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 that London was "puzzled and enraptured with the very mystery of the humour"; but Mr. Leacock, being at that time three years old, was not there to discern this for himself. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell was there on the opening night, November 13, 1866, and found the puzzle and the mystery to be far in advance of the rapture. The description he was wont to give of this unique entertainment (a "Panorama," and a lecture on the Mormons), of the depressing, unventilated Egyptian Hall in which it was given, of the wild extravagances of the speaker, which grew wilder and wilder as the audience grew more and more bewildered, was funny enough, Heaven knows, but the essence of the fun lay in failure.

Americans, sixty years ago, were brought up on polygamous jests. The Mormons were our neighbours, and could be always relied upon to furnish a scandal, a thrill, or a joke. When