in mind the outbursts of deep-chested sound with which another friend evinces his appreciation of a humorous remark or incident, a laugh which many fastidious people would pronounce too hard and rough by half, bending their heads and darting from under, as if suddenly assailed by some rude nor’wester.  But I like the pleasant shock bestowed in those strong, breezy tones, and the feeling of rejuvenation and new expectancy which it imparts.

Another laugh echoes in memory as I write, a girl’s laugh this time, not “idle and foolish and sweet,” as such have been described, but clear, and strong, and odd almost to the point of the ludicrous, yet charmingly natural withal.  A young woman’s laugh is apt to begin at the highest note, and, running down the scale, to end in a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion an octave or so lower down.  This particular girl, however, takes the other way, and, running her chromatic neatly up from about middle C, pauses for a breath, and then astonishes her audience by striking off two perfectly attuned notes several degrees higher up, hitting her mark with the ease and deftness of a prima donna.  So odd and surprising a laugh is sure to be quickly infectious, and its owner is never at a loss for company in her merriment, while a cheerful temper, unclouded by a shade of envy or suspicion, is not in the least disturbed by the knowledge that others are laughing at as well as with her.

The question of what we shall laugh at deserves more attention than our manner of laughing.  “There is nothing,” says Goethe, “in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at,” adding, “The man of understanding finds almost everything ridiculous, the man of thought scarcely anything.”  This last corresponds somewhat to a sentiment found in Horace Walpole:  “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

With many people laughter seems to be an appetite, which grows by what it feeds on, until all power of discrimination between the finer and the more vulgar forms of wit is lost.  Certain it is that the habit of laughter is as easy to fall into as it is dangerous to all social dignity.  The muscles of the mouth have a natural upward curve,—­a fact which speaks well for the disposition of Mother Nature who made us, and may also be held to signify that there are more things in the world deserving our approval than our condemnation.  But the hideous spectacle presented in the contorted visage of Hugo’s great character contains a wholesome warning even for us of a later age; for there is a social tyranny, almost as potent as the kingly despotism which ruled the world centuries ago, that would fain shape the features of its victims after one artificial pattern.  We laugh too much, from which it necessarily follows that we often laugh at the wrong things, a fault which betrays intellectual weakness as well as moral cupidity.  The determining quality in true laughter lies in the degree of innocent mirth it gives expression to; and when jealous satire, envy, or malice add their dissonant note to its sound, its finest effect is destroyed and its opportunity lost.