John Kendrick Bangs 
Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews 

Excerpt: "GOOD!" cried the Idiot, from behind the voluminous folds of the magazine section of his Sunday newspaper. "Here’s a man after my own heart. Professor Duff, of 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 maintained that myself from the moment I had my first copy-book lesson in which I had to scrawl the line, ‘It’s a long lane that has no turning, ‘ twenty-four times. And then that other absurd statement, ‘A stitch in the side is worth two in the hand’-or something[4] like it-I forget just how it goes-what Tommy-rot that is.""