More Toasts

More Toasts

The Project Gutenberg eBook, More Toasts, Edited by Marion Dix
Mosher
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Title: More Toasts
Editor: Marion Dix Mosher
Release Date: March 12, 2005 [eBook #15338]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TOASTS***
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MORE TOASTS
Jokes, Stories and Quotations
Compiled by
MARION DIX MOSHER Librarian, Genesee Branch, Rochester (N.Y.)
Public Library
New York The H. W. Wilson Company London: Grafton & Co.
1922

* * * * *
BOOKS OF JOKES, STORIES AND QUOTATIONS
TOASTER'S HANDBOOK. Peggy Edmond and Harold Workman
Williams. 501p. $1.80
MORE TOASTS. Marion D. Mosher. 552p. $1.80

* * * * *

CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION The Divine Gift of Humor The Function of Humor
Importance of Humor
MORE TOASTS
INDEX

PREFACE
The success of the Toaster's Handbook has encouraged its publishers to
compile another that will supplement it and bring it up-to-date. New
subjects keep coming to the front, and the up-to-date toaster needs
up-to-date stories to fit the up-to-date subjects. No public occasion of
today is complete without its joke on the nineteenth amendment, the
allied debts, the income tax, etc.
In offering the toasts, jokes, quotations and stories in this second
volume, the editor has endeavored to bring further aid to the distracted
toastmaster, to the professional after-dinner speaker who must change
his stories often, and to individuals inexperienced in public speaking
and so unfortunate as to have public addresses forced upon them. He
views the product with much the same feeling as did Alexander Pope,
who said, "O'er his books his eyes began to roll, in pleasing memory of
all he stole."
Paolo Bellezze expressed the same feelings in the introduction to his
work "Humor" when he said "Of this work of mine, I must confess it is
a great lot of stuff gathered from everywhere except from my brain.... It
is a necklace of pearls strung upon a slender cord; that, I have put there;
the pearls have been furnished me by the most famous jewelers, native
and foreign. This said, I can--without being accused of
pride--recommend it to my respectable customers as an article of great
value and of absolute novelty."
In making this collection, files of such magazines as Life, Judge, Puck
and Punch were drawn on extensively; also magazines having
humorous pages or columns, such as the Literary Digest, Ladies' Home
Journal, Everybody's, Harper's; also Bindery Talk and various other

house organs. According to Samuel Johnson "A man will turn over half
a library to make one book," and the compiler of this one makes
humble acknowledgment to a whole library of books and periodicals
where most of these jokes have already appeared. It has been
impossible to give credit unless the place of first publication was
definitely known.
The compiling of "More Toasts" was in large measure cooperative. The
test of the humor of a story or joke is in its efficacy when applied to
normal people under ordinary circumstances. With this philosophy in
mind the editor made it a rule to include nothing until it had first been
"tried on the dog." The original material was first graded into three
classes and, before being accepted, each joke had to stand the test of
appealing to the sense of humor of several persons. The result is a
collection of very carefully selected jokes and stories, only about fifty
per cent of the material originally chosen being used. If any
over-critical reader fails to find them humorous, may not the fault
possibly be due to his own imperfect sense of humor?
There is also much truth in the statement that the point of a jest lies in
the telling of it and often much of the subtle humor is lost in the
reading. The personality of the speaker is a necessary factor and is
frequently more important in the effect produced by the story than the
story itself. Elbert Hubbard once said "Next in importance to the man
who first voices a great thought is the man who quotes it."
The clever compiler, like a good chef, must not only know what to
select but in what order to present it. Knowledge consists in being able
to find a thing when you want it and accordingly an attempt has been
made to pigeonhole each joke where it would be most useful. Such a
classification is at best a difficult and debatable question, and numerous
cross references have been