Brought up in the school which teaches that to make others
laugh one must never smile one's self, he wore a grotesquely lugubrious and
changeless countenance. Such was Newgag in his every impersonation. When
he thought he was funniest, he appeared to be in most pain and was most
depressing.
"My methods are legitimate," he would say, when he had enlisted one's
attention and apparent admiration across a table bearing beer-bottles and
sandwiches. "The people want horse-play nowadays. But when I've got to
descend to that sort of thing, I'll go to the variety stage or circus ring
at once--or quit."
"That's a happy thought, old man," said a comedian of the younger school,
one night, when Newgag had uttered his wonted speech. "Why don't you quit?"
Such a speech sufficed to rob Newgag of his self-possession and to reduce
him to silence. He could not cope with easy, offhand, impromptu jesters.
In truth, no one tried more than Newgag to excel in "horse-play," but his
temperament or his training did not equip him for excelling in it; he
defended the monotony, emptiness, and toilsomeness of his humour on the
ground that it was "legitimate.
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