The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1920-09-29

Veteran Quips That Undoubtedly
Are Centuries Old.
tests Having 70 DO With the Mother.
in-Law and the intoxicated Man
Always Have Power to
Cause = Laugh.

Some one once said that there are
only two jokes in the world, the
drunken man joke and the mother-in-
law joke. There are many variations
Of the two themes, many ways of pre-
senting the two Supremacy comic fig
ures, but when We want to make each
other laugh We always go back either
to the drunken man or to the moth
erin-law.
The statement is an exaggeration.
There are other jokes. The curate's
egg joke, for instance, which has
nothing to do either with drunkards
or Hiothers-in-law. and the more recent
'better ole" Joke. But II remains to
be seen whether either of these jokes
will survive, will amuse generation
after generation as the two great
Jokes do. For the drunken man and
the mother-in-law are very old jokes.
They have proved their worth by pro-
voking laughter for thousands of
years and they are still the most pop
ular jokes there are. A comedian i'm
personating drunkard is sure of his
laugh, and public speaker, finding
his audience Is getting bored, has only
to say the words "mother-ln-law" to
provoke full-throated merriment.
OF tie two the drunken man Joke
seems to be the older. The Spartans
knew It, and used to make slaves
drunk so that their sons, laughing
heartily, might avoid the vice through
fear Of ridicule. The Jews knew It.
Their ancient literature is slngularly
poor in comedy. There are not half
dozen jokes in the whole Old Tesla
ment, but the drunken man joke is
there. Isaiah, grim old puritan of
a statesman, made 1t, and made 1t In
an excellent form. The mother-in-
law joke is not so old, but 1t goes back
to classical times.
We find 1t In Plutarch. "a man
once threw stone at dog and hit
his mother-ln-law. Not such a bad
shot after ALL he said" That is Plut.
arch's version Of tie Joke. 1t Is so
neat and epigrammatic that the Joke
Itself must have been old in his time.
He could scarcely have achieved, such
perfect form unless he had been
working on long familiar idea.
But ancient as these jokes are they
have lost none of their freshness for
us. Time, 1t appears, cannot stale
their infinite variety. We may fairly
suppose that they will lost as long as
our race does. America may 60 dry,
but the great comic tradition of the
drunken man will survive.
The bolshevists may abolish mar.
rage, but men will always remember
what marriage was because they will
always laugh when. anyone says
'mother-in-law." We may picture to
ourselves the last survivors OF our
race shiyering In Icy caves while the
sun shoulders to extinction. They will
no doubt cheer tie desperate hard
ship of their winter by inventing fresh
quips about drunken men and moth
ers-in-law.
No other joke seems to possess this
quality of endurance. Indeed, the
path Of mans progress through the
ages is strewed with the corpses Of
dead jokes which once were vital
enough, but somehow missed immor-
tality. There Is the doctor" Joke, for
instance. The. ancients knew 1t.
physician heal myself" is a proven
bal form of it. The story of the med
ical man who went out hunting is an
other version of it. "Today at least"
said friend who met him, "you will
kill nothing" 1t survived down to the
middle of the last century, and even
In our own time G. b. Shaw has at.
tempted to galvanize II into fresh hfA.
But the Joke is really dead. We no
longer laugh spontaneously at the
thought Of doctor, though In its day
the doctor joke was certainly a good
one.-Edinburgh Scotsman.