LAUGHTER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2310, 26 January 1892, Page 3

LAUGHTER.

Rays Mr James Payn in the Illustrated London News ;—“ A well-known lecturer on humorous subjects has been complaining in the papers that he cannot make audiences laugh as he used to do. This seems, at first sight, to be a rather damaging admission: but he is not unconscious of it, and assures us that the change has taken place in the public, and not in his ability to amuse them. It is almost certain, one fears, that people do not laugh as much as they used to do. Some say it is because we are growing better-bred, for it is understood that the well-bred do not laugh, but only smile, and that out of pity rather than appreciation ; they do not wish to be severe, but though Hvolity is excusable, fun is not so, being vulgar. Others, again, attribute the falling off in our laughter to an opposite cause — the spirit of democracy, which is on the whole melancholy. I am told that you may walk from end to end of the great republic and never hear a man laugh, much less a woman. Still, until quite lately, it was unusal for individuals to be denounced for making their fellowcreatures laugh, as though it were a crime. The Archbishop of Canterbury a few weeks ago reprimanded Professor Momerie for doing it; and now the Dean of Rochester, the blamless biographer of the Rose, has been taken to task by a religious periodical ‘ for provoking an audience of working men to laughterit sounds as through he had provoked them to a breach of the peace. The Dean has kept his temper, and quietly requested the publisher to send the future numbers of the paper which he has unfortunately already subscribed for to ‘ some hiorO dismal member 6i the coy; Jinun jty t » Does this perioJigaj imagine that because itsj YU'tqo is o| tlie Puritanic kind there shall be no more cakes and ale ? It may well do so, fop things are certainly tending in thM direction,”