WIT, GOOD-NATURED, AND OTHERWISE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 25 March 1881, Page 4

WIT, GOOD-NATURED, AND OTHERWISE.

Br Benky Lapham.

It is a well-known fact in natural history that no animal is left totally unprovided with •weapons of defence. The timorous hare has its feet of swiftness, and the slow tortoise its impenetrable shell j tho fearful swallow can often outfly and escape tho more clumsy voracious kestrel; and if tho lion miss its spring, it seeks in vain to catch the flying deer. And the comparision holds good amongst men. Giants are foiled and conquered by slight-limbed, quick-witted champions ; and women, the tenderest, the weakest, tho most fearful of their kind, have one weapon before which heroes tremble and turn pale—namely, their tongue. _ When the power of saying, sharp, bitter things is used as a means of defence one cannot but be amused to note how thoroughly effective it sometimes is, There appeared some years ago in tho Melbourne Punch an excellent picture of a little news-boy at a railway station who is watching the motions of a vulgar would-be swell with undisguished contempt. The swell himself perceives it, and, coming up to tho boy, demands viciously, " Now, you young beggar, what are you staring at; " Looking him full in the face, the boy replies coolly, " I'm only a-gazing into vacancy ! " Equally good in its way was the retort of another of these youngsters, who, having asked a man to buy a paper was rudely repulsed. Biding hi 3 time till he saw another boy making the same offer, when ho called out. " It's no good asking him, Bill, lie can't read! Instances of juvenile precocity of this kind are not uncommon. The earliest recorded ton mot of Goldsmith was an instance of wit used in self-defence. Nature had given the poet a somewhat harsh, repellant face, and the ravages of small-pox had helped to add to its plainness. If •' the child is father to the man " we may be sure that he who in after life was so innocently proud of his peach-colored breeches, would as a boy be very sensitive to remarks about his ugliness. One night, ns tho little fellow was capering about the old kitchen at Sissoy, to the merry lilt of a jig tune, the fiddler said with a sneer: "Look at iEsop dancing!" And the young poet retorted : " Heralds aloud proclaim this siying, See JEiop dancing l , and his monkey playing." Thackeray, in his English Humorists, tells this story in a delightful way, but as I have not a copy of the book at hand, I am compelled to substitute my own clumsy version. "When a men uses his powers of sarcasm te ■ insult, or dispose of some vulgar re 1 ; * pleased to soe that the asSailanVone .- H kee ?' thrust shall be quick u„_ * twister in a story that used to be told o* - "entteone of the neighboring colonies. This & man was a humorist and wit of the beso kind; his satire was always pleasing and , kind, rarely descending to mere personalities - It was said by those who did not altogether like him that his geniality and love of lon camarades led him into dissipation, and his , red flushed face gave only tco good a war- , rant for the remark. He happened at one ■ time to be*a candidate for election, and his ; opposer, in order to disconcert him before' the election, asked : "Mr So-and-So, may I ask you a simple question?" " Certainly, Mr Blank." "Then, Mr So-and-So, will you tell me what makes your face s'tf very red ?" " Yes, Mr Blank, I'm blushing for your , d——d impertinence!" Mr Sa-and-So declined to ask any mere questions. It is very amusing when a witticism of the period brings out an unexpected retort upon the head of the speaker. There is generally some satisfaction in seeing a man foiled with his own weapons; the more so when he appears a little over-confi-dent of making a great hit by his dexterity. A Mr Mitchell, a member of the Canadian House of Commons, once attempted to put down an angry majority by enquiring in a tone of sarcasm: "Who brayed there?"; "It was only-an echo," retorted an opposition member,' amidst a yell ..of delight. Again, wit may be. used to stop a preBumptuous person, or toinsinuate a delicate piece of sarcasm, as for instance, when Mr Angus B. Reach at a dinner party took occasion to inform Thackeray in a rather dictatorial manner that his name was always to be pronounced "Re-ack." Thackeray bowed, and later on in the dinner, observing a plato of peaches on the table he passed- to Mr Reach saying in a most suggestive tone, "Mr Reack, will you take a peack ?" Dean Ramsay tells a good story of how an old Scotch minister quietly smvbbed and demolished two impertinent young fools who tried to take a rise'out of him. The young men met him by chance and:' said, " G-ood clay, Mr Blank, have you heard the news ?" "Na; whatis't?" "They say the devil is dead." " Aye," replied the auld man, " then My heart is sad for ye, twa puir fatherless bairns!" There was never a man a readier wit, or one quicker to observe a chance of being humorous, than Douglas Jerrold, nor was there ever a more really tender-hearted, charitable man. His mirth was always bubbling up, and despite pain and weakness, nay, even when almost dying, he could not resist the temptation of saying a funny thing. It is related of him that while he was residing in some town in France he became almost blind with some disorder of the eye. His medical attendant was a rough, heartless butcher of a French surgeon. Poor Jerrold was blistered and kept in a dark room for many weeks. One day as this doctor was roughly dressing the blister the pain made Douglas start, and the doctor merely remarked "Cc nest rien—ee nest rien." By-and-by the doctor went to wash his hands in some warm water. He dipped his fingers in but hastily withdrew them with a loud exclamation, for the water was almost boiling. 11l as he was, Jerrold could not resist mimicking the doctor's voice, and exclaiming, " Cc nest rien, cc nest rien." There was a trick common amongst lad 3 and those who forgot they should be gentlemen, which trick consisted in putting out fingers when a man offered you his hand. A more unpleasant insult or greater impertinence than this even snobbishness itself could scarcely continue. Either take a man's hand or refuse, but this pusillanimous way of just not insulting a stranger is as mean as it is cowardly. A fellow of this description tried the same trick with Jerrold, but the latter immediately extended one finger with tho cool enquiry, "Well, which shall it be?" All these examples may fairly be characterised as defensive wit, wit used to vindicate its uttere* or to repel some insult; but there is another kind of humour not quite so ploasant to contemplate. It is personal satire, or the wit which seeks to raise a laugh by pointing to the weaknesses or deformity of a fellow-creature. Unfortunately, too many of the greatest punsters —or rather humorists—have been prono to indulge themselves thus. The anecdotes of Jerrold's table-talk teem with examples. For instance, when once on a visit to a country hotise, Jerrold and some others were wandering about the lanes and chanced upon where an ass's foal was tethered. One of the company—a poet— grew sensational over the young donkey, and said he should like to send the little thing as a present to his mother. ' Do,' said Jerrold, ' and tie a piece of paper to its neck, with these words thereon, " When this you see, remember me."' Now, poets are proverbially thin-skinned, and one can fancy how this poor wretch would wince under the laughter raised by this very feeble joke,

