nt-minded friend over again. It was quite clear that his clothes
wanted changing, but he put on the wrong suit. It was evident that
Hogarth's verdict on Johnson wanted revising, but he rushed from Scylla
to Charybdis. It was manifest that the Maltese view of Paul needed
correcting, but they swung, like a pendulum, from one ludicrous extreme
to the opposite. In each case, the hero reappears, wearing the wrong
clothes. In each case he only makes himself ridiculous. If my mind
wants changing, I must be very cautious as to the way in which I do it.

And, of course, a man _must_ sometimes change both his clothes and his
mind--his _mind_ at any rate. How can you go to a conjuring
entertainment, for example, without changing your mind a hundred times
in the course of the performance? For a second you think that the
vanished billiard ball is _here_. Then, in a trice, you change your
mind, and conclude that it is _there_! First, you believe that,
appearances notwithstanding, the magician really has _no_ hat in his
hand. Then, in a flash, you change your mind, and you fancy he has
_two_! You think for a moment that the clever trick is done in _this_
way, and then you become certain that it is done in _that_! I once
witnessed in London a very clever artist, who walked up and down the
stage, passing midway behind a screen. And as he reappeared on the
other side, after having been hidden from sight for only a fraction of
a second, he was differently dressed. He stepped behind the screen a
soldier, and emerged a policeman. He disappeared a huntsman, he
reappeared a clergyman. He went a convict, he came again a sailor. He
wore a score of uniforms in almost as many seconds.

I began by saying that changing your mind is for all the world like
changing your clothes. It is less tedious, however. I have no idea
how my London friend managed to change his garments many times in a
minute. But many a magician has made me change my mind at a lightning
pace. Yes, many a magician. For the universe is, after all, a kind of
magic. The wand of the wizard is at its wonderful work. It is the
highest type of legerdemain. It is very weird and very wonderful, a
thing of marvel and of mystery. No man can sit down and gaze for five
minutes with wide open eyes upon God's worlds without changing his mind
at least five times. The man who never changes his mind will soon
discover to his shame that he is draped in intellectual rags a