No, it Isn’t so much the things they say, as the way they say them!  Do you not recall the smug, confident look, the assurance of having said a particularly happy thing?  They come inevitably as the alarm clock; when the hands of circumstance touch the hour, the bromidic remark will surely go off.

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But, lest one make too much of this particular symptom, let us consider a few other tendencies.  The Bromide has no surprises for you.  When you see one enter a room, you must reconcile yourself to the inevitable.  No hope for flashes of original thought, no illuminating, newer point of view, no sulphitic flashes of fancy—­the steady glow of bromidic conversation and action is all one can hope for.  He may be wise and good, he may be loved and respected—­but he lives inland; he puts not forth to sea.  He is there when you want him, always the same.

Bromides also enjoy pathological symptoms.  They are fond of describing sickness and death-bed scenes.  “His face swelled up to twice its natural size!” they say, in awed whispers.  They attend funerals with interest and scrutiny.

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We are all born with certain bromidic tendencies, and children are the greatest bromides in the world.  What boy of ten will wear a collar different from what his school-mates are all wearing?  He must conform to the rule and custom of the majority or he suffers fearfully.  But, if he has a sulphitic leaven in his soul, adolescence frees him from the tyrannical traditions of thought.  In costume, perhaps, men still are more bromidic than women.  A man has, for choice, a narrow range in garments—­for everyday wear at most but four coats, three collars and two pairs of shoes.

Fewer women become Sulphites.  The confession is ungallant and painful, but it must be made.  We have only to watch them, to listen—­and to pity.

But stay!  If there is anything in heredity, women should be most sulphitic.  For of all Bromides Adam was the progenitor, while Eve was a Sulphite from the first!

Alice in Wonderland, however, is the modern type—­a Bromide amidst Sulphites.

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What, then, is a Sulphite?  Ah, that is harder to define.  A Sulphite is a person who does his own thinking, he is a person who has surprises up his sleeve.  He is explosive.  One can never foresee what he will do, except that it will be a direct and spontaneous manifestation of his own personality.

You cannot tell them by the looks.  Sulphites come together like drops of mercury, in this bromidic world.  Unknown, unsuspected groups of them are scattered over the earth, and we never know where we are going to meet them—­like fireflies in Summer, like Americans in Europe.  The Bromide we have always with us, predicating the obvious.  The Sulphite appears uncalled.

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