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Updated: May 7, 2025
Now suppose you wish to skate so that the critics will say, "See! this athlete docs his work as Church paints, as Darley draws, as Palmer chisels, as Wittier strikes the lyre, and Longfellow the dulcimer; he is as terse as Emerson, as clever as Holmes, as graceful as Curtis; he is as calm as Seward, as keen as Phillips, as stalwart as Beecher; be is Garibaldi, he is Kit Carson, he is Blondin; he is as complete as the steamboat Metropolis, as Steers's yacht, as Singer's sewing-machine, as Colt's revolver, as the steam-plough, as Civilization."
In what respects does this suit the plot and the circumstances? Which Dromio do you think the wittier? Is one more a house servant and less of a personal attendant and professional fool than the other? Why, do you think, is Antipholus the Stranger made to beat his man so often? Is his quick temper, or a sort of horse-play fun at the bottom of it?
How many times we are wittier than we meant to be, striking out, by our unconscious blow, thoughts related to the one we utter, but far more brilliant, and ourselves becoming conscious of the very good thing we have said only by its effect on the company! So it is, I fancy, with all our mental movements. The brain acts independently of the will in sleep. Why not, in a great measure, when awake?
'Genuine humour and true wit, says Landor, 'require a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one. Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men have been graver than Pascal. Few men have been wittier. To apply the citation of so great a brain as Pascal's to our countryman would be unfair.
He called for champagne, and under its exhilarating influence grew wittier and wittier, and kept the alderman in such roars of laughter that he could scarcely swallow his oysters." As he finished this little story the Alderman laughed heartily, and remarked: "I'll bet five dollars it is the same man." "Why, what do you mean?" inquired Franklin.
He will have pride enough to wish to do well in everything that he undertakes, and even to wish to do it better than others; he will want to be the swiftest runner, the strongest wrestler, the cleverest workman, the readiest in games of skill; but he will not seek advantages which are not in themselves clear gain, but need to be supported by the opinion of others, such as to be thought wittier than another, a better speaker, more learned, etc.; still less will he trouble himself with those which have nothing to do with the man himself, such as higher birth, a greater reputation for wealth, credit, or public estimation, or the impression created by a showy exterior.
I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind-sides and little extravagances; to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began the frolic.
The Pole, he says, is quicker, wittier, more imaginative, more studious of beauty, less absorbed in the material world than the Russian in a word, infinitely more gifted with the artistic temperament; and yet in every art the Russian has immeasurably outstripped the Pole. His explanation, if not wholly convincing, is at least suggestive.
A rivalry arose who should cap it with a better. The contact of brains struck sparks. Every man was wittier than his wont; every woman more radiant. What the plague had I and Wetter been grumbling and snarling at down there on the river? The impulse lasted the evening out. After dinner we fell to dancing in the long room that faced the gardens.
"Your jokes, dear ancestor, are even wittier than those of lady Feng," the party shouted, "so favour us with one, and let's have a laugh!" "I've nothing out of the way to evoke laughter with," old lady Chia smilingly answered. "Yet all that remains for me to do is to thicken the skin of my antiquated phiz and come out with some joke.
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