diverge widely.

By this I mean that each community has, within limits, its own
particular ways of being funny and its own particular conception
of a joke. Thus, a Scotchman likes best a joke which he has all to
himself or which he shares reluctantly with a few; the thing is
too rich to distribute. The American loves particularly as his line
of joke an anecdote with
the point all concentrated at the end and exploding in a phrase.
The Englishman loves best as his joke the narration of something
that actually did happen and that depends, of course; for its point
on its reality.

There are plenty of minor differences, too, in point of mere form,
and very naturally each community finds the particular form used
by the others less pleasing than its own. In fact, for this very
reason each people is apt to think its own humour the best.

Thus, on our side of the Atlantic, to cite our own faults first, we
still cling to the supposed humour of bad spelling. We have, indeed,
told ourselves a thousand times over that bad spelling is not funny,
but is very tiresome. Yet it is no sooner laid aside and buried than
it gets resurrected. I suppose the real reason is that it is funny,
at least to our eyes. When Bill Nye spells wife with "yph" we can't
help being amused. Now Bill Nye's bad spelling had absolutely no
point to it except its oddity. At times it was extremely funny, but
as a mode it led easily to widespread and pointless imitation. It was
the kind of thing--like poetry--that anybody can do badly. It was
most deservedly abandoned with execration. No American editor would
print it to-day. But witness the new and excellent effect produced