PRACTICAL JOKES by Harper's Young People

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 11, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 41.

PRACTICAL JOKES

By Harper's Young People

A PRACTICAL joke is a sort of trick played by one person upon another, in the hope of making him uncomfortable and ridiculous. To put one's friend in an absurd situation, to interfere with his rights, to do something which will hurt him in body or mind, not very deeply perhaps, yet really, is the object of the practical joker. I have never in my life been able to see the least good, the least innocent fun, in practical jokes, but I have seen a great deal of evil and mischief resulting from them.

Some years ago, just at dusk, a maid-servant in a certain beautiful home took it into her head that it would be rare fun to dress herself in a sheet and frighten another of the servants. So she slipped into the grounds and hid herself behind a tree, and waited for her opportunity. Dancing merrily along and singing with a voice like a bird, came a sweet little daughter of the home, who had been sent on an errand to the lodge at the end of the green avenue. The merry child, sensitive to her fingertips, caught a glimpse of the straight, stark figure skulking behind the oaks, and was so frightened that a few months afterward she died—of nervous shock, the physicians said, which then began its fatal work.

In one of our New England colleges a youth who had been studying hard that he might enter the Freshman class was startled from his sleep at midnight by a party of fellows in masks, who proceeded to make sport for themselves by that stupid process called "hazing" their companion. They had their silly fun, but it is to be hoped that none of the number engaged in it can ever think of that night without a pang, for it made the youth insane.