mewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but
I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in
these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or
phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them
to bully me out of a thought or line.

This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of the company was
diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly
emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought;
it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the
recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical
words has had a long and still period to form in. Here is one theory.

But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts. It is
this. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a
direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their apparent age
runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in
magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites
an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the
leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of
tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem
to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in
the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark
day-visions; all omens pointed to it; all paths led to it. After the
tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an
event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking; in a few
moments it is old again,--old as eternity.

[I wish I had not said all this then and there. I might have known
better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking
at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once the
blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken
barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of
snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive
me!

After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained
balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting
upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall,
where they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular
cosmetics.]

When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of
trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had bee