A delightful thing about humorous writings is that no one seems jealous of their influence or afraid to give them greater prominence. The only complaint which the publishers of the humorous weeklies have to make against their brethren of the daily press is, that their own circulation might be better were not so many of their good things promptly reprinted everywhere. No sooner does one of these papers come from the press than its best sayings are scissored and reprinted in a thousand or more papers. Almost any daily paper of large circulation seems to think it necessary to have a humorist of its own. They pay more for humorous contributions than for any other class of matter, and all of them are more keenly on the look-out for a new humorist than for a possible Presidential candidate. The readers of the daily press quote for one another the funny sayings of their favorite paper long before they think of mentioning the other contents; indeed, most of them are so absorbed by the fun that they don’t seem to have remembered anything else. We cannot possibly overestimate the value of our national faculty of seeing the humorous side of things. It keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous; it prevents us, both as individuals and a people, from being laughed at for anything we may do in sober earnest. It is very hard, in this day and land, for any man, society, party or church to be a fool without hearing about it in a good-natured way that robs the rebuke of its sting. It is not so in other countries. But our sense of humor does still more for us. It smooths numberless rough places in the pathway of a people whose road is not easy to travel. It averts many a quarrel, closes dangerous breaches, and is balm to wounds that otherwise would smart. It is almost always harmless. There are men and women whose fun always lingers upon incidents that are vulgar, but this is a fault of perverted minds--not of the humorous spirit. It is a better introduction, between strangers, than any letter or form of words, and it expresses much in little, doing it more effectively than any of the wise saws and proverbs of more serious races. It seems irrepressible and omnipresent; a man or woman may be too tired or sick to reason or to think, but whoever saw an American too weary to see the point of a joke or to offer another in return? We need to preserve our humor almost as carefully as if it were our character, for should we ever lose it our character will be the worse for the change. CHAPTER XXV. THE HIGHER EDUCATION. America has more colleges, so called, than all the other civilized nations combined.