HUMOROUS STORIES
There are as many kinds of humorous stories as there are kinds of humor, ranging from gentle mirth, comedy, fun, and farce, to burlesque, ridicule, satire and irony. Some stories are typically humorous in their central situation, as Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”; others abound in a whole series of funny situations, as “The King of Boyville,” by William Allen White; others, again, are rich in the humorous sayings by the writer, rather than revealed in humorous plot, as in Artemus Ward’s sketch, “Horace Greeley’s Ride to Placerville”; still others put the humor into the speech of the characters, as in “The Phonograph and the Graft,” by O. Henry; while yet others exhibit two or more of the foregoing kinds, and are by turns gay, or whimsical, or satirical, as the characters and happenings may permit, mingling humor of plot with mirth of word and incident.
The two chief ingredients of humor—though for the most part it defies analysis—are surprise, and a feeling of incongruity. But these must be accompanied by no higher emotion. It would surprise us to meet the incongruous sight of a half-clad child struggling in the snow, but the vision would not be humorous—the higher emotion of pity would preclude that. But to see an arrogant fop stripped of his finery and floundering and spluttering in a snow drift into which he had been tossed, would be funny—to others.
Merely for a story to possess humor would not warrant our classing it as a humorous story, for humor is a sunny ray gleaming often through literature and life, but when the typical spirit and prevailing treatment of the story are humorous, it may properly be so entitled.