hich
comes of being what we in Scotland sometimes call _sair hadden down_. I
have seen the like in educated people, too. And not very many will take
the trouble to seek out and to draw out the modest merit that keeps
itself in the shade. The energetic, successful people of this world are
too busy in pushing each for himself to have time to do _that_. You will
find that people with abundant confidence, people who assume a good
deal, are not unfrequently taken at their own estimate of themselves. I
have seen a Queen's Counsel walk into court, after the case in which he
was engaged had been conducted so far by his junior, and conducted
as well as mortal could conduct it. But it was easy to see that the
complacent air of superior strength with which the Queen's Counsel took
the management out of his junior's hands conveyed to the jury, (a common
jury,) the belief that things were now to be managed in quite different
and vastly better style. And have you not known such a thing as that a
family, not a whit better, wealthier, or more respectable than all
the rest in the little country town or the country parish, do yet, by
carrying their heads higher, (no mortal could say why,) gradually elbow
themselves into a place of admitted social superiority? Everybody knows
exactly what they are, and from what they have sprung; but somehow,
by resolute assumption, by a quiet air of being better than their
neighbors, they draw ahead of them, and attain the glorious advantage
of one step higher on the delicately graduated social ladder of the
district. Now it is manifest, that, if such people had sense to see
their true position, and the absurdity of their pretensions, they would
assuredly not have gained that advantage, whatever it may be worth.

But sense and feeling are sometimes burdens in the race of life; that
is, they sometimes hold a man back from grasping material advantages
which he might have grasped, had he not been prevented by the possession
of a certain measure of common sense and right feeling. I doubt not, my
friend, that you have acquaintances who can do things which you could
not do for your life, and who by doing these things push their way in
life. They ask for what they want, and never let a chance go by them.
And though they may meet many rebuffs, they sometimes make a successful
venture. Impudence sometimes attains to a pitch of sublimity; and at
that point it has produced a very great impression upon many men. The