Young man, think twice before you commit yourself to the romantic young lady, whose impulsive ideal of faithfulness and devotion will never enable her to protect you from short weight, domestic pilferings, and frayed, buttonless linen.

( 206 )

ASSOCIATION.

ERHAPS

no subject offers more

metaphysical difficulties, and at the same time finds more incessant illustration in the commonest, most thoughtless life, than that of Association. Association is the belt of the world-it embraces heaven and earth, God and man; life and death are contained within its bounds. It is the mystery of the past, the present, and the future.

After a glimpse, we must be touched with a sense of its immensity; we may therefore more freely handle a few little tags in the fringe which borders it. Some subjects may well dismay us, for they appear to be within compass, and to expect an exhaustive examination, if they are examined at all; others are so large that the philosopher can really make little more impression upon them than the fool, and it is no more pretentious in the one than in the other to approach them. Here we are, then, by the brink of the great sea of

The Groom and the Eggs.

207

Association, without horizon, sounding, or end; let us dip our little mug in and sip upon the beach.

Events widely severed are joined and meet together in some familiar scene. Take, for instance, the story of the groom and the eggs. A gentleman was driving, on a moonlight night in September, over a bridge, in a onehorse phaeton. He wore a white coat, and his servant sat behind him. bridge, on the right, was a windmill, and on the left, a church. The clock struck eleven. The gentleman turning round suddenly to the groom, said: "John, do you like eggs?" "Yes, sir," said John, touching his hat.

Just beyond the

Exactly twelve months afterwards, he was driving the same vehicle over the same bridge at eleven o'clock by moonlight, in a white coat. The clock struck. The gentleman turned round suddenly to the groom, and said: "How?" "Poached, sir," replied John, touching his hat.

The eye and the ear annihilate space and time. An unexpected familiar sound transports us in a moment. When we hear the whetting of a scythe, there is a vision of the hayfield, the harvest, or the lawn. If we were to hear it in Piccadilly, we should still see cabs

and granite with the outward eye, but swaths of grass or bending barley would be immediately present to the true or inward seeing

power.

A passer-by says, "Tlck," and horses come into the field of vision. The hiss of the groom recalls the stable-door, the bucket, the sponge, and ammonia. The bleat of the lamb carries us another way. The tom-tom of the Hindu beggar strikes the contrast between the East and the West. The peal from the steeple rekindles a mixed memory of weddings, victories, and elections.

There are, of course, catholic sounds which suggest the same ideas to different minds with approximate certainty. The passing bell has one message to all. But each associates some private scene with some particular sight, or sound, or smell.

I can never see a knife laid with its edge upwards without thinking of a particular picnic. There was a pause, and I suppose a moment of unusual receptivity in my brain; we talked about accidents in carving, danger of carelessness with knives, &c., when a gentleman, with much ceremony, set the large carving-knife in the middle of the group with its edge uppermost, and while we expected

Curious Revivals of Memory.

209

"None of you

some conjuring trick, said: will ever see a knife so laid without thinking of me;" and then he winked at the prettiest girl.

Thus each of us has some scene which an unlikely, unmeaning incident rekindles. The most remarkable revival of past impressions, however, occurs sometimes at a combination or coincidence of circumstances.

Did you never, for instance, come suddenly across or into a scene which at once is recognised as familiar, though you cannot remember having been present at it before? So strong is the impression at times, that we seem to know what will happen next, as if we had crossed the track of some past life, and, for a moment, were in possession of a little scrap of time, involving future, as well as past and present. No doubt, such an inexplicable appreciation of the view at an unexpected turn in our path has done much to strengthen a belief in the transmigration of souls.

There are sounds and sights which it is impossible to detach from particular ideas, or at least particular states of mind. Whose solemnity will not be disturbed by the squeak, pan-pipe, and drum of Punch? If a waltz could not justify itself at a funeral, it would

P