Why, she'd go into that box," pointing to one for sandwiches.
"She's not bigger than that umbrella. 'Pon my honour as a gentleman,
she's not."
Humour, by means of the perplexity it produces, often gains the victory
over strong emotions. This fact has been practically recognised by
orators, who see that when a man is struck by a humorous allusion,
powerful feelings which could not otherwise be swayed give way, and even
firm resolutions seem for the moment shaken and changed. We are bribed
by our desire for pleasure, and a man thus often seems to sympathise
with those he really opposes and can even be made to laugh at
himself--strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by
complexity. To most persons nothing can be more solemn than the thought
of death, except its actual presence; but Theramenes was light-hearted
when the hemlock bowl was presented to him, and drinking it off could
not, as he threw out the dregs, resist exclaiming "To the health of the
lovely Critias."[23] Sir Thomas More was jocose upon the scaffold.
Baron Goerz, when being led to death, said to his cook--"It's all over
now, my friend, you will never cook me a good supper again." The poet
Kleist, who was killed in the battle of Kunersdorf, was seized with a
violent fit of laughter just before he expired, when he thought of the
extraordinary faces a Cossack, who had been plundering him, made over
the prize he had found.
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