racter of Pontiff, I should tell these
young persons that most of them labored under a delusion. It is very
hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly
superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily
and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities
of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and
besides one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was
to print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least
nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred.

But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the
one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the
case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some
other channel.

Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counselled more
than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor's board or
his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends
praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive
dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of a
profession which asked only for the diligent use of average; ordinary
talents. It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown
correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors. One whom you have
never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you
specimens more or less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he
asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send back an answer
informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor
of the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him
to leave all,--the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger he posts,
the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant
plane,--and follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next
correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course of life for him, and
the means of judgment he gives you are about as adequate as the brick
which the simpleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the house
he had to sell. My advice to all the young men that write to me depends
somewhat on the handwriting and spelling. If these are of a certain
character, and they have reached a mature age, I recommend some honest
manual calling, such as they have very probably been bred