Life — July 18, 1912 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

“JEST WATCH ME AN’ I'LL SHOW YE HOW HE DONE IT.” Have Women a Sense of Humor ? " is rather interesting to observe that, although this country has no national sense of humor, it is the only country in history, so far as we know, that has succeeded in supporting a class of professional humorists or funny men. Attached to every important paper in the country is a professional funny man, whose daily column of jokes is a prominent feature of the paper. There is a National Newspaper Humorists’ Association. Whole families, in- deed, are being reared on jokes alone. Benjamin Franklin was apparently the first one who set the fashion; at any rate, since he began writing jokes for his paper the custom has steadily increased. No such condition exists in other countries. Dickens is probably the greatest humorist in the English writing world, and yet his humor is incidental to his creative work asa novelist. Of all the other great writers in other coun- tries this is true, but in America we have men who have achieved reputations as humorists and nothing else. Along with this condition, the statement that this coun- try has no national sense of humor seems paradoxical; yet it is true. Countries usually begin on epics. They have epic colic, so to speak, and after that they cut their eye teeth on philosophical systems; but it is not until they get to be old and doddering that they develop a true sense of humor. In this respect they are like individuals. Probably in a thousand years more, when our natural “LIFE; resources are exhausted, wi we have a sense of humor. At present, how can such a thing exist along with the trusts, the tariff, the magnates, white slavery, children’s factories, and the other things so incongruous that any one who had a sense of humor would perceive their humorous quality at once? The tired business man—who makes up such a large part of our population—has no sense of humor, he would not submit, as he does, to everything that is im- posed upon him. On the other hand, women are really about a thousand years ahead of the times; they alone, in all this nation, have a genuine sense of humor. If they did not have this sense of humor, they would not go about wearing gowns that button up the back, so that when a man tries to get one together he has to brace his feet on the window-sill and pray for strength. They would not wear velvet slippers down Fifth Avenue in a snowstorm. They would not make an attempt—and a probably suc- cessful attempt—to substitute the ballot box for the cradle. They would not go to a ball by hundreds with gowns cut so low in the back that a Hudson River sign painter would have space enough in one evening to keep him busy for a month. They would not support the department stores. They would not tumble all over each other when a silly girl marries a stupid English lord. The New Aesop A DOG, who was accustomed to overeat, held a piece of meat in his mouth as he crossed a placid stream by means of a plank. Looking in, he saw what he took to be another dog carrying another piece of meat. Snapping greedily to get this as well, he let go the meat that he had and lost it in the stream. s a result his indigestion felt much better all the rest of the d “TOMMY, DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS THIS MORNING? “T WASHED ONE OF THEM, MOTHER. THE OTHER DIDN'T NEED 17.” comicbooks.com