eson, who has a hundred
million people to choose from, who has millions of people who are less
fooled about him than he is, to catch up to every day, after all these
seven long years they have put on him, ought to amount to.

And what his Post Office ought to amount to.

Of course we are all human and know how it is, in a way. We know that the
first thought that would come to Mr. Burleson as to any man when he finds
he is being criticized--that people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices
are criticizing him and acting with him as if he were fooled about
himself, is the automatic thought of self-defense. The second thought,
which is what one would hope for from a General, even a Postmaster
General, is that one resents it in oneself, that in an important opening
for a man like being called foolish, one stops all one's thinking-works,
and slumps ingloriously, automatically and without a quaver into
self-defense.

One would think a man who could get to be a Postmaster General would have
the presence of mind when he says "Ouch!" to a nation that steps on his
toes, to fix his face quick, smile and say, "Thank you! Thank you! I will
see what there is in this!"

Why should a man when God is blessing him as he does Mr. Burleson, even
out of the mouths of his enemies, butt in in the way he does and
interrupt truths with enough juice in them to make one Burleson, even one
Burleson into twenty great men before a nation's eyes?

A whole Cabinet--at least a whole Democratic Cabinet--could have been
made time and time again out of the great-man-juice, the truth-pepsin
great men are made out of, this country has wasted on Burleson in the
past seven years.

XVIII

CAUSES OF BEING FOOLED ABOUT ONESELF

I would like to give a diagnosis of this quite common disease, touch on
the causes and see how they can be removed.

There seem to be, speaking roughly and as far as my own observation of
psychology goes, six main ways in which the average man is fooled about
himself and needs to change his mind about himself.

He is possessed with loco-mindedness or spotty-mindedness, sees things as
they look to one kind or group of people--sees things in spotlights of
personality, of place or time--all the rest black.

Or he suffers from what one might call Lost-Mindedness--is always getting
lost in anything he does, somewhere between the end and the means. He
either loses the means in contemplating with unholy contemplation the
end