e lost; inspiration would die upon one's lips--the
basilisk isn't in it with him.

Personally, I no sooner see the man with the big face than instinctively
I turn my eyes away. I look round the hall for another man that I know
is always there, the opposite type, the little man with the spectacles.
There he sits, good soul, about twelve rows back, his large spectacles
beaming with appreciation and his quick face anticipating every point.
I imagine him to be by trade a minor journalist or himself a writer of
sorts, but with not enough of success to have spoiled him.

There are other people always there, too. There is the old lady who
thinks the lecture improper; it doesn't matter how moral it is, she's
out for impropriety and she can find it anywhere. Then there is another
very terrible man against whom all American lecturers in England should
be warned--the man who is leaving on the 9 P.M. train. English railways
running into suburbs and near-by towns have a schedule which is
expressly arranged to have the principal train leave before the lecture
ends. Hence the 9-P.M.-train man. He sits right near the front, and
at ten minutes to nine he gathers up his hat, coat, and umbrella very
deliberately, rises with great calm, and walks firmly away. His air is
that of a man who has stood all that he can and can bear no more. Till
one knows about this man, and the others who rise after him, it is very
disconcerting; at first I thought I must have said something to reflect
upon the royal family. But presently the lecturer gets to understand
that it is only the nine-o'clock train and that all the audience know
about it. Then it's all right. It's just like the people rising and
stretching themselves after the seventh innings in baseball.

In all that goes above I have been emphasising the fact that the British
and the American sense of humour are essentially the same thing.
But there are, of course, peculiar differences of form and peculiar
preferences of material that often make them seem to diverge widely.

By this I mean that each community has, within limits, its own
particular ways of being funny and its own particular conception of a
joke. Thus, a Scotchman likes best a joke which he has all to himself
or which he shares reluctantly with a few; the thing is too rich to
distribute. The American loves particularly as his line of joke an
anecdote with the point all concentrated at the end and exploding in a
phrase. The Englishm