h yes, when there is any mind for a conflict. But the mind
does not grow without personal effort and conflict and struggle with
itself. It is a living organism, and not at all like a jar or other
receptacle for fluids. The physiologists say that what we eat will not do
us much good unless we chew it. By analogy we may presume that the mind
is not greatly benefited by what it gets without considerable exercise of
the mind.

Still, it is a beautiful theory that we can get others to do our reading
and thinking, and stuff our minds for us. It may be that psychology will
yet show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way. But just
now the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge--which
every intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate--of being
content with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to others
for our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of a
book for the book itself, or--a refinement on that--with a review of the
reviews. The method is still crude. Perhaps we may expect a further
development of the "slot" machine. By dropping a cent in the slot one can
get his weight, his age, a piece of chewing-gum, a bit of candy, or a
shock that will energize his nervous system. Why not get from a similar
machine a "good business education," or an "interpretation" of Browning,
or a new language, or a knowledge of English literature? But even this
would be crude. We have hopes of something from electricity. There ought
to be somewhere a reservoir of knowledge, connected by wires with every
house, and a professional switch-tender, who, upon the pressure of a
button in any house, could turn on the intellectual stream desired.
--[Prophecy of the Internet of the year 2000 from 110 years ago. D.W.]
--There must be discovered in time a method by which not only information
but intellectual life can be infused into the system by an electric
current. It would save a world of trouble and expense. For some clubs
even are a weariness, and it costs money to hire other people to read and
think for us.

A LOCOED NOVELIST

Either we have been indulging in an expensive mistake, or a great foreign
novelist who preaches the gospel of despair is locoed.

This word, which may be new to most of our readers, has long been current
in the Far West, and is likely to be adopted into the language, and
become as indispensable as the typic words taboo and tabooed, which
Her