subtil, qui passerait à travers la tête _d'un Cockney_ sans y
laisser la moindre trace, sans y faire la moindre impression.

The testimony of the American is equally explicit.

The following dialogue, quoted from memory, appeared some time since
in one of the best American comic journals:

_Tomkyns_ (of London).--I say, Vanarsdale, I told such a good
joke, don't you know, to MacPherson, and he didn't laugh a bit! I
suppose that's because he's a Scotsman?

_Vanarsdale_ (of New York).--I don't know; I think it's more
likely that it's because you are an Englishman!

An English audience is usually much slower than an American or
Scottish one to take up a joke that is anything less than obvious. I
heard Max O'Rell deliver one of his witty orations in London. The
audience was good humored, entirely with the lecturer, and only too
ready to laugh. But if his joke was the least bit subtle, the least
bit less apparent than usual, it was extraordinary how the laughter
hung fire. There would be an appreciable interval of silence; then,
perhaps, a solitary laugh in a corner of the gallery; then a sort of
platoon fire in different parts of the house; and, finally, a
simultaneous roar. So, when Mr. John Morley, in his admirable lecture
on the Carlyle centenary celebration (Dec. 5, 1895), quoted Carlyle's
saying about Sterling: "We talked about this thing and that--except in
opinion not disagreeing," there was a lapse of half-a-minute before
the audience realised that the saying had a humorous turn. In an
American audience, and I believe also in a Scottish one, the report