ARE YOU A BROMIDE?
OR,
THE SULPHITIC THEORY
EXPOUNDED AND EXEMPLIFIED ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT RESEARCHES INTOTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOREDOM
Including many well-known Bromidioms now in use
BY
GELETT BURGESS, S.B.
Author of “Goops and How to Be Them,” “The Burgess Nonsense Book,”“Vivette,” &c., &c.
WITH DECORATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
1906
NOTE
This essay is reprinted, with revisions and enlargement additions,from “The Sulphitic Theory” published in “The Smart Set” for April,1906, by consent of the editors.
TO
GERTRUDE McCALL
CHATELAINE OF MAC MANOR
AND DISCOVERER OF
THE SULPHITIC THEORY
ARE YOU A BROMIDE?
The terms “Bromide” and “Sulphite” as applied to psychological ratherthan chemical analysis have already become, among the illuminati, sowidely adopted that these denominations now stand in considerable dangerof being weakened in significance through a too careless use. Theadjective “bromidic” is at present adopted as a general vehicle, acommon carrier for the thoughtless damnation of the Philistine. The timehas come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellectwhich such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand ofconversation which their use has made practicable. The rapid spread ofthe theory, traveling from Sulphite to Sulphite, like the spark of apyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking world has been over-violentlyilluminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from thesimplicity and force of its fundamental principles.[1] In this, itsprogress has been like that of slang, which, gaining in popularity, mustinevitably decrease in aptness and definiteness.
[1] It was in April that I first heard of the Theory from theChatelaine. The following August, in Venice, a lady said to me: “Aren’tthese old palaces a great deal more sulphitic in their decay than theywere originally, during the Renaissance?”
In attempting to solve the problem which for so long was the despair ofphilosophers I have made modest use of the word “theory.” But to theSulphite, this simple, convincing, comprehensive explanation is more;it is an opinion, even a belief, if not a credo. It is thecrux by which society is tested. But as I shall proceedscientifically, my conclusion will, I trust, effect rational proof ofwhat was an a priori hypothesis.
The history of the origin of the theory is brief. The Chatelaine of acertain sugar plantation in Louisiana, in preparing a list of guestsfor her house-party, discovered, in one of those explosive moments ofinspiration, that all people were easily divided into two fundamentalgroups or families, the Sulphites and the Bromides. The revelation wasapodictic, convincing; it made life a different thin