..."Satan", the ultimate humorist, who declares in "The Chronicle of Young Satan" that the human race has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter....blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.5 With Don Quixote firmly in mind, Twain fashioned himself as a sort of late nineteenth-century...

...effective weapon" which can take "power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution" and "blow [them] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand" (1o.735).58 Life, Melville noted in chapter 49 of Moby-Dick, "The Hyena," is "a vast practical joke":...

...[The human race] in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. . . . Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use...