The Project Gutenberg EBook of Are You A Bromide?, by Gelett Burgess

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Title: Are You A Bromide?
The Sulphitic Theory Expounded And Exemplified According
To The Most Recent Researches Into The Psychology Of Boredom
Including Many Well-Known Bromidioms Now In Use

Author: Gelett Burgess

Release Date: January 30, 2004 [EBook #10870]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARE YOU A BROMIDE? ***

Produced by Marvin A. Hodges and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

ARE YOU A BROMIDE?

OR,

THE SULPHITIC THEORY

EXPOUNDED AND EXEMPLIFIED ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT RESEARCHES INTO
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOREDOM

_Including many well-known Bromidioms now in use_

BY

GELETT BURGESS, S.B.

Author of "Goops and How to Be Them," "The Burgess Nonsense Book,"
"Vivette," &c., &c.

_WITH DECORATIONS BY THE AUTHOR_

Note:
Decorations replaced with five asterisks
* * * * *

1906

_NOTE

This essay is reprinted, with revisions and enlargement additions,
from "The Sulphitic Theory" published in "The Smart Set" for April,
1906, by consent of the editors._

TO

GERTRUDE McCALL

CHATELAINE OF MAC MANOR

[Illustration]

AND DISCOVERER OF

THE SULPHITIC THEORY

ARE YOU A BROMIDE?

The terms "Bromide" and "Sulphite" as applied to psychological rather
than chemical analysis have already become, among the _illuminati_, so
widely adopted that these denominations now stand in considerable danger
of being weakened in significance through a too careless use. The
adjective "bromidic" is at present adopted as a general vehicle, a
common carrier for the thoughtless damnation of the Philistine. The time
has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect
which such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand of
conversation which their use has made practicable. The rapid spread of
the theory, traveling from Sulphite to Sulphite, like the spark of a
pyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking world has been over-violently
illuminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from the
si