not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed
dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years.

My heart does not warm as it should do towards the persons, not
intimates, who are always _too_ glad to see me when we meet by accident,
and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom
themselves of to me.

There is one blameless person whom I can not love and have no excuse for
hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive to me,
whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I suppose
the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own
business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with its
muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the
Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich
reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has
wandered. I will not compare myself to the clear or the turbid current,
but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in
for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself until
I can get away from him.




UNCLE SIMON AND UNCLE JIM

BY ARTEMUS WARD


Uncle Simon he