Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that
slight mental obliquity is as common as I suppose. An analogy may have
some influence on your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble
to ask your tailor how many persons have their two shoulders of the same
height? I think he will tell you that the majority of his customers
show a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a
portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hint have both sides of
their faces exactly alike? I believe he will tell you that one side is
always a little better than the other. What will your hatter say about
the two sides of the head? Do you see equally well with both eyes,
and hear equally well with both ears? Few persons past middle age will
pretend that they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not show a
natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly
to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great
deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of
ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and
practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence
is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.
I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my own conversation and
that of the other Teacups. I have told some of the circumstances of
their personal history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a
reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our
pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted
that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait;
for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into
business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles
his nose with an eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles.
So that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only
wish the pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with
a reasonable amount of health in the community on whose ailings must
depend their prosperity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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