Note in the Appendix the closing point of "The German Senator."
Could there be any more incongruous thing than wives forming a
Union?

(b) _Surprise_. By surprise is meant leading the audience to
believe the usual thing is going to happen, and "springing" the
unusual--which in itself is often an incongruity, but not necessarily
so.

(c) _Situation_. Both incongruity and surprise are part and parcel
of the laughter of a situation. For instance; a meeting of two
people, one of whom is anxious to avoid the other--a husband, for
instance, creeping upstairs at three A. M. meeting his wife--or
both anxious to avoid each other--wife was out, too, and husband
overtakes wife creeping slowly up, doing her best not to awaken
him, each supposing the other in bed and asleep. The laughter
comes because of what is said at that particular moment in that
particular situation--"and is due," Freud says, "to the release
from seemingly unpleasant and inevitable consequences."

(d) _Pure Wit_. Wit exists for its own sake, it is detachable
from its context, as for example:

And what a fine place they picked out for Liberty to stand.
With Coney Island on one side and Blackwell's Island on the
other. [1]

[1] The German Senator. See Appendix.

(e) _Character_. The laughable sayings that are the intense