A HEARTY LAUGH

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 291, 3 August 1932, Page 7

A HEARTY LAUGH

WHAT CREATES MERRIMENT IN HUMAN BEINGS. Every one enjoys a good hearty laugh. But why does a human being laugh? "Beeause he or she hears or sees something funny? "Why was it funny?" persists the psychologist — • and gets no clear-cut answer. "Your mother-in-law's run down," said the physician to Mr. Henpeck. "Fm afraid you'll.have to send her to a warmer climate." Mr. H. went out and came back in a few piinutes with an axe. "You do it, doctor," he said; "I haven't the heart." Just one of the many well worn mother-in-law pokes. Yet millions of people have laughed over trifles of that sort, even if they were ideal sons-in-law themselves, or mothers-in-law with a "sense of humour." But why should murder of a relative appear amusing? asks a writer in the Sydney Daily Telegraph'. A dignified, v/ell dressed man stalks down the street. A gust of wind whips his immaculata hat off. He chases it. The wind keeps whisking it out of reach. All his dignity gone, re.dfaced, panting, he finally trips over his feet, and ends up, looking aggrieved, in a mud puddle. And the spectators enjoy a hearty laugh, though a fellow-man has spoilt his clothes, lost his dignity, and maybe twisted his ankle or suffered concussion. "We laugh," says one sehool of psychologists, "at the misfortunes of

others, through relief that it didn't happen to ourselves. In eff ect, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes John Taxpayer'." But is is easy to find jokes which do not fit this theory. A good joke can be told against ondself. And there are others. Much for Little. Many readers chuckled, no doubt, on reading that a man snatehed a woman's hag in Darlinghourst, ran a j mile, and got — ninepence. This was a topical variant of the thugs who set on a Scotsman. and after half an hour's fight, in which every one was ' badly damaged, got threepence. "Jnst as well he didn't have sixpence," ruefully muttered one thief. "He'd have killed the lot of us."