Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1874 — The Blessing of Fun. [ARTICLE]

The Blessing of Fun.

As a people we are given to sobriety of demeanor. Mirthfulness and jollity are hardly to be reckoned as among our prominent national characteristics; albeit we are not without a certain dry humor and wit of our own, and know the droll thing when we happen to see it. Bat we do not laugh very mnch. The stamp that the grim and decorous Puritan and the stately and gracious Cavalier set upon our coun tty when they landed upon its shores has ; never (wen removed. Not all the influx of streams from many nations —jovial German, prodigal Irish, passionate Span iah, mercurial French or tranquil Swede —has taken from us as a people the sober, gravis, steady and self-repressed exterior which i* second nature with all English-

speaking folk; yet we are glad when we are made to laugh in spite of ourselves. The man who says funny things week after week in the columns of a village newspaper becomes suddenly a popular favorite, and waking up some fine morning finds himself famous. The darling of the lyceum is the man who successfully mimics the foibles and follies of the times, with a spice of fun dashing the satire of his descriptions. The ballad that sings its way into everybody’s heart has a touch of drollery mingled with its pathos, and the preacher whose sermons are touched here and there with .an honest good huihor x>r a streak of genuine mirth is*»«ure to be sought by the many. We all crave the rest and recreation that lie in amusement, and better than a hundred prescriptions hom the pharmacopoeia is the tonic that lingers in a hearty laugh. The other day, tired and dispirited, we took our journey homeward, in a car about half full of people, who like ourselves were spiritless and weary. An old apple-woman sat in one corner, an elderly gentleman, with immense whiskers and a gold-headed cane, read the paper in another. In the middle, frigid as a breath from Greenland’s icy mountains, erect and stiff, sat a fashionable lady, and dotted here and there were young and mid-dle-aged men and women, with business written over all their faces and forms. Into this assembly, all aS unsympathetic as so many sphinxes, suddenly entered, with chatter and bustle, and sparkle and ripple of voices, and little crescendo and diminuendo peals of laughter, a half dozen school-girls. They were glowing with health and overflowing with fun, and bv the very sunshine of their presence, in a half moment or so, they wrought a metamorphosis in that car. The apple woman forgot that she was going home to dry bread and cold potatoes; the goldheaded cane man put his paper down and looked benevolent; the lady of the ice melted perceptibly, and we asked mentally to be forgiven for having felt irritable. There is a blessing in Inn.—Hearth and Home.