There is a scene in the life of David in which that worthy is represented as cutting fantastic capers before high heaven. At one time, in order to keep out of Saul's way, David went down to Gath. The servants of King Achish recognize him, and tell their royal master that this is the famous David over whose exploits the daughters of Israel sang. "Is not this David, the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?" But David does not wish his identity known and with characteristic shrewdness he feigns insanity. "He feigned himself mad, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate and let his spittle fall down upon his beard,"--a sorry looking hero! So thinks the king Achish. What, this the man that slew the giant? this drivelling lunatic the victor that Israel's daughters praised? His disgust knows no bounds. He is almost as grotesque in his anger as is David in his appearance and conduct. He turns upon his courtiers in offended dignity and cries, "Lo, ye see the man is mad; wherefore have ye brought him to me? _Have I need of madmen_, (are not ye my own servants sufficient?) that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?" "Fool me no fools," says King Achish. When King Achish asked, "Have I need of madmen?" he evidently thought of his own servants and courtiers as did Christian I., of Denmark, in modern times, of those who graced _his_ Court. He sharply remarked, on a presentation to him of several court fools, that "he was not in want of such things, and if he were, he had only to give license to his courtiers, who, to his certain knowledge, were capable of exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe!" In Nehemiah's account of building the walls of Jerusalem, he shows how sorely the Jews took the clumsy jibes of their foes and gives us a specimen of Samaritan joking in that early day. Sanballat mocked the Jews and said, "What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish which are burned?" Tobiah, the Amorite, was yet more caustic: "Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he will even break down their stone wall." This ridicule, although the jests do not seem very formidable to us, was harder to bear than attacks with sword and spear. It is so to-day. We can stand anything but laughter. One would rather be made to appear infamous than ridiculous. The only answer the builders could make was to pray for the destruction of their sarcastic persecutors. They wished that heaven's bolts of lightning might answer these bolts of wit. II. Sometimes the humor lies in the description itself rather than in the thing described. Dr. Barrow, in his famous essay, says of facetiousness, "Sometimes it is wrapped up in a dress of humorous expression."