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The same is the case with dodo, which is also used, but not so often, to describe a stupid person. This bird also got its name from a word which meant "foolish." It comes from the Portuguese word doudo, which means "simpleton." We have a few verbs also taken from the names of animals and birds. We say a person "apes" another when he tries to imitate him.

The same round jolly face, the same stout square-shouldered body, the same stubby sturdy legs, the same expression of an honest simpleton with a gift for plodding work that stamped him in advance as a steady reliable chap, an hombre de bien. And the same inside, as well! Good-natured, too good-natured if anything, and bashful!

"I'm perfectly well, now perfectly well," said Belinda. "Perfectly a simpleton, I think," said Lady Delacour. "Nay, my dear, you must be ruled; your mask must come off: didn't you tell me you wanted air? What now! This is not the first time Clarence Hervey has ever seen your face without a mask, is it? It's the first time indeed he, or anybody else, ever saw it of such a colour, I believe."

He answered, “I should have liked the most beautiful and finest carpet.” Then she called a young one and said: “Maiden green and small, Shrunken old crone, Crone’s little dog, Crone here and there, Fetch here the big box.” The young toad brought the box and the fat toad opened it and gave Simpleton a carpet from it, so beautiful and so fine as up above on the earth could not have been woven.

He again blew the three feathers into the air, and they flew as before. Then Simpleton without more ado went down to the fat toad, and said, "I am to take home the most beautiful woman!" "Oh," answered the toad, "the most beautiful woman! She is not at hand at the moment, but still thou shalt have her." She gave him a yellow turnip which had been hollowed out, to which six mice were harnessed.

"'Who, now! Why, Miss Barbara. She has hardly had it off her neck since, my belief is she wears it in her sleep." "More simpleton she," returned Joyce. "The night before he left West Lynne to marry Lady Isabel and didn't the news come upon us like a thunderclap! Miss Barbara had been at Miss Carlyle's and he brought her home. A lovely night it was, the moon rising, and nearly as light as day.

Virginie became just as disdainful as her employer, and it was as though she was conferring a favor that she condescended to try some shoes on Perrine, and the black straw hat which completed the wardrobe of this little simpleton. Could anyone believe that a girl would be such an idiot! She had been given an order to buy what she wanted and she asked for two pairs of stockings and two chemises.

That scene about Tina this morning quite upset me. Poor little Tina! What a little simpleton it was, to set her heart on me in that way! But she ought to see how impossible it is that things should be different. If she would but understand how kindly I feel towards her, and make up her mind to look on me as a friend; but that it what one never can get a woman to do.

"If mysterious poisons were believed in by the ancients and remained undetected in their time it was because there were no means of analysis. But the drug of the Borgias would now lead the simpleton who might employ it straight to the Assizes. Such stories are mere nonsense, and at the present day people scarcely tolerate them in newspaper serials and shockers."

Still I pardoned all his folly, and amused myself from morning to night with watching his nimble fingers perform a thousand tricks of jugglery. Even now that I have lost the gaiety of my happy days, when I recall his irresistibly comic ways, I catch myself laughing, like an old simpleton, at the bare recollection of his monkey feats.