Central High School - Interlude Yearbook (South Bend, IN)

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THE INTERLUDE 7 ity. A rouge alive to the ludicrous is still con- vertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-man can do little for him. Such is the state1ne11t of one of the wisest and sanest men that ever lived. llumor preserves health. gives rest to thought- ful. busy, energetic minds, prevents narrowness and prejudices, and is the guardian of the minor morals of society: that is, it limits eccentricity, impudence, selhshness, extravagance. lt is a weapon to whip into place those who are insen- sible to ordinary moral denunciation. A man who will laugh at a sermon will shrink from a laugh. I own I'm proud-I inust be proud--to sec Men not afraid of God afraid of ine, - was the boast of the little wasp of Twicken- ham . Many evils, such as duclling were only abolished when the world ridiculed them. As Thackeray has pointedly expressed it, the humor- ist is a week-day preacher . 'ZX great tragic poet ought also to be a great comic poetfl once said Socrates, and Arch-deacon llare has said of the great Shakespeare in whom these qualities were united- No heart would have been strong enough to hold the woe of l.ear and Othello, ex- cept that which had the unquenchable elasticity of lialstaff and the .llid-szllnmef' Niglifs Dream . lflumor quickens friendship. How often has a laugh united a roomful of strangers who but for the timely jest might have been strangers to the end of the chapter. And error itself is best con- fronted with a smiling face and gentle ridicule, rather than glum looks and dreary sermons. llut the expression that you can never get too much of a good thing does not hold true in this case. l'erverted humor is a bad thing. A char- acter all hunior is like a glass of wine all froth. llunior should have a foundation of good sense and substantial thought or it is injurious to its possessor and wearisome to his friends. Humor is perverted when it is used to give pain. Ihat humor which makes fun of the misfortunes of others is not really humor. Irreverence, a mock- ing of the deep and tragic things of life, an ap- plication of liiblical passages to trivial or ludicr- ous events is always a misuse of humor. as is also a combination of the grave and the ridiculous, the mean and the exalted, or a rapid descent from the sublime and beautiful to the false and de- grading. The first American humorist was llenjamin Franklin, who even to this day has not been sur- passed in either the quality or quantity of his humor. His humor is abundant and never fail- ing, as fresh and enjoyable in the twentieth cen- tury as it was in the eighteenth. His humor was homely, keen, practical. llis almanac abounds with sparkling fun: If you'd lose a troublesome visitor, lend him money. Knaves a11d nettles are aking stroke 'em even kindly, yet they'll sting. The good or ill hap of a good or ill life, is the good or ill choice of a good or ill wife. It is ill-manners to silence a fool, and cruelty to let him go on. To bear other peoples aftlictions every one has enough to spare. No workman without tools. Nor lawyer without fools Can live by their rules. Love your neighbor, yet don't pull down the hedge. Many a man's own tongue gives evidence against his understanding. If jack's in love, he's no judge of -Iill's beauty. i His autobiography has many passages of ex- quisite humor: where he tells of Kermer, a printer, a great glutton, who invited two friends and Franklin to dine with him, and ordered a roast pig: But, it being brought too soon upon the table, he could not resist the temptation and ate the whole before we came. XVhen American Minister to Paris, .Franklin was greatly pressed by F renehmen whom he did not know for recommendations to military .com- missions. So he prepared an introductory 'let- ter that might serve for all: . Sir: The bearer of this, who is going to .-Xmerica, presses me to give him alletter of rec- ommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name, This may seem extraordi- nary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown to recommend himg and sometimes they reconnnend one another. As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to thosecivili- ties which every stranger, etc. Wliile his reply to his daughter who had SCl1t for some Paris goods, among them lace and feathers, must have been very disappointing for her, it is full of a quaint, delicious humor for us. He says: I send all the articles you desire that are use- ful and necessary and omit the rest: for as you say you should have great pride in wearing any- thing I send, and showing it as your fatl1er's taste, I must avoid giving you an opportunity of doing that with either lace or feathers. If you wear your cambric ruffles as I do and take care not to mend the holes, they will come in time to be laceg and feathers, my dear girl, may be had in America from every cock's tail. This is humor without sting, kindly, delightful fun which fills ns with a pleasurable glow with- out provoking uproarious laughter. The laugh- ter holding both its sides style of humor belongs to Mark Twain more than to any other humorist. Every word-ripples and erackles with fun. His humor is the true American brand that can be appreciated nowhere in the world so well as in

