elf to literature; the fearful
self-exposure incident to this way of life--the dire necessity which
constrains the author to stamp his own essential portrait on every
volume of his works, no matter how carefully he may fancy he has
erased, or how artfully he may suppose he has concealed it--this
should repel from the vestibule of the temple of fame the foot of
every profane or mocking worshiper.

But if you are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister,
but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle and
be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, and
live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be
promoted--then I pray you not to believe that the world is too wise to
need further enlightenment, nor that it would be impossible for one so
humble as yourself to say aught whereby error may be dispelled or good
be diffused. Sell not your integrity; barter not your independence;
beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by authorship;
since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corrupt
it; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulses
of your own honest heart, speak or write as truth and love shall
dictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labor of
your hands, until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secure
your service, and you may frankly accept it without a compromise of
your integrity or a peril to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfare
for man's rescue from darkness and evil, choose not your place on the
battle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you; asking not
whether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is here that you
can most surely do your proper work, and meet your full share of the
responsibility and the danger.

Believe not that the heroic age is no more; since to that age is only
requisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as ignorance
and evil shall exist so long there will be work for the devoted, and
so long will there be room in the ranks of those who, defying obloquy,
misapprehension, bigotry, and interested craft, struggle and dare for
the redemption of the world. "Of making many books there is no end,"
tho there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are made;
but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures and
vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed may close his eyes in
death, consoled and