East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1912-12-13

Helpful Hints on How to inspire the
Editor With Full, Healthy Snorts
of Pure, Hilarious and joyful Glce,
Many people have an idea that hu-
morous writing is dead easy. So 1t is
in one way; not so much so other
wise Many others still suppose that
editors of humorous journals have but
to skim the quipped cream from each
mornings mail, ship the stale jokes
Ia the authors who perpetrated them.
send the good ones down to the COM
posing room and the trick is done.
Not so, Gentle Annie! this is the
greater mistake of the two.
While it is true that occasionally
live. husky joke is captured in this
way, where one is found half a hum
dred have to be discarded because
they are wormy old and moth eaten
or smell of camphor from having been
packed away all winter as summer
jokes often are by mercenary au-
thors; left-overS, which they will not
take the trouble to read and touch up
TO date ere springing them on an un-
suspecting manuscript reader. This
sort of joke lacks snap in precisely
the same manner as does case of
last seasons fire crackers; they eX-
ploje with that tired feeling
Few people indeed imagine that
good joke is so rare a think that in
order to serve up the very best to its
readers great humorous periodical
Is obliged, at enormous expense, TO
maintain a picked corps of men, scat
tered in every cline. to send home the
bon mots of wit from the various
lands These educated gentlemen
fearlessly penetrate the very jungles
of literature, as it were of all nations,
in search of the frisky "quips and
cranks ana wanton wiles" which they
consider their legitimate prey. When
rear comic is discovered it is either
cabled home at once or packed in wet
moss to keep it fresh and shipped
home by fast freight Canned Jokes
never go with first class American
paper, though the English comics un-
doubtedly use a good many of them /;
they call them timed" however.
Anybody can write a joke As soon
as you have thought of your joke get
a piece of paper and set it down. OF
course, it is much more difficult to
think of jokes than to write them. but
once they have occurred to you, if
You can dispense reasonably good
English the rest is easy 1t takes a
genius, though, to give down contin-
ual joke supply winter and summer
and in all kinds of weather.
But to those who do not joke spon-
taneously there is a method within
easy reach of all-that of reasoning
them out by pure deduction. For in
stance
Supposing that you read in an old
magazine that Mark Twain, passing
the afternoon with Edward ". Rex,
handed him baggy old cucumber
like this: There was a certain To-
cality much pestered with cutworms,
but with the coming of the birds their
numbers greatly diminished. The
sparrows at length constituted uni
sance of themselves, some folks
thought more so than the caterpillars.
One day the teacher asked little John
ny which he thought were the worse.
the sparrows or the worms. Johnny
replied that he could not tell, as he
had never had the sparrows that he
remembered Of
This idea is capable of great varia-
ton, and the amateur jokist should
be able to evolve an entire series of
witty stories from it. For example,
think of all the animals you can.
birds, dogs, cats, finally you come to
bees, The bee is not a quadruped,
il is true, but the game jokist who
is working for a reputation does not
allow subtleties to obscure his sense
Of humor. You have caught your
bee, so now proceed to make a joke
of him. When completed. your story,
modelled after the sparrow form, will
read something like this:
I'm one neighborhood there were
many wild bees. and a farmer tried
to coax swarm into hive he had
built, and to assist him he hired little
Johnny. In setting up the hives the