“We laugh at absurdity; we laugh at deformity. We laugh at a bottle-nose in a caricature; at a stuffed figure of an alderman in a pantomime, and at the tale of Slaukenbergius. A dwarf standing by a giant makes a contemptible figure enough. Rosinante and Dapple are laughable from contrast, as their masters from the same principle make two for a pair. We laugh at the dress of foreigners, and they at ours. Three chimney-sweepers meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down. Country people laugh at a person because they never saw him before. Any one dressed in the height of the fashion, or quite out of it, is equally an object of ridicule. One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with which we cannot sympathize from its absurdity or insignificance. It is hard to hinder children from laughing at a stammerer, at a negro, at a drunken man, or even at a madman. We laugh at mischief. We laugh at what we do not believe. We say that an argument or an assertion that is very absurd, is quite ludicrous. We laugh to show our satisfaction with ourselves, or our contempt for those about us, or to conceal our envy or our ignorance. We laugh at fools, and at those who pretend to be wise--at extreme simplicity, awkwardness, hypocrisy, and affectation.” A beautiful definition of the Disappointment Theory is Max Eastman’s, “The experience of a forward motion of interest sufficiently definite so that its ‘coming to nothing’ can be felt.” Mr. Eastman says further: “It is more like a reflex action than a mental result. It arises in the very act of perception, when that act is brought to nothing by two conflicting qualities of fact or feeling. It arises when some numb habitual activity, suddenly obstructed, first appears in consciousness with an announcement of its own failure. The blockage of an instinct, a collision between two instincts, the interruption of a habit, a ‘conflict of habit systems,’ a disturbed or misapplied reflex--all these catastrophes, as well as the coming to nothing of an effort at conceptual thought, must enter into the meaning of the word _disappointment_, if it is to explain the whole field of practical humor. The ‘strain’ in that expectation is what makes it capable of humorous collapse. It is an active expectation. The feelings are involved.” The point of the Disappointment Theory, that of frustrating a carefully built up expectation is exemplified in jests like these. “Is your wife entertaining this winter?” asks one society man of another. “Not very,” is the reply. “I have to go to Brooklyn--” says a perplexed-looking old lady to a traffic policeman. “Are you asking directions, ma’am, or just telling me your troubles?” The incongruity may be merely a collocution of words.