You would have died with laughing to see him stretch his neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the nightingale, then fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the cuckoo; and all that naturally, and without effort.

He is pantomime from head to foot."[219] _Conversation._--"'Tis a singular thing, conversation, especially when the company is tolerably large.

Look at the roundabout circuits we took; the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more incongruous.

Still, just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in the head either of a man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs together in conversation; but it would often be extremely hard to find the imperceptible links that have brought so many disparate ideas together.

A man lets fall a word which he detaches from what has gone before, and what has followed in his head; another does the same, and then let him catch the thread who can.