Scion of an ancestral procession of idiots

Mark Twain didn't suffer fools gladly. In this 1905 letter he writes to a disreputable correspondent who seeks to market quack medicines:

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.

[Via Letters of Note]