I have sometimes wondered whether the injustice did not outweigh the humor—whether the smile excited by the humor was worth the wound inflicted by the injustice.
Habitual Humorists
The professional humorist, whether with pen, pencil, or tongue, is the victim of a false perspective. He is so intent upon his quip or quibble or jest, that he loses sight of more serious things. He does not hesitate to sacrifice even truth and justice, or the highest interest of whatever sort, for the sake of "making his point." He perhaps mistakenly believes that his reader or the person studying his caricature will regard his jest lightly and without loss of respect for the more serious things that lie behind. As a matter of fact, this rarely happens. The reader of the jest accepts it as a setting forth of truth, or at any rate is affected by it in some such fashion.
On the whole, therefore, I cannot help regarding the confirmed humorist in literature or art as a detrimental force.
I do not mean to include in this condemnation such genial literary humorists as Charles Battell Loomis, and Frank R. Stockton, and Charles Dudley Warner, who made things funny merely by looking at them with an intellectual squint that deceived nobody and misled nobody. I refer only to the habitual jokers of the newspapers and the like,—men who, for a wage, undertake to make a jest of everything that interests the popular mind, and who, for the sake of their jest, would pervert the Lord's Prayer itself to a humorous purpose. These people lose all sense of propriety, proportion, perspective, and even of morality itself. They make their jests at so much per line, and at all hazards of truth, justice, and intelligence.
In literature these mountebanks impress me as detrimental impertinents—in conversation they seem to me nuisances. I cannot forget one occasion on which the late Bishop Potter and a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court were discussing a question of the possibility of helpful reform in a certain direction. There was a humorist present—a man whose sole idea of conversation was sparkle. He insisted upon sparkling. He interrupted the gravest utterances with his puns or his plays upon words, or his references to humorous things remembered. The thing became so intolerable that some one present slipped his arms into those of the Bishop and the Judge, and led them away with the suggestion that there was a quiet corner in the club where he would like to seat them and hear the rest of their conversation. As they turned their backs on the humorist and moved away, the Bishop asked:
"What did you say the name of that mountebank is?"
The Judge replied:
"I knew at the time. I'm glad to have forgotten it."
"It is just as well," answered the Bishop. "There are many things in this life that are better forgotten than remembered."