me. I rather think
I must own to the "Rock of Ages" comparison. Thereupon the "Man of
Letters," so called, took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did
n't go in "for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush was played out."

The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely
good sense which one often finds in plain people from the huckleberry
districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he
calls "a tahlented mahn," looked a little puzzled. My remark seemed
natural and harmless enough to him, I suppose, but I had been distinctly
snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend myself,
as is customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one
gentleman accuses another gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity. I
could not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment by showing fight.
I suppose that would have pleased my assailant, as I don't think he has
a great deal to lose, and might have made a little capital out of me if
he could have got a laugh out of the Member or either of the dummies,--I
beg their pardon again, I mean the two undemonstrative boarders. But I
will tell you, Beloved, just what I think about this matter.

We poets, you know, are much given to indulging in sentiment, which is a
mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of
analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now we must
not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding
questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two
will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other
idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle
insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most
impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. But inasmuch as
religion and law and the whole social order of civilized society, to
say nothing of literature and art, are so founded on and pervaded by
sentiment that they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not
to be used too lightly in passing judgment, as if it were an element
to be thrown out or treated with small consideration. Reason may be the
lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if
you want to move the world. Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment
overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human
weakness which is only tolerable as one of the stage properties of
f