Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1886 — The Foundation of. Jokes. [ARTICLE]

The Foundation of. Jokes.

Owing to the great popular demand) for humor in this country, nearly every! editor from Dan to Beersheba has undertaken to “evolve from his inner consciousness” something that would pass for witticism or joke. In this, as in everything else, it is only a few that succeed. After an editor has failed to have his alleged jokes cbpded by his exchanges, the milk of human kindness sours in his system before he can dispose of it at the cheese factory, and he proceeds to rail at his more successful neighbors. His billiousness, which he mistook for humor, is vented at what he calls a .“chestnut” or “stock” joke. He exclaims : “Give us a rest on jokes on the pilule, the mother-in-law, the plumber, the gas-meter, the roller skate,” etc. And what is the strangest of all is that some of the reputable paragraphers have joined in the senseless cry 4>f these unsuccessful numskulls. There are only six mechanical powers or principles. No man ever has or ever canjmake one of those principles, but the records of the United States Patent Office show that the inventive faculties of men have combined those six principles into over 300,000 useful machines. They could make the fnachines but not the principles—could make over 300,000 machines with six starting points, as it were. Just so with the mule joke, the mother-in-law joke, etc. Any man who can make a new combination of the six mechanical powers is an inventor; so any man who can get up a new combination of ideas that will make people laugh about a mule or a mother-in-law is a humorist. But as some men invent more machines and better ones than others, so some men are greater humorists than others. There is just as much reason for condemning a man for inventing a machine that you never thought of. One-fourth of the machines that will be useful have not been invented, neither has onefourth of the mule jokes been written. Of course there are many retold jokes, but we are not defending them. What we defend is the subject of the joke. The people insist that the combination of ideas be new, and that they contain a new point, blended with the element of surprise. Then they will laugh simply because they can’t help it.-—Cali-fornia Maverick.