=The man who lacks a sense of humor.=—­There was no answer to this question, or, rather, he himself was the answer.  Such a man is obviously outside the pale, without hope of redemption.  If such a story, told by such a raconteur, could not touch him, he is hopeless.  In his spiritual landscape there are no undulations, but it reveals itself as a monotonous dead-level without stream or verdure.  He eats, and sleeps, and walks about, but he walks in a spiritual daze.  To him life must seem a somber, drab affair.  If he were a teacher in a traditional school, he would chill and depress, but he might be tolerated because a sense of humor is not one of the qualifications of the teacher.  But, in the vitalized school, he would be intolerable.  If children should go to such a teacher for spiritual refreshment, they would return thirsty.  He has nothing to give them, no bubbling water of life, no geniality, no such graces of the spirit as appeal to buoyant childhood.  He lacks a sense of humor, and that lack makes arid the exuberant sources of life.  He may solve problems in arithmetic, but he cannot compass the solution of the problem of life.  The children pity him, and no greater calamity can befall a teacher than to deserve and receive the pity of a child.  He might, in a way, teach anatomy, but not physiology.  He might be able to deal with the analytic.  He might succeed as curator in a museum of mummies, but he will fail as a teacher of children.

=Story of a boy.=—­A seven-year-old boy who was lying on his back on the floor asked his father the question, “How long since the world was born?” The father replied, “Oh, about four thousand years.”  In a few moments the child said in a tone of finality, “That isn’t very long.”  Then after another interval, he asked, “What was there before the world was born?” To this the father replied, “Nothing.”  After a lapse of two or three minutes the child gave vent to uncontrollable laughter which resounded throughout the house.  When, at length, the father asked him what he was laughing at, he could scarcely control his laughter to answer.  But at last he managed to reply, “I was laughing to see how funny it was when there wasn’t anything.”

=The child’s imagination.=—­The philosopher could well afford to give the half of his kingdom to be able to see what that child saw.  Out of the gossamer threads of fancy his imagination had wrought a pattern that transcends philosophy.  The picture that his imagination painted was so extraordinary that it produced a paroxysm of laughter.  That picture is far beyond the ken of the philosopher and he will look for it in vain because he has grown away from the child in power of imagination and has lost the child’s sense of humor.  What that child saw will never be known, for the pictures of fancy are ephemeral, but certain it is that the power of imagination and a keen sense of humor are two of the attributes of childhood whose loss should give both his father and his teacher poignant regrets.