V
Much ingenuity has been expended in trying to draw a hard and fast line between qualities which are closely akin, between talent and genius, for example. We are told that “talent does what it can and genius does what it must”; and this sounds impressive, no doubt, but it does not get us any forwarder. It implies a distinction in kind which is difficult to prove. So it is with the corresponding attempts to distinguish sharply between wit and humor. We can see clearly enough that many of Sheridan’s clever things are wit, beyond all question; and we can also see that most of Molière’s clever things are humor; but there remain not a few laughter-provoking effects which it is almost impossible to classify. Perhaps some of them cannot fairly be entitled either witty or humorous; they are just funny.
In one of Charles Hoyt’s unpretending farcical comedies, all of them unhesitatingly American, new births of our new soil, there was a droll creature who found it amusing to purloin a succession of articles from a certain house, crossing the stage again and again at intervals bearing out the objects he was appropriating, the last of these being nothing less than a red-hot stove. On one of his earlier marauding expeditions he came before the audience with a huge ostrich egg in one hand and with a tiny bantam chicken in the other. He came down to the footlights and stood for a moment looking first at the egg and then at the hen, with growing amazement. Finally he said, “Well, I don’t believe it!”
Now, I cannot call the remark witty in itself, and I am not at all sure that it is humorous; but it is funny,—at least this was the unanimous opinion of the joyful audience. Equally funny was a brief scene in another of the nondescript spectacles of Weber and Fields. There was on one side of the stage, not too near the footlights, the portico of a house, over which was a ground glass globe with an electric bulb inside it. Weber and Fields came on together; and Weber remarked, as they faced the audience: “This is his house. I know it because he told me it had a white light over the door.” (For the benefit of my readers I shall spare them the dialect which intensified the flavor of the ensuing dialog.)
“A white light?” said Fields. “I didn’t see a white light.” At that moment the globe became red just as Fields turned to look at it. “That isn’t a white light,” he asserted when he again faced the audience. “It’s a red light!”
“I tell you it’s a white light. I saw it,” said Weber; and when he twisted his head to steal a glimpse of the globe it had again changed its color. “I bet you five dollars it is a white light!”
“Five dollars?” cried Fields looking over his shoulder at the light, which had then become red. “I bet you ten dollars it is a red light!”
“Ten dollars?” shouted Weber, “I—I—” Then he cautiously stole a look at the globe, which was once more innocent of any color. “I bet you fifty dollars it is a white light!”
When Fields, in his turn, looked back the globe was red, and he instantly raised his bet to a hundred dollars.
I forget how high the wager mounted at last, each of the pair feeling assured that he was betting on a certainty; but at last they had wagered all they possessed and with the stakes in their hands, they slowly revolved to gaze at the light together. But to their astonished dismay, and to the vociferous delight of the spectators, the light over the door was green!
“What can we do?” asked the saddened Weber. “We have both of us lost!”
And the saddened Fields answered, “We must throw the money away!”
What helps to make this pleasant scene even more pleasing is that the audience was never supplied with any explanation as to the cause of the changes of the color of the lights. That remains to this day a dark mystery.