You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you
possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and
trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities,
evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which
exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the
race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and
by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has
unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter. Power, money,
persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug --
push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter
can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter
nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other
weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a
race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage."
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910), "The Mysterious Stranger"
