The Iola register., 1885-01-16
THE FUNNY ITEM.

An ENCetient Rlea IN benalI OF m I'M
portant Element of Modern Newspapers.
1t is becoming quite common to utter
the word funny sarcastically. with italic
emphasis, and as if with quoted marks.
But hundreds of Door mortals who
have found the world one too many
for them, the lines about whose
mouths are deepening every year,
becoming more and more strange
to the smile that approaches timidly
and hurries away as if it felt itself
an unwelcome guest, have had there
lives temporarily frightened (perhaps
permanently, for life is such strange
thing that the apparently trivial things
affecting it can not, like notes, be esti-
mated at their face value,) by this
same funny item. 1t is no light task
to dish up day after day, or even week
after week, continual fund of humor.
1t is not an uncommon belief that q
humorist is so with no effort of his
own, and can dash off a funny thing
with as much ease as he can walk a
mile. With such men as Mark
Twain, Artemus Ward, Bret Harte
and some others, it is perhaps
Just as natural to be humorous as not,
but with the majority 1t becomes very
much a mechanical effort after all.
Have you never seen an attempt at
gayety when you knew that underneath
it was pain that gavei it the pathos in
your eyes? So it is not difficult to ina
CINE a so-called humorist in response to
a demand writing a piece that shall
make merry many sober and saddened
heart, while his OWNS heavy with pain OF
bereavement or other loss, or with the
burden of bodily sickness silently and
heroically borne. Do you think humOr
is rs easy for the writer as for the
reader? Do you think there is no
pathos, no tragedy, even, in the lives OF
those men whose business it is to make
fun for the multitude? Several years
ago there was in Blackwelrs Island
Lunatic Asylum an inmate who had
made mirth for thousands. He was
then hypochondriac of the EXTREMIST
kind. Food was disgusting to him;
milk was gangrene; all meat was in the
last stages of putrefaction. In short, the
man who had made others merry was
himself dying of the deepest melan-
choly. Think of Fox, or of Emmett.
1t is frequently noticed that q funny
writer is a man of the gravest express
sion himself. Depend upon it here is
an illustration that humormeans work.
Savants tell us, too, that the read
ing of the crisp, sparkling items
of the funny column which al
most every paper now contains is in
furious to the memory. This is GER
tainly crushing evidence against the
poor paragraphs, but don't you think
that the heavy laugh these despised
items afford You. the dispelling for the
time of the morbid feelings we are all
prone to as We feel the presence oflife's
burdens, the stimulus to new activity
occasioned by the CLEAN of merry sun
shine that finds its way into the dark
ness of your spirit, perhaps the new
lease of life that is given you by the
cheer in the midst of your
gloom, are more than compensation
for any trifling injury to your memory?
But you can make these items posi-
tive aid to your memory. Store the
good ones up for repetition. You will
have fund of humor at your disposal,
will have pleasant food for meditation.
and will be q more welcome compan-
Gazette.