re is some motive of cruelty or dislike. One
would not go to the trouble of murdering and hoaxing people if it did
not hurt or vex somebody or other. Those who invent hoaxes are first
cousins of the boy who ties kettles or lighted torches to cats' tails.
It is the terror of the cat that amuses him. If the cat purred as the
instruments of torture were fitted on to it the boy would feel that he
had serious cause for complaint. There is, no doubt, a great deal of
the cruelty of boys which is experimental rather than malicious--the
practice of blowing up frogs, for instance. But, for the most part,
it must be admitted, a spice of cruelty is counted a gain in human
amusements. This is called thoughtlessness in boys, but it is a
deliberate enthusiasm in primitive man, out of which we have to be
slowly civilised. There is probably no more popular game with the
infancy of the streets than covering a brick with an old hat in the
hope that some glorious fool will come along who will kick hat and
brick together, and go limping and swearing on his way. One might
easily produce a host of similar instances of the humour of the small
boy who looks so like an angel and behaves so like a devil. There are,
it may be, thousands of small boys who never perpetrated an act of
such cheerful malice in their lives. But even they have usually some
other outlet for their comic cruelty. The half of comic literature
depends upon someone's getting cudgelled or ducked in a well, or
subjected to some pain. It is one of the paradoxes of comedy, indeed,
that, even when we like the hero of it, we also like to see him hurt
and humiliated. We are glad when Don Quixote is beaten to a jelly, and
when his teeth are knocked down his throat. We rejoice at every
discomfort that befalls poor Parson Adams. Humour, even when it
reaches the pitch of genius, has still about it much of the elemental
cruelty of the boy who arranges a pin upon the point of which his
friend may sit down, or who pulls away a chair and sends someone
sprawling.

Hoaxes, at the best, spring from a desire to harry one's neighbour. As
a rule, refined men and women have by this time given up the ambition
to cause others physical pain, but one still hears of milder
annoyances being practised with considerable spirit. It was Theodore
Hook, I believe, who originated the practice of hoaxing tradesmen into
delivering long caravans of goods at some house or other, to the fury
of the householder and