It is well that this is so; for to be unable to escape from the great

mass of minutiae and unimportant detail in one"s past would be
intolerable, and would so cumber the mind with useless rubbish as to
destroy its usefulness
It is well that this is so; for to be unable to escape from the great
mass of minutiae and unimportant detail in one"s past would be
intolerable, and would so cumber the mind with useless rubbish as to
destroy its usefulness. We have surely all had some experience with the
type of persons whose associations are so complete and impartial that
all their conversation teems with unessential and irrelevant details.
They cannot recount the simplest incident in its essential points but,
slaves to literalness, make themselves insufferable bores by entering
upon every lane and by-path of circumstance that leads nowhere and
matters not the least in their story. Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot,
Shakespeare, and many other writers have seized upon such characters and
made use of them for their comic effect. James, in illustrating this
mental type, has quoted the following from Miss Austen"s 'Emma':


title=you take with a Melbourne Age journalist