VI
This may not be witty, and it may even not be humorous, but it was funny. It provoked incessant laughter in its progress to its apex, which was greeted with uncontrollable roars. And laughter, like that, clean and simple and honest, is a thing to be thankful for. It is what Artemus Ward called “a sweet, sweet boon.” It needs no apology and no explanation; it is its own excuse for being,—even if it resists classification. It is wholesome and hygienic; and as Henry Ward Beecher declared, “Whoever and wherever and however situated a man is, he must watch three things,—sleeping, digestion and laughing. They are three indispensable necessities.”
(1919)
XII
THE “OLD COMEDIES”