The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-24

mind will not struggle in vain to req lize the distinction between statements of fact and figures of speech (which | latter the vulgar employ more copious- | ly than those who understand them), and in it's struggles impound itself | deeper in the morass of confusion. 1 Here is an admirable illustration of 1 that immortal truth from "The Mill on 1 the FloSs:''
 That's the fault have to find wi you, Bessy; if you see stick in the | road you're always thinkin' you cant step over it. You'd want me not to hire a good wagoner, cause he'd got mole on his face
 Dear heart' said Mrs. Tulliver, in | mild surprise; when did I ever make objections to a man because he'd got mole on his face? I'm sure I'm rather fond O the moles for my brother as is dead and gone had mole on his brow. But I can't remember you iver offering to hire a waggoner with a mole, MT. Tulliyer. There was John Gibbs hadn't mole on his face no more nor l you have, an 1 was all for having you 1 hire him. an so you did hire him, and 1 if he hadn't died O the inflammation, l as we paid Dr. Turnbull for attending 1 him, he'd very like have been driving the wagon now. He might ha' had mole somewheres out O sight, O l course. But how was I to know that, 1 MT. Tulliver?' No, no, Bessy; didn't i mean justly the mole I meant it to stand for summat else; but niyer mind its puzzling work, talking is. !" i cn m if will -p,. "a a f one thing must be either equal to an- 1 other, or greater than it or less than it, | But MT Cambridge, the horsedealer, in 'Middlemarch, apparently thought, or at least said, that it could be all three:
 You made a bad hand at swap ping, said MT, Cambridge, when you went to anybody but me, Whey Why. you never threw your leg across a finer 1 horse than that chestnut an you gave him for the brute you're on now If l you set him cantering he goes like 1 twenty sawyers. I never heard but 1 one worse roarer in my life, and that was roan; it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor; he used to drive him in his | gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to take him, but I said, Thank you, Peg, l don't deal in wind instruments. !" That was what I said. It went the round of the country, that joke did, But what the hell! the horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of yours
 Why you said just now that his was worse than mine,' said Fred, more irritable than usual.
 "I said a lie, then said MT Bam- bridge emphatcally. There wasn't a penny piece to choose between them. :"
 Nothing is more characteristic of the natural man than the failure to ap- preciate the conditions of evidence. A very ordinary person who has spent some years in India is often prone to resent the discussion or eastern affairs, even by the deepest thinker or the pro- foundest historian who has not sweat ed out his brains on the burning plains. Such was the view entertained about historical authority by the village schoolmaster who, being an old Penin- sular soldier, was employed to drill Tom Tulliver.
 "On less personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had been engaged Mir. Poulter was more reticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning military his- tory. Any one who pretended to a knowledge of what had occurred at the siege of Badajos was especially an ob-
 ject of silent pity to MT. Poulter; he wished that prating person had been run down, and had the breath tram pied out of him at the first go-off, as
 he himself had-he might talk about the siege of Badajos then!"
 These extracts go far to illustrate
 what I think is meant by saying that humor is Shakespearian. And these are the very qualities which, in my
 opinion, the humor of Dickens lacks
 It depends on peculiarities characteris-
 tic of persons, places and periods. oI
 else extravagant eccentrictty charac-
 teristic of no time, locality or individu- l