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They were choking with laughter. "And go and get married in a natural, simple way like anybody else and try to do our duty to God to each other and to our fellow-beings and quit this damned nonsense and in-fer-nal idiocy forever!" "Amen!" The present edition gives that ending, which of course is the only real one.
But the jester who expects you to laugh at the tale of the fish that was so large that the water of the lake subsided two feet when it was drawn ashore simply does not know where humour ends and drivelling idiocy begins. The dry suggestiveness of American humour is also a well-known feature. In its crudest phase it assumes such forms as the following: "Mrs.
Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thought with themselves.
He has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't. This amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him.
It was just sufficiently cognate to the matter of Lewisham's thoughts to demand attention. Every now and then he had to answer, and he felt an idiotic desire albeit he clearly perceived its idiocy to reciprocate confidences. The necessity of fleeing Parkson became urgent Lewisham's temper under these multitudinous stresses was going.
"Roderick, will you really come?" cried his mother. "Oh yes, I 'll go! I might as well be there as anywhere reverting to idiocy and living upon alms. I can do nothing with all this; perhaps I should really like Northampton. If I 'm to vegetate for the rest of my days, I can do it there better than here." "Oh, come home, come home," Mrs. Hudson said, "and we shall all be safe and quiet and happy.
I remarked, with the engaging idiocy of a pernicious-fever convalescent. Chloe came as near to pouting as a sweet disposition and a perfect profile would allow her to come. The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face through the doorway and added a concordance to the conversation. "Sometimes," said he, "old Campos keeps the dried nuts in his little store on the hill.
Could I not apprehend it? and I reflect profoundly in order to find something psychical. Then it seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer angrily, "Beg pardon! Your match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh.
And so the dinner went on and ended, with a good deal of distraction, caused by the dogs, and a mild little remark now and then from Mrs. Tempest, or an occasional wise interjection from Miss McCroke, who in a manner represented the Goddess of Wisdom in this somewhat frivolous family, and came in with a corrective and severely rational observation when the talk was drifting towards idiocy.
Think of that, parents, when you listen to the engaging nonsense of your little ones think of the child in Hanwell wards! Remember how narrow a line separates innocence from idiocy; so narrow a line that the words were once synonymous! Then there was the infirmary full of occupants on that merry New Year's night.
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