Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 411, 24 March 1904, Page 2

Sketcher.

♦- . - ■.; . OUB ANTIQUE JOKES. «fiHS9NOTHEB scientist has come forwg&w vf&r& with a startling array of zm?M£ facts to prove to the fussy men that their witticisms are older than all the hilla put together. Not long ago a German savant discovered some Chaldean inscriptions which, when translated, were fonnd to be stories with which readers of the comics papers to-day are more or lesß familiar. One was of a certain wanderer from some remote province who asked a. distinguishedlooking man at a great feast-given by the King who a certain homely-looking woman was. 'That, 9 said the distin-guished-looking man, 'is my sister. ' Oh, no/ put in the stranger, hastily, and in great confusion, 'I mean that hideouslooking oreatnre standing next to her.' '«That,' said the Chaldean, *is my wife/ And now comes Professor Francis H. Lee with a long list of jokes exhumed from the dead and mouldiy past, and which, he thinks, proves conclusively the old theory that there were only thirteen original jokes, and that all the rest are merely some form of the original thirteen. Jokes on the occupations and professions are common in all nations from early times. The physician is always hard hit, as he is to-day. Jests on relationships are quite common, and the mother-in-law seems to have been just as unpopular in antiquity as she is to-day. Witness the following story from Plutarch, the author of the ' Lives.' ' A man, angry at at> dog,- picked up a stone and threw it at the animal. He missed the dog, and happened to hit his mother-in-law, who was standing near. Whereupon he turned to the bystanders and remarked, ' Not so bad, after all!' Some of the slurs at physicians are characterised by an almost American extravagance. Here are two or three from the collection of poems known as the Greek Anthology: iPausanias, the Spartan general, when aeked why he spoke evil of a doctor whom he had never consulted, eaid, 'lf I bad consulted him, I shouldn't now be speaking (ither good or evil about anybody.' Barbers were equally hard hit in olden times, and their talkativeness was just as irksome as it is to-day. Horace, the Soman poet, in mentioning a piece of gossip,, say a it was well known in fcbe barbers' shops, and Plutarch tells of a barber who, trimming the beard of a certain Kinet Atohelaus, asked, ' How shall I cut it F* *ln silenee/ replied the King. : Even the milkman and the watered milk joke has its ancient prototype in an epigram by Martial, who wrote in the first century of the Christian era. In faot, he hints at many ideas that have done ear vice in modern times as subjects of jokes. He is particularly hard on women who use cosmetics to heighten their fading charms and who lie about their age. Cicero, the famous orator, on a certain occasion, when he heard Fabia, a prominent woman of fashion, say she was thirty years old, slyly remarked. ' That's true for I've heard her say it for the last twenty years/ A Greek epigram tells of an ungrounded scandal in -this fashion; ' Some say, Nioylla, that you dye your hair. What nonsense! Why, it's as black as can be bought in the market.' One of the most surprising modern touches to be found in any ancient writer is the account given in Aloiphron, a Greek writer of the second century ad, of a ■Bube' who waß taken in by a three-card gams played just as the modern thimblerigger plays.it. A poem pretty well known in this day tells of an 'absent-minded Dutchman filled mit grief usd shame/ because he couldn't get through his head whether he was of two twins ' Hans that was living or Yacob that was dead.' .

This is just a little change rang on the story ci the fool in the Greek ' Jest Book of Hierocles/ who, meeting oho of two twins, the death of one of whom he had heard of, asked, ' Was it you that died, or jdur brother P' »■■■■'■ There was a story current some little time ago about an Irishman who made a bet with a fellow workman that the latter could not carry him in his hod up a ladder to the fcusth story of a building. The workman put Fat in the hod and laboriously ascended. At the third storey he stumbled and almost fell, but regained his equilibrium, and finally completed the ascent in safety. > 'Well,' said Pat, when he was set down, 'you've won) but I must say that when ye tripped that time I had hopes.' Now, this joke has its basic principle in* an old Greek joke about a man who agreed to pay his doctor a fee if the latter cured him. When his wile remonstrated with him for drinking heavily when in a high , fever, he exclaimed. 'What Ido you want me to get well and have to pay the doctor bis fee ?'

The modern joke about the borrowed umbrella is certainly recalled by the following: 'Antiochus once set eyes on Lysimachus'a cushion, and Lysimaohus never set eyes on his cushion again.' Numberless instances might be given of ancient] jokes upon henpecked husbands, upon the undesirabiUty of the marriage state after one is in it, of the caustic remarks of woman haters," of men making fun of their wives (behind their back?), of clairvoyants, misers, legaoy-hnnters, &o. In fact, it is the man who is typioal of a clase that in all ages has had to bear the brunt c? the sarcasms directed against the class, It is the concrete instance of the abstract idea.

Much might; be written about the humorous and bitter remarks in ancient literature upon women. Misogynism was rife in ancient times —more so _ than at present; for one of the greatest instances of the world's progress is the improved position of women la Greece especially woman was looked down upon, and her position in the best days of Athenian glory was an inferior one. One man, Simonides of Amargos, wrote a poem, in which he describes the nature of different kinds o! women by comparing them successively to a hog, a fox, a dog, mud, sea-water, an ass, a weasel, a mare, sn ape, and a bee. Of these ten kinds the last is the only one approaching respectability. The poem winds op with this' sentiment, * God made this supremo evilwoman ; even though she seems to be some good, when a man has got her she becomes a plague.' Soorates, who doubtless bad reason for thinking »s he did, on account of his shrewish wife, Xantippe, used to say when he was asked whether it was better to marry or not, ,' Whichever you do, you will regret it;' and once, on being asked what act of their lives people most commonly repented of, he replied, * Marriage.'