I don’t think I contribute to the world’s humour; but the world’s humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which appear amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the risible faculties of another.  Every individual, I suppose, like every civilisation, must have his own standard of humour.  If I were a Roman (instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have died with laughter at the sight of a fat Christian martyr scudding round the arena while chased by a hungry lion.  At present I should faint with horror.  Indeed, I always feel tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when I smile at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore’s picture that hadn’t got a Christian.  On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness.  Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial.  Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug his elbows in his comrade’s ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the period, shouted “He’s got ’em on!” whereupon both burst into peals of robustious but inane laughter.  Now, if I had turned to them, and said, “He would be funnier if I hadn’t,” and paraphrased, however wittily, Carlyle’s ironical picture of a nude court of St. James’s, they would have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to bamboozle them.  Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.

I did not take up her retort.

“And what was the end of the romance?” I asked.

“He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the dejeuner, and his l’annee trente delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence forever from his mind.”

“He never repaid you?” I asked.

“For a humouristic philosopher,” cried Judith, “you are delicious!”

Judith is too fond of that word “delicious.”  She uses it in season and out of season.

We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest.  We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary.  We are the misers of philological history.  And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.

I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next hostelry, where the process of converting “Love’s Sweet Dream” into a nightmare was still faintly audible.  Judith looked at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative silence.