i.—the “jokal calendar.”
every joke has its appropriate season. the true humorist—one who finds comedy in everything—gathers his ideas from what goes on about him, and by a subtle alchemy of his own distils from them jokes suitable to the changing seasons. the only laws to which childhood willingly yields obedience are those unwritten statutes which compel the proper observance of “trap-time,” “kite-time,” and “marble-time.” so even must the humorist recognize the different periods allotted respectively to goats,[pg 276] stovepipes, ice-cream, and other foundations of merriment.
the jokal calendar begins in the early summer, when girls are leading young men into ice-cream saloons, and keepers of summer resorts are preparing new swindles for their guests. soon the farmer will gather in his crop of summer boarders; the city fisherman will entangle his patent flies in the branches of lofty trees, while the country lad catches all the trout with a worm. then the irate father and the bulldog will drive the lover from the front gate, while married men who remain in the city during their wives’ absence play poker until early morn and take grass-widows to coney island. about this time the chronicler of humor goes into the country, whence he will return in the early fall with a fresh stock of ideas, gathered in the village store, at the farm-house table, and by the shores of the sounding sea.
[pg 277]beginning his autumn labors with the scent of the hay-fields in his nostrils, and the swaying boughs of the pine forest still whispering in his ears, the humorist offers a few dainty paragraphs on the simple joys of rural life. the farmer who dines in his shirt-sleeves, the antiquity of the spring fowl, the translucent milk, and the saline qualities of the pork which grace the table; the city man who essays to milk the cow, and the country deacon who has been “daown to york”—all these are sketched with vivid pen for the delectation of his readers. but it must be remembered that these subjects have been used during the whole summer; and the humorist, after his return to the city, can offer, at the best, but an aftermath of farm-house fun. if it be a late fall the public may slide along on banana and orange peel jokes until the first cold snap warns housekeepers of the necessity of putting up stovepipes.[pg 278] (note.—about this time print paragraph of gas-company charging a man for gas while his house was closed for the summer. allusions to the extortions of gas-companies are always welcome.)
stovepipe jokes must be touched upon lightly, for the annual spring house-cleaning will bring the pipes down again, six months later, to the accompaniment of cold dinners, itinerant pails of hot soap-suds, and other miseries incident to that domestic event.
and now that the family stovepipe has ceased to exude smoke at every joint and pore, the humorist finds himself fairly equipped for his year’s work. the boys are at school; lodge-meetings have begun, and sleepless wives are waiting for their truant lords; college graduates are seeking positions in newspaper offices (and sometimes getting and keeping them, though it won’t do to let the public know it); election is at hand, and[pg 279] candidates are kissing babies and setting up the drinks for their constituents; young men of slender means are laying pipes for thicker clothes—in short, a man must be dull of wit who cannot find food for comic paragraphs in what goes on about him at this fruitful season. the ripening of the chestnut-burr, and the harvesting of its fruit—beautifully symbolical of the humorist’s vocation—form another admirable topic at this time.
winter comes with its snow and ice, and the small boy, who is always around, moulds the one into balls for destructive warfare, while corpulent gentlemen and pedestrians bearing eggs and other fragile articles slip and fall on the other. oyster-stews, and girls who pine for them; the female craving for matinee tickets, and the high hats which obstruct the view of those in the back seats; nocturnal revelry in saloon and ball-room; low-necked dresses; and the extortionate idleness[pg 280] of the plumber now keep the pen of the comic writer constantly at work. chapters on the pawning, borrowing, lending, and renovation of the dress-coat are also timely.
spring brings the perennial spring poet with his rejected manuscript; the actor with his winter’s ulster; the health-giving bock-beer; and, above all, the goat, in the delineation of whose pranks and follies the jokal calendar reaches its climax.
what the reindeer is to the laplander the goat is to the writer of modern humor. his whole life is devoted to the service of the paragraphist. he eats tomato-cans and crinoline; he rends the theatre-poster from the wall, and consumes the bucket of paste; he rends the clothes from the line, and devours the curtain that flutters in the basement window; he upsets elderly men, and charges, with lowered horns, at lone and fear-stricken women.
