The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-07-14
Is ART OF RUNNING LosTp
Defense of This Means of Adding tt
Gayety or Nations.

N@NOh 1OIh 1TlDuQe-l
What has become, of the pun?
the greater. whether it be the lowest
form of wit or when judiciously used
one or the highest, need not be debated
Inc fact remains that the pun is no
longer what it used to be-a royal
road to fame as wit At best, a pun
is made nowadays by a variety team
on the stage apoioseucally, and if there
is any laugh raised, it is at the apoI-
ogy- The wits of today are famous by
virtue of their slang or their brogue
and II is doubtful if a book full of
/ conversational bon-mots, such as have
0een collected from the sayings of
foote or Hook, could be collected from
any ten OF them. Perhaps our punsters,
.oo' nave become commerciaIized, and
Keep their bright thoughts for the
press. The best pun looks cold and
nat enough in print. Perhaps the gentle
art Of punning has died with the decay
or the art of conversation.
several New York men were discuss
ing the question the other day, and one
OF them, who is one of the veteran pub
lie school principals of the city, recalled
the memory Of a man who, he said.
was probably the last Of the old school
OF punsterS in the country. The MEM
DRY OF this man caused him 10 grow
eloquent in the defense of the pun.
Inc day viii come, he declared, when
the pun Will once more regain the
place IT deserves, and clever men will
play eleverly on words without shame,
and for the pleasure of all. He said:
PROFESSOR B. +. Tweed, who died
Few years ago in Cambridge, Mass,
and who was a schoolmaster. a pro
lessor in Tufts college and later in the
University of St. Louis. a Charming
conversationalist and a brilliant man,
was probably the last of a generation
or men who were famous-not infa-
mous-because of their puns Tweed
punned early and often, and the COM
mon question among his friends was,
Have you heard TWeed's latest pump
But he seldom made pun merely from
habit; there was point to all the double
meanings that he perpetrated. Once
fellow professor in st. Louis stopped
him as they were walking along the
street TO point out curious sign.
Look at that name, Joseph Rex"
How oddl' he said.
." oh, come along Tweed answered.
he's only Joking
Il remember another occasion, when
he was a public school teacher in
Charlestown. There was to be an cleo
ton OF teachers that night, and in the
afternoon Tweed met James Adams,
VINO was later mayor of Boston. Hello,
Tweed SAID Adams, what if you
should fail of reelection tonight?'
out
Again. he was at a dinner of the
Boston Schoolmasters' club in the days
when Ben Butler was governor The
dinner was partly in honor of George
A Walton, one of the agents of the
board of education in Massachusetts,
Butler had a few days before in his
. .f7r1V- r.Txa g.
board as an aggregation of old ladies
and TWO of them wear bozAats' The
presiding officer introduced Mr.. Wal
ton as one of those old ladies'
impossible. cried Tweed; hes
agent of the board
Tweed used himself to defend the
pun on the grounds Of its antiquity and
renowned ancestry. as well as its in
trinsic worth. The Egyptians started
punnfng, 50 far as we know. he used to
say. Tor they represented a doctor by
the outline of a duck Aristotle, Cice-
70, Erskine. Swift, Johnson, Hood and
good DR.. Byles Of Boston, were noted
for their puns. he declared. and shall
Scorn the weapon that served them
SO effeetiyely?' He said, with Addison.
that the seeds of punning are in ali
men who have a sense of something
more than the bald face value of
words. and he would no more think
or resisting his instinct in this aspect
than to refrain from patting a child
on the head His friends enjoyed his
puns as much as the children did his
affection
But, said one OF the other men in
the group, If Tweed were growing up
with the present generation, would he
not follow the trend Of the times, which
they tell us. il utilitarian?"
think not. verbally"
Ut |,
6ul ne Was-such bad example"
SAID another- Some men can make
good puns, but they start so many peo-
pie making bad ones that they should
ali be suppressed.
Isn't that" said the old schoolmas-
ter mildly, "a little like condepninz
the violin because so many people made