The appeal met a willing
response and soon the soldier was bearing his companion away on his
shoulder, his head hanging down the soldier's back. Unknown to the
soldier a cannon ball carried away the head of his companion. Accosted
by another soldier, he was asked why he was carrying a man whose head
had been shot away. He stoutly denied the allegation and, at length,
dropped the headless body to prove the other's hallucination. Seeing
that the man's head was, in truth, gone, he exclaimed, "Why, the durn
fool told me it was his leg."
=Humor defies explanation.=--The humor of this story is cumulative. We
may not parse it, we may not analyze it, we may not annotate it. We can
simply enjoy it. And, if we cannot enjoy it, we may pray for a spiritual
awakening, for such an endowment of the sense of humor as will enable us
to enjoy, that we may no longer lead lives that are spiritually blind.
Bill Nye wrote:
"The autumn leaves are falling,
They are falling everywhere;
They are falling through the atmosphere
And likewise through the air."
Woe betide the teacher who tries to explain! There is no
explanation--there is just the humor. If that eludes the reader, an
explanation will not avail.
A teacher of Latin read to his pupils "The House-Boat on the Styx" in
connection with their reading of the "AEneid." It was good fun for them
all, and never was Virgil more highly honored than in the assiduous
study which those young people gave to his lines.
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