ght
they might direct the reader to the subject wanted.

With these few explanatory words, the editor presents this little
volume, sincerely hoping that it may prove a friend in need to all who
seek the relaxation of humor, and a lifesaver to that legion of
humble men whose knees tremble when the chairman speaks those fateful
words--"The next speaker of the evening...."

M.D.M.

November, 1922.

INTRODUCTION

What can be more fitting than that a compiled book should have a
compiled introduction? Why should one with great pains and poor
prospects of success attempt to do what has already been well done?
Knowing that all readers of this book have a sense of humor and that
they will approve our decision we begin with a quotation from an
article[1] by Mr. E. Lyttelton.

[Footnote 1: The Nineteenth Century. July, 1922.]

The Divine Gift of Humor

The subject of humor has an attraction peculiarly its own,
because it deals with a mystery which yet is pleasantly
interwoven with the daily life of each one of us. We often say
of one of our neighbors that he has no sense of humour. But he
often laughs; he never spends a day without at least trying to
laugh, tho it remains but an attempt, an effort, an aspiration
after something which he seems to have lost but wishes to
recover. Either, that is, he remains grave when others laugh,
or he laughs, as Horace says, "with alien jaws," by constraint
rather than because he cannot help it. He has a confused idea
that it is expected of him. Such laughter is apparently the
outcome of an uneasy sense of duty, a dismal travesty of the
real thing....

Certainly humour is a singularly elusive thing, and I doubt
if anyone alive can explain it; but its elusiveness gives it
something of its charm; and, moreover, the illustrations which
are necessary to an inquiry into its nature, its scope and
meaning, are apt to be amusing without being irrelevant.

Humour has often been roughly described as a sense of the
incongruous. More satisfying, however, is the following, which
has been ascribed to Dean Inge: It is a sense of incongruous
emotions. As soon as we think of the emotions being stirred
we see that the strange difference between humourous and
unhumourous people is not an intellectual matter, but follows
the general law of emotional susceptibility, viz., that it is
in