WEBVTT

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I want to read two very
different pieces of prose

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about three years
apart in writing.

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The first is a small
story called A Miser.

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And some of the prose pieces
in since The Miner's Pale

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Children are more
deliberately not

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staying within so much as
exploring different kinds

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of narrative rather than
different kinds of address.

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A man was able to get hold of
all the laughter in the world

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and he packed it tightly and
locked it up in his house

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and hid the key.

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The trouble was that
nobody missed it.

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He had to tell them
what they were missing.

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Nobody knew what he was talking
about, nobody believed him,

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nobody thought that what he
was talking about was real.

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Who could believe
that after all?

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Would anyone believe it
if someone came up to him

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and told him that they had
all the laughter in the world

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locked up somewhere?

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Would anyone believe it even
if neither of them laughed?

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He tried to describe
laughter to them,

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he showed them how it was done.

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He showed different
ways in which

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different people could laugh.

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He told them all the things
that made people do it,

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everything he could remember
or invent people falling down,

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filth, people making
terrible mistakes,

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people unable to
control themselves,

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misfortunes of all kinds,
people with something to matter

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with them, no interest.

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He told them that it would
be good for their health

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and that he would not make
it expensive for them,

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no interest.

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There were many things
about it that he didn't even

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know he said, no interest.

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It had been called divine
he said, no interest.

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But the man kept on trying
because at least at night he

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could always go home
and take out the key

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and open up some and have
a good laugh to himself.

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But then one night he
started to laugh at himself

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and that made him lonely.

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He tried to invite
somebody else in the laugh,

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but it was very hard.

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He even said he would
give the laughter away,

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that somebody else laughed.

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So that person
remembered how to laugh.

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So that person was on his side.

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They were laughing together.

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Somebody else was
laughing with him,

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but that meant that
somebody else had some

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of the laughter in the world.

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So he started making
plans to steal it,

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but the other person
kept giving it away.

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