The school inspector was dining with the local squire.
"Funny thing happened in the village school to-day," he said. "I was a little bit ratty, and I fired a question at a sleepy-looking boy at the bottom of the class.
"Here, boy, who wrote Hamlet?"
The little chap got very flustered.
"P—please, sir, it wasna me!"
The squire laughed boisterously.
"And I suppose the little devil had done if after all!" he cried.
We laugh at that story because we have all made mistakes owing to ignorance, and blushed for them a hundred times later. When we laugh at the squire, we are really laughing at ourselves; we are getting rid of our pent-up self-shame. That's why a good laugh is a medicine; it allows us to get rid of psychic poison, just as a good sweat rids us of somatic poison. Charlie Chaplin has possibly cured more people than all the psycho-analysts in the world.
* * * * *
Public speaking is a most difficult thing. It is difficult enough when you know your subject, and it is almost impossible if you don't. At a dinner someone asks you to get up and propose the health of the ladies. I tried proposing that toast once; luckily most of the diners were under the table by that time. What can one say about the ladies?