American. John Bull's downrightness appears in his jests also. His
jokes must be unmistakable; he wants none of your quips masquerading
as serious observations. A mere twinkle of the eye is not for him a
sufficient illumination between the serious and the comic. "Those
animals are horses," Artemus Ward used to say in showing his panorama.
"I know they are--because my artist says so. I had the picture two
years before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me about six
months ago and said, 'It is useless to disguise it from you any
longer--they are horses.'"[16] This is the form of introduction that
John Bull prefers for his witticisms. He will welcome a joke as
hospitably as a visitor, if only the credentials of the one as of the
other are unimpeachable.

Now the American does not wish his joke underlined like an urgent
parliamentary whip. He wants something left to his imagination; he
wants to be tickled by the feeling that it requires a keen eye to see
the point; he may, in a word, like his champagne sweet, but he wants
his humour dry. His telephone girls halloo, but his jokes don't. In
this he resembles the Scotsman much more than the Englishman; and both
European foreigners and the Americans themselves seem aware of this.
Thus, Max O'Rell writes:

De tous les citoyens du _Royaume_ plus ou moins _Uni_ l'ami
Donald est le plus fini, le plus solide, le plus positif, le plus
persévérant, le plus laborieux, et le plus spirituel.

Le plus spirituel! voilà un grand mot de lâché. Oui, le plus
spirituel, n'en déplaise a l'ombre de Sydney Smith.... J'espère
bien prouver, par quelques anecdotes, que Donald a de l'esprit,
de l'esprit de bon aloi, d'humour surtout, de cet humour fin