“You might have spared yourself this trouble,” said Dupin. “D***, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course.”

“Not altogether a fool,” said G***, “But then he’s a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.”

“True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, “Although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”
(Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter”)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)