Hop-Frog or the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs by Edgar Allan Poe
I NEVER knew anyone so keenly spry to a anecdote as the crowned head was. He seemed to reside only for joking. To determine a lofty epic of the jest friendly, and to announce it well, was the surest passage to his favor. Thus it happened that his seven ministers were all notorious for their accomplishments as jokers. They all took after the ruler, too, in being strapping, corpulent, obsequious men, as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people increase in interest fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a witticism, I have never been moderately proficient to discover; but sure it is that a gaunt kidder is a rara avis in terris.
About the refinements, or, as he called them, the ‘ghost’ of wit, the ruler troubled himself very unimportant. He had an especial respect for wideness in a jest, and would often put up with greatest extent, for the reasons of it. Over–niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua’ to the ‘Zadig’ of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, field jokes suited his drop far elevate surpass than viva voce ones.
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He made his first chandelier for his own dining stay a decade ago and said he likes that some its descendants now hang in nonart spaces like the clothing