myself!" moaned the humbled woman in a corner to me. "And you know--as
I have learned since, as she knew all the time,--that 'faience' is
used as a generic term! Well! I have had my lesson in talking of what
I do not understand. How could she have answered me so civilly and
gravely!"

I was too sorry for her to put into words the thought of the
proverbial answer, "according to his folly." The incident had its
moral and example for me too. The recollection has beaten back many a
vehement protest against egregious absurdity, and helped me endure
with apparent composure even the patronage of fools.

After all, there are so many mistakes made by other people that affect
nobody but themselves that Don Quixote might tire of tilting at them.
The more asinine the speaker the louder is his bray, and the more
surely do we encounter him in social and domestic haunts. To dispute
with him is to strengthen the stakes, and twist harder the cords of
his belief in himself. In recognizing the truth, so humiliating to
human reason, one wonders what effect would be produced by a
determined regime of letting alone. Would what St. James graphically
describes as "foaming out of their own shame," finally froth itself
into silence? Is not the opposition consequent upon the universal
desire to set other people right, the breath that blows the flame?

What would be the status of society, what the atmosphere of our homes,
were each of us to curb the impulse to controvert doubtful, but
important, statements:--to seem to acquiesce in--let us say, in Tom's
declaration that there are forty black cats in the back yard, and
Polly's opinion that Susie Jones is the prettiest girl in town, when
we consider her positively homely, and so on to the end of the day's