Fun Has a Valuable Side

1901

"Show me a man who does not appreciate humor," said John Kendrick Bangs to me, "and I will show you a man who is morbid, cynical, unresponsive to every call of nature. Such a man is worse than a pessimist and more to be pitied. Take some of the greatest and most successful men in the world. Humor has always played an important part in their lives. Often a funny incident has marked the turning point of a great man's career. Often some ridiculous condition has been the impetus of a new start in life."

Mr. Bangs is right. Did not Columbus' apparently hopeless task of standing an egg on end make thinkers of the wise men who sat around him? Was not George Washington credited with being a master of the truth because he once saw a boy punished for trying to jest with his father and finally became, as Mr. Bangs facetiously remarks, so "he couldn't tell a lie even if he saw one?" And didn't Johann Gutenberg invent the printing press by working out a theory which found its origin while he was playing leapfrog with some boys on damp ground? The impression made in the soil by the boys' feet is said to have given Gutenberg his first idea of the impression that could be made by types. — Robert Mackay in Success.