something like the converse of this saying is also true. Not fools exactly, but wisdom disguised in the motley of wit, often gains entrance to ears deaf to angelic voices. There are follies that are to be laughed out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as a well-aimed joke brings back good-humor to an angry mob, or makes mad and pugnacious bullies cower and slink away from derision harder to stand than hard knocks,--even so will a quizzical Punch be efficient as a philanthropist, when sedate exhortations or stern warnings would fail to move stony insensibility. As an element in effective literature, a force in the cause of reform, the qualities Punch personifies have been and are of no slight service. And herein those qualities have an indefeasible title to regard. Let there be no vinegar-faced, wholesale denunciation of them, because sometimes their pranks are wild and overleap the fences of propriety. Rather let appreciation of their worthiness accompany all reproving checks upon their extravagances. Let nimble fun, explosive jokes, festoon-faced humor, the whole tribe of gibes and quirks, every light, keen, and flashing weapon in the armory of which Punch is the keeper, be employed to make the world laugh, and put the world's laughter on the side of all right as against all wrong. If this be not done, the seriousness of life will darken into gloom, its work become slavish tasks, and the conflict waged be a terrible conflict between grim virtues and fiendish vices. If you could shroud the bright skies with black tempest-clouds, burn to ashes the rainbow-hued flowers, strike dumb the sweet melodies of the grove, and turn to stagnant pools the silver streams,--if you could do this, thinking thereby to make earth more of a paradise, you would be scarcely less insane than if you were to denounce and banish all "Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, Sport, that wrinkled care derides, And laughter, holding both his sides." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: See _Parton's Humorous Poetry_.] THE SUBJECTIVE OF IT.