PARAGRAPH FOR PRECIS

One of heaven’s best gifts to man is humour, for it adds innocent pleasure to life, both in health and in sickness, and helps to promote good feelings among people in their daily intercourse with one another. Sydney Smith says, “Man should direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food, but God had given us wit and flavour, and brightness and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man’s pilgrimage and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl.” Think for a moment what life would be if there were no humours or wit in the world, no laughter, no fun. Now, humour is not the same thing as wit; wit is concerned chiefly with words while humour deals rather with situations; a man may be witty and yet not possess humour. Humour is something much larger and profound than wit. Nearly all our great writers have the gift of humour.

But like all pleasurable things of life, wit and humour have their dangers; and three of the commonest are those of being vulgar, unkind and profane. In other words, those who use these gifts of wit and humour must see that they do not hurt the feelings of others and must avoid jesting about sacred things. The only way in which you can acquire the right taste for what is good in the world of wit and humour is for you to read good examples and fortunately, we have many in our literature. Shakespeare is a mine in himself and so is Dickens.

(263 words)

SOLVED PRECIS 

Title: The Place of Humour in Life

Humour adds charm and pleasure to the social intercourse in life and relieves even the miseries of sickness. Life without humour would be barren. But humour and wit are not synonymous. With is with words, humour is with mind and situations. But great caution is required in using humour. It should not hurt anybody’s feelings. Writers like Shakespeare and Dickens give good lessons in the use of humour.

(72 words)