=The little girl and her elders.=—­The little girl upon the beach invests the tiny wavelets not only with life and intelligence, but, also, with a sense of humor as she eludes their sly advances to engulf her feet.  She laughs in glee at their watery pranks as they twinkle and sparkle, now advancing, now receding, trying to take her by surprise.  She chides them for their duplicity, then extols them for their prankish playfulness.  She makes them her companions, and they laugh in chorus.  If she knows of sprites, and gnomes, and nymphs, and fairies, she finds them all dancing in glee at her feet in the form of rippling wavelets.  And while she is thus refreshing her spirit from the brimming cup of life, her matter-of-fact elders are reproaching her for getting her dress soiled.  To the parent or the teacher who lacks a sense of humor and cannot enter into the little girl’s conception of life, a dress is of more importance than the spirit of the child.  But the teacher or the parent who has the “aptitude for vicariousness” that enables her to enter into the child’s life in her fun and frolic with the playful water, and can feel the presence of the nymphs among the wavelets,—­such a teacher or parent will adorn the school or the home and endear herself to the child.

=Lincoln’s humor.=—­The life of Abraham Lincoln affords a notable illustration of the saving power of humor.  Reared in conditions of hardship, his early life was essentially drab and prosaic.  In temperament he was serious, with an inclination toward the morbid, but his sense of humor redeemed the situation.  When clouds of gloom and discouragement lowered in his mental sky, his keen sense of humor penetrated the darkness and illumined his pathway.  He was sometimes the object of derision because men could not comprehend the depth and bigness of his nature, and his humor was often accounted a weakness.  But the Gettysburg speech rendered further derision impossible and the wondrous alchemy of that address transmuted criticism into willing praise.

=Humor betokens deep feeling.=—­Laughter and tears issue from the same source, we are told, and the Gettysburg speech revealed a depth and a quality of tenderness that men had not, before, been able to recognize or appreciate.  The absence of a sense of humor betokens shallowness in that it reveals an inability to feel deeply.  People who feel deeply often laugh in order to forestall tears.  Lincoln was a great soul and his sense of humor was one element of his greatness.  His apt stories and his humorous personal experiences often carried off a situation where cold logic would have failed.  Whether his sense of humor was a gift or an acquisition, it certainly served the nation well and gave to us all an example that is worthy of emulation.