The evening times., 1911-08-22

menacing and dangerous. OF all forms
Of sea food they appear least likely
to agree with the human digestive or
gaps. The squeamish individual ma
turally recoils, even yet, from the
oyster In the raw and uncooked state.
They have habit of turning q cop
perish green under due provocation.
They look like agony, slow torture
and a lingering death, until you get
used to their appearance. Consider,
then, how courageous that gentleman
OF the long ago must have been when
he tilted the first shell-clad denizen
of the deep to his lips and gulped him
down.
Possibly there was famine in the
land and the little green melons that
grew on the hilltops over the tribal
cave village had failed. Maybe the
fish had gone out to sea onssome mys-
terious migration and gaunt hunger
was stalking through the bone-aoored
caves. as
Any way, some one of the hairy
gentlemen went wandering along the
shallow water Of the beach and found
this forbidding looking hivalve that
now figures so largely in the bills of
fare from the glittering restaurant to
the church supper that is given to
raise money for a new carpet.
The first doing of thing takes
nerve. After 1t has been accomplish
ed once it is no longer great feat.
AS soon as the man had gulped the
oyster in plain sight of HIS tribal
brethren every one of them was able
and willing to do the same thing.
Doubtless the whole community
straightway went oyster dredging.
Great as was the civilization of the
Aztecs and the Incas, they known
nothing about a wheel Some lazy
man of white blood was undoubtedly
the first of all the children of men to
figure out this circular thing that has
done more than any other one thing
to make the white race dominant.
Where did the idea come from? The
legs of all animals in the world are a
more or less complicated set of lev
ers with joints in them. The swiftest
thing on feet has no part of its bodily
mechanism that in any way resem-
bles wheel.
Some indolent and dreamy savage
must have watched a log roll down
hill or stone with rounded corners
go whirlang down mountain side. II
he had not been lazy he would never
have thought Of decreasing his own
burdens by making a circular thing
that would roll.
Picture him sitting at the door Of
his cave earnestly chipping away at a
| fiat stone with hole in its center. He
is trying to round off few of the
many sharp corners that jut out from
the embryo wheel. His neighbors
jeer at him between mouthfuls of
whale steak or cave bear gristle. He
is accounted the tribal fool and the
wise wink as they pass. He has a
great dream Of hitching his oxen in
front of two of these round things
and going merrily along, rolling over
the prairie on the next tribal migra-
ton.
1t is a wonderfully rude thing when
1t is finished, but is better than drag
ging his household wealth over the
plains and through the rocks on two
poles, as the Sioux Indians did when
they went to follow the buffalo in
summer.
I No archoelogist has ever delved far
enough to find trace Of the first
joke. Surely there was first! Pos
sibly man got it from the ape, who
still seems to be a solemnly humor-
GUS soul, with a temperament much
like that of many Of our modern joke
smiths.
Doubtless the first jester was a
merry man and the progenitor of the
race of clowns. In some long ago
evening he sat at lis cave door and
sprang the original seven jokes. He
told just seven to the hairy circle
around the camp fire, and the number
has never been increased. A thous-
and-thousand changes have been rung
upon the original number, but analyze
the newest joke that you. have heard
and you will find that it falls natural
ly into some one of the seven original
classes.
Rodin once shaped statue, depict
ing the awful agony Of the man who
teased the first real thought out of
his brain cells. The man who origi-
mated the original seven merry jests
was undoubtedly in far greater men
tai agony. His shade will have a lot
to answer for when the rest of hui
manity meets 1t on the other side of
the Styx. But he was brave soul,
for he was san original"