story is over. When you are assured by
the narrators that all the persons present "roared" or "simply roared,"
then you can be quite sure that the humorous incident is closed and that
laughter is in place.

Now, as a matter of fact, the scene with the darky porter may have been,
when it really happened, most amusing. But not a trace of it gets
over in the story. There is nothing but the bare assertion that it was
"screamingly funny" or "simply killing." But the English are such an
honest people that when they say this sort of thing they believe one
another and they laugh.

But, after all, why should people insist on telling funny stories at
all? Why not be content to buy the works of some really first-class
humourist and read them aloud in proper humility of mind without trying
to emulate them? Either that or talk theology.

On my own side of the Atlantic I often marvel at our extraordinary
tolerance and courtesy to one another in the matter of story-telling.
I have never seen a bad story-teller thrown forcibly out of the room or
even stopped and warned; we listen with the most wonderful patience to
the worst of narration. The story is always without any interest except
in the unknown point that will be brought in later. But this, until it
does come, is no more interesting than to-morrow's breakfast. Yet for
some reason or other we permit this story-telling habit to invade and
damage our whole social life. The English always criticise this and
think they are absolutely right. To my mind in their social life they
give the "funny story" its proper place and room and no more. That is to
say--if ten people draw their chairs in to the dinner table and somebody
really has just heard a story and wants to tell it, there is no reason
against it. If he says, "Oh, by the way, I heard a good story to-day,"
it is just as if he said, "Oh, by the way, I heard a piece of news about
John Smith." It is quite admissible as conversation. But he doesn't sit
down to try to think, along with nine other rival thinkers, of all the
stories that he had heard, and that makes all the difference.

The Scotch, by the way, resemble us in liking to tell and hear stories.
But they have their own line. They like the stories to be grim, dealing
in a jocose way with death and funerals. The story begins (will the
reader kindly turn it into Scotch pronunciation for himself), "There was
a Sandy MacDonald had died and the wife had the body all laid out for