'Luggage!' I said, after another silence, 'is it not after all absurd that minds which contemplate the universe should cart about with them brushes and boots and drapery in leather boxes? Suppose all this paltry junk,' I said, giving my suitcase, which stood near me, a disdainful poke with my umbrella, 'suppose it all disappears, what after all does it matter?' At last she spoke. 'But it's not your luggage,' she said, 'but mine which is lost.' THE WRONG WORD We were talking of the Universe at tea, and one of our company declared that he at least was entirely without illusions. He had long since faced the fact that Nature had no sympathy with our hopes and fears, and was completely indifferent to our fate. The Universe, he said, was a great meaningless machine; Man, with his reason and moral judgments, was the product of blind forces, which, though they would so soon destroy him, he must yet despise. To endure this tragedy of our fate with passionless despair, never to wince or bow the head, to confront the hostile powers with high disdain, to fix with eyes of scorn the Gorgon face of Destiny, to stand on the brink of the abyss, hurling defiance at the icy stars--this, he said, was his attitude, and it produced, as you can imagine, a very powerful impression on the company. As for me, I was completely carried away by my enthusiasm. 'By Jove, that is a stunt!' I cried. IONS 'Self-determination,' one of them insisted. 'Arbitration!' cried another. 'Co-operation?' suggested the mildest of the party. 'Confiscation!' answered an uncompromising female. I, too, became slightly intoxicated by the sound of these vocables. And were they not the cure for all our ills? 'Inoculation!' I chimed in. 'Transubstantiation, Alliteration, Inundation, Flagellation and Afforestation!' A FIGURE OF SPEECH Though I sometimes lay down the law myself on public questions, I don't very much care to hear other people do it. The heavy talker, however, who was now holding forth about finance, showed such a grasp of his subject, and made such mincemeat of a rash opponent, that I thought it best, for the moment, to say nothing. 'So what you allege,' he triumphed in his overbearing manner, 'is perfectly irrelevant. My withers are unwrung. It does not affect my position in the least.' And then I lightly flung my Goliath pebble. 'Withers?' I ingenuously asked, 'what are the withers, anyhow?' He turned on me a glance of anger and contempt. 'Withers--why the withers--' 'It's only--only a figure of speech,' he stammered. 'Oh!' I said, with a look at the company full of suggestion, 'a figure of speech--I see.' A SLANDER 'But I'm told you don't believe in love--'