He seemed to get prouder and prouder over each item of his own deficiency. He ended by saying that he had a dog at his house that had a far better ear for music than he had. As soon as his wife or any visitor started to play the piano the dog always began to howl—10)plaintively, he said—as if it were hurt. He himself never did this. When he had finished I made what I thought a harmless comment. “I suppose,” I said, “that you find your sense of humour deficient in the same way: the two generally go together.” My friend was 11)livid with rage in a moment. “Sense of humour!” he said. “My sense of humour! Me without a sense of humour! 12)Why, I suppose I've a keener sense of humour than any man, or any two men, in this city!” From that he turned to bitter personal attack. He said that my sense of humour seemed to have withered altogether. He left me, still quivering with indignation.
他好像对自己的每一项缺陷越说越自豪。最后他说，他家里养的一条狗对音乐比他还在行。每当他妻子或者来客弹起钢琴，小狗就会嚎叫起来，他形容那叫声非常“哀伤”，好像受到了伤害似的。而他本人从来不会如此。他说完之后，我发表了我自认为无伤大雅的看法：“我看，你会觉得自己也不怎么幽默吧，”我说，“乐感和幽默感一般是形影不离的。”我的朋友顿时气得脸色发青。“幽默感！”他说道，“我的幽默感！我缺少幽默感！哼，我敢说我的幽默感比这个城市里的任何一个人都要强，或者说比任何两个人的加起来都还要强！”接下来，他就转向对我进行恶毒的人身攻击。他说我的幽默感似乎完全枯竭了。离开我时他还在气得浑身直颤抖。
To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain 13)vein of the old original 14)demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and 15)pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is. When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and 16)gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the original 17)savage, the18)cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again. I can imagine a group of 19)prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up: “Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned.”
在我看来，令人愉快的幽默其本质好像总是这样的——必须不伤害人而且不含有恶意。我承认，我们所有人的身上都有某种古老而原始的邪恶幽默感或快意，会因别人遭殃而幸灾乐祸，这种魔鬼心理就像我们的原罪那样附在我们身上。看见一个人，尤其是那种昂首阔步的胖子，看那人突然踩到香蕉皮而摔倒了，这本不该是什么可笑可乐的事，但事实上的确会让人觉得好笑。如果有那么个人在结冰的湖面上优雅地绕圈滑行向别人炫耀其技艺，当他突然破冰落水而变成一只落汤鸡，那么每一个在场的人都会欢声大叫。而对原始的野蛮人来说，在这类情况下如发现滑倒的那人扭断了脖子或者落水后再也爬不上来，这才是笑话的精彩所在。我能想象出一群史前野人站在落水者失踪的冰窟窿边捧腹大笑的情景。假如那时有史前报纸之类东西的话，这一事件会以这样的标题见诸报端：“趣闻——某先生跌入冰窟且溺水而亡。”
But our sense of humour under civilisation has been weakened. Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us. Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment. I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls at the side of the street and getting ready a little store of them to use. As they worked, there came along an old man wearing a 20)silk hat and belonging by appearance to the class of “jolly old gentlemen.” When he saw the boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment. He began waving his arms and calling, “Now, then, boys, free shot at me! Free shot!” In his 21)gaiety he had, without noticing it, 22)edged himself over the sidewalk on to the street. An 23)express cart collided with him and knocked him over on his back in a heap of snow. He lay there gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and spectacles. The boys gathered up their snow-balls and took a run toward him. “Free shot!” they yelled. “24)Soak him! Soak him!”
然而，在文明的掩盖之下，我们的幽默感被削弱了。我们从类似的事情上已得不到多大乐趣了。不过，孩子们身上仍然大量地保留着这种原始的快乐感。我记得有一次看见两个小男孩在街边堆雪球。正当他们在收集积雪备用的时候，一位头戴丝制礼帽的老先生走了过来，从外表看，他属于那种“乐呵呵的老绅士”。一看见那两个男孩，他那金丝眼镜后面的眼睛里便流露出了慈爱的喜悦之情。他一边挥舞着手臂一边呼喊道：“喂，孩子们，来吧，随便用雪打我吧！随便打！”由于他太高兴了，他根本没注意到自己已跨出人行道走到了马路上。一辆快速驶过的马车把他撞翻在地，他仰天倒在了一大堆雪里。他躺在那儿气喘吁吁的，挣扎着想弄掉脸上和眼镜上的雪。那两个孩子拿起手中的雪球就朝他冲了过去。“随便打！”他们高喊道，“砸他！砸他！”
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One can indeed make the 25)sweeping assertion that the telling of stories as a mode of amusing others ought to be kept within strict limits. Few people realise how extremely difficult it is to tell a story so as to reproduce the real fun of it. The mere “facts” of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or 26)incongruity in the 27)denouement of it that no narrator, however clumsy, can altogether28)fumble it. Take, for example, this well-known instance—a story which, in one form or other, everybody has heard. “[3]George Grossmith, the famous comedian, was once badly 29)run down and went to consult a doctor. It happened that the doctor, though, like everybody else, he had often seen Grossmith on the stage, had never seen him without his make-up and did not 30)know him by sight. He examined his patient, looked at his tongue, felt his pulse and tapped his lungs. Then he shook his head. ‘There's nothing wrong with you, sir,' he said, ‘except that you're run down from overwork and worry. You need rest and amusement. Take a night off and go and see George Grossmith at the 31)Savoy.' ‘Thank you,' said the patient, ‘I am George Grossmith.'”
我们的确可以一言以蔽之：凡是讲故事让别人开心，都应该严守某些规则。很少有人意识到，要再现所讲故事那原汁原味的妙趣是多么的不容易。光是罗列“实情”是不足以使故事妙趣横生的。必须使用恰到好处的措词，而且每个词都应该各得其所。也许在一百个故事中，偶尔也会有一个根本无需叙述技巧的。这种故事在结尾处突然急转直下或出人意外，其幽默因而得以淋漓尽致地呈现出来——无论其讲述者多么笨拙，都不会做得太糟糕。我们不妨举一个众所周知的例子——几乎人人都听过这个故事，版本或许略有不同。“有一次，著名喜剧演员乔治·格罗史密斯颇感身体不适，便去看医生。恰巧医生也像其他人一样，虽然经常看他演戏，却从没见过他卸装后的模样，因此没有认出他来。医生给病人检查，看了舌头，探了脉搏，还听诊了肺部，然后摇了摇头说：‘您什么病也没有，先生，只不过因工作过多、操心太多而过度劳累了。您需要的是休息和娱乐。好好放松一夜，到萨瓦去看看乔治·格罗史密斯的演出吧。'‘谢谢您，'病人回答说，‘我就是乔治·格罗史密斯。'”
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