nature bestowed on all, but in widely varying measure, so
that in the case of some of our acquaintance we deplore its
non-existence, but never in ourselves. Nobody really believes
that he is wholly without it, partly because, in proportion as
the sense is really defective, the defect must be in its own
nature unperceived, but also because the gift is so precious,
so winsome, that no one could bear to believe that it has
been denied him. By a merciful law of nature, the delusion is
unsuspected, for assuredly, if any wholly unhumorous person
once realised the full extent of his privation, nothing could
save him from "wretchlessness" and despair.

I prefer to believe that, like the sense of beauty, the love
of music, the thrill of admiration for uncalculating heroism,
we have here a wondrous aid to us in our life's pilgrimage,
but that if we trace it to a sense of our self-interest, we
not only vulgarize it, but we turn it into a caricature. For
there is in humour this singular property; its aroma is so
subtle, delicate and undefinable that the effort to buttress
it upon coarse, common utility is doomed to fail, and in the
mere attempt humour vanishes. There is something deliciously
contagious about laughter that is quite sincere and
unthinking; whereas the only people who contrive to be always
absurd, but never amusing, are those who laugh from a sense of
duty.

Humour, then, in the young is restricted in scope, their
experience of life being small; in women it is quicker than in
men, but shallower; in the Scotch it is reticent, in the Irish
voluble and refined, but cold. But wherever it is found