THE TROUSER MIND.
THIS kind of mind struts about in fanciful costumes. It flaunts in vagaries, and is always masquerading its betters. It is a mind of colours, but colours without any union, or harmonious combination—giving one the notion of an Irish rainbow, in which all the hues had quarrelled, and resolved to live apart. Nothing is too broad for it, like a Palais Royal farce. Its legs are scored like a leg of pork—only the scoring is fearful in length, so that nothing can wipe it out, like the debts a young man runs up at college. It is lined all over like a zebra, and as the zebra is the animal that is next to the donkey, the description may be said to fit it like a second skin. There is about such a mind the emptiness of vanity coupled with all its noise—not unlike the noise which coppers make when they jingle in an empty pocket. Everything about it is brassy and loud—in fact it is a perfect ophieleide of loudness that is always in full blow. It gives you the headache to look at the owner of such a mind. Better to be right in the middle of the orchestra than sit next to such a mind at the theatre: the one is the soft murmur of Midsummer silence compared to the Cochin-China cock-crowing of the other. It never whispers, but bawls, like the waiter at a cook-shop. The mind bellows, like the poor fellows outside Richardson's show—and the greater the bellowing the poorer the entertainment, generally, within. Its presence is a continual jar—a jar of sour and offensive things, like one of Goldner's preserves. How it swaggers! One would imagine the whole street belonged to it. It cannot sneeze like other people, but makes ten times more noise than any sneeze demands. It coughs to give notice of its arrival at any place—it bangs the door to give notice of its departure. Its insolence insists upon the best of everything—the seat nearest the fire, the best bedroom, the best cuts at dinner, and the best attention from everybody. It always takes the wall—it never gives way to anybody, not even to a lady. If she wants more room, let her go into the mud! It keeps its hat on in the presence of its superiors; but this is done more from ignorance than bravado, for it never suspects for a moment that it has any superiors. It stops contentedly in the middle of the room, arranges its two locks of japanned hair, that descend like two pitcher-handles on each side of its stony face; opens its legs, and admires its trousers with an air of the most supreme satisfaction. The Trouser Mind rarely looks upward. The head is to it a matter of very secondary importance, excepting as being a block that carries so much hair. Its thoughts are all downward; and if a person is introduced to it, the first survey is always to his boots and trousers. It measures mankind by its nether garments. The other half of the body is quite superfluous. In fact, the human body would, in the opinion of the Trouser Mind, be greatly improved, if it could be so contrived as to wear two pairs of trousers—one above and one below—and each pair to be totally different. In the upper regions, a thunderstorm of a pattern—in the lower, an earthquake.