and had most hated and most loathed all my life, he
had at least spared it me. It was one which I had
heard attributed to every humorous person who had
ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to
Artemus Ward. It was about a humorous lecturer
who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest
jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and then
when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him
gratefully by the hand and said it had been the funniest
thing they had ever heard, and "it was all they could
do to keep from laughin' right out in meetin'." That
anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling;
and yet I had sat under the telling of it hundreds and
thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried
and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope