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Despite these responses from Chuck, the case went on, and so, joy of joys, Flora's picture got into the paper with the caption, "Bride Sobs, I Loved Him So!" This eminence, of course, nettled Lucille, but pleased Chuck as well as Flora, and the resulting letter from him to his wife effected a reconciliation. "I have thought this thing out pretty thoroughly," he wrote, "and I have done this according to the balance method of applied logic. As a result, I am convinced that you are wrong. Not only that, but I have analyzed you psychologically, and checked up on the results. You have heard of psychoanalysis, of course. The results upon synthesis tallied with the facts." This astonishing letter was correctly spelled, written on pink paper and delivered in person! We helped poor Flora to read it, and with the concrete suggestion added by us, that Lucille board elsewhere, the home life of Chuck and Flora was resumed.

I should feel more sure of the reconciliation being permanent if Flora's picture had been as conspicuously placed in the papers as that other friend had been. Alas, it was not, and Lucille has not hesitated to point out the distinction. We'd all be easier in our minds if Flora had sobbed upon the front page instead of the ninth. As for the lawyer in the case, he may now join the grocery and the rest of the bill collectors in trying to squeeze blood from two little turnips.

IV

If the thought processes of our moron friends are analyzed, it is evident that in almost every case one may determine, by vague word associations, why they say what they do. Through a hazy mist of associations they see a vague outline of what is being discussed, and because of the sound of a word, or some more or less intangible link, they clutch at a memory which prompts a response of some appropriateness. Having these vague associations, they escape downright imbecility, but never, except in the simplest of concrete sentences, do they clearly understand what is being said. Their own language is largely Greek to them. They can't make out why it is that other people make so many and such violent distinctions, and why they take such determined stands.

Chuck and Flora will now resume their interrupted domestic life as if nothing had happened, and Lucille will rejoin Joe when he emerges from the penitentiary, or will elope with Micky. Flora on a later occasion will flirt with Tony, and Chuck will make love to Sadie, and they will again make up, or will not make up, as the case may be. But in either case. Flora will merely smile and pat her collar and fidget until we are done scolding, and Chuck will continue to shave the sailors, and nod his head over their "interogenous accounts of reserved times." They will hurl obscene abuse at each other when they are angry (with as little knowledge of its meaning as they have of any other words). Much of this abuse may be justified, but they will hurl it as readily when it is not. Many an exasperated moron mother addresses her own daughter as "son of a bitch." She uses the term, regardless of its sense, merely because it registers disapproval, as we murmur "how interesting" to the statistician's explanation which we have not in the least understood.

In the same manner the moron daughter will agree to some admonition with a cheerful "That's an earful." Because her answer has a vestige of relevance, the enraged employer, the over trustful merchant, or some other victim, will be convinced that all morons are in complete possession of normal reasoning powers, or as, in his heat, he tends to so aptly express it, "They're exactly as bright as I am." Because to the question, "How much does seven feet of cloth cost at fifteen cents a yard?" they can answer, "Arithmetic," or "You got me -- more money than I got," or "Somewhere around a coupla dollars," the inference is that they are capable of providing for their families. Because though twenty-one and voters, their answer to "What is the difference between a President and a King?" is, "Presidents are better," or "Kings are stuck up and want lotsa service," or "Generally kill you, Kings do, at least some don't," it is assumed that the vote they cast has an opinion behind it. I have known many a citizen who voted the straight -- well, anyhow, who voted a straight ticket, whose only answer to the above question was some variation of "They sit different -- on thrones, but a President wears regular clothes."

There must be no sweeping inference from this that all trouble-makers are morons, or that all morons are trouble-makers. Far from it! It is a marvel what can be done with a good disposition and small mental equipment, if the training is good, the surroundings simple, and the social standards high. Not much real thought is required if one is protected and lives with intelligent friends. A well-trained moron boy, who has enough of a way with him to get a smart girl to marry him, is often in clover. His little shop is run well, his wife sees to it that he has tobacco and that his dinners are good. She brings up the children and there is nothing left for him to do but to praise her in the city gates. Also an intelligent man with a moron wife can get along pretty well if she has learned good manners at boarding-school, and he has money enough to pay her debts. Unfortunately, both will get into difficulties with their children. Nature slipped when she made an intelligent mother a necessity for successful children, and yet allowed so many men to be attracted by defective mates. The fact that the dull girl cannot realize how dull she is, and that the ineffective father cannot know how little to blame he is for his failures, makes the ensuing catastrophes no less pathetic. On the contrary, their profuse excuses, their stories so wide of the point, their miscellaneous and irrelevant conversation, their fate always dogging them, but never understood, provide all the essentials of tragedy, for the comic is never absent.