"There is no finer opportunity for the display of tact than in the introduction

of witty or humorous stories into a discourse. Wit is keen and like a rapier,

piercing deeply, sometimes even to the heart. Humor is good-natured, and does

not wound. Wit is founded upon the sudden discovery of an unsuspected relation

existing between two ideas. Humor deals with things out of relation--with the

incongruous. It was wit in Douglass Jerrold to retort upon the scowl of a

stranger whose shoulder he had familiarly slapped, mistaking him for a friend:

'I beg your pardon, I thought I knew you--but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in

the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening

with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking

hailstones between his teeth."[24]

 

The foregoing quotation has been introduced chiefly to illustrate the first and

simplest form of anecdote--the single sentence embodying a pungent saying.

 

Another simple form is that which conveys its meaning without need of

"application," as the old preachers used to say. George Ade has quoted this one

as the best joke he ever heard:

 

Two solemn-looking gentlemen were riding together in a railway carriage. One

gentleman said to the other: "Is your wife entertaining this summer?" Whereupon

the other gentleman replied: "Not very."

 

Other anecdotes need harnessing to the particular truth the speaker wishes to

carry along in his talk. Sometimes the application is made before the story is