The Sunny Side of the Street

by Marshall P. Wilder

All these jesters are said to have been little people. I am doubly qualified to claim relationship with them, for I am only three and a half feet high, and I have been jester to millions of sovereigns—that is, to millions of the sovereign American people, as well as to some foreign royalties.

The reason for little people taking naturally to sunshine and good-natured joking is not hard to find, for it is a simple case of Hobson’s choice. It is easier to knock a man out with a joke than with a fist-blow, especially if you haven’t much height and weight behind your fist. It is the better way, too, for the joke doesn’t hurt. Instead of the other man’s going in search of an arnica bottle or a pistol or a policeman, he generally hangs about with the hope of getting another blow of the same sort. One needn’t be little to try it. Abraham Lincoln had a fist almost as big as the hand of Providence, and as long a reach as John L. Sullivan, but he always used a joke instead, so men who came to growl remained to laugh. I’m not concerned about the size of my own hand, for it has been big enough to get and keep everything that belonged to me. As to reach, as long as my jests reach their mark I shan’t take the trouble to measure arms with any one.

It is a Simple Case of Hobson’s Choice.

There’s always something in a jest—for the man who hears it. How about the jester? Well, he is easily satisfied. Most men want the earth, so they get the bad as well as the good, but the best that the world affords is good enough for the jester, so I shan’t try to break the record. It is often said that the jester swims near the top. Why shouldn’t he? Isn’t that where the cream is? And isn’t he generous enough to leave the skimmed milk for the chaps dismal enough to prefer to swim at the bottom?

I am often moved to pride when I realize how ancient is my craft. Adam did not have a jester; but he did not need one, for he was the only man—except you and I—who married the only woman in the world. Neither did old Noah have or need one, for he had the laugh on everybody else when the floods fell and he found himself in out of the rain. But as soon as the world dried out and got full enough of people to set up kings in business, the jester appears in history, and the nations without jesters to keep kings’ minds in good-working order dropped out of the procession. The only one of them that survives is Persia, where John the Jester is, as he always was, in high favor at court. When trouble is in the air he merely winks at the Shah and gets off: “Oh, Pshaw!” or some other bon mot old enough to be sweet; then the monarch doubles up and laughs the frown from his face, and the headsman sheathes his sword and takes a day off.

Speaking of old saws that are always welcome reminds me to protest against the unthinking persons who cry “Chestnut!” against every joke that is not newly coined. In one way it is a compliment, for the chestnut is the sweetest nut that grows; but it does not reach perfection until it has had many soakings and frosts, and has been kicked about under the dead leaves so many times that if it was anything except a chestnut it would have been lost. Good stories are like good principles: the older they are, the stronger their pull.

There is not a more popular tale in the world than that of Cinderella. It is so good that nations have almost fought for the honor of originating it. Yet a few years ago some antiquarians dug some inscribed clay tablets from the ruins of an Asiatic city that was centuries old when Noah was a boy. Some sharps at that sort of thing began to decipher them, and suddenly they came upon the story of Cinderella—her golden slipper, fairy godmother, princely lover and all. But do children say “Chestnut!” if you give them this, and then tell them the story of Cinderella? Not they!—unless you don’t know how to tell it. A story is like food: it doesn’t matter how familiar it is, if you know how to serve it well.

Why, the story-teller, of the same old stories, too, is as busy in Persia to-day as he was thousands of years ago, and one of the most important of his duties is the passing of the hat. You will find him on the street corners of the towns with a crowd about him. When he reaches the most interesting part of the story he will stop, like the newspaper serial with “To be continued in our next.” Then he passes his fez. The listeners know well what the remainder of the story will be; but instead of “Chestnut!” he hears the melodious clink of coppers.

Not only the Shah, but many a wealthy Persian keeps a jester for the sole purpose of being made to laugh when he feels dull. Some of the antics of these chaps would not seem funny to an American—such, for instance, as going about on all fours, knocking people down and dressing in fantastic attire—but there is no accounting for tastes, as the old woman said when she kissed the cow. The Shah’s jester has a great swing—he has twelve houses, and not a mortgage on one of them. He also has all the wives he wants. Who says that talent is not properly appreciated in Persia?