as a happy child imagines it, what a world would this be!

In time, my misapprehension was corrected, rather, I think, through the
application to it of cold logic than by any rude awakening. I learned
of my riches not by losing them--the giants did not withdraw their
graciousness--but by comparing the lot of others with my own. And yet,
to tell the truth--perhaps I might better leave it untold; only in these
chapters, especially, I will not begin with reserves--to say truth,
then, my world, during my father's lifetime, and afterwards for I will
not say how long, was divided into two natural parts, my father being
one of them, and everybody else the other. Hence I was led to regard the
parties of the latter part, rich or poor, giants or pygmies, as being,
after all, of much the same stature and value. The brightness (in the
boy's estimation) of the paternal figure rendered distinctions between
other brightnesses unimportant. The upshot was, in short, that I
inclined to the opinion that while compassion was unquestionably due to
other children for not having a father like mine, yet in other respects
my condition was not egregiously superior to theirs. They might not know
the Brownings or the Julia Ward Howes; but then, very likely, the Smiths
and the Joneses, whom they did know, were nearly as good.

After fifty years, of course, such prepossessions yield to experience.
My father was the best friend I ever had, and he will always stand in
my estimation distinct from all other friends and persons; but I can now
recognize that in addition to the immeasurable debt I owe him for being
to me what he was in his own person, he bestowed upon me a privilege
also immeasurable in the hospitality of these shining ones who were his
intimates. Did the gift cost him nothing? Nothing, in one sense. But,
again, what does it cost a man to walk upright and cleanly during
the years of his pilgrimage: to deal justly with all, and charitably:
diligently to cultivate and develop every natural endowment: always to
seek truth, tell it, and vindicate it: to discharge to the utmost of his
ability every duty that was intrusted to him: to rest content, in the
line of his calling, with no work inferior to his best: to say no word
and do no act which, were they known, might weaken the struggle against
temptation of any fellow-creature? These qualities were the price at
which Hawthorne bought his friends; and in receiving those friends from
him, his chi