To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice.  I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of the old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin.  It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin.  But it is.  When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy.  To the original savage, the cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again.  I can imagine a group of prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split.  If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up:  “Amusing Incident.  Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned.”

But our sense of humour under civilisation has been weakened.  Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us.

Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment.

I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls at the side of the street and getting ready a little store of them to use.  As they worked, there came along an old man wearing a silk hat, and belonging by appearance to the class of “jolly old gentlemen.”  When he saw the boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment.  He began waving his arms and calling, “Now, then, boys, free shot at me! free shot!” In his gaiety he had, without noticing it, edged himself over the sidewalk on to the street.  An express cart collided with him and knocked him over on his back in a heap of snow.  He lay there gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and spectacles.  The boys gathered up their snow-balls and took a run toward him.  “Free shot!” they yelled.  “Soak him!  Soak him!”

I repeat, however, that for me, as I suppose for most of us, it is a prime condition of humour that it must be without harm or malice, nor should it convey incidentally any real picture of sorrow or suffering or death.  There is a great deal in the humour of Scotland (I admit its general merit) which seems to me not being a Scotchman, to sin in this respect.  Take this familiar story (I quote it as something already known and not for the sake of telling it).

A Scotchman had a sister-in-law—­his wife’s sister—­with whom he could never agree.  He always objected to going anywhere with her, and in spite of his wife’s entreaties always refused to do so.  The wife was taken mortally ill and as she lay dying, she whispered, “John, ye’ll drive Janet with you to the funeral, will ye no?” The Scotchman, after an internal struggle, answered, “Margaret, I’ll do it for ye, but it’ll spoil my day.”