Miss Herford’s inimitable monologues, being each the apotheosis of some typical Bromide--a shopgirl, a country dressmaker, a bargain-hunter and so on--become, through her art, intensely sulphitic. They are excruciatingly funny, just because she represents types so common that we recognize them instantly. Each expresses the crystallized thought of her particular bromidic group. Done, then, by a person who is herself a Sulphite _par excellence_, the result is droll. “One has,” says Emerson, “but to remove an object from its environment and instantly it becomes comic.” * * * * * The same thing is done less artistically every day upon the vaudeville stage. We love to recognize types; and what Browning said of beauty: We’re made so that we love First, when we see them painted, Things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see can be easily extended to our sense of humor in caricature. A recent hit upon the variety stage does still more to illustrate the problem. The “Cherry Sisters” aroused immense curiosity by an act so bromidic as to be ridiculous. Were they rank amateurs, doing their simple best, or were they clever artists, simulating the awkward crudeness of country girls? That was the question. In a word, were they Sulphites or Bromides? What such artists have done histrionically, Hillaire Belloc has done exquisitely for literature in his “Story of Manuel Burden.” This tale, affecting to be a serious encomium upon a middle class British merchant, shows plainly that all satire is, in its essence, a sulphitic juggling with bromidic topics. It is done unconsciously by many a simple rhymester whose verses are bought by Sulphites and read with glee. * * * * * In the terminology of our theory we must, therefore, include two new terms, describing the variation of intensity of these two different states of mind. The extremes meet at the points of Nitro-Bromidism and Hypo-Sulphitism, respectively. Intensity of Bromidism becomes, then, Nitro-Bromidism, and we have seen how, through the artist’s, or through a Sulphite’s subtle point of view, such Nitro-Bromide becomes immediately sulphitic. By a similar reasoning, a Hypo-Sulphite can, at a step, become bromidic. The illustration most obvious is that of insanity. We are not much amused, usually, by the quaint modes of thought exhibited by lunatics and madmen. It cannot be denied, however, that their processes of thought are sulphitic; indeed, they are so wildly original, so fanciful, that we must denominate all such crazed brains, Hypo-Sulphites. Such persons are so surprising that they end by having no surprises left for us. We accept their mania and cease to regard it; it, in a word, becomes bromidic. So, in their ways, are all cranks and eccentrics, all whose set purpose is to astonish or to shock. We end by being bored at their attitudes and poses. * * * * *