[pg 281]but as the encroachments of civilization have driven the buffalo from his native plains, so is the goat, propelled by a stern city ordinance, slowly but surely disappearing from the streets and vacant lots which once knew him so well. he is making his last stand now in the rocky fastnesses of harlem. i have seen him perched on an inaccessible crag on the border-land of morrisania, looking down with solemn eyes on the great city where he once roamed careless and free from can to ash-barrel. etched against a background of lowering clouds, his was, indeed, an impressive figure, the apotheosis of american humor.
ii.—the idea and its embellishment.
in the construction of a joke the chief requisite is the idea.
making jokes without ideas is like making bricks without straw; and the[pg 282] people who tried that were sent out into the wilderness to wander for forty years and live exclusively on manna and water—a diet which is not provocative of humor. indeed it is a noteworthy fact that although the children of israel were accompanied in their journeying by herds of goats, and were constantly hearing stories of the huge squashes and clusters of grapes which grew in the promised land—the california of that period—yet we have no record that they availed themselves of such obvious opportunities for jesting.
the humorist, having procured his idea, should divest it of all superfluities, place it on the table before him, and then fall into a reverie as to its possibilities. let us suppose, for example, that his idea, in a perfectly nude condition, looks something like this:
“a girl is thin enough to make a good match for any one.”
[pg 283]now it will not do to offer this simple statement as a joke. it is merely an idea, or the nucleus of a short story, and can be greatly improved by a little verbiage.
there would be no point gained in calling the girl a new yorker, or even a philadelphian, though the latter city is usually fair game for the paragraphist. she should certainly hail from boston. the girls of that city are identified in the popular mind with eye-glasses, long words, angularity and other outward and visible signs of severe mental discipline and parsimony in diet. the ideal boston girl is not rotund. on the contrary, she is endowed with a sharply defined outline, and a profile which suggests self-abnegation in the matter of food. a little dialect will help the story along amazingly; therefore let the scene be laid in rural new england, and let the point be made with the usual rustic prefix of “wa-al!” this will afford an opportunity to utilize[pg 284] a few minor ideas relative to new england rural customs, the maintenance of city boarders, the food provided, the economy practised, and other salient features of country life.
so, by judicious expansion—not padding—the humorist will stretch his little paragraph into a very respectable story, something like this:
sample of short story erected on paragraph.
a summer evening of exquisite calm and sweetness. the golden haze of sunset sheds its soft tints on hill and plain, and pours a flood of mellow light over the roofs and trees of the quaint old village street. the last rays of the sun, falling through the waving boughs of elm and maple, form a checkered, ever-moving pattern on the wall of the meeting-house; they kindle beacon-fires on the[pg 285] distant heights of baldhead mountain, and linger in tender caress on the dainty auburn tresses of priscilla whitney, who is displaying her flounces, furbelows, and other “citified fixin’s” on the front piazza of deacon pogram’s residence.
(it will be seen that the beginning of this paragraph is written in a serious vein; but the last two lines prepare the reader for a comic story. he now makes up his mouth for the laugh which awaits him a little farther along.)
from the kitchen comes a pleasant aroma of burnt bread-crusts, as dear old samanthy pogram, her kindly face covered with its snow-white glory, prepares the coffee for supper. meanwhile the worthy deacon, in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, sits by the open door and enjoys the cool evening breeze that sweeps in refreshing gusts down the fertile valley of the pockohomock.
“there ye be again, sarah,” says aunt[pg 286] samanthy to the hired help, a shade of annoyance crossing her fine old face. “hain’t i told ye time ’n’ again not to put fresh eggs in the boarders’ omelet? i suppose ye think there hain’t such a thing as a stale egg in the haouse, but ye must be wastin’ good ones on the city folks! sakes alive! but i’ll be glad when they’ve cleaned aout, bag ’n’ baggage. i’m nigh tuckered aout a-waitin’ on ’em ’n’ puttin’ up with their frills ’n’ fancy doin’s.”
“they tell me, samanthy,” says the deacon, “that young rube perkins is kinder makin’ up to one of aour boarders. i s’pose ye hain’t noticed nothin’, mebbe?”
