ctions we term laughter.

This explanation is in harmony with the fact, that when, among several
persons who witness the same ludicrous occurrence, there are some who do
not laugh; it is because there has arisen in them an emotion not
participated in by the rest, and which is sufficiently massive to absorb
all the nascent excitement. Among the spectators of an awkward tumble,
those who preserve their gravity are those in whom there is excited a
degree of sympathy with the sufferer, sufficiently great to serve as an
outlet for the feeling which the occurrence had turned out of its
previous course. Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current; and
so prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished me by a
friend who had been witnessing the feats at Franconi's. A tremendous
leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The
clown, seemingly envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations
for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense
energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pretended to wipe
some dust from its haunches. In the majority of the spectators,
merriment was excited; but in my friend, wound up by the expectation of
the coming leap to a state of great nervous tension, the effect of the
baulk was to produce indignation. Experience thus proves what the theory
implies: namely, that the discharge of arrested feelings into the
muscular system, takes place only in the absence of other adequate
channels--does not take place if there arise other feelings equal in
amount to those arrested.

Evidence still more conclusive is at hand. If we contrast the
incongruities which produce laughter with those which do not, we at once
see that in the non-ludicrous ones the unexpected state of feeling
aroused, though wholly different in kind, is not less in quantity or
intensity. Among incongruities that may excite anything but a laugh, Mr.
Bain instances--"A decrepit man under a heavy burden, five loaves and
two fishes among a multitude, and all unfitness and gross disproportion;
an instrument out of tune, a fly in ointment, snow in May, Archimedes
studying geometry in a siege, and all discordant things; a wolf in
sheep's clothing, a breach of bargain, and falsehood in general; the
multitude taking the law in their own hands, and everything of the
nature of disorder; a corpse at a feast, parental cruelty, filial
ingratitude, and whatever is unnatural; the en