It is to be noted that humor is slighter and more delicate than any other form of wit, and that it is used by serious and accomplished writers. It is the element of success in nearly all essay-writing, especially in letters; and the business man will find it his most powerful weapon in advertising. Its value is to be seen by uses so various.
The student is invited to study three examples of humor. The first is Addison's “Advice in Love.” It is obvious that this subject could not very well be treated in any other way. It is too delicate for anything but delicate humor, for humor can handle subjects which would be impossible for any other kind of language. Besides, the sentiment would be likely to nauseate us by its excess or its morbidity, except for the healthy salt of humor. Humor makes this essay instructive and interesting.
Next we present two letters from Stevenson. Here we see that humor makes commonplace things interesting. How deadly dull would be the details Stevenson gives in these letters but for the enlivenment of humor! By what other method could anything worth reading have been gotten out of the facts?
The selection from Charles Lamb is an illustration of how humor may save the utterly absurd from being unreadable. Lamb had absolutely nothing to say when he sat down to write this letter; and yet he contrived to be amusing, if not actually interesting.
The master of humor can draw upon the riches of his own mind, and thereby embellish and enliven any subject he may desire to write upon.
Of these three selections, the easiest to imitate is Addison. First, we should note the old-fashioned phrasing and choice of words, and perhaps translate Addison into simple, idiomatic, modern English, altering as little as possible. We note that the letter offered by Addison is purposely filled with all the faults of rhetoric which we never find in his own writing. Addison's humorous imitation of these faults gives us twice as good a lesson as any possible example of real faults made by some writer unconsciously.
In Stevenson's letters we see the value of what has been called “the magic word.” Nearly the whole of his humor consists in selecting a word which suggests ten times as much as it expresses on its face. There is a whole world of fun in this suggestion. Sometimes it is merely commonplace punning, as when he speaks of the “menial” of “high Dutch extraction” as yet “only partially extracted;” and again it is the delicate insinuation contained in spelling “Parc” with a _c,_ for that one letter gives us an entire foreign atmosphere, and the disproportion between the smallness of the letter and the extent of the suggestiveness touches our sense of the ridiculous.