. The choice works of Thomas Hood, in prose and verse. reverie, and turn up again with a Tlieory of Gravitntiun. Histlioughts nre not deeply engaged elsewhere—they are nowhere. Hishead revolves itself, top-like, into a profound slumber—a blank doze AN ABSENTEE, 373 without a dream. He is not carried away by incoherent ramblingfancies out of himself,—he is not drunk, merely, with the Waters ofObHvion, but drowned in them, body and soul ! There is a story, somewhere, of one of these absent persons, whostooped down, when tickled about the calf by a bluebottle, his neighbours leg : a
. The choice works of Thomas Hood, in prose and verse. reverie, and turn up again with a Tlieory of Gravitntiun. Histlioughts nre not deeply engaged elsewhere—they are nowhere. Hishead revolves itself, top-like, into a profound slumber—a blank doze AN ABSENTEE, 373 without a dream. He is not carried away by incoherent ramblingfancies out of himself,—he is not drunk, merely, with the Waters ofObHvion, but drowned in them, body and soul ! There is a story, somewhere, of one of these absent persons, whostooped down, when tickled about the calf by a bluebottle, his neighbours leg : an act of tolerable forgetfulness, but denoting a state far short of W s absorptions. He would never have felt the fly. io make W s condition more whimsical, he lives in a small bachelors house, with no other attendant tlian an old housekeeper—one Mistress Bundy, of faculty as infirm and intermitting as his will he readily believed that her absent fits do not originate, anymore than her masters, in abstruse mathematical speculations—a. Lawk ! Ive forgot the Brandy I proof with me that such moods result, not from abstractions of mind,but stagnation. How so ill-sorted a couple contrive to get throughthe conmionplace affairs of life, I am not prepared to say: but it iscomical indeed to see him ring up Mistress Bundy to receive orders,which he generally forgets to deliver,—or, if delivered, this oldBtwildered Maid lets slip out of her remembrance with the sameficility. Numberless occurrences of this kmd—in many instancesmore extravagant—are recorded by his friends ; but an evening thatI spent with hnn recently will furnish an abundance of examples. In spite of going by his own invitation, I found W within. He was too apt, on such occasions, to be denied to his visitors ; but whatin others would be an unpardonable affront, was overlooked in a manwho was not always at home to himself The door was opened by thehousekeeper, whose absence, as usual, would not allow
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