Tears and Cheers.

In the words of O'Sap's fuddled fable, “a fellow fooling makes the whole world spin”; also a ladle of laughter is better than a barrel of giggle-gravy. Humour is the yeast in the bread of life.

A humorist is not necessarily a disseminator of desiccated delirium; he is a purveyor of philharmonic philosophy rather than a universal derider. To extract the “sigh” from the cider squeezed from old Adam's apple, it is necessary for him not only to see others better than they see themselves, but to see himself as he knows he is and wishes he weren't. A humorist is a ready-reckoner who subtracts the “what is” from the “what is supposed to be,” and extracts distraction from the subtraction. He socks Solemnity, puts a premium on Pretence, and alters the gears from tears to cheers.

Mark Twain wrote: “Be good and you'll be lonesome,” and he might have added, “laugh or you'll cry,” for the only thing that keeps the humorist from crying is laughing. To appreciate day one must know night, to recognise a warm heart one must experience cold feet, and to know the wisdom of mirth one must admit the futility of sorrow. Which explains why humour is often tinctured by the tar-brush of Tragedy. In truth, Tragedy and Humour are such close cobbers that it can be said with safety that often a giggle is only a sun-dried sob. Charlie Chaplin, the monarch of the movies (who has proved that silence is golden) demonstrates the use of the “smigh” which, as you know, is a smile with a sigh up its sleeve. He takes the raw pug of pathos, and moulds it into mirth—but mirth soaked in sympathy, laughter laced with love, delight denuded of derision, and jest at its best. Because Charlie lets us see him as he knows he is, and because we know that beneath our bluff we are as he shows he is, we smile the smile of sympathy. For man knows that he is a muddling and middling molecule on the cosmic cuticle, and the strain of buncoing his bank-balance and keeping the shell on his ego tells on his timbre. So, when I admit I'm a mug—which I am—you smile in sympathy, because you know you are a mug too, but have to keep it quiet for the sake of the family. Hence humour is merely Truth out for an airing and, if every man were as honest with himself as his wife thinks he is with her, there would be no humour, and humorists would have to work for their “dough” instead of “cracking” for a crust. Little Tommy Tucker sang for his supper and evidently got breakfast and lunch from the dumb waiter; but the humorist has to banter for breakfast, laugh for lunch, droll for dinner, and swing for supper—if he develops a hiatus in his humoresque; but humorists can even see humour in hunger, and the test of a humorist is the ability to produce a full flush from an empty jackpot.

The Hard Row of the Ho-Ho.

You ask, dear reader, “are humorists happy?” and the answer is “certainly not;” for, if a humorist were happy he would be too happy to be a humorist. Happy people are people who are so happy being happy that they fear to think; but a humorist has to think up ways and means of making people page 10

“There is even a titter in tootache.”

think they are laughing at someone else while in reality they are laughing at themselves. Believe us, dear reader, jesting is a serious matter, and the jester has a hard row to ho-ho. But humanity without humour would be as soggy as a sock full of damp sawdust, or a sea-pie with a leak in the lazaret. As the “sackee” said, “every billet finds its ‘bullet,’” and haply every happening has its humour. There is even drollery in dentistry, jest in geometry, a laugh in Love, some mirth in dearth, and a titter in toothache. Often the humour is difficult to detect at the time, but the person who can reckon out his attitude and wrongitude with the theodolite of thought must always admit that the joke is on him.

Gardening and Garnering.

Let us, for instance, run the gimbals over gardening. Gardening is an attempt to “get the works” on the earth-works, or a getting down to earth and waiting for something to turn up. As in two-up and other forms of tail-spinning, the uncertainty of gardening is the essence of the equation. Ma Nature, even when she is top-dressed and marceleryed, has to contend with slugs in the beds, grubs in the granny-bonnets, bugs in the spuds, beetles in the beet, and croakers in the crocuses. Even when gardening and garnering are unattached, the gardener has the consolation of knowing that his efforts constitute a kind of kindness to animals by providing grub for grubs and lunches for lepidoptera. To quote the lines of Tom Ato, the Bard of the Beanery:

