Among the essays of Morhof is one on the “Paradoxes of the Senses.”  That title brought to mind the recollection of another work I have been meaning to say something about, at some time when you were in the listening mood.  The book I refer to is “A Budget of Paradoxes,” by Augustus De Morgan.  De Morgan is well remembered as a very distinguished mathematician, whose works have kept his name in high honor to the present time.  The book I am speaking of was published by his widow, and is largely made up of letters received by him and his comments upon them.  Few persons ever read it through.  Few intelligent readers ever took it up and laid it down without taking a long draught of its singular and interesting contents.  The letters are mostly from that class of persons whom we call “cranks,” in our familiar language.

At this point Number Seven interrupted me by calling out, “Give us some of those cranks’ letters.  A crank is a man who does his own thinking.  I had a relation who was called a crank.  I believe I have been spoken of as one myself.  That is what you have to expect if you invent anything that puts an old machine out of fashion, or solve a problem that has puzzled all the world up to your time.  There never was a religion founded but its Messiah was called a crank.  There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.  Do you want to know why that name is given to the men who do most for the world’s progress?  I will tell you.  It is because cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of the world go round.  What would a steam-engine be without a crank?  I suppose the first fool that looked on the first crank that was ever made asked what that crooked, queer-looking thing was good for.  When the wheels got moving he found out.  Tell us something about that book which has so much to say concerning cranks.”

Hereupon I requested Delilah to carry back Morhof, and replace him in the wide gap he had left in the bookshelf.  She was then to find and bring down the volume I had been speaking of.

Delilah took the wisdom of the seventeenth century in her arms, and departed on her errand.  The book she brought down was given me some years ago by a gentleman who had sagaciously foreseen that it was just one of those works which I might hesitate about buying, but should be well pleased to own.  He guessed well; the book has been a great source of instruction and entertainment to me.  I wonder that so much time and cost should have been expended upon a work which might have borne a title like the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus; and yet it is such a wonderful museum of the productions of the squinting brains belonging to the class of persons commonly known as cranks that we could hardly spare one of its five hundred octavo pages.