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5 THE INTERLUDE 1 1 1 H U M O R 1 1 1 ,vy HAT is lnnnor and what do we mea11 'Yy dit you vant to make it ven it vas made Qf, by a sense of humor? XYebster de- alretty ?' g-ff! Fines humor as that which is adapted fNo, I mean l was too late to get aboard ?' L '4 to excite laughter, and a sense of 'Yot for you vant a board F' humor has come to mean the readiness to see a joke , the ability to laugh at the laughable or incongruous in life. And what a dull, uniform, unhappy place the world would be without this sense of humor. Suppose Cervantes, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Dickens, Sydney Smith had never been born-let's not. The thought is too dismal to contemplate. Wit, including satire, irony, sarcasm, is a form of humor not so much appreciated by the Teu- tonic mind as the Celtic. Wit is artificial, and may be acquired, humor is natural and a sense of hu- mor can never be grafted in a soul so unhappy as to be without it. Wit is a product of the intellect, humor, of the imagination and affections. The essence of wit is cleverness, sharpness, hawk- eyed mental cunning, the essence of humor is warmth, tenderness, love. The witty man iso- lates himself and watches like a spy in the corner while the humorist mingles with men. Wit is cold, sparkling, mercurial, subtile, volatile, elec- tric, humor is warm, genial, natural, kind, hearty, harmless. Some one has said that humor and pathos are twins. The humorist laughs through tears , but wit is never pathetic. Wit is brief, rapier-like. Humor is broad and diffusive. Wit converges to a focus, like a lens, humor distorts, multiplies like a prism. Wit is chain- lightning-dazzling, terrifying, humor is sum- mer sheet-lightning-Iiarmless and beautiful. The retort of a Boston lawyer when cross-ex- amining the plaintiff in a divorce trial: 'You wish to divorce this woman because she drinks F' 'Yes, sir.' 'Do you drink yourself ?' 'That's my business !'--angrily. 'Have you any other business? is witty, while the following account of the lack of fellow feeling on the part of a German is hu- morous: In a wild dash to catch his train a belated suburbanite went leaping up the stairs at an 'Li station, only to reach the platform just as the gates were slammed shut and the train began to move. Panting violently, and watching the de- parting train for a moment, he finally sought to elicit a little sympathy or comfort from a Ger- man bystander. Assuming an air of indiffer- ence, he remarked good-naturedly, 'I didn't quite make it l' 'Make vot ?' inquired the German, who, appar- ently, had not noticed anything unusual. 'That train.' fNo, not that, I wanted to take that train.' 'How coot you took it veu so many hat it al- retty F' 'No, no, no' texcitedlyj : 'I mean I wanted to ride on that train. but didn't get here soon enoughf just then the German's train pulled up at the station, and as he stepped through the gate he was heard to reply: 'Dot vos too bad: but how vos it any of my pizness ?' ' A form of humor that is intensely amusing and much abused is parody. A parody is a bringing of a great idea and trivial one into sudden and unexpected collision, clothed as nearly as may be in the same dress. Three conditions are neces- sary to a successful parody- it must be legiti- mately comic, it must be a skillful minicry of a well-known original that is neither too good to be above, nor too bad to be below, ridicule, and it must be brief. These three conditions are fulfilled in the amusing American parody on Moore, relating an incident we have all met with but perhaps never told so cleverly or with such an absence of temper: I never had a piece of bread Particularly good and wide, That fell not on the sanded rloor, And always on the buttered side. We laugh at a parody and yet we feel a sense of loss, of unrest. Something has been stolen from the beauty and sublimity of the poem, and ever after a vague, Pandora-like shadow will glide between us and its real meaning, an ugly, mocking, little elf will jeer at us from between the lines. VVe feel that Something beautiful is vanished, And we sigh for it in vain, We behold it everywhere, On the earth and in the air, But it never comes again l ln a way a parody is a compliment to the pop- ularity of a selection for only something very well-known can be successfully parodied. The selections most parodied are Shakespeare's To Be or Not to Be , Gray's Elegy , Moore's 'Twas Ever Thus and Believe Me , Tenny- son's 'fBrook , and Poe's Raven , VVe are all agreed that humor furnishes sup- port and consolation under the trials, vexatious, and disappointments of life, but it has other and perhaps graver uses. Emerson says that the perception of the ludicrous is a pledge of san-

