But, dear me! how much work all this private criticism involves! An
editor has only to say "respectfully declined," and there is the end of
it. But the confidential adviser is expected to give the reasons of his
likes and dislikes in detail, and sometimes to enter into an argument for
their support. That is more than any martyr can stand, but what trials
he must go through, as it is! Great bundles of manuscripts, verse or
prose, which the recipient is expected to read, perhaps to recommend to a
publisher, at any rate to express a well-digested and agreeably flavored
opinion about; which opinion, nine times out of ten, disguise it as we
may, has to be a bitter draught; every form of egotism, conceit, false
sentiment, hunger for notoriety, and eagerness for display of anserine
plumage before the admiring public;--all these come in by mail or
express, covered with postage-stamps of so much more cost than the value
of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and
change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's
knock as if it were that of the other visitor whose naked knuckles rap at
every door.

Still there are experiences which go far towards repaying all these
inflictions. My last young man's case looked desperate enough; some of
his sails had blown from the rigging, some were backing in the wind, and
some were flapping and shivering, but I told him which way to head, and
to my surprise he promised to do just as I directed, and I do not doubt
is under full sail at this moment.

What if I should tell my last, my very recent experience with the other
sex? I received a paper containing the inner history of a young woman's
life, the evolution of her consciousness from its earliest record of
itself, written so thoughtfully, so sincerely, with so much firmness and
yet so much delicacy, with such truth of detail and such grace in the
manner of telling, that I finished the long manuscript almost at a
sitting, with a pleasure rarely, almost never experienced in voluminous
communications which one has to spell out of handwriting. This was from
a correspondent who made my acquaintance by letter when she was little
more than a child, some years ago. How easy at that early period to have
silenced her by indifference, to have wounded her by a careless epithet,
perhaps even to have crushed her as one puts his heel on a weed! A very
little encouragement kept her from despondency, and b