of words is, quite literally, a sealed book to him. Here and there,
indeed, a form of fun is found so elementary in its nature and yet so
excellent in execution that it appeals to all alike, to the illiterate
and to the highbrow, to the peasant and the professor. Such, for
example, are the antics of Mr. Charles Chaplin or the depiction of Mr.
Jiggs by the pencil of George McManus. But such cases are rare. As a
rule the cheap fun that excites the rustic to laughter is execrable to
the man of education.

In the light of what I have said before it follows that the individuals
that are findable in every English or American audience are much the
same. All those who lecture or act are well aware that there are certain
types of people that are always to be seen somewhere in the hall. Some
of these belong to the general class of discouraging people. They listen
in stolid silence. No light of intelligence ever gleams on their faces;
no response comes from their eyes.

I find, for example, that wherever I go there is always seated in the
audience, about three seats from the front, a silent man with a big
motionless face like a melon. He is always there. I have seen that
man in every town or city from Richmond, Indiana, to Bournemouth in
Hampshire. He haunts me. I get to expect him. I feel like nodding to
him from the platform. And I find that all other lecturers have the same
experience. Wherever they go the man with the big face is always there.
He never laughs; no matter if the people all round him are
convulsed with laughter, he sits there like a rock--or, no, like a
toad--immovable. What he thinks I don't know. Why he comes to lectures I
cannot guess. Once, and once only, I spoke to him, or, rather, he spoke
to me. I was coming out from the lecture and found myself close to him
in the corridor. It had been a rather gloomy evening; the audience had
hardly laughed at all; and I know nothing sadder than a humorous lecture
without laughter. The man with the big face, finding himself beside me,
turned and said, "Some of them people weren't getting that to-night."
His tone of sympathy seemed to imply that he had got it all himself;
if so, he must have swallowed it whole without a sign. But I have since
thought that this man with the big face may have his own internal form
of appreciation. This much, however, I know: to look at him from the
platform is fatal. One sustained look into his big, motionless face and
the lecturer would b