Chapter V: THE ABSENT-MINDED.--It is far from being pleasant to meet in

conversation a talker of this class. To ask a question of importance or to give a reply to one whose mind is wandering in an opposite direction is anything but complimentary and assuring. How mortifying to be speaking to a person who you think is sweetly taking in all you say, and when finished you find you have been talking to one whose mind was as absent from what you said as a man living in America or New Zealand! He wakes up, perhaps, to consciousness, some time after you have done speaking, with the provoking interrogatory, "I beg pardon, sir; but pray what were you speaking about just now?"

He has been known at the dinner-table to ask a blessing at least three times.

He has been seen in company to make one of his best bows in reply to what he supposed was a compliment paid him, when it was intended for some other person.

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."

A story is told of a clergyman who went a walk into the country. Coming to a toll-bar, he stopped, and shouted to the man, "Here! what's to pay?"

"Pay for what?" asked the man.

"For my horse."

"What horse? You have no horse, sir!"

"Bless me!" exclaimed the clergyman, looking between his legs. "I thought I was on horseback."

He had fallen into a thoughtful mood in his walk, and being more accustomed to riding than walking, in his absence of mind he made the blunder.