When the slithery slug goes glug, glug, glug.
And the wire-worm, too, and the big black bug,
And the greedy green-fly chews and champs,
And the big black Tom of the neighbour's,
stamps
Over the beds so new and neat,
And the boozy beetle bags the beet;
When sparrows come from far to feed
On the Brussels-sprouts and the garden seed,
And the blighted blight make drooping “duds”
Of the brand new crop of spanking spuds;
When earwigs wiggle and listen-in,
While they give the spinach a spikey spin,
And every bug that flies or creeps
Or lopes or gallops or springs or leaps,
Comes round from morning till late at night,
To nip and nibble and pierce and bite;
When caterpillars and centipedes
Commit despicable dirty deeds,
And a drought comes on, and the water-man
Comes out to catch you if he can,
A'using the hose to squirt the green—
Now what would you say these omens mean?
They mean one thing, and only one—
That some stout-hearted son-of-a-gun
Has pitted his courage in generous wads,
To raise a garden against all odds;
And if he fails—as well he might—
To beat the beetles and bugs and blight,
At least he has the thought o’ nights
That he has whetted their appetites!

When the bean turns out a has-been, when the lettuce won't, when the horse-radish proves a non-starter, when the scarlet runner refuses to run, when the spring onion gets “sprung,” when the French bean goes Dutch, when the marrow's motto is “to-marrow”; when the potatoes go cock-eyed, the turnips fail to turn up, the leeks drip, the currants

“If the vacuum cleaner broadcasts the racing results.”

page 11 fuse, the carrots re-fuse, the asparagus becomes disparagus, and the curly kale turns over a new leaf and goes straight; even when all or each of these errors occur in your agricultural accountancy there still remains the fun of nursing a sick parsnip back to pars-nippiness, of crooning to a crumpled cabbage, or sitting by the bed of a restless radish.

The Fie in Finance.

But even Finance has its merry moments when its L. S. Deceit is hamstrung by Humour. Finance might be described as a mythematical means of putting two and two together and making them six. There are two varieties of finance—high finance and low finance. High finance is a method of removing everything from the masses except their confidence. The process is so complex that the victims are never quite sure whether they are getting the count or only taking it. Their account is called a Suspense Account because suspense is what they get most of. High Finance abounds mostly in America, also known gee-o-graphically as U-say, Sez-U and You're-tellin'-me. There the science is so scienterrific that it is possible to reach the highest notes without going to Sing Sing. Frenzied Finance is High Finance doing a tale-spin or duping the “goop.”

Low Finance is a home industry or a domestic science consisting of making both ends meet without end. Low Finance makes the best of everything, while High Finance takes everything of the best. But one thing which both High and Low Finance can share is Summer; for Summer is a “free for all” rather than a fee for “gall.”

The Simmer of Summer.

Summer is Nature with the sun in her eyes and the skin off her nose. There is a simmer

The Summer Time Bill

in Summer and a careless air in the air, so that no one cares whether the gas meter brings out a brood of football bladders or the vacuum cleaner broadcasts the racing results. The glow of Sol's bright optic is reflected on the sundials of the seasiders, and the peels of the beach-belles ring when touched. The city calls to the country and the country answers in the affarmative. The business man sheds his mercantile maroon and goes down to the sea in slips. The typiste, true to type, abandons Pitmans for petmans. The great out-of-doors has turned the key on Care and the cry of the cashregister is lost in the sigh of the surf. For summer symbolises sentiment and Eros is on the air. Summer is summarily summed up in the Song of the Sand-piper:

Oh there's nothing rummer
Than the season of summer.
It makes one feel feckless—
Regardless and reckless—
In shorts, it's the season
Of unbalanced reason,
Of sunning and seizing
The things that are pleasing.
The sun on the torso
Is soothing—and more so—
And ain't it just “hummer,”
This season of summer!
The sandflies that bite us,
The things that invite us
To fill up the billy
And feed willy-nilly.
All winter we've waited
With hope unabated
For just such a “trimmer” —
A sizzling simmer.
So here's to the season
That relegates Reason,
Delight's master-mummer—
The season of Summer!