d his diabolical jeers drumming on my tympana. In dreams he
perches on my breast, and clutches me by the throat.

"Like the arch fiend, he assumes many shapes. He is now a tall man, and
again a short man; sometimes young and audacious, sometimes old and
leering. He only once took a feminine guise: that blessed form was
irksome to him. He prefers the freedom of masculinity and ineffables. He
was once a bookkeeper like myself; then a young attorney; then a medical
student; then a bald-headed old gentleman, who seemed to blow a
flageolet for a living; and lately, he has taken the shape of a
well-to-do President of 'The Arkansas and Arizona Sky Rocket
Transportation Company,' but through all these shifting shapes, I
recognize him and shudder.

"He is known as the Funny Fellow.

"Very glorious are wit and humor. I have heard many eminent lecturers
discourse on the distinctions, definitions, and value of these airy good
gifts. I remember being especially edified by the skill with which
Spout, the eloquent, dissected the philosophy of mirth in the same style
and with the same effect that the boy in the story dissected his
grandmamma's bellows to see how the wind was raised. I agree with Spout
that wit and humor are glorious; that satire, pricking the balloons of
conceit, vain glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can
come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than
the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in
literature. We all love the kindly humorist from Chaucer to Holmes,
inclusive. How genial and gentle they are, as they sit with us around
the fireside, chucking us under the chins, and slyly poking us in the
ribs; and in the field how nobly they have charged upon humbugs and
shams. They have been true knights, chivalrous, kind-hearted, brave,
religious; their spears are slender, perhaps, yet sharp and elastic as
the blades of Toledo; and as they have galloped up and down in the
lists, gaily caparisoned and cheery, it has done our hearts good to see
how they have hurled into the dust the pompous, sleepy champions of
error and hypocrisy.

"So too, consider how pleasant a thing is mirth on the stage. Who does
not thank William the Great for Falstaff, and Hackett for his
personation of the fat knight? Who does not chuckle over the humors of
Autolycus, rogue and peddler? Who has not felt his eye glisten, as his
lips smiled, when Jesse Rural has spoken, and