and sees himself act, but he feels that some other "he" has borrowed
his body and stolen his voice. Or perhaps he is conscious of speaking
and acting as usual, but he speaks of himself as a stranger with whom
he has nothing in common; he has stepped out of his own self. Does it
not seem as though we found this same extraordinary confusion in many a
comic scene? I am not speaking of Amphitryon, in which play the
confusion is perhaps suggested to the mind of the spectator, though the
bulk of the comic effect proceeds rather from what we have already
called a "reciprocal interference of two series." I am speaking of the
extravagant and comic reasonings in which we really meet with this
confusion in its pure form, though it requires some looking into to
pick it out. For instance, listen to Mark Twain's replies to the
reporter who called to interview him:

QUESTION. Isn't that a brother of yours? ANSWER. Oh! yes, yes, yes! Now
you remind me of it, that WAS a brother of mine. That's William--BILL
we called him. Poor old Bill!

Q. Why? Is he dead, then? A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could
tell. There was a great mystery about it.

Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then? A. Well, yes, in a sort
of general way. We buried him.

Q. BURIED him! BURIED him, without knowing whether he was dead or not?
A. Oh no! Not that. He was dead enough.

Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and
you knew he was dead--A. No! no! We only thought he was.

Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again? A. I bet he didn't.

Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. SOMEBODY was dead. SOMEBODY
was buried. Now, where was the mystery? A. Ah! that's just it! That's
it exactly. You see, we were twins,--defunct and I,--and we got mixed
in the bath-tub when we were only two weeks old, and one of us was
drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill. Some think
it was me.

Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do YOU think? A. Goodness knows! I
would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful tragedy has
cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now,
which I have never revealed to any creature before. One of us had a
peculiar mark,--a large mole on the back of his left hand: that was ME.
THAT CHILD WAS THE ONE THAT WAS DROWNED! ... etc., etc.

A close examination will show us that the absurdity of this dialogue is
by no means an absurdity of an ordinary type. It would disappear