Jokes For All Occasions | Page 4

wife of a villager in Poitou became ill, and presently fell into a
trance, which deceived even the physician, so that she was pronounced
dead, and duly prepared for burial. Following the local usage, the body
was wrapped in a sheet, to be borne to the burial place on the shoulders
of four men chosen from the neighborhood. The procession followed a
narrow path leading across the fields to the cemetery. At a turning, a
thorn tree stood so close that one of the thorns tore through the sheet
and lacerated the woman's flesh. The blood flowed from the wound,
and she suddenly aroused to consciousness. Fourteen years elapsed
before the good wife actually came to her deathbed. On this occasion,
the ceremonial was repeated. And now, as the bearers of the body
approached the turn of the path, the husband called to them:
"Look out for the thorn tree, friends!"
The written humor of the Dutch does not usually make a very strong
appeal to us. They are inclined to be ponderous even in their play, and
lack in great measure the sarcasm and satire and the lighter subtlety in
fun-making. History records a controversy between Holland and
Zealand, which was argued pro and con during a period of years with
great earnestness. The subject for debate that so fascinated the
Dutchmen was: "Does the cod take the hook, or does the hook take the
cod?"
Because British wit and humor often present themselves under aspects
somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts
unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction are
the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British colonies

is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly parallels our own in many
distinctive features. Thus, there is a Canadian story that might just as
well have originated below the line, of an Irish girl, recently imported,
who visited her clergyman and inquired his fee for marrying. He
informed her that his charge was two dollars. A month later, the girl
visited the clergyman for the second time, and at once handed him two
dollars, with the crisp direction, "Go ahead and marry me."
"Where is the bridegroom?" the clergyman asked.
"What!" exclaimed the girl, dismayed. "Don't you furnish him for the
two dollars?"
It would seem that humor is rather more enjoyable to the British taste
than wit, though there is, indeed, no lack of the latter. But the people
delight most in absurd situations that appeal to the risibilities without
any injury to the feelings of others. For example, Dickens relates an
anecdote concerning two men, who were about to be hanged at a public
execution. When they were already on the scaffold in preparation for
the supreme moment, a bull being led to market broke loose and ran
amuck through the great crowd assembled to witness the hanging. One
of the condemned men on the scaffold turned to his fellow, and
remarked:
"I say, mate, it's a good thing we're not in that crowd."
In spite of the gruesome setting and the gory antics of the bull, the story
is amusing in a way quite harmless. Similarly, too, there is only
wholesome amusement in the woman's response to a vegetarian, who
made her a proposal of marriage. She did, not mince her words:
"Go along with you! What? Be flesh of your flesh, and you a-living on
cabbage? Go marry a grass widow!"
The kindly spirit of British humor is revealed even in sarcastic jesting
on the domestic relation, which, on the contrary, provokes the bitterest
jibes of the Latins. The shortest of jokes, and perhaps the most famous,
was in the single word of Punch's advice to those about to get married:

"Don't!"
The like good nature is in the words of a woman who was taken to a
hospital in the East End of London. She had been shockingly beaten,
and the attending surgeon was moved to pity for her and indignation
against her assailant.
"Who did this?" he demanded. "Was it your husband?"
"Lor' bless yer, no!" she declared huffily. "W'y, my 'usband 'e 's more
like a friend nor a 'usband!"
Likewise, of the two men who had drunk not wisely but too well, with
the result that in the small hours they retired to rest in the gutter.
Presently, one of the pair lifted his voice in protest:
"I shay, le's go to nuzzer hotel--this leaksh!"
Or the incident of the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a
suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The
woman stared at it with an accusing eye, and questioned bluntly:
"What makes your nose so red?"
The tramp answered with heavy sarcasm:
"That