n Memoirs of a Preceding Age,
where the vulgarly tyrannous hostess of a great house of reception
shuffled the guests and played them like a pack of cards, with her exact
estimate of the strength of each one printed on them: and still this
house continued to be the most popular in England; nor did the lady ever
appear in print or on the boards as the comic type that she was.

It has been suggested that they have not yet spiritually comprehended
the signification of living in society; for who are cheerfuller, brisker
of wit, in the fields, and as explorers, colonisers, backwoodsmen?
They are happy in rough exercise, and also in complete repose. The
intermediate condition, when they are called upon to talk to one
another, upon other than affairs of business or their hobbies, reveals
them wearing a curious look of vacancy, as it were the socket of an eye
wanting. The Comic is perpetually springing up in social life, and, it
oppresses them from not being perceived.

Thus, at a dinner-party, one of the guests, who happens to have enrolled
himself in a Burial Company, politely entreats the others to inscribe
their names as shareholders, expatiating on the advantages accruing to
them in the event of their very possible speedy death, the salubrity
of the site, the aptitude of the soil for a quick consumption of their
remains, etc.; and they drink sadness from the incongruous man, and
conceive indigestion, not seeing him in a sharply defined light, that
would bid them taste the comic of him. Or it is mentioned that a newly
elected member of our Parliament celebrates his arrival at eminence by
the publication of a book on cab-fares, dedicated to a beloved female
relative deceased, and the comment on it is the word 'Indeed.' But,
merely for a contrast, turn to a not uncommon scene of yesterday in
the hunting-field, where a brilliant young rider, having broken his
collar-bone, trots away very soon after, against medical interdict,
half put together in splinters, to the most distant meet of his
neighbourhood, sure of escaping his doctor, who is the first person he
encounters. 'I came here purposely to avoid you,' says the patient. 'I
came here purposely to take care of you,' says the doctor. Off they
go, and come to a swollen brook. The patient clears it handsomely: the
doctor tumbles in. All the field are alive with the heartiest relish of
every incident and every cross-light on it; and dull would the man have
been thought who had