, it is. Do you mean to say that you don't understand?"

"You jest so much. I never can tell--" he broke off, helplessly.

"But surely you see that," I urged. "How would _you_ define humor?"

"Why, humor is something funny. There's nothing funny about--er--that
that Carlyle said."

"Yes, but it's only a very delicate and occult way of exhibiting his
acuteness," I said. "Don't you see? An appreciation of the under side
of things--the side that does not lie on the surface."

"Are you serious?" he asked, as I leaned back to rest from my toil.

"Perfectly. But I can hardly believe that you are."

"Do you mean to say that you really see anything in that definition?"

"I do," I said, with ominous distinctness.

My manner indicated his stupidity, and he resented it. He grew
excited.

"Now, tell me, on your honor, do you really see anything funnier in
the under side of that sofa than in the top side?"

I could have screamed with anguish. But, being in company, I only
smote my hands together in my impotence and prayed for death.

The tension was relieved by the young son of our hostess in the
library just beyond having overheard our conversation. He laid his
hand over his mouth and went into such convulsions of silent laughter,
all the time writhing and twisting his lean body into such contortions
that in watching his extraordinary gymnastics over the head of my
unconscious _vis-a-vis_, and wondering if the boy ever could untie
himself, I forgot my suffering. I even relaxed my mental strain and
forgot the stupid man.

Would I could keep on forgetting him.

THE NEW WOMAN

"You have taught me
To be in love with noble thoughts."

That clever _bon-mot_, "To say 'everybody is talking about him' is a
eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no
longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a
delicious bit deserves a longer life. I could weep over the early
death of an epigram with a hearty spirit, which is second only to the
grief I feel at a good story spoiled for relation's sake. Cleverness,
like beauty, is its own excuse for being, and the first attribute of
the new woman is her cleverness. It is the new woman who is
responsible for the death of that epigram. But as she did not take an
active part in the murder, but was only an accessory after the fact,
let us hope that she will escape with as light a sentence as possible
from that stern old judge,