one paper about something altogether new," I said to myself;
"something that nobody else has ever written or talked about before; and
then I can have it all my own way." And I went about for days, trying to
think of something of this kind; and I couldn't. And Mrs. Cutting, our
charwoman, came yesterday--I don't mind mentioning her name, because I
know she will not see this book. She would not look at such a frivolous
publication. She never reads anything but the Bible and _Lloyd's Weekly
News_. All other literature she considers unnecessary and sinful.

She said: "Lor', sir, you do look worried."

I said: "Mrs. Cutting, I am trying to think of a subject the discussion
of which will come upon the world in the nature of a startler--some
subject upon which no previous human being has ever said a word--some
subject that will attract by its novelty, invigorate by its surprising
freshness."

She laughed and said I was a funny gentleman.

That's my luck again. When I make serious observations people chuckle;
when I attempt a joke nobody sees it. I had a beautiful one last week.
I thought it so good, and I worked it up and brought it in artfully at
a dinner-party. I forget how exactly, but we had been talking about the
attitude of Shakespeare toward the Reformation, and I said something and
immediately added, "Ah, that reminds me; such a funny thing happened the
other day in Whitechapel." "Oh," said they, "what was that?" "Oh, 'twas
awfully funny," I replied, beginning to giggle myself; "it will make you
roar;" and I told it them.

There was dead silence when I finished--it was one of those long jokes,
too--and then, at last, somebody said: "And that was the joke?"

I assured them that it was, and they were very polite and took my word
for it. All but one old gentleman at the other end of the table, who
wanted to know which was the joke--what he said to her or what she said
to him; and we argued it out.

Some people are too much the other way. I knew a fellow once whose
natural tendency to laugh at everything was so strong that if you wanted
to talk seriously to him, you had to explain beforehand that what you
were going to say would not be amusing. Unless you got him to clearly
understand this, he would go off into fits of merriment over every word
you uttered. I have known him on being asked the time stop short in the
middle of the road, slap his leg, and burst into a roar of laughter.
One never dared say anything real