The Professor at the Breakfast-Table
Englishman loses.     

       How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him!     

       —My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a Mental movement in three parts.     

       A.—First voice, or Mental Soprano,—thought follows a woman talking.     

       B.—Second voice, or Mental Barytone,—my running accompaniment.     

       C.—Third voice, or Mental Basso,—low grumble of importunate self-repeating idea.     

       A.—White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of apple-blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and ear-rings, the most delicious berthe you ever saw, white satin slippers—     

       B.—Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of window just here.—Two pages and a half of description, if it were all written out, in one tenth of a second.)—Go ahead, old lady! (Eye catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came over in the “Mayflower” on the first old fool's face. Why don't they wear a ring in it?     

       C.—You 'll be late at lecture,—late at lecture,—late,—late—     

       I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt through the superincumbent strata, thus:—The usual single or double currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,—Oh, there! I knew there was something troubling me,—and the thought which had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and articulates itself,—a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an unpleasant recollection.     

       The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in this, that they are both brimful. There is no space 
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