A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

My brother just sent out the Christmas Wish Lists for my five-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece:

Hi Everyone,
Here are the kid’s Christmas lists. Sorry it’s taken so long to get them sent.

Galen
A toy typewriter
A marble run
A castle set
Armor pants
A coconut
Jack Frost movie
A plastic Christmas plate
A wooden toy airplane that can actually fly
A batman calendar
A comfortable life jacket
A pencil sharpener with a bucket
A batman fishing pole

Evelyn
A candy cane decoration
An apple decoration
A fireman costume
A princess crown
A pink fishing pole
Heart pajamas
Princess music
A camping plate
A bucket for playing in the snow
Two big new blankets
A pink ball dress that fits when I’m a grown up
A pink paint brush

Populace

Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.

In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it; they please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above.—Not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions.

Letters to His Son, Lord Chesterfield

At first reading this annoyed me. But then I thought about sitcoms in general and America's Funniest Home Videos....and I could see a point to Chesterfield's disdain.