Mark Twain described Turner’s Slave Ship as “A tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.” In a newspaper cartoon, a wife says to her husband, “Even if it is Sunday morning and a terribly hot day, that’s no reason you should go around looking like the dog’s breakfast!” So we see the element of surprise must be combined with the element of appropriate inappropriateness to gain the desired result. In this story expectation is aroused for a human tragedy. The incongruity and disappointment make its humor. As Mr. Caveman was gnawing at a bone in his cave one morning, Mrs. Caveman rushed in, exclaiming, “Quick! get your club! Oh, quick!” “What’s the matter?” growled Mr. Caveman. “A sabre-toothed tiger is chasing mother!” gasped his wife. Mr. Caveman uttered an expression of annoyance. “And what the deuce do I care,” he said, “what happens to a sabre-toothed tiger?” It must be admitted that a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the two theories given us by the Greek philosophers. Cicero subscribed to the Derision theory, and said the ridiculous rested on a certain meanness and deformity, and a joke to be pleasing must be _on_ somebody. But he declared, also, that the most eminent kind of the ridiculous is that in which we expect to hear one thing and hear another said. Several other Greek and Roman philosophers tackled the subject without adding anything of importance, and some of them, as well as later writers declared that the comic could never be defined, but is to be appreciated only by taste and natural discernment; while many moderns agree that all theories are inadequate and contradictory, however useful they may be for convenience in discussion. Perhaps the trouble may be that only serious-minded people attempt a definition of humor, and they are not the ones best fitted for the work. For the discussion goes on still, and is as fascinating to some types of mentality as is the question of perpetual motion or the Fountain of Immortal Youth. A useful commentary on the matter, and one appropriate at this juncture is the following extract from the works of the celebrated theologian, Dr. Isaac Barrow, an Englishman of the Seventeenth century.