Again, we may find numerous duplicates of contemporary stories of our own in the collection over which generations of Turks have laughed, the tales of Nasir Eddin. In reference to these, it may be noted that Turkish wit and humor are usually distinguished by a moralizing quality. When a man came to Nasir Eddin for the loan of a rope, the request was refused with the excuse that Nasir's only piece had been used to tie up flour. "But it is impossible to tie up flour with a rope," was the protest. Nasir Eddin answered: "I can tie up anything with a rope when I do not wish to lend it."
When another would have borrowed his ass, Nasir replied that he had already loaned the animal. Thereupon, the honest creature brayed from the stable. "But the ass is there," the visitor cried indignantly. "I hear it!" Nasir Eddin retorted indignantly: "What! Would you take the word of an ass instead of mine?"
In considering the racial characteristics of humor, we should pay tribute to the Spanish in the person of Cervantes, for Don Quixote is a mine of drollery. But the bulk of the humor among all the Latin races is of a sort that our more prudish standards cannot approve. On the other hand, German humor often displays a characteristic spirit of investigation. Thus, the little boy watching the pupils of a girls' school promenading two by two, graded according to age, with the youngest first and the oldest last, inquired of his mother: "Mama, why is it that the girls' legs grow shorter as they grow older?" In the way of wit, an excellent illustration is afforded by Heine, who on receiving a book from its author wrote in acknowledgment of the gift: "I shall lose no time in reading it."
The French are admirable in both wit and humor, and the humor is usually kindly, though the shafts of wit are often barbed. I remember a humorous picture of a big man shaking a huge trombone in the face of a tiny canary in its cage, while he roars in anger: "That's it! Just as I was about, with the velvety tones of my instrument, to imitate the twittering of little birds in the forest, you have to interrupt with your infernal din!" The caustic quality of French wit is illustrated plenteously by Voltaire. There is food for meditation in his utterance: "Nothing is so disagreeable as to be obscurely hanged." He it was, too, who sneered at England for having sixty religions and only one gravy. To an adversary in argument who quoted the minor prophet Habakkuk, he retorted contemptuously: "A person with a name like that is capable of saying anything."
But French wit is by no means always of the cutting sort. Its more amiable aspect is shown by the declaration of Brillat Savarin to the effect that a dinner without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye. Often the wit is merely the measure of absurdity, as when a courtier in speaking of a fat friend said: "I found him sitting all around the table by himself." And there is a ridiculous story of the impecunious and notorious Marquis de Favières who visited a Parisian named Barnard, and announced himself as follows:
"Monsieur, I am about to astonish you greatly. I am the Marquis de Favières. I do not know you, but I come to you to borrow five-hundred luis."
Barnard answered with equal explicitness:
"Monsieur, I am going to astonish you much more. I know you, and I am going to lend them to you."
The amiable malice, to use a paradoxical phrase, which is often characteristic of French tales, is capitally displayed in the following:
The wife of a villager in Poitou became ill, and presently fell into a trance, which deceived even the physician, so that she was pronounced dead, and duly prepared for burial. Following the local usage, the body was wrapped in a sheet, to be borne to the burial place on the shoulders of four men chosen from the neighborhood. The procession followed a narrow path leading across the fields to the cemetery. At a turning, a thorn tree stood so close that one of the thorns tore through the sheet and lacerated the woman's flesh. The blood flowed from the wound, and she suddenly aroused to consciousness. Fourteen years elapsed before the good wife actually came to her deathbed. On this occasion, the ceremonial was repeated. And now, as the bearers of the body approached the turn of the path, the husband called to them:
"Look out for the thorn tree, friends!"
The written humor of the Dutch does not usually make a very strong appeal to us. They are inclined to be ponderous even in their play, and lack in great measure the sarcasm and satire and the lighter subtlety in fun-making. History records a controversy between Holland and Zealand, which was argued pro and con during a period of years with great earnestness. The subject for debate that so fascinated the Dutchmen was: "Does the cod take the hook, or does the hook take the cod?"
Because British wit and humor often present themselves under aspects somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction are the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British colonies is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly parallels our own in many distinctive features. Thus, there is a Canadian story that might just as well have originated below the line, of an Irish girl, recently imported, who visited her clergyman and inquired his fee for marrying. He informed her that his charge was two dollars. A month later, the girl visited the clergyman for the second time, and at once handed him two dollars, with the crisp direction, "Go ahead and marry me."
"Where is the bridegroom?" the clergyman asked.
"What!" exclaimed the girl, dismayed. "Don't you furnish him for the two dollars?"
It would seem that humor is rather more enjoyable to the British taste than wit, though there is, indeed, no lack of the latter. But the people delight most in absurd situations that appeal to the risibilities without any injury to the feelings of others. For example, Dickens relates an anecdote concerning two men, who were about to be hanged at a public execution. When they were already on the scaffold in preparation for the supreme moment, a bull being led to market broke loose and ran amuck through the great crowd assembled to witness the hanging. One of the condemned men on the scaffold turned to his fellow, and remarked:
"I say, mate, it's a good thing we're not in that crowd."
In spite of the gruesome setting and the gory antics of the bull, the story is amusing in a way quite harmless. Similarly, too, there is only wholesome amusement in the woman's response to a vegetarian, who made her a proposal of marriage. She did, not mince her words:
"Go along with you! What? Be flesh of your flesh, and you a-living on cabbage? Go marry a grass widow!"
The kindly spirit of British humor is revealed even in sarcastic jesting on the domestic relation, which, on the contrary, provokes the bitterest jibes of the Latins. The shortest of jokes, and perhaps the most famous, was in the single word of Punch's advice to those about to get married:
"Don't!"
The like good nature is in the words of a woman who was taken to a hospital in the East End of London. She had been shockingly beaten, and the attending surgeon was moved to pity for her and indignation against her assailant.
"Who did this?" he demanded. "Was it your husband?"
"Lor' bless yer, no!" she declared huffily. "W'y, my 'usband 'e 's more like a friend nor a 'usband!"
Likewise, of the two men who had drunk not wisely but too well, with the result that in the small hours they retired to rest in the gutter. Presently, one of the pair lifted his voice in protest:
"I shay, le's go to nuzzer hotel—this leaksh!"
Or the incident of the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The woman stared at it with an accusing eye, and questioned bluntly:
"What makes your nose so red?"
The tramp answered with heavy sarcasm:
"That 'ere nose o' mine, mum, is a-blushin' with pride, 'cause it ain't stuck into other folks's business."
But British wit, while often amiable enough, may on occasion be as trenchant as any French sally. For example, we have the definition of gratitude as given by Sir Robert Walpole—"A lively sense of future favors." The Marquis of Salisbury once scored a clumsy partner at whist by his answer to someone who asked how the game progressed: "I'm doing as well as could be expected, considering that I have three adversaries." So the retort of Lamb, when Coleridge said to him: "Charles,