He has been heard try to give a narrative of great interest; but before he had got half-way through he lost his mind in the story, and ran two or three into one.
He has been known almost to rave with self-indignation while calling back some one to whom he had forgotten to state the object of meeting, although they had been together some time in promiscuous talk.
He has been seen at the tea-table in a heated discussion, thinking of his brightest idea just as he was in the act of swallowing his tea, and by the time the tea was gone his idea was gone, and of course he lost the day.
One has heard of an eminent minister so absent-minded in talk at the tea-table that he has taken about twenty cups of tea, and has not only exhausted the supply of tea, but after using the teaspoon in each cup has thrown it behind him on the sofa, until all the spoons have been gone as well as all the tea; and only when he has been told that there was no more of either has he woke up to know how much tea he had drunk, and what had become of the spoons.
One of these talkers, in the midst of conversation in a large circle of friends, tried to quote the lines following:—
“I never had a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die.”
But, instead of repeating them correctly, his mind became absent, and thought of a parody on the lines, which ran as follows:—
“I never had a piece of bread,
Particularly long and wide,
But fell upon the sanded floor,
And always on the buttered side.”
So in his attempt to render the first correctly he mingled the beauties of both as follows:—
“I never had a dear gazelle,
Particularly long and wide,
But when it came to know me well,
And always on the buttered side.”