"I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me. I never wrote a 'good' line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning."
I wish I had not said all this then and there. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me with a wild sort of expression; and all at once she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a sling shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive me!
The Confusion of Personality
"We must remember that talking is one of the fine arts—the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult. It is not easy at the best for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them."
The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.
"When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together," I continued, "it is natural that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension."
Our landlady turned pale. No doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellect, and that it involved the probable loss of a boarder. Everybody looked up, and the old gentleman opposite slid the carving-knife to one side, as it were, carelessly.
"I think," I said, "I can make it plain that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognised as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.
THREE JOHNS
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.