ant intellect--for
the accomplished villain is always clever--who was detected in his
crime, and who stood breathless before his accusers, waiting for and
expecting a life sentence at hard labor, to hear the judge's voice
pronounce sentence, "Condemned for life to the perpetual society of
fools!"

I believe the man would be taken from the court-room a raving maniac.

I cannot but think that a real fool is conscious of his own
foolishness. He must realize his aloofness from the rest of mankind,
and in moments of such bitter self-knowledge I can picture many whom
the world regards as too far gone to comprehend their calamity praying
the prayer of the court-jester, "God be merciful to me a fool." I am a
little tender towards such. I do not condemn them. They have reached
the stage when they are the victims of human pity--a lamentable
condition. But those dense persons inhabiting the thickly populated
region bordering on foolishness--those self-satisfied, uncomprehending
egotists occupying the half-way house between wisdom and folly, known
as stupidity--against such my wrath burns fiercely. They are
deceptive--so un-get-at-able. They wear the semblance of wisdom, yet
it is but a cloak to snare and delude mankind into testing their
intelligence. They are not labelled by Heaven, like the fools we may
avoid if we will, or to whom we may go in a spirit of philanthropy.
They do not wear straw in their hair like maniacs, nor drool like
simpletons. Now they infest society clad in the most immaculate of
evening clothes. Often they are college graduates, and get along very
well with other men. They are frequently found among the rich,
sometimes even among the poor. Sometimes they are stolid and cannot
understand. Sometimes they are indifferent and won't understand.
Sometimes they are English.

We women are those upon whose souls their stupidity bears most
heavily. But stay--they do not oppress all women alike! There are
women whose spiritual needs never soar above the alphabet. When these
men are men of family, and one expects to find their wives sitting
with clinched hands and set teeth, simply enduring life and praying
for death, one is often surprised to see that they are generally stout
women, who wear many diamonds and a bovine expression in their eyes.
Evidently there is no nervous tension in their house, and the dense
man is quite capable of comprehending the a b c of human nature and of
keeping his family in flannels.