hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as
leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look
as if I were squatted and set on my own destruction.

But by hard-headed persons I mean those beyond the ordinary, those so far
gone that a pin-prick through the skull would yield not so much as a drop
of ooze; persons whose brain convolutions did they appear in fright at the
aperture on the insertion of the pin--like a head at a window when there
is a fire on the street--would betray themselves as but a kind of cordage.
Such hard-headedness, you will admit, is of a tougher substance than that
which may beset any of us on an occasion at the price of meat, or on the
recurrent obligations of the too-constant moon.

I am reasonably free from colds. I do not fret myself into a congestion if
a breath comes at me from an open window; or if a swirl of wind puts its
cold fingers down my neck do I lift my collar. Yet the presence of a
thoroughly hard-headed person provokes a sneeze. There is a chilly vapor
off him--a swampish miasma--that puts me in a snuffling state, beyond
poultice and mustard footbaths. No matter how I huddle to the fire, my
thoughts will congeal and my purpose cramp and stiffen. My conceit too
will be but a shriveled bladder.

Several years ago I knew a man of extreme hard-headedness. As I recall, I
was afflicted at the time--indeed, the malady co-existed with his
acquaintance--with a sorry catarrh of the nasal passages. I can remember
still the clearings and snufflings that obtruded in my conversation. For
two winters my complaint was beyond the cunning of the doctors. Despite
local applications and such pills as they thought fit to administer, still
did the snuffling continue. Then on a sudden my friend left town.
Consequent to which and to the amazement of the profession, the springs of
my disease dried up. As this happened at the beginning of the warm days of
summer, I am loath to lay my cure entirely to his withdrawal, yet there
was a nice jointry of time. My acquaintance thereafter dropped to an
infrequent, statistical letter, against which I have in time proofed
myself. But the catarrh has ceased except when some faint thought echoes
from the past, at which again, as in the older days, I am forced to blow a
passage in the channel for verbal navigation.

This man's interest in life was oil. It oozed from the ventages of his
talk. If he looked on the map o