of the kind
which they sought. 1t remained for Inger-
soil to stumble upon what has for all time
been overlooked by the busy prospectors in
search of subjects for laughter, applause and
roaring fun. What an oversight. Here on
every table in the house of every family lies
book more replete with fun than anything
written by the Joe. Millers of ancient or
modern days and nobody ever suspected it.
Here is a book so near every one of the peo
pie that no man can put his hand out in
any direction without touching it. Which
has for centuries been wholly unappreciated
by those who studied it daily. Without in
the least suspecting it, the book is one which
according to the reading of Ingersoll, is
comical to the remotest extreme, and from
cover to cover is crowded with the grotesque,
the ridiculous, the laughable, being in realty
jibing jester, full of fantasy and grimaces,
making mouths at us from every page and
displaying the motley of the grinning clown
in every chapter.
The GLOBE does not undertake to question
as to whether or not there is any truth in the
utterances of "Pope Robert" What it
simply essays is, to point out how short sight
ed the world has been in not seeing how full
of fun and jollity this book is. Most people
have been in the habit of regarding it as
wholly different in respect of laughter, pro-
voking and productive of ludicrous conf
calities. A great many have always looked
on it as rather serious production. They
read in it of the thunderings from
Sinia, the maledictions of the prophets, the
wailings of the enslaved children of Israel,
the pitiful scene in Gethsemane, the scoring
mob which Knocked the writings of the
figure on the cross, and they put away the
book without the least suspicion that there
was anything in it to provoke their risibilities.
None of this class ever suspected that there
were rounds of applause concealed in the
sombre variations of the Old Testament, or
in the menaccs of the new. They never dis
covered uproarious laughter in the promise of
eternal damnation, or of laughter and ap-
planse in the fiery pictures of revelations.
The discoveries of Ingerson will undoubt-
edly stimulate the search for novelties in
other directions. Some day there will turn
up some keen scanted humorist who will fill
great hall with an audience and with split
ting laughter and applause over the comical-
tiles of the constitution of the United States.
We shall have the most bizarre of farces
founded on Dantes comedia, a peculiar
advertisement arranged from Watts hymns