full of ideas. They seemed to come to him
without any trouble."

McGann, I understand, is dead. I am not sorry for it.
Indeed, I think that for most of us the time has gone by
when we can see the fun of putting tacks on chairs, or
thistles in beds, or live snakes in people's boots.

To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good
humour is that it must be without harm and without malice.
I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of the
old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune
of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It
ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and
pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is.
When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles,
and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice
and gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the
original savage, the cream of the joke in such cases was
found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man
who went through the ice never came up again. I can
imagine a group of prehistoric men standing round the
ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their
sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric
newspaper, the affair would have headed up: "_Amusing
Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is
Drowned._"

But our sense of humour under civilisation has been
weakened. Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been
lost on us.

Children, however, still retain a large share of this
primitive sense of enjoyment.

I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls
at the side of the street and getting ready a little
store of them to use. As they worked, there came along
an old man wearing a silk hat, and belonging by appearance
to the class of "jolly old gentlemen." When he saw the
boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment.
He began waving his arms and calling, "Now, then, boys,
free shot at me! free shot!" In his gaiety he had, without
noticing it, edged himself over the sidewalk on to the
street. An express cart collided with him and knocked
him over on his back in a heap of snow. He lay there
gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and
spectacles. The boys gathered up their snow-balls and
took a run toward him. "Free shot!" they yelled. "Soak
him! Soak him!"

I repeat, however, that for me, as I suppose for most of
us, it is a prime condition of humour that it must be
without harm or malice, n