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Show ! THS WORLD JOKES IN IRELAND. Irish Humor From the Viewpoint of a Traveler. In Ireland the whole world joks and the responsiveness is Ac iieious, writes Katharine Tynan in the New York 1 Sun. In England you have learned a sober demeanor. As soon as the first velvet breath of Irish air blows on your face you begin to rollick. Lunching at a Dublin restaurant a friend of ours of an impassivclv dry demeanor tried a Joke rn the waHer. When the bill was brought lie placed on it a bright new farthinir nud wert on talking to us, apparently unconscious of his mistake. The waiter stood by patiently pa-tiently till there was a pause in the conversation. "1 beg your pardon, sir," he said, i "but have you no smaller change?" The Irishman's wit is humor as well as wit, and humor is own sister to wisdom. wis-dom. No true Irishman' is ever guilty of punning, that dreariest of all forms of fun. The Irish humor is a rich humor. It is found at its best in the Irish-American "Mr. Dooley." Mr. Dooley is at least as great a philosopher as he is a wit. and in both capacities I salute him as one of the immortals. It is this quality of humor that makes the Irish life so gay, so varied, so be-wildcringly be-wildcringly pleasant. It is this, quality which makes material pleasures count for very little in the ordinary Irish life. An Irishman will not think of his dinner so iong as he is hearing good stories. He may be buttonholed in the street on his way to dinner and forget all about the meal. They live by, enjoyment enjoy-ment as well as by food over there; I and an Irishman does not care when he dines. It is when he is ready, if it is a matter mat-ter of the public restaurant: when-the dinner is ready, if he is at home. I have been asked to dine at a Dublin house, and have arrived at the door with the materials for the dinner: and T have been punctual for lunch at 1:30. according to the card, and have been received by half a dozen dogs who sat around in chairs and entertained me. while a maid, looking as though I had come with the milk in the morning, came in to light the fire and informed me that the mistress was lying down with the toothache. The next guest arrived ar-rived at 2:45, and lunch was on the table ta-ble at 3. What matter? One grows accustomed 1o the want of punctuality in time; and the meal is worth having when it comes, for it is seasoned with gayety. . They may or may not make big fortunes for-tunes over there, but life is worth living. liv-ing. It is true that they are no students, stu-dents, no lovers of books in these latter lat-ter days. They claim for themselves that they arc connoisseurs of all the rfrts: but I doubt it. What do they want with books: seeing see-ing how delightful is the page of life? They are not restful enough for quiet contemplation of the arts. ' Every man Is his own and his fellows' book and picture. It is the slower, more contemplative con-templative races that are. hi the right sense of the word, amateurs of the aits. They will not even wrile their humor down. If they did, what a library of humor they might m?ke: It s something some-thing too instant, too evanescent, too much of the time and the occasion for cold writing down. Everywhere men congregate in Ireland Ire-land is a center of wit and humor. It invades the learned professions and those whom age might have staled to laughter. The Four Courts library "n Dublin is one of the places whence the good stories emanate. The wits of Dublin, within my memory, have been Baron Dowse, a judge: Lord Morris of Spidal, also a judge; Father Healy, a priest: Dr. Nedley, a surgeon. All these are gone. M-ist hanpily, Richard Adams, county court judge, yet remains. And, to be sure, the vacant va-cant places have been filled. Eve-i politics has not made the Jri.vh sad; and there is no tax on laughter. When you set out to tell good Stories from Ireland they jostle each other so in your memory that you hardly know r , ..... vy. .-r TTj which to select. I will put down a few haphazard. , A friend of mine who was very enthusiastic en-thusiastic about things Irish, herself being an Englishwoman, was driving on an outside car in Dublin. She was praising everything to the carman, and among the rest the famous Dublin stout with which she has just become acquainted. "What an excellent drink it i," she said. "why. it's meat and drink, too." "Thrue for you, ma'am," replied the car driver, "an" a night's lodgin", too, if you only drink enough of it." Another story was told by a leading Dublin teetotaler who had taken no pledge against a joke. A well known Dublin citizen, also prominent on the temperance platforms in Dublin, was addressing a crowded meeting and arguing ar-guing against the assumption that stimulants were