SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF JOKES.
I.—THE “JOKAL CALENDAR.”
Every joke has its appropriate season. The true humorist—one who finds comedy in everything—gathers his ideas from what goes on about him, and by a subtle alchemy of his own distils from them jokes suitable to the changing seasons. The only laws to which childhood willingly yields obedience are those unwritten statutes which compel the proper observance of “trap-time,” “kite-time,” and “marble-time.” So even must the humorist recognize the different periods allotted respectively to goats, stovepipes, ice-cream, and other foundations of merriment.
The Jokal Calendar begins in the early summer, when girls are leading young men into ice-cream saloons, and keepers of summer resorts are preparing new swindles for their guests. Soon the farmer will gather in his crop of summer boarders; the city fisherman will entangle his patent flies in the branches of lofty trees, while the country lad catches all the trout with a worm. Then the irate father and the bulldog will drive the lover from the front gate, while married men who remain in the city during their wives’ absence play poker until early morn and take grass-widows to Coney Island. About this time the chronicler of humor goes into the country, whence he will return in the early fall with a fresh stock of ideas, gathered in the village store, at the farm-house table, and by the shores of the sounding sea.
Beginning his autumn labors with the scent of the hay-fields in his nostrils, and the swaying boughs of the pine forest still whispering in his ears, the humorist offers a few dainty paragraphs on the simple joys of rural life. The farmer who dines in his shirt-sleeves, the antiquity of the spring fowl, the translucent milk, and the saline qualities of the pork which grace the table; the city man who essays to milk the cow, and the country deacon who has been “daown to York”—all these are sketched with vivid pen for the delectation of his readers. But it must be remembered that these subjects have been used during the whole summer; and the humorist, after his return to the city, can offer, at the best, but an aftermath of farm-house fun. If it be a late fall the public may slide along on banana and orange peel jokes until the first cold snap warns housekeepers of the necessity of putting up stovepipes. (Note.—About this time print paragraph of gas-company charging a man for gas while his house was closed for the summer. Allusions to the extortions of gas-companies are always welcome.)
Stovepipe jokes must be touched upon lightly, for the annual spring house-cleaning will bring the pipes down again, six months later, to the accompaniment of cold dinners, itinerant pails of hot soap-suds, and other miseries incident to that domestic event.
And now that the family stovepipe has ceased to exude smoke at every joint and pore, the humorist finds himself fairly equipped for his year’s work. The boys are at school; lodge-meetings have begun, and sleepless wives are waiting for their truant lords; college graduates are seeking positions in newspaper offices (and sometimes getting and keeping them, though it won’t do to let the public know it); election is at hand, and candidates are kissing babies and setting up the drinks for their constituents; young men of slender means are laying pipes for thicker clothes—in short, a man must be dull of wit who cannot find food for comic paragraphs in what goes on about him at this fruitful season. The ripening of the chestnut-burr, and the harvesting of its fruit—beautifully symbolical of the humorist’s vocation—form another admirable topic at this time.
Winter comes with its snow and ice, and the small boy, who is always around, moulds the one into balls for destructive warfare, while corpulent gentlemen and pedestrians bearing eggs and other fragile articles slip and fall on the other. Oyster-stews, and girls who pine for them; the female craving for matinee tickets, and the high hats which obstruct the view of those in the back seats; nocturnal revelry in saloon and ball-room; low-necked dresses; and the extortionate idleness of the plumber now keep the pen of the comic writer constantly at work. Chapters on the pawning, borrowing, lending, and renovation of the dress-coat are also timely.