Absentmindedness.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8, 24 August 1907, Page 37

Absentmindedness.

ALMOST LOST HIS SUPPER. Victorien Sardou’s fits of abstraction are so intense that when he is at work the noted French dramatist is said to be oblivious to all else. “La Tosca” was ono of the plays which appealed to him particularly. He laboured over it early and late, and if it had not •been for the care of his family his health would have suffered, so profound was his mental preoccupation. When’he did not respond to the summons for dinner one day, a messenger was sent to his den to insist on his coming to .the dining room where the rest were already seated. Presently the two appeared, the mind of the dramatist apparently being still on the play. However, he was seated >at the table. Without uttering a word, and still rapt in thought, he finished his soup and fish; then, pushing back his chair, lie rose and started from the room, muttering and gesticulating. “You do not wish to finish dinner?” he was asked. Seeming to come, to himself, he replied, “W'hy, yes, if the meal is prepared. I shall be most willing to appease my appetite. I am almost famished.” He was in complete ignorance that he had already partly finished his meal. HIS MENTAL DIGESTION. Hogarth’s absent mindedness at mealtime was extreme. In the midst of dinner it was no uncommon thing for him to turn round in his chair, and sit with his back to the table, twiddling his thumbs. Then he would as suddenly rise, place his chain back in its proper position, and resume eating as if he had not interrupted himself. NEWTON AND HIS MEALS. This suggests the anecdote of Newton, who was so much the victim of forgetfulness and mental blindness in ordinary matters that his friends thought little of it. On visiting Sir Isaac one morning, Dr. Stukely, one of his intimates, was ushered into the .parlour by a maid and informed that her master was engaged upstairs, but would be down presently. The guest waited, and time slipped by; but Newton did not appear. The doctor became restless, and was on the point of departing, but decided to remain. After a long stay the maid appeared in the parlour with a cooked fowl, which she placed on a table in anticipation of Sir Isaac’s appearance to eat his midday meal. Stukely grew more and more hungry, as the smell from the fowl was highly tempting. Finally, as his friend had not eome, he could withstand temptation no longer, and, turning to the fowl, he finished it. It was sometime after that that the scientist appeared, and gazed at the remains of the meal with a perplexed expression. “I protest I had forgotten that I had eaten my dinner,” he remarked. “You see, doctor, how oblivious we philosophers are.” AT THE BALLOT BOX.

A Middletown, Connecticut, man was responsible for an amusing mistake at .he polls, which w*as not exactly ballot box stuffing, although it savoured of it, land it was due to absent mindedness. Having carefully made out the ticket he wished to vote, he deposited in the box, not the ticket, as he imagined, but a cheque which he had in his pocket. A FORGETFUL MAIL CLERK. A Western mail agent, through a fit of abstraction, which seized him at a critical moment, caused the Illinois town of Leaf River to miss one mail. The train on which the agent was detailed ran through Leaf River without stopping, and it was the agent’s duty to pitch the sack containing the mail on the railroad platform. Instead of throwing it out, however, one day he dumped out on the platform absent .mindedly, as the train whizzed by, the. satchel containing a drummer’s sample cigars. THE CHILD AND THE BOOK. This brings to mind the incident in life of the extraordinarily forgetful Comte de Brancas, which inspired La Brnyerc’s “Absent Man.” The Count was seated by his fireside, bnried in a hook, when the nurse entered with his infant daughter. The father laid down the book, took' the child in his arms, and was fondling her when a visitor of note was ushered in. Associating the child with the book, he promptly tossed the infant on the table.