Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 247, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1917 — WHEN FATHER TELLS A JOKE [ARTICLE]

WHEN FATHER TELLS A JOKE

Mother Sees Nothing Funny In It and Daughter's Glance Is Expressive of Her Pity. When a man hears a joke which his primitive sense of humor classifies as “the funniest thing he had ever heard” he hurries home to bear the glad tidings to his wife. Father produces his great discovery, but mother’s countenance remains untroubled by so much as a smile, observes the New York Evening Sun. Nine wives out of ten will gaze blankly Into that interesting emptiness to which woman’s eyes are continually traveling over her husband's shoulder. The tenth and cruelest creature will wither her spouse with a penetrating stare which registers: ‘‘l see nothing—absolutely nothing—funny In that." Disgusted and baffled, the husband tells the same joke to hfs daughter. Her only Indication of amusement Is a pitying uplift of the eyebrows and a subsequent absorption in her knitting. With his finger on the last unbroken string of hope father approaches his nearest masculine relative. At last success Is his, for his son or his son-in-law or his uncle roars, applauds and slaps him on the back. Father bows to Imaginary audiences and compliments his fellow man on his perspicacity and his fortunate possession of a sense of humor. He pities “those womon—those poor defective women.”