rought back one of
those overflows of gratitude which make one more ashamed of himself for
being so overpaid than he would be for having committed any of the lesser
sins. But what pleased me most in the paper lately received was to see
how far the writer had outgrown the need of any encouragement of mine;
that she had strengthened out of her tremulous questionings into a
self-reliance and self-poise which I had hardly dared to anticipate for
her. Some of my readers who are also writers have very probably had more
numerous experiences of this kind than I can lay claim to;
self-revelations from unknown and sometimes nameless friends, who write
from strange corners where the winds have wafted some stray words of
theirs which have lighted in the minds and reached the hearts of those to
whom they were as the angel that stirred the pool of Bethesda. Perhaps
this is the best reward authorship brings; it may not imply much talent
or literary excellence, but it means that your way of thinking and
feeling is just what some one of your fellow-creatures needed.

--I have been putting into shape, according to his request, some further
passages from the Young Astronomer's manuscript, some of which the reader
will have a chance to read if he is so disposed. The conflict in the
young man's mind between the desire for fame and the sense of its
emptiness as compared with nobler aims has set me thinking about the
subject from a somewhat humbler point of view. As I am in the habit of
telling you, Beloved, many of my thoughts, as well as of repeating what
was said at our table, you may read what follows as if it were addressed
to you in the course of an ordinary conversation, where I claimed rather
more than my share, as I am afraid I am a little in the habit of doing.

I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or prose, have the
habitual feeling that we should like to be remembered. It is to be awake
when all of those who were round us have been long wrapped in slumber.
It is a pleasant thought enough that the name by which we have been
called shall be familiar on the lips of those who come after us, and the
thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelligence, the emotions
that trembled through our frames, shall live themselves over again in the
minds and hearts of others.

But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently and
gradually fading away out of human remembrance? What line have we
written