William Fitzgerald Jenkins, The Saint (1916)
“ I am humble because the people around me say I am a saint, and I know they are such fools that they are not likely to be right in such a matter. I am chaste principally because I am cross-eyed, and no woman would look at me unless I had much money, which I have not. I am industrious because I like to eat occasionally, and here there is no other way to get food. I am thrifty. I owe no man money, because, fools though they are, yet none of my neighbors is fool enough to lend to me, and I am honest because there is nothing worth stealing in the village. ”
