Jokes For All Occasions | Page 5

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 come alone, and the greatest of all possible misfortune is usually followed by a greater."
And there is the hospitable invitation of the Irishman:
"Sir, if you ever come within a mile of my house, I hope you will stop there." And it was an Irishman who remarked to another concerning a third: "You are thin, and I am thin, but he's as thin as the two of us put together." Also,