its author. At a certain point the dramatist read, "At this the
Chevalier laughed"; whereupon Voltaire murmured enviously, "How
fortunate the Chevalier was!" I think of that story whenever I am
struck afresh by the ease with which we are moved to mirth.

A painstaking German student, who has traced the history of humour
back to its earliest foundations, is of the opinion that there are
eleven original jokes known to the world, or rather that there are
eleven original and basic situations which have given birth to the
world's jokes; and that all the pleasantries with which we are daily
entertained are variations of these eleven originals, traceable
directly or indirectly to the same sources. There are times when we
are disposed to think eleven too generous a computation, and there
are less weary moments in which the inexhaustible supply of
situations still suggests fresh possibilities of laughter. Granted
that the ever fertile mother-in-law jest and the one about the
talkative barber were venerable in the days of Plutarch; there are
others more securely and more deservedly rooted in public esteem
which are, by comparison, new. Christianity, for example, must be
held responsible for the missionary and cannibal joke, of which we
have grown weary unto death; but which nevertheless possesses
astonishing vitality, and exhibits remarkable breadth of treatment.
Sydney Smith did not disdain to honour it with a joyous and unclerical
quatrain; and the agreeable author of "Rab and his Friends" has told
us the story of his fragile little schoolmate whose mother had
destined him for a missionary, "though goodness knows there wasn't
enough of him to go around among many heathen."

To Christianity is due also the somewhat ribald mirth which has clung
for centuries about Saint Peter as gatekeeper of Heaven. We can trace