I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct, which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not answerable.  It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like endosmosis, with which some of you are acquainted.  A thin film of politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought from the stream of conversation.  After a time one begins to soak through and mingle with the other.

We were talking about names, one day.  Was there ever anything,—­I said,—­like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,—­inventing or finding them,—­since the time of Praise-God Barebones?  I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly.  It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,—­and called, for convenience, as above.  I have heard a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes.  Names are cheap.  How can a man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm, Hiram?—­The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned toward me, but I was stupid, and went on.—­To think of a man going through life saddled with such an abominable name as that!—­The poor relation grew very uneasy.—­I continued; for I never thought of all this till afterwards.—­I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the name of Hiram—­

—­What’s got into you, Cousin,—­said our landlady,—­to look so?—­There! you’ve upset your teacup!

It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the “hysteric ball,”—­a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often complain of.  What business had I to be trying experiments on this forlorn old soul?  I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.

Ah, the young girl!  I am sure that she can hide nothing from me.  Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks.  She does not seem to be shy, either.  I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid.  She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his presence.