"
Not until he used his authority as trainer-in-full-charge, did I yield. It
may seem absurd to some for a serious man like me solemnly to caper about
in imitation of a scraping, grimacing French-Irishman; but Monson was
right, and I haven't in the least minded the ridicule he has brought on me
by tattling this and the other things everywhere, since he turned against
me. It's nothing new under the sun for the crowds of chuckleheads to laugh
where they ought to applaud; their habit is to laugh and to applaud in the
wrong places. There's no part of my career that I'm prouder of than the
whole of this thorough course of education in the trifles that are yet not
trifles. To have been ignorant is no disgrace; the disgrace comes when one
persists in ignorance and glories in it.
Yet those who make the most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world
regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride
themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and
ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a
race of nincompoopery. If they didn't grow old and tired, what would they
not do?
All this time I was giving myself--or thought I was giving myself--chiefly
to my business, as usual.
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