But the swift accession of joy may come in another way, from the sudden transformation of one’s world, from the arrival of some good thing which is at once unexpected and big enough to lift us to a higher level of happiness. With children and savages the sight of a new and pretty toy is sometimes enough to effect this. The charming bauble will so fill sense and soul that the joy of living leaps to a {73} higher plane and bursts into a peal of mirth. The unexpected sound of the father’s voice at the end of a long day devoted to the things of the nursery was, we are told, enough to evoke a shout of laughter in a small American boy: it sufficed to bring back to the little fellow’s consciousness another and a glorious world. We older folk have, for the greater part, lost the capacity of simply greeting delightful things in this way, a greeting in which there is no thought either of their meaning or of their interest for us. Yet we may meet the unexpected coming of friends with something of the child’s simplicity of attitude. It is hard not to smile on suddenly seeing a friend in a crowded London street: hard to keep the smile from swelling into a laugh, if the friend has been supposed at the moment of encounter to be many miles away. Some of us, indeed, may retain the child’s capacity of laughing with a joyous wonder at a brilliant explosion of fireworks. It remains to account for the persistent fit of laughter which frequently accompanies a prolonged gladness. Does not the fact that the child and the natural man, when taken with the mood of mirth, go on venting their good spirits in renewed peals tell against our theory that the outburst is caused by an accession of joy? In order to answer this we must look a little more closely at this so-called persistent laughter. The language of observers of unsophisticated human nature is sadly wanting in precision here. When, for example, we are told by travellers that certain savages are always laughing, we know that we are not to take the statement literally. It means only what it means when a mother tells her visitor that her rogue of a boy is for ever laughing and shouting; that under certain favourable conditions the laughing fit comes readily and persists longer than usual. In a lasting {74} mood of jollity we are all strongly inclined to laugh, and need very little to call forth a long outburst.