Sporting notions of present days and past

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CHAPTER IV
RACING REMARKS
IN the accounts furnished of the speeching,
always a star item in the entertainment, at a
certain Gimcrack Club dinner, which did not take
place exactly in the dark ages, the chairman of
the Race Committee gave a specimen of what
was considered a joke, a rare, quaint, merry
conceit, received as such by the assembled
company, for " (Laughter) " adorns the reports.
I can't quite believe that this laughter was of the
sort in which all joined, as is the case with a legal
funniment rich enough to amuse the Bench and
occasionally a condescending prisoner also. Still,
there it is—laughter in parentheses. The short-
hand gentlemen responsible for the telegraphed
despatches surely wouldn't put it in their notes,
and far less into copy to be wired and paid for at
so much per hundred words, unless the merriment
was
there at the time. Now, what do you think,
readers, this good thing was, to tickle the diners
so ?—a gem that in the long ago might have been
considered smart enough to be "sent to
Punch,"
considered by some the official dumping-place for
all witticisms, new or second-hand, pungent and
lively or flat and vapid. Here it is; but I'll be
hanged if I can see where the fun comes in. The
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