The Ghost in the White House / Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

by Gerald Stanley Lee

The Habit of Not Having any Habits—leaving out standardized elements in things and not being machine-minded enough.

Automatism, or Machine-Mindedness.

These six forms of being fooled by oneself all boil down in the end—in their final cause, I suspect to the last one, to automatism or lack of conscious control of the mind.

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XIX

LOCO-MINDEDNESS

Loco-mindedness in a Post Office consists in Mr. Burleson's running the Post Office for one kind of people—the kind of people he has noticed.

There are supposed to be various kinds of people who use a Post Office.

There are the people who write hundreds of letters a day—letters that are being waited for accurately and by a particular mail—like telegrams.

There are people who sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, stick out their tongues and chewing on one end of the pen, and slaving away and sweating ink on the other, scrooge out a letter once in three weeks that they have put off six months.