Corners people understood it right along, but then they always
were a most suspicious lot, and fond of an amusing spectacle that cost
them nothing.

THE STRANGE MISADVENTURES OF AN ORGAN

Carson was a philosopher, and on the whole it was a great blessing that
he was so. No man needed to be possessor of a philosophical temperament
more than he, for, in addition to being a resident of Dumfries Corners,
Carson had other troubles which, to an excitable nature, would have made
life a prolonged period of misery. He was the sort of a man to whom
irritating misfortunes of the mosquito order have a way of coming. To
some of us it seemed as if a spiteful Nature took pleasure in pelting
Carson with petty annoyances, none of them large enough to excite
compassion, many of them of a sort to provoke a quiet smile. Of all the
dogs in the neighborhood it was always his dog that got run into the
pound, although it was equally true that Carson's dog was one of the few
that were properly licensed. If he bought a new horse something would
happen to it before a week had elapsed; and how his coachman once ripped
off the top of his depot wagon by driving it under a loose telephone
wire is still one of the stories of the vicinity in which he lives.
Anything out of the way in the shape of trouble seemed to choose the
Carson household for experimental purposes. He was the medium by which
new varieties of irritations were introduced to an ungrateful world, but
such was his nature that, given the companionship of Herbert Spencer and
a cigar, he could be absolutely counted on not to murmur.

This disposition to accept the trials and tribulations which came upon
him without a passionate outburst was not by any means due to
amiability. Carson was of too strong a character to be continually
amiable. He merely exercised his philosophy in meeting trouble. He
boiled within, but presented a calm, unruffled front to the world,
simply because to do otherwise would involve an expenditure of nervous
force which he did not consider to be worth while.

I can never forget the sense of admiring regard which I experienced
when in Genoa, while he and I were about to enter our banker's together,
he slipped upon a bit of banana peeling, bruising his knee and
destroying his trouser leg. I should have indulged in profane allusions
to the person who had thoughtlessly thrown the peeling upon the ground
if by some mischance the accident had happened to me. Car