tterance.
And laughter? When a man is too lazy to think out an idea, and yet too
active to dreamily _feel_ it, he laughs. When he catches its leading
points, and yet realizes that behind them remains the incomprehensible
or incongruous, he settles it for the nonce with a smile. Hence it comes
that we laugh so seldom with all our heart, a second time over a jest.
It has been _comprehended_; the mystery, the sense of contradiction and
incongruity, has vanished--we may revive it in others, and laugh
electrically with them; but the first piquant gusto of _its_ spice is
gone forever.

Yet the jest, like the proverb, acquires a value by becoming current.
It often illustrates an opinion or an experience, and when it is much
worn, it may still gain a new point, by being brought into illustrative
relation with some event or idea. Esop's fables, or any fables, are,
after all, only good jokes in a narrative form, which owe their fame
simply to their boundless capacity for application. Sidney Smith's story
of Mrs. Partington, who tried to mop out the Atlantic, was a jest, and
so too was Lady Macbeth's 'cat i' the adage,' who wanted fish, yet would
not wet her paws, and let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' _Something_
of our old enjoyment of a joke for the first time, always lingers around
it, and we gladly laugh again--for, 'old love never quite rusts out.'
And there are many jests, which, owing to their boundless variety of
application, always come before us in a new light. Such are those which
illustrate character. Woe to the man among the vulgar, who once becomes
the scape-goat of a story on the subject of a joke-anecdote which 'shows
him up.' Woe in truth, if it grow to a nickname--for then he, of all
persons, learns that there are jests which never lose their sting.

Some jests have been progressive--they have been re-made to suit the
times. Diogenes, when asked which wine he preferred, replied, 'That of
other people.' An Englishman answered to the same question, 'The O. P.
brand,' referring the initials not only to Other People, but also to the
far-famed Old Particular stamp which marked certain rare varieties--or,
as others explain it, to 'Old Port.' The Scholastikos of Hierocles,
having a house for sale, carried a brick around as a sample--a modern
story says that a commander when asked of what material his
fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said:
'There!--every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living w