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The Serious Results of the Late Humor
Harper’s Weekly (January 23, 1909) : 31
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
 

      A sense of humor went out (that term of fashion meaning complete extinction of the thing gone and shame to the persistent wearer) just in the nick of time. Not that humor has disappeared. Great numbers of old-fashioned people still cling to it; but there is a vast deal of difference between a thing being in vogue and its merely being in existence. It is always the people who consent to a mental dowdiness, a complacent using of opinions totally lacking in style, who keep the world properly balanced. If we all rushed to the extreme of the day there would be a dangerous toppling over, and Heaven only knows where we would land. Fashionable insistence on humor was excessively dangerous. A little, quiet, behind-the-times chuckling does not a whit of harm, though it is best not to mention it, never praise it, and only condone it in the privacy of the home.
      With a turn that no one in the least expected, humor, about a year ago, assumed the attributes of a Gorgon, and not only turned to stone anything it set its eyes on, but made it vanish into thinnest air a moment later. If we had any of us had the slightest inkling of these serious consequences we would have thought twice before so assiduously cultivating the horrid trait. But how were we to tell? Humor was required, commanded. It was as much as one’s life was worth not to possess it. Every one naturally, stupidly, thought it had come to stay. We were led to believe by a few of the most rabid believers in humor that the world was to be regenerated by it, that civilization in creating it had achieved her chef d’oeuvre and would not rest on her laurels, while all the time we were being led upon perilously thin ice, through which we have now fallen into cruelly cold water and a most ignominious scramble for safety. We were taught — we do not know by whom, but it was certainly none of our doing — to laugh at marriage and love and emotion and sentiment, above all, to shout at seriousness in any of its various forms, with the exceрtion of Ibsen, and now — it really is too absurdly humiliating — we are left with our antiquated talent on our hands and the appalling realization that it is interfering seriously with our movements, if not making us ridiculous. A humorist ridiculous! The horror of it? And yet if, two legs having gone out of fashion, every one cut off one and hopped on the other, only to find that a year later legs were extremely necessary, as running was all the rage, he would be in not a jot more trying a predicament than the humorists are now. They cut off something and at present they — let this not be said in public — want it back most sincerely. They want to fall in love, that interesting, daring tumble that no self-conscious person is capable of. Humorists became self-conscious almost in the very beginning. They want a grande passion, or at least the feeling that they are fitted for it... They cut off something and at present they — let this not be said in public — want it back most sincerely. They want to fall in love, that interesting, daring tumble that no self-conscious person is capable of. Humorists became self-conscious almost in the very beginning. They want a grande passion, or at least the feeling that they are fitted for it,instead of the maddening hollow laughter with which their every crevice is now filled. They want to cry, cry convincingly as though there were a reason for it. They long to take unimportant things seriously, and they would give all the jokes in the world for an hour of sustaining, dull, literal conversation. They would like, more than all else, to fall into fifteenth-century rages, and if they ever feel a flash of awful ire in their eyes, instead of that fiendish little self-satisfied twinkle of amusement which has been there so long, they will leap for joy, shout with relief, and perhaps nip their rage in the very bud.
      It is humor that has made marriage the unpopular thing it is — not any of the more serious reasons that excited scientists give, but just a madness that passed through most of us and left in its trail a shy uncertainty, a sensitiveness, a tendency to wince at so much as a corner of a mouth’s slightest twitching. It is amazing how tender, almost raw, the poor sufferers are. Never before has retribution come so quickly. The poor creatures screw up their courage to exhibit the faintest show of feeling, just any little fragment of sentiment that somehow has managed to stick to them; and before it has been out a blink of time they cover it up nervously and smile tightly, thereby hoping to give the impression that they did not mean what they said and only trust that you saw the joke of their having said it. Now was ever a situation more pitiable? No reformed criminal has more need of sympathetic encouragement than a reviving humorist. It is imperative that those who escaped the worst of the humor storm should turn away their heads and pretend not to hear when a faltering sufferer makes a tentative, appealing, half-serious remark. After their strength has returned a little they may be agreed with, though always in a gentle voice that will not startle them; and do not under any circumstances try to catch their shifting, unhappy eye. They will laugh if you do; they cannot free themselves from the trick, and it is sure to give them a relapse.
      It is a matter for which Americans can never be too grateful that a hardy half of our citizens showed an inability to be inoculated with the humor germ. It blessedly did not “take” with some, and the nation was saved. These people went living along, as though the other half of the population was not rocking in agonies of dutiful laughter; and now that the storm has passed they do not know that it ever existed, and their example is going, after this present time of anxious uncertainty, to pull the convalescents through. With every one ashamed to feel anything, they would have ended by laughing themselves out of existence or satirized themselves into stones.Their literalness will serve as a screen under which the rescued laughers can gradually nurse their emotions back to normal size. If the catastrophe had been general, America would now be non-existent. With every one ashamed to feel anything, they would have ended by laughing themselves out of existence or satirized themselves into stones. One of the convulsing details — no, no, not that, never that again, but one of the interesting facts noted during the process of this interesting phenomenon — is the bravado with which they do the things they once considered so — ah, well, there is no necessity for harping on the word! They step out bravely to admire things they like, or discuss their annual cold, or row over trunks checked wrongly. They swagger, roll a watchful eye, and you know to a certainty that they expect momentarily to be tripped up. They step high because they feel the pitfalls of old still about them, and the spirit of them makes one’s heart ache. We fall and rise again and feel with unpleasant realism the swing of the pendulum...
our bodies mere banners with which to mark the pendulum’s half circle They are so like slowly filling balloons, fears for their delicate emptiness and instinctively holds out a supporting hand.
      It is not in the least likely that this experience will teach any one a lesson. We are so extremely gullible about ourselves, and will believe anything so long as it is on the delectable subject — us. We ought to be wary and we are, while we are painfully picking ourselves up. Once on our feet, we gayly walk any plank that looks extensive and alluring. We fall and rise again and feel with unpleasant realism the swing of the pendulum. We dangle foolishly and are carried to dizzy heights. We lose our breath and are swept down at a sickening speed; and with a stubbornness that is perhaps the most amazing thing of all, we regard our position as stationary or else steadily ascending, this while the wind is on our faces and our bodies mere banners with which to mark the pendulum’s half circle.
 

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