Filed under: Books
Meg stared at him crossly, as if she felt all her warning were wasted. “I can read what’s proper and needful, young man! But no more than that. F’rinstance, I’d never read a book!”
“But what about Miss Mansfield?”
Meg shut her eyes in vexation.
“Yes! You look at the mistress. All trouble and worry and storms in the heart! And then you look at the master who can neither read nor write on accont of his disability 0 which is, maybe, a blessing in disguise. All smile and even-faces. All contentment, I’d say. There, now!” Surprised by her own powers of observation, she opened her eyes triumphantly. “So who’s the better off? Brains? Give you a farthing for ‘em!”
– Smith, by Leon Garfield
Can you see the problem here? Meg is trying to prove her point to Smith, the boy she’s talking to, by telling him that one thing was caused by another – that her mistress is unhappy because she can read and her master is happy because he’s blind and can’t read. This tactic can be very convincing. Just because one thing can before another thing doesn’t mean that it was caused by that thing.
