because he really believes the playmate did it, but because he feels he
_must_ have some outlet for his resentment. When once resentment is
roused, it will expend its force on anything that turns up handy, as the
man who has quarrelled with his wife about a question of a bonnet, will
kick his dog for trying to follow him to the club as he leaves her.

The mob, enraged at the death of Cæsar, meets Cinna the poet in the
streets of Rome. "Your name, sir?" inquires the Third Citizen. "Truly,
my name is Cinna," says the unsuspecting author. "Tear him to pieces!"
cries the mob; "he's a conspirator!" "I am Cinna the poet," pleads the
unhappy man; "I am not Cinna the conspirator!" But the mob does not heed
such delicate distinctions at such a moment. "Tear him for his bad
verses!" it cries impartially. "Tear him for his bad verses!"

Whatever sort of misfortune falls upon persons of the lower order of
intelligence is always met in the same spirit. Especially is this the
case with the deaths of relatives. Fools who have lost a friend
invariably blame somebody for his fatal illness. To hear many people
talk, you would suppose they were unaware of the familiar proposition
that all men are mortal (including women); you might imagine they
thought an ordinary human constitution was calculated to survive nine
hundred and ninety-nine years unless some evil-disposed person or
persons took the trouble beforehand to waylay and destroy it. "My poor
father was eighty-seven when he died; and he would have been alive still
if it weren't for that nasty Mrs. Jones: she put him into a pair of damp
sheets." Or, "My husband would never have caught the cold that killed
him, if that horrid man Brown hadn't kept him waiting so long in the
carriage at the street corner." The doctor has to bear the brunt of most
such complaints; indeed, it is calculated by an eminent statistician
(who desires his name to remain unpublished) that eighty-three per cent.