better than the defects of his kind ought to minister to the impulses within him. It is true that a close student of the case avers that while we smile at wit it is only a gross exhibition of the ridiculous that calls out laughter. Wherefore, if the author is right who claims that only man's fantastic tricks and blunders contain the elements of the ridiculous, why, then, there is nothing left for us but to laugh at what makes the angels weep in our fellowmen. Nor is there any escape from the proposition that mocking and unregenerate man must cease his laughter before much headway can be made in the uplifting of the race. When one considers, however, what a dull world would be left to man if laughter should be wiped out of it, it is utterly impossible to give the matter over to scientific analysis and moral considerations. A something not dreamed of in their philosophy must reside in these subtle springs of laughter implanted in human breasts. For one thing, despite all that may be said of their reformatory purposes in social life, it is doubtful if any true sociability could endure if society reformed its members to the extent of wiping laughter out of its ranks. There was deep sagacity in the great Frenchman's claim that he must attach himself to earth and its children by something silly, although chasing his hat, or repeating Balzac's picture of a huge animal chasing its tail, may not have been the figure that occurred to him. The significance of his position was admirably presented by a recent writer, who says: "Our souls rebel against being kept ceaselessly at any pitch, no matter how clear and sonorous the tone may be. We may admire a friend's wit and intellectual power, we may lean upon his sympathy and sound judgment, yet it is his moment of giving way to unconsidered mirth, his sudden drop to sheer nonsense, that endears him to us." And as against the claim of one writer, who says that "laughter is not an aid to progress," this friend of laughter declares that "a pretty atmosphere of fun creates a glamour where the best of us may bloom. In its mild warmth we grow and thrive, and, like the sparkle of tiny waves on a sunny day, it marks the steady progress of the tide." It is true enough that much of the great and serious work of the world has been done by serious souls, though in their very seriousness they have perchance moved the "inextinguishable laughter of the gods." It is not every pious wrestler with his earth pilgrim's progress who realizes with Bunyan that at the best many things "are of such a nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." There is, in truth, a laughter at the heart of things terrestrial which seers, if not scientists, are fain to admit, and the most serious-minded actor is liable to be caught in the tide of it. The contretemps of life have no respect for piety or vocation, and the most solemn actor is often entangled in them somewhat as Mansfield was in the tragic scene of "A Parisian Romance," when, as "Baron Chevrial," he falls dead at supper while the music and the conversation were at their height. It was the business of the doctor in the play to rise upon the scene with the solemn call, "Stop the music; the baron is dead." But, in the perversity or mischief of things, it chanced that the music was jangling out of tune, and the doctor bewildered as to his part. Hence the audience was electrified, if not convulsed, by the sonorous call, “Stop the music; it has killed the baron," and even the corpse was shadowed by an awful grin. The serio-comic, the melodramatic, is so liable to break out of the unforeseen and uncontrollable, that it seems impossible to believe that some spirit of mirth and mischief is not at the root of laughter in this whole terrestrial globe of ours. The immortal bard was surely in the secret of laughter when he put a mischievous Puck in the field to effect those slips and accidents in human pathways which "make the whole quire hold their hips and laffe." The laughter of things as well as "the tears of things" figures too deeply in this planet of ours to be wholly ignored in life's riddle. Something more than the "rigidity" of man must take part in that unexpected blast which flings a signboard or a stray fruit rind in his path, to trip him up just when he is passing the window of the elegant Charlotte. It seems best typified by that fairy, Robin Goodfellow, of nature's domain, who, as the poet explains, "leads us" and "makes us stray," And when we stick in mire and clay, Doth, with laughter (and to laughter) leave us. It may be that the angels in their proper heaven have no such tricks to entrap us for their own or our diversion. But something to take the place of merry laughter must enter into their shining sphere if the pleasure is to be complete, or the great poet and believer is right who tells us that "what we learn on earth we shall practice in heaven." A land of no laughter would certainly be a chill place to spirits tuned to laughter by all the brightest things of earth. It seems more natural to picture those heavenly courts ringing with the happy laughter of children who have found their Father's house. For, when all is said, the only laughter worth considering is that which bubbles up from some spring of joy in the heart, and the gay and innocent laughter of happy children is the sole embodiment of that. There is nothing sweeter in this old world of ours than the laughter of children. It belongs to the heaven that lies about us in our infancy and might well belong to the heaven that may dawn upon us in our angel infancy. Save when perverted by some adult influence, the laugh of the child has not one touch of that mocking or derisive character that science finds in the cachinnations of the man. The child laughs, and, perchance, claps his little hands in glee, for pure gladness, delight in his coveted toy, pleasure in his eager play or joy in the coming of some beloved idol or hero in the It is here in the child's world that the man of science must study the problem of laughter in its true nature, and he can do no better than to follow the counsel of the poet who tells him: world of men. Go learn from a little child each day, THE CURRENT DEMAND FOR AN INSPIRED MILLIONAIRE A N inspired millionaire is one of the latest dreams of the writers. That brilliant optimist, Gerald Stanley Lee, is on the track of him. He "is the next best thing that is going to happen to the world." He will not come in shoals, but as a solitary prodigy among big fishes, setting the unheard-of example of not eating up the little ones. "One will be enough. He will make the rest unhappy. They will watch him really living and doing big interesting things with his money, and they will feel bored." He is due, we are told; overdue, we should say. That nothing but inspiration can bring forth a millionaire with the modest tastes and conceptions of true living ascribed to him seems curious, but perhaps the authors know. Can any good come out of Dives? "Can a vampire's body be white?" are problems they have long been wrestling with, and if they have at last found out that it takes a Messiah to save the lost millionaire it is charity all around to make it known. Nothing short of genius, pure inspiration, on his own account, ever taught a writer to bring dreams and not sermons to bear upon the milloinaire's case. That the poor (?) wretch had troubles of his own writers have discerned aforetime. "Alas, for Dives," says one, "whom every reformer wants to reform, whom every socialist wants to strip, whom every demagogue wants to fatten on, and every promoter and philanthropist and college president and trustee of school, or hospital, or museum to 'interest.' Alas, for him. |