Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1872-01-10
Mistellaaeons.
THE MEMBER OF THE HAOUSE.
BY o. w. HOLMES.

The idea OF a mans interviewing him
self y as rather odd, to be sure. But then,
that is what we are all of us doing every
day. talk half the time to find out my
own thoughts, as school boy turns his
pockets inside out to see what is in them.
lie brings to light all sorts of personal
property he had forgotten in his inventory.
lon don't know what your thoughts are
going to be beforehand? said the MEM
Der of the Haouse,n as he calls himself.
Why, of course | don't! Bless your
honest legislative soul, suppose l have
as many bound volumes of notions of one
kind and another in my head as you have
in your Representatives library up there
at the State House. | have to tumble
them over and open them in a hundred
places, and sometimes cut the leaves here
and there, to find what think about this
and that. And a good many people who
tlatter themselves that they are talking
wisdom to me, are only helping me to get
at the shelf and the book and the page
where | shall find my own opinion about
the matter in question.
The Members eyes began to look heavy.
It's very queer place, that receptacle
| man tetches his talk out of. The library
comparison doesn't exactly hit it. You
stow away some idea and don't want it.
| say for ten years. When it turns up at
last it has got so jammed and crushed out
of shape by the other ideas packed with it,
| that it is no more ike what it was than q
raisin is like grape on the vine, or fg
from drum like one hanging on the tree.
Then. again. some kinds of thoughts
| breed in the dark of ones mind like the
| blind fishes in the Mammoth Cave. We
can't see them, and they can't see us but
sooner or later the daylight gets in, and
we find that some cold, fishy little mega
tive has been spawning all over our be-
liefs. and the brood of blind questions it
has given birth to are hurrowing round
and under and but,ing their blunt noses
against the pillars of faith we thought the
whole world might lean on. And then,
again, some of our old beliefs are dying
out every year, and others feed on them
and grow fat, or get poisoned, as the case
may be. And SO, you see, you can't tell
what the thoughts are that YOU have got
salted down, as one may say, till you run
a streak of talk through them, as the mar
ket people run a butter-scoop through
tirkin.
Don't talk, thinking You are going to
find out your neighbor, for you won't do
it, but talk to lind out yourself There is
more of you-and less of you. in spots,
very likely-than you know.
The Member gave a slight but unequv
ocal start just here. 1t does seem as if
perpetual somnoence was the price of lis
tening to other peoples wisdom. This
was one of those transient nightmares that
one may have in doze of twenty seconds.
He thought certain imaginary Commit
tee of Safety of a certain imaginary Leg
islature was proceeding to burn down his
haystack, in accordance with an Act. en-
titled an Act to make the Poor Richer by
making the Rich Poorer. And the chair
man of the committee was instituting
torcibe exchange of hats with him, to his
manifest disadvantage, for he had Just
bought him new beaver. He told this
dream afterwards to one of the boarders.
From the Poet Of The BREAKFAST table, in
JanHa1y ATLANTIC.