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him is another. The saturation-point of each mind differs from

that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind
which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up

much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always
to rise above - not the author, but the reader's mentalversion of

the author, whoever he may be.
I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown

into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then
they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought

without words. We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and
probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the

contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of
spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in

vast circles round the largest compass of earthlyintelligences.
- I confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned

to you some time ago, - I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes
it becomes almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in the

mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very bad to have
thoughts and feelings, which were meant to come out in talk, STRIKE

IN, as they say of some complaints that ought to show outwardly.
I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every

day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more
of births, - with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats,

its pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the
books that were ever written, put together. I believe the flowers

growing at this moment send up more fragrance to heaven than was
ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled.

- Don't I read up various matters to talk about at this table or
elsewhere? - No, that is the last thing I would do. I will tell

you my rule. Talk about those subjects you have had long in your
mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied

but recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till
they are seasoned.

- Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their attention turned
a good deal of late to the automatic and involuntary actions of the

mind. Put an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an
hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to it.

When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it as it was when
acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to speak, - become at

home, - entered into relations with your other thoughts, and
integrated itself with the whole fabric of the mind. - Or take a

simple and familiar example; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it. You
forget a name, in conversation, - go on talking, without making any

effort to recall it, - and presently the mind evolves it by its own
involuntary and unconscious action, while you were pursuing another

train of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips.
There are some curious observations I should like to make about the

mental machinery, but I think we are getting rather didactic.
- I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin would let me know

something of his progress in the French language. I rather liked
that exercise he read us the other day, though I must confess I

should hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a
remote city where I once lived might think I was drawing their

portraits.
- Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I don't know whether

the piece I mentioned from the French author was intended simply as
Natural History, or whether there was not a little malice in his

description. At any rate, when I gave my translation to B. F. to
turn back again into French, one reason was that I thought it would

sound a little bald in English, and some people might think it was
meant to have some local bearing or other, - which the author, of

course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he could not be acquainted with
anything on this side of the water.

[The above remarks were addressed to the school-mistress, to whom
I handed the paper after looking it over. The divinity-student

came and read over her shoulder, - very curious, apparently, but
his eyes wandered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was

somewhat hurried and high, or THORACIC, as my friend, the
Professor, calls it, I watched her a little more closely. - It is

none of my business. - After all, it is the imponderables that move
the world, - heat, electricity, love. HABET?]

This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into boarding-school
French, such as you see here; don't expect too much; - the mistakes

give a relish to it, I think.
LES SOCIETES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES.

CES Societes la sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins
d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu a leurs

emotions a l'egard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de
l'habitude de boire.

Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le moins
de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent aux

depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques
connaissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on

ouvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes les
choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre un

nouveau FLEXOR du TARSE d'un MELOLONTHA VULGARIS. Douze savans
improvises, portans des besicles, et qui ne connaissent rien des

insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du CULEX, se precipitent sur
l'instrument, et voient - une grande bulle d'air, dont ils

s'emerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein
d'instruction - pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Societe. Tous

les membres regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air
d'intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans un discours

d'une demiheure que O6 N3 H5 C6 etc. font quelque chose qui n'est
bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres desagreable,

selon l'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres cela vient un
mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfin

un x+y, dont vous n'avex pas besoin et qui ne change nullement vos
relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations

speciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont vous n'avez
jamais soupconne l'existence. Ainsi il vous decrit les FOLLICULES

de L'APPENDIX VERMIFORMIS d'un DZIGGUETAI. Vous ne savez pas ce
que c'est qu'un FOLLICULE. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un

APPENDIX UERMIFORMIS. Vous n'avez jamais entendu parler du
DZIGGUETAI. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes ces connaisances a la fois,

qui s'attachent a votre esprit comme l'eau adhere aux plumes d'un
canard. On connait toutes les langues EX OFFICIO en devenant

membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai
sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, on comprend tout cela de suite, et

s'instruit enormement.
Il y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours a ces

Societes: 1 (degree) Le membre a questions; 2 (degree) Le membre a
"Bylaws."

La QUESTION est une specialite. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait
jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode de

dire les choses suivantes: "Me voila! Je ne suis pas fossil, moi,
- je respire encore! J'ai des idees, - voyez mon intelligence!

Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de
cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! Nous ne

sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense!" - LE FAISEUR DE QUESTIONS
DONNE PEU D'ATTENTION AUX REPONSES QU'ON FAIT; CE N'EST PAS LA DANS

SA SPECIALITE.
Le membre a "Bylaws" est le bouchon de toutes les emotions

mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un
empereur manque, - un tyran a la troiseme trituration. C'est un

esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les
grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l'aime pas dans

la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n'y a qu'un
mot pour ce membre audessus de "Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce

que l'Om est aux Hundous. C'est sa religion; il n'y a rien audela.
Ce mot la c'est la CONSTITUTION!

Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les
trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunes,

faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on aime la
botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si on fait

des etudes zoologiques, on square trouve un grand tas de q' [square
root of minus one], ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que

les encyclopedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphysique qu'on
doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous decrivons.

RECETTE POUR LE DEPILATOIRE PHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUE
Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj.

Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite.
I told the boy that his translation into French was creditable to

him; and some of the company wishing to hear what there was in the
piece that made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as

well as I could, on the spot.
The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused by the idea that a

depilatory could take the place of literary and scientific
accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she

might send a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn't
think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his head to get

into any of the societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he
played a part in a tabullo.

No, - said I, - I shouldn't think of printing that in English.
I'll tell you why. As soon as you get a few thousand people

together in a town, there is somebody that every sharp thing you
say is sure to hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in

Pekin? - that makes no difference. Everybody in those cities, or
almost everybody, has his counterpart here, and in all large

places. - You never studied AVERAGES as I have had occasion to.
I'll tell you how I came to know so much about averages. There was

one season when I was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the
week, through most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most

speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than to
keep several in hand.

- Don't you get sick to death of one lecture? - said the landlady's
daughter, - who had a new dress on that day, and was in spirits for

conversation.
I was going to talk about averages, - I said, - but I have no

objection to telling you about lectures, to begin with.
A new lecture always has a certain excitement connected with its

delivery. One thinks well of it, as of most things fresh from his
mind. After a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then

disgusted with its repetition. Go on delivering it, and the
disgust passes off, until, after one has repeated it a hundred or a

hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the hundred and first or
hundred and fifty-first time, before a new audience. But this is

on one condition, - that he never lays the lecture down and lets it
cool. If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is

intense, so that the sight of the old battered manuscript is as bad
as sea-sickness.

A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We use it for a
while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to

touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no
longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the

calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the
novelty and get the blisters. - The story is often quoted of

Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had
been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until

it has passed its hundredthdelivery; and some, I think, have
doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lectures are a

man's best, commonly; they improve by age, also, - like the pipes,
fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to make

the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, -
to take out the really good things which don't tell on the

audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades
him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general delivery.

A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five
hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered.

- No, indeed, - I should be very sorry to say anything
disrespectful of audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great



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