----What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round all that time without a rider. The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought upon that of another. ----I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always _now_ to something. --I will thank you for the dry toast,--was my answer. ----I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or elsewhere. One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an unfortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,--as helpless, apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an Egyptian mummy. He then proceeds, with the air and method of a master, to take off the bandages. Nothing can be neater than the way in which he does it. But as he takes off layer after layer, the truth seems to grow smaller and smaller, and some of its outlines begin to look like something we have seen before. At last, when he has got them all off, and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it as a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom we have known in the streets all our lives. The fact is, the philosopher has coaxed the truth into his study and put all those bandages on; of course it is not very hard for him to take them off. Still, a great many people like to watch the process,--he does it so neatly! Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see how those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are abused by my fellow-vertebrates,--perhaps by myself. How they spar for wind, instead of hitting from the shoulder! ----The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat fighting attitude.--Fetch on the fellah that makes them long words!--he said,--and planted a straight hit with the right fist in the concave palm of the left hand with a click like a cup and ball.--You small boy there, hurry up that "Webster's Unabridged!"