been remarked, "have
always been a favourite subject of ridicule for the satirist and
jester." Personal deformities seem absurd to some, but those who have
made them their study see nothing extraordinary in them. Sometimes our
laughter shows us that something seems wrong, which our highest ideal
would approve. I remember seeing an aged man tottering along a rough
road in France, with a heavy bag of geese on his back. One of his
countrymen, who by the way have not too much reverence for age, came
behind him and jovially exclaimed, "_Courage, mon ami, vous etes sur le
chemin de Paradis_." The old man ought to have been glad to have been on
the road to heaven, but our laughter reminds us that most would prefer
to stay on earth.

It must be admitted that our feelings with regard to right and wrong are
very shifting and changeable, and that we condemn others for doing what
we should ourselves have done under the same circumstances. We have also
an especial tendency to adopt the view that what we are accustomed to is
right. We sometimes observe this in morals, where it causes a
considerable amount of confusion, but it holds greater sway over such
light matters as awaken the sense of the ludicrous. When anything is
presented to us different from what we have been long accustomed to,
unless it is evidently better, we are inclined to consider it worse. In
the same way, things which at first we consider wrong, we finally come
to think unobjectionable.

In taste and our sense of the ludicrous, we find ourselves greatly under
the influence of habit. What seems to be a logical error is often found
to be merely something to which we are unaccustomed; thus the double
negative, which sounds to us absurd and equivalent to an affirmation, is
used in many languages merely to give emphasis.

How ridiculous do the manners of our forefathers now seem, their
pig-tails, powder, and patches, the large fardingales, and the stiff and
pompous etiquette. I remember a gentleman, a staunch admirer of the old
school, who, lamenting over the lounging and lolling of the present day,
said that his grandmother, even when dying, refused to relax into a
recumbent posture. She was sitting erect even to her very last hour, and
when the doctor suggested to her that she would find herself easier in a
reposing posture, she replied, "No, sir, I prefer to die as I am," and
she breathed her last, sitting bolt upright in her high-backed chair. So
great indeed is