l Holmes will say of
metaphysics that it is like "splitting a log; when you have done, you
have two more to split." A poster long used by the comedians Crane and
Robson represented these popular favourites in the guise of the two
lowermost cherubs in the Sistine Madonna. Bill Nye's assertion that
"the peculiarity of classical music is that it is so much better than
it sounds" is typical of a whole battalion of quips. Scenery, even
when associated with poetry, fares no better. The advertising fiend
who defaces the most picturesque rocks with his atrocious
announcements is, perhaps, hardly entitled to the name of humorist;
but the man who affixed the name of Minniegiggle to a small fall near
the famous Minnehaha evidently thought himself one. So, doubtless, did
one of my predecessors in a dressing-cabin at Niagara, who had
inscribed on its walls:

"Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered!
But the man who desc_i_nds
Through the Cave of the Winds
Can give points to the noble six hundred."

Of the extravagant exaggeration of American humour it is hardly
necessary to give examples. This, to the ordinary observer, has
perhaps been always its salient feature; and stock examples will occur
to everyone. It is easy to see how readily this form of humour can be
abused, and as a matter of fact it is abused daily and hourly. Many
would-be American humorists fail entirely to see that exaggeration
_alone_ is not necessarily funny.

To illustrate: the story of the woman who described the suddenness of
the American cyclone by saying that, as she looked up from her
gardening, "she saw the air black with her intimate friends," seems to
me a thoroughly humorous application of the exaggeration principle.
So, too, is the description of a man so terribly thin that he never
could tell whether he had the stomach-ache or the lumbago. But the
jester who expects you to laugh at the tale of the fish that was so
large that the water of the lake subsided two feet when it was drawn
ashore simply does not know where humour ends and drivelling idiocy
begins.

The dry suggestiveness of American humour is also a well-known
feature. In its crudest phase it assumes such forms as the following:
"Mrs. William Hankins lighted her fire with coal oil on February 23.
Her clothes fit the present Mrs. Hankins to a T." The ordinary
Englishman will see the point of a jest lik