Methodist minister, or a commercial traveller, or an old darky, or
two Irishmen, or any of the stock characters of the American
repertory. On another occasion I dined with a bishop of the Church. I
expected that when the soup came he would say, "There was an old
darky--" After which I should have had to listen with rapt attention,
and, when he had finished, without any pause, rejoin, "There were a
couple of Irishmen once--" and so on. But the bishop never said a
word of the sort.

I can further, for the sake of my fellow-men in Canada and the
United States who may think of going to England, vouchsafe the
following facts: If you meet a director of the Bank of England, he
does not say: "I am very glad to meet you. Sit down. There was a
mule in Arkansas once," etc. How they do their banking without that
mule I don't know. But they manage it. I can certify also that if
you meet the proprietor of a great newspaper he will not begin by
saying, "There was a Scotchman once." In fact, in England, you can
mingle freely in general society without being called upon either
to produce a funny story or to suffer from one.

I don't mean to deny that the American funny story, in capable
hands, is amazingly funny and that it does brighten up human
intercourse. But the real trouble lies, not in the fun of the story,
but in the painful waiting for the point to come and in the strained
and anxious silence that succeeds it. Each person
around the dinner table is trying to "think of another." There is
a dreadful pause. The hostess puts up a prayer that some one may
"think of another." Then at last, to the relief of everybody, some
one says: "I heard a story the other day--I don't know whether
you've heard it--" And the grateful cries of "No! no! go ahead"