At Wit's End

A fellow of my acquaintance is known far and wide as a wonderful joke teller. He 's one of those people we think of as the "life of the party," and invariably keeps his friends in stitches. To his consternation, however, his wife never laughs at his jokes. Recently he was at a gathering and told a joke that landed with a thud. No one laughed except, remarkably, his wife, who howled as everyone stared at her in icy silence. "Now that," she said when she had regained her composure, "was funny!"