One day when he was in this vein he mentioned a detail--the sense of humor.

I cheered up then, and took issue.

I said we possessed it.
"There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust.

You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that.

This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things--broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh.