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Extract from essay by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, M.P., "On People in Books." "Take, for instance, that immoderately common type, among the most common of God's creatures, which I will call 'the Silent Fool,' the man who hardly ever talks, and when he does says something so overwhelmingly silly that one remembers it all one's life. I can recollect but one Silent Fool in modern letters, but he comes in a book which is one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time, a book like a decisive battle, or like the statue of John the Baptist at South Kensington, a glory for us all. I mean The Diary of a Nobody. In that you will find the silent Mr. Padge, who says 'That's right'—and nothing more."