and the humorists must be classified at once with the thinkers.

If one were asked to go further than this and to give offhand a
definition of humor, or of that elusive quality, a sense of humor, he
might find himself confronted with a difficulty. Yet certain things
about it would be patent at the outset: Women haven't it; Englishmen
haven't it; it is the chiefest of the virtues, for tho a man speak with
the tongues of men and of angels, if he have not humor we will have none
of him. Women may continue to laugh over those innocent and innocuous
incidents which they find amusing; may continue to write the most
delightful of stories and essays--consider Jane Austen and our own Miss
Repplier--over which appreciative readers may continue to chuckle;
Englishmen may continue, as in the past to produce the most exquisite of
the world's humorous literature--think of Charles Lamb--yet the
fundamental faith of mankind will remain unshaken: women have no sense
of humor, and an Englishman cannot see a joke! And the ability to "see a
joke" is the infallible American test of the sense of humor.

But taking the matter seriously, how would one define humor? When in
doubt, consult the dictionary, is, as always, an excellent motto, and,
following it, we find that our trustworthy friend, Noah Webster, does
not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is
"the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating
ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations,
happenings, or acts," with the added information that it is
distinguished from wit as "less purely intellectual and having more
kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos." A
friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute
more lightly as "a facetious turn of thought," or more specifically in
literature, as "a sportive exercise of the imagination that is apparent