I HAVE fits of Laughter all to myself.
The world is full of funny things. All to myself I Laugh at them. I lounge at my desk in the small night hours, and I finger a pencil or a box or a rubber or a knife and rest my chin on my hand, and sit on my right foot, and Laugh intermittently at this or that.
Ha! ha! ha! I say inwardly: with all my Heart: relishingly.
I laugh at the thought of a mouse I once encountered lying dead—so neat, so virtuous—though soft and o'er-long dead—with its tail folded around it—in a porcelain tea-pot: a strong inimical anomaly to all who viewed it. It had a look of a saint in effigy in a whited sepulcher. Looked at as a mouse it seemed out of place. Looked at as a saint it was perfect.
I Laugh at the recollection of a lady I once met who had thick black furry eyebrows incongruous to her face, which she took off at night and laid on her bureau. They were at once 'detached' and detachable: itself a subtle phenomenon. She referred to her mind as her 'intellects' and talked with a quaint bogus learnedness, and in remarkable grammar, of the Swedenborgian doctrines. Looked at as a person she was inadequate. Looked at as a
