Are You A Bromide?

ed by their strange dreams any more than with their pathological symptoms. Hypnotism, they are convinced, has attained the standing of a science whose rationale is pretty well understood and established, and the subject is no longer an affording subject for anecdote. Sulphites can even listen to tales of Oriental magic, miraculously-growing trees, disappearing boys and what-not, without suggesting that the audience was mesmerized. Above all, the Sulphite recognizes as a principle that, if a story is really funny, it is probably untrue, and he does not seek to give an adjuvant relish to it, by dilating with verisimilitude upon the authenticity of the facts in the case. But your Bromide is impressive and asserts, "I knew the man that died!" The Sulphite, too, has little need for euphemisms. He can speak of birth and death without metaphor.

But to the Bromide all such matters of fact and fancy are perpetually picturesque, and, a discoverer, he leaps up and shouts out enthusiastically that two and two are four