A SENSE OF HUMOR.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3161, 4 May 1931, Page 2

A SENSE OF HUMOR.

Other People Are to Funny I

"Mrs. Jones is so amusing," we say to each other, when Mrs. Jones has visited us and kept us smiling with her conversation. You see she is one of those witty people. She has the knack of describing the most commonplace happenings and making them sound amusing; the people she meets and knows do the most extraordinary and funny things—at least their doings sound funny when they are chronicled by Mrs. Jones. She has just that gift of being able to coin a neatly-turned phrase, sometimes she becomes absolutely epigrammatic, the dullest conversation brightens and becomes sparkling dialogue when Mrs. Jones, with her smart phrases and her sense of humor, takes a part in it. How we laughed when she related how the Brown's maid spilled the soup down the back of the guest of honor at a dinner party at the Brown's house, and how amused we were when she told us about the faux pas made by Mi's. Wilkins —a new neighbor with I aspirations to "society," and who will ' insist on using long words she doesn't I understand, when conversing with her friends.

Yes, we enjoy a visit from Mrs. Jones, thoroughly enjoy it. We've laughed a great deal, and when we have escorted Mrs. Jones to the front door and seen her safely off the premises, we reflect what a great thing it is to have a sense of "humor. "Makes life worth living, we say to ourselves, when you can see the funny side of things," and as for our friend Mrs. Jones, well, she's a most amusing friend to have. Mrs. Jones is a really good sort we tell ourselves. It is a failing of the majority of us that we are so pricelessly egoistical that we really think to ourselves that other people are amusing. It never strikes us that our witty friend who pokes humor, very often malicious humor, at our friends, will probably do exactly the same with us. Either such an idea doesn't occur to us or else in our unbounded egoism we imagine ourselves to be immune from that sort of thing. Other people are funny—but we aren't Other people make faux pas which cause their friends amusement —but, of course, we don't!

But don't we? Are we not reckoning entirely without Mrs. Jones and her type—the lady who is so witty and amusing, and who can see something funny in- everything. Will she not see something humorous about us and, seeing it, not scruple to maintain her own reputation as a raconteur at our expense by relating, with possible exaggerations, the funny things she sees in us and our doings? It is a disturbing thought for us that we, who so recently howled with mirth at the idiosyncrasies of some of our friends (as related by the clever tongue of Mrs. Jones), are now the subject of someone else's mirth —and yet this often happens. So often persons who are witty and have the knack of making others laugh are so anxious to do this and to amuse that they do not stick strictly to the truth; if not telling deliberate untruths, they at least distort the truth, and exaggerate to such an extent that it amounts to an untruth. So sometimes these humorous people spoil themselves by being unkind; their clever remarks have a sting in them for somebody. Very often their humorous sallies are directed at some weakness upon which their friend is sensitive, some point to which any reference catches their victim "on the raw."

Those who are witty—who possess after all what is a very valuable attribute —should not use it at the expense of their friends, and should remember that "barbed wit" is crueL Though it may raise a laugh among a certain type of thoughtless people, it may hurt someone else very deeply.