he first evidence of true wisdom is humility. One
may be ignorant without being foolish. Lack of knowledge because the
opportunity for acquiring it has been withheld, induces in the human
mind such conditions as we find in a sponge that has been cleaned and
dried. Information fills and enlarges the pores. Ignorance that is
content with itself is turgid and saturated. It will take up no more,
no matter what is offered.

This is the form of folly which the preacher admonishes us to answer
in kind. The effort to force the truth upon the charged sponge is an
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
be majestic. She was stupid, awkward and slovenly about her work, and
altogether so "impossible" that I disliked to send her adrift upon the
world, and was still more averse to imposing her upon another
household. In a weak moment I essayed to reason her out of her fatuous
vanity, and stimulate in her a desire to make something better of
herself. She seemed to hearken while I repr