The audience looked at it sadly. "I am glad," commented the lecturer, "that you did not laugh. Those pictures are, as you perceive, as stupid as they are vulgar. Now I will show you some clever English work": and there appeared before us the once famous Ally Sloper recreating himself and his family at the seashore. The audience looked at him sadly. A solemn stillness held the hall. "Why don't you laugh?" asked the lecturer irritably. "I assure you that picture is funny." Whereupon everybody laughed; not because we saw the fun—which was not there to see—but because we were jolted into risibility by the unwarranted despotism of the demand.
The prohibition jest which stands preeminent in the United States, and has afforded French and English humorists a field which they have promptly and ably filled, draws its vitality from the inexhaustible springs of human
