Somebody—­was it Mark Twain?—­once said that there are eleven original jokes in the world—­that these were known in prehistoric times, and that all jokes since have been but modifications and adaptations from the originals.  Miss Repplier, however, gives to modern times the credit for some inventiveness.  Christianity, she says, must be thanked for such contributions as the missionary and cannibal joke, and for the interminable variations of St. Peter at the gate.  Max Beerbohm once codified all the English comic papers and found that the following list comprised all the subjects discussed:  Mothers-in-law; Hen-pecked husbands; Twins; Old maids; Jews; Frenchmen and Germans; Italians and Niggers; Fatness; Thinness; Long hair (in men); Baldness; Sea sickness; Stuttering; Bloomers; Bad cheese; Red noses.  A like examination of American newspapers would perhaps result in a slightly different list.  We have, of course, our purely local jokes.  Boston will always be a joke to Chicago, the east to the west.  The city girl in the country offers a perennial source of amusement, as does the country man in the city.  And the foreigner we have always with us, to mix his Y’s and J’s, distort his H’s, and play havoc with the Anglo-Saxon Th.  Indeed our great American sense of humor has been explained as an outgrowth from the vast field of incongruities offered by a developing civilization.

It may be that this vaunted national sense has been over-estimated—­exaggeration is a characteristic of that humor, anyway—­but at least it has one of the Christian virtues—­it suffereth long and is kind.  Miss Repplier says that it is because we are a “humorous rather than a witty people that we laugh for the most part with, and not at our fellow creatures.”  This, I think, is something that our fellow creatures from other lands do not always comprehend.  I listened once to a distinguished Frenchman as he addressed the students in a western university chapel.  He was evidently astounded and embarrassed by the outbursts of laughter that greeted his mildly humorous remarks.  He even stopped to apologize for the deficiencies of his English, deeming them the cause, and was further mystified by the little ripple of laughter that met his explanation—­a ripple that came from the hearts of the good-natured students, who meant only to be appreciative and kind.  Foreigners, too, unacquainted with American slang often find themselves precipitating a laugh for which they are unprepared.  For a bit of current slang, however and whenever used, is always humorous.

The American is not only a humorous person, he is a practical person.  So it is only natural that the American humor should be put to practical uses.  It was once said that the difference between a man with tact and a man without was that the man with tact, in trying to put a bit in a horse’s mouth, would first tell him a funny story, while the man without tact would get an axe.  This use of the funny story