ne's best, indeed, but by doing it now, not
waiting for some distant day when one can do it better. A writer
deserves no pardon for careless or hurried writing. As much time as he
has mental ability to spend on it, so much time he should devote to it.
But then speed it on its way. Shut it up for a term of years, and you
will perhaps have a manuscript that says _begin_ where it used to say
_commence_, but in the mean time all the people whom you wished to save
have died of a broken heart,--or lived with one, which is still worse.
Besides, even for improvement, it is better to publish your paper than
to keep it in the drawer. There, all the amendments it can receive will
come from the few feeble advances in knowledge which you may be so
fortunate as to make. But print it and every one immediately gives you
especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen
to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable
boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious
newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is
the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but
when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the
letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another
with a relish that is marvellous to behold, and which must furnish to
the unbelieving world a lively commentary on the old text, "Behold how
these Christians love one another!" When their own list of your
shortcomings is exhausted, ten to one they will take up the parable of
somebody else; and if little Johnny Horner sitting in the corner of his
sanctum has not room in his crowded columns for the whole pie in which
his brother Horner has served you up, never fear but he will put in his
thumb and pick out the plums to enliven his feast withal.

No. I shall keep on writing,--hit, if I can, miss, if I must, but shoot
any way. There is a great deal of firing that kills no men and breaches
no walls, but it worries the enemy. John Brown did not in the least know
what he was doing. His definite attempt was a fatal failure; but the
great and guilty conspiracy behind, of which he saw nothing, was smitten
to the heart under his random blows; his sixteen white men and five
negroes, flung blindly and recklessly against the ramparts of Slavery,
were but the precursors of that great host, black and white, which has
since gone down, organi