Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1891 — Poor Show for Funny Men. [ARTICLE]

Poor Show for Funny Men.

New York Sun. Drollery, humor and wit are appreciated in the United States. Yet practical people are apt to doubt the seriousness of any funny man. Such a man is rarely elected to any high office or intrusted with any important administrative duty. As we run over the list of Presidents for example, we find that they were all staid personages. Washington rarely indulged in jocularity. John Adams was vivacious in youth, and enjoyed merriment at times, but in mature life rarely gave way to it. Jefferson, during his resis deuce in France, got a certain brilliancy of language which whiles became y[it. Madison and Monroe were men of gravity. Jackson was not afraid to make people laugh at time» by his keen language, his stories ant retorts, but his most mirthful things were not of the style of modern jesting. From his term to that of Buchanan there was no humorous occupaht of the Presidential chair. Abraham Lincoln had a vein of rare humor in his nanature; but the same thing can not be said of any of his successors down to Harrison. A genuinely facetious man rarely turns up in Congress, though funny speeches, some of which may be intentionally funny,are sometimes delivered there. The British Parliament, Lords and Commons, is singularly destitute of humorous members, though tpe reports of the proceedings in the Commons show that “laughter,” which is generally of the sardonic kind, is not unknown there. In the French Chambers, even in serious debates, there are sometimes flashes of French wit. In the German Reichstag the prevailing spirit is that of heavy gravity, and a funny man would not be tolerated. In the Italian Parliament also gravity i» dominant.