Few Women Laugh Heartily

1910

Whether Due to Lack of Humor or Childhood's Training Is Unknown, But Fact Remains

Women laugh too little. Whether this is due to their lack of humor or to childhood's training in gentle manners may be questioned. Certain it is that a hearty laugh in a woman's voice is rare music. An audience of women rustles with amusement, but seldom laughs. A group of girls giggle, but do not laugh. A woman reading the most brilliantly humorous story seldom gets beyond a smile.

When Sir Walter Besant, in his clever skit, "The Revolt of Man," pictured the time in the twentieth century when women should have usurped all power — political, ecclesiastical and social — he shrewdly noted that laughter had died out in England; and when men revolted against their feminine tyrants, they came back to their own with peals of laughter.

A Paris doctor has recently opened a place for the laughter cure. It is a private institution, and large fees are charged. The patients sit around a room, and at a given moment begin to smile at each other. The smile broadens to a grin, and at a signal to a peal of laughter. Two hours a day of this healthful exercise is said to cure the worst cases of dyspepsia. But whether the habit of laughing easily and naturally could be acquired by this process is doubtful. — Montreal Herald.