A precisely similar exaggeration of his own quality has been bred by similar causes in the American mind in his estimate of his national sense of humour. I am not denying the excellence of American humour, for I have in my library a certain shelf to which I go whenever I feel dull, and for the books on which I can never be sufficiently grateful. The American's exaggeration of his own funniness is not positive but comparative. Just as he is tempted to regard himself as the original patentee of human progress, and the first apostle of efficiency, so he is very ready to believe that he has been given something like a monopoly among peoples of the sense of humour. With a little more humour, he would undoubtedly have been saved from this particular error. Especially are the Americans convinced that there is no humour in Englishmen. Germans and Frenchmen may possess humour of an inferior sort, but not Englishmen. It is my belief that in the American clubs where I find copies of _Fliegende Blaetter_ and the _Journal Amusant_, these papers are much more read than _Punch_, and in not a few cases, I fear, by men who have but slight understanding of the languages in which they are printed. Indeed, _Punch_ is a permanent, hebdomadally-recurrent proof to American readers that Englishmen do not know the meaning of a joke.[153:1] Americans, of course, do not understand more than a small proportion of the pages of _Punch_ any more than they would understand those pages if they were printed in Chinese; but because _Punch_ is printed in English they think that they do understand it, and because they cannot see the jokes, they conclude that the jokes are not there. A certain proportion of American witticisms are recondite to English readers for precisely similar reasons, but the American belief is that when an Englishman fails to understand an American joke, it is because he has no sense of humour; when an American cannot understand an English one, it is because the joke is not funny. It is a view of the situation eminently gratifying to Americans; but it is curious that their sense of humour does not save them from it. Whatever American humour may be, it is not subtle. It has a pushfulness--a certain flamboyant self-assertiveness--which it shares with some other things in the United States; and, however fine the quality of mind required to produce it, a rudimentary appreciative sense will commonly suffice for its apprehension. The chances are, when any foreigner fails to catch the point of an American joke or story, that it is due to something other than a lack of perceptive capability.