"what was that?" "Oh, 'twas awfully funny," I replied, beginning to
giggle myself; "it will make you roar;" and I told it them.

There was dead silence when I finished--it was one of those long
jokes, too--and then, at last, somebody said: "And that was the
joke?"

I assured them that it was, and they were very polite and took my word
for it. All but one old gentleman at the other end of the table, who
wanted to know which was the joke--what he said to her or what she
said to him; and we argued it out.

Some people are too much the other way. I knew a fellow once whose
natural tendency to laugh at everything was so strong that if you
wanted to talk seriously to him, you had to explain beforehand that
what you were going to say would not be amusing. Unless you got him
to clearly understand this, he would go off into fits of merriment
over every word you uttered. I have known him on being asked the time
stop short in the middle of the road, slap his leg, and burst into a
roar of laughter. One never dared say anything really funny to that
man. A good joke would have killed him on the spot.

In the present instance I vehemently repudiated the accusation of
frivolity, and pressed Mrs. Cutting for practical ideas. She then
became thoughtful and hazarded "samplers;" saying that she never heard
them spoken much of now, but that they used to be all the rage when
she was a girl.

I declined samplers and begged her to think again. She pondered a
long while, with a tea-tray in her hands, and at last suggested the