The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1921-07-27
Beerbohm on Laughter,

Only the emotion of love takes
higher rank than the emotion of high
err laughter. Both these emotions are
partly mental, partly physical in orr
gion. They are not the less thereal
for that. The physical sensations of
laughter, on the other hand, are reach
ed by a process whose starting point
is in the mind. They are not the less
laughter that goes so far as to lose
all touch with it's motive, and to exist
only, grossly, in itself. This is
laughter at its best. A man to whom
such laughter has often been granted
may happen to die in the workhouse.
No matter. l will not admit that he
has failed in life Another, who has
never laughed thus, may be buried in
Westminster Abbey, leaving more
than million pounds overhead.
What then? l regard him as
failure.
Nor does it seem to me to matter
one jot how such laughter is achieved.
Humor may rollick on high planes of
fantasy Or in depths of Stiffness. To
many people it appeals only from
those depths. If it appeals to them
irresistibly, they are more enviable
than those who are sensitive only to
the finer kind of joke and not so sensi-
tive as to be mastered and dissolved
by it. Laughter is thing to be rated
according to it's own intensity.
Many years ago | wrote an essay in
which | poured scorn on the fun pur-
veyed by the music halls, and on the
great public for which that fun was
quite good enough. l take that callow
scorn back. I fancy that the fun it.
self was better than it seemed to me
and might not have displeased me if
it had been waited to me in private,
in the presence of a few friends. A
public crowd, because of lack of
broad impersonal humanity in me,
rather insulates than absorbs me-
Amidst the outlaws of a thousand
strangers become unnaturally grave.
If these people were the entertain
ment, and l the, audience, l should be
sympathetic enough. But to be one
of them is position that drives me
spiritually aloof. Also, there is to
me something rather dreary in the no.
ton OF going anywhere for the specific
purpose of being amused. | prefer
that laughter shall take me unawares.
Only so can it master and dissolve me.
And in this respect, at any rate, am
not peculiar. In music halls and such
places you may hear loud laughter, but
not see silent laughter, not see
strong men weak, helpless, suffering, |
gradually convalescent, dangerously |
relapsing. Laughter at its greatest
and best is not there.
Even in private and accidental in
tercourse, few are the men whose
humor can reduce us, be we never so |
susceptible, to paroxysms of mirth. !
| will wager that nine-tenths of the
worlds best laughter is laughter at,
not with. And it is the people set in
authority over us that touch most
surely oHr sense of the ridiculous.
Freedom is a good thing, but we lose
through it golden moments. The
schoolmaster to his pupils, the mon
arch to his courtiers, the editor to
his staff-how priceless they are!
Reverence is good thing and part
of its value is that the more we re-
we're man, the more sharply are
we struck by anything in him land
there is always much) that is incon-
gruous with his greatness. Rever-
ance, like subsection, is a rich
source of laughter And herein lies
one of the reasons why as we grow
older we laugh less. The men we
esteemed so great are gathered to
their fathers. Some of our coevals
may, for ought we know, be very
great, but good heavens! we can't
esteem them so.
Arkansas Gazette. Saw q sswonderl