ind. You shudder at doing anything unusual, and even hear by
anticipation the laugh of your particular friends. You are especially
ashamed at appearing to care for what those about you do not care for. A
laugh at your humanity, or your "theories," would disconcert you. You
are fearfully anxious that any project of benevolence you undertake
should succeed, not altogether on its own account, but because your
sagacity is embarked in it, and plentiful will be the gibes at its
failure, if it should fail. Put these fears aside. All that is
prominent, all that acts, must lay itself open to shallow criticism. It
has been said that in no case of old age, however extreme, has the
faculty for giving advice been known to decay; depend upon it, that of
criticism flourishes in the most indolent, the most feeble, the most
doting minds. Let not the wheels of your endeavour be stayed by
accumulated rubbish of this kind. We are afraid of responsibility,
afraid of what people may say of us, afraid of being alone in doing
right: in short, the courage which is allied to no passion--Christian
courage as it may be called--is in all ages and amongst all people, one
of the rarest possessions.

The fear of ridicule is the effeminacy of the soul.

Great enterprises--and for you this attempt to make your working men
happier is a great enterprise--great enterprises demand an habitual
self-sacrifice in little things: and, hard as it may be to keep fully in
mind the enterprise itself, it is often harder still to maintain a just
sense of the connection between it and these said trifling points of
conduct, which, perhaps, in any single instance, seem so slightly and so
remotely connected with it. But remember it is not always over great
impediments that men are liable to stumble most fatally.

* * * * *

You must not expect immediate and obvious gratitude to crown your
exertions. The benevolence that has not duty for its stem, but merely
springs from some affectionateness of nature, must often languish, I
fear, when it comes to count up its returns in the way of grateful
affection from those whom it has toiled for. And yet the fault is often
as much in the impatience and unreasonable expectation of the
benefactors, as in any ingratitude on the part of the persons benefited.
If you must look for gratitude, at any rate consider whether your
exertions are likely to be fully understood at present by those whom