and Holmes are the names
of some whose punning arraignments of puns and punsters make them at
once judges and prisoners at the bar.

Theodore Hook is accredited with the original pun which is the basis
of a common conundrum. He bragged that he could make a pun on any
subject, and immediately a friend suggested that he make one on the
King. "The King is no subject," was the prompt rejoinder.

The poems of Thomas Hood, the "king of punsters," abound in puns, and
the sort of wit, subtle or broad, which may be expressed in puns. He
was primarily a poet, and manipulated words in a masterly fashion,
not letting them deflect his thought. An example of the
inevitableness of his punning is found in the poem on "Sally Brown":
"They went and told the sexton, and the sexton toll'd the bell."

A friendly contest between Hook and Hood, as to which could make the
best pun, resulted in a draw, the efforts of the two men being of
equal merit, according to the friend who was called upon to decide.

Alexander Pope, although disapproving of the pun as a trifling form
of wit, once challenged his hearers to suggest a word upon which he
could not make a pun. The word "keelhauling," meaning to draw a man
under a ship, was given by a woman present. "That, Madam," replied
Pope, "is indeed putting a man under a hardship."

The incident is told of Charles Lamb that once when in Salisbury
Cathedral the constable remarked to him that eight people had dined
at the top of the spire; whereupon Lamb remarked that they must be
"very sharp set."

The story is told that a man noted for his wit in puns was asked in
regard to the writings of Thomas Carlyle if he did not like "to
expatiate in such a field?" He replied, "No. I can't get over the
stile (style)."

From the riddle or pun it is but a short step to the conundrum,
which takes the pun from its purely factitious setting and gives it a
general application and a permanent form. It is, when rightly
constructed, at once interesting and instructive, teaching as much by
negative as by affirmative statement. It embodies the ever new
analogies between dissimilar things, and with a language so fertile
in idiom as the English aids in its mastery. Used in application to
historical and geographical subjects it may serve to fix names and
places definitely in memory, as well as facts which but for the
humorous interest given to them would be dry and easily forgotten.

There is a certain distinctive flavor