suppose a doubt as to his own astuteness ever dims the self-
complacency of White Waistcoat? Never!

There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. By a special
dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one side of a
subject, so are always convinced that they are right, and from the
height of their contentment, look down on those who chance to
differ with them.

A lady who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of many
years' careful study and tireless "weeding" will ask anxiously if
you are quite sure you like the effect of her latest acquisition -
some eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably,
from the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to
your verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by
contract, with the latest "Louis Fourteenth Street" productions,
conducts you complacently through her chambers of horrors, wreathed
in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that smug assurance
granted only to the - small.

When a small intellect goes in for cultivating itself and improving
its mind, you realize what the poet meant in asserting that a
little learning was a dangerous thing. For Mediocrity is apt, when
it dines out, to get up a subject beforehand, and announce to an
astonished circle, as quite new and personal discoveries, that the
Renaissance was introduced into France from Italy, or that Columbus
in his day made important "finds."

When the incompetent advance another step and write or paint -
which, alas! is only too frequent - the world of art and literature