elves some years ago with
attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me
Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quiz.

"I gave him the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,'--I
certainly think the words would never have come together except in this
way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human
being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to
be reading a religious writer,--as he thought himself,--who threw
aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday came into my
head; this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I
remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone,
as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the
motto of the ferocious sectarian who turns his religious vessels into
mud-holders, for the benefit of those who will not see what he sees."

"There are several other sentences given, in which all the letters
(except v and j as consonants) are employed, of which the following
is the best: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck,--which in more sober
English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more
edification, more religion, in this than in all the 666 interpretations
put together."

There is something very pleasant in the thought of these two sages
playing at jackstraws with the letters of the alphabet. The task which
De Morgan and Dr. Whewell, "the omniscient," set themselves would not be
unworthy of our own ingenious scholars, and it might be worth while
for some one of our popular periodicals to offer a prize for the best
sentence using up the whole alphabet, under the same conditions as those
submitted to by our two philosophers.

This whole book of De Morgan's seems to me full of instruction. There is
too much of it, no doubt; yet one can put up with the redundancy for the
sake of the multiplicity of shades of credulity and self-deception it
displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of us are conscious of
a second personality in our complex nature, which has many traits
resembling those found in the writers of the letters addressed to Mr. De
Horgan.

I have not ventured very often nor very deeply into the field of
metaphysics, but if I were disposed to make any claim in that direction,
it would be the recognition of the squinting brain, the introduction of
the term "cerebricity" corresponding to electricity, the idiotic area in
the brain or thi