chiding remark to
her offspring. She talks loudly, so that I may hear it, and says to
him, "Fie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to let people see how
naughty you are."

Of all this that I stood there and observed not one thing, not even one
little accessory detail, was lost on me; my attention was acutely keen;
I absorbed carefully every little thing as I stood and thought out my
own thought, about each thing according as it occurred. So it was
impossible that there could be anything the matter with my brain. How
could there, in this case, be anything the matter with it?

Listen; do you know what, said I all at once to myself, that you have
been worrying yourself long enough about your brain, giving yourself no
end of worry in this matter? Now, there must be an end to this
tomfoolery. Is it a sign of insanity to notice and apprehend everything
as accurately as you do? You make me almost laugh at you, I reply. To
my mind it is not without its humorous side, if I am any judge of such
a case. Why, it happens to every man that he once in a way sticks fast,
and that, too, just with the simplest question. It is of no
significance, it is often a pure accident. As I have remarked before, I
am on the point of having a good laugh at your expense. As far as that
huckster account is concerned, that paltry five-sixteenths of
beggar-man's cheese, I can happily dub it so. Ha, ha!--a cheese with
cloves and pepper in it; upon my word, a cheese in which, to put the
matter plainly, one could breed maggots. As far as that ridiculous
cheese is concerned, it might happen to the cleverest fellow in the
world to be puzzled over it! Why, the smell of the cheese was enough to
finish a man; ... and I made the greatest fun of this and all other
Dutch cheeses.... No; set me to reckon up something really eatable,
said I--set me, if you like, at five-sixteenths of good dairy butter.
That is another matter.

I laughed feverishly at my own whim, and found it peculiarly diverting.
There was positively no longer anything the matter with me. I was in
good form--was, so to say, still in the best of form; I had a level
head, nothing was wanting there, God be praised and thanked! My mirth
rose in measure as I paced the floor and communed with myself. I
laughed aloud, and felt amazingly glad. Besides, it really seemed, too,
as if I only needed this little happy hour, this moment of airy
rapture, without a care on any side, to get my head into working