e understanding
and reason;--but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away
with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of
wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart
happy, I have no question.

If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or does not share
all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter.
Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books.
After all, if we think of it, most of the world's loves and
friendships have been between people that could not read nor spell.

But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs
all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of
smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,--this is the great martyrdom
of sensitive beings,--most of all in that perpetual auto da fe
where young womanhood is the sacrifice.

--You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and
friendships of illiterate persons,--that is, of the human race,
with a few exceptions here and there. I like books,--I was born
and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into
their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think
I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I
can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly
been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew
patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent
to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I think,
if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next
Saturday, we should feel honored by his company.

What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in
which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books.

--I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, Sir,--said the
divinity-student,--who should feel himself above Shakspeare at any
time.

My young friend,--I replied,--the man who is never conscious of a
state of feeling or of intellectual effort entirely beyond
expression by any form of words whatsoever is a mere creature of
language. I can hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think
for a moment of the power of music. The nerves that make us alive
to it spread out (so the Professor tells me) in the most sensitive
region of the marrow just where it is widening to run upwards into
the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense rather
than of th