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8 THE INTERLUDE our own United States. It is broad but not vul- gar, impersonal and therefore kind. The con- versation between the slangy miner and an orthodox minister in Buck' Fanshattfs Funeral is especially appreciated by Americans who are fam- ous or infamous for their slang. The miner is so thoroughly educated in it as almost to have become a foreigner to English-speaking people: 'Well, you've got the bulge on me. Or may- be we've both got the bulge, somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see one of the boys has passed in his checks, and we want to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to rout out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsomef 'My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly in- comprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them some way? At first I thought perhaps I under- stood you, but now I grope. Would it not expe- dite manners if you restricted yourself to cate- gorical statements of fact unincumbered with ob- structing accumulations of metaphor and alle- ?Y J! Equally amusing is the charming conceit of the American Specimenu. Americans are not the most modest people in the world, but we be- lieve few have quite the sang froid of the Speci- men with his breezy self-complacency which is the adolescent's idea of the well bred ease of the man of the world.liiHe had all the look of an American who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial and spell his middle name outf' We are overpowered by the gracious condescension of his address: Very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sureg very glad indeed, assure you. I've read all your little efforts and greatly admired them, and when I heard you were here, I ---.' And the irony of the closing remark: It is a great and solemn thing to have a grandfather. We have all met the woman who is afraid of lightning. O yes! The woman who wrings her hands and emits feeble little groans during the refreshing thunder-storm that we have been wish- ing for for days is, unhappily, only too familiar to us, but Mrs. McWilliams', leads not only the band of these women but her husband as well. On being told he ought to be ashamed for sleeping through a storm, Mr. McWilliams ex- claims: 'Wl1y, how can one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonableg- a man cau't be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline ?' 'You never try, Mortimer-you know very well you never try,' sobs Evangeline from the wardrobe whither she has taken refuge from thc lightning. And again, 'VVhat is that, Mortiine-r?' 'The cat.' 'The cat! Ch, destruction! Catch her, and shut her up in the washstand. Do be quick, love: cats are full of electricity. I just know my hair will turn white with this night's awful perils.' The awful perils turn out to be the booming of a cannon and the flashes of light emitted from it. So for once at least fears of a thunder-storm were groundless. The comical distress of the European guide over the seeming stolidness of the Americans is delightfully humorous : 'Ah, genteelmen, you come wis us! I show you beautiful, oh, magnificent bust Christopher Colombo! Splendid, grand, magnificent P' He brought us before the beautiful bust,-for it was beautiful,-and sprung back and struck an attitude. 'Ah, look, genteelmen l-beautiful, grand,- bust Christopher Colombo !-beautiful bust, beau- tiful pedestall' The doctor put up his eye-glass,-procured for such occasions. 'Ah,-what did you say this gentleman's name was P' 'Christopher Colombo! Ze great Christopher Colombol' 'Well, what did he do ?' 'Discover America l-discover America !-Oh, ze diable !' 'Discover America? No, that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America our- selves. Christopher Colombo !-pleasant name, -is-is he dead F' 'Oh, corpo di Baccho!-tree hundred yearl' 'What did he die of?' I do not know. I cannot tell.' Small-pox, think P' I do not know, genteelmen, I do not know what he die of.' 'Measles, likely P' 'Maybe-maybe. I do not know,-I think he die of something' 'Parents living ?' 'I m- posscebl e I' This is the true type of American humor as expressed in Mark Twain, that will make anyone laugh. And let us not smother our laughter or draw our faces to prodigious lengths. There is such a thing as taking life too seriously, and in this strenuous age of strikes and race struggles and panics we need to laugh much, for there's a true philosophy in cheering ha, ha, ha. INIYRTLE M. MCCORRISTKBN, '10. 4 A l :. -4: an-05414: yu i.. Zyl ,Q XQK ,Z remiss N TT' -W?i-fwsbie'