How to Tell a Story and other Essays, 1899 | Page 4

Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference from
Comic and Witty Stories.
I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim
to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in
the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.
There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the
humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is
American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The
humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;
the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the
comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The
humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.
The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art-- and
only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and
the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous
story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--was created in
America, and has remained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal
the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it;
but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the
funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is
the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he
has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the
"nub" of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause,
and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story
finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then
the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert
attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and
indifferent way, with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub.

Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated
audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent
surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell
used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it to-day.
But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at
you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany,
and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after
it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very
depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better
life.
Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote
which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred
years. The teller tells it in this way:
THE WOUNDED SOLDIER.
In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off
appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the
rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained;
whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate,
proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were
flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded
man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. In
no-long time he was hailed by an officer, who said:
"Where are you going with that carcass?"
"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!"
"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his
head, you booby."
Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood
looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said:
"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, "But
he TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG! ! ! ! !"
Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous
horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his
gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.
It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and
isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story form it
takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened
to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.

He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just
heard it for the first time,