Occasionally, there is some doubt as to whether we regard things as
ludicrous or humorous. This is seen in some proverbs.
But the most common and strongly marked instances of variation are where
what is seriously taken by one person is regarded as ludicrous by
another. Thus the conception of the qualities desirable in public
speaking are very different on this side to the Atlantic from what they
are on the other, and what appears to us to partake of the ludicrous,
seems to them to be only grand, effective, and appropriate. "In
patriotic eloquence," says a U.S. journal, "our American stump-speakers
beat the world. They don't stand up and prose away so as to put an
audience to sleep, after the lazy genteel aristocratic style of British
Parliamentary speech-making." This boast is certainly just. There is a
vigour about the popular style of American oratory that we are sure has
never been equalled in the British Parliament. A paper of the interior
in paying a glowing tribute to the eloquence of the Fourth of July
orator who officiated in the town where the journal is published,
says--"Although he had a platform ten feet square to orate upon, he got
so fired up with patriotism that it wasn't half big enough to hold him:
his fist collided three times with the President of the day, besides
bunging the eye of the reader of the Declaration, and every person on
the stage left it limping.
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