it were more painful to be under contract for the delivery of so many tears per diem, or to compel that [Greek:  anerithmon gelasma][1] I confess, I pitied them both; for if it be difficult to produce on demand what Laura Matilda would call the “tender dew of sympathy,” he is also deserving of compassion who is expected to be funny whether he will or no.  As I grew older, and learned to look on the two heads as types, they gave rise to many reflections, raising a question perhaps impossible to solve:  whether the vices and follies of men were to be washed away, or exploded by a broadside of honest laughter.  I believe it is Southwell who says that Mary Magdalene went to Heaven by water, and it is certain that the tears that people shed for themselves are apt to be sincere; but I doubt whether we are to be saved by any amount of vicarious salt water, and, though the philosophers should weep us into another Noah’s flood, yet commonly men have lumber enough of self-conceit to build a raft of, and can subsist a good while on that beautiful charity for their own weaknesses in which the nerves of conscience are embedded and cushioned, as in similar physical straits they can upon their fat.

[Footnote 1:  Countless—­i.e., perpetual—­smile.]

On the other hand, man has a wholesome dread of laughter, as he is the only animal capable of that phenomenon—­for the laugh of the hyena is pronounced by those who have heard it to be no joke, and to be classed with those [Greek:  gelasmata agelasta] which are said to come from the other side of the mouth.  Whether, as Shaftesbury will have it, ridicule be absolutely the test of truth or no, we may admit it to be relatively so, inasmuch as by the reductio ad absurdum it often shows that abstract truth may become falsehood, if applied to the practical affairs of life, because its relation to other truths equally important, or to human nature, has been overlooked.  For men approach truth from the circumference, and, acquiring a knowledge at most of one or two points of that circle of which God is the centre, are apt to assume that the fixed point from which it is described is that where they stand.  Moreover, “Ridentem dicere verum, quid vetat?”

I side rather with your merry fellow than with Dr. Young when he says: 

  Laughter, though never censured yet as sin,
       * * * * *
  Is half immoral, be it much indulged;
  By venting spleen, or dissipating thought,
  It shows a scorner, or it makes a fool;
  And sins, as hurting others or ourselves.
       * * * * *
  Yet would’st thou laugh (but at thine own expense),
  This counsel strange should I presume to give—­
  “Retire, and read thy Bible, to be gay.”

With shame I confess it, Dr. Young’s “Night Thoughts” have given me as many hearty laughs as any humorous book I ever read.