Meynell, Alice Christiana Thompson, 1847-1922 / 2008-09-07 00:00:00


If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to signal
their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall keep the laugh
for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, and simply, and not
thrice at the same thing--once for foolish surprise, and twice for tardy
intelligence, and thrice to let it be known that they are amused--then it
may be time to persuade this laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it
is wont in public. The theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations
laugh lower than ours. The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the
laugher's sense of the ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the
disadvantage of covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the
actors. It is a public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for
a public laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private
laughter there.
Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times of
dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour in a
place better guarded, as something worth a measure of seclusion. It
should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in adventurous places.
For the sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself
conspicuous in the act of laughter.
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