this, one would say, does not
concern us. We do not want to go to the Pole--or to the hotel. I, for
one, cannot imagine which would be the more dreary and disgusting--the
real North Pole or the sham one. But as a mere matter of psychology
(that merry pastime) there is a question that is not unentertaining.

Why is it that all this scheme of ice and snow leaves us cold? Why is
it that you and I feel that we would (on the whole) rather spend the
evening with two or three stable boys in a pot-house than take part
in that pallid and Arctic joke? Why does the modern millionaire's
jest--bore a man to death with the mere thought of it? That it does bore
a man to death I take for granted, and shall do so until somebody writes
to me in cold ink and tells me that he really thinks it funny.

Now, it is not a sufficient explanation to say that the joke is silly.
All jokes are silly; that is what they are for. If you ask some sincere
and elemental person, a woman, for instance, what she thinks of a good
sentence from Dickens, she will say that it is "too silly." When Mr.
Weller, senior, assured Mr. Weller, junior, that "circumvented" was "a
more tenderer word" than "circumscribed," the remark was at least as
silly as it was sublime. It is vain, then, to object to "senseless
jokes." The very definition of a joke is that it need have no sense;
except that one wild and supernatural sense which we call the sense of
humour. Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that
is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
It is meant to remind us human beings that we have things about us as
ungainly and ludicrous as the nose of the elephant or the neck of the
giraffe. If laughter does not touch a sort of fundamental folly, it
does not do its duty in bringing us back to an enormous and original
simplicity. Nothing has been worse than the modern notion that a clever
man can make a joke without taking part in it; without sharing in the
general absurdity that such a situation creates. It is unpardonable
conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is
why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit
and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you
must be the Court Fool.

Whatever it is, therefore, that wearies us in these wealthy jokes
(like the North Pole Dinner) it is not merely that men make fools of
themselves. When Dickens described M