PATEA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 256, 29 October 1932, Page 3

PATEA

SUMMER SPORTS It is hoped that all summer sports will be recommenced to-day. The Lawn Tennis Club will hold its official opening day, while the local cricket team will travel to Hawera to play the High School. This will be the second match in the competition among South Taranaki vlubs. On the rifle range, the second shoot for the Finlayson trophy will be fired. At the bowling green there will be the usual Saturday match and rink play. After the rain in the early part ot the week, all greens and courts are looking especially well-cared for, and tennis, bowling, and croquet courts present a splendid grass surface. which should give players good sport. BUSINESSMEN’S LUNCH CLUB Rev. Walton was the speaker at the monthly luncheon of the Businessmen s Club last Wednesday. Mr E. F. Hemingway presided. There was a good attendance of members, who listened to Rev. Walton with interest. Rev. Walton took as his subject. “Wit and Humour” and undertook, by anecdotes, to illustrate the difference. Humour appealed to the feelings, whilst wit, he stated, was more an appeal to the intelligence, by brevity and an appreciation of the nineties of the language. Wit, which was an essential to epigrammatic speech, was a matter of intelligence and understanding, the power of giving pleasure by combining ideas or expressions. Humour on the other hand tended to excite laughter by ludicrous images or representations. A humourous person was one having the faculty of perceiving the funny side of things.

Rev. Walton also traced the refinement of humour from the early days to the present conception of humour. Primitive people had found mirth in occurrences which to people of to-day appeared repulsive. New editions of old books have portions which once caused laughter deleted as being coarse, vulgar and brutal. In the eighteenth century, humour began to be connected with a new quality of tenderness. Thackeray gives some of the best definitions of humour, as well as instances. He said, “The humourous ■writer proposes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your tenderness, vour scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture, your tenderness for the weak, poor and oppressed. The humourous man is pretty sure to be of a philanthropic nature, have great sensibility, easily moved to pain or pleasure, to sympathise in laughter, love and amusement. The best humour is that flavoured with tenderness and kindness.” Rev. Walton gave instances of humour found in epitaphs on gravestones, which were more or less unconscious. He also quoted several spoonerisms. In conclusion, Rev. Walton stated that, humour was a God-given gift, which had been a marked characteristic of the British soldier during the Great War. “Humour. helped a man to keep his sanity, and God help the man without it,” he stated.