“i’ve seen him a-settin’ alongside o’ that dough-faced critter times enough so he’d like ter wear aout the rocker on the piazzy; but i guess rube had better not set enny too much store by what she says to him. them high-toned whitney folks o’ hern daown bosting way hain’t over[pg 287] ’n’ above anxious to hev rube perkins fur a son-in-law, i kin tell ye.”
“wa-al,” drawls the deacon, reflectively, “i kalkerlate they’ve got an idee she’d better make a good match while she’s abaout it.”
“she’s thin enough to make a lucifer match,” rejoins aunt samanthy; and with this parting bit of irony she goes in to put the saleratus biscuit on the tea-table.
of course this is not a model of a humorous story, but it will pass muster. it is, however, a very creditable specimen of a story built up, as i have shown, on a very slender foundation. some humorists would give it an apologetic title, such as “rural sarcasm,” or “aunt samanthy’s little joke,” in order to let the reader down easy.
[pg 288]
iii.—revamping old jokes.
it often happens that the humorist finds himself unexpectedly called upon for jokes at a moment when he has no ideas about him. perhaps he is away from his workshop where his tools are kept, or perhaps he has lost the combination of the safe in which his precious ideas are securely locked up. the problem of how to make bricks without straw, and the awful fate of the people who attempted it, stares him in the face. but his keen intelligence comes to his aid. like the trusty guide in mayne reid’s story, he exclaims, “ha, it is the celebrated joke-root bush, called by the apaches the ha-ha plant!” and seizing an ancient jest, he tears it from the soil, carefully cleanses the esculent root from its clinging mould, and then proceeds to revamp it for modern use.
[pg 289]the joke should be one that has slowly ripened under the suns of distant climes and other days. it should be perfectly mellow, and care must be taken to remove from it all particles of dust and lichen. let us suppose, for example, that the joke, divested of all superfluities, presents this appearance:
“a man once gave his friend a very small cup of very old wine, and the friend remarked that it was the smallest thing of its age he had ever seen.”
i have selected this joke because it is one of the oldest of which the world has any record.
the world has known many changes since civilization reached the point that made old wine an appreciated and acknowledged delight to the dwellers in the fertile valley of the euphrates, and thus threw open the doors for the appearance of this joke. the dust of him who gave and of him who drank the wine are[pg 290] blended together in the soil of that once populous region. stately sarcophagi mark the last resting-places of many who have enjoyed this ancient bit of merriment. empires have crumbled since then; mighty rulers have yielded the insignia of their power at the imperative summons of the conqueror of all; yet nothing has interrupted the stately, solemn march of this joke along the corridors of time. it flourished in byzantium; it lingered in tender caress on each of the seven hills of rome; when hannibal led his cohorts across the snow-clad alps it stepped out from behind a crag and said, “here we are again!” and the astonished warrior recognized it at once, although it wore a peaked hat and a goitre.
it has awakened laughter among effeminate and refined athenians as they lay stretched in languid and perfumed ease immediately after the luxurious bath, and about two hundred years before christ.[pg 291] it has been said that cleanliness is next to godliness, and yet we find that in this instance there was room to slip this joke in between the two, and have two hundred years of space left.
it is found in the sacred writings of confucius, side by side with his memorable injunction to his followers not to shed a single cuff or sock unless the ticket should be forthcoming. under the iron crown of lombardy and the lilies of france this joke has lived and thrived. it has even been published in the philadelphia ledger which is a sure proof of its antiquity.
surely no one but an american humorist could look upon this hoary relic without feelings of veneration. let us see what the humorist does with it:
that which has worn a toga in rome and a coat of mail in the middle ages, he now clothes in the habiliments of the present day. watch him as he arrays it[pg 292] in the high hat, the patent-leather shoes, the cutaway coat, and the eye-glasses of modern times, and, behold, we have:
“young arthur cecil, of the knickerbocker club, prides himself on his knowledge of wines, and boasts of a cellar of his own which cannot be matched on this side of the water. bilkins dined with him the other night, and as a great treat his host poured out into a liquor-glass a few drops of priceless old ——.
“‘there, my boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’ll not find a drop of that anywhere in new york except on my table!’
“bilkins took it down at a single gulp, smacked his lips, and said:
“‘i’ll tell you what it is, old man. there ain’t many things lying around loose that are as old as this and haven’t grown any bigger.’
