bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he
had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.

Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the
average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed
to modify the public opinion. Or rather, that was one of the reason why
it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped
with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made
the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had
been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement--a
calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical
form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and
fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful
of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. But
irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for
it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided
without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson
was a pudd'nhead--which there hadn't--this revelation removed that doubt
for good and all. That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly
ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete
the thing and make it perfect. After this the judge felt tenderer than
ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.

Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society
because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and
therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions.
The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty
because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody
attached any importance to what he thought or did. He was liked, he was
welcome enough all around, but he simply didn't count for anything.