Confessions of a Neurasthenic

ignified life, caused me to think that the pulpit was the place for me. A few weeks later I chanced to see a sleight-of-hand performance and I at once decided that the art of legerdemain would be more easily learned than the Gospel work; so I began to practice along this line by extracting potatoes and other sundries from the nasal appendages of members of the household. I was succeeding admirably, I thought, until one day in attempting to eat cotton and blow fire out of my mouth I burnt my tongue painfully and became so disgusted that I abandoned the idea of becoming a showman.

In turn I had fully made up my mind to become a huckster, an auctioneer, a scissors-grinder, a peanut-vender, an editor, an artist, a book-keeper, etc. My natural selection being always something that I thought would not require great energy.

As I became a little older, my mental horizon widened somewhat, but my erratic notions became accordingly more expansive. I was simply a little dreamer and my thoughts were all visi