The average English joke has its peculiarities. A sort of mellow distance. A kind of chastened reluctance. A coy and timid, yet trusting, though evanescent intangibility which softly lingers in the untroubled air, and lulls the tired senses to dreamy rest, like the subdued murmur of a hoarse jackass about nine miles up the gulch.

He must be a hardened wretch, indeed, who has not felt his bosom heave and the scalding tear steal down his furrowed cheek after he has read an English joke. There can be no hope for the man who has not been touched by the gentle, pleading, yet all potent sadness embodied in the humorous paragraph of the true Englishman.