The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bible
even. Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as the
boarding-house keeper, who declared that if it were not for canned
tomato, she should have nothing to fly to. Well, in all this great
agitation I find Herbert unmoved, a conservative, even to the
under-crust. I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast. There
are some tests that the dearest friendship may not apply.
"Will you smoke?" I ask.
"No, I have reformed."
"Yes, of course."
"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, the
apparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions,
the almost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force,
and the relation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man,
it is not safe to do anything to the nervous system that will--"
"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: old
memories, reveries, friendships, center about that:--is n't an open
wood-fire good?"
"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it too
long."
III
The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot be
repeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with the
least residuum.
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