Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/392

 quarters into which he brought a bed, a table, and a lamp, and that as a roof he used a large piece of sail-cloth with a hole through the centre; how during the night after the room was completed, a cow being driven home fell through the opening in the ceiling on to the table and extinguished the lamp; how his brother helped patiently to hoist the animal out and to rearrange everything; how he did the same thing when the same disturbance was repeated the following night; and then every succeeding night; such a story becomes comical through repetition. But Mark Twain closes with the information that in the forty-sixth night when the cow again fell through, his brother finally remarked that the thing was beginning to grow monotonous; and here we can no longer restrain our humoristic pleasure, for we had long expected to hear how the brother would express his anger over this chronic malheur. The slight humor which we draw from our own life we usually produce at the expense of anger instead of irritating ourselves. The excellent humoristic effect of a character like that of the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, is based on economized contempt and indignation. To be sure we recognize in him the unworthy glutton and fashionably dressed swindler, but our condemnation is disarmed through a whole series of factors. We understand that he knows himself to be just as we estimate him; he