it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe.  It is true that if you lay it cold on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat.  Just so with the rhyming fellow,—­he pounds away on his verses and they warm up a little.  But don’t let him think that this afterglow of composition is the same thing as the original passion.  That found expression in a few oh, oh’s, eheu’s, helas, helas’s, and when the passion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have said, are its ashes.

I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustration of my thesis.  There is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows how to profit by it.  We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the other side.  I speak metaphorically.  He takes new and startling views of things we have always looked at in one particular aspect.  There is a rule invariably to be observed with one of this class of intelligences:  Never contradict a man with a squinting brain.  I say a man, because I do not think that squinting brains are nearly so common in women as they are in men.  The “eccentrics” are, I think, for the most part of the male sex.

That leads me to say that persons with a strong instinctive tendency to contradiction are apt to become unprofitable companions.  Our thoughts are plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chilling atmospheres.  They are all started under glass, so to speak; that is, sheltered and fostered in our own warm and sunny consciousness.  They must expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash from the frame and let the outside elements in upon them.  They can bear the rain and the breezes, and be all the better for them; but perpetual contradiction is a pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and tends to kill them out altogether.

Now stop and consider a moment.  Are not almost all brains a little wanting in bilateral symmetry?  Do you not find in persons whom you love, whom you esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in mental vision?  Are there not some subjects in looking at which it seems to you impossible that they should ever see straight?  Are there not moods in which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all things out of plumb and in false relations with each other?  If you answer these questions in the affirmative, then you will be glad of a hint as to the method of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cerebral strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms of perversity.  Let them have their head.  Get them talking on subjects that interest them.  As a rule, nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than letting them talk about themselves; if authors, about their writings; if artists, about their pictures or statues; and generally on whatever they have most pride in and think most of their own relations with.