exercise of mental muscle akin to the beating of the air, deprecated
by the Apostle to the Gentiles.

"Such stolid stupidity is incredible in a land where education is
compulsory!" exclaimed a friend who, having talked himself out of
breath in the effort to persuade a rich vulgarian into belief of one
of the simplest of philosophical principles, had the mortification of
seeing that his opponent actually flattered himself with the idea that
_he_ had come off victorious in the wordy skirmish. "One would have
thought that living where he does, and as he does, he would have taken
in such knowledge through the pores."

"Not if the pores were already full," was a retort that shed new light
into the educated mind.

Folly has a law and language of its own with which intelligence
intermeddles not. The workings of an intellect at once untrained and
self-sufficient are like the ways of Infinite Wisdom--past finding
out.

Philosophy and politeness harmonize in the effort to meet such
intellects upon what they shall not suspect is "made ground." To apply
to them the rules of conversation and debate you would use in
intercourse with equals would be absurd, and disagreeable alike to you
and to themselves. They would never forgive a plain statement of the
difference between you and their guild.

As a matter of curious experiment, I made the attempt once, in a case
of a handsome dolt, who was, nominally, a domestic in my employ for a
few months. She had an affected pose and tread which she conceived to