LAUGHTER.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 58, 19 April 1912, Page 14

LAUGHTER.

Women laugh too little. Whether this is due to their lack of humor or to childhood's training in gentle manners may be questioned. Certain it is that' a hearty laugh in a woman's voice is rare music. An audience of women rustles with amusement, but seldom laughs. A group of girls giggle, but do not laugh. A woman reading tho most brilliantly humorous; story seldom gets beyond a smile. When Sir Walter Besant, in his clever skit, "The Revolt of Man," pictured tho time in the twentieth century when women should havo usurped all power —political, ecclesiastical, and social — he shrewdly noted that laughter had died out of England; and when men revolted against their fominimo tyrants, they came back to their own with peals of laughter. A Paris doctor has recently opened a place for the laughter oure. It i 3 a private institution, and large fees are charged. The patients sit round a room and at a given moment begin to smile at each other. The smilo broadens to a grin, and at a signal to a peal of laughter. Two hours a day of this healthful exercise is said to euro tho worst cases of dyspepsia. But Whether the habit of laughing easily aod naturally could be acquired by this process is doubtful.