Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/34

Here he is again, returned from an expedition all curled up like a ball, on his library chair. Now be quiet a minute while I confide to you a philosophical idea, my dear Dick. If you only knew what curiosity besets me, and makes me think for hours how to penetrate your brain with my mind, to know what you understand, and what are the limits to that intelligence, which constantly increases and decreases to my mental vision, just as an object appears to the eye,—larger as it comes nearer, and smaller as it recedes,—and I wonder what concepts of the mind, what shadows of ideas, the world's spectacle has given you, and our aspect and the act and the sounds escaping from our lips! If you only knew how much mental exhaustion I suffer in trying to measure the distance that lies between us, and to uncover your innermost nature and of the ties which bind us and of the barriers which separate us! If you only knew what an attractive and solemn mystery is locked up away from me in that little head of yours, which lies in my hand like an orange; in that glance of yours that is simple and mysterious at the same time, in which I seem at times to see glimmers of human understanding, and