“Is your father alive yet?” inquired one O’Brien of one M’Gorry. “No,” replied M’Gorry solemnly, “not yet!” A beggar called at a house and said: “For the love of hiven, ma’am, give me a crust of bread, for I’m so thirsty I don’t know where I’ll sleep to-night.” All of which is very funny and as who should say, very quaint. But is it humor? It provokes a smile certainly, yet it points to simplicity, rather than subtilty, in the Irish character. Indeed, the absolute truth about the bull is that it is the child of a plentiful lack of wit. A nice derangement of epitaphs, an opening of one’s mouth and a putting of one’s foot in it, may provoke mirth in other people, but it does not prove one to be either witty or merry. It is satisfactory to know that, according to the latest observations, the fine art of bull-making is going out of fashion among Irishmen. The Irish were the inventors of the bull, they brought it to its greatest perfection, they made it redound to their credit as a witty nation; and one cannot deny their right to cease from its manufacture if they see fit. In the House of Commons a bull is nowadays seldom perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, at any rate by the Irish Party. Irish Members of Parliament have grown too wary to be caught bulling. They walk delicately in English-cut frock-coats; they rather pride themselves on their ability to keep down the brogue, and at the bare mention of the word “bull,” they are prone to shiver. There is one feature of Irish wit and humor which is worthy of admiration and imitation. It is a negative feature truly, but an excellent one. Irishmen do not seem capable of that last infirmary of the doting mind—the pun. To play effectively upon words is, of course, an art in itself, and kept within bounds it is an amusing art; but the man who drops out of art into sheer mechanism, which is what has happened to the average punster, cannot be considered worthy of the respect of his fellows. The Irish, as I have said, do not appear to have descended to these depths. They may be a worn-out, a weary, a dull-witted, an exhausted, and a brooding and melancholy people, but they are not punsters. Herein they have a distinct advantage over the English, among whom the pun appears to obtain wider and wider currency. It is a lamentable fact that there are judges on the English Bench who never let slip an opportunity for punning. It makes juries and the gallery guffaw, and it gets a judge the reputation of being a wit and the possessor of those minor literary graces which are supposed to be included in the judicial prerogative. Judges are commonly understood to be irremovable, but I think that after their third pun retirement should be the only course for them. The man who makes a pun insults the intellect of his auditors and commits a gross outrage upon the language. Let all punsters, whether in high or low places, take heed that they are vulgar and vicious persons, and neither witty nor wise.