> A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, “Do not worry but buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it and go a little ways you fill find it.”

This is interesting: it's the sort of quip that, if said extemporaneously in conversation, would probably get someone to laugh. The funny thing would specifically be referencing back to a conversation/event that happened a few days ago. The thing that makes it less funny in the compressed form is that you don't have to put the 2 and 2 together of "oh yeah, that's an event that happened a few days ago which is related to this situation" because the compressed joke has spoon-fed you the context.

Maybe jokes were such a novel form at the time that even the compressed form was still funny back then?