Funny / Montague Rhodes James

• Most of James' stories have a rich vein of very dry, subtle humour running through them. "Oh Whistle And I'll Come For You, My Lad" is easily as hilarious in parts as it is terrifying, as James pokes fun at golf enthusiasts and gently mocks Colonel Wilson for being a strident anti-Catholic.
• There's something darkly funny about Karswell's magic-lantern show in "Casting the Runes"—not least, because it's largely intended just to scare the local kids.
• The opening of "A Neighbour's Landmark"—perhaps a little Self-Deprecation on James' part?
  Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy. Happy in these employments, and in occasionally opening an eighteenth-century octavo, to see ‘what it is all about’, and to conclude after five minutes that it deserves the seclusion it now enjoys, I had reached the middle of a wet August afternoon at Betton Court—
  ‘You begin in a deeply Victorian manner,’ I said; ‘is this to continue?’
• "The Uncommon Prayer-Book" takes quite the jab at Gregorian chanting, with the character of Mr. Avery laughing about how his son-in-law describes it:
  "He say he can hear the old donkey brayin' any day of the week, and he like something a little cheerful on the Sunday!"
• "Wailing Well" — originally written to be read at an excursion of Eton's troop of Boy Scouts — has some excellent comic moments, before it takes a decidedly sinister turn. The horrible ending is all the more shocking for the wry asides and anecdotes that come before. As an example, here's the Annual Life-Saving Competition at Eton:
  The practice, as you know, was to throw a selected lower boy, of suitable dimensions, fully dressed, with his hands and feet tied together, into the deepest part of Cuckoo Weir, and to time the Scout whose turn it was to rescue him. On every occasion when he was entered for this competition Stanley Judkins was seized, at the critical moment, with a severe fit of cramp, which caused him to roll on the ground and utter alarming cries. This naturally distracted the attention of those present from the boy in the water, and had it not been for the presence of Arthur Wilcox the death-roll would have been a heavy one. As it was, the Lower Master found it necessary to take a firm line and say that the competition must be discontinued. It was in vain that Mr. Beasley Robinson represented to him that in five competitions only four lower boys had actually succumbed. The Lower Master said that he would be the last to interfere in any way with the work of the Scouts; but that three of these boys had been valued members of his choir, and both he and Dr. Ley felt that the inconvenience caused by the losses outweighed the advantages of the competitions. Besides, the correspondence with the parents of these boys had become annoying, and even distressing: they were no longer satisfied with the printed form which he was in the habit of sending out, and more than one of them had actually visited Eton and taken up much of his valuable time with complaints. So the life-saving competition is now a thing of the past.