rom his own little pedestal--it may be the shuffling
stilts of three feet high, or it may be the lofty security of the
Vendome column--shrieks out his little opinion, and demands the silence
or assent of the universe. Would that our modern Stylites, like to those
of old, might, from their eminences, preach their own nothingness! Would
that, like the Muezzins of Islam, they might climb the minarets of
publicity and fame, only to call the world to praise and prayer!

But I, sharing the weaknesses, and, therefore, the privileges of a
common humanity, claim the right to the luxury of preaching, which comes
nearest to that of criticising, and is only in the third degree of
inferiority from that supreme pleasure that is involved in _I told you
so_.

And so, here by the western seas, where the homeless Atlantic finds a
home, do I, a simple, rural priest, venture to homilize and
philosophize on that great human gift of talk. Imagine me, then, on one
of those soft May evenings, after our devotions in my little chapel, and
with the children's hymns ringing in my ears, and having taken one pinch
of snuff, and with another poised in my fingers, philosophizing thus:--

"I think--that is, I am sure--that the worst advices I ever heard given
in my life were these:--

"On Preaching.--Try to be simple; and never aim at eloquence.

"On Meditation.--Keep your fingers in your Breviary, and think over
the lessons of the Second Nocturn.

"And they are evil counsels, not _per se_, but _per accidens_; and for
precisely similar reasons. They took no account of the tendency of human
nature to relax and seek its ease. When the gray-haired counsellor said,
'Be simple,' he said, 'Be bald and vulgar.' For the young men who
listened aimed at simplicity, and therefore naturally argued, the
simpler the better; in fact, the conversational style is best of all.
Where, then, the need for elaborate preparation? We shall only vex and
confuse the people, consequently preparation is superfluous. We know the
results. 'A few words' on the schools; an _obiter dictum_ on the
stations; a good, energetic, Demosthenic philippic against some scandal.
But instruction,--oh, no! edification,--oh, no! That means preparation;
and if we prepare, we talk over the people's heads, and we are
'sounding brasses and tinkling cymbals.'"

"But surely, sir, you wouldn't advise young men to study the eloquence
of Massillon, or Bourdaloue, or Lacordaire? That wo