"To this fear also," replied I, coldly, "I set limits. A man, for instance, may not in the least believe in or be afraid of ghosts; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of epilepsies, falling-sicknesses, and so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him." "One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralizing a little,--"one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the henheart may die on the spot." ------------------------ 2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen, only his Prince. ------------------------ A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stage-coach altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love. ------------------------ 45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them. ------------------------