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withstand distress.
I said: "Bring him to my lecture. I'll start him for you."
"
Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family
would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my
benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those
parched orbs?"
I was profoundly moved. I said: "My son, bring the old party round.
I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there
is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that
will make him cry or kill him, one or the other." Then the young man
blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him
in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on
him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him
with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes
into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed
up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and
behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and
sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started
a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of
moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one
despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of
supernatural atrocity full at him!
110
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