J
JARS, DAILY
It is not often the great strokes of misfortune that break men down, but the daily wear and tear of small troubles. An editor writes thus:
A huge cart-wheel lies in the gutter near our office. The cart itself has been pulled with difficulty out of the way of the trolley cars. An axle has broken. And that axle! It is fully four inches in diameter and was originally forged of soundest steel. But as you look at the fragments of it wedged in the overturned hub you discover a peculiar condition. “The steel has been crystallized,” the mechanic would explain. No sudden strain broke it, no tremendous wrench twisted the spindle from the beam. The ruin was wrought by the constant small jars of daily traffic. Rumbling over stones, bumping over crossings, scraping against curbs threw the atoms of steel in the axle out of cohesive harmony. Then came the one jar, no heavier than the others, that sent the load of coal into the street.
(1683)
Jester, The—See [Humor Overdone].
JESTING COMMENDED
It is wise to laugh, and Joe Miller is right when he says that the gravest beast is an ass, and the gravest man is a fool. This opinion of the famous jester is in accord with Plato, who is reported to have remarked to his friends, when their social enjoyment was occasionally intruded upon by the approach of some sedate wiseacre, “Silence, my friends, let us be wise now, for a fool is coming.” Other notable characters, if not themselves witty, have sought relief from the strain of serious employment by a laugh and innocent merriment. Philip of Macedon, Sylla, the Roman dictator, Queen Elizabeth, and our own Abraham Lincoln, keenly enjoyed a good joke, while Julius Cæsar, Tacitus, Erasmus, and Lord Bacon compiled jest-books. So there is high authority for jesting, and a jest is merely petrified laughter—a laugh congealed into words, so as to be passed from mouth to mouth and handed down to further generations.—Edmund Kirke, North American Review.
(1684)
JESTS, OLD