Like some in the advertising line,
To magnify sounds on such marvelous scales
That the sounds of a cod seem as large as a whale’s.
There was Mrs. F.
So very deaf
That she might have worn a percussion-cap
And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap.
Well, I sold her a horn; and the very next day
She heard from her husband in Botany Bay.”
Is that last line wit or humor? It is a play on a word, no doubt, and that would relate it to wit. But it has the imaginative exaggeration that we are wont to associate with humor. Lowell noted that we find it natural to speak of the breadth of humor, while wit, by the necessity of its being, is “as narrow as a flash of lightning, and as sudden.” Humor has also its unexpectedness, and while most good puns must be classed as specimens of wit, some few transcendent examples may fairly claim to be specimens of humor—that last line of Hood’s, for example. Many other instances might be advanced. A very distinguished British scientist had the foible of inventing thrilling episodes in his own autobiography; and on one occasion after he had spun a most marvelous yarn, with himself in the center of the coil, a skeptical friend looked him in the eye and asked sternly, “Clifford, do you mean to say that this really occurred to you?” Whereupon the imaginative man of science laughed lightly and with a most imperturable assurance calmly answered, “Yes—it just occurred to me!”