hey pass them by. Finally
they reach a small and mean dwelling in a small and mean thoroughfare.
"This," says Saint Peter, "is your habitation." "This!" cries the
indignant lady; "I could not possibly live in any place so shabby
and inadequate." "I am sorry, madame," replies the saint urbanely;
"but we have done the best we could with the materials you furnished
us."

There are no bounds to the loyalty with which mankind clings to a
well-established jest, there is no limit to the number of times a
tale will bear retelling. Occasionally we give it a fresh setting,
adorn it with fresh accessories, and present it as new-born to the
world; but this is only another indication of our affectionate
tenacity. I have heard that caustic gibe of Queen Elizabeth's anent
the bishop's lady and the bishop's wife (the Tudors had a biting wit
of their own) retold at the expense of an excellent lady, the wife
of a living American bishop; and the story of the girl who, professing
religion, gave her ear-rings to a sister, because she knew they were
taking _her_ to Hell,--a story which dates from the early Wesleyan
revivals in England,--I have heard located in Philadelphia, and
assigned to one of Mr. Torrey's evangelistic services. We still
resort, as in the days of Sheridan, to our memories for our jokes,
and to our imaginations for our facts.

Moreover, we Americans have jests of our own,--poor things for the
most part, but our own. They are current from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, they appear with commendable regularity in our newspapers
and comic journals, and they have become endeared to us by a lifetime
of intimacy. The salient characteristics of our great cities, the
accepted traditions of our mining-camps, the contrast between East
and West, the still more familiar contrast between the torpor of
Philadelphia and Brooklyn ("In the midst of life," says Mr. Oliver
Herford, "we are--in Brooklyn") and the uneasy speed of New
York,--these things furnish abundant material for everyday American
humour. There is, for example, the encounter between the Boston girl
and the Chicago girl, who, in real life, might often be taken for
each other; but who, in the American joke, are as sharply
differentiated as the Esquimo and the Hottentot. And there is the
little Boston boy who always wears spectacles, who is always named
Waldo, and who makes some innocent remark about "Literary Ethics,"
or the "Conduct of Life." We have known this little boy to