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Show WHO DOES WRITE THE JOKES? Principally the Professional Funny Man, Which Easily Explains Their "Sad" Quality. How are jokes made? The funny bone of the American people demands a thousand new pleasantries every day. The doctors say that our diaphragms dia-phragms must be tickled or we will die. How can anybody Bit down and deliberately make up jokes that' will tickle us? The main source of newspaper joke3 Is the professional funny man. The 'unny man works in various ways. A crude beginner at the joke trade usually usual-ly opens the dictionary at random and begins to look for words to make puns on. He comes to the word "horse." That reminds him of "horse sense." So he frames the following little Johnny John-ny and teacher anecdote: "Johnny," said the teacher, "write a sentence using the words 'horse sense.'" Johnny wrote: "One night pa forgot to lock the stable and he hasn't seen his horse sense." This joke is duly published in the funny column of the metropolitan paper. pa-per. A magazine writer, seeing the story in a country paper, thinks it original and exclusive. He steals it and sells it to a weekly magazine of national circulation. From this magazine maga-zine London editors grab the little jest and it Is now afloat on the wide ocean of English language and It probably will outlive the man who wrote it. Most of the anecdotes that fill the funny columns never happened in real life. They are the brain children of some hired jester who dotes on anecdotes. anec-dotes. There is a pun, right there. The professional funny man would ponder that a minute, then perhars produce a rhyme like this: Artie chokes on artichokes And writhes about In pain; But Auntie dotes on antidotes. And soon he's well again. |