originals. Miss Repplier, however, gives to modern times the credit for
some inventiveness. Christianity, she says, must be thanked for such
contributions as the missionary and cannibal joke, and for the
interminable variations of St. Peter at the gate. Max Beerbohm once
codified all the English comic papers and found that the following list
comprised all the subjects discussed: Mothers-in-law; Hen-pecked
husbands; Twins; Old maids; Jews; Frenchmen and Germans; Italians and
Niggers; Fatness; Thinness; Long hair (in men); Baldness; Sea sickness;
Stuttering; Bloomers; Bad cheese; Red noses. A like examination of
American newspapers would perhaps result in a slightly different list.
We have, of course, our purely local jokes. Boston will always be a joke
to Chicago, the east to the west. The city girl in the country offers a
perennial source of amusement, as does the country man in the city. And
the foreigner we have always with us, to mix his Y's and J's, distort
his H's, and play havoc with the Anglo-Saxon Th. Indeed our great
American sense of humor has been explained as an outgrowth from the vast
field of incongruities offered by a developing civilization.

It may be that this vaunted national sense has been
over-estimated--exaggeration is a characteristic of that humor,
anyway--but at least it has one of the Christian virtues--it suffereth
long and is kind. Miss Repplier says that it is because we are a
"humorous rather than a witty people that we laugh for the most part
with, and not at our fellow creatures." This, I think, is something that
our fellow creatures from other lands do not always comprehend. I
listened once to a distinguished Frenchman as he addressed the students
in a western university chapel. He was evidently astounded and
embarrassed by the outbursts of laughter that greeted his mildly
humorous remarks. He even stopped to apologize for the deficiencies of
his English, deeming them the cause, and was further mystified by the