Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms; out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up, brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again, like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man's having some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out of him. But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner life. I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by telling the story of his hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him. I will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, by saying how he has told it. --We had been talking over the subjects touched upon in the Lady's letter. --I suppose one man in a dozen--said the Master--ought to be born a skeptic. That was the proportion among the Apostles, at any rate. --So there was one Judas among them,--I remarked. --Well,--said the Master,--they 've been whitewashing Judas of late. But never mind him. I did not say there was not one rogue on the average among a dozen men. I don't see how that would interfere with my proposition. If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were twelve men in your club, and one of 'em had red hair, I don't see that you have materially damaged my statement. --I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which was more apparent than real, very evidently, and he went on. --When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundred--Did you ever read my book, the new edition of it, I mean? It is rather awkward to answer such a question in the negative, but I said, with the best grace I could, “No, not the last edition.”