346 MEN 1 HAVE FISHED WITH. 



shrewd enough at a bargain, but children in everything 

 else; they had read nothing, could talk of nothing but 

 their own uneventful lives. Yet it was necessary that 

 something should be done to relieve the monotony of sit- 

 ting around a camp-fire and listening to the talk of men 

 who could not talk. Therefore, to relieve myself from 

 the dreadful situation, ten times more lonsome than if no 

 human being had been within one hundred miles, I 

 "opened my box of tricks," learned in the idle moments 

 of schoolboy life, and amused myself and companions 

 with the few simple bits of legerdemain which I could call 

 to mind. Later in life many such situations have oc- 

 curred, when if you wanted any fun you must make it 

 yourself, and it is my mature opinion that such a crowd 

 have so little humor that they don't appreciate anything 

 except practical jokes or the wonders of the magician. 

 The humorous story or the witty repartee is wasted on 

 them as much as it would be on a Digger Indian. Yet 

 that is the state of mind of over half of the people of the 

 United States, taking them "by and large.''' It is safe to 

 say that outside what may be called the educated classes 

 few appreciate a joke unless it is in its roughest costume. 

 Refine it, put it in evening dress, and it "is caviare to the 

 general;" but the few who can and do enjoy it are those 

 for whom it was intended. Jests are of so many kinds 

 that some are offensive. Bacon, in his "Essays," says: 

 "As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be 

 privileged from it namely, religion, matters of state, 

 great persons, any man's present business of importance, 

 any case that deserveth pity." This definition is "funny" 

 to this generation. 



It is funny because "matters of state" are the subject 

 of political cartoons in almost every illustrated paper of 

 to-day, and as for "great persons" they are the fellows 



