Special Gifts, Devices, and Techniques : Page 133

today I could sit on a cigarette paper and swing my feet." A much maligned form of humor is the pun. Often called the lowest form of wit, it has its place. Virtually every great conversationalist has had to plead guilty to its use. The habitual punster is, however, a plague on good conversation. The reason is that he will quip his puns in the middle of someone's paragraph. You are explaining that lying is a certain sin. The punster rejoins, "That is what my mother seems to think when she calls me to get up every morning." Thus the significant topic is sidetracked by this inopportune pun. An irrelevant pun almost deserves the remark attributed to Dr. Johnson, that "He who would make a pun would pick a pocket." A pun brings incongruously together two different meanings of words sounding alike. A good pun can be really funny. And if it comes as an interlude between two speakers, that is at the conclusion of someone's point, it is quite acceptable. Someone asked the late W. C. Fields, "Do you believe in clubs for women?" He is supposed to have replied, "Yes, if every other form of persuasion fails." Someone remarks that a professor who comes to class ten minutes late is very rare. The punster amends, "I suppose, you would say he's in a class by himself, wouldn't you?" This sort of thing is fine. If you have the gift for it, judiciously inflict it on your party.