Word: dullards
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...funny though it may be ridiculous. Humorous verse requires the greatest perfection of form. A skillful rhymester uses his rhymes to point his wit and obtains additional effects by surprising rhymes. Everyone is familiar with the lamentable effect of even a good joke haltingly and redundantly told by a dullard who remembers it imperfectly and repeats it clumsily. Concise expression, accuracy, and fluency are essentials of wit in verse and even more in prose. Good humorous verse is not easy to write, but it is all the more worth writing...
...Raffalovich has happily preserved his artistic innocence against the brittle formula of the American short-story. Power he has, and fine detachment, and skill. There the story is, layer within layer,--all distinct and complete. The peasants, the bureaucracy, the poet, the dullard, the maniac, the woman are almost ocularly visible, lightened a bit specially by the irony of title and touch, but real as they must be in their local habitation. "Patriots' All" is the best story I have read in any magazine in months...
Methods of uniformity have no ethical values in schooling character. The dullard in the average class is not at fault for his backwardness, but the teacher who passes him by. All schools should be measured by their losses as well as their gains...