nature. All such logic is fatuous, and founded upon a misconception of
the Theory.

* * * * *

There is, however, a subtlety which has perhaps had something to do
with confusing the neophyte. It is this: Sulphitism and Bromidism are,
symbolically, the two halves of a circle, and their extremes meet. One
may be so extremely bromidic that one becomes, at a leap, sulphitic,
and _vice versa_. This may be easily illustrated.

* * * * *

Miss Herford's inimitable monologues, being each the apotheosis of some
typical Bromide--a shopgirl, a country dressmaker, a bargain-hunter and
so on--become, through her art, intensely sulphitic. They are
excruciatingly funny, just because she represents types so common that
we recognize them instantly. Each expresses the crystallized thought of
her particular bromidic group. Done, then, by a person who is herself a
Sulphite _par excellence_, the result is droll. "One has," says
Emerson, "but to remove an object from its environment and instantly it
becomes comic."

* * * * *

The same thing is done less artistically every day upon the vaudeville
stage. We love to recognize types; and what Browning said of beauty:

We're made so that we love
First, when we see them painted,