Well . . . the thing is . . .

Nothing
Find the thing in nothing!
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Some of you will recall that I - relying on my hermeneutic of suspicion - posted some speculations about a line in one of the letters (in Jean Webster's novel Daddy-Long-Legs) that Jerusha wrote to her benefactor, about whom she knew almost nothing:

I don't know a single thing about you. I don't even know your name. It is very uninspiring writing to a Thing.

My speculations were centered on the remote possibility that there is an authorial pun here on "Thing" as a slang term for the male sexual organ. The thought occurs to me to quote all other expressions of "a thing." First:

I am having sublingual gland swelling. And I've been studying physiology all the year without ever hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!

Hmm. Glands. A thing. Second:

I don't know what kind of a thing a farm is. I've never been on one in my life.

Hmm. Never been on a thing. Third:

If you just want a thing hard enough and keep on trying, you do get it in the end.

Ahem. No comment. Fourth:

Amasai, who used to be so obliging about beating rugs and carrying wood, grumbles if you suggest such a thing.

Hmm. Beating.Wood. A thing.

Well, these are all out of context, but the "No comment" line is the stand-out here.