The Genial Idiot

Glasgow University, has come out with a public statement that the maxims and proverbs of our forefathers are largely hocus-pocus and buncombe. I've always main

he side is worth two in the hand'-or something like

ively. "Certain great moral principles are instilled into the minds of the young by the old proverbs a

farm that led from the hen-coop to the barn. There wasn't a turn nor a twist in it, and I know by actual measurement that it wasn't sixty feet long. You've got just as much right to say to a boy that it's a long nose that has no twisting, or a long leg that has no pulling, or a long courtship

Mr. Whitechoker. "Perhaps, after all, th

no ending.' What's the use of putting a thing like that in a copy-book? A boy who didn't know that without being told ought to be spanked and put t

ptious? Out of a billion and a half wise saws you pick out one to ju

ave called a beaut. What superior claims the second thought has over the first or the seventy-seventh thought, that it should become axiomatic, I vow I can't see. If it's morality you're after I am dead against the teachings of that proverb. The second thought is the open door to duplicity when it comes to a question of morals. You ask a small boy, who has been in swimming when he ought to have been at Sunday-school, why his shirt is wet.

times fifth thoughts are best. In science I guess you'll find that the man who thinks the seven hundred and ninety-seventh thought along certain lines has got the last and best end of it. And so it goes-out of the infinitesimal number of numbers, every mother's son of 'em may at the psychological moment have a claim to the supremacy, but your self-sufficient ol

t it," said the Lawyer. "I neve

andly, "that we may not so summarily dismiss. Take, for in

some jovial friends, when there's no end of it in the well, but not a drop within reach of my fevered hand, and I haven't the energy to grope my way down-stairs to the ice-pitcher. There's more water in that proverb than tangible assets. From the standpoint of veracity that's one of the most immoral

any other," said

then, 'You may drive a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink,' is another choice specimen of the Waterbury School of Philosophy. I know a lot of human horses who have been driven to water lately, and

hoker, "that modern conditions should so

e writing-lessons, why not adapt your means to your ends? Why make a beginner in penmanship write over and over again, 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?'-which it isn't, by-the-way, to a man who is a good shot-when you can bear in on his mind that 'A dot on the I is worth two on the T'; or, for the instruction of your school-teachers, why don't you get up a proverb like 'It's a long lesson that has no learning'? Or if you are interested in having your boy brought up to the strenuous life, why don't you have him make

n Mr. Whitechoker, "the point seems to be that the proverbs of the ancients a

," said

ave something to begin on. Possibly," he added, with a wink at the Bibli

the Idiot. "Here i

handed Mr. Brief a paper on w

ter till the stock fal

s nothing at all at pr

nnies. Somebody else w

iress that know

ghts are alw

on is the them

what you can put on

day are the obligat

wat deserve

he read them off, "you can't g

eat trouble with the Idiot. Even with all h