s
proportionately from this misapplication of energy. The mischief is
abundantly clear, but the remedy, if we do not shut our eyes to it, is
tolerably clear also. Just as this condition of things is largely due to
our unscientific neglect of variations in character and the wooden
system of education which this neglect has produced, so we may expect to
see its evils disappear by an abolition of the one and a reform of the
other. If the world be indeed a stage, with all humanity for its _corps
dramatique_ it must surely be well for the success of the performance
that the cast should take account of individual aptitudes, and that to
each player should be allotted the part which he can best support in the
great drama of Life.

NORMAN PEARSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

"The Man who Laughs."

The degree of culture and good breeding which a man possesses may be
very correctly determined by the way he laughs. The primeval savage,
from whom we trace descent, was distinguished above everything else by
his demonstrativeness; and there is much in our present type of social
manners and conduct which betrays our barbarous origin. The brute-like
sounds that escape from the human throat in the exercise of laughter,
the coarse guffaw, the hoarse chuckle, and the high, cackling tones in
which many of the feminine half of the world express their sense of
amusement, attest very painfully the animal nature within us. It was
Emerson, I believe, who expressed a dislike of all loud laughter; and it
is difficult to imagine the scene or occasion which could draw from that
serene and even-minded philosopher a broader expression of amusement
than that conveyed in the "inscrutable smile" which Whipple describes as
his most characteristic feature. Yet Emerson was by no means wanting in
appreciation of the comic. On the contrary, he had an abiding sense of
humor, and it was this--a keen and lively perception of the grotesque,
derived as part of his Yankee inheritance--that kept him from uniting in
many of the extravagant reform movements of the day. Few of us, however,
even under the sanction of an Emerson, would wish to dispense with all
sound of laughter.

The memory of a friend's voice, in which certain laughing notes and
tones are inextricably mingled with the graver inflections of common
speech, is almost as dear as the vision of his countenance or the warm
pressure of his hand. Yet among such remembrances we hold others, of
those fro