Scarcely more excusable was tho following joke, also'at theexpenco of a literal".' r ''i"r.'l. and tho fact that Jerrold was hirasoir' a man of letters oiight to have made him the more careful how he joked at others of the fraternity:— It so happened that a friend of .Torvold't, wroto a book which did not come up to Douglas' expectations, and ho nuulo no scruple of expressing his disapprobation. Tho author ono day said to his friend, ' I hear you said was tho worst book I ever wrote.' ' No, I didn't; I said it was the worst book anybody ever wroto." This, besides being untrue, was nUogelher uncharitable, ungentlemanly, and unworthy of a man like Jerrold. And, after all, it is so easy to make fun of other men—clumsy, slow, apathetic fellows, perhaps ; but, after all, immensely more honest, more kindly, more human than the satirist -who ' flicks ' at them -with his mischievous lash. They may mako no retort—may oven awkwardly try to laugh th c matter over; but who can tell how deep the wound may penetrate ? A man's amour propre is his tenderest part, and a stab there sometimes never heals. Often, too, the utterers of these sharp sayings are men of not superior accomplishments, only they have learnt the knack of saying sharp, disagreeably funny things, and are notashamed to use it. After all, it is not a great attainment. A monkey can fling a pebble that may kill a man ; but for al! that the ape is a mischievous creature, deserving only a whip and a cage, while tho man is worth fifty thousand of him. And the matter resolves itself into this, that men of humour are only mere hai'lequins, playing ' fantastic tricks' for the poor rewai'd of a guffaw, unless they are also careful to see that their witticisms neither raise a blush of shame nor hurt the feelings of some fellowman.