The Idle Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

standingwhich, nobody can tell why. There is no accounting for them. You arejust as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a largefortune as on the day after you have

rs and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin,and

keray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. Youthrow the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" thecat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think youwill write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I findI have five minutes to spare, and so hasten to write to you," for aquarter of an hour, without being able to think of

d, with all your friends and relationsstanding round you weeping. You bless them all, especially the youngand pretty ones. They will value you when you are gone, s

g thatmight happen to you. Who would care two straws (whatever preciseamount of care two straws may represent) whether you are blown up, orhung up, or married, or drowned? Nobody cares for you. You nev

to astate of savage fury against everybody and everything, especi

into bed as if you had backedyourself for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time. Thereyou toss and tumble about for a couple of hours or so, varying themonotony by occa

and insist on the children's going to bed. All of which, creating, asit does, a good deal of disturbance in the house, must b

e poet says that "a feelingof sadness comes o'er him." 'Arry refers to the heavings of hiswayward heart by conf

y the way, it never does come except in the evening. In thesun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannotstay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voicesof the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned _miserere_in our ears. In the day we are a

ality is too stern a thing for sentiment. We linger to weep overa p

n real grief. We do nottoy with sharp swords n

they think of the tiny feet whose toddling march is done, andsweet-faced young ones who place each night beneath their pillow somelock that once curled on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissedto death, will call me a nasty cynical brute and say I'm talkingnonsense; but I believe, nevertheless, that if they will askthemselve

helps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are col

dry bread. Besides,sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for ourhumor, surely it would

litting shrieks point to astate of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upona little wh

healing hand uponthe wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted underand no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts. The burden is nolonger heavy when we have for our past troubles only the same sweetmingling of pleasure and pity that

fulpen--the observation is! Who has not felt the sorrowful enchantmentof those lingering sunsets? The world belongs to Melancholy then, athoughtful deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day. It is nottill "light thickens and the crow wings to the r

presence in each long, dull street; and the dark river creepsghostlike unde

s in our face, andthe land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinksdeeper still into our hearts. We

triving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood inupon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome,we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round