necessary to health. "Look at me, boys," he said. "Here I am, 80 years old. I've been a total abstainer all my life, and could you see any man of 80 healthier than I am?" "Yorra, Mr. B.," said a voice in the crowd, "if you'd taken your glass like a man 'tis a hundred j-ou'd have been by now." The beggars are chartered wits in Ireland and occasionally the wit stiYigs unless one has the sense of humor to laugh with it. "May the blessing of God go after you," says the beggar with outstretched hand, and when you have passed without giving any alms. "and never overtake you." Again the Dublin carman when he has received an insufficient fare, looks at the coin in the palm of his hand, as 'is the way of his brethren elsewhere. "Ah, well, sir," more in sorrow than in anger, "I leave you to him that made you," Another on a similar occasion said heartily: "Arrah, bad luck to tne Land League." "But why?" asked the astonished ', passenger. "Yerra, sure it killed out all the gentry." ; In another case a friend of mine, a small man who was walking with his tall sister, was importuned by a beg- gar, but gave nothing. The beggar mis- ' took the relationship and got home ' neatly on the two by remarking sotto voce: "Ah. well. then, may God help the poor little creature that couldn't say : no to you." "There goes high art." remarked a i Wexford beggar, as a very tall friend i of mine with sketching apparatus passed down the street. The beggar's wit is not always vituperative. vitu-perative. One asked another of an el- derly person who passed by with a i jubilant air: jj "What's come to the ould gentleman f, at all. at all?" S "Sure, didn't you hear? He was mar- l! ried last week." "I thought there was something when C I seen him goin along like that, just touchin' the ground in an odd place." In another case my sister was im- J portuned by a female tinker, i. e., a f gypsy, with three children. Further on e she met the lady's mate with three p more. S "Our mother's dead. Miss, an' we're orphans," whine the children; "give F a penny to the orphans." My sister, young and dogmatic, fixed r an accusing glance on the "orphans." "I don't believe you are orphans," she said. "I met your mother farther down the road." t "Come away, childher, come away," 9 said the father, sorrowfully. "She's an S unbeliever." This, however, belongs ! mere to pure roguery than to wit. and E there's a deal of sly roguery in Ireland. M Sometimes the wit is in the form of a H compliment. One remembers the fa- Ij mous compliment paid "to one of the it Gunnings by a Dublin coal porter. H "Look at her. look at her! I could light 9 my pipe at the fire of her eye." Only 9 f.n Irishman could have taid to a lady: "Well, I don't know your ag, but sure, 3 whatever you are, you don't look it." j There is the conscious humor in Ire- J land, but there is also the unconscious, 3 or at least the subconscious, which is as much a part of Ireland as her green- m r.ess and her clouds. One remembers vi the host at the courtly hotel, who, when an angry English guest informed him that he had put his boots outside his bedroom door eYery night of the week and they had never been touched, 3 replied blandly: !s "Sure, that's nothing at all. We're the honestest people in the world in this country. You might lave your goold watch there, an' it'd never be touched, let alone your boots." Again there is the answer a Dublin car driver made to a friend of fine who asked how many the car was supposed sup-posed to hold. "Well, four if you sit contagious and six if you sit familiar." Humor, conscious or vnconscious, is a thing that meets you everywhere in Ireland. The sly and innocent, appealing appeal-ing roguery is a thing that meets you on all sides: the topsy-turvines. the quaintntss, the odd. unexpected way of looking at things, are the very essence of gayety in the country. It is in the face and the speech of every peasant: it looks at you from the eyes of the townsfolk. It makes a crowd anywhere a thing of life and gayety, electric with laughter, responsive respon-sive to everything but dullness. That must have been the snake which St. Patrick scotched, for it is not to be found from end to end of at least Irish Ireland. In a land where they are all raconteurs, racon-teurs, the wonder is that there are any listeners. It must only be by a generous gen-erous system of reciprocity. Even when ! they blunder th?y blunder "wittily, and ' that makes the difference between an Irish blunder and the blunders of other nronles. and accounts for the so-called , Irish bull The Irish bull often contains an ellin- j sis. like that one of the gentleman who ' said it would be better to be a coward ! for five m'nutcs than to be dead all your life. Even when it is a blunder it is not stupid. It provokes good laughter. |