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Show FUNNY MEN. The man who professes to be amusing is usually such a bore that we overlook his wit when he has any. Small jokers, like great talkers, are more plague than pleasure. They worry us when we want rest, and are so afraid of our missing their point that they extinguish any possible amusement by overstating, if not by explaining it. For company, the sprightly man is better than the witty man, and the sprightly woman better than either, but who every heard of a funny woman? Yet, on the average, women greatly exceed men both in liveliness and in wit. A good joker whould have a short memory, both lest he should remember and repeat the jokes of others, and lest he should be troubled by remembering them when he repeats his own. If he has constantly to think whether he said this or that in the same company before, he will lose all the freshness which is an important element in his success. It is no doubt a mistake consciously to repeat, but when it is done unconsciously, it is of very little consequence, so long as the repetition is merely verbal. The best fun does not bear repetition or description, but vanishes when written down. All Sydney Smith's recorded jokes would not account for the great reputation he had as a wit; but it is well said of him, as of many another funny man of slighter pretensions, that after you have been in his company, you remember not so much the witty things he said, as the amount of laughing you yourself have undergone. It is here that the distinction comes which must be drawn between good things and fun. A good thing is by no means always funny, when it is funny it is often ill-natured toward somebody present, and to have a laugh at it may disturb enjoyment in its favor. The alderman complained to Coleridge that in consequence of the poet's joking he had swallowed a magnificent piece of fat without tasting it. We confess the deepest sympathy with the alderman. Could we but learn his name, it would be enshrined in the tablets of our memory. He was not stupid; he could see appoint - only too well, indeed , for his own comfort. He had come to eat, not to laugh, and he wished to be allowed to chose his own time for either pursuit. To be funny without ill-nature is not a common gift. It is but too easy to see and remark the weaknesses of other people. Many funny men have not friends because every one is afraid of them. It is their misfortune to say biting things, to wound the susceptibility of unoffending neighbors and to give nicknames which stick. To be able to suppress a joke is, in some cases, much better than to be able to make one. If a man is able to hold his tongue rather than wound, the chances are he can command his wit and be as funny as he pleases when occasion demands. Such a person is invaluable at a dull party or when others are melancholy or tired. He is able to relieve anxiety, to comfort sorrow, to brighten the wettest of days and be cheerful under the most cheerless circumstances. If he knew how to temper his wit, he may be a beneficent visitor everywhere. He must have sympathy for the sorrowful, and be able to enter into the views of people who differ widely from himself, not only in opinion and natural gifts, but in attainments and in experience. He will often find comedy and tragedy as closely allied as they are, in Shakespeare, who well knew, as indeed every true artist must know, how inseparable they are. - London Saturday Review. |