Americans and Others | Page 7

a people, we have an abiding and somewhat
disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone
to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth when
it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and we
habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration, accepting,
perhaps unconsciously, Hazlitt's verdict: "Lying is a species of wit, and
shows spirit and invention." It is true also that no adequate provision is
made in this country for the defective but valuable class without
humour, which in England is exceedingly well cared for. American
letters, American journalism, and American speech are so coloured by
pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule, that the silent and stodgy men,
who are apt to represent a nation's real strength, hardly know where to
turn for a little saving dulness. A deep vein of irony runs through every
grade of society, making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter
discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which
we passively permit. Just as the French monarchy under Louis the
Fourteenth was wittily defined as despotism tempered by epigram, so
the United States have been described as a free republic fettered by
jokes, and the taunt conveys a half-truth which it is worth our while to
consider.
Now there are many who affirm that the humourist's point of view is,
on the whole, the fairest from which the world can be judged. It is
equally remote from the misleading side-lights of the pessimist and
from the wilful blindness of the optimist. It sees things with
uncompromising clearness, but it judges of them with tolerance and

good temper. Moreover, a sense of the ridiculous is a sound
preservative of social virtues. It places a proper emphasis on the
judgments of our associates, it saves us from pitfalls of vanity and
self-assurance, it lays the basis of that propriety and decorum of
conduct upon which is founded the charm of intercourse among equals.
And what it does for us individually, it does for us collectively. Our
national apprehension of a jest fosters whatever grace of modesty we
have to show. We dare not inflate ourselves as superbly as we should
like to do, because our genial countrymen stand ever ready to prick us
into sudden collapse. "It is the laugh we enjoy at our own expense
which betrays us to the rest of the world."
Perhaps we laugh too readily. Perhaps we are sometimes amused when
we ought to be angry. Perhaps we jest when it is our plain duty to
reform. Here lies the danger of our national light-mindedness,--for it is
seldom light-heartedness; we are no whit more light-hearted than our
neighbours. A carping English critic has declared that American
humour consists in speaking of hideous things with levity; and while so
harsh a charge is necessarily unjust, it makes clear one abiding
difference between the nations. An Englishman never laughs--except
officially in "Punch"--over any form of political degradation. He is not
in the least amused by jobbery, by bad service, by broken pledges. The
seamy side of civilized life is not to him a subject for sympathetic mirth.
He can pity the stupidity which does not perceive that it is cheated and
betrayed; but penetration allied to indifference awakens his wondering
contempt. "If you think it amusing to be imposed on," an
Englishwoman once said to me, "you need never be at a loss for a
joke."
In good truth, we know what a man is like by the things he finds
laughable, we gauge both his understanding and his culture by his sense
of the becoming and of the absurd. If the capacity for laughter be one of
the things which separates men from brutes, the quality of laughter
draws a sharp dividing-line between the trained intelligence and the
vacant mind. The humour of a race interprets the character of a race,
and the mental condition of which laughter is the expression is
something which it behooves the student of human nature and the

student of national traits to understand very clearly.
Now our American humour is, on the whole, good-tempered and decent.
It is scandalously irreverent (reverence is a quality which seems to have
been left out of our composition); but it has neither the pitilessness of
the Latin, nor the grossness of the Teuton jest. As Mr. Gilbert said of
Sir Beerbohm Tree's "Hamlet," it is funny without being coarse. We
have at our best the art of being amusing in an agreeable, almost an
amiable, fashion; but then we have also the rare good fortune to be very
easily amused. Think of the current jokes provided for our
entertainment week by week, and day by day. Think of the comic
supplement of