e this (though his mind
will not fly to it with the electric rapidity of the American's), but
the more delicate forms of this allusive style of wit will often
escape him altogether. Or, if he now begins to "jump" with an almost
American agility it is because the cleverest witticisms of the Detroit
_Free Press_ are now constantly served up to him in the comic columns
of his evening paper. We have got the length of being consumers if not
producers of this style of jest.

In its higher developments this quality of humour melts imperceptibly
into irony. This has been cultivated by the Americans with great
success--perhaps never better than in the columns of that admirable
weekly journal the _Nation_. Anyone who cares to search the files of
about eight or ten years back will find a number of ironical leaders,
which by their subtlety and wit delighted those who "caught on,"
while, on the other hand, they often deceived even the elect Americans
themselves and provoked a shower of innocently approving or
depreciatory letters.

Apart altogether from the specific difference between American and
English humour we cannot help noticing how humour penetrates and gives
savour to the _whole_ of American life. There is almost no business
too important to be smoothed over with a jest; and serio-comic
allusions may crop up amongst the most barren-looking reefs of scrip
and bargaining. It is almost impossible to imagine a governor of the
Bank of England making a joke in his official capacity, but wit is
perfected in the mouth of similar sucklings in New York. Of recent
prominent speakers in America all except Carl Schurz and George
William Curtis are professed humorists.

When Professor Boyesen, at an examination in Columbia College, set as
one of the questions, "Write an account of your life," he found that
seventeen out of thirty-two responses were in a jocular vein. Fifteen
of the seventeen students bore names that indicated American
parentage, while all but three of the non-jokers had foreign names.
Abraham Lincoln is, of course, the great example of this tendency to
introduce the element of humour into the graver concerns of life; and
his biography narrates many instances of its most happy effect. _All_
the newspapers, including the religious weeklies, have a comic column.

The tremendous seriousness with which the Englishman takes himself and
everything else is practically unknown in America; and the ponderous
machinery of comme