Let us take a single
instance. There is a story of a drunken man who was observed to
feel his way several times all round the railings of a London
square, with the intention apparently of finding some way of
getting in. At last he sat down, covered his face with his hands,
and burst into tears, saying, with deep pathos, "I am shut in!" In
a sense it was true: if the rest of the world was his prison, and
the garden of the square represented liberty, he was undoubtedly
incarcerated. Or, again, take the story of the Scotchman returning
from a convivial occasion, who had jumped carefully over the
shadows of the lamp-posts, but on coming to the shadow of the
church-tower, ruefully took off his boots and stockings, and turned
his trousers up, saying, "I'll ha'e to wade." The reason why the
stories of drunken persons are often so indescribably humorous,
though, no doubt, highly deplorable in a Christian country, is that
the victim loses all sense of probability and proportion, and
laments unduly over an altogether imaginary difficulty.
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