But presently the lecturer gets to understand that it is only the
nine-o'clock train and that all the audience know about it. Then it's
all right. It's just like the people rising and stretching themselves
after the seventh innings in baseball.
In all that goes above I have been emphasising the fact that the
British and the American sense of humour are essentially the same
thing. But there are, of course, peculiar differences of form and
peculiar preferences of material that often make them seem to
diverge widely.
By this I mean that each community has, within limits, its own
particular ways of being funny and its own particular conception
of a joke. Thus, a Scotchman likes best a joke which he has all to
himself or which he shares reluctantly with a few; the thing is
too rich to distribute. The American loves particularly as his line
of joke an anecdote with
the point all concentrated at the end and exploding in a phrase.
The Englishman loves best as his joke the narration of something
that actually did happen and that depends, of course; for its point
on its reality.
There are plenty of minor differences, too, in point of mere form,
and very naturally each community finds the particular form used
by the others less pleasing than its own. In fact, for this very
reason each people is apt to think its own humour the best.
Thus, on our side of the Atlantic, to cite our own faults first, we
still cling to the supposed humour of bad spelling.
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