If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don’t understand what our friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what that means?—Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you
had a bent tube, one arm of which was the size of a pipe-stem, and the
other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height
in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the
same way,—and the fools know it.