“A PROPHET OF THE SOUL” 
His essay on laughter is undoubtedly the most 
convincing and satisfactory exposition of the subject 
that has yet been made. One phase of its central 
idea, — namely, that we laugh at inanimate objects 
when they behave like human beings and vice versa, 
— TI saw illustrated at a farmhouse in the Catskills 
last summer. The water from a spring on the hill 
was brought to the house in a pipe which discharged 
into a half-barrel near the kitchen door. Into the 
end of a pipe a plug had been driven with a good 
sized gimlet-hole in the end of it. Out of this hole a 
jet of water came with great force, striking the water 
in the tub a few inches from the rim, at an angle of 
about forty-five degrees, and driving deeply into it. 
One day I was washing some apples in the tub, and 
while they were floating about I noticed that they 
all tended to line up on the west side of the barrel 
and then move up in a slow, hesitating manner to a 
point just behind the jet of water. I became an in- 
terested spectator. Slowly the apples in procession 
in close line turned toward the little vortex made 
by the jet. The one in the lead seemed to hesitate 
just on the edge of the danger-line, as if it would fain 
draw back; then, while you were looking, it would 
so suddenly disappear beneath the plunging jet that 
the eye could not trace its movements; its hesitation 
was followed by such a lightning-like plunge that it 
, astonished one. One fancied he could almost see 
tiny heels flash in the air as the apple went down. 
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