A large class of simple-minded people believe that the obvious joke is the most delightful form of humor. An obvious joke is one whose point or climax can be seen from the very start, and is, in fact, a natural sequence to the beginning. For example, when we begin to read of a city dude who professed to understand the distinctively rural art of milking a cow, and volunteered to show his friends how to do it, we know perfectly well that he is going to get knocked out in the attempt, and that the story will end in a humorous description of the indignities inflicted upon him by the enraged animal. The only chance for variety in the sketch lies in the manner in which the cow will resent the dude’s impertinence. She may impale him on one or both of her horns; she may hurl him on a dunghill and dance on his prostrate form; she may content herself with kicking him; but whatever she does she will be sure to upset the milk-pail and excite the laughter of the lover of obvious humor. Of course a professional humorist never reads an obvious joke. He knows exactly what is going to happen the moment his eye falls on the first paragraph. If a tatterdemalion appears at the county fair with a broken-down plug which he offers to trot against any horse on the track, the professional humorist knows that the decrepit charger is going to win the race, and that his owner will go away with his pockets bulging out with the money he has won from the too confiding. If a man holding four aces is persistently raised by a gentleman of quiet demeanor and bland, childlike face, we can call the latter’s hand without looking at it, because we know from long familiarity with American humorous literature, as well as poker, that he holds a straight flush. Some writers have had the effrontery to deal him a royal flush, forgetting that he has already given his opponent all the aces. If a gentleman of apparently delicate physique resents the impertinence of a bully who is forcing his attentions upon a lady, we know, without reading to the end of the chapter, that the man of effeminate build is in reality a prize-fighter or a college athlete, and will bundle the bully out on the sidewalk with great rapidity. The professional humorist shuns these “comics” as he would the plague. They make him tired. He knows how easy they are to construct. Moreover he despises alike the mind that gives them birth and that which finds them funny. The recipe for their concoction is very simple: Think of some acquaintance who habitually eats sugar on his lettuce and sweetens his claret. The man who says, “I don’t want none of this _I_-talian caterwaulin’. The good old-fashioned tunes, like ‘Silver Threads among the Gold,’ suit me right down to the ground. I don’t want none of yer fancy gimcracks ’n’ kickshaws in mine.” Try to remember the sort of thing that has moved this man to laughter, and then fashion a joke on the same plan, taking pains to make it apparent to the most primitive intellect.