Jokes For All Occasions | Page 5

'ere nose o' mine, mum, is a-blushin' with pride, 'cause it ain't
stuck into other folks's business."
But British wit, while often amiable enough, may on occasion be as
trenchant as any French sally. For example, we have the definition of
gratitude as given by Sir Robert Walpole--"A lively sense of future
favors." The Marquis of Salisbury once scored a clumsy partner at
whist by his answer to someone who asked how the game progressed:
"I'm doing as well as could be expected, considering that I have three
adversaries." So the retort of Lamb, when Coleridge said to him:
"Charles, did you ever hear me lecture?". * * * "I never heard you do
anything else." And again, Lamb mentioned in a letter how

Wordsworth had said that he did not see much difficulty in writing like
Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. "Clearly," Lamb continued,
"nothing is wanted but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that
runs back to Tudor times, although it has been attributed to various
later celebrities, including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was
executing a number lurid with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer
remarked that the piece was tremendously difficult. This drew the retort
from another auditor:
"Difficult! I wish to heaven it were impossible!"
Americans are famous, and sometimes infamous, for their devotion to
the grotesque in humor. Yet, a conspicuous example of such amusing
absurdity was given by Thackeray, who made reference to an oyster so
large that it took two men to swallow it whole.
It is undeniable that the British are fond of puns. It is usual to sneer at
the pun as the lowest form of wit. Such, alas! it too often is, and
frequently, as well, it is a form of no wit at all. But the pun may contain
a very high form of wit, and may please either for its cleverness, or for
its amusing quality, or for the combination of the two. Naturally, the
really excellent pun has always been in favor with the wits of all
countries. Johnson's saying, that a man who would make a pun would
pick a pocket, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not recorded that
Napier ever "pinched a leather," but he captured Scinde, and in
notifying the government at home of this victory he sent a dispatch of
one word, "Peccavi" ("I have sinned"). The pun is of the sort that may
be appreciated intellectually for its cleverness, while not calculated to
cause laughter. Of the really amusing kind are the innumerable puns of
Hood. He professed himself a man of many sorrows, who had to be a
lively Hood for a livelihood. His work abounds in an ingenious and
admirable mingling of wit and humor. For example:
"Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms, But a cannon
ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms.
"And as they took him off the field, Cried he, 'Let others shoot, 'For
here I leave my second leg, 'And the Forty-Second Foot.'"

It is doubtless true that it would require a surgical operation to get a
joke into some particular Scotchman's head. But we have some persons
of the sort even in our own country. Many of the British humorists have
been either Scotch or Irish, and it is rather profitless to attempt
distinctions as to the humorous sense of these as contrasted with the
English. Usually, stories of thrift and penuriousness are told of the
Scotch without doing them much injustice, while bulls are designated
Irish with sufficient reasonableness. In illustration of the Scotch
character, we may cite the story of the visitor to Aberdeen, who was
attacked by three footpads. He fought them desperately, and inflicted
severe injuries. When at last he had been subdued and searched the
only money found on him was a crooked sixpence. One of the thieves
remarked glumly:
"If he'd had a good shilling, he'd have killed the three of us."
And there is the classic from Punch of the Scotchman, who, on his
return home from a visit to London, in describing his experiences,
declared:
"I had na been there an hour when bang! went saxpence!"
Anent the Irish bull, we may quote an Irishman's answer when asked to
define a bull. He said:
"If you see thirteen cows lying down in a field, and one of them is
standing up, that's a bull."
A celebrity to whom many Irish bulls have been accredited was Sir
Boyle Roche. He wrote in a letter:
"At this very moment, my dear----, I am writing this with a sword in
one hand and a pistol in the other."
He it was who in addressing the Irish House of Commons asserted
stoutly:
"Single misfortunes never