making it
possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff
with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit.
Just as the French monarchy under Louis the Fourteenth was wittily
defined as despotism tempered by epigram, so the United States have
been described as a free republic fettered by jokes, and the taunt
conveys a half-truth which it is worth our while to consider.

Now there are many who affirm that the humourist's point of view is,
on the whole, the fairest from which the world can be judged. It is
equally remote from the misleading side-lights of the pessimist and
from the wilful blindness of the optimist. It sees things with
uncompromising clearness, but it judges of them with tolerance and
good temper. Moreover, a sense of the ridiculous is a sound
preservative of social virtues. It places a proper emphasis on the
judgments of our associates, it saves us from pitfalls of vanity and
self-assurance, it lays the basis of that propriety and decorum of
conduct upon which is founded the charm of intercourse among equals.
And what it does for us individually, it does for us collectively.
Our national apprehension of a jest fosters whatever grace of modesty
we have to show. We dare not inflate ourselves as superbly as we
should like to do, because our genial countrymen stand ever ready
to prick us into sudden collapse. "It is the laugh we enjoy at our
own expense which betrays us to the rest of the world."

Perhaps we laugh too readily. Perhaps we are sometimes amused when
we ought to be angry. Perhaps we jest when it is our plain duty to
reform. Here lies the danger of our national light-mindedness,--for
it is seldom light-heartedness; we are no whit more light-hearted
than our neighbours. A carping English critic has declared that
American humour consists in speaking of hideous things with levity;
and while so harsh a charge is necessarily unjust, it makes clear
one abiding difference between the nations. An Englishman never
laughs--except officially in "Punch"--over any form of political
degradation. He is not in the least amused by jobbery, by bad service,
by broken pledges. The seamy side of civilized life is not to him
a subject for sympathetic mirth. He can pity the stupidity which does
not perceive that it is cheated and betrayed; but penetration allied
to indifference awakens his wondering contempt. "If you think it
amusing to be imposed on," an Englishwoman once said