A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.
Printed in the United States of America
To
Three of the Best Story-Tellers I Know:
ROBERT H. DAVIS SAMUEL G. BLYTHE
HAL S. CORBETT
FOREWORD
The anecdotal form of humor is largely, I think, a native institution. Americans did not invent or discover the short humorous story, it is true. Indeed, some short stories still are making their rounds which were old when the Pyramids were young. Probably the piper who piped before Moses rounded out his act with one of the standard jokes of the period—a joke which, dressed in new clothes, is doing duty somewhere to-day. The mother-in-law joke could not have originated with Adam, because Adam had no mother-in-law, but I have not the slightest doubt that Cain began using it shortly after his marriage. And beyond peradventure Father Noah wiled away many a dragging half hour in the Ark by telling Shem, Ham and Japhet one of the ones which begin: “It seems there were two Irishmen named Pat and Mike. And Pat said to Mike, ‘Faith, an’ be jabers!—’ ”