ON RISIBILITY.

Hutt News, Volume 2, Issue 45, 17 April 1930, Page 3

ON RISIBILITY.

(By Account Sales)

" An old number of "London Punch", tamo into my hands the other evening, and the thought came to me as I looked over .tJte pages that -humour springs from very widely differing causesThere is the gross exaggexation .type — Toddlekins is anxious to take his family to - Mars this" summer, and in^

quires where he can hire a balloon for .'fcne . purpose.! The. sheer absurdity- of the thing is amazingr Then there is the Mark Twain . style of sharp descent from sublimity to triviality—" Ceasar is ; dead, -Shakespeare is no more, and I am not feeling very well myself." The form relying for its" hum our on a play or words, is probably the.most long suffering, and "oyer-worked of all the many styles, and is ,to be found in almost any pape.r you pick up. Here .is one from" Punch, \'r-^-" Visitors to Mud-uieiton-on-Sea. derive great benefit from, th eir" sniall change, and landladies .in thfl, vicinity also get great benefit from it especially when it is left lying about onymantlepieees. etc." There is the ' humour of misunderstanding. A visitor 10 a remote country inn somewhere inthe wilds of Ireland, is depicted standing at the door of his room one morn-, ing arid pointing to-his boots which are still lying on fche mat where he placed them to be cleaned the night before, while h.e says to the puzzled land-lord: ".Look here, what does this mean? I left my boots out last night and they havgn 't been - touched!'' '■' Tirue for ye, sor! And begorra, if ye'd left yout gowld watch an' cihain out, div'l a sow! wud a touched them nayther!" Another example: Mrs Ranis-bottom was askeil wthether she liked yachting and she replied that she preferred "terra cotta." She probably meant "terra firma.!'' Under this class too-would come the genus."School-boy Howlers." i.e., "The equator is a menagerie lion running round the centre of the eartihl' ' A different sense of values is often the cause to the onlooker of hearty laugh- | ter. I call to mind JStoele.Eudd 's "On Our Selection." Dad, after struggling hard with, the help of fche family to clear and ring-fence with, logs, a piece of land for cultivation, has. to stand by helpless while a bush fire takes the fenced. Joe asks Dad if ihe didn't think it a fine sight (alluding to the bush fire). Dad was thinking. of the fences, and reacihed for Joe. : But no matter the form, humour is the greatest tonic for "all t-he ills that flesh! is heir to," and no doubt Hamlet's soliloquy would have been in a different key had he seen the funny side of things. ' . .