The two operations might
be going on at the same time without thwarting, as the sun's two motions
(earth's I mean); or as I sometimes turn round till I am giddy, in my
back parlor, while my sister is walking longitudinally in the front; or
as the shoulder of veal twists round with the spit, while the smoke
wreathes up the chimney. But there are a set of amateurs of the Belies
Lettres,--the gay science,--who come to me as a sort of rendezvous,
putting questions of criticism, of British Institutions, Lalla Rookhs,
etc.,--what Coleridge said at the lecture last night,--who have the form
of reading men, but, for any possible use reading can be to them but to
talk of, might as well have been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain
sucking out the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as the pyramids
will last, before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business
and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little
salutary warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if I take a
newspaper, cramming in between my own free thoughts and a column of
figures, which had come to an amicable compromise but for them. Their
noise ended, one of them, as I said, accompanies me home, lest I should
be solitary for a moment. He at length takes his welcome leave at the
door; up I go, mutton on table, hungry as hunter, hope to forget my
cares and bury them in the agreeable abstraction of mastication: knock
at the door! In comes Mr.
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