Some jests have been progressive--they have been re-made to suit the times. Diogenes, when asked which wine he preferred, replied, 'That of other people.' An Englishman answered to the same question, 'The O. P. brand,' referring the initials not only to Other People, but also to the far-famed Old Particular stamp which marked certain rare varieties--or, as others explain it, to 'Old Port.' The Scholastikos of Hierocles, having a house for sale, carried a brick around as a sample--a modern story says that a commander when asked of what material his fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said: 'There!--every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living walls' of the Romans--two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were never yet more than twenty-five original 'good stories,' and that all of those now current may be traced back to them. In a certain sense, the assertion is true; but it is a mistake to confound the result of a cause with the cause itself, and an error to declare the descendant to be one and the same with the ancestor. Max Muller has proved that hundreds of words of the most different meanings descend from the same root, and, in like manner, we might show, if the traditional links were supplied, that the last 'good one' current at Washington, originated at the court of King Pharaoh. Let no one laugh, for Chaucer's Clerke of Oxforde's Tale was for years told, with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as the heroes, and we have even met with a bold Southron who '_knew_ that it was true of them!' In this connection it is worth while to observe that even the slang phrases of the day, which are popular, partly because they _save trouble in thinking_, and partly because the vulgar mind, like the vulgar ear, finds a relief or pleasure in monotony--are not unfrequently of ancient origin. The current expression, 'a high old time,' occurs in a Latin jest, given in an old German-Latin jest-book, which, as its preface asserts, consists entirely of a reprint from still older works. 'Henricus,' it says, 'was begged to make at a wedding (_Hoch zeit_--literally, 'high time') a wedding song, and complied with the following: 'Iste vetus Juvenis Socius prius ad stationem arripit Atque _altum tempus_ habere cupit.'[4] The expression is better in its old form, since _altum_ means both high and old. Those who have laughed at the instance in 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' of the Dutchman, who boasted that his brother had written a great book of poetry as thick as a cheese, may find its original 'motive' in an anecdote given in the same work.