THE END OF A PRACTICAL JOKE.
The Western papers brought us an account, a few weeks ago, of the tragical ending of a practical joke. Two gentlemen entered the apartments occupied by one of them, a young man inordinately fond of quizzing or teasing. He told his friend that the colored servant who had charge of the rooms was in constant terror of burglars, adding,— “He thinks that I am out of town. Let us upset the chairs, open the desk, and hide in the bath-room, to see what he will do.” His friend remonstrated, but he persisted, disarranged the furniture and papers, and then, pushing his guest before him into the bath-room, closed the door just as the old janitor came in. Supposing his master had been robbed, the negro tried to open the bath-room door, and finding the robbers, as he thought, within, he went for a pistol, and fired through the door, killing the poor young joker at the first shot. Now no practical joke could, apparently, have been more innocent and harmless than this. But, in fact, no practical jokes are innocent or harmless. They invariably play upon the cowardice, ignorance, superstition, or some other weakness of others, for the selfish amusement of the joker. Their danger cannot be estimated beforehand, simply because the weakness or anger of the victims is an unknown quantity. In farming districts, a favorite amusement of young people with vacant minds is to dress as ghosts, demons, etc., and go about frightening children. Epilepsy or lifelong nervous disease is often the result. There is another kind of practical jokes, legalized in college by long custom, just as senseless and dangerous. Such, in the University of Pennsylvania, for example, as “bowl day,” when two classes fight over the body of the youngest “honor boy,” one to put him into an enormous wooden bowl, the other to keep him out. The clothes and limbs of the victim are torn and dragged as by a pack of wolves.