(5) We may now pass to a group of presentations where the laughable feature seems to reside in a situation or condition which is distinctly undesirable. _Small misfortunes_, especially those which involve something in the nature of a difficulty or “fix,” are for the ordinary onlooker apt to wear an amusing aspect. The loss of one’s hat, a fall due to a slip, or a tilting against another pedestrian, are recognised instances of the amusing in the spectacle of the streets. Such sights as Ajax slipping in the foot-race and getting his mouth filled with dirt (_Iliad_, xxiii., 770–85), John Gilpin on his runaway steed, a party in a boat left stranded on a sand-bank, the down in the circus vainly trying to stop a runaway horse by clinging to its tail; these and other illustrations will readily occur to one familiar with the ways of laughter. The older popular entertainments, such as the {97} enjoyment of the performance of grinning through the horse-collar at the country fair, owed something of their value to this delight in seeing a man in a fix—if only that of being compelled to make a fool of oneself—especially when it was due to his lack of foresight.[57] A more refined sense of the laughable seizes on the many “awkward” situations of social life, say the unconcealable _gêne_ that overtakes a fine lady when she makes a meritorious but ill-judged attempt to get into touch with one of the “lower class”. It is to be noted that many situations involving not only an irritating amount of inconvenience but real suffering may excite this kind of laughter in the vulgar. The spectacle of a cripple dragging his body along has its amusing aspect, not only for jovial mortals but for superior beings. Homer represents the Olympian gods as dissolved in laughter at the sight of the lame blacksmith trying to discharge the dainty office of the cup-bearer Ganymede. We see the same unfeeling rejoicing at mishap in the laughter of the savage and of the coarser product of civilisation at certain forms of punishment, particularly the administration of a good thrashing to a wife, or to some ugly piece of mischief, as Thersites. Even “polite society” seems to have a relish for this form of amusement, if we may judge from the entertainment which the fashionable crowd on one side of the English Channel appears to find in scanning the gloomy figures and wan faces of the passengers as they land after a stormy passage. Here, again, the deep malignity of man peeps out in a rejoicing at the sight of others’ hurt (Schadenfreude).