for himself), "There was a Sandy MacDonald had died and the wife
had the body all laid out for burial and dressed up very fine in
his best suit," etc. Now for me that beginning is enough. To me
that is not a story, but a tragedy. I am so sorry for Mrs. MacDonald
that I can't think of anything else. But I think the explanation
is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live
so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without
irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else,
perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or not.
Take it either way.

But I am tired of talking of our faults. Let me turn to the more
pleasing task of discussing those of the English. In the first
place, and as a minor matter of form, I think that English
humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to the pun. For some
reason English people find puns funny. We don't. Here and there,
no doubt, a pun may be made that for some exceptional reason becomes
a matter of genuine wit. But the great mass of the English puns
that disfigure the Press every week are mere pointless verbalisms
that to the American mind cause nothing but weariness.

But even worse than the use of puns is the peculiar pedantry, not to
say priggishness, that haunts the English expression of humour. To
make a mistake in a Latin quotation or to stick on a wrong ending to
a Latin word is not really an amusing thing. To an ancient Roman,
perhaps, it might be. But then we are not ancient Romans; indeed, I
imagine that if an ancient Roman could be resurrected, all the Latin
that any of our classical scholars can command would be about
equivalent to the French of a cockney waiter on a Channel steamer.
Yet one finds even the immortal Punch citing recently as a very funny