convinced that it is well for a man to think too highly of himself while he is in the working state. Sydney Smith could discover no relation between Modesty and Merit, excepting that they both began with an M. Considered simply as a machine out of which work is to be got, the wheels of intellect run best when they are kept well oiled by the public and the publisher.
Therefore, my friends, if any of you have uttered words of kindness, of flattery, of extreme over-praise, even, let me thank you for it. Criticism with praise in it is azotized food; it makes muscle; to expect a man to write without it is like giving nothing but hay to a roadster and expecting to get ten miles an hour out of him. A young fellow cannot be asked to go on making love forever, if he does not get a smile now and then to keep hope alive. The truth is, Bridget would have whisked off the table-cloth and given notice of quitting, and the whole establishment would have gone to pieces at the end of No. 1, if you had not looked so very good-natured about it that it was impossible to give up such amiable acquaintance.
The above acknowledgments and personal revelations are preliminary to the following more general statement, which will show how they must be qualified.
Every man of sense has two ways of looking at himself. The first is an everyday working view, in which he makes the most of his gifts and accomplishments. It is the superficial stratum in which praise and blame find their sphere of action,—the region of comparisons,—the habitat where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the oaks, but they are the more useful and necessary vegetable of the two. The cheap, but perpetual activities of life grow out of this upper stratum of our being. How silly to try to be wiser than Providence! Don't tell me about the vain illusions of self-love. There is nothing so real in this world as Illusion. All other things may desert a man, but this fair angel never leaves him. She holds a star a billion miles over a baby's head, and laughs to see him clawing and batting himself as he tries to reach it. She glides before the hoary sinner down the path which leads to the inexorable gate, jingling the keys of heaven at her girdle.
Underneath this surface-soil lies another stratum of thought, where the tap-roots of the larger mental growths penetrate and find their nourishment. Out of this comes heroism in all its shapes; here the enterprises that overshadow half the planet, when full grown, lie, tender, in their cotyledons. Here there is neither praise nor blame, nothing but a passionless self-estimate, quite as willing to undervalue as to rate too highly. The less clay and straw the task-master has given his servant, the smaller the tale of bricks he will be required to furnish. Many a man not remarkable for conceit has shuddered as some effort or accident has revealed to him a depth of power of which he never thought himself the possessor and broken his peace with the fatal words, "Sleep no more!"
This deeper self-appreciation is a slow and gradual process. At first, a child thinks he can do everything. I remember when I thought I could lift a house, if I would only try hard enough. So I began with the hind wheel of a heavy old family-coach, built like that in which my Lady Bountiful carried little King Pippin, if you happen to remember the illustrations of that story. I lifted with all my might, and the planet pulled down with all its might. The planet beat. After that, my ideas of the difference between my will and my muscular force were more accurately defined. Then came the illusion, that I could, of course, "lick," "serve out," or "polish off," various small boys who had been or might be obnoxious to me. The event of the dif-
