There must also be complete unconsciousness in the perpetrator of a bull. "The pleasure," says Sydney Smith, "arising from bulls proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected;" but ordinary wit creates a sudden surprise at a resemblance which could not have been suspected between two things. Perhaps the best bull was practically perpetrated by the old lady in Middlebury, Wis., who crossed over a bridge that was marked "Dangerous" without seeing the sign. On being informed of the fact on the other side, she instantly turned in great alarm and re-crossed it. The wit which produces laughter cannot be analyzed without a mental process: but that is an after-thought and laughter anticipates it; as when Mark Twain, writing upon Franklin, says, "He was twins, having been born simultaneously in two houses in Boston." There is an unconscious organic assumption that both houses, since people insist upon both, must have been the spots of his birth. If so, the births in two houses must have been simultaneous, but the two Franklins not identical. Of course, then, they must have been twins. At least, this is the best that can be done with the historical material. But I am reminded of a famous wit, who, after viewing the Siamese Twins for a while, quietly remarked, "Brothers, I suppose." If wit ever unmasks a moral feeling it performs its noblest function and imparts a complicated pleasure; as when Abraham Lincoln, in defending a fugitive slave before a court, said, "It is singular that the courts will hold that a man never loses his right to his property that has been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost the right to himself if he was stolen." When wit creates a temporary congruity between an idea and an object which are essentially incongruous on all points, the shock dissolves in pleasure, because the oppressiveness of life results from its ideas; and yet one of them opens to us an escape from it. We find a way of eluding for a moment a task-master, and it makes us smile. It is not a moral revolt, for that would be a deepening of the seriousness till it became too pathetic; but it is a momentary beguilement, and we are cheated into the presumption that there is no care in the world. We return to the care refreshed by this electric bath of wit, which has a tonic quality and saves us from despair. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Ninth Eclogue of Virgil, 28th line.] [Footnote 2: Sterne may have picked up this sentiment during his journey in France, when the donkey was bewept. At any rate, it is found in literature as early as 1594, when Henri Estienne wrote his "Prémices:" "_Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue._"] WIT, IRONY, HUMOR. WIT.