super-gossip of Tarbonny,
came into the schoolhouse this morning.

"Do ye ken this," she said to Mrs. Macdonald, "it's my opeenion that
Mrs. Broon died o' neglect. I went to the door the day afore she died
to speer hoo she was, and her daughter cam to the door, and do ye ken
this? That lassie was smiling . . . _smilin'_ . . . and her auld
mother upstairs at death's door. Eh, Mrs. Macdonald, she's a heartless
woman that Mary Broon. She killed her mother by neglect, that's what
she did."

After she had gone I said to Mrs. Macdonald: "Who nursed Liz's mother
when she died last June?"

"Nobody," said Mrs. Macdonald grimly. "Liz had too much gossip to
retail in the village, and I'm told that Liz was seldom in the house."

I think I am guessing fairly rightly when I say that Liz feels guilty
of neglecting her own mother, and like Meg Caddam she projects the
reproach on to someone else.

* * * * * *

Last Friday night I gave a lecture to the literary Society in Tarby,
our nearest town. I chose the subject of forgetting, and I told the
audience of Freud and his great work in connection with the
unconscious. To-day's _Tarby Herald_ in reporting the lecture prints
phonetically the spelling "Froid," but the _Tarby Observer_ goes one
better when it says: "Mr. Neill is an exponent of the new science of
Cycloanalysis."

Which reminds me of a painful episode that took place when I was
eighteen. I was much enamoured of a young university student, and I
always strove to gain her favour by being interested in the things she
liked. One day she informed me that she intended to take the
Psychology class at St. Andrews the following session. I had never
heard the word before, and I made a bold guess that it had something to
do with cycles. In consequence we talked at cross purposes for a while.

"I'd love a subject like that," I said warmly.

"Most of it will be experimental psychology," she said.

My enthusiasm increased. I thought of the many experiments I had tried
with my old cushion-tyred cycle.

"Excellent!" I cried. "A sort of training in inventing. Cranks, eh?"
At that time my one ambition in life was to invent a folding crank that
would give double power on hills.

The lady looked at me sharply.

"Why cranks?" she demanded. "I don't see it. Psychology has nothing
to do with crystal-gazing you know."

I was gravelled.

"But what's the idea?" I asked. "Improvement of