Judge — June 28, 1919 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ee ee ee Se. aE — aay ns by Hemwass Pacwen JUDGE EDITORIALS Tue Latent SMILE T is one of the “most peculiar paradoxes” of the years that out of the grimmest war in history has come the broadest and most rollicking of humor. For indeed was there ever a time when the public sense of humor was so keen or the wagging of the wheezer so mad? tanding, as it were, at the very center of the “smile sphere,” Jupce has been able to observe the rapid growth in humorous inventiveness in the past few years as well as a corresponding expansion in the apprecia- tion of these inventions. From every camp and out- post has sprung a comic magazine or bulletin, and with each new merrymaking enterprise has grown an audi- ence to help it along. Nor was this zest for the latent wheeze stimulated only in military circles, for in the most utter of civilian cliques the spread of the smile has been decidedly to the steeplechase. 3 The circulation of Jupce continues to grow with each issue, and analyses of this growth show a proportion of increase among civilians equal to that among the boys of the service. And since there’s “nothing worth the wear of w ning save laughter and the love of friends,” let us con- gratulate ourselves on finding the true felicity. But let not Momus hear us, or he may take it into his head to start another war. Wuart Is Humor? CORRESPONDENT A of the New York Sun has resurrected Joseph A\ddison’s delighting “Geneal- ogy of Humor,” and it serves admirably to differentiate le- gitimate Humor from a growth in which the grotesque so often figures these days. Much that now passes for Humor in this country reflects a life more complex in elements than the life of Addison’s time and environment. “Truth was the founder of Di the family,” said Addison, act DeManrs usting outcome of little Willie’s July Fourth trick on brother Bob, recently discharged from the Marines and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the Father of Wit, who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he has issue, Humor. Humor, therefore, being the youngest of the illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different disposi- tions, is very various and unequal in his temper; some times you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behavior and fantastic in his dress, in so much that at different times he appears as serious as a judge and as jocular as a merry andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his consti- tution, whatever mood he is in he never fails to make his company laugh.” Truth, Good Sense, and Mirth are indeed the legiti- mate forbears of Humor. But we have in some efforts that pass for Humor these days Exaggeration to the point of impossibility, Nonsense with no grain of plausi- bility, and a forced hilarity that has nothing of the beneficent mellowness of Mirth. This is an age in which gauche pictures as well as grotesque locutions in text fill the place of Humor for many, and some of the pictures are as uncouth and bar- barous as some of the text is remote from all normal experience. True Humor relates to life in its natural aspects, and in its natural aspects life has countless angles that amuse. Humor springs from a fancy that plays along normal lines—an exercise of imagination that is alto- gether happy. And today, as always, Humor reveals genial- ity and enforces sympathy, while Wit, as distinguished from Humor—although it has the paternal relation—has a more subtle appeal and some- times in analysis its sarcasm and irony cut to the quick. The very complexity of life in this country accounts for much of the eccentric humor that in other days would not have been understood by a more homogencous population. And much has been translated into the language of every- day existence from foreign and polyglot sources. comicbooks.com