u must not expect to find people
always at their best. It is a very unusual thing that even the ablest
men should be like Burke, who could not talk with an intelligent
stranger for five minutes without convincing the stranger that he had
talked for five minutes with a great man. And it is an awful thing, when
some clever youth is introduced to some local poet who has been told how
greatly the clever youth admires him, and what vast expectations
the clever youth has formed of his conversation, and when the local
celebrity makes a desperate effort to talk up to the expectations formed
of him. I have witnessed such a scene; and I can sincerely say that I
could not previously have believed that the local celebrity could have
made such a fool of himself. He was resolved to show that he deserved
his fame, and to show that the mind which had produced those lovely
verses in the country newspaper could not stoop to commonplace things.

* * * * *

Undue sensitiveness, and a too lowly estimate of their own powers, hang
heavily upon some men,--probably upon more men than one would imagine.
I believe that many a man whom you would take to be ambitious,
pushing, and self-complacent, is ever pressed with a sad conviction of
inferiority, and wishes nothing more than quietly to slip through life.
It would please and satisfy him, if he could but be assured that he is
just like other people. You may remember a touch of nature (that is, of
some people's nature) in Burns; you remember the simple exultation of
the peasant mother, when her daughter gets a sweetheart: she is "well
pleased to see _her_ bairn respeckit _like the lave_," that is, like the
other girls round. And undue humility, perhaps even befitting humility,
holds back sadly in the race of life. It is recorded that a weaver in a
certain village in Scotland was wont daily to offer a singular petition;
he prayed daily and fervently for a better opinion of himself. Yes, a
firm conviction of one's own importance is a great help in life. It
gives dignity of bearing; it does (so to speak) lift the horse over many
a fence at which one with a less confident heart would have broken down.
But the man who estimates himself and his place humbly and justly will
be ready to shrink aside, and let men of greater impudence and not
greater desert step before him. I have often seen, with a sad heart, in
the case of working people that manner, difficult to describe, w