of Somebody" is, at present, the commonest
bromidic form. Once, as in "The Courting of Dinah Shadd" and "The
Damnation of Theron Ware," such a title was sulphitic, but one cannot
pick up a magazine, nowayears, without coming across "The ---- of ----"
As most magazines are edited for Middle Western Bromides, such titles
are inevitable. I know of one, with a million circulation, which
accepted a story with the sulphitic title, "Thin Ice," and changed it
to the bromidic words, "Because Other Girls were Free." One of O.
Henry's first successful stories, and perhaps his best humorous tale,
had its title so changed from "Cupid _a la carte_," to "A Guthrie
Wooing."

This is one of the few exceptions to the rule that a sulphitic thing
can become bromidic. Time alone can accomplish this effect. Literature
itself is either bromidic or sulphitic. The dime novel and melodrama,
with hackneyed situations, once provocative, are so easily
nitro-bromidic that they become sulphitic in burlesque and parody.

* * * * *

Metaphysically, Sulphitism is easily explained by the theory of
Absolute Age. We have all seen children who seem to be, mentally, with
greater possibility of growth than their parents. We see persons who
understand without experience. It is as if they had lived before. It is
as if they had a definite Absolute Age. We recognize and feel
sympathetic with those of our caste--with those of the same age, not in
years, but in wisdom. Now the standard of spiritual insight is the
person of a thousand years of age. He knows the relative Importance of
Things. And it might be said, then, that Bromides are individuals of
less than five hundred years; Sulphites, those who are over that age.
In some dim future incarnation, perhaps, the Bromide will leap into
sulphitic apprehension of existence. It is the person who is Absolutely
Young who says, "Alas, I never had a youth--I don't understand what it
is to be young!" and he who is Absolutely Old remarks, blithely, "Oh,
dear, I can't seem to grow up at all!" One is a Bromide and the other a
Sulphite--and this explanation illuminates the paradox.

* * * * *

The Sulphite brings a fresh eye to life. He sees everything as if for
the first time, and not through the blue glasses of convention. As if
he were a Martian newly come to earth, he sees things separated from
their environment, tradition, precedent--the dowager without he