ABSENCE OF MIND.
Macaulay remarks that absent-mind-edness is either the mark of a genius or a fool. We think that Lord Macaulay was a little too severe on one of its sides. A man's mind may be so intensely occupied with lofty intuitions and inspirations that his senses, seemingly, are scarcely awake to the realities of the tangible world. A certain Scottish professor was not more remarkable for his. writings on political, economy than for his frequent unconsciousness of what passed before him. His absence of mind was so very remarkable that his wife once wagered him that she could accost him on the street, inquire after the health of herself and family, and that he would not recognise her. She actually won the wager. The professor was : once taking a walk on the banks of a canal, into which, in his abstraction, he walked. When within a yard of the centre, an honest old woman, washing clothes behind him, bawled out, " Come oot ! come oot, fule body, or yell be droont." The warning* entered the tympanum of his professorial ear, and made him turn about and regain dry land. The good woman concluding he was an idiot, sympathetically added, " Puir body ! aweel they have much to answer for that lets ye gang yer lane."
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Bibliographic details
Clutha Leader, Volume II, Issue 81, 27 January 1876, Page 3
Word Count
215ABSENCE OF MIND. Clutha Leader, Volume II, Issue 81, 27 January 1876, Page 3
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