And one doesn't dare NOT to laugh, does one?
It's really quite unfair and unkind sometimes!
Don't you think so?
We took up a volume on The Analysis of Humor one winter — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — and read it completely through, and before the winter was over it got so there wasn't a one of us that dared NOT to laugh at anything any other one said and — well, it got rather ghastly before spring. Because even if someone wanted to know if a person needed an umbrella someone else would laugh.
Well, I must be going now. I have a committee meeting at three this afternoon. We're going in for this one-day Women's Strike, you know — our little group is.
VOKE EASELEY AND HIS NEW ART
FOR my acquaintance with Voke Easeley — —
(Hermione's reporter, and not Hermione herself, is speaking now.) — —
For my acquaintance with Voke Easeley and his new art, I am indebted to Fothergil Finch.
Fothergil is a kind of genius hound. He scurries sleuthing around the town ever on the scent of something queer and caviar. He is well trained and never kills what he catches himself; he takes it to Hermione; and after Hermione has tired of it I am at liberty to do what I please with it.
The most remarkable thing about Voke Easeley at a casual glance is his Adam's apple. It is not only the largest Adam's apple I have ever seen, and the hardest looking one, and the most active one, but it is also the most intelligent looking one. Voke Easeley's face expresses very little. His eyes are small and full and green. His mouth, while large, misses significance. His nose, indeed, is big; but it is mild; it is a tame nose; one feels no more character in it than in a false nose. His chin and forehead retreat ingloriously from the battle of life.
But all the personality which his eyes should show, all the force which should dwell in his nose, all the temperamental qualities that should reveal themselves in his mouth and chin, all the genius which should illumine his brow — these dwell within his Adam's apple. The man has run entirely to that feature; his moods, his emotions, his thoughts, his passions, his appetites, his beliefs, his doubts, his hopes, his fears, his resolves, his despairs, his defeats, his exaltations — all, all make themselves known subtly in the eccentric motions of that unusual Adam's apple.