Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1884 — De Quincey’s Peculiarities. [ARTICLE]

De Quincey’s Peculiarities.

The association of common-place people and their pointless remarks were intolerable to him. They did not bore him in the ordinary sense, but seemed, as it were, to outrage his mind. To me, to whom the study of human nature iu any forth had become even then attractive, this was unintelligible, and I suppose I showed it in my face, for he proceeded to explain matters. “Some years ago,” he said, “I was standing on the pier atTarbet, on Loch Lomond, waiting for the steamer. A stout old lady joined me. I felt that she would presently address me, and she did. Pointing to the smoke of the steamer which was making itself s en above the next headland, ‘There she comes,* she said. ‘ La, sir! if you and I had seen that fifty years ago how wonderful we should have thought it!’ Now, the same sort of thing,” added my host, with a shiver, “might happen to me any day, and that is why I always avoid a public conveyance.”— Comhill Magazine. When a young man walks with a girl as though he was afraid some one would see him, the girl is his sister. If he walks so close to her as to nearly crowd her against the fence, she is some one else’s sister.