gain, may
profit by this recollection. But what if one does say the same
things,--of course in a little different form each time,--over her? If
he has anything to say worth saying, that is just what he ought to do.
Whether he ought to or not, it is very certain that this is what all who
write much or speak much necessarily must and will do. Think of the
clergyman who preaches fifty or a hundred or more sermons every year for
fifty years! Think of the stump speaker who shouts before a hundred
audiences during the same political campaign, always using the same
arguments, illustrations, and catchwords! Think of the editor, as
Carlyle has pictured him, threshing the same straw every morning, until
we know what is coming when we see the first line, as we do when we read
the large capitals at the head of a thrilling story, which ends in an
advertisement of an all-cleansing soap or an all-curing remedy!

The latch-key which opens into the inner chambers of my consciousness
fits, as I have sufficient reason to believe, the private apartments of a
good many other people's thoughts. The longer we live, the more we find
we are like other persons. When I meet with any facts in my own mental
experience, I feel almost sure that I shall find them repeated or
anticipated in the writings or the conversation of others. This feeling
gives one a freedom in telling his own personal history he could not have
enjoyed without it. My story belongs to you as much as to me. De te
fabula narratur. Change the personal pronoun,--that is all. It gives
many readers a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them something
they have long known or felt, but which they have never before found any
one to put in words for them. An author does not always know when he is
doing the service of the angel who stirred the waters of the pool of
Bethesda. Many a reader is delighted to find his solitary thought has a
companion, and is grateful to the benefactor who has strengthened him.
This is the advantage of the humble reader over the ambitious and
self-worshipping writer. It is not with him pereant illi, but beati sunt
illi qui pro nobis nostra dixerunt,-Blessed are those who have said our
good things for us.

What I have been saying of repetitions leads me into a train of
reflections like which I think many readers will find something in their
own mental history. The area of consciousness is covered by layers of
habitual thoughts, as a sea-beach is covered w