write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies;-though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which byand-by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think! This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you, is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,-under all these screens, I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side; the permitted side, not as a man, but particulars, authors of a few lies, in all particulars. Their every tr quite true. Their two is not the their four not the real four: so t word they say chagrins us, and not where to begin to set them rig time nature is not slow to equip prison-uniform of the party to adhere. We come to wear one cu and figure, and acquire by degree tlest asinine expression. There is fying experience in particular w not fail to wreak itself also in th history; I mean, "the foolish praise," the forced smile which in company where we do not fe in answer to conversation which interest us. The muscles, not spo ly moved, but moved by a low wilfulness, grow tight about the the face and make the most dis sensation, a sensation of rebuke ing which no brave young man twice. [11] nu resistance Nike Nis own, ne migns home with a sad countenance; but ir faces of the multitude, like their aces, have no deep cause,-disguise , but are put on and off as the wind and a newspaper directs. Yet is the tent of the multitude more formidhan that of the senate and the colt is easy enough for a firm man who the world to brook the rage of the ated classes. Their rage is decorous rudent, for they are timid as being vulnerable themselves. But when to feminine rage the indignation of the e is added, when the ignorant and oor are aroused, when the unintellibrute force that lies at the bottom of y is made to growl and mow, it needs abit of magnanimity and religion to it godlike as a trifle of no concern. other terror that scares us from selfis our consistency; a reverence for past act or word, because the eyes of s have no other data for computing [12] |