design?"

This made her think hard.

"H'm, yes, I think I know what you mean," she said slowly. "But
remember that before you can improve the psyche you must know the
psyche."

I hastened to agree.

"Certainly, but all the same there is much room for improvement. You
don't want to come off at every hill, do you?"

This seemed to make her more thoughtful still.

"No," she said, "but don't you think that the mind makes the hill?"

This staggered me.

"Eh?" I gasped. "Mean to say that I broke my chain on Logie Brae
yesterday because----"

"I'm afraid it is too difficult for me," she said apologetically. "I
get lost in metaphors."

Then I asked her something about ball bearings, and she threw me a
grateful smile . . . for changing the subject--as she thought.

The most amusing joke is the joke about the innocent or ignorant.
Everyone is tickled at the Hamlet joke I referred to in my _Log_.

The school inspector was dining with the local squire.

"Funny thing happened in the village school to-day," he said. "I was a
little bit ratty, and I fired a question at a sleepy-looking boy at the
bottom of the class.

"Here, boy, who wrote _Hamlet_?"

The little chap got very flustered.

"P--please, sir, it wasna me!"

The squire laughed boisterously.

"And I suppose the little devil had done if after all!" he cried.

We laugh at that story because we have all made mistakes owing to
ignorance, and blushed for them a hundred times later. When we laugh
at the squire, we are really laughing at ourselves; we are getting rid
of our pent-up self-shame. That's why a good laugh is a medicine; it
allows us to get rid of psychic poison, just as a good sweat rids us of
somatic poison. Charlie Chaplin has possibly cured more people than
all the psycho-analysts in the world.

* * * * *

Public speaking is a most difficult thing. It is difficult enough when
you know your subject, and it is almost impossible if you don't. At a
dinner someone asks you to get up and propose the health of the ladies.
I tried proposing that toast once; luckily most of the diners were
under the table by that time. What can one say about the ladies?

When you have a definite subject to talk about, and when you know
everything about it, even then public speaking is difficult. You stand
up before a sea of faces. You see no one; you dare not catch anyone's
eye. The best plan is to fix your eye on the blurre