“the joke was too good to keep, and cecil had to square himself at the club by ordering up a basket of mumm.”
[pg 293]
iv.—the obvious joke.
a large class of simple-minded people believe that the obvious joke is the most delightful form of humor. an obvious joke is one whose point or climax can be seen from the very start, and is, in fact, a natural sequence to the beginning.
for example, when we begin to read of a city dude who professed to understand the distinctively rural art of milking a cow, and volunteered to show his friends how to do it, we know perfectly well that he is going to get knocked out in the attempt, and that the story will end in a humorous description of the indignities inflicted upon him by the enraged animal. the only chance for variety in the sketch lies in the manner in which the cow will resent the dude’s impertinence. she may impale him on one or both of her horns; she may hurl him[pg 294] on a dunghill and dance on his prostrate form; she may content herself with kicking him; but whatever she does she will be sure to upset the milk-pail and excite the laughter of the lover of obvious humor. of course a professional humorist never reads an obvious joke. he knows exactly what is going to happen the moment his eye falls on the first paragraph.
if a tatterdemalion appears at the county fair with a broken-down plug which he offers to trot against any horse on the track, the professional humorist knows that the decrepit charger is going to win the race, and that his owner will go away with his pockets bulging out with the money he has won from the too confiding.
if a man holding four aces is persistently raised by a gentleman of quiet demeanor and bland, childlike face, we can call the latter’s hand without looking at it, because we know from long familiarity[pg 295] with american humorous literature, as well as poker, that he holds a straight flush. some writers have had the effrontery to deal him a royal flush, forgetting that he has already given his opponent all the aces.
if a gentleman of apparently delicate physique resents the impertinence of a bully who is forcing his attentions upon a lady, we know, without reading to the end of the chapter, that the man of effeminate build is in reality a prize-fighter or a college athlete, and will bundle the bully out on the sidewalk with great rapidity.
the professional humorist shuns these “comics” as he would the plague. they make him tired. he knows how easy they are to construct. moreover he despises alike the mind that gives them birth and that which finds them funny.
the recipe for their concoction is very simple:
[pg 296]think of some acquaintance who habitually eats sugar on his lettuce and sweetens his claret. the man who says, “i don’t want none of this i-talian caterwaulin’. the good old-fashioned tunes, like ‘silver threads among the gold,’ suit me right down to the ground. i don’t want none of yer fancy gimcracks ’n’ kickshaws in mine.” try to remember the sort of thing that has moved this man to laughter, and then fashion a joke on the same plan, taking pains to make it apparent to the most primitive intellect.
persons of this description are found in large numbers in the rural districts, and, therefore, any story tending to cast ridicule on the city man who puts on airs, or, in other words, affects the amenities of civilized life, is sure to be appreciated.
for example: it is the delight of sportsmen to fish for trout with fly-rods and tackle of an elaborate description, to the intense amusement of the yokel who[pg 297] catches fish, not for sport, but in order that he may sell them at an exorbitant price to some ignorant stranger. now it is a very easy matter to compose a story on this basis suited to the comprehension of such a rustic.
the following is a fair specimen of a story of the class i have described:
“he was a real sportsman, just from the city, and he had come down into the country to show the benighted inhabitants how to catch fish. he had a new patent rod in his right hand and a brand-new basket over his left shoulder. in his coat-tail pocket he carried a silver flask, and in his breast-pocket a big wallet filled with all the latest devices in newfangled flies. he walked down the road with the air of a man who had come to catch fish and knew just how to do it.
“it was growing dark when he returned to the hotel, wet, muddy, and weary, and sadly laid aside his implements of sport.
[pg 298]“‘fish don’t bite in this blawsted country, yer know,’ was his reply to the landlord’s cheery inquiry, ‘what luck?’
“and just at this moment who should come along but old bill simons’s sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy jim, with his birch-pole over his shoulder, and a fine string of the speckled beauties in his brown paw.
“‘good gawd!’ exclaimed the dude, ‘how did you catch those, me boy?’
“‘hook ’n’ line, yer fool! how d’yer s’pose?’ was jim’s answer, as he pulled a handful of angleworms, the last of his bait, from his pocket, and threw them out of the window.”
