“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.
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)