her it was the one that made the original Hyena laugh I have not
been able to ascertain. It is a joke that has appeared in modified
form many times since. Even that illustrious pundit, Senator Chauncey
M. DeMagog uses it as his most effective peroration at this season's
public banquets. I heard him myself get it off at The Egyptian Society
Dinner last month, as well as at the Annual Banquet of The Sons and
Daughters of the Pre-Adamite Evolution, the month before, changing the
answer, however, to "when it's a jar"--which I personally do not
consider an improvement, for when a door becomes a jar I must confess
I cannot see. A jar, as I understand it, is a vessel, a receptacle, a
jug, a sort of demijohn, or decanter that people use to store up
water, or to keep the juice of the grape in, like a pitcher, or an
amphora; and how by any stretch of the imagination a door could become
such a thing is beyond my ken, although I must say that the jest when
told by the Senator in his own inimitable way, was received with
shouts of laughter every time he got it off. For my own part I think
that Cain's version is infinitely more humorous and instructive as
well, because a "door is not a door" when it is a "daw," which is,
indeed, as Cain's answer to the riddle claims it to be, a bird. It is,
of course, a great compliment to Cain that the Senator and a hundred
others I might name like him should go back to him for their humor,
but I think they would do better if they took his jests exactly as
they found them instead of trying to improve them to their
destruction.

I find also in our family records that it was Abel who first asked the
question, "Why is an elephant like an oyster? Because it cannot climb
a tree," a jest that similarly to Cain's riddle, possesses not only
true humor but is at the same time educational, as the best humor must
always be, in that it teaches the young certain indubitable facts in
the Science of Natural History, viz., that neither the pachyderm nor
the bivalve, in common with several other carnivorous botanical
specimens, is gifted similarly to the squirrel, the ant, or the
grizzly bear.

Mother Eve, who always took a naive delight in the droll sayings of
her offspring, used to tell with great glee of Cain's persistent habit
of asking questions of his father, some of which used to tax all the
old gentleman's powers of invention to answer intelligently. One of
these that I recall most vividly was as follows: