June 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



•255 



I FEAR that to this question there is but one answer, 

 "We don't know." The infinite, which necessarily is, is 

 necessarily incomprehensible. 



* * * 



Among the signs of waning wit, in these h\ird days, must 

 be recognised the increased favour in which mere word 

 playing is held. The comic papers, or those which now- 

 a-days do duty for such, seem to rely more and more on this 

 most insipid form of fun. Some, indeed, have been started 

 with no other apparent object but to show what absurdities 

 can he reached in that direction. But then skc/i papers are 

 only vulgar because written for a vulgar-minded chis>. It 

 should be otherwise with p:\pers like Puncfi, originally 

 started, and long maintained, as exponents of genuine wit 

 and humour. True, amoug the fii-st writers for Punch must 

 be counted some who were much too fond of that agreeable 

 servant but most hateful master, the pun. But such a 

 writer as Thomas Hood punned merel)- in the excess aurl 

 exubei-ance of his fun ; he had true humour and true pathos 

 at his command. (It slaould never be forgotten that his 

 " Song of a Shirt " came out in Puncli.) 



* * * 



Why should an innocent public be disgusted by those 

 atrocious illustrated i)uns which have so long appeared 

 weekly in Punch 1 The pun is good fun enough when it 

 comes in casually in conversation, though even there it 

 weaiies if the casualties are too frequent ; and when sus- 

 picion arises that any one is really lying in wait for oppor- 

 tunities to pun, the whole thing becomes a nuisance, and 

 conversation a weariness of the fiesh. Even this, however, 

 terrible as it is, seems nothing compared with the iniquity 

 of a man who deliberately sits down, with a dictionar}', to 

 invent infamously bad puns, and then gets a fellow- 

 conspirator to draw (or himself draws) a bad picture to 

 corre.spond. 



One does not like to seem severe, especially on those who 

 try to cater for our amusement ; but reall_y the editor and 

 proprietor of a paper in which such cruel fun as this is 

 allowed to appear should be subjected, for each oftence (after 

 the iniquity of their course has been shown them), to some 

 really painful punishment — the perusal, for example, of a 

 whole page of the Tupicnl Tivies or the Sporting Times, or 

 any of the organs specially intended for the vulgar. Obsti- 

 nate persistence in wrong-doing might be properlj' pnni.shed 

 by the infliction of a whole number, and, if the offender 

 survived, by the order to commit to memory, and repeat 

 daily, a dozen of the worst jokes (if any one could .select 

 them), or to analyse them, and inquire how they were pro- 

 bably invented. 



* * * 



Imagine, for example, the state of a man's mind, outside 

 Bedlam originally, who had had to analyse manj' such jokes 

 as this from the Topical Times : " ' Have you ever seen a 

 hen stealing 1 ' says the wife. ' Xo, but I've seen a cock 

 robbing,' replied the husband. ' Yes,' she commented, ' in 

 the ...''' but the i-est is too feeble to bear removing. The 

 analysis would result in showing how the inventor of this 

 elaborate witticism said to himself: ''Go to — I will make 

 me a joke ! What word shall I try to play on 1 1 will 

 think over the poetry of my childhood, and choose me a 

 word from it. 'Who killed cock robin?' Let me see — 

 ' robin ' sounds near enough to ' robbing ' to do. A cock 

 robbing — um, um, um ! — a cock stealing — a hen stealing. 

 Why, there it is ! Bring a hen stealing and a cock robbing 

 into the compass of three or four lines, and the public (that 

 is, the pubUc we wi-ite for) will find that a full-sized joke." 

 Ilinc illte lacrynKB. 



At that rate a man of average industry (and with a 

 dictionary, hien enteniht.) will make you his hundred 

 or so of such jokes per diem. But Punch ought to have 

 nothing to say to such rubbish. The memorj- of writers like 

 Hood, Jerrold, Thackeray, and Dickens should save the 

 pages of our still leading comic paper from this dreary non- 

 sense. Better than this would be even the ghastliest form 

 of American fun — as suggestive of true humour as a grin- 

 ning skull of cheerfulness. 



* * * 



A CORRESPONDENT expresses annoyance because I have not 

 hitherto answered in " Gossip " his question. Whether the 

 i21st or 22nd of June is actually the longest day — especially 

 as he had already asked that question in the anteroom of a 

 place where I had lectured. 1 remember the occasion, and 

 that I reached my hotel half an hour later than I liad 

 hoped in consequence ; but I fail to see why this should 

 lead me to resume the ungrateful task of answering corre- 

 spondents in Knowledge. I may repeat, however, what I 

 then laboriously explained, that the longest day is not the 

 same in every year. That day on which the sun enters the 

 sign Cancer is the longest day. I prepared my " Seasons 

 Pictured," Knowledge Library, precisely to answer such 

 questions; and when I consider how much labour I devoted 

 to that work, and that it cost me something to get it printed 

 and published,! venture to think that any one really interested 

 in such matters might be willing to obtain the book, or 

 to seek the information from others. It is a sioiple matter 

 of fact that, if I answered all such queries as are thus 

 addressed me, I could do nothing else. One might as 

 reasonably ask a tailor for specimen suits as a student 

 of science for letters of explanation. 

 * * * 



I KNOW not how it may be with others, but I find myself 

 strangely moved by photographic records of the heavenlv 

 bodies. To see on a small area of photographic film the 

 ripple marks of light waves which have travelled across the 

 illimitable depths of interstellar space, taking years or 

 centuries on their way, to close their career by writing down 

 their record for the astronomers on our tiny earth — this, 

 surely, is among the most amazing, one may almost say the 

 most moving, achievements of the science of our day. 



* * * 



But some of the recent triumphs of photography in this 

 direction are. to my mind, even more striking, when rightly 

 apprehended. The photographic charts, for example, in 

 this number and our last, at first view seem in no way 

 more striking than one of the charts of stars formed by 

 Argelander and his assistants. One would say they were 

 ordinary engravings showing a great number of stars, some 

 of them large, others of medium size, others exceedingly 

 minute. One might even say, how neatly has the en- 

 graver rounded these tiny discs ! and how carefully he has 

 shown the smallest stai-s by the minutest conceivable dots ! 

 — less than mere pin holes ! 



* * * 



But in reality every one of the white dots on the black 

 ground has been engraved by the light waves of the corre- 

 sponding star — aided afterwards by the stronger light of our 

 own star, the sun. For, after the stars in a certain rich 

 region had recorded their positions on a photographic film, 

 and by solar action a positive had been formed from the 

 resulting negative, a zincographic plate had to be formed 

 from this star-drawn and sun-reversed chart. To do this the 

 sun's rays were again called in to help the work of his 

 brother suns, the stars, in that photographic field. On a 

 film of gelatine his record of their positions was left, and 

 afterwards certain acids poured on the gelatine film pa.ssed 



