combination with a solemn face and earnest manner. For instance, he was
fond of such incongruous statements as: "I once knew a man in New
Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head," here he would pause for some
time, look reminiscent, and continue: "and yet he could beat a base-drum
better than any man I ever knew."

Robert J. Burdette, who wrote columns of capital humor for _The
Burlington Hawkeye_ and told stories superbly, on his first visit to New
York was spirited to a notable club, where he told stories leisurely
until half the hearers ached with laughter, and the other half were
threatened with apoplexy. Everyone present declared it the red-letter
night of the club, and members who had missed it came around and
demanded the stories at secondhand. Some efforts were made to oblige
them, but without avail, for the tellers had twisted their recollections
of the stories into jokes, and they didn't sound right, so a committee
hunted the town for Burdette to help them out of their difficulty.

Humor is the kindliest method of laugh-making. Wit and satire are
ancient, but humor, it has been claimed, belongs to modern times. A
certain type of story, having a sudden and terse conclusion to a direct
statement, has been labeled purely American. For instance: "Willie Jones
loaded and fired a cannon yesterday. The funeral will be to-morrow." But
the truth is, it is older than America; it is very venerable. If you
will turn to the twelfth verse of the sixteenth chapter of II.
Chronicles, you will read:

"And Asa in the thirty-ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet,
until his disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not
the Lord, but turned to the physicians--and Asa slept with his fathers."